By John Pollock
Kingsway. 270 pages.
ISBN 0 85476 857 2
If you are looking for some inspiration for your walk with God during the summer break, why not read this biography of John Wesley? It is a reissue of a volume originally published by Lion back in 1989, but has lost none of its fire.
Pollock is an eloquent writer, and paints the scenes and dramas of 18th-century Britain well. We are taken from Wesley as a small boy rescued from a fire in his father's parsonage (a brand plucked from the burning), through the beginnings of the Holy Club at Oxford with his brother Charles, into the full glow of the great revival led by himself and Whitefield, and the struggles for unity in the Methodist movement of his more mature years.
Pollock litters the tale of Wesley's perpetual endeavours with fascinating incidents. We see Wesley facing hostile mobs in Cornwall and the Midlands. Then there is the equally intriguing confrontation between Wesley and the Regency dandy, Beau Nash, at Bath. We see him at the end of his life getting involved in the beginnings of the fight against slavery. At the same time, Wesley's weaknesses are not skated over. Great spiritual leader that he was, his ineptitude, for example, in the few romances in which he was involved, is astonishing.
'Too hard an act to follow'? No doubt that is how some people lethargically react to Christian biography these days. But it need no be like that. Instead, something of the fire can rub off on us. The companion biography of George Whitefield has also been republished recently.
