"John Wesley" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exist? No, sir; it is by external evidence, which is altogether in favor of our church; and this is more valuable than all the internal evidence that ever existed in the minds of fanatics, from Simon Magus to John Wesley, or from the Gnostics to the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... came to be associated with angular and frigid disquisitions which were rapidly losing their connexion with vital religion. It has been left for the scholars of the present century to give us a picture of St. Paul as he really was—a man much nearer to George Fox or John Wesley than to Origen or Calvin; the greatest of missionaries and pioneers, and only incidentally a great theologian. The critical study of the New Testament has opened our eyes to see this and many other things. Much new light has also been ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... summer in the pulpit of John Wesley, in London—a pulpit where he stood one day and said: "I have been charged with all the crimes in the calendar except one—that of drunkenness," and his wife arose in the audience and said: "You know you were ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... titter, irreverent souls, to hear him so eager in his reading and so unconscious. It was not his eyesight that was at fault: to the end he could read the smallest hand without any glasses, like his great namesake, John Wesley, whom a German traveller noticed on the packet-boat between Flushing and London reading the fine print of the Elzevir Virgil, with his eyes unaided, though at an ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... before things had come to this pass, an English clergyman, named John Wesley, had been striving to awaken people to a more religious life; but he did not sufficiently heed the authority of the Church; and his followers, after his death, quite separated themselves from her, and became absolute schismatics, with meeting-houses ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... tender as a girl's, now ringing like a trumpet over roof and sea. There were old men there, old beyond the years of man, who said they had never seen nor heard the like: but it must be like what their fathers had told them of, when John Wesley, on the cliffs of St. Ives, out-thundered the thunder of the gale. To Grace he seemed one of the old Scotch Covenanters of whom she had read, risen from the dead to preach there from his rock beneath the great temple of God's air, a wider and a juster creed than theirs. Frank drew Thurnall's arm ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... years of Jonathan Edwards a wonderful array of thinkers along religious and philosophic lines, men who have molded the thought and lives of a multitude of persons. Among these intellectual giants born within fifteen years of Mr. Edwards were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Swedenborg, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... common-sense of the eighteenth century, sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of impulsive pots, pans, beds and chairs insisted on making themselves notorious. The Wesley case would never have been celebrated if the sons of Samuel Wesley had not become prominent. John Wesley and the Methodists revelled in such narratives, and so the catena of testimonies was lengthened till Mesmer came, and, with Mesmer, the hypothesis of a 'fluidic force' which in various shapes has endured, and is not, even now, wholly extinct. Finally Modern Spiritualism arrived, and was, for ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... John Wesley is a notable illustration of the influence of the personal touch. Peter Bohler of the Moravian Church, came into his life when he was in sore need of just such assistance as he seemed able to give. Dr W. H. Fitchett ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... and to fill his soul with the breath of life. It is only upon truth that the soul feeds, and by means of knowledge that the character grows. "It cannot be that people should grow in grace," writes John Wesley, "unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people." Reading makes one mighty in action when it gives one knowledge, since "knowledge is power," and since power has but one way of showing itself, and that is, in action. Knowledge ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... religious leaders who really cared for the condition of the people, have tried to create a genuine leadership for them along the same lines; Francis of Assisi gathered his "little brothers"; Peter Waldus his Bible teachers; Wycliffe his "poor preachers"; John Wesley his local preachers and itinerants; William Booth his ensigns and captains with the big bass drum; and the entire foreign mission propaganda calls for leaders who will go to the people and offers them nothing but enough to live in health. Today practically the entire ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Dr. John Wesley Edward Bowen was born in New Orleans. His father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington, D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly esteemed, was ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Pythagoras Zeno Buddha Isaiah Daniel Empedocles Socrates Plato Aristotle Porphyry John Wesley Franklin Goldsmith Ray Paley Isaac Newton Jean Paul Richter Schopenhauer Byron Gleizes Hartley Rousseau Iamblichus Hypatia Diogenes Quintus Sextus Ovid Plutarch Seneca Apollonius The Apostles Matthew James James the Less Peter The Christian Fathers Clement Tertullian Origen Chrysostom St. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... John Wesley was once travelling in a stage-coach with a young officer who was exceedingly profane, and who swore curses upon himself in almost every sentence. Mr. Wesley asked him if he had read the Common Prayer Book; for if he had, he might remember the collect beginning, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... spoke to John Nelson, making unfavourable comparison of John Wesley with a prominent religious teacher of the day; and Nelson replied, "He has not stayed in the upper room like John Wesley." We need our silent preparations for speech; to go forth, like Ezekiel, into the plain to find the glory of the Lord; or like Daniel to the river-side, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... secrete them? You haven't a small travelling case, Miss Houghton? Then I shall look as if I'd just been taking a journey. Which I have—to the Sun and back: and if that isn't far enough, even for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley, why, I'm sorry." ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... little cloud busted. Water riz in de second story of de wicked king's palace. He sont fer de northern lady. When she come a-shaking and a-twisting in de room de king fell back in his chair. He say dat he give her anything she want, all she got to do is ask fer it. She say to cut off John Wesley's head and bring it to her. De king had done got so suluctious dat he done it. Dat king and all of dem got drowned. Nora put a lot of things in de ark dat he could have left out, sech as snakes and other varments; but de ark floated ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Jesse James, and Billy the Kid reflect popular attitude toward the hard-riding outlaws. Sam Bass, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Joaquin Murrieta, John Wesley Hardin, Al Jennings, Belle Starr, and other "long riders" with their guns in their hands have had their biographies written over and over. They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... it to be the composition of the Rev. Charles Wesley, the younger brother of the celebrated John Wesley: he was born in 1708, and died in 1788. He was the author of many of the hymns in his brother's collection, which are distinguished for their elegance and simplicity. I am not able to find out, for certain, whether he had another name; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... so named from the Abbot's Orchard. John Wesley once lived here. In Old Pye Street a few squalid houses with low doorways remain to contrast with the immense flats known as Peabody's Buildings, which have sprung up recently. In 1862 George Peabody gave L150,000 for the erection of dwellings for the working ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... episcopacy west of the Atlantic was accompanied by the further separation of the Methodists as a distinct religious society. Although John Wesley regarded the notion of an apostolical succession as superstitious, he had made no attempt to separate his followers from the national church. He translated the titles of "bishop" and "priest" from Greek into Latin and English, calling them "superintendent" and "elder," but he did not deny ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Christianity has sprung up again through the false and superficial, the movement has been associated with somebody's rediscovery of Jesus Christ. Saint Francis of Assisi rediscovered him, and made a spot of spiritual beauty at the heart of the medieval age. John Wesley rediscovered him and his compassion for the outcast, and led the Church into a new day of evangelism and philanthropy. William Carey rediscovered him and his unbounded care for men, and blazed the trail for a new era of expansive Christianity. And if today ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... John Wesley—"the brand plucked out of the burning," as he termed himself—when a boy was remarkable for his piety. At eight his father admitted him to the Holy Communion. He had thus early learned the lesson of self-control; for his mother tells us that having ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... intrinsically, but one equal value. They vary but in power to apprehend, and this may be more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite knowledge. I shall even dare to quote of this Universal Truth, the words I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: 'I see now that if God's love reach up to every star and down to every poor soul on earth, it must be vastly simple; so simple that all dwellers on Earth may be assured of it—as all who have eyes may be assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... great book read for the first time not as a book, but as a revelation; it may be the first realization of the extent and moment of what physical science has to teach us; it may be, like Carlyle's "Everlasting Yea," an ethical illumination, or spiritual like Augustine's or John Wesley's. But whatever it is, it brings with it new eyes, new powers of comprehension, and seems to reveal a treasury of latent and unsuspected talents in the mind and heart. The history of mankind has its parallels to these moments of illumination in the life of the individual. There are times when the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself, and I no longer wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim "Wonderful!" when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old woman to the gallows in honour of the Witch of Endor. In the latter instance it might, I admit, have been an erroneous (though even at this ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with the English room of sculpture. There is a fine portrait statue of Flaxman, from the chisel of Franks; a very clever statue of John Wesley; but if I were to chronicle all the sculptures here, I may as well write a catalogue at once. But before I quit the subject of marble, let me just allude to the Italian gallery. There the specimens are indeed exquisite, and remind us that the genius of art yet loves to linger in the "land ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Johnson was never in a hurry, especially in the later days, when he had done his work and was enjoying his fame. Mrs. Thrale says that conversation was all he {47} required to make him happy. He hated people who broke it up to go to bed or to keep an appointment. Much as he delighted in John Wesley's company, he complained that he was never at leisure, which, said Johnson, "is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk as I do." The world has perhaps grown a more industrious ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the home of John Wesley's father, was haunted in 1716-17 by a persevering ghost called Old Jeffrey, whose exploits are recorded with a gravity and circumstantial exactitude that remind us of Defoe's narrative concerning the ghostly Mrs. Veal in her "scoured" ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... tint, the same light. There is the family character in all true Christians, with whatever diversities of idiosyncrasies, and national life or ecclesiastical distinctions. Whether it be Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, whether it be Thomas a Kempis or George Fox, the light is one that shines through these many-coloured panes of glass, and the living Church is the witness of a living Lord, not only before it, and behind it, and above it, but living in it. They are 'light' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... thought here than that of the contemporaneousness of the two processes, and that is, as it is written on John Wesley's monument in Westminster Abbey, 'God buries the workmen and carries on the work.' The great Vizier who seemed to be the only protection of Israel is lying in 'a coffin in Egypt.' And all these truculent brothers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... absurd as the opposite notion that Frederick was Antichrist and Torquemada and Ignatius Loyola men after the very heart of Jesus. Neither they nor their exploits had anything to do with him. It is probable that Archbishop Laud and John Wesley died equally persuaded that he in whose name they had made themselves famous on earth would receive them in Heaven with open arms. Poor Fox the Quaker would have had ten times their chance; and yet Fox made rather a miserable business ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... irrigation to the country, and I had been both amused and irritated by the attitude of Eastern men who obtained from Congress grants of National money to develop harbors and yet fought the use of the Nation's power to develop the irrigation work of the West. Major John Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Grand Canyon, and Director of the Geological Survey, was the first man who fought for irrigation, and he lived to see the Reclamation Act passed and construction actually begun. Mr. F. H. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... large, low rooms, its latticed windows and beautifully carved and polished oak panelings, was very dear to him. Every room was full of stories of Cavaliers and Puritans. The early followers of George Fox had there found secret shelter and hospitality. John Wesley had preached in its great dining-room, and Charles Wesley filled all its spaces and corridors with the lyrical cry of his wonderful hymns. There were harmless ghosts in its silent chambers, or walking in the pale moonlight up the stairs or about the flower garden. No one was ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr |
