Charles Wesley, like George Whitefield, was an evangelist who preached constantly in the open air, to multitudes of fifteen to twenty thousand people. He was without the iron strength of Whitefield, but for fifteen years he did preach once a day, and sometimes two and three times. He lacked Whitefield's organ voice, and the strange mystic, magical charm of his brother John, but his sentences were short, with the swiftness of bullets, and he was a most persuasive orator. The fact was, Charles Wesley's emotions were often beyond his powers of control. He pled with men with tears running down his cheeks; his voice shook and quavered; he melted men until their hearts were like water. Often, in the midst of his sermon, he broke into song. In theory he was a high-churchman, but in practice he was a nonconformist, who ordained laymen to the ministry. He was a little man, short-sighted, quick to resent a wrong, loyal in friendship, most lovable, full of faults, and full of sorrow by reason of his faults, an inspired singer of hymns; but he lacked the order, the organizing gift, the iron purpose and the unyielding will of his brother John.
Far greater than either Whitefield or Charles Wesley was the brother, preacher, statesman, theologian, scholar, and evangelist. John Wesley outlived Whitefield by thirty, and his brother Charles, by four years. If Whitefield preached eighteen thousand times, this amazing man preached forty-two thousand, four hundred times and within fifty-one years. His comrades broke down, his friends passed away, bitter opposition developed, the doors of the churches were closed against him but Wesley's zeal "burned long, burned undimmed, burned when even the fire of life turned to ashes." For fifty years he not only preached, but published seven volumes a year. He did an enormous work as author and publisher. In the interests of the poor he was the first man to publish cheap literature, and he brought many wise books within the reach of colliers and peasants. He wrote a volume on household medicine; simple books on grammar, style, good health and history. He translated the writings of other authors, and abridged works that were beyond the poor man's purse. The germ of the modern lecture system, social settlement work, night-schools, and the shelter-houses of General Booth, are all in Wesley's work. He accomplished an incredible amount as author, publisher, educator, and organizer of social and political reforms. His Journal, covering a period of fifty-four years, and existing to-day in the shape of twenty-one beautifully written volumes, has been called "the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned."
This personal Journal of John Wesley deserves a place among the few great journals of the world. There are only two other eighteen century volumes worthy to be spoken of in the same breath:—Walpole's Letters and Boswell's Johnson. Horace Walpole was the rich idler, the male butterfly, who lived for pleasure and position, and in his gossiping letters embalmed for later generations "all the lords and ladies, the rakes and flirts, the fools and spendthrifts, the gossip and scandal of a rich man's career." Dr. Johnson stands for manliness, independence, courage, robust common sense. His chief interests in life were literature and politics, and Boswell says that he divided society into two classes, Whigs who were to be cudgelled and scourged, and Tories who were to be admired and praised. But Wesley's Journal is upon a far higher level. His spirit is not that of curiosity, as was Walpole's, nor of vehement resentment and personal preferences, as was Johnson's. It is that of a passionate and divine pity. He possessed an overpowering sense of the value of men apart from their position, their politics, their knowledge or ignorance, their poverty or wealth; he saw them as God sees them. And the result is a work far sweeter and finer than either of the two famous volumes just considered.
Wonderful the picture of serenity and strength given us in these intimate, vivid pages. The story of a single day is the story of the whole fifty years. Wesley rose at four o'clock, read his devotional books until five, preached in the open air to the colliers who had to go to their tasks at half-past six. After breakfast at seven, he mounted his horse; drew rein for a few minutes from time to time to read a page in some book that he was analyzing; after twenty or thirty miles' ride, preached in a public square or some churchyard at noon; dismissed his hearers at one o'clock that they might return to their work; rode rapidly, often twenty miles, to his next appointment, where he preached at five; after supper, when the evening twilight fell, preached again, holding a service that often lasted until nine or even ten o'clock.
During the half century, Wesley worked along the lines of a triangle, westward from London to Bristol, north by Liverpool and Carlisle to Newcastle; then back to London through the towns of the east coast of England. His preaching tours followed the lines of England's industrial centers. He worked where the population was thickest. He loved the mining districts, where two or three thousand men would assemble for him at almost any hour of the day. The falling rain never disturbed him, the rough roads seemed to bring no tire. He loved crowds, and noise and excitement did not seem to wear upon his strength. Apparently there was not a tired or sore nerve in his wonderful little body. An entry in his journal speaks of having travelled that day ninety miles, and not being in the least tired, although he seems to have preached three times. "Many a rough journey have I had before," says the Journal, "but one like this I never had, between wind and rain, ice and snow, and driving sleet and piercing cold. But it is past; those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been." His appointments were often made a fortnight in advance. His journals are filled with pictures of deep snow, dripping skies, bitter northwest winds.
What is the secret of Wesley's greatness, and how did he ever endure such labour? The hidings of his power are in his wonderful ancestry. Long after Samuel Wesley's death, the son found in the garret of the old rectory a manuscript of his father's, with a scheme of world-wide evangelization which became a chart for the son, who said, "the world is my parish." The mother, Susannah, was possessed of so many gifts that her son felt that to have fallen heir to her mental and moral treasures was, in itself, a gift of God. Gibbon described his tutor in Oxford as a "man who remembered that he had a salary to receive and forgot that he had a duty to perform."
John Wesley had the opposite theory of life. At seventeen, going to Oxford he won distinction as a scholar of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments, and one of the finest men of his time. Elected a Fellow of Lincoln College when thirty-two years of age, appointed lecturer in Greek, carrying on his own studies in Arabic and Hebrew, in poetry and oratory, young Wesley wrote in his Journal a sentence that describes the next sixty years of his life: "Leisure and I have taken leave of each other." It was true of him in middle life, and it was to be true of him to the day of his death.
During the critical years when Wesley was educating himself, his favourite books were the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy Taylor's Purity of Intention, and William Law's masterpiece, Serious Call. It was while he was in Oxford that he formed the habit of reading for one hour before he outlined the duties of the day. Then came the two years' visit to the United States, his brief ministry in Georgia, his friendship with the Moravians, and that golden hour on May 24, 1738, when he went with Peter Böehler and passed through an experience like that of Paul on the road to Damascus, that has been described by the critical historian Lecky,—"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history." But it is a striking fact that Wesley's real work did not begin until he had reached full middle life. It was under the influence of George Whitefield, the greatest pulpit orator England has produced, that Wesley went to Bristol and under pressure by Whitefield, consented to speak in the open air to some three thousand people, gathered about a little eminence. Few careers offer greater encouragement and inspiration to the man who at middle-age has yet to find himself.
And what was the secret of his incredible strength? The secret is very simple. During each day he kept two or three little islands of silence and solitude for himself, betwixt the sermons and crowds. He learned how to read books on horseback. He never hurried, and never worried. He preached with physical restraint, so that public speech became a form of physical exercise, a life-giving kind of gymnastics. He learned how to breathe, so that speaking three, or four and five hours a day did not injure his vocal cords. Morley, in his Life of Gladstone, says that at Gravesend, Gladstone spoke for two hours to an audience of twenty thousand, and his biographer declares that physically and intellectually, that speech was the greatest of Mr. Gladstone's career. Gladstone was sixty-two years old when he performed that feat, which is unique in his career. Wesley's journal is filled with records like this:—
Sunday, August 10, 1786. Preached in the churchyard to large congregations.