Of the men whom God raised up at this time, John Wesley was, in many ways, the most outstanding and certainly the best known. There is a tendency to attribute the evangelical revival and its fruits to him, in much the same way as the Reformation is attributed to Luther, but we shall miss the whole significance of both movements unless we see them as concerted and divinely coordinated movements of the Holy Spirit. Many of the instruments God used at this time owed nothing to Wesley, while he, himself, owed not a little to others.
John Wesley was a son of Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, a parish in a then desolate part of Lincolnshire inhabited by sullen and hostile folk, on whom he was not able to make much impression. Six-year-old John all but lost his life in a fire which may have been caused deliberately by the rector’s enemies. He was thus, in a literal sense, “a brand plucked out of the fire” (Zech. 3:22And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? (Zechariah 3:2)). His father was a pious man, but, like many more at that time, he lacked evangelical light. It was a religion of law and outward forms that prevailed in the Church of England in those days.
John Wesley’s mother was a woman of remarkable piety, laborious, strict in her life, and devoted to her husband and numerous family, whom she trained according to her light with meticulous regard for their moral and spiritual welfare, though herself a stranger to the free grace of the gospel. Writing to her son, when he had expressed his intention to take holy orders, she said, “I heartily wish you would now enter upon a strict examination of yourself, that you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation by Jesus Christ. If you have the satisfaction of knowing, it will abundantly reward your pains; if you have not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in a tragedy.” And in another letter: “Whether God has forgiven us or no, we know not; therefore let us be sorrowful for ever having sinned.” Even at that time, Wesley’s instinct seems to have detected the defect in such a doctrine, for he wrote to his mother, “Surely the graces of the Holy Ghost are not of so little force as that we cannot perceive whether we have them or not. If we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, which He will not do unless we be regenerate, certainly we must be sensible of it. If we never can have any certainty of being in a state of salvation, good reason is it that every moment should be spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling, and then, undoubtedly, in this life we are of all men most miserable. God deliver us from such a fearful expectation as this.” Wesley’s logical mind perceived the flaw in this kind of theology, but it was many years before the way of salvation was known to him. Such was the theology of William Law, who was, for some years, Wesley’s religious mentor. Law’s Serious Call is still regarded as a religious classic, but it is not Christianity. Law was born in 1686, was ordained in 1711, and was one of the Non-Jurors expelled from the Church for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to King William III. While at Cambridge, Law drew up a set of rules for his future conduct. The first rule was “to fix it deep in my mind that I have one business on my hands — to seek for eternal happiness by doing the will of God.” He had not learned that a fallen creature could not do the will of God. Salvation through the atoning sufferings of Christ was a doctrine which he declined. In his book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, we read, “To have a true idea of Christianity, we must not consider our blessed Lord as suffering in our stead, but as our representative acting in our name and with such particular merit as to make our joining with Him acceptable unto God.”
Salvation by law rather than grace thus colored Wesley’s early religious experiences, and with such views conscientiously held, he was ordained deacon in 1725. In the following year, he crowned a successful scholastic career by being elected Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
For eight years after this he was resident at Oxford. His brother Charles had gathered together a few seriously-minded fellow-students, who formed a little society for the study of the Greek Testament. This was at the end of 1729, and in the following summer they began to visit prisoners in the castle and poor people in the town, to send neglected children to school, to help the sick and needy, and to distribute Bibles and prayer books to those who lacked them. They quickly incurred ridicule and persecution and were called the “Holy Club.” But the nickname that stuck was “Methodists.” In one of his letters, the old rector of Epworth wrote, “I hear my son John has the honor of being styled the father of the Holy Club. If it be so, I am sure I must be the grandfather of it, and I need not say that I had rather any of my sons should be so dignified and distinguished than have the title of His Holiness.”
In spite of their austerities and strictly religious life, there is no evidence of any fruit from these activities, though no doubt it was good training.
