14. Susanna’s Widowhood and the Grace of God
Susanna’s Widowhood and the Grace of God
Although Susanna had revealed some weakness as she had realized that Samuel’s hour of death was drawing near, she was able to face the sad event when it actually occurred with much of her usual strength. Charles tells us, ‘My mother, who for several days before he died hardly ever went into his chamber but she was carried out again in a fit, was far less shocked than we expected; and told us that “now she was heard, in his having so easy a death, and her being strengthened to bear it”.’[1]
And as arrangements were made for her husband’s funeral Susanna also faced the grim realization that he had no possessions, that he still owed money, that his commentary on Job was not finished and that a new rector would soon be appointed to take over the parish. In only a short time, she would be obliged to move and would be dependent solely on the charity of her children. The difficult situation before her could not but have caused some alarm, even in so courageous a woman.
Her sons immediately exerted themselves on her behalf. Charles, in a letter to his brother Samuel, stated:
We have computed the debts, and find they amount to above £100, exclusive of cousin Richardson’s. Mrs Knight, her landlady, seized all her quick stock, valued at above £40, for £15 my father owed her, on Monday last, the day he was buried. And my brother this afternoon gives a note for the money, in order to get the stock at liberty to sell. . .
It will be highly necessary to bring all accounts of what he owed you, that you may mark all the goods in the house as principal creditor, and thereby secure to my mother time and liberty to sell them to the best advantage. . . If you take London in your way, my mother desires you will remember that she is a clergyman’s widow. Let the society give her what they please, she must be still in some degree burdensome to you, as she calls it. How do I envy you that glorious burden and wish I could share it with you![2]
We must assume that Samuel applied to the society for the relief of needy clergymen’s widows, but there is no evidence that she received anything from that body. But ‘Samuel Wesley tells John on April 29 that he has paid £30 to save his mother, who had been arrested for debt, and £15 more to Mrs Knight “who threatened the same usage”. “Mr Hutchinson and Mr Vernon have sent my mother ten guineas apiece.”’ Two months later, John Wesley said to Vernon, ‘You have a just claim. . . for continuance of your regard to my mother. . .’[3] Mr Vernon was one of the trustees for the colony of Georgia.
John soon finished his father’s commentary on Job and had it printed. Since Samuel had dedicated it to the queen John now received permission to present a copy to her. When he ‘was introduced to the royal presence, the queen was romping with her maids of honour; but she suspended her play, took the book from his hand, and said, “It is very prettily bound,” and then laid it down without opening it.’
All too soon there came for Susanna the sad moment of saying farewell to Epworth and moving out of the rectory. We can imagine the feelings with which she must have packed up her few belongings and prepared to take her leave. It was undoubtedly with deep emotion that she recalled many of the experiences she had undergone there. In this house she had given birth to eleven children, six of whom she had seen buried. She was sure to think of the traumatic occasion on which Samuel had left her and her little ones and had applied for a position as a naval chaplain. And she undoubtedly called to mind the two fires, the one in which the rectory had been only partially destroyed, and the other in which the boy John had been dramatically rescued and the entire rectory had been burnt down. Here too she had conducted the school for her children, disciplining them with a firm but kind hand, training their minds and instructing them in piety as well as academics. Did she think too of Hetty, and her enforced marriage to so boorish and unsuitable a man as William Wright? These and countless other memories must have flooded her mind as she prepared to leave this house which had been her home for so long.
Susanna’s sons were all willing to provide her with a home but they lacked the means to do so. John had little beside the £45 or so from his fellowship and had no place of his own in which she could live. Charles was not yet ordained and had no income apart from the small amount he earned by his tutoring. Samuel was the most able, for his school provided him with an adequate salary.
Susanna went first to stay with her daughter Emilia, who was conducting a girls’ boarding school at Gainsborough. While there she wrote to John — her first letter since the loss of her husband. She began by speaking of God as the ‘I AM’ and then went on to say,
I have long since chosen him for my only good, my all; my pleasure, my happiness in this world as in the world to come. . . Yet I do not long to go home, as in reason I ought to do. This often shocks me; and as I constantly pray (almost without ceasing) for thee, my son, so I beg you likewise to pray for me, that God would make me better, and take me at the best.
