The Life of Thomas Vasey by His Widow [M J Vasey]

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EARLIEST MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCES. In November 1839 Mr. Vasey arrived at Exeter, and entered on the regular duties of a Wesleyan minister, with the Revs. Joseph Wood and James Cheeseman as his colleagues. In reference to his association with Mr. Wood, his first Superintendent, we quote some...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EARLIEST MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCES. In November 1839 Mr. Vasey arrived at Exeter, and entered on the regular duties of a Wesleyan minister, with the Revs. Joseph Wood and James Cheeseman as his colleagues. In reference to his association with Mr. Wood, his first Superintendent, we quote some portions of Mr. Vasey's own testimony in the biography of that most earnest, useful, and successful minister, by the Rev. H. W. Williams. Mr. Vasey says: ? I shall always account it a special privilege to have spent the first year of my ministerial life under the superintendency of the late Rev. Joseph Wood. His spirit and example, both in public and private life, were well calculated to give a young man the most exalted ideas of the work of a true Methodist preacher. . . . He was a true evangelist. Not content with preaching to the people who came to chapel, he would go, on a week-night before the service began, into some benighted neighbourhood, address the people, invite them to the chapel, sing up the street, and take them in with him. ... He had peculiar views of Methodist preaching, as distinguished from the prevailing style of other Christian denominations, and thought it should be largely hortatory, with urgent and pointed appeals to the heart and conscience, and a larger margin left in pulpit preparation for enlargement suggested by the influence of the Spirit and the circumstances of the congregation. His own preaching was an exact embodiment of these views. ... In short, I do not know any man whom I should be more disposed to point out as a model Methodist preacher; and, at any rate, if we hadmany such, Methodism would occupy a much higher position than it does. . . . The writing of this brief sketch has been most refreshing to me, by reviving the recollection of o...