Singing Through the Storm

In January 1736, the ship Simmonds pitched violently in the North Atlantic as a winter gale tore its mainsail to shreds. Seawater poured across the deck and flooded below. The young Anglican minister John Wesley, bound for Georgia, gripped whatever he could hold and felt certain he was about to die. He later confessed in his journal that he was utterly unwilling to face death — his faith, for all its discipline, had not conquered his terror.…