Introduction

THE earliest Wesley letter that has been preserved links him to the famous school he loved so well and to which he owed so much. He was eighteen when he wrote to the Treasurer of Charterhouse; but his style is as clear and direct as in his maturity, and his moral scrupulousness shows with what high ideals he started life. The last letter is that to William Wilberforce, a trumpet-blast from the veteran who is putting off his armor to the noble philanthropist engaged in a mighty war against one of the most horrible wrongs suffered by mankind. Wesley knew his correspondent, and was heart and soul with him in his great crusade. Such a letter must have been an inspiration to the heroic soldier of Christ who received it.

The fact that age and youth were joined together in Thomas Sutton's foundation must have been very impressive to a boy like John Wesley. In his letter of December 3, 1774, to Christopher Hopper, one of his foremost preachers, we catch a manifest allusion to the eighty pensioners who shared Charterhouse with the schoolboys: 'We are really a company of poor gentlemen. But we have food and raiment and content.' That is a striking picture of the itinerant brotherhood of which Wesley was both founder and leader.

The letters begin in 1721, and end in 1791. Every year between is represented in this Collection save 1722 and 1728. The number preserved in 1731 reaches 21 and in the years of Wesley's conversion and first field-preaching runs up to 30 and 33. For 1768 there are 68 letters; and the number gradually rises, with some exceptions, till the highest totals are reached, 138 in 1788, 144 in 1789. The roll of 2,670 letters may be compared with the more than 800 letters of Cicero that have come down to us, of which 400 were written to his friend Atticus. In her fourteen volumes of Horace Walpole's Letters, Mrs.

Paget Toynbee was able to include 2,801 in whole or in part and the number was brought up to 3,060 in the two supplementary volumes edited by her husband.

Dr. Johnson felt' the cool of leisure, the stillness of solitude' were necessary to the production of a good letter. Such conditions were not often granted to Wesley. He did manage, when an important answer had to be written to a controversialist, to secure a day or two at Lewisham, or in some other congenial retreat, where he could grapple with a difficult subject; but his Diary shows that his letter-writing was carried on in moments snatched from other engagements. The Letters give many glimpses into the financial burden that rested on the head of a growing communion. On January 14, 1779, he is struggling with his London building scheme, and writes to Miss Warren: ' We are here at our wit's end how to pay for the new chapel, as many of our workmen are unpaid still. For riches the Calvinists beat us altogether.' See also letter of June 30, 1743.

In Wesley's letter to Samuel Furly on July 15, 1764, an interesting light is thrown on his method of composition: ' I never think of my style at all; but just set down the words that come first. Only when I transcribe anything for the press, then I think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear, pure, and proper. Conciseness (which is now, as it were, natural to me) brings quantum sufficit of strength. If, after all, I observe any stiff expression, I throw it out, neck and shoulders.' On March 3I, I787, he tells Miss Cooke (who afterwards married Adam Clarke), 'Considering that I am usually obliged to write in haste, I often doubt whether my correspondence is worth having'; and in the following July to Lady Maxwell he says, 'Our correspondence, I hope, will never be broken off, till one of us be removed into a better world. It is true I have often wondered that you were not weary of so useless a correspondent; for I am very sensible the writing of letters is my brother's talent rather than mine. Yet I really love to write to you, as I love to think of you.' He says to Richard Tompson on February 5, 1756, ' I am a very slow, you seem to be a very swift, writer '; the next month he tells Dr. Dodd, ' We are both of us rapid writers.' His penmanship was deliberate, but his mind moved quickly.

Leslie Stephen says Wesley 'shows remarkable literary power; but we feel that his writings are means to a direct practical end, rather than valuable in themselves, either in form or substance. It would be difficult to find any letters more direct, forcible, and pithy in expression. He goes straight to the mark, without one superfluous flourish. He writes as a man confined within the narrowest limits of time and space, whose thoughts are so well in hand that he can say everything needful within these limits. The compression gives emphasis, and never causes confusion. The letters, in other words, are the work of one who for more than half a century was accustomed to turn to account every minute of his eighteen working hours.' [History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 409.]

