Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/354

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

piers of cotton bales arise the visions of old Savannah. What glories cluster about her honored name! From out her past appears the noble form of him who from the brilliant old world light and the gay splendor of the English Court sought these untried shores, an exile in fair mercy's sake, and lent to the struggle of his fellow-*men the strength of that genius which sped his fame through all the fields of Europe; and with him through the shadows of that far-off time comes a dusky figure, a Christian who has never heard of God, a gentleman into whose guiltless life had never come the influence of court or fashion; brave with a conscience of honest aim; kindly with the innate tendency of a noble nature; regal in that charity which loves to give; a hero to whose virtues no tablet speaks; a Georgian in whose memory no marble shaft lifts up its polished line; forgotten of those he served; asleep in his nameless grave; but blessed be the soil which has mingled with Tomochichi's dust, the first of the great Savannahians!"


On the original spot where the colonists established a house of worship stands to-day the beautiful and classic proportions of Christ Church. Here Wesley preached and Whitefield exhorted,—the most gifted and erratic characters in the early settlement of Georgia. Wesley came to the Georgia shores with a fervor amounting almost to religious mysticism. He thought his mission was to Christianize the Indians. No priest from Spain ever carried the Cross among the Aztecs