In this state he entered the university, where, for five years, while treating his religious duties with outward respect, he continued to sin against his convictions in spite of the castigations of iiis conscience. These were so severe at times as to induce transient fits of unfruit- ful repentance. His love of learning was too strong to suffer his pleasures to interfere with his studies; his poverty held him back from the costly vices which en- slaved many of his college companions, but did not pre- vent him from becoming a lively and witty, though not an immoral, sinner. When twenty -two years of age his thoughts were drawn to more serious views of life by his father's pressing letters, urging him to enter into holy orders, and by the light which broke upon his con- science while reading the Christian's Pattern, by Thom- as a Kempis. The conversation of a religious friend, and, after his removal to Lincoln College, the perusal of Law's Christian Perfection and Serious Call, deepened these convictions, and led him to devote himself, soul, body, and substance, to the service of God. The com- pleteness of this self-devotion, combined with his rare moral courage and superior strength of character, caused him to be recognised as the leader of a group of under- graduates which was nicknamed the " Holy Club" by the inigodly students and dons of the university, who also derided its members for their rigid adhesion to ritual- istic rules and charitable practices by calling them " Methodists."
From this unreserved dedication of himself to God Wesley never receded. Henceforth he sought to do the divine will with all the force of his energetic nat- ure. But, owing to his failure to comprehend the script- ural doctrine of salvation by faith only, he groped in the' dark through thirteen years of ascetic self-denial, ritu- alistic observances, imceasing prayer, and works of char- ity, before he gained an assurance that God, for Christ's sake, had pardoned his sins. No stronger proof of sin- cerity and earnestness can be found in human history than is contained in Wesley's absolute and complete de- votion to religion through those long, wearisome, com- fortless years of seeking God without finding him. Perhaps there is no fact more surprising in his marvel- lous career than that, with his singularly large per- ceptive powers and his familiarity with Scripture and with the writings of the English divines, he lived so long without gaining a right conception of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And when, on his voy- age to Savannah, he saw some pious Moravians rejoic- ing, while he was shaken with fears of death, amid the fury of a storm which apparently was driving them into the jaws of destruction, he did not suspect that his fear was the fruit of his erroneous views. Nevertheless, his attention was thereby directed to the unsatisfactory features of his experience. He talked much with some of the jNIoravian brethren after his arrival in Savannah ; but it was not until after his return to England, in 1738, that Peter Biihler, a IMoravian preacher in London, after much conversation, aided by the testimonies of several X.— jNI m m
living witnesses, convinced him that to gain peace of mind he must renounce that dependence upon his own works which had hitherto been the bane of his experi- ence, and replace it with a full reliance on the blood of Christ shed for him. To gain this faith he strove with all possible earnestness. And at a Moravian societv meeting in Aldersgate Street, while one was reading Luther's statement of the change which God works in the heart through faith, Wesley says, " I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation ; and an assurance was given me tliat he had taken away mij sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
Wesley was now the possessor of "constant peace;" but, his faith being yet weak, was subject to many Huc- tuations through manifold temptations. He therefore devoted all the forces of his mind to the culture of his faith. He sought association with the spiritually mind- ed Moravians ; journeyed to Germany ; visited count Zinzendorf; made himself familiar with tlie religious life of the Bloravians at Herrnhut; conversed freely with many of their most distinguished men ; and, in September, 1738, returned to London, strong in faith and prepared to enter with unbounded zeal upon the duty of calling men to repentance as Providence might give him opportunities. " I look," he said to a friend, shortly after his return to England, " upon all the world as my parish ; thus far, I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to de- clare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation."
IV. Beginning of his Evangelistic Work. — This con- viction, the offspring of his faith and love, was the ger- minal principle of organic Methodism, though Wesley did not then recognise it in that light. At this time he had not the feeblest conception that he was about to become the builder of a A-ast ecclesiastical structure. Never, perhaps, was a learned clergyman at thirty-five years of age so utterly without a plan of life as was John Wesley in 1738. He knew that his heart was ablaze with love for Christ and for human souls, and that he was possessed by a passionate desire to proclaim the doctrine of present salvation by faith alone, and that he was determined, cost what it might, to be guided by that desire. Beyond this his intentions did not reach. He was a stanch, even a High, Churchman, and very natu- rally supposed that the fruit of his labors would con- tribute to the spirituality of the Established Church. Hence Methodism must be regarded as an accident rather than the result of a purpose deliberately formed in the mind of its great founder. It was the outgrowth of a sublime principle wrought into organic form by cir- cumstances which could not be controlled, except by the surrender of the principle itself. The facts in Wes- ley's career subsequent to 1738 scarcely admit of any other satisfactory interpretation. Let us briefly review them.