The frail, elderly and diminutive figure walked surprisingly briskly along the High St, flanked by two larger men. As they trudged back from Calton Hill they were recollecting their memories over the last thirty-nine years of his preaching in Edinburgh, which, despite his widespread travelling, he had visited twenty-two times (1751-1790). His frailty and small stature betrayed what lay inside, for here was a lion of a man in preaching terms. His name was Revd John Wesley.
In the early years of his open-air gatherings on Calton Hill, Castle Hill, Arthur’s Seat, and in the School Yards, crowds of between 5,000 and 6,000 would regularly gather to hear him, even at five o’clock in the morning. He remembered the time on Calton Hill in 1764, when during a Sabbath communion, he witnessed the largest crowd he had ever seen in Scotland, and more importantly they were ‘deeply affected. Many were in tears; more seemed cut to the heart. Surely,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘this time will not be forgotten. Will it not appear in the annals of eternity?’
The first time Wesley had set his eyes on Edinburgh he, like so many before and after him, fell in love with the old city with its rugged beauty and unique history. For many he was a fresh breath of air, and when asked whether he was fearful of the dour Scots, he said he was far more in fear of being hugged to death. And yet he was appalled at the stench of Auld Reekie. ‘How long,’ he cried, ‘shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer? Will no lover of his country, or of a decency and common sense, find a remedy for this?’
Despite his passionate preaching and large crowds however, Wesley never really broke through in Scotland, for he did not understand the Presbyterian Church. On his death he left only just over 1,000 people in his Wesleyan Connexion, compared with the 57,000 in England and Wales.
Although he wrote in 1788 that he could find ‘a frankness and openness in the people of Edinburgh, which I find in few other parts of the kingdom’, he also found that ‘they hear, but feel no more than the seats they sit upon!’ What he soon discovered was how deeply entrenched Calvinism was in the people, and he was an Arminian. John Calvin and his followers had taught that God had predetermined people to go to heaven or hell, whereas Arminius taught that we have freewill to choose God, or reject him. Although many people turned out to hear Wesley’s preaching, his Arminian views screened most of them out from being members of his congregations, even though many were converted to Christ. This was something both his brother Charles, and fellow-evangelist and Calvinist friend George Whitefield, had warned him about. Another problem was the level of education and knowledge he found in Edinburgh, and he ruefully admitted ‘they know everything, so they learn nothing.’
He soon realised he had a battle on his hands with the Calvinists, led primarily by the very man who had done so much good in Britain and America – Dr John Erskine. After Erskine had published his Mr. Wesley’s Principles Detected in 1767, Wesley found a growing aloofness from the clergy. And yet both were godly men of love. Benjamin Rush could write of Erskine that ‘the fire of Christian love burned upon [the altar of his heart] with a perpetual blaze.’Wesley, in turn, could say about Erskine: ‘I love your person; I love your character; I love the work wherein you are engaged’.
‘Do you think we shall see John Wesley in heaven?’ a zealous Calvinist asked George Whitefield. ‘I fear not,’ replied Wesley’s friend. ‘No! – he will be so near the throne, and we at such a distance, that we shall hardly get a sight of him.’
Wesley tried hard to see unity forged between him and the Presbyterians, even finding Lady Glenorchy and Lady Maxwell to fund and support a gospel partnership. Lady Glenorchy wrote in her diary on 7th March, 1770:
‘This day, St Mary’s Chapel was opened for preaching the Gospel. Ministers of every denomination are to be admitted, who have a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ and the souls of men, and who preach the doctrine of justification by faith alone.’
This experiment was a watershed moment in our history: would there be a unity between the church denominations in Edinburgh and Scotland around the gospel, or not? Wesley’s hopes were high, but were soon dashed to pieces. By 1771, after listening to some of the leading Calvinists in Edinburgh, Lady Glenorchy ‘dismissed Mr. Wesley’s preachers from [her] chapel.’
Such a failed experiment may have been a crushing blow to Wesley and others, but something was stirring. A new day was dawning in which Presbyterian Christians would work side-by-side with Christians of other church backgrounds in love and harmony for Christ’s gospel, but this would emerge during the next century. It would be like a giant arising from a long sleep, with global consequences.
‘And they were preaching the gospel there’ (Acts 14:7, NKJV).
Image: John Wesley on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Permission from the Methodist Church