Works of Piety and Works of Mercy

I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. MATTHEW 25:35–36

From the days of the Holy Club, when the young Oxford Methodists visited prisoners in the Castle gaol and taught poor children to read, Wesley never separated prayer from practical love. He called the two works of piety and works of mercy, and he insisted that both belong to the way God has appointed for His children to grow. In two late sermons, On Zeal and On Visiting the Sick, he went further than most Christians of his day, or ours, would dare: he said that works of mercy are real means of grace, and that when they conflict with works of piety, mercy is to be preferred.

Two kinds of good works

In The Scripture Way of Salvation, as we saw, Wesley names both. Works of piety are prayer, public, family and private; receiving the Lord’s Supper; searching the Scriptures; and fasting. Works of mercy are those that relate to the bodies or souls of others: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, entertaining the stranger, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, instructing the ignorant, awakening the careless, comforting the feeble-minded. Neither earns salvation. Both are the way in which a believer waits for God to complete His work.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. JAMES 1:27

Mercy as a means of grace

In On Visiting the Sick Wesley challenges a common assumption. People generally suppose, he says, that the means of grace and the ordinances of God are the same thing: prayer, Scripture, the sacrament. “But are they the only means of grace?” His answer: “Surely there are works of mercy, as well as works of piety, which are real means of grace.”

The point is profound. Wesley believed that God meets us not only when we turn toward Him in worship, but when we turn toward our neighbour in need. The one who visits the sick, he says, gains an excellent means of increasing his thankfulness to God, and of increasing his sympathy with the afflicted, his benevolence and all his social affections. Whoever neglects it loses a means of grace.

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again. PROVERBS 19:17

Love on the throne

In On Zeal Wesley gives a picture of the Christian life that sets everything in its proper order, and it is one of the most useful images he ever offered. In a Christian believer, he says, love sits upon the throne erected in the inmost soul, the love of God and man, filling the whole heart and reigning without a rival. In a circle near the throne are all holy tempers: longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, fidelity, temperance. In an exterior circle are all the works of mercy, whether to the souls or bodies of men. Next to these are the works of piety: reading and hearing the word, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, fasting. Lastly, uniting them all, the church, in which Christ has joined His followers into one body so that they may provoke one another to love and good works.

The order matters. True zeal, Wesley argues, is always proportioned to the degree of goodness in its object. A Christian should be zealous for the church, but more zealous for the ordinances than for the church itself, more for works of mercy than for works of piety, more for holy tempers than for works of mercy, and most of all for love. It is easy to let zeal run the other way, burning hottest for the outermost circle.

Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. MATTHEW 9:13

And then comes the startling instruction. Since God will have mercy and not sacrifice, “Whenever, therefore, one interferes with the other, works of mercy are to be preferred.” Even works of piety, he says, are to give way to works of mercy. He does not mean that prayer is unimportant; he spent hours in it every day. He means that a religion which would leave a neighbour hungry to keep an appointment with a prayer book has misunderstood what prayer is for.

Not by proxy

On Visiting the Sick is also a remarkably practical sermon. By the sick, Wesley says, he means not only those who keep their beds, but all who are in affliction of mind or body, whether good or bad, whether they fear God or not.

And he insists that this duty must be done in person. People with money, he observes, are often willing to send help but not to go. They should go. “One great reason why the rich, in general, have so little sympathy for the poor, is, because they so seldom visit them.” They see nothing of the misery, and so they feel nothing. The poor must be seen to be loved. Wesley presses the point more than once: this is a duty you cannot perform by proxy, unless you are disabled by your own weakness.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. GALATIANS 6:2

He gives advice on how to visit. Begin by praying for humility, meekness and patience, so that you are not discouraged by ingratitude or dullness. Then, usually, begin with the person’s outward condition: whether they have food, clothing and fuel, whether they have care and proper advice for their illness. Help where you can, and where you cannot, do not be ashamed to beg for the poor from those who are more able. Only then, gently, turn to the state of their soul.

He adds that the duty falls on everyone, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, according to their ability. And, in a passage bold for its time, he argues at length that women should share fully in this work, and rejects the maxim that women are only to be seen and not heard.

Where to read with care

Wesley’s ordering of works of mercy above works of piety can be misunderstood as a preference for activism over prayer. It was nothing of the kind. His own life was one of intense and regular devotion, and his circles begin with the love of God on the throne. A Christian who serves the poor without praying will soon run dry, and Wesley would have said so. The point is not that mercy replaces worship, but that worship which does not issue in mercy has lost its way.

Some may also feel that his pictures of the poor, like those of his age, can be condescending. He often speaks as a gentleman to gentlemen about the poor rather than to the poor as equals. But few people in eighteenth-century England spent more time among them or gave away more of their income to them. The instruction to go in person remains as searching now as then.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Draw Wesley’s circles: love on the throne, then holy tempers, then works of mercy, then works of piety, then the church. Where does your zeal burn hottest?

2. Is there someone sick, lonely or in trouble whom you have been helping only at a distance? Visit them in person this week.

3. Before you visit, pray for humility, meekness and patience, as Wesley advises.

4. Ask whether any religious routine of yours has ever kept you from an act of mercy. Resolve what you will do next time.

5. Read On Zeal or On Visiting the Sick in the Sermons on Several Occasions.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and You have told us that what we do for the least of Your brethren we do for You.

Put love on the throne of my heart, and let everything else be ordered around it.

Save me from a religion that keeps me comfortable while my neighbour suffers. Send me in person to the sick, the poor and the afflicted, and meet me there.

Make my prayers fruitful in mercy, and my mercy full of prayer. Amen.