Lord Oxford wrote to the celebrated Dean Swift, soliciting his name as a subscriber to Mr. Wesley's book on Job—"The person concerned is a worthy, honest man; and by this work of his, he is in hopes to get free of a load of debt which has hung upon him some years. This debt is not owing to any folly or extravagance of his, but to the calamity of his house having been twice burnt, which he was obliged to rebuild. This is in short the case of an honest, poor, worthy clergyman, and I hope you will take him under your protection."
A wealthy brother of Mr. Wesley professed himself quite "scandalised" at the constant struggles of the family, and did a little for the wiping away of the reproach, but no more. "Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you ever really wanted bread?" said the good Archbishop Sharp one day, by way of preface to a very generous donation on the spot. "My Lord," was the reply, "I will freely own to your grace that, strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after as has often made it very unpleasant to me. And I think to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."
"All this, thank God," said Mr. Wesley, "does not in the least sink my wife's spirits. She bears it with a courage which becomes her, and which I expected from her."
Mrs. Wesley's meditations on the matter carry with them an unchanging serenity of mind. "That man whose heart is penetrated with Divine love, and enjoys the manifestations of God's blissful presence, is happy, let his outward condition be what it will. This world, this present state of things, is but for a time. What is now future will be present, as what is already past once was. And then, as Pascal observes, a little earth thrown on our cold head will for ever determine our hopes and condition. Nor will it signify much who personated the prince or the beggar, since, with respect to the exterior, all must stand on the same level after death."
In a very dark hour she writes: "But even in this low ebb of fortune I am not without some kind interval…I adore and praise the unsearchable wisdom and boundless goodness of Almighty God for this dispensation of His providence towards me. For I clearly discern there is more of mercy in this disappointment of my hopes than there would have been in permitting me to enjoy all that I desired, because it hath given me a sight and sense of some sins which I had not before. I would not have imagined I was in the least inclined to idolatry, and covetousness, and want of practical subjection to the will of God…. Again, the furnace of affliction which now seems so hot and terrible to nature, had nothing more than a lambent flame, which was not designed to consume us, but only to purge away our dross, to purify and prepare the mind for its abode among those blessed ones that passed through the same trials before us into the celestial paradise…. How shall we then adore and praise what we cannot here apprehend aright! How will love and joy work in the soul! But I cannot express it; I cannot conceive it."
VIII.
A NEW DEPARTURE.
Where the great religious movement of the last century in England is to be traced to any human influence, the mother of John and Charles Wesley must have a large share of the sacred honour. This will be found to fall to her by right, not only on account of that profound religious education she imparted to her children, but also by reason of the peculiar direction which she gave it. Even in respect of their first institution of assemblies for the preaching of the Gospel outside the walls of churches or any stated places of worship, Susanna Wesley may be discovered to have led the way.
In the year 1711, during one of the protracted sojournings of Mr. Wesley in London attending Convocation, and also doing business with his publishers, his place at the parish church was supplied by a curate whose ministrations were not particularly efficient, although, as may be judged from things already told, the people of Epworth were not likely to be very exacting.
However, a notable reaction of feeling in favour of their minister had set in since the days of the fire, and the parishioners were, many of them, quietly attentive to Divine ordinances. Mrs. Wesley, without any pronounced hostility on her part toward the curate, felt a deep echo of the popular complaint in her own soul. Divine service at church had been cut down to one diet in the morning, and hence, to save her children and servants from temptation of mere idleness, the gifted mother felt herself called to set up a kind of service at the parsonage. Of this step she duly apprised her husband, saying: "I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent committed to me, under a trust by the great Lord of all the families of heaven and earth; and if I am unfaithful to Him or to you in neglecting to improve those talents, how shall I answer unto Him when He shall command me to render an account of my stewardship?"