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HOW TO GET STRONG
his burdens and infirmities he would not slacken his labors till the approach of death benumbed his powers. Eight days before his death he preached his last sermon at Leatherhead, near London, and died at eighty-eight."—People's Cyclopaedia.
"For more than half a century Wesley led the field of preaching in his country. His life was passed on horseback or on foot; travelling over England, Ireland, Scotland, founding societies and planting the seeds of reform. His ceaseless labors were maintained by temperance, abstinence, self-restraint. He always believed that his regular health was due to a spare diet and constant toil; nor of the latter did he ever grow weary. He was up at four o'clock; he divided his day into various hours of duty. He travelled and preached incessantly, yet his writings, his poems, sermons, letters, exhortations, filled endless volumes, and were enough to have occupied a common life; nor, in the midst of his endless toil was he ever too busy to fly to the bedside of the sick and dying; to feed the poor, to soothe the penitent, or console the sad. Fifty years of ceaseless labor passed over the active brain of John Wesley, yet he asserts that he never knew any lowness of spirit nor ever lost his peaceful sleep. He grew old by slow decay; and abstinence preserved him from the pains of a sinking frame. Almost inaccessible to weariness or physical pain, he made his way over hill, moor, and arid mountain, often frozen by the chill blasts and thickening snows of the upland or shivering amidst the Scottish mists; yet storms and frost never checked his ardor; never would he forget or pass over his appointment to preach. He pressed on with the resolution of a Cæsar, over dangerous loads through inclement weather; and often rose, hoarse with cold and worn with travel, to speak to the anxious throngs who awaited his coming; yet he relates that as he spoke his physical pains would disappear, his vigor return, and a genial ardor restore his feeble frame to unprecedented strength."—Eugene Lawrence.
Of his personal appearance Dr. Kennicott says: "At forty-one Wesley was neither tall nor fat." Tyerman says: "In person Wesley was rather below the middle size, but beautifully proportioned, without an atom of superfluous flesh, yet muscular and strong, a bright, penetrating eye and a lovely face, which retained the freshness of his complexion to the latest period of his life. As a preacher
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