The devotional and spiritual significance of the Letters grows upon us as we study them. Wesley's best writing is here, the most direct, most pungent, most 'practical. His whole heart and mind were absorbed in his work as an evangelist. The letters bear witness that it was no narrow view of religion which he cherished. It covered every side of life. It sought to make good citizens and true patriots, as well as honorable men of business and good fathers and mothers. It included true culture; for Wesley said that the work of grace would die out in one generation if the Methodists were not a reading people. His letters were part of the great mission to which he had consecrated himself, and must have sent a thrill through the minds and hearts of his correspondents, not a few of whom were young friends who coveted his smile and were eager to help him in his work. The Rev. Nehemiah Curhock wrote long ago that one never saw a Wesley autograph without wanting to know what it said. 'Invariably and inevitably it says something that is worth reading. The manuscript letter or memorandum is sure to be short, clear, neat, orderly, pithy, in pure English, containing something practical put into vigorous form, and not without a dash of imperiousness, loving-kindness, or raciness. Read ever so small a fragment in a company of intelligent Methodists, and someone is almost sure to cry out, "That's John Wesley's!" The style of thought and expression never varies, any more than does the handwriting. Wesley was not in any sense a double-minded man. He was the same all the way round, and all. through, and in all circumstances. The definite regularity and persistent consistency of his character, to which even handwriting bears testimony, was one among the many causes of his power. Constitutionally he was a method-ist; and the discipline both of early and of later life, together with divine grace working upon that personal characteristic, at once developed and inspired it. His methodism he carried out consistently in all things to which he put his hand. In the construction of a sermon, in the organization of a new in the framing of a letter, and in everything else, great and small, he was emphatically a method-ist.' He gives a little, note, which may refer, as Dr. Stamp suggested, to the garden of the Newcastlw Orphan House, or more probably to that at Kingswood School:

I desire

1. That the gate may be hung.

2. That the hinge of the garden door may be mended.

3. That the door may be kept locked.

4. That the garden may be made and kept as neat as the adjoining garden.

5. That gooseberries and currants may be planted down the middle walk and strawberries under them.

6. That the rest of the ground may be sown with whatever it will bear.

7. That a part of it be planted with raspberries (sic), part with flowers.

J.W.

Between 1721 and 1791 lay nearly seventy years of service such as few men have ever rendered to the cause of religion. Wesley was both scholar and gentleman, and he lifted the tone of every circle he entered. He owed much to his mother, as the earlier letters prove. The deepest subjects are discussed with her on an equal footing. She was the greatest formative influence on his character in its most impressionable stage, and he never ceased to turn to her as his wisest counselor. How much his father influenced the Holy Club comes out in his heart-stirring counsels. Epworth at this stage was more influential than Oxford, and projected itself into that little circle of students and workers who were preparing for such service to their generation and to all generations that followed it. The letters to Mrs. Pendarves and her sister are now for the first time given in their fullness, through the kindness of Mr. Russell J. Colman. They introduce us to a lady who was greatly esteemed in Court circles, known to us best as Mrs. Delany. Her estimate of Wesley helps us to see him as an Oxford don, a master of refined courtesy, and a lover of such choice society as he found among the Granvilles and Kirkhams. The letters show how Wesley, who was to spend most of his life among lowly folk, bore himself in such aristocratic surroundings.

No one who reads these Letters can regard Wesley as lacking in the tenderer graces. He was essentially human, made to love and to be loved. His sisters were devoted to him. He tells his mother on November 1, 1724, that he recalls Wroot with more pleasure than Epworth; 'so true it is, at least to me, that the persons not the place make home so pleasant.' He has no sympathy with a morbid distaste for innocent pleasure. He writes to his mother on May 28, 1725: 'I can't think that when God sent us into the world He had irreversibly decreed that we should be perpetually miserable in it.... What are become of all the innocent comforts and pleasures of life, if it is the intent of our Creator that we should never taste them If our taking up the cross implies our bidding adieu to all joy and satisfaction, how is it reconcilable with what Solomon so expressly affirms of religion--that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths peace '

Amid the quaint stories and amusing bits of gossip in the Oxford letters are many pathetic touches which reveal a warm and eager spirit. He tells his brother Samuel on June 17, 1724: ' I have been so very frequently disappointed when I had set my heart on any pleasure, that I will never again depend on any before it comes.'

