of aristocrats, ex-convicts, soldiers of fortune, and religious
enthusiasts--the rest were plain, every-day folk.

Pioneer people are too intent on maintaining life to go into the
abstrusities of either ethics or theology. Wesley soon saw that his
powers demanded a wider field. The experience, though, had done him
much good, especially in two ways. He had gotten a glimpse of chattel
slavery and made a remark about it that is forever fixed in
literature, "Human slavery is the sum of all villainies." Then he had
met on shipboard a party of Moravians, and was so impressed by them
that he straightway began to study German. In six weeks' time he could
carry on an acceptable conversation in that language. At the end of
the two years which he spent in Georgia, through attending the
services of the Moravians, he could read, write and preach in the
German language.

The Moravians seemed to him the only genuine Christians he had ever
seen, and their example of simple faith, industry, directness of
speech, and purity of life made such an impress upon him that
thereafter Methodism and Moravianism were closely akin.

At Savannah there were some people too poor to afford shoes, and when
these people appeared at church in bare feet they were smiled at by
the alleged nobility. Seeing this, on the following Sunday, John
Wesley appeared barefoot in the pulpit, and this was his habit as long
as he was in Georgia. This gave much offense to the aristocrats; and
Wesley also made himself obnoxious by preaching salvation to the
slaves. Indeed, this was the main cause of his misunderstanding with
the Governor. Oglethorpe considered any discussion or criticism of
slavery "an interference with property-rights."