Isolated as was the life she lived at Hoxton, Mary Bosanquet was not wholly severed from her parents At intervals her father would drive up in his carriage, bringing her some present and renewing his persuasions to her to live at home upon the terms of spiritual silence on which he had previously insisted. But though, to all appearance peculiarly alone, the two years spent in her solitary lodging was a time of the richest blessing, during which she entered into such communion with God as influenced the whole of her after-life.
An almost curious sensitiveness to the sorrows and needs of men so possessed her that all consideration of self or repining at her condition was entirely shut out, and with this insight into the woe of the world came a wonderful baptism of Divine love God became all in all to her soul, and she lived in the spirit of Gerhardt’s inspired hymn:—
Oh, grant that nothing in my soul
May dwell but Thy pure love alone;
Oh, may Thy love possess me whole,
My joy, my treasure, and my crown!
Strange flames far from my heart remove,
My every act, word, thought, be love!
It was inevitable that her Methodist friends should suggest to her a less lonely life; some of them, indeed, went so far as to speak of her in connection with Mr. Fletcher.
“Ah, if I were to marry him,” she thought, “he would be a help and not a hindrance to my soul!”
She little knew that Fletcher had been fighting the same thought Indeed, it was not long after this that, in answer to Charles Wesley’s practical suggestion, that a wife would be helpful in his lonely work, Fletcher drew up as quaint a set of Reasons for and Against Matrimony as have ever been committed to paper:—
For.
1 A tender friendship is, after the love of Christ, the greatest
felicity of life; and a happy marriage is nothing but such a
friendship between two persons of different sexes.
2 A wife might deliver me from the cares of housekeeping, etc.
3 Some objections and scandals may be avoided by marriage.