History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

He said soon after, "I will get up," and while his friends were preparing his clothes, he broke out
singing:—
"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath."
Once more seated in his chair, he began to sing again, his last song on earth:
"To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Who sweetly all agree."
Put back to bed, he said, "Pray and praise!" He saluted each one present and said, "Farewell,
farewell." Summoning his failing strength, he said, "The best of all is God is with us!" Scores of
times he repeated, "I'll praise, I'll praise." Wednesday, March 2, Joseph Bradburn prayed with him;
it was a few minutes before ten o'clock. There were around his bed his niece, Miss Wesley; one of
his executors, Mr. Horton; his medical attendant, Dr. Whitehead; his book steward, George
Whitefield; the present occupants of his house, James and Hester Ann Rodgers, and their little boy;
and his friends and visitors, Robert Carr Brackenbury and Elizabeth Ritchie, — eleven persons
altogether. "Farewell!" cried Wesley, — the last word he uttered; and then as Joseph Bradburn, the
devoted, was saying, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors; and this
heir of glory shall come in," Wesley gathered up his feet in the presence of his brethren and without
a sigh or a groan was gone. It was about ten o'clock, A.M., Wednesday, March 2, 1791.
As soon as he was dead, those present gathered about his couch and sang:
"Waiting to receive thy Spirit
Lo! the Saviour stands above;
Shows the purchase of his merit,
Reaches out the crown of love."
They knelt down and prayed that the mantle of the ascended Elijah might rest upon his followers.
His remains were kept for one week, for which his chroniclers, not even Tyerman, give no reason.
The day before his burial, the body, clad in his gown, cassock, and band, lay in state in the City Road
chapel. He had directed in his Will that six poor men should be his bearers, and be compensated with
one pound each. While dying, he said, "Let me be buried in nothing but what is woollen; and let my
corpse be carried in my coffin into the chapel." Great crowds flocked to see his remains, to look for
the last time upon that placid and venerable face. So intense indeed was the excitement that it was
found expedient to conceal the time of his burial, and at the early hour of five — his favorite
preaching hour — of the morning of the 9th of March, by torchlight, his coffin was interred in its
grave prepared in the graveyard of City Road chapel, John Richardson, one of his old preachers,
reading the service so impressively at the words, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take
unto himself the soul of our deceased father," at the substituted word those present burst out into
loud weeping. Tyerman mentions the singular fact that those present were given, "a biscuit, in an
envelope, engraven with a beautifully executed portrait of the departed, dressed in canonicals,
surmounted with a halo and a crown." That grave has been the Mecca of godly Methodists for more
than a century.