A Letter to a Friend.

A LETTER TO A FRIEND.

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DEAR SIR, September 20, 1757.

THE longer I am absent from London, and the more I attend the service of the Church in other places, the more I am convinced of the unspeakable advantage which the people called Methodists enjoy. I mean, even with regard to public worship particularly on the Lord’s day. The church where they assemble is not gay or splendid, which might be a hindrance on the one hand; nor sordid or dirty, which might give distaste on the other; but plain as well as clean. The persons who assemble there are not a gay, giddy crowd, who come chiefly to see and be seen; nor a company of goodly, formal, outside Christians, whose religion lies in a dull round of duties; but a people most of whom do, and the rest earnestly seek to, worship God in spirit and in truth. Accordingly, they do not spend their time there in bowing and curtesying, or in staring about them; but in looking upward and looking inward, in hearkening to the voice of God, and pouring out their hearts before him.

It is also no small advantage that the person who reads Prayers (though not always the same, yet) is always one who may be supposed to speak from his heart, one whose life is no reproach to his profession; and one who performs that solemn part of divine service, not in a careless, hurrying, slovenly manner; but seriously and slowly, as becomes him who is transacting so high an affair between God and man.

Nor are their solemn addresses to God interrupted either by the formal drawl of a parish clerk, the screaming of boys, who bawl out what they neither feel nor understand, or the unseasonable and unmeaning impertinence of a voluntary on the organ. When it is seasonable to sing praise to God, they do it with the spirit, and with the understanding also; not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Hopkins and Sternhold, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry; such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian, than a Christian to turn critic. What they sing is therefore a proper continuation of the spiritual and reasonable service; being selected for that end (not by a poor humdrum wretch who can scarce read what he drones out with such an air of importance, but) by one who knows what he is about, and how to connect the preceding with the following part of the service. Nor does he take just “two staves,” but more or less, as may best raise the soul to God; especially when sung in well-composed and well-adapted tunes, not by a handful of wild, unawakened striplings, but by a whole serious congregation; and these, not lolling at ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, drawling out one word after another, but all standing before God, and praising him lustily and with a good courage.

Nor is it a little advantage as to the next part of the service, to hear a Preacher whom you know to live as he speaks, speaking the genuine Gospel of present salvation through faith, wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost; declaring present, free, full justification, and enforcing every branch of inward and outward holiness. And this you hear done in the most clear, plain, simple, unaffected language; yet with an earnestness becoming the importance of the subject, and with the demonstration of the Spirit.

With regard to the last and most awful part of divine service, the celebration of the Lord’s supper, although we cannot say that either the unworthiness of the Minister, or the unholiness of some of the communicants, deprives the rest of a blessing from God; yet do they greatly lessen the comfort of receiving. But these discouragements are removed from you: You have proof that he who administers fears God; and you have no reason to believe, that any of your fellow-communicants walk unworthy of their profession. Add to this, that the whole service is performed in a decent and solemn manner, is enlivened by hymns suitable to the occasion, and concluded with prayer that comes not out of feigned lips.

Surely then, of all the people in Great Britain, the Methodists would be the most inexcusable, should they let any opportunity slip of attending that worship, which has so many advantages, should they prefer any before it, or not continually improve by the advantages they enjoy! What can be pleaded for them, if they do not worship God in spirit and in truth; if they are still outward worshippers only, approaching God with their lips while their hearts are far from him? Yea, if, having known Him, they do not daily grow