The more serious side of his thinking appears in the discussion with his mother of the deep things of philosophy and religion. Nor is it less interesting to watch him champion his sister Hetty. He tells Samuel on December 5, 1726: 'My sister Hetty's behavior has, for aught I have heard, been innocent enough since her marriage. Most of my disputes on Charity with my father were on her account, he inconceivably exasperated against her. 'Tis likely enough he would not see her when at Wroot: he has disowned her long ago, and never spoke of her in my hearing but with the utmost detestation. Both he, my mother, and several of my sisters were persuaded her penitence was but feigned.' Wesley stands out there against the family; and though he has asked his father's and his brother's pardon 'for any real or supposed slight I have put upon you,' he is careful to state: ‘I have said all that I can say, I have professed my sincerity and integrity, more perhaps than it became me to profess them.' You feel, as you read such words, that you are in the presence of no common man; and the impression is deepened when he declines to become his father's successor at Epworth. That was probably the most difficult refusal of his life. His father pleaded that his son should preserve the fruit of his forty years' labor; the people longed for him; it meant a home for his mother in her last years: but he resolutely declined to give up Oxford for Epworth; and who can doubt that he was right Providence certainly never meant to limit him to a country parish. His final consent came too late to change the course of events, and there is no doubt that it was forced on him by circumstances. The mission to Georgia led to that intimate association with the Moravians which had so large a part in Wesley's evangelical conversion. The letters describe his visit to Herrnhut, and also show how closely connected he was with the London Moravians in 1738 and 1739.

The Letters are an invaluable introduction and supplement to Wesley's Journal. They are less known, and therefore have a freshness all their own, and bring us into close touch with the men and women who labored with Wesley in all parts of the kingdom and in America. They form the most intimate portrait of Wesley we possess. As Maud Diver (in But Yesterday) puts it, 'In their letters, at least, the dead are alive for evermore.' Wesley is here in his habit as he lived.

The Letters really form the marching orders of the Evangelical Revival, and fill up many gaps in our knowledge of the events of that great awakening. Wesley had to keep the fires burning in three kingdoms, and much of this had to be done through his correspondence. He was, indeed, a true psp,. The letters were an extension of his cure of souls and of his oversight of the scattered Societies. In one of them to a lay friend he waxes indignant. It is dated November 7, 1788: 'I am constrained to tell you you use me ill. Be you ever so great a man, and I ever so little, you owe it to me to give me an account at the stated times of those souls I have entrusted you with, for whom I am to give an account to God.' That is one reason why so many of his letters were written to godly women who had their hearts in the work and had leisure to devote to the care of the young and the spiritual interests of the members. On January 15, 1773, he asks Miss Bolton: ' Let me know, not more seldom than once a month (unless something extraordinary prevent), how you are yourself, both as to your bodily health and with regard to your better part; and how the work of God goes on among your neighbors, particularly in any remarkable instance. Consider I am not likely to trouble you long; my day is far spent. I am therefore the more desirous to help you forward who are in the morning of life.' He urges Mrs. Freeman of Dublin on March 2, 1764: ' See that you strengthen your brethren, particularly those who are tempted to give up their confidence. O lift up the hands that hang down! Help those especially who did once taste of pure love.'

