A John Wesley Sermon in Manuscript
John Wesley.
[Sermon on Hebrews 4:9]. Manuscript on paper.
[Birr, Ireland], 15 June 1758.
This original manuscript from the hand of John Wesley preserves an otherwise unknown sermon on Hebrews 4:9. Discovered and published in 1940 by Albert F. Hall, a Methodist minister and collector of early documents in Oxfordshire, the ten-page sermon paraphrases Richard Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest, a book that Wesley long had recommended to his followers, and which he edited in 1751 and reprinted many times beginning in 1783. Wesley’s sermon was written on June 15, 1758, a rainy day that received no comment in his journal, but which delayed his travel from Birr (where he had preached the previous evening) to Limerick.