There are many, like John Wesley, who fear to trust their Christian
faith to guide them, but must lean on the faith and strength of others.
But faith thus treated is certain to fail the soul in any great crisis.
Wesley’s first consideration, he declares, is “which way
of life will conduce most to my own improvement?” He needs
daily converse with his friends, and he knows “no other place
under heaven, save Oxford, where I can have always at hand
half-a-dozen persons of my own judgment and engaged in the
same studies. To have such a number of such friends constantly
watching over my soul” is a blessing which, in a word, Wesley
can not bring himself to give up. “Half Christians,” he
declares, would kill him. “They undermine insensibly all my
resolutions and quite steal from me the little fervor I have.
I never come from among these ‘saints of the world’ but faint,
dissipated, and shorn of all my strength.” Except he can
crouch beneath the shelter of a stronger faith than his own,
John Wesley protests he must die; so he will not venture from
Oxford.--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”
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