John Wesley to Miss J.C. March

Here are a couple of excerpts from letters from John Wesley to a Miss March, a woman of "wealth and education". When Miss March admitted her struggles with the fact that associating with Methodists also meant she came into contact with the poor, Wesley wrote to her:

"Go and see the poor and sick in their own poor little hovels. Take up your cross, woman! Remember the faith! Jesus went before you, and will go with you. Put off the gentlewoman; you bear an higher character. You are an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ! Are you not going to meet Him in the air with ten thousand of His saints? O be ready!"

She complains of associating with people of poor taste and low character..., and Wesley replies:

"I want you to converse more, abundantly more, with the poorest of the people, who, if they have not taste, have souls, which you may forward in their way to heaven. And they have (many of them) faith and the love of God in a larger measure than any persons I know."

To her continued protest he writes:

"What I advise you to is, not to contract a friendship or even acquaintance with poor, inelegant, uneducated persons, but frequently, nay constantly, to visit the poor, the widow, the sick, the fatherless in their affliction; and this, although they should have nothing to recommend them but that they are bought with the blood of Christ. It is true this is not pleasing to flesh and blood. There are a thousand circumstances usually attending it which shock the delicacy of our nature, or rather of our education. But yet the blessing which follows this labour of love will more than balance the cross."

Miss March replies saying to this exhortation to "constantly" visit the poor that she is already a busy woman and that some time must necessarily be put aside for seclusion and prayer in the maintenance of her spiritual life. To this, Wesley:

"Yet I find time to visit the sick and the poor; and I must do it, if I believe the Bible, if I believe these are the marks whereby the Shepherd of Israel will know and judge His sheep at the great day...
... and I am concerned for you; I am sorry you should be content with lower degrees of usefulness and holiness than you are called to."

-selections taken from the essay "Visit the Poor: John Wesley, the Poor, and the Sanctification of Believers" in The Poor and the People Called Methodists, ed. Richard Heitzenrater.