Your loving mother,
Life at the girls’ boarding school was probably not very comfortable for Susanna. Emilia’s income was not sufficient to provide more than the bare necessities of life and during the hours when school was out the place would have been filled with noise and bustle. None the less, Susanna, now a woman of sixty-seven, remained at the school for more than a year.
While Susanna was living with Emilia, John and Charles suddenly took a step which was to bring about a radical change in their lives. They left England to sail for Georgia, America’s newest colony, where they intended to serve as missionaries. Methodist sentiment a century later depicted Susanna as saying, ‘Had I twenty sons, I would they were all so employed,’ but while that may have been her heart’s desire it is to be doubted whether she actually ever used those words. She needed her sons near her and wanted them each settled in a living in England. Neither she nor they had the least idea as to when they would return, and she had reason to fear she might never see them again. Their departure was undoubtedly a cause of deep sorrow to her.
After more than a year at Emilia’s school, in September 1736 Susanna went to reside with her son Samuel at Tiverton. He had always been her favourite child and his home and salary were sufficient to provide for her comfort. Although Samuel’s wife had a sharp tongue and easily offended people there is no suggestion of any discord between her and her gracious mother-in-law.
However, Westley Hall apparently interfered with the harmony in the home. He told Mrs Matthew Wesley in London that there had been friction between Susanna and her son Samuel, and that she was leaving to go and live with the Halls. The spreading of this tale manifestly wounded Susanna, and Hetty, who was frequently at her Uncle Matthew’s and was aware as to how the tale had come about, wrote to her mother, explaining the matter and consoling her.[5]
None the less, after nearly a year at Tiverton Susanna did leave to go and live with the Halls. Hall had not yet begun the evil practices that characterized his later years and Susanna stated, ‘Mr Hall. . . behaves like a gentleman and a Christian, and my daughter [Martha] with as much duty and tenderness as can be expected.’[6] She appears to have been happy throughout the time that she stayed with them.
While Susanna was with the Halls both Charles and John returned from Georgia. Her strong conviction that they owed it to her to remain in England stands out in Charles’s statement that ‘She vehemently protested against our returning to Georgia.’
But, in the planning of God, both of these men were about to undergo the greatest change in their lives. One of their friends, George Whitefield, who had lately left for Georgia, had been preaching in London to crowds that no church could hold. Charles had heard him, and John, on his arrival in England, learned of his outstanding success and was deeply interested. Whitefield had preached a different message from the one which the Wesleys were used to. He declared, ‘Ye must be born again,’ and his ministry had borne fruit in the transformation of many lives.
Whitefield’s message also coincided with one the Wesleys had heard during their absence from England. While on the vessel outward bound, they had been in company with a group of evangelical Germans known as Moravians and these people — men, women and children — had set them an example of calm fearlessness amidst the fury of a raging storm at sea. Then, during their days in Georgia they had frequently been in the company of Moravians, and from them they had learned more about the gospel, the truth of ‘salvation by faith’.
On their return to England the Wesleys attended a religious society that a number of Moravians also attended. John and Charles both became filled with a longing to experience the salvation by faith of which they were now constantly hearing and they yearned to receive the assurance which they were told it would bring.
Charles came into the experience of salvation first. The date was 21 May 1738, and he exultingly testified, ‘I was in a new heaven and a new earth.’ He tells us, ‘I wrote a hymn upon my conversion,’ and it was probably the one beginning,
And can it be that I should gain,
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?[7]
Three days later, on 24 May, there came for John the now famous experience in Aldersgate Street, when he felt his heart ‘strangely warmed’ and felt that God had taken away his sins and saved him from the law of sin and death.[8] He then went with a company of friends to the home in which Charles was staying and they all joined in singing Charles’s conversion hymn.
The Wesleys now began to declare the message of ‘salvation by faith’ in their preaching and in their correspondence. They wrote of their experience to their brother Samuel and he manifested his strong opposition to their ‘new theology’.
Above all, they wrote of it to their mother and her replies reveal what she believed at that stage in her life concerning the way of salvation. For instance, in a letter she wrote to Charles on 19 October 1738, she said,
Blessed be God, who showed you the necessity you were in of a Saviour to deliver you from the power of sin and Satan (for Christ will be no Saviour to such as see not their need of one), and directed you by faith to lay hold of that stupendous mercy offered us by redeeming love. Jesus is the only Physician of souls; his blood the only salve that can heal a wounded conscience.
