The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival
Page 23
_From the Revd. John Wesley to Mr. George Stobart._
"At Mrs. Berry's Lodgings, Bristol,
"May 5th, 1762.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"Your letter surprised and grieved me; for I had hoped that Lady Kilrush would have smiled upon your suit, and that an union between two natures so ardent in Christian charity would be not only for your happiness, but for the spiritual welfare of that dear lady, and for the greater glory of God.
"Yet though I regret your disappointment I can but honour her ladyship for the reverence in which she holds her promise to the dead; nor can I do other than admire that chaste and heavenly disposition which would dedicate a lifetime to the memory of a husband who was hers only in one dying hour. Such widows are widows indeed!
"You ask for my counsel at this so serious crisis of your life, when the nature of your future work for Christ rests on your choice of action; first, whether you should take Holy Orders, before you go to America, a voyage upon which you tell me your mind is irrevocably fixed; and next whether you should accept her ladyship's munificent gift of the major portion of her funded property, and her mansion in St. James's Square, she retaining only her Irish estate, and the family seat on the Shannon. This latter question I unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. The fact that this noble lady had executed the deed of gift which transferred her property to you before she declared her intention, in the touching letter which you send me, would show that she had deliberately resolved upon this sacrifice, and was influenced by the desire of doing justice to her late husband's nearest kinsman. She has indeed honoured me with a letter to that effect, and has moreover told me that she intends to spend the rest of her life in Ireland, where I hope occasionally to visit her.
"I say to you, George, accept this fortune, even though, in your present temper, it may seem a burden. Lady Kilrush will be still a rich woman; and you will have a wider scope for the employment of money in the service of Christ than any woman, not even that Mother in Israel, Lady Huntingdon, could find.
"The more serious question of your ordination I must leave to your own heart and mind, and the Spirit of God directing you. As an itinerant lay-preacher your ministry has borne good fruit, and if you transfer your labours to Georgia I shall sorely miss your help; but as an ordained priest you will enter a higher sphere of usefulness, and feel yourself sent out upon a nobler mission: so, my dear brother in Christ, I bid you go on and fear not. We desire to rivet the chains that bind us to the Church of England, not to loosen them; and the idea that we are drifting apart from that Church--_injusta noverca_ though she has been to us--is a source of fear and trembling to many weak spirits, most of all to my dear brother Charles.
"For myself I care but little whether we continue to belong to the Established Church or be cast out; for sure I am that we have kindled a flame which neither men nor devils will ever be able to quench. Our fundamental principles are the fundamental principles of the Church, and will suffer no change. I have no fear for the Society, which, from so insignificant a beginning, has attained so vast an influence. I remember how, less than thirty years ago, two young men, without friends, without either power or fortune, set out from college to attempt a reformation, not of opinions, but of men's tempers and lives, of vice in every kind, of everything contrary to justice, mercy, or truth. For this we carried our lives in our hands, and were looked upon and treated as mad dogs. Knowing this of me you cannot think that I should fear to stand alone, the untrammelled shepherd of my flock. Your ordination, should you meet with a bishop of liberal mind, like Whitefield's friend, that good Bishop of Gloucester, ought not to hang tediously on hand. But I hope I may have many occasions for conversing with you before you sail for America, where, supplied with ample fortune, and armed with the faith that can move mountains, you may do much to maintain those noble enterprises, the Schools, the Orphanages, and Asylums, which Mr. Whitefield initiated, and to which he ever returns with fresh vigour. Would that he had a more robust constitution, and that we might hope to see his ministry continued to a green old age; but I fear he cannot long stand against the inroads of disease, accelerated by strenuous toil, preaching three times a day, long journeys in all weathers, the rough usage of the mob, and that fiery spirit which has been always like the sword that wears out the scabbard.
"On my return to the Foundery in the autumn I shall seek for you in your house at Lambeth. Till then, esteemed friend and fellow labourer, farewell.
"JOHN WESLEY."
