only
separated for about a year; but it may fairly be assumed that, had the
King lived twenty years, Wesley would not have returned to his wife
unless she had signified to him that she had renounced her pestilent
scepticism.

The same stern strength of resolve which Wesley, the father, showed in
this extraordinary course was shown by the son at many a grave public
crisis in his career. The birth of John Wesley was the result of the
reconciliation between the elder Wesley and his wife. There were other
children, elder and younger; one of whom, Charles, became in after-life
the faithful companion and colleague of his brother. John and Charles
Wesley were educated at Oxford, and were distinguished there by the
fervor of their religious zeal and the austerity of their lives. There
were other young men there at the time who grew into close affinity
with the Wesleys. There was George Whitefield, the son of a Gloucester
innkeeper, who at one time was employed as a drawer in his mother's
tap-room; and there was James Hervey, afterwards author of the flowery
and sentimental "Meditations," that became for a while so famous--a
book which Southey describes "as laudable in purpose and vicious in
style." These young men, with others, formed a sort of little
religious association or companionship of their own. They used to hold
meetings for their mutual instruction and improvement in religious
faith and life. They shunned all amusement and all ordinary social
intercourse. They were ridiculed {129} and laughed at, and various
nicknames were bestowed on them. One of these nicknames they accepted
and adopted; as the Flemish _Gueux_ had done, and many another
religious sect and political party as well. Those who chose to laugh
at them saw especial absurdity in their formal and methodical way of
managing their spiritual exercises and their daily lives. The jesters
dubbed them Methodists; Wesley and his friends welcomed the title; and
the fame of the Methodists now folds in the orb of the earth.

[Sidenote: 1738--Torpor of the English Church]

Wesley and his friends had in the beginning, and for long years after,
no idea whatever of leaving the fold of the English Church. They had
as little thought of that kind as in a later generation had the men who
made the Free Church of Scotland. Probably their ideas were very vague
in their earlier years. They were young men tremendously in earnest;
they were aflame in spirit and con