On his recovery he returned to Switzerland, there being no further prospect of employment in the Portuguese service. But his desire for military life was unabated. His uncle and eldest brother were in the Dutch service, and in a little while he received word that his uncle had procured a commission for him. He at once set out for Flanders, but before he could join the army the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in October, 1748, entirely altered the situation. Troops were disbanded or sent home, and the uncle on whom his hopes depended left the service, and died soon afterwards. With his death Fletcher's hopes were entirely destroyed, and he abandoned all thoughts of becoming a soldier.
The first well-marked stage of his history was now completed. He had reached manhood. He had received the best education that his age and his country afforded. In temperament he was active and ardent, in spirit serious and devout; and though he had declined from his early piety, he was entirely free from the follies and vices so easily learnt, and so readily condoned, at college and in camp. It was impossible to say how a life with such preparations would open out. That its promise was fair, and even noble, might well be judged; but that it should find at once the supply of its own deepest want, and the sphere for the employment of its powers, in a foreign country, and in connexion with a religious movement wholly unknown in Switzerland, and unsanctioned either by Church or society in England, was among the things that could not possibly be foreseen. Lives like Fletcher's, when they lie complete before us, are luminous in the linked succession of divinely directed steps; the overruling Providence is so manifest that nothing which takes place surprises us; but, followed in their natural order, the determining events are unforeseen, they come in unlikely forms and from quarters whence they could not be expected. From Swiss Moderatism Fletcher was to pass into the bosom of English Methodism. The student reared in the school of Calvin and Beza was to be the apologist of Evangelical Arminianism. He was to become, not
"Captain, or colonel, or knight-in-arms"
in Portugal, Brazil, or Flanders, but "Vicar of Madeley." But of all this he knew nothing;—how could he?
"I know that the way of man is not in himself:
It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
————
"Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me."