Biography
Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707, at Epworth, England, the eighteenth child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. His father was a rector with little money and a hard temper, and his mother was a woman of iron discipline who taught her children their letters and their prayers at her own table. Charles grew up in that crowded rectory and learned early that a home can be both godly and strained. He went to Westminster School in London and then to Christ Church, Oxford, where his mind was sharp and his faith was still mostly outward habit.
At Oxford he gathered a few friends who agreed to pray, read Scripture, take communion often and visit prisoners. Other students laughed at their method and called them the Holy Club and Methodists. His older brother John soon became the leader of the little band, but it was Charles who began it. Both brothers were sincere, and both were still strangers to the peace of God. In 1735 they sailed for the colony of Georgia. Charles went as secretary to General Oglethorpe and he lasted less than a year. He quarreled with colonists, was accused of troubling the peace, fell ill and sailed home in 1736 defeated and unsure of his own soul.
Back in England, a Moravian friend named Peter Böhler pressed him on whether he truly trusted Christ alone for salvation. Charles was slow to answer. In the spring of 1738 he lay sick in the home of a working man, John Bray, and read Luther's commentary on Galatians. On May 21, 1738, he found peace with God. He wrote in his journal that he began to hope he was a believer. Two days later he wrote the hymn "And Can It Be." Three days after that, John had his own experience in Aldersgate Street. The two brothers had been preaching a gospel they had not yet received, and God taught them both.
From that year Charles gave himself to the work of the revival. He rode the roads of England on horseback, preached in fields and in town squares, and met mobs who threw stones and shouted him down. He was nearly killed more than once. For about eighteen years he traveled widely, and then he settled mainly in Bristol and later in London, where he cared for the societies and kept the preachers in order. All through those years he kept writing hymns. Some were written on horseback and scribbled on whatever paper he had. He wrote around six thousand five hundred hymns in his life, among them "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." These hymns carried doctrine into the memory of ordinary people. The poor, who could not read well, learned of sin, atonement, holiness and the love of God by singing them.
In 1749 he married Sarah Gwynne, a young woman from Wales who was lively, patient and godly. They had eight children and only three of them lived to adulthood. Two of his sons, Samuel and Charles, became gifted musicians. His home was warm in many ways, though it knew the sorrow of burying little ones. His wife stood by him through years of poor health and long absences, and he honored her for it.
Charles was not an easy man in every season. He was quick to feel an offense and slow to let it go. He held the Church of England dear and feared that the Methodist societies would drift away from her. When John began ordaining men for the work in America and elsewhere, Charles was grieved and said so plainly. The two brothers loved each other and disagreed sharply, and neither fully gave way. Charles also opposed some of John's choices of leaders and sometimes spoke harshly of men he judged unsound. He could be stubborn, and he was not a man who sought out a crowd. He seemed to prefer the study, the pulpit and the hymn book.
He lived to be nearly eighty. On March 29, 1788, he died in London. Before the end, weak and unable to write, he called his wife to his bedside and dictated a last short verse to her, a plea of a sinner who knew he had nothing to bring to God. He was buried in the churchyard at Marylebone, and eight clergymen of the Church of England carried him to the grave. He had asked for that.
The church still sings what he wrote. Many believers have never heard his name and yet have lifted his words in worship all their lives. His life is a reminder that a hymn written in faith can outlast a hundred sermons, and that the God who forgives sinners also teaches them to sing.