Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers. W. E. Winks
cannot perhaps appreciate. After he had mused for a time, and thought upon his ways, he became suddenly, and, as it seemed then, most unaccountably convinced of sin, and led to cherish the most anxious concern to find peace with God. “One evening,” he writes in his diary, “at the close of the year 1769, while I was making a few cursory remarks on the season, and looking at some decayed flowers in a garden adjoining the house I worked in, I was suddenly carried, as it were, out of myself with the thought of death and eternity.... My sins were set as in battle array before me, particularly that of ingratitude to a good and gracious God. This caused my very bones to tremble, and my soul to be horribly afraid. Hell from beneath seemed moved to meet me.... The effects of those convictions were such that I could scarcely reach home, though but a little way off. I went to bed, but found no rest. I sunk under the weight of my distress, gave myself up to despair, and for some time lost the use of my reason.” For several days the poor sin-stricken youth lay as if in a high fever, and raved of judgment and perdition. It was three months ere he entered into a state of quiet, firm, intelligent, Christian faith, bringing peace and rest to his mind. His excellent and godly master helped him somewhat during this long and terrible struggle in the “slough of despond.” Several “evangelists,” in the character of gospel ministers, pointed out the way of life to him, but they were not of so much service as might have been expected. A “roll which he carried in his hand,” on which was written, “The Door of Salvation Opened by the Key of Regeneration,” was of great value in showing the way to the blessedness he sought. In fact, it was during the reading of this little treatise on the life of faith that his spirit first seemed to hear the divine words, “Peace, be still.” There could be no mistake about the young shoemaker’s conversion. Account for it as men might, the change was marvellous, and infinitely beneficial, as we shall see, no less to his neighbors than to himself; for Samuel Bradburn was intensely social, and bound to influence his friends in one way or another, as well as to be influenced by them. It was impossible for him to remain inactive when a great impulse moved within him. The desire to go out and speak of the joy he had found, and the means by which he had found it, soon became a ruling passion. It is the desire which makes the philanthropist, the preacher, the missionary. The language in which he attempts to describe that indescribable joy of the renewed heart is but another reading of the old gospel truth: “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”[10] Alluding to the reading of the little book above mentioned, he says: “Such an unspeakable power accompanied the words to my soul, that, being unable to control myself, I rose from my seat and went into the garden, where I had spent many a melancholy hour; but, oh, how changed now! Instead of terror and despair I felt my heart overflowing with joy, and my eyes with grateful tears. My soul was in such an ecstasy that my poor emaciated body was as strong and active as I ever remember it, and not at that time only, for the strength and activity remained. I had now no fear of death, but rather longed to die, knowing that the blessed Jesus was my Saviour; that God was reconciled to me through Him; that nothing but the thread of life kept me from His glorious presence. Now the whole creation wore a different aspect. The stars which shone exceeding bright appeared more glorious than before. Such was my happy frame that I imagined myself in the company of the holy angels, who, I believed, were made more happy on my account, and doubtless those ministering spirits did feel new degrees of joy on seeing so vile a sinner, so wretched a prodigal, come home to the arms of his heavenly Father.[11] O Thou eternal God!“ he exclaims, ”Thou transporting delight of my soul! preserve and support, me through life, that I may at last enjoy the heaven of love which I then felt overpowering my spirit.”
Bradburn at once joined the Methodist Society at Chester. His master’s son, a boy of twelve, and many other young people, began to attend the “class-meetings” about the same time. Among his work-fellows, also, there were some who rejoiced in the light which now filled young Bradburn’s soul, and their conversation and hymn-singing while at work, and their union in prayer before quitting the workroom at the close of the day, made the new time a perpetual Sabbath, and the shoemaker’s room “a perfect paradise.” In March, 1770, after the usual period of probation, he was admitted to full membership, and received what the Methodists call “his first ticket.” He was not long in discovering, as every one else has done in similar circumstances, that the change, though genuine, was not complete. An outburst of passion, and a growing desire after disputation on theological matters, in which he found himself contending for mastery rather than truth, gave him to see that a sound and secure religious character is a matter of growth and culture and can only be maintained by watchfulness and prayer, and the careful formation of habits of piety. And as Thomas à Kempis finely says, “Custom is overcome by custom,” so Bradburn found it, and in order to put a bar between his spirit and possible temptations, changed his way of living, his companions, and his books. One day, when John Wesley was administering the Lord’s Supper in the little chapel at Chester, Bradburn was seized with the idea that he must become a preacher. For a long time he strove hard to drive it from his mind. But the more he did so the more it seemed to possess him. His sense of unfitness for so great an office as that of the preacher, his exalted notions of the sacredness and responsibility attaching to the office, and his own deepening conviction, which nothing could resist, that it was his duty before God to devote himself to the work, made him for a time positively wretched. He tried the effect of change of residence upon his feelings in the matter. He was now twenty years of age, and out of his time. But on visiting his relations at Wrexham, he found that they and their friends of the Wesleyan Society, to whom he was introduced, had a common feeling that such a young man ought surely to exercise his gifts as a speaker. In answer to their entreaties he spoke several times in their meetings, and thus made his first start in public speaking. Still the question of preaching was left unsettled, and disturbed his mind night and day. It became a positive burden to him—“the burden of the Lord,” indeed, and no power of his own could remove it. Six months after this brief visit to Wrexham, he obtained a situation, and went to reside in Liverpool, where he fell in with people much to his mind, who were exceedingly kind to him. They, however, no sooner came to know him than their opinion was strongly expressed to the same purport as that of his friends in Chester and Wrexham. In four months he left Liverpool and returned home, the great life-question still upon his mind. He dare not settle it, in one way or the other; all he could do was to resolve to live as near to God as possible, commit his way unto Him, and submissively wait for the direction of Divine providence. In this condition of mind he passed the rest of the year 1772. At the beginning of the following year he found employment at Wrexham, and there took up his abode in the congenial society of his relations and religious friends. Soon after this the event occurred which decided the severe and agonizing mental struggle to which he had been subjected for the last twelve months, and determined the whole course of his life, and the employment of his rare gifts as a preacher of the Gospel. On Sunday, February 7th, 1773, the preacher for the day failed to appear. Young Bradburn was invited by the leaders of the congregation to take the service. Trembling from head to foot, almost blind with fear and excitement, and casting himself on divine aid, he mounts the pulpit stairs. The opening part of the service gives him confidence, and when the time for preaching comes, he is able to speak with much freedom and fervor to an appreciative and thankful audience. In the evening he is once more asked to occupy the pulpit, and this time he delivers a discourse which is not too long for the hearers, though it lasts for more than two hours. The next week he preaches to the same people three times; and now the question is settled, and settled, as he and his friends are fain to believe, in a providential way: Samuel Bradburn is called to be a preacher, and a preacher of no ordinary power. He has not waited all these long months for nothing. He has not run before he was sent. He has not tarried in the desert like Moses, like Elijah, like Saul of Tarsus, to learn the truth and will of God, with no beneficial results. He has been called of the Holy Spirit to the work, and to the work of preaching he must now give himself and his very best powers, or a woe will rest upon him. He and his Methodist friends would not trouble themselves for one moment about the question of his being a shoemaker, or remaining a shoemaker, if he is to become a preacher. One apostolic precedent was as good as twelve to them in a matter of this kind, and Paul did not cease to be a tent-maker when the Holy Ghost said to the church at Antioch, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work whereunto I have called them.”[12]
Soon after the events just referred to, Bradburn