“Mr. Wesley has come--Mr. Wesley is preaching!”
There was the sound of many feet trampling down the pebbles of the beach. The people flowed toward him like a great wave slowly moving over that place now forsaken by the waves. The young men and maidens who had been engaged in that fierce wild dance among the wiry herbage flocked toward him, their faces shining from their exertions, and stood catching their breath. The old men who had been staring stolidly through the great ribs of the hulk, slouched through the ooze and stood sideways beneath him, their hands, like the gnarled joints of a thorn, scooped behind their ears lest they should lose a word. The women, with disordered hair, tears on their faces, the terror of anticipation in their eyes, waited on the ground, some kneeling, others seated in various postures.
He stood there, a solitary figure, black against the crimson background of the western sky, his arms still upraised. It might have been a statue carved out of dark marble that stood on the spur of the cliff.
His hands were still uplifted in the attitude of benediction; and the words that came from him were the words of the Benediction.
“The Peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
The Peace of God--that was the message which he delivered to that agitated multitude, and it fell upon their ears, soothing all who heard and banishing their fears. He gave them the message of the Father to His children--a message of love, of tenderness--a promise of protection, of infinite pity, of a compassion that knew no limits--outliving the life of the world, knowing no change through all ages, the only thing that suffered no change--a compassion which, being eternal, would outlive Time itself--a compassion which brought with it every blessing that man could know--nay, more--more than man could think of; a compassion that brought with it the supreme blessing that could come to man--the Peace of God which passeth all understanding!
He never travelled outside this message of Divine Peace, although he spoke for a full hour.
And while he spoke the meaning of that message fell upon the multitude who listened. They felt that Peace of which he spoke falling gently upon them as cold dew at the close of a day of intolerable heat. They realised what it meant to them. The Peace descended upon them, and they were sensible of its presence. The dread that had been hanging over them all the day was swept away as the morning mist had been dispersed. The apprehension of the Judgment was lost in the consciousness of a Divine Love surrounding them. They seemed to have passed from an atmosphere of foetid vapours into that of a meadow in the Spring time. They drank deep draughts of its sweetness and were refreshed.