Eagle Feathers #185 – The Wesleys

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

Clergyman John Wesley was the founder of Methodism, an alternative movement from the Church of England. He was born in England on June 17, 1703, the same date of the future American Battle of Bunker Hill.

After narrowly surviving a house fire in his youth, his faith and purpose in life were born. On becoming an ordained minister, he traveled to America to preach with his brother Charles.

His open-air lectures, exhaustive by American standards, were commonplace to him. After returning to England four years later, he became a nomadic preacher for the remainder of his life. He covered forty to sixty miles a day on horseback, averaging 15 sermons a week for the next fifty years, almost 40,000 in his lifetime. He also wrote a best-selling medical text during his era, while becoming one of England’s greatest spiritual leaders.

John’s brother, Charles, was a prolific writer who wrote over 6,000 hymns. Among them was Hark the Herald Angels Sing. He was considered the greatest hymn writer in England. In 1736, Charles preached at Boston’s Old North Church where there is a plaque commemorating him. Also, a white marble memorial honoring both brothers is in Westminster Abbey, London, England.

Union Square’s First Methodist Church was erected in 1874. It held and filled the largest audience room in the city. Today, like many other religious affiliations, it has drifted to the wayside. It is now a re-born prestigious condominium complex, but its memory stands proud in its location at One Summer Street. It is on the corner of Bow Street and Wesley Park, which overlooks Wesley Square and honors this often quoted man. John coined the terms:

• Agree to disagree
• Eat a little less than you desire
• Lord, let me not live to be useless

One of his many mottos was:

“Do all the good you can.

By all the means you can.

In all the ways you can.

In all the places you can.

At all the times you can.

To all the people you can.

As long as ever you can.”