Mr. Coleridge finds a satisfactory solution of this knotty question in attributing the whole thing to "a contagious nervous disease" with which he judged the whole family to have been afflicted, "the acme or intensest form of which is catalepsy." The poor dog, it would seem, was as badly afflicted as the rest. This notion does not need refutation. Dr. Adam Clarke, who collected all the accounts of these disturbances and published them in his _Wesley Family_, claims that they are so circumstantial and authentic as to entitle them to the most implicit credit. The eye and ear witnesses were persons of strong understanding and well-cultivated minds, untinctured by superstition, and in some instances rather skeptically inclined. [Illustration: JEFFREY'S ATTIC ROOM, WHENCE THE MYSTERIOUS NOISES CAME.] These unexplained noises in the Epworth rectory found their counterpart in what was known a little earlier as "New England witchcraft," and in our times as the Rochester and Hidsville knockings in 1848, which have ripened into modern Spiritualism, which, if real, is satanic. There is but little doubt that these remarkable occurrences at his Epworth home made a deep and lasting impression on John Wesley's mind and life. There was ever present to his mind the reality of an invisible world, and he was convinced that satanic as well as angelic forces were all about us, both to bless and to ruin us if permitted to do so by Him who rules all the world. CHAPTER V. ORIGIN OF THE HOLY CLUB. IT was while he was a member of Lincoln College that that unparalleled religious career of Mr. Wesley, which has always been regarded as the most wonderful movement of modern times, began. "Whoever studies the simplicity of its beginning, the rapidity of its growth, the stability of its institutions, its present vitality and activity, its commanding position and prospective greatness, must confess the work to be not of man, but of God." The heart of the youthful collegian was profoundly stirred by the reading of the _Christian Pattern_, by Thomas à Kempis, and _Holy Living and Dying_ by Jeremy Taylor. He learned from the former "that simplicity of intention and purity of affection were the wings of the soul, without which he could never ascend to God;" and on reading the latter he instantly resolved to dedicate all his life to God. He was convinced that there was no medium; every part must be a sacrifice to either God or himself. From this time his whole life was changed. How much he owed under God to these two works eternity alone will reveal. Law's _Call_ and _Perfection_ greatly aided him.