Author Bio: Charles Wesley was a prolific Methodist poet and hymnist writing during the eighteenth-century Christian revival. While Wesley is rarely mentioned in standard histories of the period, his immense body of work—including poems, hymns, and a fascinating journal documenting his time in America—interests scholars both for its religiosity and its first-hand account of a tumultuous period. Yet the immense quantity of his poetry and its uneven quality, along with its doctrinaire conviction and evangelical purpose, have generally compounded the difficulty of editing, evaluating, and interpreting Wesley’s work. Wesley’s poetry nevertheless provides invaluable insight into the important international phenomenon of the Christian revival, its theology, psychology, and understanding of the efficacy of useful verse.