work, but meeting with meager success, he returned to
Introduction to the Shepherd Classics Edition Few persons have ever lived who exerted more positive influence on their time than John Wesley. His prodigious life and work, spanning most of the eighteenth century, epitomized and gave direction to an evangelical revival that changed the face of England, setting in motion forces of righteousness that have had reverberations to the ends of the earth.
Born at Epworth, June 17, 1703, he was the second surviving son of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, and the fifteenth of nineteen children. In the Anglican vicar's home where he grew up, he learned early the importance of sound doctrine and vigorous piety.
At the age of ten, John went to London to attend the Charterhouse School, and seven years later, he entered Christ Church College, Oxford. After graduation he offered himself to become a priest of the Church of England, and was ordained a deacon in 1725. For a while he assisted his father in pastoral work, but meeting with meager success, he returned to his scholarly pursuits at the University, where he had been made a teaching fellow at Lincoln College.
Here Wesley joined his brother, Charles, along with a few other students, in a closely knit fellowship of earnest souls seeking God's will. The group met regularly for study and worship, practiced fasting twice a week, and engaged themselves in a number of benevolent services to the poor. Because of their vigorous discipline they were dubbed in derision "'the holy club" or "Methodists."
Following his father's death in 1735, John accepted
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an appointment as a missionary to the colonists and Indians living in Georgia. However, his strict adherence to order did not set well with the more easy-going frontiersmen of the new world. A courtship rejection by one of the ladies of the colony added to his difficulties. Finally, after nearly two years of frustration, the broken Wesley returned to England. Typifying his anguish, on shipboard he wrote in his Journal, "I went to America to convert the Indians; but O! Who shall convert me?"
Back in London, his longing for spiritual reality eventually led to a little Moravian prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street. There on May 24, 1738, about a quarter before nine, while a layman was reading from Luther's Preface to the Book of Romans, "'describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,' Wesley felt his heart "strangely warmed," and received assurance that he was delivered from the law of sin and death. This experience kindled a fire in his life which was to set a nation aflame.
England was in desperate circumstances. Centuries of turmoil had left the people bitter and restless.
Poverty was everywhere. Society reeked with moral decay. Making the situation more tragic, the apathetic established church was completely discredited and out of touch with the working masses.
Into this generation of despair, seething on the verge of revolution, John Wesley began to herald a Gospel of free and full salvation—a deliverance which any man can know now through simple faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Sophisticated churchmen closed their doors to his preaching. But Wesley, seeing all the world as his parish, "submitted to be more vile," and began to proclaim in the streets and fields the glad tidings of salvation.
SHEPHERD EDITION INTRODUCTION xxxvii Soon the soft-spoken Oxford don in clerical garb, standing scarcely five feet four inches tall, with his long, silken hair blowing in the wind, became a familiar sight across the land. Multitudes were arrested by his message, especially the poor, the outcasts of society, and those disenchanted with the cold religious institutions of the day.
The genius of Wesley, however, was not so much in his preaching, as in the way he followed up those whose hearts were awakened. Persons wanting further instruction were organized into classes, and in turn, these were formed into "circuits" of preaching points largely shepherded by laymen. By this means the growing movement was not restrained by lack of discipline and leadership.
For fifty years Wesley carried his ministry to the people. Hazardous conditions never deterred him from his mission "'to reform the nation and to spread scriptural holiness over the land." It is estimated that he traveled 250,000 miles on horseback.
During this period he preached 42,000 sermons, an average of more than 15 a week. Still at the age of 87, his eyes dim, his right hand shaking with a lingering fever almost every day, he wrote in his Journal: 'Blessed be God, I do not slack my labor."
Part of his energy was given to reading and study, particularly the Bible which he revered as the very
Word of God. Out of this came a profusion of writings on a wide variety of subjects. Altogether he authored over 400 publications, including Gospel tracts, sermons, appeals, hymns, textbooks, histories, Bible commentaries, and even a medical handbook entitled Primitive Physick.
During his undergraduate days in college, in pursuance of the advice of Bishop Taylor in his Rules for Holy Living and Dying, Wesley began the practice of
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recording how he employed the hours of the day. Extracts from these notes were published at different times during his life. From these portions of his
Journal the present volume was compiled by P. L.
Parker in 1902. Though an abbreviated anthology, it seeks to capture the high moments in the larger narrative, and preserves its vivid style and atmosphere.
As a self-portrait of Wesley, this remarkable composition shows better than anything else the manner of man he was, and the temper of the times in which he lived. In its pages you ride up and down the thoroughfares of England; you feel the fresh winds of the countryside on your cheek as he preaches in the open air. There is nothing artificial, nothing far-fetched about the account, but with unassuming honesty, it bears the heart of a man who was determined to make full proof of his ministry.
A few months before Wesley died on March 2, 1791, the last entry in his Journal noted that he had exhorted a large congregation in Spitalfields to "put on the whole armor of God." Then in the afternoon, to a still more crowded church at Shadwell, he recorded that he spoke on the truth, "One thing is needful," adding the comment, 'and I hope many, even then, resolved to choose the better part."
This was the obsession of his life—the burning desire that every person yield themselves fully to the claims of Christ. As you read here what this commitment meant to the apostle of Methodism, may something of that same urgency be felt to "put on the whole armor of God," and so to ''choose the better part."
Robert E. Coleman Wilmore, Kentucky July, 1979
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