Wesley went one day to hold evening prayers at a village church near Oxford. His fame had preceded him: the worthy warden securely locked the doors and deposited the key in the capacious depths of his breeches-pocket and went a-fishing. Several old women were waiting to attend the service, and rather than send them away, Wesley, standing on the church-steps, read prayers and spoke. It was rather an unusual scene, and the unusual attracts. Loafers from the tavern across the way came over, children gathered in little groups, people who had never entered a place of worship stopped and listened. Some laughed, others looked serious, and most of them remained to the close of the meeting. Thus does everything work together for good for everybody. The warden and his astute vestrymen thought to block the work of Wesley, and Wesley did the only thing he could: spoke outside of the church, and thus did he speak to the hearts of people who had never been inside the church and who would not go inside the building. Street preaching was not the invention of John Wesley, but up to his time no clergyman in the Church of England had attempted so undignified a thing. Wesley was doing what his mother had done the very year he was born. She had preached to the people of the village of Epworth in the churchyard, because, forsooth, the chancel was a sacred place and would suffer if any one but a man, duly anointed, spoke there. The woman had a message and did the only thing she could: spoke outside, and spoke to two hundred fifty people, while the regular attendance to hear her husband was twenty-five. And so John Wesley had made a discovery, and that was that to reach the submerged three-quarters, you must make your appeal to them on the street, in the marketplaces--from church-steps. His experience on shipboard and in America had done him good. They had taught him that form and ritual, set time and place, were things not necessary-that whenever two or three were gathered together in His name, He was in their midst. And it was in preaching to the outcasts that Wesley found himself, and was "converted." He says, "My work in America failed because I had not then given my heart to my Savior." Now he got the "power," and whether this word means to his followers what it meant to him is a question we need not analyze. Power comes by abandonment: the orator who flings convention to the winds and gives himself to the theme finds power. The opposition and the ridicule were all very necessary factors in allowing Wesley to find his true self. He wrote to his mother telling what he was doing, and she wrote back giving him her blessing, writing words of encouragement. "Son John must speak the words of love on any and every occasion when the spirit moves," she said.