John Wesley

250,000 miles on horseback. 40,000 sermons. 52 years. Methodism is what's left.

May 24, 1738, Aldersgate Street: Wesley's heart is "strangely warmed" at a small religious meeting. He is 35. The next year — 1739 — he reluctantly joins George Whitefield in field preaching outside Bristol, addressing miners the established Church wouldn't touch. From that day until his death in 1791, he does not stop. 52 years of itinerant preaching. An estimated 250,000 miles on horseback and in carriage — the equivalent of ten times around the equator on roads that were mostly mud. 40,000+ sermons. He builds the Methodist class meeting — a small accountability group of 12 people meeting weekly to confess and support — and the circuit rider system that propagates it. In 1784, at age 81, he ordains Coke and Asbury for America, founding the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 19th-century historian Élie Halévy argued that Methodism is what kept Britain from a French-Revolution-style rupture — the social pressure was absorbed by the chapels. Wesley wasn't a charismatic moment-leader. He was a man who got on a horse every day for 50 years. That was the alchemy.