JOHN WESLEY : DOING ALL THE GOOD
HE COULD (September, 2003, for use as biographical
information in the programme for 'The Life and Times of John Wesley', the
2003 Glen Waverley Middle School Musical')
Until
just three months before it opened in January 1866, the school we
now know as ‘Wesley College’ was to be named ‘Wesleyan
Methodist Grammar School’, words that were to adorn the pediment
of the new, cement-rendered building with its two grey towers on the
road to St Kilda.
No
record of the reasons for this change has been found but one
significant outcome of the change was that it gave the school a role
model, for it took the name of a person - the eighteenth century
English social reformer, Reverend John Wesley MA, (1703-1791).
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Saved from
fire when aged five and a half |
Leading a
meeting of the Oxford 'Methodists' |
In
eighty-eight action-packed years, John Wesley …
- grew
up in the large family of Rev Samuel and Mrs Susanna Wesley,
being thoroughly trained by his mother, as were his siblings;
- was
dramatically rescued from death in a house fire when aged five
and a half;
- attended
London’s Charterhouse School from age eleven and, at
seventeen, went on to Oxford University, becoming a Fellow of
Lincoln College in 1726;
- led
a group of Oxford
young men who resolutely studied their Christian faith,
worshipped devoutly, visited the sick, poor and imprisoned and
taught children;
- was
ordained deacon in the Church of England at age twenty-two and
priest at twenty-five;
- sailed,
at thirty-two, to Georgia, America to serve the colonists and
indigenous people - an episode that ended, he felt, with a sense
of personal failure;
- approaching
thirty-five and back in England, became newly inspired to strive
to save people from exploitation, depravity, ignorance, poverty
and ill-health;
- travelled
400,000 kms throughout the British Isles by horse, in all
weathers, preaching the Christian gospel and personally helping
people, particularly in rapidly industrializing England;
- preached
an average sixteen sermons a week, mostly outdoors in places
where large numbers of people from all walks of life could
gather easily;
- established
diverse schools, bookrooms, orphanages, refuges, labour
exchanges, credit unions, charitable funds, relief agencies and
free health clinics;
- faced
repeated rejection, persecution and life-threats arising from
his opposition to practices like class discrimination, brutish
sports, gin addiction and slavery;
- was
a prolific writer and publisher of books, magazines, pamphlets,
treatises, papers, articles and letters on social, theological
and personal subjects;
- developed
a large network of self-help
groups within which his increasing number of followers shared
support, enabling them to assist and include others;
- created
through his network a variety of leadership opportunities and a
system of community literacy for ordinary men and women that
left a strong democratic legacy;
- with
his brother Charles (who wrote more than six thousand hymns),
widely employed singing as an enjoyable way for people -
especially the illiterate - to understand the Christian faith;
- organized
his life and work so meticulously that he and his followers,
commencing in the Oxford days, were disparagingly nicknamed
’Methodists’;
- was
denied, through Charles’ interference, a likely happy marriage
to Grace Murray in his mid-forties and later married Mary
Vazeille but separated after four years;
- recorded
more than fifty years of his life and work in a comprehensive
published Journal, in addition to its drafts and a detailed
personal diary;
- donated
more than thirty-five thousand eighteenth century English pounds
to charity;
- at
eighty-eight, was rising at 4.00 am each day and performing his
usual daily pastoral duties, mentally alert though physically
frail;
- headed,
at his death, a global network (mainly in Britain and the USA)
of more than 120,000 members grouped in ‘Methodist
Societies’.
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Sixteen
sermons a week ... usually outdoors |
Imminent
death, 1791 |
Before
1738, John Wesley, a committed Christian, believed he had to earn
God’s love. Intellectually
and methodically he worked hard at achieving this but often was
pre-occupied by his self-perceived unworthiness if measured against
benchmarks he set for himself.
In
May 1738, however, Wesley became personally assured that God loved
him freely, quite independent of any human measure, much as a parent
loves a child. “I
felt my heart strangely warmed”, he wrote in his Journal.
No
longer feeling hidebound by his methodology, the liberated John
Wesley instead began to apply it passionately in his mission to
convey divine love spiritually and materially to as many people as
he could, particularly the disadvantaged.
Thus Wesley united his heart with his head and, with an
extraordinarily fit physique, spent the next fifty-three years being
the exemplar of his superbly pragmatic challenge to his followers:-
“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."
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Susanna |
Samuel |
John |
Charles |
Mary |
Sources
Benson,
C. Irving, A Century of Victorian Methodism, Spectator Publishing Co.,
Melbourne, 1935
Byard,
Trevor, Grandpa was a Methodist, The Joint Board of Christian Education,
Melbourne, 1993
Cross,
F.L. and Livingstone, E. A. (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1974
Garlick,
Phyllis, Six Great Missionaries, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1956
Gribben, Robert, ‘The Wesleys:
a quarter of a millennium after their conversion to fervent Christianity’, on
‘Focus’, Radio 3LO, Melbourne, May 1988
Patterson, Bryan, ‘Wesley’s
Method of God’s Work’, in the ‘Sunday Herald Sun’, Melbourne, 22/6/2003
Tolar Burton, Vicki, ‘John
Wesley and the Liberty to Speak: The Rhetorical and Literary Practices of Early
Methodism’ in ‘College Composition and Communication’, September 2001
'Wesleyan Methodist Grammar
School, St Kilda', in the 'Wesleyan Chronicle', Melbourne, 20/1/1865
'Wesley College, Melbourne', in
the 'Wesleyan Chronicle', Melbourne, 20/12/1865
Zwartz, Barney, ‘Horseback Hero’, in ‘The Age’,
Melbourne, 18/6/2003
Appreciation
Uniting
Church in Australia ministers Rev Graeme James and Rev Professor Norman Young
kindly agreed to read the draft of this piece and made helpful suggestions.
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