It is not in wealth, or honour, or sensual pleasure, to relieve a spirit heavy laden and weary of the burden of sin. These things have power to increase our guilt by alienating our hearts from God; but none to make our peace with him, to reconcile God to man and man to God, and to renew the union between the divine and human nature.
No, there is none but Christ, none but Christ, who is sufficient for these things. But blessed be God, he is an all-sufficient Saviour, and blessed be his holy name that thou hast found him a Saviour to thee, my son! Oh let us love him much for we have much forgiven.
I would gladly know what your notion is of justifying faith, because you speak of it as a thing you have recently received.
Charles evidently replied that this justifying faith was indeed a thing he had only recently received. She answered:
I think you are fallen into an odd way of thinking. You say that till within a few months you had no spiritual life, nor any justifying faith.
Now this is as if a man should affirm he was not alive in his infancy, because when an infant he did not know he was alive. All then that I can gather from your letter is that, till a little while ago you were not so well satisfied of your being a Christian as you are now. I heartily rejoice that you have now attained to a strong and lively hope in God’s mercy through Christ. Not that I can think that you were totally without saving faith before: but it is one thing to have faith, and another thing to be sensible we have it.
Faith is the fruit of the Spirit, and the gift of God; but to feel or be inwardly sensible that we have true faith requires a farther operation of God’s Holy Spirit. You say you have peace, but not joy in believing. Blessed be God for peace! May this peace rest with you. Joy will follow, perhaps not very closely, but it will follow faith and love. God’s promises are sealed to us, but not dated, therefore patiently attend his pleasure. He will give you joy in believing. Amen.
In these two letters Susanna reveals both a knowledge of the way of salvation and at the same time confusion on the subject. She declares that Christ is the only Saviour and that in order to receive him one must know one’s need of him. Yet she cannot believe that Charles was ‘totally without saving faith’ till the event that he termed his conversion. She has no concept of being divinely remade, of becoming ‘a new creation in Christ’ in the new birth, but she glimpses something of the assurance of salvation for she says, ‘To be inwardly sensible that we have true faith requires a farther operation of God’s Holy Spirit.’ In some regards she was in advance of the teachings she had long been used to, and yet in others she was in bondage to them.
Before another year had passed death again entered Susanna’s family. It took her first-born, her son Samuel. Although he had been ailing for some years he had conducted his duties without fail. But ‘On the night of November 5, 1739 he went to bed seemingly as well as usual, was taken ill about three o’clock in the morning and died at seven.’
Samuel had almost impoverished himself in sending money to help his father, he had assisted John during his Oxford days and had likewise aided Kezia. Devoting himself to the work of teaching, he had seldom preached, but had punctuated his life with the writing of poetry. During the following century a volume of 178 of his poems was published, drawing favourable comment from authorities on the poetry, and eight of his hymns found a place in the Methodist Hymn Book.
We would have expected that Susanna would be painfully distressed by the sudden loss of this son, the one she particularly loved. But in a letter to Charles she stated,
Your brother was exceeding dear to me in his life, and perhaps I have erred in loving him too well. I once thought it impossible for me to bear his loss, but none know what they can bear till they are tried. . . I rejoice in having a comfortable hope of my dear son’s salvation. He is now at rest and would not return to earth, to gain the world. Why then should I mourn?. . .
It was natural to think that I should be troubled for my dear son’s death because a considerable part of my support was cut off. But to say the truth, I have never had one anxious thought of such matters: for it came immediately into my mind that God, by my child’s loss, had called me to a firmer dependence upon himself. . .
I cannot write much, being but weak. I have not been downstairs above ten weeks, though better than I was lately.[11]
About the time that Susanna wrote this letter, December 1739, her son John began using a building he had acquired in London. It was a former factory known as the Foundery. He made a large part of it into a meeting-house and a smaller section became his living quarters. Susanna said, ‘Since I have been informed that Mr Hall intends to move his family to London. . . I must go with them.’[12] John was now well able to provide for her and his apartment became her home for the rest of her life. While living with John she was undoubtedly as well supplied with the necessities of life as at any time since she left her father’s home fifty years earlier.
