Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1913-02-18
SERMON
ON JOHN WESLEY
Rev. Metcalf Delivers Address at
Congregational Church on
Founder of Methodism.

The closing address of the series
on the -Four Johns was delivered
by Rev. Arthur Metcalf at the Con-
gregational church Sunday night.
The pastor was greeted with large
audience and held the interest of
his hearers to the closing sentence.
John Wesley, the founder Of Metho-
dism, was the theme.
The story of the Jacobin ghost
was told to give the audience some
conception of the atmosphere of the
times, when belief in the super
natural was universal.
Samuel Wesley was preacher, a
scholar, an author and one of the
best educated men of his age. His
wife was a woman of a keen mind,
good heart, and practical hand.
She was also an educated woman in
day when educated women were
rare. This was a Rooseveltian fam
lily, nineteen children, eight of
whom died in infancy. The family
was as poor as the proverbial church
mouse. In spite of this, these par
ents did not hesitate in giving their
children an education. So the moth
er became a school. ma'am and her
pupils were her own children. Meth
cd was the law of the home. A cer-
tain time for each duty, be it lesson,
prayer, or household task.
Not only was the home of the
Wesleys haunted with restless
ghost, but this spirit Of unrest
haunted the entire. nation. The king
was insecure upon his throne. The
young Pretender was continually
threatening to usurp the throne.
Political unrest was just as prevail
ent Everybody knew men were
buying and selling votes, and that
there was no virtue in public life.
Nobody lived a serious life
Many churches were closed or
worse than closed. The average
minister was seldom a good man,
and never a good preacher. He was
more at home on the hunting field
than in the prayer meeting; more
apt to be found at cock fight than
attending to his pastoral duties. 1t
was a time when throngs of people
could always be found in the bull
ring; when rottenness in politics.
rottenness in religion and rotten
ness in society were at their height
in England
Samuel Wesley was the noted ex-
ception and because he believed in
all things good and preached true
religion, his barn was burned, his
hay stacks destroyed and other in
dignities heaped upon him. 1t had
been decided in the home that John
and Charles should be educated as
preachers. They were sent to a
charter house school where scholar
ships had been secured for them,
and eventually We're students at Ok
ford Here there We're few real
scholars and Oxford, instead of be-.
ing a school of learning, was an en-
pire of dissolute life.
These young men from a godly
home became real students. The
method and system of the parsonage
they brought with them and they
became Method-ists. The jeers and
gibes of others had no effect They
were the only students who caught
the key to opportunity and the high
place they reached in after life was
theirs because they had let no mo-
ments go to waste. Right here be-
gan the great revival of religion OF
which these two men were the lead
ers. It was accompanied by re-
vival in literature, in which such
men as Defoe and Fielding, pioneers
in fiction, Hume and Gibbon, great
historians. Samuel Johnson, father
of English dictionaries, Voltaire the
philosopher, Pope and Grey, renown-
ed poets, were prominent factors.
Bigger than them all, were these
preachers of humble origin, because
of the good that resulted from the
great revival which they led.
In the work of the others the in
tellect and the heart were divided,
but in the work of the Wesleys, only
one object was theirs-the CONVEX
sion of souls and betterment of HUI
man lives.
Now little group of people band
ed themselves together and called
! themselves Methodists. They were
known as the Holy club, but this
was purely an intellectual move
ment at first, though the religious