52 History of Methodism 



physical welfare and comfort of the emigrants, he was 

 also meditating the proper measures to he taken to 

 secure as early as practicable suitable missionaries to 

 instruct them and the neighboring Indians in the 

 great duties of religion. He had been for a long 

 time the warm friend of the Wesley family, and per- 

 haps knew from the Hector of Epworth that his fa- 

 ther, the Rev. John Wesley, of Whitchurch, as early 

 as 1665, felt a strong desire to visit the Western Con- 

 tinent, and actually formed the purpose of embarking 

 as a missionary, first to Guiana in South America, and 

 afterward to Maryland, in North America, but was 

 providentially hindered. Governor Oglethorpe was 

 certainly well acquainted with the broad and compre- 

 hensive scheme of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, for the 

 evangelization of the entire Eastern Continent, and 

 his noble offer to the British Government, in the 

 spirit of an apostle, to undertake the task, and to de- 

 vote his life to the prosecution of the enterprise — a 

 scheme which was not attempted only because he lived 

 before the age which could sympathize with his spirit, 

 or respond to his aspirations. He knew that both the 

 grandfather and father of John Wesley held that the 

 call of God to preach the gospel was a missionary 

 call, and they who had it knew that they were not 

 their own, and must do the Master's work in the Mas- 

 ter's own way, place, and time. He therefore kept 

 the Rector of Epworth well informed by letters, from 

 time to time, with respect to colonial affairs in Geor- 

 gia — not without the reasonable expectation that one 

 whose soul was capacious enough to embrace the 

 whole of the Eastern could not prove indifferent to 

 the wants of the Western Continent. "I had always 

 so dear a love for your colony," wrote he under date 



