WHAT, another Life of John Wesley! Why not? This time a "Young People's
Wesley." If ever the common people had an interest in any man, living or
dead, that man is John Wesley. It is true that we already have many
"Lives" of this remarkable man. They range from the massive volumes of
Tyerman down to the booklet of a few pages. The truth abides that of
making many books there is no end, and so more Lives of Wesley will be
written from time to time as the years and centuries come and go. The
reason of this is that John Wesley is one of the greatest men of all the
Christian centuries. When we undertake to enumerate the five greatest
men that the English race has ever produced we must of necessity include
the name of John Wesley. As the distance increases between the present
time and the days of his protracted activity the grander does he appear.
The majority of the men of his day and generation did not comprehend
him. They could not, for the plan of his aspirations and achievements
was far above their thinking or living. They did not realize his
greatness; they did not foresee the influence he was destined to exert
on all future generations. He has been dead more than a hundred years,
and yet to-day he is larger, vaster, and more powerful in the wide realm
of intellectual and spiritual activities than he was at any time during
his long and vigorous life. So far as we can judge, this development of
the stature of this wonderful man will continue for ages.
Remember that John Wesley was well bred. On both his father's and
mother's side he inherited the qualities of the best blood of England.
So far as we know, his ancestry was purely Saxon, and of the best type
of English-Saxon lineage. On sea or land, in military affairs, as a
diplomat or statesman, he would have been eminent. He was one of the
most thorough and comprehensive scholars of his century. He was fully
abreast of his times in all matters of natural science; he was a
linguist of rare excellency; he was a metaphysician; he was at home in
philosophy. He had the rare ability of using all he knew for the best
and highest purposes. He was a real genius, not a crank. A genius
utilizes environment; a genius dominates circumstances; a genius makes
old things new; a genius pioneers mankind in its career of progress.
Because of these qualities and characteristics, men will never tire of
reading the life, and men will never stop writing the life, of this
man. Born in the humble rectory of Epworth, in the midst of the fens of
Lincolnshire, his name and fame reach to the ends of the earth. Men know
him not for what he might have been, but for what he was--a friend of
all, and a prophet of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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