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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DISAPPOINTMENTS AND PERPLEXITIES. 135<br />
children tender their humblest duty. We all join in<br />
wishing you a Happy New Year, and very many of<br />
them.<br />
" I am your obliged and most<br />
obedient Servant and Sister,<br />
" SUSANNA WESLEY."<br />
The above letter was written evidently in reply to<br />
some not very distant communication from Mr. Annesley,<br />
and it is not quite clear whether the date is according<br />
to the Old Style or the New. It is also uncertain<br />
whether it was ever received, as no reply came to it in<br />
any form, and when, two or three years later, the<br />
newspapers of the day announced that Mr. Annesley<br />
was, or would be, a passenger on board a certain<br />
homeward-bound vessel, and some of his relatives<br />
arranged to meet him, they were disappointed, as he<br />
did not arrive, and nothing definite could be heard<br />
about him.<br />
Life at Ep worth was at this time very uncomfortable,<br />
and the old adage, that " when poverty comes<br />
in at the door, love flies out at the window," seems<br />
to some extent to have been verified in the case of<br />
the <strong>Wesley</strong>s. On one occasion Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> wrote<br />
to one of her sons that unfortunately his father and<br />
she never thought alike, and the eldest son Samuel,<br />
in a familiar letter to his brother John, who was<br />
then in Lincolnshire, and had written a confidential<br />
account of the state of affairs, says he would to<br />
God that his father and mother were as easy in<br />
one another as himself and his wife. Emilia, the<br />
eldest daughter, speaks of being in " intolerable want<br />
and affliction/' in " scandalous want of necessaries/'<br />
of her mother being<br />
ill in bed all one winter, and
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