In his Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley Alexander Knox says: 'It is certain that Mr. Wesley had a predilection for the female character; partly because he had a mind ever alive to amiability, and partly from his generally finding in females a quicker and fuller responsiveness to his own ideas of interior piety and affectionate devotion. To his female correspondents, therefore (as it strikes me), he writes with peculiar effluence of thought and frankness of communication. 'He, in fact, unbosoms himself, on every topic which occurs to him, as to kindred spirits, in whose sympathies he confided, and from whose re-communications he hoped for additional light on those internal concerns which were ever uppermost in his mind and nearest to his heart. Accordingly in those prompt effusions all Mr. Wesley's peculiarities are in fullest display: his confident conclusions from scanty or fallacious premises; his unwarrantable value for sudden revolutions of the mind; his proneness to attribute to the Spirit of God what might more reasonably be resolved into natural emotions or illusive impressions;--these and such-like evidences of his intellectual frailty are poured forth without reserve; in strange union, however, with observations on persons and things, replete with acuteness and sagacity.'

Mr. Knox adds that, amid what he calls ' this anomaly of mind, there is no anomaly of heart: the point aimed at is consummate virtue in every temper and in every action.' He also considers that the letters 'are in the strictest harmony with each other, and indeed with everything else which proceeded from him.' It is the same John Wesley, whether he addresses individuals or addresses thousands; 'he wrote as he spoke. Their unstudied simplicity must give this impression; and I myself, who often heard him speak, can attest its justness.' He 'literally talks upon paper.'

The Letters show Wesley's power to lift the load of discouragement from the minds of his fellow workers. One of the preachers wrote to resign his position, as he thought he was not in his right place. Wesley replied: 'Dear Brother, you are not. in your right place, for you are doubting when you ought to be praying.' His letters were written to men who were often lonely, suffering hardship and sometimes sharp persecution; and they never failed to cheer and inspire them. Sometimes he has to speak very plainly. He tells Thomas Wride on February 24, 1775: ' Beware of your own spirit ! You bite like a bull-dog. When you seize, you never let go.' He has to use more sharpness a few months later; for on July 22 he writes, after an outburst in one of Wride's letters, which had given great offence to the preachers in Ireland: 'Such base language is too bad for the fishwives of Billingsgate. It is such as an archangel would not use to the devil! You must have done with it for ever, if you desire to have any farther fellowship with John Wesley.' His tenderness and patience with this troublesome preacher are extraordinary. Wesley made himself felt everywhere. Joseph Benson, in his Manuscript Life, by his son, tells a friend on July 24, 1774: ' There is great preparation-making for the College Anniversary [at Trevecca]. I wish Mr. Wesley might be at the helm of those unwieldy affairs. He is to be at Brecon on that day.' He had been at a Conference where Wesley evidently presided. ' We had a blessed time indeed. Love and truth were among us. Christ was there.'

How firmly he kept his hand on the work even in his extreme old age is seen by the letter of February 8, 1790. It was written to William Horner, then Assistant at Oxford. There were three preachers and a supernumerary in the circuit, and Mr. Horner probably felt the need of another helper. Wesley writes: ' Dear Billy, I am determined there shall be no circuits in England with more than four preachers whilst I live. Four are too many if I could help it.' He gives his judgment as to the chapel in the city: ' I should have no objection to have pews at Oxford under the gallery, but not elsewhere. I wish to have our preaching-houses different from all others.' He ends with a brief charge: ' Do not ask to be honorable; be content to be despised.'

We have been able to put a name to the correspondent of May 14, 1765; and many questions arise as to what would have been the result had John Newton seen his way to become one of Wesley's colleagues. It shows how closely Wesley was in touch with the evangelicals of the time, and how eager he was to welcome any of them who were ready to share the burden of his expanding parish.

The letters are in almost every case written by Wesley's own hand, though they were sometimes copied out by others, and were occasionally written to his dictation. Michael Fenwick and Samuel Bradburn learnt to imitate his handwriting very closely. We also find Thomas Tennant, who was then in the London Circuit, writing for Wesley on November 12, 1783, and February 12, 1785. It should not be overlooked that Wesley sometimes dated a letter from London, though it was written whilst he was on his journeys. The answer would naturally find him most quickly at headquarters. On June 30, 1788, he wrote one letter as from Grimsby and another as from London. His usual signature is 'J. Wesley,' though he sometimes signed 'John' in full. Wesley wrote with a quill pen on paper which folded into a sheet 6 by 4 or 8 by 6 inches and was sealed or fastened with wafer. He often made contractions such as ye yr, wch. He drew up a long list of these contractions, which is still preserved. The shortest letter is that of June 1, 1784, which has only eight words--' Dear Simon, You shall be in Oxfordshire. Adieu’; but he never spared time or space when his correspondent needed guidance or encouragement, or when he had to answer such a critic as Bishop Warburton.

