1 of 2

Social reform as we conceive of it today would have been impossible in Wesley’s time. Society in England during the eighteenth century was rigidly structured, and the only means of advancing from one class to another was preferment, the support of a wealthy benefactor. The nobility, the city and country gentry, and the tradesmen were sharply differentiated from servants, the poor, and slaves, in that order. If you were born, for example, in the servant class, chances were you remained there the rest of your life.

Wesley and his followers did not challenge the order and hierarchy of society. They were not revolutionaries. Rather, within each class they worked to enrich the spiritual dimensions of individual men’s and women’s lives. There was one exception to Wesley’s willingness to accept the status quo—that was slavery. Wesley’s journals record his interest in the movement to abolish slavery. Serfdom, or life bondage to the land, was abolished systematically in Europe during this period; slavery was largely abolished during the next century. Late in his career Wesley agreed with Wilberforce, the voice of the antislavery movement—slavery must end. (See “Wesley to Wilberforce”)

Wesley and his men and women went into the prisons, hospitals, and work houses to bring the message of salvation. The reform they sought was like that brought to the repentant thief on the cross. They tried to turn people in a hopeless situation to Christ for the sake of their immortality. This was scarcely easy, for prisoners felt themselves irrevocably condemned and ruined. There was no possibility of a life of honor if ever they were released. The sick were taught that illness was a form of God’s judgment, and this compounded their despondency at being hospitalized. Debt-ridden folk and female offenders in the work houses had little prospect of release.

Instead of being accepted with open arms when they visited the prisons and work houses, Wesley and his fellow Holy Club members, and later his followers, found hatred, taunts, and intractability. They preached over shouting, mockery, and physical abuse. Peer pressure made true repentance difficult for the downtrodden prisoners. Working under the threat of disease, amid unsanitary conditions, the Methodists continued with calm persistence in the face of abuse and repeated disappointment.

William Morgan, one of the members of the Holy Club, started the prison visitations, and all members followed his example. Wesley made this so basic a part of his program that William Hogarth could satirize in a print the fervid exhortations of a Methodist preacher as he tried to win a condemned soul for Christ on the way to execution. In fairness, Hogarth’s print depicts the Methodist as actively seeking to save the lost soul while the official Anglican clergyman sits idly by in comfort.

Wesley preached faith and God’s mercy to men and women who might have despaired of redemption. His message was that God’s grace is “free in all, and free for all.”

Hospitals in the eighteenth century were by no means the clean and elaborate organizations that we know today. Medicine itself was crude and ineffective. The poor were seldom able to get the medical attention they required. Here Wesley’s approach to reform was more direct. He established clinics for the poor.

Wesley’s success in the work houses seems remarkable even by contemporary standards of reform. Without changing conditions in the fundamental sense, Wesley’s preaching inspired inmates. He emphasized cleanliness and thrift. He records returning to work houses he had preached at previously—and finding evidence of almost total transformation. Particularly among “lost” women his appeal to human decency was heeded.

next page... |  1 of 2

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help