John Wesley passed through a long, singular, and what we may call a parti-coloured experience, before his mind came out into the light. In those days his mind was a singular combination of High Churchism, amounting to what we should call Ritualism now, and mysticism, both of which influences he brought from Epworth: the first from his father, the second from the strong fascination of the writings of William Law. He found, however, in the “Holy Club” that which helped him. He tells us how, when at Epworth, he travelled many miles to see a “serious man,” and to take counsel from him. “Sir,” said this person, as if the right word were given to him at the right moment, exactly meeting the necessities of the man standing before him, “Sir, you wish to serve God and to go to heaven: remember you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions, or make them. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.” It must be admitted that the enthusiasm of the mystics has always been rather personal than social; but the society at Oxford was almost monastic, nor is it wonderful that, with the spectacle of the dissolute life around them, these earnest men adopted rules of the severest self-denial and asceticism. John Wesley arrived in Oxford first in 1720; he left for some time. Returning home to assist his father, he became, as we know, to his father’s immense exultation, Fellow of Lincoln College. In 1733 George Whitefield arrived at Oxford, then in his nineteenth year. Like most of this band, Whitefield was, if not really, comparatively poor, and dependent upon help to enable him to pursue his studies; not so poor, perhaps, as an illustrious predecessor in the same college (Pembroke), who had left only the year before, one Samuel Johnson, the state of whose shoes excited so much commiseration in some benevolent heart, that a pair of new ones was placed outside his rooms, only, however, creating surprise in the morning, when he was seen indignantly kicking them up and down the passage. Whitefield was not troubled by such over-sensitive and delicate feelings; men are made differently. Johnson’s rugged independence did its work; and the easy facility and amiable disposition, which could receive favours without a sense of degradation, were very essential to what Whitefield was to be. He, however, when he came to Oxford, was caught in the same glamour of mysticism as John Wesley. But in this case it was Thomas à-Kempis who had besieged the soul of the young enthusiast; he was miserable, his life, his heart and mind were crushed beneath this altogether inhuman and unattainable standard for salvation. He was a Quietist—what a paradox!—Whitefield a Quietist! He was seeking salvation by works of righteousness which he could do. He was practising the severest austerities and renouncing the claims of an external world; he was living an internal life which God did not intend should bring to him