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The following morning, I happened to take up a tract by John Fletcher, of Madeley, in which I read, that at a breakfast party on the occasion of a wedding, to which he was invited, just in the middle of idle and frivolous conversation which was going on, he was constrained to rise up and say, "I have three times had an experience of joy and liberty, which I believe to be Sanctification, and it has passed away; now that it has returned again, I take this opportunity to testify."
His fixed gaze recalled her to herself, and immediately the countenance changed beyond recognition. Her eyes wandered past him with a look of cold if not defiant reserve; the lips lost all their sweetness. He was chilled with vague distrust, and once again asked himself whether this could be the Eve Madeley whose history he had heard.
At first he refused it, but being greatly pressed, he thanked them very heartily, and gracefully handed it over to the Society fund for the sick poor, which he had heard was in a very needy condition. Life at Madeley was very full.
Afraid of missing her if he went out, he fretted through another hour, and was at length relieved by the arrival of a letter of explanation. Eve wrote that she had been summoned to Dudley; her father was stricken with alarming illness, and her brother had telegraphed. For two days he heard nothing; then came a few lines which told him that Mr. Madeley could not live many more hours.
It sounded, moreover, with the London accent, while Eve's struck a more familiar note to the man of the Midlands. Eve seemed to be the elder of the two; it could not be thought for a moment that her will was guided by that of the more trivial girl. Eve Madeley the meek, the melancholy, the long-suffering, the pious what did it all mean?
For the first time in his life he heard these hideous noises with pleasure: they told him that the day of his escape had come. Unable to lie still, he rose at once, and went out into the chill dawn. Thoughts of Eve Madeley no longer possessed him; a glorious sense of freedom excluded every recollection of his past life, and he wandered aimlessly with a song in his heart.
A somewhat well-known story is connected with Fletcher's sensitiveness to the influence of the Spirit with regard to his message for men. He had entered the pulpit one Sunday morning at Madeley to preach a sermon prepared for the purpose, when all remembrance of it fled; he could not even recall the text.
All in Him are blessed sacraments; I mean visible signs of the fountain, or vehicles to convey the streams of inward grace." To CHARLES WESLEY: "MADELEY, May 11th, 1776. "MY DEAR BROTHER, What are you doing in London? Are you ripening as fast for the grave as I am? How should we lay out every moment for God?
John Wesley thought John Fletcher, the Vicar of Madeley, the holiest man then living. 'I have known him intimately for thirty years, says Mr. Wesley. 'In my eighty years I have met many excellent men; but I have never met his equal, nor do I expect to find such another on this side of eternity. From what source did that perennial stream of piety spring?
She was going away to London." "Eve Madeley." He repeated the name to himself, and liked it. "She's had a deal of trouble, poor thing," pursued the landlady. "We was sorry to lose sight of her, but glad, I'm sure, that she went away to do better for herself. She hasn't been home since then, and we don't hear of her coming, and I'm sure nobody can be surprised.
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