At the age of seventeen he entered Christ College, Oxford, one of the noblest colleges of that famous seat of learning, where he remained five years, under the care of Dr. Wigon, a gentleman of fine classical attainments. His excellent standing at the Charterhouse gave him a high position at Oxford. His means of support were very limited. His mother laments their inability to assist him. In a letter to him she says: DEAR JACK: I am uneasy because I have not heard from you. If all things fail, I hope God will not forsake us. We have still his good providence to depend on. Dear Jack, be not discouraged. Do your duty. Keep close to your studies, and hope for better days. Perhaps, after all, we shall pick up a few crumbs for you before the end of the year. Dear Jack, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee. SUSANNAH WESLEY. This indicates the great financial embarrassment in which they were often found, as well as their abiding trust in God. His mother seems deeply concerned for his religious life. She writes, "Now in good earnest resolve to make religion the business of life; for, after all, that is the one thing that, strictly speaking, is necessary. All things besides are comparatively little to the purposes of life. I heartily wish you would now enter upon a strict examination of yourself, that you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation by Jesus Christ. If you have it, the satisfaction of knowing it will abundantly reward your pains; if you have it not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in any tragedy." His brother Samuel writes hopefully to his father: "My brother Jack, I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of discouragement from believing your third son a scholar. Jack is a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can." At the age of twenty-one, while yet a student at Oxford, "he appears," says a writer of the time, "the very sensible and acute collegian; a young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments." Alexander Knox says: "His countenance, as well as his conversation, expressed an habitual gayety of heart, which nothing but conscious innocence and virtue could have bestowed." Then, referring to him in more advanced life, he says: "He was, in truth, the most perfect specimen of moral happiness I ever saw; and my acquaintance with him has done more to teach me what a heaven upon earth is implied in the maturity of Christian piety than all I have elsewhere seen or heard or read, except in the sacred volume." "Strange," says another writer, "that such a man should have become a target for poisoned arrows, discharged, not by the hands of mad-cap students only, but by college dignitaries, by men solemnly pledged to the work of Christian education!"