In 1736, with his brother Charles and Benjamin Ingham, another member of the “Holy Club,” Wesley was chosen to go to Georgia, where he hoped to be a help to the Red Indians. But he had no gospel to preach. His mission was a failure, and his legality only got him into trouble. On the way, he had been profoundly impressed by the calm demeanor, during a severe storm, of a party of Moravians. They had no fear of death. He had. On landing, he consulted the Moravian leader, Spangenberg, who quickly detected Wesley’s lack. Two years passed, and he was glad to hasten home, disappointed and dispirited, saying, “I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who shall convert me?” He was coming to an end of himself. He was beginning to learn what Adam had to learn in the garden — that his fig leaves could not hide the nakedness of his fallen state in the presence of a holy God. But Wesley was truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness. On his return to London, he consulted another Moravian brother, Peter Boehler, who gave him good advice. One day he was impressed by the scripture, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:3434And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. (Mark 12:34)). That evening he attended the little society in Fetter Lane, then under Moravian auspices, and someone was reading Martin Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. Of that moment he records, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Having got so much help from the Moravians, he decided to go to Germany and see their way of life. He was greatly impressed. But he soon outgrew his teachers and found they were not without faults. Indeed, before long he severed his relations with the Fetter Lane society, though it became a pattern for the numerous Methodist societies afterwards established all over the land.
Wesley had found the great secret: faith in Christ alone and His finished work. He now began to preach with power and results. Whitefield had already blazed the trail, and the new style of preaching, which was not new but as old as Pentecost, raised a storm of opposition. The Anglican pulpits began to close against John Wesley. Whitefield, wishing to pay another visit to Georgia, begged Wesley to continue the successful work among the miners of Bristol. With much heart searching, Wesley finally consented. The results were tremendous; the blessing of God was evident. He now began that long career of itinerant preaching with which his name is associated. He devoted his life to this great work. His early rising and his methodical habits enabled him to put far more into every day than any ordinary man. North, south, east and west of the land — now to Ireland, now to America — he went rousing multitudes to a sense of their need of salvation and proclaiming to them the glorious gospel of the Saviour who died that men might live eternally. Little societies grew up in the wake of his preaching. Lay preachers were appointed to augment the gospel work, and pastors were chosen to care for the sheep.
There are few men in the annals of Christianity marked by such single-eyed devotion to the Lord and His service as John Wesley. Day in and day out, year after year for fifty years, he never ceased to labor in preaching, in teaching, in exhorting, and in caring for the numerous societies and the multifarious business that arose from them. He rose every day at four in the morning. Oftentimes he was preaching at five, and, strange to say, there were audiences to listen to him even at this early hour. He rode on horseback and used the hours so spent in reading. He traveled thus thousands of miles a year, preached innumerable sermons, wrote many books, and composed and translated a number of hymns. There seems indeed to be no end to the extent and variety of his labors. The company of the wise and great and wealthy he did not seek, but he was a friend to the poor and needy, and he determined to leave as little as possible behind him when he died.
At eighty-two years of age, his venerable form was to be seen trudging ankle deep in the snow through the streets of London collecting money to clothe the poor. His prayer was that he might work to the last, and this prayer was granted. He preached within a few days of his death. Two days before he died, he said, “There is no way unto the holiest but by the blood of Jesus.” The following day, he thought he would get up. Suddenly, he began to sing, to the surprise of all:
I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my noblest powers,
My days of praise shall ne’er be past,
While life and thought and being last,
Or immortality endures.
Later he cried, “The best of all is, God is with us.”
The following morning, with the word “Farewell” on his lips, he fell asleep in Jesus. This was in 1791 when he was eighty-eight years of age.
Wesley’s Helpers
As the work grew and the societies multiplied, John Wesley gathered around him a company of lay preachers. Six years after the beginning of his work, Wesley had forty such helpers. By 1760, ninety were serving the gospel cause, besides many local helpers. Fifty chapels were then in regular use. The societies met weekly and classes of twelve persons were formed for mutual help under the guidance of a leader.
The first of the lay preachers was Cennick, who afterwards joined Whitefield. Maxfield was the second. One of the most gifted was Nelson, a stonemason of Yorkshire. He was converted through Wesley’s preaching and became a bold, fearless evangelist. He had to face tremendous opposition. An attempt was made to stop him by illegally pressing him into the army. Lady Huntingdon procured his discharge. Another remarkable helper was an Irishman named Walsh, who was much used in his own land. He was a most spiritual man and seemed to breathe the atmosphere of heaven.
