Susanna Wesley
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism. Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism.
Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
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98 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
" I am straitened for paper and time, therefore<br />
must conclude.<br />
God Almighty bless you and preserve<br />
you from all evil. Adieu. " SUSANNA WESLEY."<br />
Much of this letter has been omitted on account of<br />
its being exclusively a theological<br />
dissertation. Indeed,<br />
in none of Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s epistles is religion<br />
presented in a less attractive aspect, for she<br />
represents God as a hard master dealing out strict<br />
retribution to all who diverge from the straight and<br />
exceedingly narrow path of righteousness. She would<br />
surely have been a happier woman if her mental attitude<br />
had been that of the German divine whose<br />
evening prayer, after many<br />
hours of labour in his<br />
Master's service, was,<br />
" Lord, all is as ever between<br />
me and thee," before he lay down to his peaceful and<br />
well-earned slumber.<br />
There are only one or two hints of what took place<br />
at Epworth during the years 1811 and 1812. Mrs.<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong> must have employed a great deal of her leisure<br />
in writing a manuscript containing sixty quarto pages,<br />
entitled A ' '<br />
Religious Conference between Mother and<br />
Emilia/' on the outside of which were the texts,<br />
" I<br />
write unto you, little children, of whom I travail in<br />
May<br />
birth again, until Christ be found in you," and " '<br />
what is sown in weakness be raised in power.' Written<br />
for the use of my children, 1711-12."<br />
In the spring of April 1712, while Mr. <strong>Wesley</strong> was<br />
away in London, five of the children had small-pox,<br />
which was then a far more terrible scourge than in our<br />
own day. The mother's hands must have been very full ;<br />
but she seems never to have caught the infection, although<br />
the family was visited by it at least on one other
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