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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TEACHING AND TRAINING. 37<br />
woman who valued mind above matter. Very few of<br />
her country men and women at the present day ever<br />
attain the art of reading aloud audibly and intelligibly,<br />
as may be observed by diligent attendance at church,<br />
where the average clergy mumble and murder both<br />
liturgy and lessons.<br />
Perhaps school-books of the ordinary sort were<br />
scarce at Epworth certainly there was no money to<br />
spare for the purchase of them or perhaps<br />
it was on<br />
principle that Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s children were taught<br />
their very letters and small words from the first<br />
chapter<br />
of Genesis, and made perfect in reading each verse<br />
before going on to the next. As soon as the fifth birthday<br />
was passed the house was set in order, and the<br />
mother devoted the six school-hours of one whole<br />
day to teaching her youngest pupil its letters, with<br />
what success she herself has told us. She must have<br />
had a great deal of uninterrupted time for her educational<br />
work, as her husband spent most of his days in<br />
his study when at home, and was chosen by his clerical<br />
brethren in Lincolnshire to represent them three several<br />
times in Convocation. This took him to London for<br />
many months at a time ;<br />
and though the journey and<br />
the expense of remaining in the metropolis so long<br />
were heavy drains on his purse, the occupation was<br />
congenial and kept him before the public eye, thus<br />
causing a readier sale for his literary productions and<br />
giving him the opportunity of distinguishing himself<br />
and communicating with publishers. During these<br />
absences Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> had everything in her own<br />
hands, the glebe, the parish, and the family she ; kept<br />
the books, did the best she could with regard to farming<br />
operations ; though having, like her husband, spent<br />
her youth in London, and among books, she could
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