Spiritual reading is different from every-day information gathering. Spiritual reading requires you to slow down and chew on the words, with attentiveness to the voice of the Spirit. John and Charles Wesley’s entry in the “Classics of Western Spirituality” series is a banquet of a spiritual meal.

John and Charles Wesley were spiritual leaders in eighteenth century England. Devoted Church of England people, the brothers ended up forming the movement known as Methodism. As the years passed, this stream of spirituality became the most significant source of pentecostalism, with overlap between the Wesley’s experience of sanctification and the pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism.

Frank Whaling’s edited volume of the Wesley’s works includes many of Charles’s hymns with excerpts from John’s sermons and other works. John and Charles are best read together. I used two bookmarks, beginning and ended my reading of John with Charles’ hymns, which are no less theologically rich than John’s prose.

This volume fittingly includes John’s A Short Account of Christian Perfection in its entirety. This is perhaps the Wesley’s most significant and controversial contribution to Christianity. Even if you disagree with the idea of Christian perfection, John’s love for God makes this doctrine at least an ideal to which every believer should aspire.

Q. What is Christian Perfection?
A. The loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. This implies that no wrong temper, none contrary to love, remains in the soul; and that all the thoughts, words, and actions are governed by pure love. (327)

John continually returns to love as the centre of the Christian life. I can’t think of a more desperately needed message for the world and the church today.

Whaling, Frank, ed. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Paulist Press, 1981. The Classics of Western Spirituality.