The other Wesley -- Charles, part 2

Window in Wesley's Chapel,
London.
Top portion shows Charles on left
in red and John on right in black,
bottom portion shows
Charles writing.
(13 October 2012)

Charles used healing imagery multiple times in his more than 9000 poems, lyrics and hymns (Webster, 231).  This was not just a concept with him, but a deep belief.  He suffered from pleurisy, neuralgia, lumbago, dysentery, piles, rheumatism, gout and scurvy* (Webster, 232).  His wife was scarred from smallpox and his infant son died of it.  Out of his 8 children, only three lived to adulthood (Webster, 240).
Charles' own physical illness caused depression and emotional turmoil.  He believed healing was both physical and spiritual (Webster, 235), as he wrote,
"Health in Thine only name we find/
Thy name doth in the medicine heal." The title of that hymn was "For One That is Sick, Before Using the Means of Recovery:"(Webster, 237.)

He especially depended on Holy Communion as a method of comfort, describing the wine as "liquid life":

"Soon as I taste the liquid life,
Sorrow expires, and pain, and strife
And suffering is no more;
My inmost soul refreshed I feel,
And filled with joy unspeakable
The bleeding Lamb [Jesus] adore." (Webster, 240.)

In a hymn based on Isaiah 40:31, which is "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength," he proclaimed,
"The spirit of an [sic] healthful mind:
For this I wait in pain,
This precious pearl I long to find,
And to be born again.
Spare me till I my strength of soul,
Till I Thy love, retrieve
Till faith shall make my spirit whole,
And perfect soundness give." (Webster, 235.)

Raspberry, used to treat pleurisy
Physic Garden, Epworth, UK
9 October 2012

He referred to healing herbs 549 times in his hymns (Webster, 231), certainly dovetailing with John's passion for health promotion through Primitive Physic.

Hymn singing became a mark of the Methodists, and in 1787 anthems by choirs were banned because all worshippers were supposed to sing to express their beliefs in, and emotions about, God (Brewer, John.  The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997) 55).  Rev. Leslie Griffiths tells the story that when Wesley's Chapel in London was rededicated after a 1978 renovation, the Queen and Prince Philip attended.  She was heard to comment, "Don't these Methodists sing loudly?" (Griffiths, Leslie.  "Wesley's Chapel" address, Wesley Pilgrimage.  London, 13 October 2012.)  This is due to Charles.  Wesley, not Prince.

*Pleurisy = "an inflammation of [the] pleura [the membrane around each lung], remedied by evacuation, suppuration, or expectoration, or all together." (Johnson.)
Neuralgia = pain in the nerves.
Lumbago = "Lumbagos are pains very troublesome about the loins and small of the back."
Piles = "the haemorrhoids." (Johnson.)
Scurvy = weakness and excessive bleeding of gums and under skin, caused by Vitamin C deficiency.