8 sively in Yorkshire, Cornwall, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, and other counties. He was a man of such genuine spirit and popular tact that his worst opposers usually became his best friends, and the rudest men delighted to hear him. He passed through Wednesbury soon after the terrible riots there, and preached in the open air. The mob came, but would not molest him. At Nottingham several persons tried to throw squibs into his face and at his feet while he was preaching, but others threw them back; and a ser geant of the army came to him with tears, and said: “In the presence of God and all this people I beg your pardon, for I came on purpose to mob you; but when I could get no one to assist me I stood to hear you, and am convinced of the deplorable state of my soul; I believe you are a servant of the living God." "He then kissed me," says Nelson, "and went away weeping." No evidence could better prove the power of the artisan preacher. He journeyed on to Grimsby, where the parish clergyman hired a man to beat the town drum, and went before it, gathering together the rabble, and giving them liquor to go with him. and "fight for the Church." When they came to Nelson's lodgings they set up three huzzas, and their clerical leader cried out to them to pull down the house; but no one offered to touch it till Nelson had done preaching; they then broke the windows, leaving not one whole square of glass in the building. The people were assailed as they went out; but the mob began to fight one another, and thus allowed the preacher and his hearers to escape. Not long after the minister gathered the rioters together again, and gave them more drink. They then came and broke the stanchions of the windows, pulled up the paving in the streets, threw the stones into the house, and demolished its furniture; but they again quarreled among themselves, and dispersed after five hours of tumult. The clergyman, who was a representative of a large class of his profession at that day, hired the town drummer to disturb the evangel• Nelson's Journal, p. 90. ist again the next morning; but after beating his drum around the congregation for three quarters of an hour, he yielded under Nelson's eloquence, threw away the drum, and stood listening with the tears running down his cheeks. Such was the power of this extraordinary man over his rudest hearers. He went to Epworth; both the clerk and clergyman of that parish were drunkards; the former ran, as Nelson was preaching in the open air, and cried to the congregation to make way that he might reach the itinerant and carry him before his master, who was at the village ale-house. The people stood up, however, for the eloquent mason, and bade the clerk hold his peace and go about his business. He chose to become still ruder, when a sturdy yeoman took him up and threw him on a dung-hill. At Pudsey the people were afraid to admit him to their houses, as they had heard that constables were searching for him. Nelson sat upon his horse in the street and exhorted them. "The Lord," he assured them, "would build the walls of Jerusalem in these troublesome times." He passed on to Leeds, where he kept hewing stone by day and preaching every night." The Methodists of Leeds may " justly boast of him as their founder and apostle. On reaching his home at Birstal, he was met with warnings that he should be impressed for the army if he did not immediately escape. The ale-house keepers complained of the loss of their customers by his preaching, and the parish clergyman wished not such a rival near him. "I cannot fear," said the brave Yorkshireman; "I cannot fear, for God is on my side, and his word hath added strength to my soul this day." He was seized the next day while preaching at Adwalton. He was much esteemed among his fellow-townsmen, and one of them offered five hundred pounds bail for him, but it was refused, and he was marched off to Halifax, where the Birstal vicar was on the bench as one of the Commission. Nelson's neighbors came to bear witness for him, but the commissioners declined to hear any other than their clerical asso ciate, who reported him to be a vagrant, without visible means of living. Nelson, who had always been an industrious workman, repelled the charge manfully. "I am as able to get my living by my hands," he said, "as any man of my trade in England is, and you know it." He was ordered to Bradford. On leaving Halifax many of the common people wept and prayed for him as he passed through the streets. "Fear not," he cried to them; "God hath his way in the whirlwind, and he will plead my cause; only pray for me that my faith fail not." At Bradford he was plunged into a dungeon, into which flowed blood and filth from a slaughter-house above it, so that it smelt, he says, "like a pig-stye; but my soul," he adds, "was so filled with the love of God that it was a paradise to me." There was nothing in it to sit on, and his only bed was a heap of decayed straw. But even there his manly spirit won him friends; a poor soldier wished to become responsible for him; and an opposer of the Methodists offered security for