might have preached another crusade. England was not a country for monks, or he would certainly have founded a new and rigorous order.

In 1732, the charter of the province of Georgia was granted by George II., and in 1735 Oglethorpe, the leader of the colony, returned to England for a reinforcement. The enterprise was everywhere regarded with favor, and the trustees sought for men to go out as ministers to the colonists and the Indians. They turned their eyes to the Wesleys. Who else had so much of the missionary spirit? After some hesitation the brothers concluded to accept the invitation. Two years before, a band of Moravians, amid hymns and prayers, had left the little community of Herrnhutt, and "floating down the Maine, and between the castles, crags, the vineyards and the white-walled towns that adorn the banks of the Rhine," had embarked at Rotterdam, and settled in freedom and hope near Savannah. On board the vessel in which the Wesleys embarked, they found a number of Moravians going to join their brethren. The whole company might honestly have adopted the seal of the corporation of the colony," a group of silk-worms at their toils," with the motto non sibi sed aliis, not for themselves but for others. The leaven of selfishness was not mingled with their motives. "Are you one of these knights-errant ?" said an unbeliever to Wesley. "You havea good provision for life, must you leave all to fight windmills?""Sir," replied the missionary, "if the Bible be not true, I am as very a fool and madman as you can conceive, but if it be of God, I am sober-minded; for he has declared, "There is no man who has left houses, or friends, or brethren, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in the present time, and in the world to come, everlasting life."

The conduct of the Moravians during the voyage, full of patience and forbearance under vexations, full of confidence in danger, exhibited to Wesley a new feature of the Christian life. A sudden storm came on as they were singing the psalm at the commencement of their worship. The sea broke over the ship and rushed down between the decks. A dreadful screaming was heard among the English: the Moravians calmly sang on. Wesley asked one of them if he was not afraid,-if the women and children were not afraid? "No," he replied, "thank God, no; our women and children are not afraid to die."

The labors of Wesley in Georgia were the least prosperous

and satisfactory labors of his life. John was stationed at Savannah and Charles acted as secretary of Oglethorpe at Frederica. Both were honest and faithful, both spent their time in works of charity and mercy,-both were unsuccessful. They were better fitted for stirring up the minds of various classes in the old country, than for ruling the rather independent spirit of the infant colony. The mind of Oglethorpe became prejudiced against Charles through the misrepresentations of his enemies, to such an extent, that the unfortunate secretary was left actually to suffer for want of the bare necessaries of life. He lay upon the ground in a corner of the hut, and could not obtain the luxury of a few boards for a bed, and at last fell into a fever. This alienation between himself and the governor was subsequently healed, and in a few months he was sent to England as bearer of despatches. John came near being married to a lady in the colony; but the negotiation was somewhat abruptly broken off. The attachment on neither side seems to have been very extravagant, since we find the lady shortly marrying another, and Wesley soon after excluding her from the communion table, according to certain rules of ecclesiastical discipline which had long lain dormant. He does not appear to have chosen the happiest moment for reviving them, nor to have done it with an excess of Christian courtesy. This ecclesiastical proceeding produced a difficulty which ended in his leaving America for England, after having spent in the new world a year and nine

months.

But though so little was effected for the colony, a great influence was exerted on Wesley. He began to perceive that there were most important religious feelings which he had never experienced. He began to conjecture that the path which he was painfully pursuing was delusive and vain. His intercourse. with the Moravians strengthened these convictions. They had a faith unfelt by him: he never had the serenity in trouble, the joy even in great perils, the lively hope " full of immortality," which they had. His voyage home afforded him time for a solemn review of his religious experience, which ended in the painful though salutary conviction that he had "no such faith in Christ as prevented his heart from being troubled." He had labored with some fidelity to convert others, but now he had to be converted himself. In London he met with Peter Bohler, a Moravian minister. The conversation turned on "saving faith." Wesley pressed his objections. "My brother," said Bohler to

him, "that philosophy of yours must be purged away." Another day brought another conversation, and fresh amazement to Wesley, as Bohler assured him of the "fruits of a living faith, the holiness and happiness which attend it." The next morning he began his Greek Testament anew, determined to abide by the law and the testimony, and confident that a humble and honest inquirer would not seek in vain. He listened with wonder to the testimony of living witnesses. He read Luther on the Galatians, and learned to his astonishment that the English church" was founded on this important article of justification by faith alone." The two years which followed his return from America were painful in their experience, but rich in their fruits. He had the sentence of death in his own soul, and struggled by a perfect obedience to reverse the terrible doom, till he found the law too high for him, and that by its deeds shall no man living be justified; till he found too another great doctrine which gradually revealed itself to his groping mind," Believe, and thou shalt be saved." The whole current of his thoughts was changed. "Now, sir," says he in a letter to his former friend and adviser, Mr. Law, "suffer me to ask, how you will answer it to our common Lord, that you never gave me this advice? Why did I scarcely ever hear you name the name of Christ; never so as to ground any thing upon faith in his blood? I beseech you, sir, by the mercies of God, to consider deeply and impartially whether the true reason of your not pressing this upon me was not this, that you had it not yourself?" He proceeds with a tone of equal vigor and more asperity, which would seem to indicate that he had some other spirit quite as active as the "catholic charity" which in after life he was inclined to. his mind had evidently been undergoing a deep change. He called it conversion. "Oh what a work," said he, " has God begun! such a one as shall never come to an end, till heaven and earth pass away!"

