Wesley felt renewed strength to spread the Gospel to ordinary people and it
was around then that he began to write the poetic hymns for which he would
become known. It was not until 1739 that the brothers took to field
preaching, under the influence of George Whitefield, whose open-air
preaching was already reaching great numbers of Bristol colliers. [6]
After ceasing field preaching and frequent travel due to illness in 1765,
Wesley settled and worked in the area around St Marylebone Parish Church.
On his deathbed he sent for the church's rector, John Harley, and told him
"Sir, whatever the world may say of me, I have lived, and I die, a member of
the Church of England. I pray you to bury me in your churchyard." Upon his
death, his body was carried to the church by six clergymen of the Church of
England. A memorial stone to him stands in the gardens in Marylebone High
Street, close to his place of burial. One of his sons, Samuel, became the
organist at the church.
St Joseph
The Bible pays Joseph the highest compliment: he was a
“just” man.
When the Bible speaks of God “justifying” someone, it
means that God, the all-holy or “righteous” one, so
transforms a person that the individual shares somehow
in God’s own holiness, and hence it is really “right” for
God to love him or her.
By saying Joseph was “just,” the Bible means that he was
one who was completely open to all that God wanted to
do for him. He became holy by opening himself totally to God.
The rest we can easily surmise. Think of the kind of love with which he
wooed and won Mary, and the depth of the love they shared.
It is no contradiction of Joseph’s manly holiness that he decided to divorce
Mary when she was found to be with child. The important words of the Bible
are that he planned to do this “quietly” because he was “a righteous man yet
unwilling to expose her to shame” (Matthew 1:19).
The just man was simply, joyfully obedient to God—in marrying Mary, in
naming Jesus, in shepherding the precious pair to Egypt, in bringing them to
Nazareth, in the undetermined number of years of quiet faith and courage
The Bible tells us nothing of Joseph after the return to Nazareth except the
incident of finding Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41–51). so that when Jesus’
mysterious nature began to appear, people couldn’t believe that he came
from such humble beginnings: “Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his
mother named Mary…?” (Matthew 13:55a). It was almost as indignant as
“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46b).
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