not permit many quotations, but take the following words, and the sweet meditation in prose of the much-enduring, and often patiently suffering lady in the old world country vicarage, which read like many of her son’s notes in verse: “If to esteem and have the highest reverence for Thee; if constantly and sincerely to acknowledge Thee the supreme, and only desirable good, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If to rejoice in Thy essential majesty and glory; if to feel a vital joy overspread and cheer the heart at each perception of Thy blessedness, at every thought that Thou art God, and that all things are in Thy power; that there is none superior or equal to Thee, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If comparatively to despise and undervalue all the world contains, which is esteemed great, fair, or good; if earnestly and constantly to desire Thee, Thy favour, Thy acceptance, Thyself, rather than any, or all things Thou hast created, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE!” At length she died as she had lived, her last words to her sons breathing the spirit of her singular life: “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God!” Thus, from the polite circles of London, from the obscure old farm-like vicarage, the rude and rough old English home, events were preparing themselves. John Wesley was born in 1703; the Countess of Huntingdon in 1707: near in their birth time, how far apart the scenery and the circumstances in which their eyes first opened to the light. Whitefield was born later, amidst the still less auspicious scenery of the old Bell Inn, at Gloucester, in 1714. These were undoubtedly among the foremost names in the great palpitation of thought, feeling, and holy action the country was to experience. Future chapters will show a number of other names, which were simultaneously coming forth and educating for the great conflict. So it has always been, and singularly so, as illustrating the order of Providence, and the way in which it gives a new personality to the men whom it designs to aid its purposes. In every part of the country, all unknown to each other, in families separated by position and taste, by birth and circumstances, a band of workers was preparing to produce an entire moral change in the features of the country. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III OXFORD: NEW LIGHTS AND OLD LANTERNS.