Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers — John Shaqi
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
Oglethorpe had with him several Indians that he had brought over from
America. They were proud, silent, and had the reserve of their kind.
Moreover, they were six feet high, and when presented at court wore no
clothes to speak of.
King George the Second, when these sons of the forest were presented
to him, appeared like a pigmy. Oglethorpe knew how to march his forces
on an angle. London society went mad trying to get a glimpse of his
savages. He declared that the North American Indians were the finest
specimens--intellectually, physically and morally--of any people the
world had ever seen. They needed but one thing to make them perfect--
Christianity.
The Wesleys, discouraged by the small impress they had made on Oxford,
listened to Oglethorpe's arguments and accepted his terms. Charles was
engaged as Secretary to the Governor, and John Wesley was to go as a
missionary.
And so they sailed away to America. On board ship they methodized the
day--had prayers, sang hymns and studied, read, exhorted and wrote as
if it were their last day on earth. This method excited the mirth of
several scions of nobility who were on board, and Oglethorpe opened
out on the scoffers thus: "Here, you damned pirates, you do not know
these people. They forget more in an hour than you ever knew. You take
them for tithe-pig parsons, when they are gentlemen of learning, and,
like myself, graduates of Oxford. I am one of them, I would have you
know. I am a religious man and a Methodist, too, and I'll knock hell
out of anybody who, after this, smiles at either my friends or my
religion!"
Long years after, Wesley told this story to illustrate the fact that a
man might give an intellectual assent to a religion and yet not have
much of it in his heart. Oglethorpe looked upon Methodism as a good
thing--cheaper than a police system--and sure to bring good results.
If John Wesley and George Whitefield could convert his colony and all
the Indians round about, his work of governing would be much reduced.
Oglethorpe was a very practical man.
* * * * *
John Wesley did not convert the Indians, because he could not find
them, they being away on wars with the other tribes. Besides that, he
could not speak their language and was wholly unused to their ways.
The Indian does not unbosom himself to those who do not know him, and
the few Indians Wesley saw were stubbornly set in the idea that they
had quite as good a religion as his. And Wesley was persuaded that
probably they had.
In the city of Savannah, there were just five hundred eighteen people
when John Wesley was there. About half of these were degenerate sons
of aristocrats, ex-convicts, soldiers of fortune, and religious
enthusiasts--the rest were plain, every-day folk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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