His letters to the young are full of tender and fatherly counsel. We have been able to put names to some not hitherto identified. Philothea Briggs (granddaughter of Vincent Perronet, the Vicar of Shoreham, daughter of William Briggs, and wife of the first Missionary Treasurer, William Thompson, the Hull banker and Member of Parliament) is a 'Young Disciple.' Dr. Buckley, the famous editor of the Christian Advocate, New York, said to Dr. John F. Goucher: 'I am amazed at the versatility of John Wesley. I am reading again his letters to a score of young women, and I find them remarkable for common sense and refreshing piety.' He added that he ' felt much refreshed by the crystal stream of Christian perfection that flowed through these little letters without sandbar or mud.' [Christian Advocate, Aug. 26, 1926.] Wesley tells one correspondent: ' When I speak or write to you, I have you before my eyes; but, generally speaking, I do not think of myself at all. I see you aiming at glory and immortality, and say just what I hope may direct your goings in the way and prevent your being weary or faint in your mind.'

His power to help his friends in their perplexities was drawn largely from his own experience. He tells Miss Bolton on January 20, 1774: 'You in your little station, as I in mine, have abundance of trouble and care and hurry. And I too have often thought, Had I not better throw off some part at least of the burden But I think again, Is it my burden Did I choose it for myself Is it not the cup which my Father hath given me And do I bear it for my own sake, or for the profit of many that they may be saved '

Wesley's wandering life and his unhappy marriage made him turn much to his friends for sympathy and kindly feeling. His brother Charles lived in Bristol after his marriage; and when he removed to Marylebone in 1771, he was so far from City Road that intercourse was difficult for one burdened so heavily as Wesley. He had always longed for congenial company. If we compare his letter to Miss Furly on January 16, 1761, with that to his mother on November 1, 1724, we see the same spirit: ' I am so immeasurably apt to pour out all my soul into any that loves me.' She and her family were old London friends; and he writes freely to her, and expects like freedom in return. He tells her on September 25, 1757: ' It is a rule with me to take nothing ill that is well meant; therefore you have no need ever to be afraid of my putting an ill construction on anything you say.' Miss Elizabeth Briggs was another family friend of the third generation, and he writes on December 28, 1774: ' I love that you should tell me both what you feel and what you do, for I take part in all.' His letters to Peggy Dale are beautifully tender and sympathetic. He welcomed every opportunity of seeing her, and says on June 18, 1767, ' By conversing with you I should be overpaid for coming two or three hundred miles round about.'

The letters to Samuel Furly, Joseph Benson, John Valton,' Adam Clarke, and Henry Moore prove how they looked up to him and loved him, as did the members of the Holy Club at Oxford. Nor are those to young Alexander Knox less tender and fatherly. The sympathy with his physical weakness and spiritual troubles is unfailing; the old man's wisdom is all at the young Irishman's service. He kept his friendships in repair wherever possible by letters and visits. We find him writing to Samuel Bradburn on November 9, 1782,' But do not, to please any of your new friends, forsake your true old friend.' He was always eager to hear from them: ' Never be afraid that I should think your letters troublesome; I am never so busy as to forget my friends.' ' I love to think of you and hear from you. I want you to be always holy and happy.'

How he comforted sorrowing friends his letter to Mr. Arthur Keane of Dublin will show. Mr. Keane's child was dying; and on July 24 Wesley writes: 'You will have all need of patience while you hear every day that poor little maid bemoaning herself.' When the blow fell, he sent him a touching message from Manchester on August 5, 1787: My Dear Brother, We may see the mercy of God in removing your little one into a better world. It was a mercy for you, as well as for her. I was afraid she would have continued in pain long enough to have taken her mother with her. But God does all things well. You must now take care that she may have more air and exercise than she has lately had. Otherwise she may find many ill effects of her late confinement.'

