The Poor and the Slave

Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. PROVERBS 31:8–9

Wesley’s gospel was not only for the soul. He believed that the love of God, once it fills a heart, must overflow toward everyone that heart can reach, and especially toward those whom the world passes by. Across his long life that love took practical shape in schools, medicine, loans, visits to prisons and workhouses, and at the last in a public campaign against the slave trade. This chapter gathers those threads. It is the place where his teaching on perfect love, on works of mercy and on the use of money comes out into the street.

Holiness is never solitary

Wesley is remembered as saying, in the preface to one of the early Methodist hymn books, that the gospel of Christ knows no holiness but social holiness. In context he was arguing against a solitary religion of the desert, insisting that holiness grows in fellowship and not in isolation. But the principle reaches further than that. The love that Wesley preached could not be kept inside the society meeting. It had to reach the neighbour, and the neighbour, as he says in The Almost Christian, is every man in the world.

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 1 JOHN 3:16–17

Among the poor

The Methodist societies were overwhelmingly societies of the poor, and Wesley spent his life among them. From the Holy Club onward he visited prisoners, and he preached to condemned men in their cells. He set up a school for the children of the colliers at Kingswood near Bristol. In London he organised collections for the poor, found work for the unemployed, and established a small lending fund so that people could borrow without falling into the hands of moneylenders. He opened a dispensary where the sick could receive simple remedies, and he wrote a book of cheap and practical medicine, Primitive Physic, for people who could not afford a physician.

None of this was separate from his preaching. It flowed from the same conviction: that the love of God must show itself in works of mercy, and that those who have more are stewards of it for those who have less. His sermon On Visiting the Sick, as we saw, insists that the rich must go to the poor in person. And in his sermon On Dress he denounces expensive clothing in words that still sting. He begs his hearers not to lay out on nothing “what may clothe your poor, naked, shivering fellow-creature!” And then: “Everything about thee which cost more than Christian duty required thee to lay out is the blood of the poor!”

He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor. PROVERBS 14:31

Who cares for the Africans

Wesley’s concern for the enslaved went back to his time in the American colonies, where he had seen slavery at first hand. In his sermon The Imperfection of Human Knowledge, reflecting on the mysteries of providence, he asks who cares for the millions of Africans who are continually driven to market and “sold, like cattle, into the vilest bondage”, with no hope of deliverance but death. It is a cry of grief that he cannot answer.

In 1774 he did more than grieve. After reading the work of the Quaker Anthony Benezet, he published Thoughts upon Slavery, one of the earliest and most forceful attacks on the slave trade by a leading English churchman. In it he described the capture of Africans, the horrors of the voyage and the cruelty of the plantations. He answered the arguments of those who said the trade was necessary for commerce or legal under English law, denying that any law could make right what is contrary to justice and mercy. He insisted that slave-holding could not be squared with even natural justice. And he addressed himself directly to the ship captains, the merchants and the planters, urging each of them to give up the trade, whatever it cost them.

He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. EXODUS 21:16

The last letter

Wesley kept up the cause to the end. In February 1791, only days before his death, he wrote to William Wilberforce, the young Member of Parliament who was leading the campaign in the House of Commons against the slave trade. He urged him not to be weary in well-doing, warned him that unless God had raised him up for this very thing he would be worn out by opposition, and encouraged him that if God was for him, none could be against him. He called the trade a villainy that was the scandal of religion, of England and of human nature. It is among the last letters of his that survive. The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, and slavery itself in the 1830s, and the Methodist people, in Britain and beyond, were among the campaign’s most faithful supporters.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. GALATIANS 6:9

Where to read with care

It would be easy to make Wesley a modern social reformer, and he was not. He did not question the structure of eighteenth-century society in most respects. He was a loyal Tory who opposed the American Revolution. His charity, though generous, was usually personal rather than political, and some of his descriptions of the poor and of other peoples carry the condescension and prejudice of his age. The same sermon that grieves over the enslaved Africans speaks of them, and of other peoples, in terms no Christian should repeat. It is honest to say so.

But it is also honest to say that on the greatest moral question of his century he saw clearly and spoke plainly, when many churchmen, including many good ones, were silent or complicit. And his reasons were not those of a political programme. They were the reasons of the gospel: that every human being bears the image of God, that Christ died for all, and that love for God is a lie if it can look on a brother’s chains and do nothing.

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? ISAIAH 58:6

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Wesley believed that holiness is never solitary. How does your love for God reach the people around you, especially the poor?

2. Look at one thing you own or plan to buy, and ask Wesley’s hard question: did it cost more than Christian duty required?

3. Learn about one form of modern slavery or exploitation, and find one practical way to oppose it.

4. Is there a moral question on which the church around you is silent? Ask God whether He is calling you to speak.

5. Pray for those who campaign for justice today, as Wesley encouraged Wilberforce, that they will not grow weary.

A PRAYER

Father of all, You made every human being in Your image, and Your Son died for all. Forgive us for the times we have looked away from the poor and the oppressed.

Let the love You pour into my heart overflow toward my neighbour, whoever and wherever he is.

Give me courage to open my mouth for those who cannot speak for themselves, and wisdom to act, not only to feel.

Strengthen all who labour against injustice, that they may not be weary in well-doing, and let Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.