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Today’s Episode: Day-to-Day Revival.
William J, Seymour, the black preacher from Houston who started the Azusa Street revival in Los Angelos in 1906 and birthed Pentecostalism, did not keep a diary. Neither did John Wimber who started the Vineyard church in the 70s, nor did Martin Luther or John Calvin.
John Wesley kept a diary in the late Spring of 1739, and his account offers a unique perspective from within a revival. He writes about the crowds who came to hear him preach, but also where he had supper. His diary account is the most direct, but he also wrote contemporaneous letters, some of which he modified for journal accounts to published later. A quick refresher: Wesley’s diary was the private document he kept for his own spiritual journey, Wesley’s journal contained edited and expanded excerpts of his life published for the edification of others in and out of the movement.
The past two episodes have focused on John Wesley’s sermon on Free Grace, first preached on Sunday April 29, 1739. Here is the diary account for that day.
5.30 Prayed; writ 7 Bowling Green, ‘Free Grace’ (four thousand there). 8 Tea; at Clifton, married four. 10.30 Hanham (three thousand there). 12 Visited. 12.30 At Mr Deschamps’, dinner; Clifton, read Prayers, preached. 4.30 Rose Green, Galatians 3:22 (seven thousand there). 6 At Mrs England’s, tea, religious talk. 7.30 Sang, etc. 8.30 At our Love-feast. 10 At home; religious talk. 11.
Nobody took attendance at these gatherings and so we should always take the numbers he gave with a grain of salt. Though he does write in his journal that he came to the number 7,000, by computation.
The next day, John kept on preaching. He delivered ‘Free Grace’ again and noted in his diary “two struck, one comforted.” This was as powerful for him as the large crowd sizes. John Wesley was astonished by the responses that people were making to his sermons. He speaks of people being “offended of those on whom the power of God came, among whom was a physician, who was much afraid there might be fraud or imposture in the case.”1
The dialectical nature of the revival is on display here. Thousands came, but some were suspicious. Wesley sees the suspicion as further evidence of the authenticity of revival. As well, when someone who is suspicious becomes convinced of the work of God, it is a miraculous moment. The field preaching had these moments of cries and offense within the crowd, of skeptics and converts, but field preaching was not the primary location of personal transformation.
The next day, John was on Baldwin street and wrote: “ten received [remission of sins]”2 The crowds weren’t the point of the endeavor. It was clearly an astonishing thing for him to preach to such large crowds, but the field preaching didn’t lead people to repentance as the small society meetings did. Field preaching led to the conviction of sins, small groups led to the remission of sins. Each powered by grace, but each tool with a specific purpose.
In the journal accounts, though, Wesley continues to focus on the large crowds and the spiritual experiences witnessed there. On May 1, a Quaker “who stood by was not a little displeased…and was biting his lips and knitting his brows, when he dropped down as thunderstruck.”3
The next day after a meeting and a response to skeptic, John writes
She said she had been reasoning with herself how these things could be, till she was perplexed more and more, and she now found the Spirit of God was departed from her. We began to pray, and she cried out, ‘He is come! He is come! I again rejoice in God my Savior.’ Just as we rose from giving thanks, another person reeled four or five steps and then dropped down. We prayed with her, and left her strongly convinced of sin and earnestly groaning for deliverance.”4
These are the stories that fill the journal while the diary mentions where he ate and spoke, but also the individuals responding in meetings.
May 9th brought about a momentous watershed in the Methodist Movement. He writes in the diary, “At the Schoolroom, took seisin.” Seisin, spelled S-E-I-S-I-N, is the british legal term for taking possession of a piece of land. This is the first mention of what will become the New Room and the first Methodist Property owned apart from the Church of England.
In the journal he writes:
We took possession of a piece of ground near St. James’s churchyard, in the Horse Fair, Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain both the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street and such of their acquaintance as might desire to be present with them, at such times as the Scripture was expounded. And on Saturday, 12, the first stone was laid with the voice of praise and thanksgiving.5
In a few days, John makes the radical step which concretizes the movement. Like any church receiving a large gift, the moment is not without challenges. He continues in the journal.
I had not at first the least apprehension or design of being personally engaged either in the expense of this work or in the direction of it, having appointed eleven feoffees on whom I supposed these burdens would fall, of course; but I quickly found my mistake. First, with regard to the expense: for the whole undertaking must have stood still had not I immediately taken upon myself the payment of all the workmen; so that before I knew where I was, I had contracted a debt of more than a hundred and fifty pounds. And this I was to discharge as I could, the subscriptions of both societies not amounting to one quarter of the sum.6
Feoffe is an archaic English word that has to do with a Freehold piece of land, the best translation of which is Trustee. So Wesley appointed 11 Trustees (who would be disbanded in a few days) but he paid for the first expenses by encurring debt to his name. In today’s dollars, it would be a debt of £29,045.86, a major risk for a man whose last major risk (going to Georgia) failed so miserably. He writes, “Money, it is true, I had not, nor any human prospect or probability of procuring it; but I knew “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof,” and in His name set out, nothing doubting.”