But

No one ever produced a great moral revolution whose heart was not the seat of painful struggles and a glorious victory : who did not feel in the profoundest depths of his soul, the lifegiving truths, which it were better to die than not to publish. Luther did not go forth on his mission, was not fitted for his mission, till he had suffered the agony of a soul, struggling in blindness and doubt onward to salvation: till he had prayed and wept over the WORD of GOD, and had rested his buffeted and weary spirit on that foundation rock of the Reformation, the SECOND SERIES, VOL. IX. NO. II.

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doctrine that man is justified by faith in Christ. After that, his whole duty was clear before him as noonday. He had but one thing to do, and that he must do,--to bear the flaming torch of truth through the world, to proclaim from every housetop everlasting liberty to those who are bound in the chains of the law. So it was with Wesley. He must preach the gospel: necessity was laid upon him; a bitter experience, a joyful hope had enlightened his way and made the rough places plain.

In the year 1722 a company of Moravians under the guidance of Christian David, had left the country of their fathers where nothing remained for them but persecution and distress, and sought the protection of Count Zinzendorf, in Lusatia, one of the Protestant provinces of Germany. The Count assigned them a spot on his estates for their settlement, to which they gave the name Herrnhut, the watch of the Lord,' a name which has become famous in the history of their community. They came poor indeed in the wealth of the world, since the little which they had in Bohemia they were for the most part obliged to abandon; but they were rich in the recollection of an ancestry, who through many dark centuries had cherished on their altars the flame of a pure religion, who had suffered all that men can suffer for the liberty of conscience, and were at last borne down by the brute force of their enemies. They remembered the spirit awakened among them by the writings of Wickliffe. They remembered how the gentle and heroic Huss had been treacherously betrayed, and made to lead the van of the "noble army of their martyrs:" how the intrepid Jerome had sung a hymn in the midst of the flames. They remembered the bloody wars which followed the Council of Constance, and the relentless persecutions which forced some to a denial of their faith, and more to meet in secret at midnight to encourage each other and receive the sacrament. Some of them had come out of Moravia singing the same hymn which their fathers had sung a hundred years before, on their exodus for the same reason, from the house of bondage. This little community, "persecuted, but not forsaken! cast down, but not destroyed!" chastened and humbled by their trials, lively in faith and peculiar in their manners and discipline, Wesley determined to visit, that he might learn something more of a people whose daily life illustrated the great doctrines which he had begun to feel.

The intercourse of Wesley with the Brethren (as they were called) was interesting, and to him very profitable. He ad

mired the simplicity of their character, their meekness and love, and charity and contentment. He gathered many hints from their policy which were of considerable use in the future organization of his own societies. But it is impossible not to suppose that the germ of that dissatisfaction was at this time implanted which led him at a future time to withdraw entirely from the Moravians. Count Zinzendorf was the patron of the community, and wished to receive Wesley as a pupil. The self-confidence and spirit of authority in the great Methodist were just shooting out into a vigorous maturity, and the Count was to him but a man, subject to the same rules of logic and argument with other men. Our sympathies are more subtle and swift than the deductions of the understanding, and probably the two great and good men found their enthusiastic admiration of each other somewhat tempered by the free intercourse of a month, though neither might be willing to acknowledge it. But nothing prevented Wesley from feeling that he would willingly "have spent his life in Herrnhut, if his Master did call him to labor in another part of the vineyard."

The work to which he was destined was indeed far greater than he or any one could anticipate. He returned to London to engage actively in preaching and other religious labors. He joined his brother Charles, who had visited the prisoners at Newgate and accompanied them to Tyburn. The effect of their efforts was decided, and the poor prisoners were brought to a state of penitence and faith. Their fame spread as holy men: the sick desired their prayers, and were healed by them. Frenzied lunatics became calm under the kind words which they spoke, and the impressive language of their petitions. Their meetings in Fetter-lane-the central point of their operations-became larger, and the scenes exhibited there tended to increase the enthusiasm of Wesley, to strengthen his confidence in his own resources, and render him skilful in controlling the increasing body of his followers. He gradually yielded to the conviction that he was selected under Providence for a great work, and though he may not have looked far into the future, still he was probably revolving those plans which fourscore years found him consummating. Here too began those singular physical results which have clung so tenaciously to Methodism, wherever preached, but which will be better noticed hereafter.

In the history of Methodism, Bristol deserves a prominent place, and will ever be remembered with interest. Whitefield