earnestly that her children should grow up God-fearing men and women, well instructed in the Scriptures. She spent an hour or two every week in private conversation with each of them, that she might understand them the better and cause them to be the freer and more open with her. In after years her son John remembered these little fellowship-meetings with deep gratitude. Solicitous for the spiritual welfare of all her children, Mrs. Wesley paid special attention to John, not from partiality, but because a remarkable deliverance when the parsonage-house was burned to the ground impressed her with the conviction that she ought to be more particularly careful of the soul of a child whom God had so mercifully preserved. John Wesley, too, regarded this escape as a Divine call to unusual devotedness; he considered himself a brand plucked from the burning.'

At the age of eleven years John Wesley went to the Charterhouse School in London, and in 1720 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. At the University he studied diligently and successfully, obtaining considerable distinction by his scholarship. He had resolved to enter the ministry of the English Church, and was ordained deacon in 1725, priest in 1728. Throughout his academical career we mark a continually increasing seriousness, a sterner and yet more stern resolve to work out his own salvation by the use of every conceivable means of grace and channel of religious activity, and a curious combination of mysticism and asceticism in his opinions and practices. But most of all the observer is struck with the intensely earnest force of the man ; whatever he does must be done thoroughly, no difficulties can daunt or turn him, and his companions instinctively regard him as their chief. The name 'Methodist,' now borne by one of the largest Christian Churches in the world, was originally a nickname applied to a religious company of which John Wesley was the principal member.

Eagerness for arduous service induced the young Clergyman to set sail for the infant colony of Georgia, hoping to become a missionary to the Indians. He embarked October 14th, 1735; he landed again in England, February 17th, 1738. He had failed in the object he proposed to himself, and he had incurred

the ill-will of the settlement. But the voyage was far from fruitless. Wesley had been brought into contact with the Moravians. Their calmness in a terrible storm at sea and subsequent intercourse with them had convinced him that they knew more of true religion than he did. 'In the ends of the earth' he had learned that I, who went to America to convert others, was myself never converted to God.' Shortly after his return to his native country John Wesley met Peter Böhler, a Moravian Minister. Through his instrumentality the sincere goer about to establish his own righteousness was 'clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved.' For this faith be sought till Wednesday, May 24th. On that day his private reading of the Scriptures and the anthem he heard at St. Paul's seemed to point to his deliverance from his bondage. 'In the evening,' to use his own words, 'I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.'

John Wesley has 'that faith whereby alone we can be saved’; what will he do with it? First of all, he will satisfy himself that such faith as his wears well; he will observe its workings in those who possess it. For this purpose he visited the Moravians in Germany, and was thereby fully assured of the excellent effects and abiding permanence of the faith that worketh by love. Immediately on his return to England he preached confidently the doctrine of justification by faith. That doctrine, as he held it, was equally removed from Legalism and Antinomianism. At the commencement of his evangelical ministry he spoke in the Moravian and other similar societies, and in such churches as were open to him. Gradually, as his views became known, the clergy closed their pulpits against him, and the societies afforded scant scope for his energies, even had he not felt bound to separate himself from them for theological reasons.

While Wesley was in London, George Whitefield had been preaching with remarkable success in the open air to the Kingswood colliers. He summoned Wesley to his aid. With many misgivings did the propriety-loving Clergyman follow the example of his more impulsive friend and begin field-preaching. But necessity was laid upon him, and on April 2nd, 1739, he declared the Gospel to some three thousand souls, 'speaking from a little eminence in the ground adjoining the city' of Bristol. That visit to Bristol may not unfairly be considered as the origin of the Methodist Churches; for then, not only did their founder commence to proclaim 'the grace of God that bringeth salvation,' regardless of early prejudices and the commandments and traditions of men, but there the united societies took their rise, and the first Methodist chapel was built.

It is impossible within the limits of this sketch to give any adequate conception of the gigantic and heroic labours thus begun. They extended over more than half a century. Ceaseless evangelistic journeys throughout the United Kingdom would have so occupied most men as to effectually prevent the accomplishment or even the inception of any other work. But Wesley, while he travelled more than a quarter of a million miles, and preached more than forty thousand sermons, found time to be the organiser and chief administrator of a growing Church, a voluminous author, an extensive reader, and a busy editor. In him single-eyed devotion to the glory of God were conjoined with boundless energy, indefatigable industry, and vigorous bodily health.

The spiritual destitution of the people and the apathy of their pastors summoned Wesley to preach the Gospel as freely, frequently, and publicly as possible. He had no intention of founding a denomination or making a name for himself. But he could not leave his converts unsheltered and unshepherded; hence the establishment of the Class-meeting and the employment of lay assistants. He did not intend that these assistants should preach, and when Thomas Maxfield, in his absence from London, began to preach, he was not merely surprised but seriously alarmed. He yielded, however, to the sincere conviction that this lay agency