I found John Wesley’s “arrow through the air” metaphor in a letter he wrote to Anne Granville in 1730. After writing my first blog post on this, I decided I should see if anyone else had written about this. This resulted in numerous hits (including this blog!), but in reading a great many of them, I found they referred to a different passage in Wesley’s writing, to the Introduction to his printed sermons from about the year 1759. Here’s the passage.

“To candid reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God, just hovering over the great gulf; till a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came down from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God!”

So twenty-nine years later, Wesley is still using his metaphor, still seeing in his life a comparison to that rushing shaft on its way to a target, momentarily disturbing those invisible gases it encounters and leaving no mark during the passage. Only at the target does the arrow have impact. Wesley refined the metaphor over time. Here’s how he used it in his earlier writing:

“Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

First the metaphor was concerning personal improvement, looking ahead to a life that should be full of impact, and fearing that will not be achieved. Later he wrote of the temporary nature of human existence on earth. Different concerns; same metaphor. Wesley’s use of quotes around it leads one to believe this is not the first time that metaphor has been used in print. Perhaps he read it and appropriated it for a sort of life motto.

I’m not sure I’m quite ready to draw life-changing conclusions from all of this. I like the original use of the metaphor better than the latter. The latter, however, gets much more attention in the post-Wesley world, and who am I to dispute the scholars? In fact, ‘twould not surprise me to find this popping up several more times in the writing of this great man. “As an arrow through the air”; how apt a metaphor.