“On Tuesday evening, Mr. John Wesley and Mr. Delamotte arrived from Frederica. Next day, Mr. Wesley gave me an account of what had passed there since my departure. O what secrets will come to pass in the last day!
“Easter Sunday, April 25. We were thirty-four communicants. Our constant number is about a dozen. Next day, Mr. Wesley and I went up to Cowpen, in a boat, bought for our use, to converse with Mrs. Musgrave about learning the Indian language. I agreed to teach her children to read, and to make her whatever recompence she would require more for her trouble. I am to spend three or four days a week with her, and the rest at Savannah, in communicating what I have learned to Mr. Wesley; because he intends, as yet, wholly to reside there.
“The Moravians, being informed of our design, desired me to teach one of the brethren along with Mr. Wesley. To this I consented at once, with my whole heart. And who, think ye, is the person intended to learn? Their lawful bishop.[64] ‘The right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence; the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass.’
“Friday, April 30. Mr. Wesley and I went up again to Cowpen, taking along with us, Toma-Cache and his Queen. Their town is about four miles above Savannah, in the way to Mrs. Musgrave’s. We told them we were about to learn their language. I asked them, if they were willing I should teach the young prince. They consented, desiring me to check and keep him in; but not to strike him. The Indians never strike their children; neither will they suffer any one to do it. I told them, I would do my best, as far as gentleness and good advice would go. How I shall manage, God alone can direct me. The youth is sadly corrupted, and addicted to drunkenness, which he has learnt of our Christian heathen. Nay, the whole Creek nation is now generally given to this brutal sin, whereto they were utter strangers before Christians came among them.
“Oh! what a work have we before us! Who is sufficient for these things? I am nothing. I have nothing. I can do nothing. O! my dearest friends, pray for us. Pray earnestly for us; and more especially for me, your very weak, though most dutiful son, and affectionate brother,
“Benjamin Ingham.”
This lengthened document needs no apology. It exhibits Ingham as a sincere, earnest, self-denying, zealous servant of the Divine Redeemer. It helps to justify the suddenness of his departure from his native country, without obtaining the consent of his family and friends, and even without consulting them. It shows, that, he was a firm believer in the sacred text—“In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” Who can doubt that Ingham was divinely guided in embarking for America? The service that he rendered there, might be comparatively small; but, at that period, it required no ordinary courage, for a young man of three and twenty, to encounter the storms of the Atlantic, and to live with wild Indians in the woods of Georgia. The results of Ingham’s ministerial labours in the new colony might be few; but the mission there brought him into the society of a set of simple-minded, earnest, godly men, by whom the current of the whole of his subsequent life was changed; and the rough experience of the few months spent among colonial settlers and untutored savages, was a useful training for the hard labours and hard treatment awaiting him in his native country. If Ingham had not embarked for Georgia, the probability is, he would not have been brought into fellowship with Moravians; and, therefore, would not have become a Moravian Evangelist among the masses of the north of England. The Providence, which sent him to Georgia, separated him from the Established Church; but, as in the case of Wesley, it made him the Founder of a large number of religious societies, which exercised a mighty influence on the people of Yorkshire, and of the neighbouring counties.
As yet, Ingham, like the Wesleys, was seeking to be saved by works, rather than by penitent faith in Christ Jesus; but the very fact that he hoped to be saved thus, served as an incentive to the practice of self-denial and other austerities, and to the use of diligence and faithfulness in his ministerial office which have seldom been surpassed. The man had a large heart, brim-full of benevolent feeling; and regarded it as the highest honour and happiness of his life to be of service to the cause of God, and to the welfare of his fellow-creatures. Without doubt, he was what would be called a high churchman when he set sail for Georgia; but his sympathies were too large to be ice bound with high church bigotry. His description of the twenty-six psalm-singing Moravians is just and generous. He was willing to admit the fact, and to rejoice in it, that there were as good Christians without the pale of his own Church, as there were within it. Like all men of noble mind, he was not too much a man to bend to a little child. Teaching and catechizing children was a self-imposed, but happy task, while on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and it was equally one of his pleasant toils in Georgia. Idleness and he were strangers to each other. Early rising, abstemious diet, and constant working, were, with him, not accidents, but principles. They were part and parcel of his religion. The Bible was his daily study; and prayer, for himself, and for others, his highest privilege and duty. The two combined inspired him with a confidence in God, which never faltered; and which kept him calm in the greatest dangers. Let us follow him.
Ingham landed in Georgia, on February 5, 1736: he re-embarked for England on February 26, 1737. Nearly three of the thirteen months he spent in Georgia, are comprehended in the Journal already given. The details of the other ten are few and scanty.