VIII. THE ISSUES OF THE WESLEYAN HYMNS
Space is wanting, and the profit would be slight, to give a catalogue of the sixty-four original issues of hymns that John published from 1737 to 1790, the mass of them for the use of the evangelistic campaign. They were largely occasional, issued to meet a pressing but only temporary need. They varied from a single sheet containing but a single hymn (Charles Wesley’s hymn praying for his brother’s long life) to the two volumes with two thousand and thirty short hymns on Scripture passages. It was not until 1780 that a regular hymnbook “for the use of the people called ‘Methodists’” was issued, containing five hundred and twenty-five hymns.