At the Roots of Methodism: Escape from fire shaped Wesley's life
8/27/2003 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn.
This
is a regular feature on Methodist history prepared especially for
distribution by United Methodist News Service. Artwork is available of
John Wesley and the Epworth rectory.
A UMNS Feature
By John Singleton*
The
Old Rectory, John Wesley's boyhood home at Epworth, England, was
destroyed by fire in 1709 and later rebuilt. Six-year-old John's
dramatic rescue from the flames convinced his mother, Susannah, that he
had been saved for a special purpose. A UMNS photo courtesy John
Singleton. Photo number 03-281, Accompanies UMNS #420, 8/27/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
A defining image of John Wesley's life is that of
6-year-old "Jacky," as he was known, being rescued from an upper window
of the blazing rectory in Epworth, England. This dramatic event gave
rise to the biblical description of him by his mother, Susannah, as "a
brand plucked out of the burning" - someone whom God had saved for a
special purpose.
This conviction drove the founder of the Methodist movement throughout his life, for he felt the hand of providence upon him.
The
story of the Epworth rectory fire traditionally handed down is that,
shortly before midnight on Feb. 9, 1709, members of the Wesley household
awoke to find the thatched roof of the rectory ablaze and the house
filling with smoke. John Wesley's father, Samuel, his wife and servants
hurried the children downstairs and out into the garden, but only to
find one of them, young Jacky - the second of their three sons at this
time - missing. Repeatedly, the rector tried to fight his way back into
the house, but the flames drove him back.
Then a small figure
appeared against the glow of the flames in an upstairs window. Jacky had
awakened to find himself alone in the house with the rafters above his
head on fire. He groped his way to the head of the stairs, only to find
them impassable. Though trapped, Wesley seemed to know even then how to
keep his head in a crisis. Dragging a chest to the bedroom window, he
climbed onto it, and someone in the yard below spotted him.
Would-be
rescuers had no time to fetch a ladder, and the boy's plight seemed
desperate. Then someone had an idea and ran toward the house, calling a
companion to follow him. One of them climbed on the shoulders of the
other, and though they barely reached the windowsill, the two saved the
boy. A moment later, the rectory's roof crashed down.
The Wesley
family had lost everything and was homeless until the rectory was
rebuilt, but what did it matter, as long as everyone was safe?
Nearly
200 years later, a footnote to the episode of the rectory fire appeared
in an edition of the British weekly newspaper, the Methodist Recorder,
published in 1903. A letter arrived at the London-based Recorder from a
Mrs. Rowson of Taylors' Falls in Chicago, widow of a Methodist Episcopal
minister, the Rev. A.E. Rowson. Referring to a previous article in the
newspaper about Epworth, she wrote:
"The whole article was
interesting to me, but I specially noted the sentence referring to the
rescue of John Wesley from the burning rectory, which said: 'The names
of those two men should have been handed down to posterity, for who can
realize the benefit they conferred upon humanity?'
"I am
proud to inform you I am a descendant of the man who stood on the
shoulders of another and took the boy from the window of the burning
house. My sainted and honored father (the late William Kirk, of Retford,
Nottinghamshire) was born at a village in the Isle of Axholme, just a
few miles from Epworth, and this man, whose name was 'Clark,' was his
great-great-grandfather."
So this was the man who, literally, plucked the brand from the burning.
Wesley's
own sense of the importance of that event became evident in November
1753 when, at age 50, he fell ill and believed he would die from
consumption. He went so far as to write the inscription that he desired
to have placed on his tombstone:
"Here lieth the Body of John
Wesley, a brand plucked out of the burning: who died of a consumption in
the fifty-first year of his age, not leaving, after his debts are paid,
ten pounds behind him: praying, God be mercifully to me, an
unprofitable servant!"
Fortunately, Wesley recovered and went on
to live for another 37 years, achieving much more as a "brand plucked
out of the burning."
# # #
*Singleton is a consultant
editor with the weekly Methodist Recorder in London. He can be contacted
by e-mail at john@towerhamlets.org.
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