John Wesley S Journal

The Journal kept by John Wesley from 1735 to 1790 charts his own spiritual journey and the work in which he engaged once converted. These extracts provide an insight into the spiritual ignorance and hostility that existed in his day and the amazing effects of the Gospel in transforming lives. We see the revival that took place as a result of his and others’ evangelistic endeavours and the establishment of Methodism. Wesley’s incessant travels, – covering thousands of miles each year, often on horseback, and habitually preaching several times a day, – make compelling reading. They challenge us too. What efforts are we making to reach the lost in our day, in which ignorance and hostility to spiritual things still exists?

Spanning some fifty-five years, John Wesley's voluminous Journal records the daily tribulations experienced in traveling the length and breadth of the British Isles in the 18th century. These selections present an engrossing portrait of Wesley during the course of his travels and evangelical activities, illuminating the preacher's views and opinions on a host of contemporary matters. Begun as a public vindication of his early spiritual and pastoral work in Oxford and America, Wesley's journal became a means of keeping far-flung outposts of Methodism in touch with one another, a device for administering encouragement and rebukes, and a textbook of the experiential religion Wesley spent his life proclaiming. Wesley's eclectic interests and passion for rational analysis also make the Journal a rich source for any reader interested in observing the conditions and values of Augustan society--particularly those of the lower classes--through the eyes of a well-educated and intelligent gentleman of the time.