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Charles Wesley

1707–1788 · England · Baroque

Author

Anglican priest, leader of the Methodist revival with his brother John, and the most prolific English hymn writer, credited with over 6,500 hymns.

Life

Charles Wesley was born in 1707 at Epworth, Lincolnshire, the eighteenth child of the Anglican rector Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna, and younger brother of John Wesley. At Oxford he gathered the 'Holy Club' in 1729, which John and George Whitefield later joined. He was ordained in 1735 and went with John to Georgia, returning a year later. In May 1738, days before John's Aldersgate experience, Charles came to an evangelical assurance of faith, and the brothers spent the following years travelling throughout Britain preaching and leading the Methodist revival. He married Sarah Gwynne in 1749; from 1756 his ministry became more settled, in Bristol and later London. He remained firmly opposed to any separation of the Methodists from the Church of England.

As a Hymn Writer

Wesley wrote hymns for every season of the Church Year and every turn of Christian experience. His texts are dense with Scripture, sometimes several allusions in a line, and they sing the great objective facts of the Gospel: the incarnation ('Hark! The Herald Angels Sing'), the atonement, the resurrection ('Christ the Lord Is Risen Today'), the ascension and the return ('Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending'). Lutherans have long sung his festival hymns gladly, often in altered or abridged forms; editors have sometimes softened lines that reflect the Wesleyan teaching on Christian perfection, while his universal note ('once for every sinner slain') fits the Lutheran confession of universal grace.

In The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Service Book (11)

  • TLH 94 Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
  • TLH 193 Christ the Lord is Risen Today
  • TLH 241 Father, in Whom We Live
  • TLH 345 Jesus, Lover of My Soul
  • TLH 351 Love Divine, All Love Excelling
  • TLH 359 Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies
  • TLH 360 Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
  • TLH 433 Jesus, My Truth, My Way
  • TLH 450 Soldiers of Christ, Arise
  • TLH 478 The Saints on Earth and Those Above
  • TLH 488 Lord of the Harvest, Hear

Sources: Wikipedia, 'Charles Wesley'.

Hymn Texts (26)