Since Susanna lived virtually at John’s meeting-house, as was to be expected, she began to attend his services. From the time that she had left Dissent as a girl she had known only the services of the Church of England, but she was now attending Methodist services and although Methodism was still part of the Church of England its message was different. She was aware of the change that had come in the lives and the ministries of John and Charles following their conversions in May 1738, and she now heard them declare that salvation is not the reward of works but is the gift of God ‘to him that believeth’. And round about her, Sunday by Sunday, there moved a number of Methodist people who all testified with confidence that they were converted and that they were conscious of the assurance of being saved.
Westley Hall was on the verge of renouncing all relationship with Christianity but at this point he still functioned as a clergyman. At times John invited him to supply the pulpit at the Foundery and it was after one of these occasions, apparently in January 1740, when he took part in a communion service, that Susanna stated, ‘While my son Hall was pronouncing these words in delivering the cup to me, “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,” these words struck through my heart, and I knew that God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.’[13]
Charles Wesley was convinced that up to this point his mother had lived, to use his own words, in ‘a legal night of seventy years’. In a burning desire to remove any vestiges of her long belief that she was saved by her works he wrote to her, apparently declaring that she had previously been in a lost and hell-deserving condition, and in saying such things he could be harsh and abrasive. She replied, saying,
The Foundery, John’s meeting-house, which was Susanna’s home for the last few years of her life
I thank you for your kind letter. I call it so, because I verily believe it was dictated by a sincere desire of my spiritual and eternal good. There is too much truth in many of your accusations; nor do I intend to say one word in my own defence, but rather choose to refer all things to him that knoweth all things. . .
I am not one of those who have never been enlightened, or made partaker of the heavenly gift, or of the Holy Ghost, but have many years since been fully awakened, and am deeply sensible of sin, both original and actual. My case is rather like that of the Church of Ephesus; I have not been faithful to the talents committed to my trust, and have lost my first love. . .
I do not, I will not, despair; for ever since my sad defection, when I was almost without hope, when I had forgotten God, yet I then found he had not forgotten me. Even then he did by his Spirit apply the merits of the great atonement to my soul, by telling me that Christ died for me.[14]
How are we to view this letter? Is Susanna stating that she did not become a true believer for the first time in the experience at that communion service, but that she had already known Christ as her Saviour for many years? Quite possibly this is her meaning. She honestly admits that she ‘had lost her first love’, but she also declares that God had brought her back to himself.
There is really no need for us to attempt to decide at what point Susanna was converted. Rather we may rejoice in the evidence that she had probably known the Lord for a long time and in the certainty of salvation to which she manifestly came as the result of this experience late in her life.
Susanna was now called upon to witness another death in her family. She had recently buried her first-born and now she attended the funeral of her last-born. Her youngest daughter Kezia, who had never been strong and who had suffered heartbreak when the profession of love made to her by Westley Hall had proved to be false, passed away in March 1741. ‘Full of thankfulness, resignation and love, without pain or trouble, she commended her spirit into the hands of Jesus, and fell asleep.’
Susanna’s own life was now likewise drawing to its close. Although many think of her as having always been a robust, healthy woman, such a concept is the very opposite of the truth. Her daughter Emilia spoke of her as repeatedly enduring suffering, ‘occasioned by want of clothes or convenient meat’. And she herself said, ‘I have many years suffered much pain and great bodily infirmities.’ Yet she could also say, ‘Those very sufferings have, by the blessing of God, been of excellent use, and proved the most proper means of reclaiming me from a vain conversation; insomuch that I cannot say I had been better without this affliction, this disease, this loss, want, contempt or reproach. All my sufferings . . . have concurred to promote my spiritual and eternal good.’[15]
John’s ministry took him away from home much of the time, but three of Susanna’s daughters lived in London and one of them could always be with her. During July 1742, John was in Bristol, but he received a note from one of his sisters, telling him that his mother was near death. He rode post-haste to London and found her, he said, ‘on the borders of eternity. But she had no doubt or fear; nor any desire but (as soon as God should call) “to depart and to be with Christ”.’