Wesley kept an eye on the Press, to avoid misunderstanding and remove prejudice; and editors eagerly welcomed his communications. We find, from a letter to Arthur Keane on August 5, 1787, that they actually increased the sales. ' I do not wonder,' he says, 'that your Dublin newsvendors were afraid of stirring up a nest of hornets. Ours in England are not so fearful; they are glad to have anything from me. They know how it increases the sale of their paper.' He shrank from controversial writing, though he could not escape that manifest obligation; but the less the better was his rule. He tells Joseph Benson, July 31 1773: 'There will always be men deˆ pste [Titus i. II, ‘whose mouths must be stopped.’] --Antinomians and Calvinists in particular. By our long silence we have done much hurt, both to them and the cause of God.' He says on April 5, I758: ' I abhor disputing, and never enter into it but when I am, as it were, dragged into it by the hair of the head.' He acted on the advice of Polonius in Hamlet:

Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.

Letters connected with national events were written to leading statesmen. He asks Lord North, the Prime Minister, on June 14, 1775, ' Is it common sense to use force towards the Americans’ and gives some startling facts as to public feeling at home, as he has been able to gauge it in his visits to all parts of the country. A copy of the letter was sent to Lord Dartmouth. He would have left America large freedom, and thus have kept the United States as part of the British Commonwealth. But the Government of George III had not learnt to take Wesley's wider view of liberty. His letter of September 6, 1784, to the younger Pitt makes important suggestions as to taxation, and does not forget its word in season--' O may you fear nothing but displeasing Him!' How faithful he was to the great men whom he knew will be seen by his letters to Sir James Lowther, Lord Dartmouth and others. In July 1790 he writes to a Member of Parliament, undoubtedly William Wilberforce, asking him to speak to Mr. Pitt as to the tyrannical action of some magistrates in Lincolnshire in imposing fines on Methodists. In an important personal letter to Dr. Coke, dated September 5, I789, the sentence 'I wish you to obey "the powers that be" in America, but I wish you to understand them too,' shows that Wesley was not altogether easy as to the way in which Coke and Asbury had approached Washington with congratulations on his appointment as President of the United States.

Wesley lost no opportunity of doing good. Richard Viney's. manuscript Journal for July 15, 1744, says: 'I received a kind letter this day from Mr. John Westley, in which he insisted on my letting him know if I was straitened in outwards.' When Viney left Newcastle on June 4 to walk home to Pudsey, he wrote: ' My head ached, and I was heavy, so that I did not rise till almost six, then prepared for my departure, had some talk with Mr. Westley, and he gave me a guinia for my journey, &c. At eight I breakfasted with him, took leave, and at nine set out of Newcastle, and walked without baiting through Chesterly Street to Durham, twelve miles.' The letter to Richard Rodda on October 24, I789, urging him to leave no stone unturned to secure the appointment of Mr. Salmon of Coleford as Master. of the Poor House at Manchester is a fine illustration of his zeal on behalf of friends in need.

The great sayings which have made such an impression on Wesley's followers are met early in the letters, and mark them to the very end. It was on December 6, 1726, that he hoisted his flag: 'Leisure and I have taken leave of one another: I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged me.' The flag never drooped till death overtook him in 1791.

On July 24, 1731, he writes to Mrs. Pendarves: God hath so constituted this world that, so soon as ever any one sets himself earnestly to seek a better, Censure is at hand to conduct him to it. Nor can the fools cease to count his life madness till they have confirmed him in the wisdom of the just.' He also tells her on the 12th of August, when she is about to set out for Ireland: ' I know no danger that a lover of God can be in till God is no more, or at least has quitted the reins and left Chance to govern the world. Oh yes, there is one danger; and a great one it is, which nothing less than constant care can prevent--the ceasing to love Him.'

