Susanna Wesley

208 SUSANNA WESLEY.
" She laboured under great trials, both of soul and
body, some days after you left her ;
but God perfected
His work in her about twelve hours before He took her
to Himself. She waked out of a slumber ;
and we,
hearing her rejoicing, attended to the words she spake,
which were these,
'
My dear Saviour ! are you come to
help me in my extremity at last ? ' From that time
she was sweetly resigned indeed ; the enemy had no
more power to hurt her. The remainder of her time
was spent in praise."
Mrs. Wesley was buried on Sunday, August 1st, in
Bunhill Fields, John reading the funeral service of the
Church of England, and Emilia, Susanna, Hetty,
Anne, and Martha standing round. A large number
of friends were assembled, as well as others drawn
together by sympathetic curiosity. Then a hymn was
sung, and John Wesley, who in the prime of his early
manhood had desired so earnestly that he might not
survive his mother, stood by that mother's grave and
preached to the assembled multitude one of his most
eloquent and impassioned sermons.
A plain stone was soon set at the head of that last
resting-place, with an epitaph in verse from the pen of
Charles Wesley : " Here lies the Body
of
MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY,
Youngest and last surviving daughter of
Dr. Samuel Annesley."
" In sure and stedfast hope to rise,
And claim her mansion in the skies,
A Christian here her flesh laid down,
The cross exchanging for a crown.