The journal of John Wesley: With an introduction by Hugh Price Hughes. Appreciation of the journal by Augustine Birrell Hardcover – January 1, 1951

“The complete Journals, still preserved in twenty-six bound volumes, have never been printed.” (Editor’s Note) I don’t know this to be true presently; the editor died in 1925 and the undated Editor’s Note is quoting a biographer who died in 1936. In any event, while presenting only a fraction, the editor has “tried to retain the atmosphere of tremendous activity which is one of [the Journal’s] most remarkable features. (ibid.)As a Franciscan, I was struck by the contention that John Wesley and his “helpers” were “the first preachers since the days of the Franciscan friars in the Middle Ages who ever reached the working classes.” (Hugh Price Hughes' Introduction, p. 11) With chagrin, I would note that John Wesley died in 1791, several decades into the Industrial Revolution; the most substantive Catholic response to the Industrial Revolution wouldn’t appear for a complete century, until Pope Leo’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.On page 64 we find the now-celebrated quote: “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Now observed by Methodists every May as Aldersgate Day, John Wesley’s 1738 conversion experience is described by a Methodist website as “crucial for his own life and… a touchstone for the Wesleyan movement.”For this book Augustine Birrell, an eminent essayist and biographer, contributed a substantial Appreciation which concludes as follows: “From [Wesley’s Journals] we can learn better than anywhere else what manner of man he was, and the character of the times during which he lived and moved and had his being.” (p. 23)

Excellent writing and so spiritually uplifting.