The following day the daughters Emilia, Sukey, Hetty, Anne and Martha all came to John’s apartment and gathered in prayerful solemnity around her bed. John’s Journal continues: ‘I sat down on the bedside. She was in her last conflict; unable to speak, but, I believe, quite sensible. 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 loosing and the wheel breaking at the cistern; and then, without any struggle, or sigh or groan, her soul was set at liberty. We stood around the bed, and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little before she lost her speech, “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.”’[16]
What did they sing? We are not told, but one hymn which would have been very appropriate was the one written by her son Charles that begins:
Happy soul, thy days are ended,
All thy mourning days below;
To the sight of Jesus go!
Waiting to receive thy spirit,
Lo! the Saviour stands above;
Shows the purchase of his merit,
Reaches out the crown of love.
John also reports the funeral service. He says, ‘Aug. 1, Sunday. Almost an innumerable company of people being gathered together, about five in the afternoon I committed to the earth the body of my mother, to sleep with her fathers. The portion of Scripture from which I afterwards spoke was, “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written, in the books, according to their works.” It was one of the most solemn assemblies I ever saw, or expect to see on this side of eternity.’[17]
The interment was in the Bunhill Fields cemetery where such eminent Christians as John Bunyan, John Owen and Isaac Watts are also buried. The stone placed over the grave bore the inscription:
Here lies the body
of
MRS SUSANNA WESLEY
The youngest and last surviving daughter of
Dr Samuel Annesley
In sure and steadfast hope to rise
And claim her mansion in the skies,
A Christian here her flesh laid down,
The cross exchanging for a crown.
True daughter of affliction, she,
Inured to pain and misery,
Mourned a long night of griefs and fears,
A legal night of seventy years.
The Father then revealed his Son,
Him in the broken bread made known;
She knew and felt her sins forgiven
And found the earnest of her heaven.
Meet for the fellowship above,
She heard the call, ‘Arise my love!’
‘I come,’ her dying looks replied,
And lamb-like as her Lord she died.[18]
So passed from this life the soul of Susanna Annesley Wesley on 23 July 1742. She was in her seventy-fourth year.
We may well rejoice in Mrs Wesley’s Christian description of death as being ‘released’! For her there was no fear, no mystery, no darkness. It meant rather a happy setting free from care, from pain and trial, the rending of the bonds that had bound her to the realm of time and sense. She has passed through the valley of the shadow of death, led by her tender and all-knowing Shepherd, and now, though loved ones mourn that she is ‘absent from the body’, her soul has entered the unspeakable rejoicing of being ‘for ever with the Lord’!
Though Susanna had nothing of earth’s goods to leave to her children, she possessed many qualities of character that she passed on to each of them, in varying measure.
She had set apart an hour each day, apparently from six to seven in the evening, to be alone with God. During that time she read the Scriptures, meditated and prayed, and she allowed virtually nothing to prevent her from fulfilling this practice. In doing so, she set an example that her children could never forget.
The patience with which she bore the trials of her life — the domineering by her husband, the family’s constant poverty and her several disappointments — was a remarkable feature of her character and it became evident in turn in each of the girls. The same quality was manifest in the ministries of John and Charles, as they repeatedly faced the violence of outraged mobs, yet would return the next day to declare the gospel to the same people, and continued to do so till they had won many of them to Christ.
Susanna had none of the wit that was frequently displayed by her husband, but she had about her a sincerity that governed all her actions and gave a definite purpose to her life. Similarly, although we are not given any information as to what education she received as a girl, we have seen that by the time she reached maturity she possessed a wide vocabulary, used the English language with precision and had a knowledge of theology superior to that of many ministers.
Although these qualities, in varying degrees, were passed on to all of Susanna’s children, mankind has especial reason to be thankful that her sons Charles and John possessed them. We may all rejoice in the wealth of Christian song made available in the hymns composed by Charles, as well as in the masterly evangelistic career of John, culminating in his organizing of the Methodist Church. But although certain of these abilities were derived from their father, Samuel, it was especially from their mother, Susanna, in the providence of God, that they inherited the qualities which enabled them to achieve so much.
Well may all, even as many as know the name of Wesley, remembering Susanna’s wealth of knowledge, her rare patience and self-sacrificing goodness, obey the scriptural injunction to ‘rise up and call her blessed’!