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.
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
PARTINGS. 171<br />
despised Methodist, who will be ashamed and confounded<br />
when called to appear before that Almighty-<br />
Judge whose Godhead they have blasphemed, and<br />
whose offered mercy they have rejected and ludicrously<br />
despised.<br />
" The pleasures of sin are but for a short and uncertain<br />
time, but eternity hath no end ;<br />
therefore one<br />
would think that few arguments might serve to convince<br />
a man who has not lost his senses that it is of<br />
the greatest importance to us to be very serious in<br />
improving the present time, and acquainting ourselves<br />
with God while it is called to-day, lest, being disqualified<br />
for His blissful presence, our future existence be<br />
inexpressibly " miserable.<br />
You are certainly right. The different degrees of<br />
piety are different states of mind which we must pass<br />
through ; and he who cavils at practical advice plainly<br />
shows that he has not gone through those states ;<br />
for<br />
in all matters of a religious nature, if there be not an<br />
internal sense in the hearers corresponding to that<br />
sense in the mind of the speaker, what is said will have<br />
little effect. Yet sometimes it falls out that, while a<br />
zealous Christian is<br />
speaking on spiritual subjects, the<br />
blessed Spirit of God will give such light to the mind<br />
of the hearers as will dispel their native darkness, and<br />
enable them to apprehend those spiritual things, of<br />
which before they had no knowledge. As in the case<br />
of Cornelius and his friends, it is said '<br />
While : Peter<br />
spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them<br />
that heard him.'<br />
" Mr. Law is a good man, yet he is but a man ; and,<br />
therefore, no marvel that he has not been so explicit<br />
as you could have wished in speaking on some particular<br />
subjects. Perhaps his mind was too full of the
Change language