And so Wesley sailed back to England, sobered by a sense of failure,
but encouraged by the example of the Moravians, who accepted whatever
Providence sent, and counted it gain.

The overseers of Oxford, like Oglethorpe, had no special personal
sympathy with the peculiar ideas of Wesley; but as a matter of policy
they recognized that his influence in the great educational center was
needed for moral ballast. And so his services were secured as Greek
Professor and occasional preacher.

Concerning the moral status of Oxford at this time, Miss Wedgwood
further says:

The condition of Oxford at the time of the rise of Methodism has
been too little noted among those who have studied the great
Evangelical Revival. Contemplating this important movement in its
latter stage, they have forgotten that it took its rise in the
attempt made by an Oxford tutor to bring back to the national
institution for education something of that method which was at this
time so disgracefully neglected. To surround a young man with
illustrations of one kind of error is the inevitable preparation for
making him a vehement partisan of its opposite, and in education the
influence on which we can reckon most certainly is that of reaction.
The hard external code and needless restrictions of Methodism should
be regarded with reference to what Wesley saw in the years he spent
in that abode of talent undirected and folly unrestrained.

It was to the Oxford here described--the Oxford where Gibbon and Adam
Smith wasted the best years of their lives, and many of their