One of my great unfinished reading projects is The Works of John Wesley. A long row of books from the series lines one of my shelves these days holding the collected works of the principal founder of Methodism including sermons, journal entries, and minutes of the first conferences.
This week I received Volume 32: Medical and Health Writings, edited by James G. Donat and Randy L. Maddox. I doubt I’ll get through all 788 pages (!) and, truth be told, although Mr. Wesley on grace is a thing to hold dear, Mr. Wesley on health can be a little scary. He was fascinated by the new science of electricity, for instance, and suggested its use to cure everything from leprosy to bruises!
But some of Wesley’s recommendations still ring true. On June 5, 1778 he wrote to a correspondent:
“I advise you:
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Never sit up later than ten.
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Never rise later than six.
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Walk at least an hour daily in the open air; if it rains all day, in the dining room.
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Choose such diet, both for quantity and quality, as you find sits light upon your stomach… [He preferred mutton and beef to veal and chicken.]
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Eat as much spinach, cress, and summer fruits as agrees best with your stomach.” [659]
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Bodily health, for Wesley was part of a more general dedication to spiritual holiness. And if he couldn’t get his hearers all the way to God, he could at least get them close. As when he advised one person interested in better health:
“[E]very fair day walk to, if not round, the churchyard. When you are a little hardened by this, you may venture at a convenient opportunity (suppose on a Sunday morning) to attend the public worship. Till you do I cannot say you are in God’s way, and therefore I am not sure you will find his blessing.” [668]
Sneaky, that Mr. Wesley. But on these latter points, absolutely right.
Heartlands 