read Thomas a Kempis Imitation of Christ at family prayer in the Latin tongue, his wife reading the translation while he followed her in the original, and Matthew Richey adds that while he "carefully studied the Greek Testament, he was not forgetful of the Latin language, in which his attainments were very respectable." We have no record of the books he read or any account of his studies, but his Journal and letters show, that he was a student all his life, reading theology, history, biography and essays in literature with an economy of time, and an alertness, which put many of us to shame. With a yearning after wider culture he longed to go to Kingswood School in England, and when that became impossible, he devoted himself with greater enthusiasm to his studies, and employed John Wesley to send him books. Although he was a model itinerant and was preaching every day, he pursued the method of training his own mind and instructing his hearers by courses on systematic theology, which is an ideal system for any minister. He writes: "In my last sixteen discourses I have taken a view of man in his primitive state, and in his fall, the consequences of his apostacy, to himself and to his posterity, the interposition of a Mediator, his offices, incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, and session on the right hand of the Father. O, how wonderful is the process of redeeming love!" Living in a real world and deeply impressed with the needs of the people, he had no time to devote to any literary work, though he might have rendered some service by his pen to the cause of Christ, but modesty barred the way, and he was above everything else a pioneer evangelist. Only once did he consent to have one of his sermons published, and that was a discourse preached at Windsor, Nova Scotia, on Deut. 33:13. "He made him to suck honey out of the rock." When he preached a sermon on Bishop Asbury at the General Conference in Baltimore, and was importuned to have it published by that august body, he respectfully declined the honor.