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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172 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
sense of that blessed Being readily to hit upon words<br />
to express a thing so far above their nature. Who<br />
can think, much less speak, on that vast subject ? His<br />
greatness, His dignity, astonishes us ! The purity<br />
of<br />
His nature, His redeeming love, confounds and<br />
overpowers us ! At the perception of His glory, our<br />
feeble powers are suspended, and nature faints before<br />
the God of nature.<br />
" For my own part, after many years' search and<br />
enquiry, I still continue to pay my devotions to an<br />
Unknown God. I dare not say I love Him ; only this<br />
I have chosen Him for my own Happiness, my All,<br />
my only Good in a word for<br />
; my God. And when<br />
I sound my will, I feel it adheres to its choice,<br />
though not so faithfully as it ought. Therefore I<br />
desire your prayers, which I need much more than you<br />
do mine.<br />
" That God is<br />
everywhere present, and we always<br />
present to Him, is certain but that we should<br />
;<br />
always<br />
be able to realise His presence is quite another thing.<br />
Some choice souls have obtained such an habitual<br />
sense of the presence of God as admits of few interruptions.<br />
But, my dear, consider, He is so infinitely<br />
blessed, so absolutely lovely, that every perception of<br />
Him, every approach to His supreme glory and blessedness,<br />
imparts such a vital joy and gladness to the mind,<br />
as banishes all pain and sense of misery ;<br />
and were<br />
eternity added to this happiness, it would be heaven.<br />
" My love and blessing attend you<br />
" !<br />
I am, your affectionate " mother,<br />
SUSANNA WESLEY."<br />
Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> had a good deal of anxiety about the<br />
health<br />
of her sons at Oxford, and suffered much her-
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