IX.
RELATION TO HER SONS.
Susanna Wesley was the life-long counsellor of her children.
Amid those interesting conversations which were held with each member of the family on appointed days and hours, and which are frequently noted in Mrs. Wesley's private meditations, we are arrested by the heading of one of them—"Son John"—and we learn that he became a communicant at the Lord's table at eight years of age, this important step being taken by reason of his great seriousness and of the signs of grace that were seen in him.
His mother gives us another striking glimpse of him, in April 1712, when the scourge of small-pox attacked five of the children—"Jack bore his disease bravely like a man, and indeed a Christian without any complaint."
On recovering he was, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, to whom his father was known, sent to Charterhouse School; but at this period there is little or nothing recorded of correspondence with his mother. It is tolerably clear that the reason of this was that the boy was studious to a degree, and needed his father's injunction to see to it that he took regular exercise in the garden. The letters of Mrs. Wesley to her sons are best represented by those addressed to Samuel, now twenty years of age. After having distinguished himself at Westminster School, and won the special regard and friendship of those two eminent men, Bishops Sprat and Atterbury, Samuel repaired to Oxford. Following the fashion of the time, the youth had hitherto addressed his mother as "Dear Madam." His mother disliked the phrase, but had waited till the change should be made spontaneously to "Dear Mother," which instantly evoked the response, "Dear Sammy,—-I am much better pleased with the beginning of your letter than with that you used to send me, for I do not love distance or ceremony; there is more of love and tenderness in the name of mother than in all the complimentary titles in the world… You complain that you are unstable and inconstant in the ways of virtue. Alas! what Christian is not so too? I am sure that I, above all others, am most unfit to advise in such a case: yet since I love you as my own soul, I will endeavour to do as well as I can."
Admirable advice is then given as to choice of company, with strictness yet with charity, for "we must take the world as we find it;" and the wholesome caution to beware "lest the comparing yourself with others may be an occasion of your falling into too much vanity," and "rather entertain such thoughts as these, 'Though I know my own birth and advantages, yet how little do I know of the circumstances of others!' 'Were they so solemnly devoted to God at their birth as I was?' You have had the example of a father who served God from his youth; and though I cannot commend my own to you, for it is too bad to be imitated, yet surely my earnest prayers for many years and some little good advice have not been wanting…. If still upon comparison you seem better than others are, then ask yourself who it is that makes you differ: and let God have all the praise…. I am straitened for paper and time, therefore must conclude. God Almighty bless you and preserve you from all evil. Adieu.
"SUSANNA WESLEY."
It is a striking fact that Mrs. Wesley's letters to her son John are for the most part concerning his secular affairs; the inference is not remote that, as regards his spiritual welfare, John Wesley appeared to his mother at all times to be in a satisfactory condition. At one time he presses her for an opinion on Thomas à Kempis, and receives an elaborate answer, at once philosophical and theological, in the course of which the remark is made—"I take à Kempis to have been an honest weak man, with more zeal than knowledge, by his condemning all mirth or pleasure as sinful or useless, in opposition to so many plain and direct texts of Scripture. 'Tis stupid to say nothing is an affliction to a good man; nor do I understand how any man can thank God for present misery, yet do I know very well what it is to rejoice in the midst of deep afflictions. Not in the affliction itself, for then it would cease to be one; but in this we may rejoice, that we are in the hand of a God who has promised that all things shall work together for good, for the spiritual and eternal good, of those that love Him." Evidently it is from an unshaken soul the concluding words of the letter proceed—"Your brother has brought us a heavy reckoning for you and Charles. God be merciful to us all!"
Much earnest and deeply discriminative advice is given to John on occasion of his entering the holy ministry. The letter then written to him abounds with traces of the fact that he had been in the habit of confiding much of his mind to his mother through those years. In 1727 she writes to him a profound and beautiful epistle, in terms which indicate that he had made her his confidante at the time, in his love for a young lady whom he had lately met in Worcestershire.
"What then is love? Oh, how shall we describe its strange, mysterious essence? It is—I do not know what! A powerful something; source of our joy and grief, felt and experienced by every one, and yet unknown to all! Nor shall we ever comprehend what it is till we are united to our first principle, and there read its wondrous nature in the clear mirror of uncreated love:"
Another letter belonging to the same year is solemnly prospective the topic being evidently the "cares of the world."
"'Believe me, youth (for I am read in cares,
And bend beneath the weight of more than fifty years).'
"Believe me, old age is the worst time we can choose to mend either our lives or our fortunes. Ah! my dear son, did you with me stand on the verge of life, and saw before your eyes a vast expanse, an unlimited duration of being, which you might shortly enter upon, you can't conceive how all the inadvertencies, mistakes, and sins of youth would rise to your view; and how different the, sentiments of sensitive pleasures, the desire of sexes and pernicious friendships of the world would be then from what they are now while health is entire and seems to promise many years of life."