How can the brave, the witty, and the gay
Survive, when mirth, wit, courage die away?
None but the Christian’s all-comprising power
Subdues each chance, and lives through every hour:
Watchful, he suffers all, and feels within
All smart proportion’d to some root of sin;
He strikes each error with his Maker’s rod,
And, by self-knowledge, penetrates to God.”
Gambold entered Christ Church College in the same year that Charles Wesley did, the latter being more than two years older than the former. John Wesley also was a member of the same college, and twelve months before, on September 19, 1725, had been ordained a deacon. In 1729, the society of Oxford Methodists was formed by Charles Wesley; and, a year afterwards, Gambold, still only in his teens, became one of them. He shall narrate his own story, written when Wesley was in Georgia. The account is long; but, containing as it does a full description of the rise and peculiarities of the “Holy Club,” and a faithful delineation of the character and influence of their confessed “curator,” it is too important to be omitted. Gambold writes:—
“Mr. Wesley, late of Lincoln College, has been the instrument of so much good to me, that, I shall never forget him. Could I remember him as I ought, it would have very near the same effect as if he was still present; for a conversation so unreserved as was his, so zealous in engaging his friends to every instance of Christian piety, has left nothing now to be said, nothing but what occurs to us as often as we are disposed to remember him impartially.