Description
Pottery plaque with underglaze transfer print of the Rev.John Wesley.
The plaque was made at the Jackson and Patterson Pottery in Gateshead, Tyneside.
(Thanks to Stephen Smith for attribution).
EXHIBITION….IF THESE POTS COULD TALK.
The Reverend John Wesley a man of major historical religous importance.His influence was so strong that it still echoes in the world today through the Methodist movement.He worked long and hard and travelled generally on horseback, preaching two or three times each day. It is reported that in his life he “rode 250,000 miles, gave away 30,000 pounds(an enormous sum at the time),and preached more than 40,000 sermons.
He formed societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, prescribed for the sick, helped to pioneer the use of electric shock for the treatment of illness, superintended schools and orphanages, and received at least £20,000 for his publications but used little of it for himself.
Wesley married very unhappily at the age of forty-eight to a widow,she left him fifteen years later. Wesley and his unhappy wife never had children.
Wesley had many great achievements and a phrase he used is still much in use in these modern times , he was the first to put the phrase ‘agree to disagree’ in print.
Wesley died on 2 March 1791, in his eighty-seventh year. As he lay dying, his friends gathered around him, Wesley grasped their hands and said repeatedly, “Farewell, farewell.” At the end, he said “The best of all is, God is with us”, lifted his arms and raised his feeble voice again, repeating the words, “The best of all is, God is with us.” Because of his charitable nature he died poor, leaving as the result of his life’s work 135,000 members and 541 itinerant preachers under the name “Methodist”. It has been said that “when John Wesley was carried to his grave, he left behind him a good library of books, a well-worn clergyman’s gown,” and the Methodist Church.