After spending some months with her daughter in the neighbouring town of Gainsborough, Mrs. Wesley went, in September, 1736, to reside with her eldest son, at Tiverton, where she remained until July, 1737. Thence she removed to Wootton, Wiltshire, where Mr. Hall, who had married her daughter Martha, was curate. In the course of a few months, Mr. and Mrs. Hall removed to Salisbury, and Mrs. Wesley accompanied them to that ancient cathedral city. In the spring of 1739, she returned to the place of her birth, and there spent the remainder of her days. Fifty years before, in the bloom of early womanhood, she had left the mighty metropolis, to share in the joys and sorrows of a minister’s wife. Then, her father, mother, sisters, and brothers were all alive; now, all were numbered with the dead. The mother of the Wesleys herself was waiting, as in the land of Beulah, for the call, “Come ye up hither.” Her closing hours afforded ample evidence of a triumphant death. On the 23rd July, 1742, the founder of Methodism wrote in his journal—“Her look was calm and serene, and her eyes fixed upward, while we commended her soul to God. From three to four, the silver cord was loosening, the wheel breaking at the cistern, and then, without any struggle or sigh or groan, the soul was set at liberty.” Her distinguished son and all her surviving daughters stood round the bed, and fulfilled her last request: “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.” Some of those strains afterwards written by the dying widow’s minstrel son, would have been most appropriate.
In the presence of an almost innumerable company of people, John, with faltering voice, conducted her funeral ceremonies. As soon as the service was over, he stood up and preached a sermon over her open grave, selecting as his text Rev. xx. 11, 12. That sermon was never published. “But,” says the preacher, “it was one of the most solemn assemblies I ever saw, or expect to see on this side eternity.” “Forsaking nonconformity in early life,” says her biographer, “and maintaining for many years a devout and earnest discipleship in the Established Church, which, in theory she never renounces, in the two last years of her life she becomes a practical nonconformist, in attending the ministry and services of her sons in a separate and unconsecrated ‘conventicle.’ The two ends of her earthly life, separated by so wide an interval, in a certain sense embrace and kiss each other. Rocked in a nonconformist cradle, she now sleeps in a nonconformist grave.” There, in Bunhillfields burying-ground, near the dust of Bunyan, the immortal dreamer; of Watts, the poet of the sanctuary; De Foe, the champion of nonconformity; and of many of her father’s associates, her mortal remains await the “times of the restitution of all things.” A plain stone with a suitable inscription stands at the head of her grave.
A NOBLE WIFE.
A true wife, like the grace of God, is given, not bought. “Her price is far above rubies;” and, “the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.” Such a wife was Mrs. Wesley. In early life she did not disdain to study the minute details of domestic economy, hence she took her proper place at once in the parsonage at Epworth—managed a large household on very inadequate means—while her love for her husband, and regard for the welfare of her children, constrained her to use wisely and well the income entrusted to her control. Her husband laid his purse in her lap, assured that the comfort and responsibility of his house and the interest of his property were in safe keeping. After the disastrous fire, in regard to everything save their eight children, Mr. and Mrs. Wesley were about as poor as Adam and Eve when they first set up housekeeping. Thirteen years after that sad event, a wealthy relative was “strangely scandalised at the poverty of the furniture, and much more so at the meanness of the children’s habit.” The rector’s incarceration for a paltry debt of less than £30, before his friends could come to his rescue, was the heaviest trial of the heroic Mrs. Wesley. What little jewellery she had, including her marriage ring, she sent for his relief; but God provided for him in another way. “Tell me, Mrs. Wesley,” said good Archbishop Sharp, “whether you ever really wanted bread.” “My lord,” replied the noble woman, “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.” “You are certainly in the right,” replied his lordship, and made her a handsome present, which she had “reason to believe afforded him comfortable reflections before his exit.”
It is certain that the Wesley family lived a life of genteel starvation. The worldly circumstances of the clergy are better now. Curates have £100. South Ormsby is worth more than £250; and the rectorship of Epworth is now upwards of £900. But even in our days, the common tradesman exceeds many clergymen of the Church of England, and ministers of other Churches, in his command of real comfort and substantial independence. The former is respectable in moleskin, but the latter must have broad-cloth. This state of matters is intolerable, grossly unjust, and fearfully oppressive—a wrong done not to pastors only, but to society at large; whose interest suffers through theirs. England lodges in palaces and clothes her nobles, bishops, and merchants in purple; while she leaves many of the most pious and laborious ministers of Christ to be fed by the hand of charity, and clothed in the garments which respectability can no longer wear! What a reproach! When shall it be wiped away?
Between persons of so much decision and firmness as Mrs. Wesley and her husband, no doubt differences of opinion arose. But they were neither serious nor of long duration. The story about a protracted breach caused by the diversity of their sentiments concerning the revolution of 1688, if it have any foundation in fact, is grossly exaggerated in its details. Samuel Wesley and Susanna Annesley were drawn to each other by love and reverence; and if you want to see a marriage noble in every way, you must go to the rectory at Epworth where this couple lived. Their entire married life is one of the sweetest, tenderest, and noblest on record. Mrs. Wesley was always ready to stand by the rector. “Old as I am,” she writes, “since I have taken my husband ‘for bettor for worse,’ I’ll take my residence with him. Where he lives, will I live; where he dies, will I die; and there will we be buried. God do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part him and me.” These strong feelings of attachment were reciprocated by Mr. Wesley. “The more duty you pay her,” he writes to his son Samuel, “and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your affectionate father.” His picture of a good wife is an ideal description of the blessed virgin; but there is reason to believe that the original from which it was drawn was the rector’s own wife.
A GOOD MOTHER.
Who can over-estimate a woman’s worth in the relation of mother? The great Napoleon said: “A man is what his mother makes him.” Is there not much truth in the statement? The tender plant may be trained by the maternal hand for good or evil, weal or woe. John Randolph, the statesman, remarked: “I should have been a French atheist if it had not been for one recollection, and that was, the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hands in hers, and cause me on my knees to say, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’” Providence blessed Mrs. Wesley with a large family. She was the mother of nineteen children, most of whom lived to be educated, and ten came to man’s and woman’s estate. Her heart was deeply wrung by bereavements, probably at intervals too short to allow the wounds to heal; but the desolateness of her spirit was broken in upon by the faith that the departed were well, and that the mourner would go to them.
“Oh, when the mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,