There is no touch of arrogance in the greatest saying appears in the letter of March 2o, ~739: ' I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that in whatever part of it I am I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. That is Wesley's watchword; and it is the watchword every true Christian. Wesley felt that ' a dispensation of the gospel was committed to me; and woe is me if I preach not the gospel.' It was in his letter to his brother Charles, after the ordinations for America, that he wrote: ' I firmly believe I am a scriptural psp as much as any man in England or in Europe; for the uninterrupted Succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove.'

Another word has its note of rejoicing. Religion, as Wesley taught it to his Societies, stood the supreme test : 'The world may not like our Methodists and evangelical people, but the world cannot deny that they die well.' His last letter, to William Wilberforce, is one of the noblest: ‘Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it.' Nor must we forget the death-bed saying, though it was uttered when he had laid down his pen for ever: ' The best of all is, God is with us.'

Letter writing always absorbed much of Wesley's time. His Georgia diary for March 15, 1736, shows that at 5 a.m. he was transcribing a letter to Zinzendorf which bears date the following day. On November 16, 1738, he has four or five and thirty letters awaiting reply. On June 20, 1766, when engrossed by his Notes on the Old Testament, he says: ' All my time is swallowed up, and I can hardly catch a few hours to answer the letters that are sent me.' After a month in the Channel Islands he tells Miss Bolton, on September x8, I787, that with the assistance of two of his friends he 'answered abundance of letters' (Journal, vii. 327). Despite the use of franks he had heavy postal charges. On June 23, 1783, he writes: ' My letters to-day cost me 18s.'

He had many problems to solve in his long life, and not the least perplexing was the relation of Methodism to the Church of England. His constant aim was to maintain close fellowship between them, but he writes to his brother on September 8, 1761: ' I do not at all think (to tell you a secret) that the work will ever be destroyed, Church or no Church.' That conviction is more than justified by the position of Methodism in the world to-day.

His patience with eager spirits amazes us. He tells Samuel Furly, on July 30, 1762: ' You love dispute, I hate it.' We get an illustration of this in the draft reply which Furly has written on the back of Wesley's letter of January 25, I762. Furly protested that Wesley had not the least ground to imagine that his feeling towards his old friend would change in a year's time, and commits himself to the statement that ' Perfection, which now tramples on the blood of God's eternal Son, will then make its appearance with all the signs of Satan's contrivance, introducing confusion, rage, and devastation among the people of God.' That strange caricature throws light on Wesley's letters to him on May 21 and July 30, 1762, and shows how the Methodist teaching was misunderstood even by one who might have been expected to have known better.

Wesley's letters are a mirror both of the man and of the Evangelical Revival. There is no aiming at effect. The gems of the correspondence come out naturally under the impulse of the moment. Horace Walpole has left the world a vast store of letters, and by these he survives. If wit and brilliancy, without gravity or pathos, are to rank highest, Austin Dobson ranked him first of letter-writers. ' diversity of interest and perpetual entertainment, for constant surprises of an unique species of wit, for and unexpected turns of phrase, for graphic and clever anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, t there is nothing in English like his correspondence. one remembers that, in addition, this correspondence stitutes a sixty years' social chronicle of a epoch by one of the most picturesque of picturesque chroniclers there can be no need to bespeak any further suffrage Horace Walpole's "incomparable letters."' [Horace Walpole, pp. 29:3-4.]

That estimate is endorsed by other experts. John Wesley's letters have a different claim on attention. They are seventy years' panorama of the Evangelical Revival. show the preparation of the chief instruments; they introduce them to their fields of service; and for more than half a century they allow us to see them at work, light to them that sat in darkness, lifting men and women new heights of personal character, showing how helpers enlisted in the crusade against ignorance and vice, until chief worker, who had once been in constant peril from mobs, won love and honor such as few men have ever enjoyed, and closed his life with such a 'well done' as the world scarcely ever given to any of its evangelists.

Edited by Michael Mattei (2000)