Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/17

Rh in London an excellent training as a dentist, and was able to support himself by his profession when he was only nineteen. From Plymouth, where he first practised, he soon removed to Exeter and became exceedingly prosperous. From the age of twenty he determined to be a missionary, but the opposition of his wife, whom he married in 1816, kept the project for a long time in abeyance. It was revived about the year 1825 with her full concurrence. Not long before this they had decided to devote their whole property to God, in the sense, apparently, that they should live on a minimum, save nothing, and give away the balance of an annual income of about £1,500. Groves published in this year a tract entitled Christian Devotedness, in which it would seem he taught this line of conduct as a plain evangelical duty. This tract engaged the warm sympathy of Dr. Morrison, the eminent pioneer of Protestant missions in China, and exercised a momentous influence on the celebrated Dr. Duff of Calcutta.

A visit from Edward Bickersteth, of the Church Missionary Society, in July, 1825, finally determined Groves to abandon his profession and qualify as an ordained missionary. With this end in view he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a fellow-commoner, probably in 1825.