The Servitor and the Methodists
The Servitor and the
Methodists
The church was cold in spite of the early morning winter sun. A handful of people, mostly old folks, sat in the pews ahead of George listening to the prayers being read. The words, “Be merciful to me a sinner,” rang so loudly in George’s ears and heart that he stopped listening to the rest of the prayers. He needed mercy, and he was a sinner! He was back to his old ways. He hadn’t returned to school long, before he joined his schoolmates in a life that had nothing to do with school. He and his friends were known in town as rakes, fashionable young men who lived wildly, sometimes doing shameful things. If the schoolmaster found out, he would be more than just displeased. He might expel George. How could he go to Oxford and become a minister? He covered his face, and said the words over and over, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
When at last he looked up, the December sun streaming in the window bathed him in its light. Was it a sign that God had heard his pleas? “I will be back for evening prayers,” he vowed.
He returned home that evening eager to please God. George flew up the stairs and into the apartment where his mother sat sewing by the fire. Elizabeth stood stirring the large cooking pot and George patted her shoulder as he passed. “What was that for?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re invited to some big party while I’m stuck here slaving away!” George just grinned.
His mother raised her face for his greeting, with the smile she always kept for him. “Mother,” he said, “I’ll be seventeen this 16th December. I will prepare myself to take the holy sacrament on Christmas Day, and this night I will begin to read devotional books again. I have been to public worship twice today, and intend to keep it up.” The look of astonishment on his mother’s face delighted George. “Yes, Mother, it’s your very own son George you see before you. I believe God wants me to be a minister like you hoped.”
Elizabeth had stopped tending the stew to listen. “Well, if God wants it you had better get on with it, but I’ll believe it when I see it.” She laughed and returned to stirring the supper stew.
First, George needed to confess to the school-master that he and his friends had broken the Master’s rules for Christian behavior, and he was truly sorry. The Master’s stern discipline fell on them all, but to George it seemed almost welcome. He studied hard and this time he did not go with his friends who soon went back to their old ways.
Not only his mother, but Elizabeth and his brothers were amazed when one year later they stood waving farewell to an excited George on his way to the university. He had changed!
His arrival at Pembroke College, a massive stone building, one of Oxford’s several colleges, nearly took his breath away. It seemed to George like sacred ground, the place that held the key to all he dreamed of becoming. However, life at Oxford was not the same for all its students. George stood in the garret dorm room high up under the roof. This was the place where the lowhest of all students lived, the servitors who would receive free tuition at Oxford for their service. The room was unheated and poorly furnished. It would be George’s quarters for the next three years.
Like all the servitors George put on the plain robe that marked him as a servant. Students of a higher rank wore finer robes and did not talk to servitors other than to give orders. A servitor was not allowed to speak to those above his station other than to answer his own master. Servitors had their own discussions in philosophy and not with the rest of the students. When the entire college took the Holy Sacrament, servitors took it on another day just for them.
Thankfully, George soon had a friend – round faced, jolly Marcus, a servitor like himself and one of his room-mates. Before the first day was over George was called to serve three gentlemen. He would receive some money, and the gift of an occasional book or cast off clothing.
By the end of a week blacking shoes, straightening rooms, running errands, waking them in the mornings, and doing assignments for two of them, George was in high demand. George found that his duties were much like those he had done at the inn, and he was good at them. However, there was one duty he wasn’t happy about. A servitor had to check his gentlemen’s rooms at night to see if they were there and report to the Master of the college any who were not. It made George feel awkward, and he hoped he would never have to report on any of them. Meanwhile his education had started and George’s tutor was not only a learned man, but a kind one willing to help George learn. Already the tutor had lent him a book to study.
George sat reading one evening in the light of his candle on a propped up table. As usual the attic room was cold and George shivered. All four of his room-mates were gone out in search of warmth and mirth in a local alehouse. A small stab of fear pinched George’s insides when he thought of his own past living for pleasures. He knew how quickly drinking and partying could become a way of life dangerous to all his hopes and dreams. Marcus and the others had laughed at him earlier when he refused to go with them, but he dared not go back to his old ways even if it meant being alone in a freezing room.
As George turned a page the door opened, and Marcus stuck his head in. “Change your mind yet, old fellow? I’ve enough for a pint for both of us tonight and you can pay me back next week.” Marcus’ round face seemed always merry and ready for a good time. “Well?” he asked.
George shook his head. “You know I have no love for taverns,” he said. “It’s kind of you, Marcus, but I need to study.”
“Suit yourself, then. You’ll freeze in here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Marcus shut the door and silence settled back into the room, a cold silence. George grew so cold he could not get warm and barely slept that night. But before he knew it winter days had turned into spring, and something new came into George’s life.