Debt was no minor matter at this time. Debt was the principle cause for people to be imprisoned and yet Wesley staked his name and freedom on this movement.
One of the deepest skeptics to the evidence of spiritual action was John Wesley’s older brother, Samuel. They had been maintaining an extended debate around salvation by faith, the established church, and spiritual gifts before John came to Bristol.
On May 10th, John wrote to Samuel
The gospel promises to you and me, and our children, and all that are afar off, even as many of those whom the Lord our God shall call as are not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, 'the witness of God's Spirit with their spirit that they are the children of God’; that they are now at this hour all accepted in the Beloved: but it witnesses not that they shall be. It is an assurance of present salvation only; therefore not necessarily perpetual, neither irreversible.
I am one of many witnesses of this matter of fact, that God does now make good this His promise daily, very frequently during a representation (how made I know not, but not to the outward eye) of Christ either hanging on the cross or standing on the right hand of God. And this I know to be of God, because from that hour the person so affected is a new creature both as to his inward tempers and outward life. ‘Old things are passed away, and all things become new.’
John then proceeded to list two anecdotes that would later be published in the journal. Evidence of God’s action was deeply persuasive to John. He didn’t just follow his reason and the tradition but was open for the Bible to speak through these new experiences people were having. And these experiences were day-to-day occuranxes. In order to keep up with the revival, he established a schedule for himself.
His daily routine was as follows, as remarked in the journal.
Every morning I read prayers and preached at Newgate. Every evening I expounded a portion of Scripture at one or more of the societies. On Monday, in the afternoon, I preached abroad, near Bristol; on Tuesday, at Bath and Two Mile Hill alternately; on Wednesday, at Baptist Mills; every other Thursday, near Pensford; every other Friday, in another part of Kingswood; on Saturday in the afternoon, and Sunday morning, in the Bowling Green (which lies near the middle of the city); on Sunday, at eleven, near Hannam Mount; at two, at Clifton; and at five, on Rose Green. and hitherto, as my days so my strength hath been.7
For the next three weeks, John kept much to the same schedule. The journal highlights a few major events, the diary keeps the day-to-day grind, and the letters continue the chronology with a little extra detail. In presenting the revival, John no longer felt the need to offer the day to day and instead lifted up the edifying highlights as examples for others.
This pattern of life continued until June 5 when John was confronted by a man who asked what authority John gathered people together. John responds in a letter and the journal:
I replied, “By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the (now) Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid hands upon me and said, ‘Take thou authority to preach the gospel.’” He said, “This is contrary to Act of Parliament: this is a conventicle.” I answered, “Sir, the conventicles mentioned in that Act (as the preamble shows) are seditious meetings; but this is not such; here is no shadow of sedition; therefore it is not contrary to that Act.” He replied, “I say it is: and beside, your preaching frightens people out of their wits.”8
The Conventicle Act of 1670, referred here, was passed during the second parliament of King Charles II after the restoration. A conventicle was a secret religious meeting. John Wesley alludes to the introduction of the act which states that these meetings had to be seditious in order to be illegal. He was probable aware of the details of the law because his mother, Susanna, had come under suspicion of it when she was leading bible studies in her home while Samuel Sr. was away. This act would be on the books until the regency period and so would hang over Wesley’s leadership of the Methodist Movement throughout his life.
The penalty for preaching at a declared conventicle was £20, or £3,872.78. That is, each sermon given would cause the preacher to be charged this amount.
In his journal and letters, John Wesley plays off this incident as no big deal, but he soon receives a letter from London concerning drama at the Fetter Lane society, and thus decamps to the capital, arriving on June 13.
I am not saying that the man bringing up the Conventicle Act stopped the revival, but it contributed to John leaving at that time. Only two years before, he had gone through tremendous legal trouble in the colonies and he would have no desire to press his luck in a community where he had only stayed for two months. He didn’t know the workings of the Justice of the Peace or the Mayor or any public figures.
After his final sermon on June 11, John “commended them to the grace of God, in whom they had believed. Surely God hath yea a work to do in this place. I have not found such love, no, not in England; nor so childlike, artless, teachable, a temper as He hath given to this people.”9
This would not be John’s last visit to Bristol. The construction of the New Room was coming along, and the society meetings were continuing to bear fruit, but London had trouble of its own, had John and Charles had a lot of growing to do still in the summer of ’39, next time on the History of Methodism.