Oxford, with an annual allowance of £40 as a Charterhouse scholar. His health was poor and he found it hard to keep
out of debt, but he made good use of his opportunities.
A scheme of study which he drew up for 1722 with a time-table
for each day of the week is still to be seen in his earliest diary,
which became the property of Mr George Stampe of Great
Grimsby. The diary runs from April 5, 1725, to February 19,
1727. A friend describes Wesley at this time as "a young
fellow of the finest classical taste, and the most liberal and manly
sentiments."
He was "gay and sprightly, with a turn for wit
and humour."
The standard edition of Wesley's Journal (1909) has furnished much new material for this period of Wesley's life, the Rev. N. Cumock having unravelled the difficult cipher and shorthand in which Wesley's early diaries were kept. He reached the conclusion that the religious friend who directed Wesley's attention to the writings of Thomas a Kempis and Jeremy Taylor, in 1725, was Miss Betty Kirkham, whose father was rector of Stanton in Gloucestershire. Up to this time Wesley says he had no notion of inward holiness, but went on " habitually and for the most part very contentedly in some or other known sin, indeed with some intermission and short struggles especially before and after Holy Communion, " which he was obliged to attend three times a year. On the 25th of September 1725 he was ordained deacon, and on the 17th of March 1726 was elected fellow of Lincoln. His private diaries, seven of which are in the hands of Mr Russell J. Colman of Norwich, contain monthly reviews of Wesley's reading. It covered a wide range, and he made careful notes and abstracts of it. He generally took breakfast or tea with some congenial friend and delighted to discuss the deepest subjects. At the coffee house he saw the Spectator and other periodicals. He loved riding and walking, was an expert swimmer and enjoyed a game at tennis.
He preached frequently in the churches near Oxford in the months succeeding his ordination, and in April 1726 he obtained leave from his college to act as^his father's curate. The new material in the Journal describes the simple matter of his life. He read plays, attended the village fairs, shot plovers in the fenland, and enjoyed a dance with his sisters. In October he returned to Oxford, where he was appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes. He gained considerable reputation in the disputation for his master's degree in February 1727. He was now free to follow his own course of studies and began to lose his love for company, unless it were with those who were drawn like himself to religion. In August he returned to Lincolnshire, where he assisted his father till November 1729. During those two years he paid three visits to the university. In the summer of 1729 he was up for two months. Almost every evening found him with the little society which had gathered round Charles.
When he came into residence in November he was recognized as the father of the Holy Club. It met at first on Sunday evenings, then every evening was passed in Wesley's room or that of some other member. They read the Greek Testament and the classics; fasted on Wednesday and Friday; received the Lord's Supper every week; and brought all their life under review. In 1730 William Morgan, an Irish student, visited the gaol and reported that there was a great opening for work among the prisoners. The friends agreed to visit the Castle twice a week and to look after the sick in any parish where the clergyman was willing to accept their help. Wesley s spirit at this time is seen from his sermon on " The Circumcision of the Heart, " preached before the university on the 1st of January 1733. In 1765 he said it " contains all that I now teach concerning salvation from all sin, and loving God with an undivided heart." Wesley rose at four, lived on £28 a year and gave away the remainder of his income. He already displayed those gifts for leadership which were to find so conspicuous a field in the evangelical revival. John Gambold, a member of the Holy Club, who afterwards became a Moravian bishop, says " he was blest with such activity as to be always gaining ground, and such steadiness that he lost none. What proposals he made to any were sure to charm them, because they saw him always the same." He wore an air of authority yet never lacked address, or " assumed anything to himself above his contemporaries."
William Law's books produced a great impression on Wesley, and on his advice the young tutor began to read mystic authors, but he saw that their tendency was to make good works appear mean and insipid, and he soon laid them aside. Wesley had not yet found the key to the heart and conscience of his hearers. He says, "From the year 1725 to 1729, I preached much, but saw no fruit to my labour. Indeed it could not be that I should; for 1 neither laid the foundation of repentance nor of preaching the Gospel, taking it for granted that all to whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no repentance. From the year 1729 to 1734, laying a deeper foundation of repentance, I saw a little fruit. I3ut it was only a little; and no wonder: for I did not preach faith in the blood of the covenant. From 1734 to 1738, speaking more of faith in Christ, I saw more fruit of my preaching." Looking back on these days in 1777, Wesley felt " the Methodists at Oxford were all one body, and, as it were, one soul; zealous for the religion of the Bible, of the Primitive Church, and, in consequence, of the Church of England; as they believed it to come nearer the scriptural and primitive plan than any other national church upon earth." The number of Oxford Methodists was small and probably never exceeding twenty-five. John Clayton, afterwards chaplain of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, who remained a strong High Churchman; James Hervey, author of Meditations among the Tombs, SinA Thcron and Aspasio; Benjamin Ingham, who became the Yorkshire evangelist; and Thomas Broughton, afterwards secretary of the S.P .C .K ., were members of the Holy Club, and George Whitefield joined it on the eve of the Wesleys departure for Georgia.
Wesley's father died on April 25, 1735, and in the following October John and Charles took ship for Georgia, with Benjamin Ingham and Charles Delamotte. John was sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and hoped to labour as a missionary among the Indians, but though he had many interesting conversations with them the mission was found to be impracticable. The cabin of the " Simmonds " became a study for the four Methodists. The calm confidence of their Moravian fellow-passengers amid the Atlantic storms convinced Wesley that he did not possess the faith which casts out fear. Closer acquaintance with these German friends in . Savannah deepened the impression. Wesley needed help, for he was beset by difficulties. Mrs Hawkins and Mrs Welch poisoned the mind of Colonel Oglethorpe against the brothers for a time. Wesley's attachment to Miss Hopkey also led to ihuch pain and disappointment. All this is now seen more clearly in the standard edition of the Journal. Wesley was a stiff High Churchman, who scrupulously followed every detail of the rubrics. He insisted on baptizing children by trine immersion, and refused the Communion to a pious German because he had not been baptized by a minister who had been episcopally ordained. At the same time he was accused of "introducing into the church and service at the altar compositions of psalms and hymns not inspected or authorized by any proper judicature." The list of grievances presented by Wesley's enemies to the Grand Jur>' at Savannah gives abundant evidence of his unwearying labours for his flock. The foundation of his future work as the father of Methodist hymnody was laid in Georgia. His first Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737) contains five of his incomparable translations from the German, and on his return to England he published another Collection in 1738, with five more translations from the German and one from the Spanish. In April 1736 Wesley formed a little society of thirty or forty of the -serious members of his congregation. He calls this the second rise of Methodism, the first being at Oxford in November 1729. The company in Savannah met every Wednesday evening " in order to a free conversation, begun and ended with singing and prayer." A select company of these met at the parsonage on Sunday afternoons. In 1781 he writes, " I cannot but observe that these were the first rudiments of the Methodist societies."
In the presence of such facts we can understand the significance of the mission to Georgia. Wesley put down many severe things against himself on the return voyage, and he saw afterwards that even then he had the faith of a servant though not that of a son. In London he met Peter Bohler who had been ordained by Zinzendorf for work in Carolina. By Bohler Wesley was convinced that he lacked " that faith whereby alone we are saved." On Wednesday, May 24, 1738, he went to a society meeting in Aldcrsgate Street where Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans was being read. "About a quarter
