John also had other, more personal reasons for going to Georgia, and he wrote them all down on paper:
My chief motive to which all the rest are subordinate is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ, by preaching it to the heathen. They have no comments to construe away the text, no vain philosophy to corrupt it, no luxurious, sensual, covetous, ambitious expounders to soften its unpleasing truths.… A right faith, will, I trust, by the mercy of God, open the way for a right practice, especially when most of those temptations are removed which here so easily beset me.
As he often did when faced with a decision, John wrote to his mother and to his brother Samuel, seeking their advice regarding a move to Georgia. Samuel was in favor of the idea, and Susanna wrote back a letter in which she said, “Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice that they were all so employed, though I should never see them more.” John was also surprised to learn from his mother that shortly before his death his father had considered going as a clergyman to Georgia but eventually decided against the plan because of his age. His father had written to James Oglethorpe explaining, “Had it been but ten years ago, I would gladly have devoted the remainder of my life and labours to that place.” John took this news as his father giving his support to the plan from beyond the grave.
John wrote to Dr. Burton and James Oglethorpe, offering himself as a clergyman to the Georgia colony, and the two men gladly accepted him to serve in Savannah. John did not intend to go to Georgia alone, however, and he set about recruiting several other young men to accompany him. Benjamin Ingham, who had been a member of the Holy Club in Oxford, agreed to go along, as did Charles Delamotte, the son of a London merchant and a friend of Benjamin’s. John hoped to persuade one last person to go with him to Georgia—his brother Charles.
At first Charles rejected the idea. “Go with you to Georgia?” he exclaimed. “What possible use might I be to you there, since I am not yet ordained?”
Not willing to take no for an answer, John set to work on the situation. He managed to persuade the Bishop of London to ordain Charles, and he also secured for his brother the position of private secretary to James Oglethorpe. When he heard of the arrangements, Charles agreed to go.
Finally everything was in place, and in early October the four men made their way down the Thames River to Gravesend, where the Simmonds was docked, waiting to set sail across the Atlantic Ocean.
As John climbed the gangplank to board the Simmonds, his chest swelled with confidence. Surely, he told himself, God will use me to take the gospel to the noble savages.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Chapter 7
Georgia
The Simmonds set sail for Georgia from Gravesend, England, on October 14, 1735. It was a red-letter day for John, who was on his way to a new start in a new land, a land that John hoped would take his mind off all earthly things and allow him to think only of God and His kingdom. John started off as he meant to continue, with a strict routine for himself and the other three men, for whom he took spiritual responsibility.
Each morning, John announced, the four men would all rise at four o’clock—any later was laziness—and pray privately for an hour. The next two hours, from five to seven, were to be spent reading the Bible together in the Wesley brothers’ large cabin. Following this was breakfast with the other passengers, and then the next hour was to be spent in public prayer with any of the passengers who cared to join them. John would take close note of those who attended, since he was to become their pastor when they landed in Savannah. The rest of the morning was to be given over to study. Charles Wesley wanted to write sermons and spiritual poems, Charles Delamotte would study Greek, Benjamin Ingham chose to read theology or teach Bible stories to the children aboard, and John decided to learn German.
John was motivated to learn German mainly because accompanying the eighty English colonists aboard the Simmonds was a group of German-speaking Moravians. The Moravians were a Pietist group that had started in Moravia, a region of modern-day Czech Republic, and had suffered persecution there, especially at the hands of Catholic bishops. Many of them had fled to Germany, where Saxon Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf had given them shelter on his estate at Herrnhut. The religious community they established had become zealous about sending out missionaries to foreign lands. In fact, the two Danish missionaries whose story Susanna Wesley had read to the people of Epworth back in 1712 had both been Moravians. A group of Moravians had already settled in Georgia, and this group aboard the Simmonds were on their way to join their brethren. None of the Moravians aboard spoke English, but John was eager to learn more about the people’s theology and their church experience in Europe. Since the voyage to Georgia would last about four months, John was confident that he would be speaking German fluently by the time they arrived at their destination.
At noon the four Englishmen would again meet to discuss how well they had kept to their morning schedule and to plan the details of their afternoon before eating lunch at one o’clock. After lunch the men would spend the next four hours in private conversation with passengers about the spiritual state of their souls and teaching the children the Anglican catechism.
Two more hours of private prayer and group Bible reading were to follow, and then dinner, after which the men would join the Moravians for their hour-long prayer service. At eight o’clock in the evening they would again meet to account for how well they had followed their afternoon program and to search their souls for any doubts or rebellious thoughts. Then it would be off to bed at ten o’clock for six hours of sleep before starting the routine over again the next day.
As it had been in the past, food became an issue of holiness. John decided that the four of them should forgo the meat and wine served with the meals and live entirely on bread and water while aboard the Simmonds. Soon he felt that this regimen was not strict enough and declared that the four of them could also do without eating at all during the nightly dinner hour.
