"TODAY I entered on my eighty-second year and found myself just as strong to labor and as fit for any exercise of body or mind as I was forty years ago. ... I am as strong at eighty-one as I was at twenty-one; but abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the head ache, toothache, and other bodily dis orders which attended me in my youth." 1
The writer was a man who knew how to live—John Wesley. His was no idle boast, and of all the dedicated evangelists of the past few hundred years, Wesley has few peers.
It was no mystery to the dedicated Wesley as to why he had such good health. His secret was his methodical manner of living—each activity had a definite purpose, and all contributed to his service for his Saviour.
In his own words: "I do not impute this (his healthy vigor I to second causes, but to the Sovereign Lord of all. It is He who bids the sun of life stand still, so long as it pleaseth Him. . . . We can only say, The Lord reigneth!' While we live let us live to Him." 2
Wesley is also known for his views of temperance and treatments for various illnesses. He said that if it were in his power he would banish alcoholic beverages out of the world. He referred to such beverages as a "certain, though slow, poison."
Cures he had aplenty, and many of them are helpful, such as this for the extremely fat person: "Use a total vegetable diet." Some will raise eyebrows or amuse, like his cure for a cold in the head: "Pare very thin the yellow rind of an orange, roll it up inside out, and thrust a roll into each nostril." For the person who has drowned: "Rub the trunk of the body all over with salt. It frequently recovers them that seem dead." (It might also have a tendency to pickle the body if the person didn't re cover.)
Wesley really comes into his own in stressing the importance of exercise. Even today we would have difficulty improving on his suggestions:
"A due degree of exercise is indispensably necessary to health and long life.
"Walking is the best exercise for those who are able to bear it; riding for those who are not. The open air, when the weather is fair, contributes much to the benefit of exercise.
"We may strengthen any weak part of the body by constant exercise. Thus the lungs may be strengthened by loud speaking, or walking up an easy ascent; the digestion and the nerves, by riding; the arms and the hands, by strongly rubbing them daily.
"The studious ought to have stated times for exercise, at least two or three hours a day: the one half of this before dinner [his midday meal], the other be fore going to bed.
"Exercise, first, should be always on an empty stomach; secondly, should never be continued to weariness; thirdly, after it, we should take care to cool by degrees; otherwise we shall catch cold." 3
Wesley not only laid down rules for living the abundant life that hold good today but set the example. In his youth both John and his brother Charles walked miles daily, reading all the while! When the times in which he lived are considered—an age of immoderate eating and drinking, stuffy houses, garbage-strewn streets, and a lack of personal cleanliness—his campaign be comes all the more remarkable!
"Exercise! And more exercise!" was Wesley's frequent exhortation. To ac company this physical activity he also advised: "Use a plain diet, easy of digestion, and this as sparingly as you can. For studious persons [like the minister and office worker of today] about eight ounces of animal food and twelve of vegetable in twenty-four hours is sufficient, water is the wholesomest of all drinks; quickens the appetite, and strengthens the digestion most." 2
Wesley noted that his fellow Methodist ministers were not getting enough exercise and that their midriffs were testifying to their over-involvement at the dining table. "Every day use as much exercise as you can bear; or [else you] murder yourself by inches." He warned that sitting at a desk is not consistent with good health. Also interfering with their sacred responsibilities was the excess of food they were consuming— "more than nature required"—particularly in the evening. "Eat a very light, if any, supper," he told them.
Often acclaimed to be the greatest health educator of the eighteenth century in England, he probably originated the saying "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," since it has not been traced beyond one of his sermons.
Wesley's life spanned almost nine decades—testimony enough to the active yet well-ordered and temperate life he led. Today—almost two hundred years since his death—his words are sound advice. Give them a try . . . and live.
1 John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, edited by Percy Livingstone Parker (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), p. 391.
2 Ibid.
3 John Wesley, Primitive Physic (London: The Epworth Press, 1960; first published in 1747), 127 pp.
