Heresy and treason are invoked together; one is an offense against the Church, the other against the State. "The man is a traitor to God and a traitor to his country," that settles it--off with his head! The offenses of Socrates, Jesus, Savonarola, Huss, Wyclif, Tyndale, Luther and John Wesley were all identical. Reformers are always guilty-- guilty of telling unpleasant truths. The difference in treatment of the man is merely the result of a difference in time and local environment. Oxford was professedly a religious institution; it was a part of the State. John Wesley, the undergraduate, perceived it was in great degree a place of idleness and dissipation. John wrote to his mother describing the conditions. She wrote back, pleading that he keep his life free from the follies that surrounded him, and band those who felt as he did into a company, and meet together for prayer and meditation in order that they might mutually sustain one another. Susanna Wesley was the true founder of Methodism, a fact stated by John Wesley many a time. As early as Seventeen Hundred Nine, she wrote to her son Samuel, who was then at Oxford, and who was never converted from Oxford influences: "My son, you must remember that life is our divine gift-- it is the talent given us by Our Father in Heaven. I request that you throw the business of your life into a certain method, and thus save the friction of making each day anew. Arise early, go to bed at a certain hour, eat at stated times, pray, read and study by a method, and so get the most out of the moments as they swiftly pass, never to return. Allow yourself so much time for sleep, so much for private devotion, so much for recreation. Above all, my son, act on principle, and do not live like the rest of mankind, who float through the world like straws upon a river." In hundreds of her letters to John and Charles at Oxford, their mother repeats this advice in varying phrase: "We are creatures of habit; we must cultivate good habits, for they soon master us, and we must be controlled by that which is good. Life is very precious--we must give it back to God some day, so let us get the most from it. Let us methodize the hours, so we may best improve them." John Wesley was a leader by nature, and before he was twenty he had gathered about him at Oxford a little group of young men, poor in purse, but intent in purpose, who held themselves aloof from the foibles and follies of the place, and planned their lives after that of the Christ. In ridicule they were called Methodists. The name stuck. In this Year of Grace, Nineteen Hundred Seven, there are more than thirty million Methodists, and about seven million in America, The denomination owns property to the value of more than three hundred million dollars in the United States, and has more than one hundred thousand paid preachers. * * * * *