George lifted his face to the warm sun as he and Marcus walked together from the noon meal they had eaten with the other servitors. “There goes one of those Methodist fellows,” Marcus said. Marcus was looking in the direction of an upperclassman hurrying towards the gate with a Bible under his arm. “There’s to be a public hanging tomorrow and I wager he’s on his way to visit the fellow in the condemned hole.”
George nodded. “If that’s where he goes, then I say God be with him. I’ve visited prisoners in Newgate, and the place is filthy, no fireplace, and an open sewer running through it. The rats are a menace. The prisoners are all thrown together whether they’re young or old, hardened criminals or the least offenders. I’ve seen poor women with their small children, some of them in prison just for stealing food to keep alive.”
“Not a place I’d want to visit.” Marcus said. “I know you’ve been working among the poor, reading to them, visiting the sick, going to church, even taking the sacrament every week,” Marcus said. “Some of us think you are carrying things a bit too far. There’s a rumor that your own tutor thinks so too. Better watch out, or they’ll be calling you a Methodist.”
George felt his face grow warm. Secretly, he admired the small group of young Oxford students called Methodists. Like everyone else at Oxford they belonged to the Church of England, but were called Methodists by those who mocked them. They were known for their kindness, their good works, and the strict, disciplined way they lived. Each kept a journal of how he spent every hour of the day striving to please God, noting the good works he’d done that day. They met regularly in one or another’s rooms to study and pray together. George longed to know them, but as a servitor he dared not introduce himself to them. He could however, defend them.
“They are good men, Methodists or not,” George insisted. “And I know what my own tutor thinks of me, but he is still willing to loan me books and teach me. I think him the kindest of men.”
“So long as you don’t hang around with the Methodists, old fellow, I’m sure you will be okay,” Marcus said.
The following day George did more than hang around with the despised group.
He had finished his morning duties for the gentlemen he served and now hurried away from Pembroke. He’d received a note at the six a.m. reading of prayers for an invitation to breakfast with one of the Methodists and an upperclassman! Swallowing hard George knocked on the door of Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley, a leader of the Methodist group. Charles opened the door himself. He was not tall, not as tall as George, but he seemed dignified yet gentle, and the look on his face was a kind one. “Come in, Mr. Whitefield. I’ve been expecting you, come have some breakfast.”
Seated together at the table Charles prayed the grace and then served George’s plate. “Now, I know that as a servitor you could not have come to us,” he said handing him the platter, “and so we have taken the liberty of coming to you, sir. My brother John and I have noticed your faithful attendance at church and we’ve seen and heard about the good works you have been doing. We felt we needed to meet you face to face.”
When breakfast was over and George left he carried a book kindly lent to him by Charles Wesley. There would be others, many of them, and George would indeed be known as one of those “Methodists” in the Holy Club.
Each night now, George wrote the day’s events carefully into his journal. His new purpose was to waste no part of the day, but to do all he could to live a disciplined life as a member of the Holy Club.
Weeks went by and Marcus no longer bothered to invite George to go out with the rest of his roommates. Tonight was no different. The last one to leave, Marcus stood in the doorway looking at George. “Just tell me how giving up every pleasure is going to help you once you finish Oxford?” he asked.
George looked up from the new devotional book he was reading. “Well, Marcus, for one thing I hope to have a quiet little English parish where I can live a disciplined life and teach my congregation to do the same. We need to make every effort we can to live rightly. Don’t you fear God, Marcus?
Marcus laughed. “No,” he said, “I do not fear God, and I am sure he is no more interested in me or any of us than the King is in some poor creature living somewhere in a corner of the kingdom. However, I agree with you on the quiet little English church so long as it comes with a good living.” Marcus smiled at George. “You know that all the people want from a minister in the Church of England is that he follow the rituals and rules of the Church and be a pleasant fellow. So long as he is not too religious everyone is happy.” Laughing, Marcus left before George could answer.
George wanted to call out after him, “But to be a Christian a man must live a strict life of good works and self-denial, as well as go to church, say his prayers, and receive the sacrament.” George closed the book in front of him. Marcus was wrong. No one could be too religious. No one could do too many good works.
Maybe he needed to do more. Tomorrow he would skip buying fruit and take the money to the first poor family he visited.
Word spread quickly that Whitefield was now a Methodist. Some of his fellow servitors pelted his clean robe with dirt. The gentlemen who employed George now thought him fair game for fun, and some kept back the money they owed for his services. In class some teachers mocked Methodists. George tried to ignore the taunts. He visited the sick and the poor and told himself it was a Christian’s duty to be kind and not waste a single hour.