was John Wesley ushered, on the 17th of June, 1703. For all that made the comfort of that home, the joy of his childhood and the glory of his riper years, the great reformer was indebted to his mother; as who, that is ever great or good, is not? Never was child more fortunate in a maternal guide than young Wesley, and never could mother claim more exclusively the credit of her son's early training. At eleven years of age he left home for the Charterhouseschool, but up to that period he was educated by his mother. Literary composition, correspondence, and parochial and secular duties fully employed his father; but amid the domestic cares of fifteen living children, his pious and gifted mother found time to devote six hours daily to the education of her family. Passing from under the tutelage of his accomplished mother, young Wesley became at the Charterhouse a sedate, quiet, and industrious pupil. The regularity of system which characterized the man was even then visible in the boy, taking his methodical race round the garden thrice every morning. His excellent habits were rewarded by the esteem of his masters, and his election six years afterward to Christ's Church College, Oxford. At the University he maintained the reputation for scholarship acquired at school, and ere long was chosen a Fellow of Lincoln, and appointed Greek Lecturer and Moderator of the Classes to the University. And here properly begins the religious life of the young reformer. Prior to his ordination, which took place in 1725, he had devoted himself to such a course of reading as he considered most likely to conduce to his spiritual benefit, and qualify him for his sacred office. Upon the mind of one so religiously and orderly brought up, the Ascetic Treatises of Thomas à Kempis, and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, would naturally make a deep impression, the more as their earnest strain would contrast so favourably with the epicurean insouciance, or the stolid fatalism of his classic favourites. The highest effort of Pagan heroism and philosophy was to invite their dead to the feast and orgie, and mock at death by crowning him with flowers, while of all the sublimer objects of life they were as ignorant as to its more serious duties they were unequal. Surfeited with their dainties which he had relished as a child, when he became a man he put away childish things with the loathing of a matured and higher taste. Assistant to his father for two years in the adjacent living of Wroote, and engaged thus in the actualities of the ministry, his soul found more and more occasion for self-examination, selfrenunciation, and devotion to the solemn work of his calling. Impressions deepened upon his mind which could not fail to issue in great good to the Church of Christ, impressions made by his temper of body, early training, and the studies and duties of his vocation. His views were very imperfect of the doctrines of grace, but his heart was undergoing that process of preparation for their full disclosure and ready reception which might be resembled to turning up the fallow ground. He was not far from the kingdom of God. While the young clergyman was engaged in the searchings of heart attendant upon his early experience, and was prosecuting the labours of his country cure, God was maturing at Oxford a system of events which was to issue in the result he sought-light to the understanding, peace to the conscience, purity to the life, and an assured sense of the divine forgiveness. |