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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me.<br />
" As for your proposal of letting some other person<br />
TEACHING IN PUBLIC. 105<br />
I will<br />
resign myself to Him '<br />
; or,<br />
as Herbert better<br />
expresses it :<br />
Only, since God doth often make,<br />
Of lowly matter, for high uses meet,<br />
I throw me at His feet ;<br />
There will I lie until my Maker seek<br />
For some mean stuff whereon to show His skill ;<br />
Then is<br />
my time.<br />
" And thus I rested, without passing any reflection<br />
on myself, or forming any judgment about the success<br />
or event of this undertaking.<br />
" Your third objection I leave to be answered by<br />
your own judgment. We meet not on any worldly<br />
design. We banish all temporal concerns from our<br />
society none is suffered to mingle any discourse about<br />
;<br />
them with our reading or Singing; we keep close to<br />
the business of the day, and as soon as it is over they<br />
all go home. And where is the harm of this ? If 1<br />
and my children went a-visiting on Sunday nights,<br />
or if we admitted of impertinent visits, as too many<br />
do who think themselves good Christians, perhaps<br />
it would be thought no scandalous practice, though, in<br />
truth, it would be so. Therefore, why any should<br />
reflect upon you, let your station be what it will,<br />
because your wife endeavours to draw people to the<br />
church, and to restrain them, by reading and other<br />
persuasions, from their profanation of God's most holy<br />
day, I cannot conceive. But if any should be so mad<br />
as to do it, I wish you would not regard it. For my<br />
part, I value no censure on this account. I have long<br />
since shook hands with the world, and I heartily wish<br />
I had never given them more reason to speak against
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