Physical Habits of John Wesley
By M. E. Olsen
With John Wesley’s long and fruitful career everybody is more or less familiar, but his physical habits, which doubtless lay at the foundation of his remarkable health and continued usefulness to the very last, are perhaps not so well known. To quote from another, “Wesley does not appear to have inherited a robust constitution, and in his youthful days was certainly not without many illnesses, but after the age of forty he usually enjoyed excellent health till within a few days of his decease. He was exceedingly temperate; rose constantly at an early hour, was of a very cheerful disposition and even temper; took constant exercise of the most active kind, regardless alike of heat and cold, wind and rain, and was a lover of regularity and order in everything.” Wesley’s own words will be interesting on this point. Writing of himself at the age of sixty-eight, he says: “I can hardly believe that I am this day entered into the sixty-eighth year of my age! How marvelous are the works of the Lord! How he has kept me even from a child! From ten to thirteen or fourteen I had little but bread to eat, and not a great plenty of that. I believe this was so far from hurting me that it laid the foundation of lasting health. When I grew up, in consequence of reading Dr. Cheyne, I chose to eat sparingly and drink water. This was another great means of continuing my health till I was about twenty-seven. I then began spitting blood, which continued several years. A warm climate cured this. I was afterward brought to the brink of death by a fever, but it left me healthier than before. Eleven years after I was in the third stage of consumption: in three months it pleased God to remove this also. Since that time I have known neither pain nor sickness, and am now healthier than I was forty years ago! This hath God wrought!” Five years later he writes: “I am seventy-three years old, and far abler to preach than I was at three and twenty. What natural means has God used to produce so wonderful an effect?—(1) Continual exercise and change of air by traveling about four thousand miles a year; (2) constant rising at four; (3) the ability, if ever I want it, to sleep immediately; (4) the never having lost a night’s sleep in my life. . . . May I add, lastly, evenness of temper? I feel and grieve, but by the grace of God, I fret at nothing. But, still, ‘the help that is done upon earth’ he doeth it himself; and this he doeth in answer to many prayers.” As years wore on, Wesley’s health and activity continued, and on his eighty-second birthday we find him writing: “To-day I entered on my eighty-second year, and found myself just as strong to labor, and as fit for exercise of body and mind as I was forty years ago. I do not impute this to second causes, but to the sovereign Lord of all. I am as strong at eighty-one as I was at twenty-one, but abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache, and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.” At the age of eighty-three he observed: “I am a wonder to myself. It is now twelve years since I have felt any sensation of weariness. I am never tired (such is the goodness of God!) either with writing, preaching, or traveling; one natural cause, undoubtedly, is my continual exercise and change of air. How the latter contributes to health I know not, but certainly it does.” Wesley’s life is a beautiful example of temperance reaping its own reward. He was not naturally strong and rugged, but by rigid self-denial and strict adherence to the principles that underlie health, he grew more and more vigorous, and his usefulness continued till the close of his remarkably long and fruitful life. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.”