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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WIDOWHOOD. 193<br />
rest with you. Joy will follow, perhaps not very<br />
closely, but it will follow faith and love. God's promises<br />
are sealed to us but not dated, therefore patiently<br />
attend His pleasure.<br />
Amen.<br />
He will give you joy in believing.<br />
"Sus. WESLEY."<br />
Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> was calmer than her son Samuel, but<br />
he was terribly alarmed by the reports of the strange<br />
wave of excitement that broke over men's souls and<br />
bodies at the preaching of his brothers and Mr. Whitfield;<br />
at the refusal of the clergy to allow them to<br />
speak from their pulpits, and of the bishops to permit<br />
them to preach in their dioceses. He recognised the<br />
voice of the priest announcing the forgiveness of sins<br />
from the place sanctioned by the authority of the<br />
Church, but he was afraid of the same doctrine when<br />
promulgated out of doors under the canopy of heaven.<br />
It seemed to him as if the bulwarks of the body ecclesiastic<br />
were being beaten down and the flood-gates of<br />
schism opened. Perhaps that, too, was the view of the<br />
Hebrew Rabbis eighteen hundred years ago, when the<br />
young and unknown Teacher spoke words that thrilled<br />
the hearts of the multitudes that clustered round him<br />
on the lake-shore or mountain-side. No such movement<br />
had ever roused England before; it was the<br />
response of soul to soul, the awakening of humanity<br />
from a long sleep, the magnetic touch of spiritual<br />
genius that kindled dry bones into vivid life. Samuel<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong>, with all his goodness, lacked the magic of<br />
the divine afflatus ;<br />
but his mother, with her finer<br />
feminine instinct, began to feel and comprehend its<br />
inspiration. Perhaps the strife of tongues would have<br />
waxed hot in the family, had not the Master he<br />
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