Charles was the younger brother of John Wesley, the eighteenth child and youngest boy of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. He was educated at the Westminster School, London, and was the founder of the Holy Club at Oxford, though John took the leadership. He joined John on the unfruitful missionary journey to Georgia and was also deeply impressed by the spiritual qualities of the Moravian believers. In 1738, three days before his brother John’s conversion, he was lying ill in the house of a friend on Little Britain, London, and was reading Luther’s commentary on Galatians. In his words, ‘I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ’.
Charles quickly threw himself into evangelistic endeavours, preaching in houses, prisons, churches until the doors were closed to him, and eventually in the open air. His impact was hardly less powerful than John’s, but he did not engage in extensive travel. He married and made his home in Bristol near the New Room (as the Methodist Chapel was called) until 1771, when he moved to London. He died in 1788, and is buried in the old graveyard of St Marylebone Church, where his monument may be seen today. The fame of Charles Wesley, however, rests not so much on his preaching as upon his hymns. Altogether, he wrote some 7,270 such compositions, making him the most prolific by far of all English hymnwriters.
A significant number are widely known and sung today, including:
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing 0, For a Thousand Tongues Christ the Lord Is Risen Today Jesu Lover of My Soul And Can It Be Love Divine, All Loves Excelling Soldiers of Christ Arise