_From the Revd. John Wesley to the Revd. George Stobart._
"At the George Inn, Limerick, Ireland,
"November 11th, 1768.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"It is with poignant grief that I take up my pen to write the saddest tidings it has ever been my lot to send you. Your last letter was full of enquiries about Lady Kilrush. Alas, George, that noble being, whom we have both loved and revered, no longer inhabits this place of sin and sorrow, and I dare hope that her pure and gentle spirit has taken flight to a better world, and now enjoys the companionship of saints and angels. Rarely have I met with a nature so free from earthly stain, nor have I often beheld a life so rich in good works; and although she may not even at the last have attained that unquestioning faith which I so desired to find in her, I would hazard my own hope of Heaven against the certainty of her everlasting bliss; for never did I know a better Christian.
"Her death was worthy to rank in the list of martyrs. You may have heard that this city--the filth and squalor of whose poorer streets and alleys no pen can depict--was lately visited by an outbreak of small-pox. Lady Kilrush was at her mansion by the Atlantic, a delightful spot, where I once spent a reposeful week in her sweet company, preaching in the neighbouring villages, and narrowly escaping death at the hands of a wild mob, egged on by a bigot priest. In this healthful retreat she heard of the pestilence that was mowing down the poor of Limerick, and at once hastened to the dreadful scene. Secure from the disease herself, by past suffering, she spent her days and nights in ministering to the sick, aided in this pious work by a band of holy women of the Roman Catholic faith, and by such hired nurses as her purse could command.
"For six weeks she laboured without respite, scarcely allowing herself time for food or sleep; and when my itinerant ministry brought me to Limerick I found her marked for death. She had taken cold in passing from close and heated rooms into the windy street, had neglected her own ailments in her anxiety for others, and the result was a violent inflammation of the lungs, attended with a raging fever.
"Alas, dear sir, I can give you no message of affection from those once so lovely lips. She was delirious when I saw her, and though your name was mixed with her wild ravings, 'twas in disjointed sentences of no meaning; but on the day preceding her death the fever abated, and indeed it seemed for a short space as if my prayers had prevailed, and that she would be spared still to adorn a world where by her charities and inexhaustible beneficence she shone like a star. Her senses came back to her within an hour of the last change. She knew me, and received the Sacrament from my hand, and I dare hope that in those last moments perfect faith in her Saviour was conjoined with that perfect love which had long been the ruling principle of her life.
"I had been kneeling by her bedside in silent prayer for some time, her marble hand clasped in mine, when she cried out suddenly, 'Husband, I have kept my vow,' and, looking upward with a seraphic smile, her spirit passed into eternity. I assisted in the funeral service, and saw her mortal remains laid in the family vault, where her coffin was plac
ed beside that of the last Lord Kilrush.
"Yours in sorrow and affection,
"JOHN WESLEY."
EPILOGUE.
Thirty years later, on the anniversary of Antonia's death, GeorgeStobart, Bishop of Northborough--the fighting bishop, as some of hisadmirers called him, a profound scholar, a fiery controversialist, acelibate and an ascetic, once famous as a Methodist field-preacher, andnow the leader of the extreme High Church party--sat by the fireside inhis library in the episcopal Palace, a lofty and spacious room, where apair of wax candles on the writing-table served but to accentuate thedarkness. He sat leaning forward in the candlelight, with one elbow onthe arm of his chair, looking at a long dark ringlet that lay in hisopen hand, bound with a black ribbon to which was attached a label inWesley's writing--
"Antonia's hair, cut after death by her sorrowing friend, J. W."
"Only a woman's hair," murmured the bishop. "'Tis said that Swift spokethose words in pure cynicism over a ringlet of his ill-used Stella.Only a woman's hair! And for me the memorial of a life's love, the oneearthly relic which reminds the priest that he was once a man. Oh, thouwho wert the idol of this heart, dost thou in some undiscovered regionstill live to pity thy desolate lover? Shall we meet and know eachother again, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage? Oris it all a dream, nothing but a dream?"