This year is the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley, priest, poet, and teacher of the faith. He is known primarily for the extraordinary hymn texts, which he wrote throughout his life.

Charles was born December 18, 1707, the 18th of the 19 children of the Rev. Samuel Wesley and Susanna Annesley Wesley, both devoted Anglicans. John Wesley was his older brother.

In the spring of 1729, Charles and two others studying at Christ Church, Oxford, formed a study club, which began to also read helpful books and to receive frequent communion. They visited the sick and imprisoned, and fasted. They became known as the “Holy Club,” and later were nicknamed “Methodists.”

He was ordained priest in September 1735, and immediately joined a mission to Georgia for six months. After his return to England, on Pentecost in 1736, he was “evangelically converted,” and hymns poured forth for the remainder of his life.

At his death in 1788, he had written 9,000 hymns and poems in 100 different meters. They allude to scripture, church history, the liturgy, mysticism and religious poetry. They combine church dogma, personal religious experience, and the anticipated coming of Christ. Ernest Rattenbury has said that “a skillful man, if the Bible were lost, might extract much of it from Wesley’s hymns. They contain the Bible in solution.”