Wesley's Industry

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 28, 1868

Wesley's Industry.

NEVER since the days of Paul, was a man more assiduous in labor than Wesley. Not a day was given to repose, not an hour to unnecessary leisure. In his eighty-fifth year, he speaks of that day as a day of rest, in which he preached only twice. Before the latter years of his life, he usually journeyed on horseback, and read poetry, history, and philosophy as he rode, having no other time for such employments. “Leisure and I,” he said, “have taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged me,” and fortunately he was always well. For seventy years he did not lose a night’s sleep. He attended the Conference; he directed the preachers; he kept a steady eye on Scotland and Ireland, on the West Indies and America; he founded schools, he inspected the circuits; after his eightieth year we hear of him in Holland, in Guernsey and Jersey, in Wales, in Scotland, in Ireland, and every considerable town in England; he systematized the rules of his order, and established that discipline which shows his foresight, and energy, and wisdom; he purchased ground and erected chapels; he wrote sermons, and essays, and tracts, treatises on Primitive Physic and on Theology, memoirs of good men, and notes on the New Testament, beside his numerous letters and copious diary. Sixteen octavo volumes of his works were published some time after his death. Always calm and cheerful, curious and accurate, he read new books, and looked upon novel and strange things to the very last, with all the interest of youth.

Amid the complicated labors, the solemn drama of that earnest, cheerful and laborious life drew to its serene close. Already had one and another of his earliest and best friends lain down to their eternal rest. His brother Charles, blessed to the very end of his fourscore years, in the church and his family, had calmly and joyfully met the change whose last pangs he had always dreaded. The saintly Fletcher too, had gone. Fourscore years found Wesley still active, traveling four thousand miles annually, preaching, writing, and directing the extended business of the society. Six years more and he began to feel that the machine was wearing out. He could not well preach more than twice a day. His service at five in the morning, continued for so many years, was given up. He wrote in his cash account book with a tremulous hand, “For upwards of eighty-six years I have kept my accounts exactly; I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can, and give all I can, that is all I have.” Thus closed the accounts of one who, never being rich, gave away during his life, thirty thousand pounds! “Time has shaken me by the hand,” he said in the words of his father, “and death is not far behind.” The second day of March, 1791, came at last. Sixty-five years of his ministry had passed away. The horologue had pealed out the eighty-eighth year of his life, and the hands of the dial stood still forever.—Biblical Repository.