s Wesley put into his
hands, he ascribed his first conviction of that doctrine of free
salvation which he afterward made it the great object of his life to
teach.

With the exception of a short period in which he was assisting his
father at Epworth, John Wesley continued at Oxford till the death of his
father, in 1735, when the society was dispersed, and the two Wesleys
soon after accepted the invitation of General Oglethorpe to accompany
him to the new colony of Georgia. It was on his voyage to that colony
that the founder of Methodism first came in contact with the Moravians,
who so deeply influenced his future life. He was surprised and somewhat
humiliated at finding that they treated him as a mere novice in
religion; their perfect composure during a dangerous storm made a
profound impression on his mind, and he employed himself while on board
ship in learning German, in order that he might converse with them. On
his arrival in the colony he abandoned, after a very slight attempt, his
first project of converting the Indians, and devoted himself wholly to
the colonists at Savannah. They were of many different nationalities,
and it is a remarkable proof of the energy and accomplishments of Wesley
that, in addition to his English services, he officiated regularly in
German, French, and Italian, and was at the same time engaged in
learning Spanish, in order to converse with some Jewish parishioners.

His character and opinions at this time may be briefly described. He was
a man who had made religion the single aim and object of his life, who
was prepared to encounter for it every form of danger, discomfort, and
obloquy; who devoted exclusively to it an energy of will and power of
intellect that in worldly professions might have raised him to the
highest positions of honor and wealth. Of his sincerity, of his
self-renunciation, of his deep and fervent piety, of his almost
boundless activity, there can be no question. Yet with all these
qualities he was not an amiable man. He was hard, punctilious,
domineering, and in a certain sense even selfish. A short time before
he left England, his father, who was then an old and dying man, and who
dreaded above all things that the religious fervor which he had spent
the greater part of his life in kindling in his parish should dwindle
after his death, entreated his son in the most pathetic terms to remove
to Epworth, in which case he would probably succeed to the living, and
be ab