Methodism

 Writing yet again about the rather negative approach to Methodism and Methodists in the early 19th century Scottish novelists I have been reading, I thought I would make a few observations below.

On our weekend London trip recently, we visited the London Charterhouse. John Wesley attended there as a pupil between 1714 and 1720. There is a plaque to him on the wall of the passage leading to the chapel.

 

Just a little further down the road to St. Paul's, we noticed another plaque - this to an event eighteen years' later, when Wesley's conversion, being 'strangely warmed' took place. Being brought up in the Methodist Church - I was 'received' into its Fellowship in Marlborough as a teenager - and having attended Kingswood School, the church's premier education establishment, it is not surprising I retain an emotional (if not an intellectual) attachment to it.  

Kingswood School - mid-19th century

I have several books about the school and Methodism in general. One of my prized possessions is an 1802 Countess of Huntingdon's Chapels Hymnbook, given to my father in 1939, when he was serving in St. Maartens, West Indies. I have recently had the cover rebound, as the old one was falling to pieces. The Countess, a formidable woman, fell out with the Wesleys, but still retained many of Charles Wesley's hymns. It is fascinating, reading through some of the offerings in the 481 pages (342 hymns); many of them totally unsympathetic to present day beliefs. 

Whilst wandering through the Edinburgh churchyards recently, with their 18th and 19th century tombstones and monuments (you really should view them in mist and steady rain), and reading the youthful ages of many (most?) of the deceased, one could understand the almost morbid preoccupation with Death. One had to believe in an Afterlife and Salvation. Certainly, many of the hymns in the little book I am now looking through, focus on this final event. 

AH lovely appearance of death!

No sight  upon earth is so fair;

Not all the gay pageants that breathe

Can with the dead body compare:

With solemn delight I survey

The corpse when the spirit is fled,

In love with the beautiful clay,

And longing to lie in its stead.

I don't think I would invite the author to my convivial Dinner Party. In fact, the whole Collection reinforces the feeling of a totally different age. One can imagine the inspired members of the little Welsh chapels - Zion, Bethesda, Ebenezer, Salem - belting out such paeans to the Almighty two hundred years ago.

Ye dying sons of men,

Immerg'd in sin and woe,

The gospel's voice attend,

While Jesus sends to you:

Ye perishing and guilty, come,

In Jesu's arms there yet is room.

OR

Saviour, can'st thou love a traitor?

Can'st thou love a child of wrath?

Can a hell-deserving creature

Be the purchase of thy death?

I vividly recall, at each early January service (I think, called the Annual Covenant Service), listening to a prayer which called us miserable worms. Each time, indignant, I thought 'I'm no worm'! No wonder, J. G. Lockhart, Susan Ferrier and others had such an opinion of the Methodists.