him that he might be allowed to sleep in a bed. The people handed him food, water, and candles through a hole in the door, and stood outside joining him in hymns most of the night. He shared their charities with a miserable fellow-prisoner, who might have starved had it not been for his kindness. Nelson's excellent wife came to him early the next morning, and showed that she was worthy of him. She had two young children to provide for, and expected soon another, but addressing him through the hole in the door, said: "Fear not; the cause is God's for which you are here, and he will plead it himself. Therefore be not concerned about me and the children, for He that feeds the young ravens will be mindful of us. He will give you strength for your day; and after we have suffered awhile he will perfect what is lacking in our souls, and bring us where the wicked cease from troubling and where the weary are at rest." "I cannot fear," responded the brave man; "I cannot fear either man or devil so long as I find the love of God as I now do." The next day he was sent to Leeds. Multitudes flocked to see him, and he thought, he says, of the Pilgrim's Progress, for hundreds of people in the street stood and looked at him through the iron gate, and were ready to fight about him. Several would have bailed him out. A stranger offered a hundred pounds security, but it was refused. At night a hundred persons met in the jail, and joined him in worship. In a short time he was marched off to York, where violent hostility prevailed against the Methodists, While he was guarded through the streets by armed troops, it was, he says, as if hell was moved from beneath to meet him at his coming. The streets and windows were filled with people, who shouted and huzzaed as if he had been one who had laid waste the nation. 66 But," he adds sublimely, "the Lord made my brow like brass, so that I could look upon them as grasshoppers, and pass through the city as if there had been none in it but God and me." Here he was again sent to prison, but ceased not to admonish the officers and others about him whenever they swore, and they often shrank before his word and his glance. He was ordered to parade. The corporal who was commanded to give him a musket, and gird him with his military trappings, trembled as if he had the palsy. Nelson said he would wear them " as a cross," but would not fight as it was not agreeable to his conscience, and he would not harm his conscience for any man on earth. He reproved and exhorted all who approached him. At one time "a great company' gathered to see him, and wished to hear his opinions. He preached to them, and they retired, declaring "this is the doctrine which ought to be preached, let men say what they will against it." Before long he was preaching in the fields and the streets, and no remonstrances of his officers could stop him. He replied to them always with respect. fulness, but with an invincible though quiet firmness. He was subjected to maltreatment, which his brave spirit would have resented had it not been for his Christian principles. A stripling ensign, especially, took pleasure in VOL. 1-14 tormenting him. This officer had him put in prison for re proving his profanity and for preaching, and when he was let out threatened to chastise him. Nelson records that "it caused a sore temptation to arise in me, to think that wicked, ignorant man should thus torment me, and I able to tie his head and heels together. I found an old man's bone in me; but the Lord lifted up a standard, when anger was coming on like a flood, else I should have wrung his neck to the ground and set my foot upon him.” He was at last released by the influence of Lady Huntingdon with the government, after having been marched about the country with his regiment for nearly three months. He immediately resumed his labors as a good soldier of the Lord Jesus. On the night of his discharge he was preaching at Newcastle; several of his military comrades came to hear him, and parted from him with tears. We shall meet him again amid severer scenes, but always sublime in the calmness, simplicity, and courage of his noble nature: Thomas Beard, his fellow evangelist, had also been his fellow-sufferer in the regiment, and met a sadder fate. He maintained a brave spirit under his sufferings, but his health failed. He was sent to the hospital at Newcastle, "where," says Wesley, "he still praised God continually." His fever became worse and he was bled, but his arm festered, mortified, and had to be amputated. A few days later he died, the protomartyr of Methodism.7 It is not surprising that the scholarly mind of Wesley sometimes revolted from such scenes. "I found," he writes, 66 a natural wish, O for ease and a resting-place! Not yet, but eternity is at hand!" Amid these very agitations he was planning for a still more energetic prosecution of the 7 Wesley refers to him in his Journal, 1744, with much feeling, and quotes the lines: "Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought Of God, in word mightier than they in arms." Charles Wesley wrote two of his best hymns on the death of Beard |