Wesley Corpus

To John Hutchings Date: SAVANNAH, AMERICA, February 16, 1737. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1737) Author: John Wesley --- DEAR SIR, --- Mr. Ingham has left Savannah for some months, and lives at an house built for him a few miles hence, near the Indian town. I have now no fellow laborer but Mr. Delamotte, who has taken the charge of between thirty and forty children. There is therefore great need that God should put it into the hearts of some to come over to us and labour with us in His harvest. But I should not desire any to come, unless on the same views and conditions with us--without any temporal wages other than food and raiment, the plain conveniences of life. For one or more in whom was this mind there would be full employment in the province, either in assisting Mr. Delamotte or me while we were present here or in supplying our places when abroad, or in visiting the poor people in the smaller settlements, as well as at Frederica, all of whom are as sheep without a shepherd. By these labors of love might any that desired it be trained up for the harder task of preaching the gospel to the heathen. The difficulties he must then encounter, God only knows; probably martyrdom would conclude them: but those we have hitherto met with have been small, and only terrible at a distance. Persecution, you know, is the portion of every follower of Christ, wherever his lot is cast; but it has hitherto extended no farther than words with regard to us (unless in one or two inconsiderable instances); yet it is sure every man ought, if he would come hither, to be willing and ready to embrace (if God should see good) the severer kinds of it. He ought to be determined not only to leave parents, sisters, friends, houses, and land for his Master's sake, but to take up his cross too, and cheerfully submit to the fatigue and danger of (it may be) a long voyage, and patiently to endure the continual contradiction of sinners and all the inconveniences which it often occasions.