John Wesley (1703-1791) is remembered today as the founder of the Methodist movement. He was converted to Christ at the age of 35. Before his conversion, he had done missionary work among the American Indians as an Anglican minister. He was forced to leave the Anglican Church and spent the rest of his life preaching in the fields and on the streets and wherever he was able to. He was up each morning before 5:00 for prayer and Bible study, and often rode on horseback 15 to 20 miles a day, preaching four or five times daily. During his lifetime, Wesley traveled 250,000 miles, preaching a total of 42,000 sermons. He died at the age of 88 and preached up to the very month in which he died.

“Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.”

“Without faith we cannot be thus saved; for we cannot rightly serve God unless we love him. And we cannot love him unless we know him; neither can we know God unless by faith. Therefore, salvation by faith is only, in other words, the love of God by the knowledge of God; or, the recovery of the image of God, by a true, spiritual acquaintance with him.”

“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.”

“Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”

“The points we chiefly insisted upon were . . .that orthodoxy, or right opinions, is, at best, but a very slender part of religion, if it can be allowed to be any part of it at all; that neither does religion consist in negatives, in bare harmlessness of any kind; nor merely in externals, in doing good, or using the means of grace, in works of piety (so called) or of charity; that it is nothing short of, or different from, the mind that was in Christ; the image of God stamped upon the heart; inward righteousness, attended with the peace of God; and joy in the Holy Ghost.

“Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.”

“By salvation I mean, not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth.”

“The more I converse with this people, the more I am amazed. That God hath wrought a great work among them is manifest; and yet the main of them, believers and unbelievers, are not able to give a rational account of the plainest principles of religion. It is plain, God begins His work at the heart; then the inspiration of the highest giveth understanding.