Aldersgate Memorial
The site of John Wesley's "heart strangely warmed" moment on May 24, 1738 in Aldersgate Street, London, has been lost to time. This monument commemorates the event, however, and sits outside the Museum of London.
The site of John Wesley's "heart strangely warmed" moment on May 24, 1738 in Aldersgate Street, London, has been lost to time. This monument commemorates the event, however, and sits outside the Museum of London.
John Wesley's tomb behind City Road Chapel, London. Note the very modern building surrounding it, which gave me the feeling that both old and new intersect with Wesley's life and ministry.
John Wesley had a small prayer room built in his City Road home adjacent to the Chapel. It is a small, simple space but I imagine the many hours he spent here in prayer.
John Wesley was truly a man of the Enlightenment. He wrote many pamphlets and books, some of which dealt with subjects other than religion. His book "A Primitive Physic" was full of home remedies to various diseases. The machine under glass in the corner of this room in his London home is an electrification machine, since Wesley saw electricity as being a cure for many of ills of the body.
A view from the pulpit in the New Room, Bristol, the first Methodist meeting house. The pulpit is on the level of the balcony, which meant that the speaker could be seen from above and below. There is no organ or piano as the early Methodists sang accapella with the hymns lined out by a leader.
What a thrill it was to stand in Wesley's pulpit in the New Room, the first Methodist meeting house in Bristol. The pulpit is a two-tiered design and towers above the floor. The railings around the pulpit itself support a staircase that can only be accessed from the balcony, which prevented people who may have been opposed to the Methodist movement from storming the pulpit!
The Methodist meeting house in London (it could not be called a "church" because the Church of England was the "official" ecclesiastical body. The Chapel has been more ornately decorated in the years after Wesley's death. He would have seen it as being too ostentatious in its current form!
The university church of Oxford. Wesley preached here several times and became well-known as a result.
Grave of John and Charles Wesley's mother Susanna in Bunhill Fields, London. Susanna and Samuel Wesley had 19 children, 9 of whom lived to adulthood. She was also the primary religious instructor of the children and led Bible studies in the Epworth parsonage. She was truly a woman ahead of her 18th century time!
This is me "preaching" at the Market Cross in Epworth, the Wesleys' hometown. Methodism was characterized by open air preaching to the poor, which was considered to be a "vile" form of religious expression to the Church of England establishment.
