allowing Wesley to find his true self.

He wrote to his mother telling what he was doing, and she wrote back
giving him her blessing, writing words of encouragement. "Son John
must speak the words of love on any and every occasion when the spirit
moves," she said.

John Wesley was attracting too much attention to himself at Oxford:
there came words of warning from those in authority. To these
admonitions he replied that he was a duly ordained clergyman of the
Church of England, and there was nothing in the canons that forbade
his holding services when and where he desired. And then he adds: "To
show simple men and women the way of life, and tell them of Him who
died that we might live, surely can not be regarded as an offense. I
must continue in my course." That settled it--Oxford the cultured was
not for him. He was a preacher without a pulpit--a teacher without a
school.

He saddled his horse and with all his earthly possessions in his
saddlebags traveled toward London--following that storied road which
almost every great and powerful man of England had traversed. He was
penniless, but he owned his horse. He was a horse-lover: he delighted
in the companionship of a horse, and where the way was rough he would
walk and lead the patient animal. It comes to us with a slight shock
that the Reverend John Wesley anticipated Colonel Budd Doble by
saying, "God's best gift to man--a horse!"

So John Wesley rode, not knowing where he was going or why--only that
Oxford no longer needed him. When he started he was depressed, but
after passing the confines of the town, and once out upon the highway