Charles Wesley, Priest and Hymnwriter

Today the Church commemorates Charles Wesley, priest and hymnwriter, whose songs taught Christians to seek the transforming love of Jesus.

Charles was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire on December 18, 1707. His father, Samuel, was the rector. His mother, Susanna, taught her children at home, beginning and ending their lessons with the singing of psalms. Prayer and song belonged to the ordering of the household.

At Oxford, Charles gathered companions for disciplined study and devotion. His brother John joined them and helped direct their common life. They attended the worship of the Church, prayed, and sought to live faithfully by the rule they had undertaken. Others called them Methodists.

Charles was ordained a priest of the Church of England in 1735. He sailed with John to Georgia, where he served as secretary to James Oglethorpe and ministered among the colonists. Conflict, illness, and disappointment brought his work there to an early end. He returned to England with little to show for the hopes with which he had set out.

On Pentecost in 1738, Charles experienced an assurance of God’s mercy that changed his ministry. The faith he had studied and the discipline he had practiced became a source of renewed confidence in Christ. He began to preach with an urgency that carried him beyond the familiar settings of parish worship.

He traveled through England and later Ireland. He preached to people whose lives were marked by hard labor and poverty. He visited prisoners, including people awaiting execution. His ministry brought opposition and sometimes violence. He continued to call his hearers to repentance and to the life God offered in Jesus.

As he preached, Charles wrote hymns. He gave congregations words in which to confess their need, praise their Redeemer, and ask for holiness. Scripture passed into song. People who might never read a theological treatise could carry its teaching in memory and pray it together.

The love for which he taught them to ask was to enter the whole person. In Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, Jesus came as the joy of heaven seeking a dwelling in human hearts. The hymn asked him to complete his new creation, restore his people, and change them from glory into glory until they stood before him in praise.

Charles also gave sustained attention to the Eucharist. In 1745 the brothers published Hymns on the Lord’s Supper. John prepared an introduction from the Anglican priest Daniel Brevint, and Charles supplied most of the hymns.

Their songs led worshipers to Christ’s Passion, his present gifts at the table, the unity of his body, and the feast still to come. The communicant approached the altar to receive the Lord and to offer a life that belonged to him. Charles’s preaching and poetry remained bound to sacramental worship.

In 1749 he married Sarah Gwynne. She traveled with him and helped lead the singing at his meetings. Their household became part of the life through which he continued his ministry.

Charles wanted the Methodist societies to renew the Church of England. As some preachers moved toward a separate ministry, he resisted them. When John undertook ordinations for America in 1784, Charles opposed his brother’s action. In a prayer written in response, Charles asked Christ to restrain and protect his brother.

The disagreement did not end their affection. Charles remained committed to the Church in which he had received priestly orders. He wanted the people awakened through the revival to remain within its common prayer and sacramental life.

His strength failed in 1788. By March he could no longer write. He died on March 29 and, according to his wishes, was buried in the churchyard of Saint Marylebone. Anglican clergy bore his funeral pall.

His hymns continued to pass from voice to voice. Congregations sang of Christ’s birth, his redeeming love, the light of his presence, and the holiness he gives his people.

Charles taught the Church to ask for more than a passing warmth of devotion. He taught us to pray that Christ would dwell within us and complete the work he had begun. May the words we sing become the desire of our hearts, and may the love we ask of God take flesh in the lives we offer him.