John Wesley’s Chapel

Hokitika Guardian, 24 June 1922, Page 1

John Wesley’s Chapel

A NOTABLE TOMB.

John Wesley’s Chapel in the City road is full of beautiful memories, and it contains also some lieautiful things the mahogany pulpit from which he preached, the Communion rail at which he administered the Sacrament, the seven marble pillars which Methodists overseas gave to support the galleries when the roof was raised a quarter of a century ago, a series of stained-glass windows of real merit, writes the London correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” recently.

But for all these* unusual assets Wes-] ley’s Chapel to-day is a place of shabbi'ness and dirt. It can seat 1800 people (one, wonders how IV osle.v him sol I counted the heads tlmt made up Hie 5000 or 6000 tlmt he claimed to have preached to in the chapel - that preceded it, hut it is never filled. Far from it. Wesley’s Chapel, like other places of worship in the City of Lon- 1 don, has been islanded by great warehouses; its once well-to-do congregation has gone away, and all that arc left are people whose means oblige them to live quite close to their work, like caretakers and officemimlers and a., few small shopkeepers. They contribute, as all Methodists do, to the upkeep of their place of worship, but the total sum so raised barely meets the urgent current expense, and there is no margin for cleaning or repairs, or. that occasional refurnishing which is called in the North “beautifying.” Because of long neglect the fabric of the chapel has become seriously deeayed, and the roof of that long side room, ■ where Wesley had his fivc-o’clofk-in-the-moriiing prayer meetings,, is sagging ominously. This is not all.. The house in which Wesley lived and died, the forecourt to the chapel where stands his figure in bronze, and the trees to which Charles Wesley tied his horse while lie went inside to the ser-i vices, the graveyard at the hack, where, Wesley was laid to rest in 1791, arc all unkempt, ill-tended, and dilapidat-, eil.

The memorial over Wesley’s grave is suffering with the rest. One of its inscriptions records that this place “made' sacred by the mortal remains of the: Venerable and Ajtoslolick V eslev” was. “re-edificed and enlarged” in 1811. It. cannot be again enlarged, for the, clinpel bounds it on one side, the brick .vails of high warehouses on two sides,, and an iron fencing on the fourth. But the need for re-edification is clamant.' Passers along Tabernacle street see through that fencing a most desolate space, weedgrown, and untidy, with many tomb-stones in fast decay, and the central and most prominent of, them, with Wesley’s name cut deeply' in the stone, literally falling to pieces like the rest.

i walked in the graveyard to-day and found it full of subsidences, and most , miserable in its neglected state. One wonders what Methodists from overseas ("who are, f learn, the principal visitors] to this place) think about us who treat, their shrines so. Wesley’s house, which stands at one side of the forecourt to the chapel, is a narrow brick building of four storeys. It is in such a state of disrepair, internally and externally, that its shell does small honour to the relics of the preacher—his gown, his shoes, his furniture —that help to makeup the Wesley museum. The present minister at Wesley’s Chapel, the Rev H. W. Armstrong, is making a gallant effort to do something for the. betterment of the buildings and their environment. He is a;>pealing for '£lo,ooo for the work. His own congregation ran do little to help, and Mr Armstrong quite reasonably thinks that this is an appeal that may fairly he made to Methodists beyond the area of his own ministrations. Wesley himself claimed the world as his parish and the world—or at least the Methodist part of it—is to have the opportunity to res lor the little bit that Wesley made peculiarly his own as a place of happy pilgrimage. To-day it is anything hut that. Overseas Methodists, 1 am told, come reverently to pay homage at the tomb of him who at his burial was spoken of as “our dear father here departed, and having seen the place they go sadly and sorrowfully away. A visit to tiro cradle of Wesley’s movement and the tomb which marks his grave ought to have —and will have if Mr Armstrong's appeal is adequately responded to—a- precisely opposite effect.