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 On May 24 1738, a troubled Anglican priest went to a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street just north of St. Paul’s cathedral in London. The lecturer was reading the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter to nine, this Anglican divine felt his heart strangely warmed. An assurance was given to him that Christ had taken away his sins and saved him from the law of sin and death.
This was the spiritual birth of John Wesley, the revolutionary who became one of the architects of the modern world.
Not long after this momentous rebirth, Wesley discovered that most of his Anglican brethren would not let him preach in their parish. Undaunted, he took to the open fields preaching over 40,000 sermons and traveling over 250,000 miles on horseback. “The world is my parish,” he said.
Wesley was a prolific author of educational treatises, histories, sermons, and commentaries, publishing 233 books and 5,000 tracts. He edited and compiled an English dictionary, published twenty-three collections of hymns, and recorded his travels in his Journal. His medical handbook went through thirty-two editions.
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| Me at Wesley's tombstone |
Because of the prodigious writing of Wesley, he is often called “The Father of the Religious Paperback.”
Wesley was not only a great preacher, he was also a great organizer. Wherever he went, he organized "societies" designed to provide a spiritual home for his many converts. It was not his intention to start a new church, but he could not bear the thought of letting the fruit of his work go to waste. He was determined to develop the religious life of those who had responded to the call of the Gospel.
Wesley employed a number of lay preachers and divided the field into circuits, assigning a number of traveling preachers to each. George Whitefield, comparing his labors with Wesley’s said, “My brother Wesley acted more wisely. The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in societies and thus preserved the fruits of his labors. This I neglected and my people are a rope of sand.”
At his death, there were over 500 preachers and 115,000 people who called themselves Methodists.
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