The Heart of John Wesley's Journal

Hendrickson Classic Biographies presents a one-volume abridgement of Wesley's multi-volume journals. The Heart of John Wesley's Journal presents a remarkable life, recorded and examined in real time by Wesley himself. Spanning some fifty-five years, John Wesley's journals recorded his daily experiences in studying, teaching, preaching, and traveling the throughout England and then America in the eighteenth century. These selections present an engrossing portrait of Wesley during the course of his travels and evangelistic activities, illuminating the preacher's views and opinions on a host of contemporary matters. Begun as a public vindication of his early spiritual and pastoral work in Oxford and America, Wesley's journal became a means of keeping far-flung outposts of Methodism in touch with one another, a device for administering encouragement and rebukes, and a textbook of the experiential religion Wesley spent his life proclaiming. Wesley's eclectic interests and passion for rational analysis also make his journal a rich source for any reader interested in observing the conditions and values of society--particularly those of the lower classes--through the eyes of a well-educated and intelligent gentleman of the time.