This was the saddest part of her history. But it is darkest just before
sunrise. She returned to London. Not long after, it so happened that she
went to a small church in the city one Sunday afternoon. The preacher was
such as we have often heard; but not so this poor woman, in her day of
sapless theology, ere John Wesley waked the snoring church. Instead of
sending a dry clatter of morality about their ears, or evaporating the
Bible in the thin generalities of the pulpit, this man drove God's truths
home to the hearts of men and women. In his hands the divine virtues were
thunderbolts, not swans' down. With good sense, plain speaking, and a
heart yearning for the souls of his brethren and his sisters, he stormed
the bosoms of many; and this afternoon, as he reasoned like Paul of
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, sinners trembled--and
Margaret Woffington was of those who trembled.
After this day, she came ever to the narrow street where shone this house
of God; and still new light burst upon her heart and conscience. Here she
learned why she was unhappy; here she learned how alone she could be
happy; here she learned to know herself; and, the moment she knew
herself, she abhorred herself, and repented in dust and ashes.
This strong and straightforward character made no attempt to reconcile
two things that an average Christian would have continued to reconcile.
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