The preachers were allotted circuits which were hundreds of miles in circumference, and they traveled as much as forty miles a day, usually on horseback, preaching two or three times daily. They were, for the most part, very poor and received only very meager support. Only devotion to the Lord could have induced such men to labor hard and continuously without any material reward. “They swam through floods, wandered whole nights on moors and wastes, and were sometimes almost engulfed in bogs. Highwaymen came to let them pass unmolested, for earlier encounters had shown they possessed nothing but a few tracts and a fixed determination to pray for and with their molesters.”
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was four and a half years younger than his brother. When a lad of eighteen years, he received an offer from Sir Garrett Wesley, who owned large estates in Ireland, to become his adopted son and heir. He declined. The young man who was adopted in his place became father of the Duke of Wellington.
After training at Oxford, Charles Wesley, like his brother John, was ordained and, in 1735, as secretary to General Oglethorpe, went to Georgia at the same time as his brother. Like John, he came under the influence of the Moravians.
At Whitsuntide in 1738, he was lying ill in the house of a poor mechanic named Bray, of whom he said, “He knows nothing but Christ.” Charles Wesley was full of doubts and fears. Longings after salvation filled his soul, but he had no peace. Bray’s sister, a Mrs. Turner, had had a dream in which the Lord had told her to go and speak a word of comfort to Charles Wesley. How could she, a poor woman, speak to a learned clergyman about his soul? But the command was imperative, and, after much hesitation, she obeyed. Creeping up to the door of his room, she called out, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe, and thou shalt be healed of all thy infirmities.” To the sick man, it seemed as though the Lord Himself had spoken. It was, however, a woman’s voice, and he thought he knew whose it was. He rang the bell, but the person in question was out. He opened his Bible, and the first words he saw were, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee” (Psa. 39:77And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee. (Psalm 39:7)), and then, “He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord” (Psa. 40:33And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:3)) — words of prophetic significance, to be fulfilled in a remarkable way! He now found peace with God. The following day he wrote the hymn:
Where shall my wondering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from sin and hell,
A brand plucked from eternal fire;
How shall I equal triumphs raise?
How shall I sing my Saviour’s praise?
Three days later his brother John arrived with a troop of friends to tell the news of his own conversion. With tears of joy streaming down their faces, they sang together Charles’ newly composed hymn.
Two months later, Charles Wesley became curate of Islington Church. But the gospel was not wanted, and his services were quickly dispensed with. He soon became companion to his brother John in his itinerant evangelism, preaching to great crowds and facing the storms of opposition and reproach.
At the mature age of forty-two, he married Sally Gwynne, a woman much younger than himself. Their marriage was a very happy one. As the cares of a family came upon him, he became less free for countrywide evangelical work, and his activities were confined to Bristol, where he lived till his removal to London in 1771.
Though himself a sensitive, well-educated and highly cultured man, his heart went out to the most depraved of sinners. Soon after his conversion he wrote:
Outcasts of men, to you I call,
Harlots and publicans and thieves!
He spreads His arms to embrace you all;
He came the lost to seek and save.
Come, O ye guilty creatures, come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin!
His bleeding hand shall make you room,
His open side shall take you in.
He calls you now; invites you home.
Come, O my guilty brothers, come.
This was no mere sentiment, for shortly after this he preached to ten criminals condemned to the gallows, boldly assuring them of pardon through repentance and faith in Christ. Near the end of his life, on April 28, 1785, in answer to his prayers, nineteen malefactors, condemned to be hanged that day, died penitent.
Charles Wesley was one of the greatest hymn writers of any age. His poetic compositions number sixty-five hundred, among which are such gems as “Jesus lover of my soul” and “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing.” At the beginning of the eighteenth century, hymn singing in the Church was unknown, except among some of the more advanced Dissenters. Metrical versions of the Psalms only were allowed. Even Isaac Watts’ paraphrases of these Psalms were regarded with suspicion. Throughout the Church’s history, revival of the truth has been accompanied by an outburst of song. Luther’s hymns did much in Reformation days to further the revival. Among the Pietists and Moravians there was a similar springing up of spiritual melody. From the eighteenth century onward, there has been a rich and sustained outpouring of sacred song.
The hymns of the Wesleys (for John translated many from the German of Gerhardt Tersteegen and Zinzendorf) afforded an outlet for the thousands of converts to express united praise to God in song.