As the leader of the group, John felt compelled to hold himself to an even higher standard than the others. He tried to pray for the last five minutes of every hour he was awake, and he kept a diary examining every small detail of his feelings, faith, and actions. To ensure that this diary would never be read by anyone but himself, he devised and wrote in a complicated code. (His code was not deciphered until the 1930s.) John also prepared a public journal, which he hoped to publish at some later date. In his public journal he recorded the events that had the most profound effect on him during the long journey to Georgia.
About one in the afternoon [Sunday, January 25, 1736] almost as soon as I had stepped out of the great cabin door, the sea did not break as usual, but came with full, smooth tide over the side of the ship. I was vaulted over with water in a moment, and so stunned that I scarce expected to lift up my head again till the sea should give up her dead. But, thanks to God, I received no hurt at all. About midnight the storm ceased.
The following day was worse, and John wrote,
At four it was more violent than any we had had before. Now, indeed, we could say, “The waves of the sea were mighty, and raged horribly. They rose up to the heavens above, and clave down to hell beneath.” The winds roared round us and—what I never heard before—whistled as distinctly as if it had been a human voice. The ship not only rocked to and fro with the utmost violence, but shook and jarred with so unequal, grating a motion, that one could not but with great difficulty keep one’s hold on anything, nor stand a moment without it. Every ten minutes came a shock against the stern or side of the ship, which one would think should dash the planks in a thousand pieces. In the height of the storm a child, privately baptized before, was brought to be publicly received by the Church.
Once he had performed the baptismal ceremony as best he could under the difficult circumstances, John went to the Moravians’ cabin to see how they were faring. He was shocked by what he saw. They were in the middle of a church service, and John noted,
In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the mainsail to pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans looked up, and without intermission calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterward, “Was [sic] you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied mildly, “No, our women and children are not afraid to die.”
As the Simmonds sailed on, the scenes he witnessed that day among the Moravians haunted John. Although he had preached countless sermons on trusting God and not being afraid of death, he had been as afraid as any of the other English passengers during the storm. Only the Moravians had been unwavering in their faith, believing that they were in God’s will whether they lived or died. As much as John hated to admit it, he knew that he did not have that kind of total faith. In fact he was as afraid of death as anyone else on board. This realization shook him to the core, and he began to doubt that he was fit to be a missionary to the Indians, let alone a godly example to the English.
No one was more relieved than John when the Simmonds hove to off the lush coast of Georgia. The following morning, February 5, 1736, the ship crossed the bar and dropped anchor in the mouth of the Savannah River. The landscape was green and low-lying, made up of a number of islands packed close together. On the tip of one of the islands, which he soon learned was named Tybee, John observed a crude wooden lighthouse. James Oglethorpe informed him that he had ordered the structure to be built while he was away in England.
In his journal the next day, John wrote about a short but encouraging prayer service.
About eight in the morning, we first set foot on American ground. It was a small uninhabited island [Peeper Island], over against Tybee. Mr. Oglethorpe led us to a rising ground, where we all kneeled down to give thanks. He then took a boat for Savannah. When the rest of the people were come on shore, we called our little flock together for prayers. Several parts of the [lesson] were wonderfully suited to the occasion; in particular, the account of the courage and suffering of John the Baptist; our Lord’s directions to the first Preachers of his Gospel, and their toiling at sea, and deliverance; with these comfortable words: “It is I, be not afraid.”
Following the service on Peeper Island, most of those who had come ashore returned to the ship while Oglethorpe and several men traveled in one of the Simmonds’s boats upriver to Savannah for the night. What John did not record in his public journal was the situation he encountered when he returned to the Simmonds. John and Charles Wesley, Charles Delamotte, and Benjamin Ingham had stayed ashore on Peeper Island for several more hours to walk and talk. When they finally returned to the ship, John was stunned to discover that almost the entire complement of crew and passengers were drunk. Apparently a settler from the colony had rowed out to the Simmonds at anchor and smuggled aboard several barrels of rum, which by the time John arrived aboard ship had been drained of their contents. John could scarcely believe his eyes as people he thought were devout Christians stumbled about the deck drunk. Little could be done about the situation other than let everyone sleep off their inebriation.
The following day, when Oglethorpe returned from Savannah, John was still trying to reconcile what he had seen. The hungover passengers and crew were delighted to see Oglethorpe or, more precisely, the supplies he had brought back with him: beef, pork, venison, turkey, bread, and turnips—the first fresh food everyone aboard had seen in four months. The ship’s cook, with the eager assistance of the women aboard, prepared a delicious meal, which was served on Peeper Island. John, though, stuck to eating bread and water, refusing to partake of any of the fresh, rich food.
