Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/13



armies of the Church Militant throughout the world were never commanded by a better general than John Wesley. The military instinct was strong in every fibre of his keen mind and wiry body, and his genius for organizing has probably had far more to do with keeping the hosts of Methodism in vigorous marching order for the last hundred and fifty years, than any of the tenets he inculcated. He had, moreover, the gift of an eloquence that was magnetic, that drew men after him as the multitudes followed Peter the Hermit, and that compelled self-surrender as did the teaching of Ignatius Loyola. He was a born leader of men, who went straight to his point, and carried it by force of personal superiority. He made a very effectual lieutenant of his brother Charles, who, had it not been for John, would probably have lived a peaceful, pious life, and been a diligently decorous parish priest 1