Gary Best, former warden of the New Room in Bristol and currently its historical consultant, has produced this account of early Methodism in a format that includes 500 readings embedded in the text from the Wesleys and 120 of their contemporaries. Most of the chapters are chronological, but three chapters focus on specific themes: the content of early Methodist preaching, social justice issues, and the role of lay preachers. The final chapter is a compendium of eighteenth-century prayers ordered thematically.
The book, being aimed at the general reader, is copiously illustrated and while some of the illustrations will be very familiar to Methodist readers—Henry Perlee Parker's A Brand Plucked from the Burning (10), for example—others, such as the interior of the Fetter Lane chapel (98), will be less so. A mix of the familiar and unfamiliar is similarly employed with the selection of quotes, especially those featuring in the parts...
