verses, yet persevering effort has had its reward, so that there is now a line of about a dozen stations stretching along the coast from the Tugela to the Umzimkulu, a distance of nearly one hundred and fifty miles, at each of which the Gospel is preached, a school taught, and, with one or two exceptions, a church formed.

ARTICLE VI.

THE MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS.

The Mother of the Wesleys. A Biography. By Rev. JOHN KIRK. Cincinnati: Poe & Hitchcock. 1865.*

THE power of maternal character and training is so uniformly acknowledged, that it is one of the first sources to which we look for the greatness of all great men. High on the noble list of mothers whose names are written in heaven, if not all on earth, stands Susannah Wesley, the mother of the honored founder of Methodism, and his equally illustrious brother, the Methodist lyric poet; men whom, now that time has softened the asperities of religious controversy, and revealed in its true proportions the work which they performed, the church universal recognizes with pride and reverence, as among her chief and peculiar treasures. The public history of John and Charles Wesley is familiar to every person of intelligence; their earnest words of exhortation and entreaty have still a living power; their hymns are sung in every land to which the Gospel has been carried. But the circumstances of their early home-life and education, though they have not been, and could not be denied the admiring comments of every biographer of the Wesley brothers, have yet received less attention than their remarkable character demands. It is to the mother of John and Charles Wesley that we would devote this article, hoping that however bare may be our recital of facts, it will awaken an interest which may be gratified elsewhere.

Of all the biographies of the Wesleys which we have seen, the most delightful, because the most graphic and gossippy, is * Reprinted from the first London edition, 1864.

Adam Clarke's "Wesley Family": for these qualities, which in ordinary memoirs are anything but commendable, become, when an extraordinary subject is under consideration, most valuable and charming, as giving us a breadth of view which a writer less in sympathy with his subject, and more regardful of his own literary reputation, would fail to afford. Enthusiastic to what seems sometimes like extravagance; partial, doubtless, in the recital of certain occurrences; yet as we finish the good Doctor's eulogistic volume, we hardly wonder at its closing sentence: "Such a family I have never read of, heard of, or known, nor since the days of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, has there ever been a family to which the human race has been more indebted."

Dr. Clarke's enthusiasm, while it may have led him astray occasionally in minor points, has yet been his greatest safeguard, in that his reverence for all that concerned the Wesley family has caused him to let them speak for themselves whenever possible, and to bring together an amount of original family documents which could not without much painstaking now be found elsewhere. It would have been well if the author of the volume named at the head of this article had had the modesty and wisdom to follow Dr. Clarke's example; if instead of exhortations and inferences he had devoted the space they consume to larger quotations from their family papers. His book is, however, written in a popular and interesting style, and we are glad the character which it chiefly aims to delineate is brought before the public at the present time.

We wish to give as large extracts from these original documents as our limits will allow. But we must first briefly sketch the circumstances of Mrs. Wesley's early life, and the influences which contributed to form her character. Her father, Dr. Samuel Annesley of London, was a non-conforming minister of good abilities and exemplary piety, of whom Richard Baxter once spoke as "a most sincere, godly, humble man, totally devoted to God." He was a leader among the non-conformists, highly esteemed in all their churches for his sound judgment and administrative ability, and respected by his opponents both for his firmness and his charity. Of Mrs. Wesley's mother little is known. She is believed to have been the daughter of John White, "a grave

lawyer," and M. P. for Southwark in 1640. Dr. and Mrs. Annesley are said to have had twenty-five children, of seven of whom some account has been preserved. They seemed all to have been well educated, of at least fair abilities, and some of them remarkable both for intellect and personal attractions. There is a portrait of Judith Annesley, supposed to be by Sir Peter Lely, which represents her as a very beautiful woman, and some of Mrs. Wesley's biographers allege that she was much more beautiful than her sister. Her sister, Elizabeth Annesley, who married John Dunton, an eccentric bookseller of some note, is described as "pleasant, witty and virtuous; mistress of all those graces which can be desired to make a complete woman ;" and Anne Annesley as "a wit for certain; than whom art never feigned nor nature formed, a finer woman." Susannah Annesley, afterwards Mrs. Wesley, was born in 1669. Her father's house was a school of piety and learning such as few families present, and she seems to have profited to the utmost by its opportunities. Her education, as evinced in her writings, while it may not have included all the fashionable accomplishments of the day, was thorough as to the more important studies. Her English is marvelously clear and compact, her reading evidently of no small extent, and her powers of reflection most precociously developed. Metaphysics seems to have been her favorite branch of study, and the leading theological questions of the time were investigated by her with an interest and acuteness very remarkable in a young girl, even in those days of religious agitation. The controversy between the advocates of conformity and non-conformity was at its height. Dr. Annesley was a dissenter, though one of the moderate sort. Susannah listened to the discussions which frequently took place at her father's house, pondered them, and perhaps assisted by the sympathy of Samuel Wesley, then a student at Stepney, and a frequent visitor at Dr. Annesley's, who about this time renounced non-conformity for the established church, she attached herself to the latter; as she says, "not being full thirteen." Says Dr. Clarke:

"It does not appear that her father threw any obstacles in her way, or that he afterwards disapproved of her marrying a rigid orthodox churchman; who from a similar process, became a convert from the peculiar tenets of his nonconformist ancestors to the eccle

siastical establishment of the kingdom, nor have I learned, after the most extensive research and the closest inquiry, that the slightest difference ever existed between him, his son-in-law and daughter, upon the subject."

A testimony most creditable to the liberality and Christian forbearance of Dr. Annesley in those days of heated and angry controversy. Mrs. Wesley remained through life a devoted adherent of the church of England, though when, in her old age, among the people to whom her sons ministered, lay preaching developed itself, much to John Wesley's astonishment, and at first displeasure, she manifested the same spirit of tolerance which her parents had shown to her.

"John,' says she, in reply to his request for her counsel in the matter, you know what my sentiments have been. You can not accuse me of favoring readily anything of this kind. But take care what you do with respect to that young man' (Thomas Maxfield), 'for he is as surely called of God to preach as you are. Examine what the fruits of his preaching have been, and hear him yourself.' In 1689 Susannah Annesley married the Rev. Samuel Wesley. As has been mentioned, he had left the Dissenters for the established church, and was now, at the age of twenty-eight or nine, considered a preacher and writer of promising talent. He was descended from an ancient, respectable and pious family. After a short residence in London, and at South Ormsby in Lincolnshire (at the latter terminated by a difference with his patron, in which the young clergyman's unbending integrity would not suffer him to yield a point of morality even in prospect of the loss of his living), Mr. and Mrs. Wesley took up their permanent abode at Epworth, an obscure town in the same county. Here most of their children were born, and here the influences of which Susannah Wesley was the centre, radiated to her children and through them to the world. Here she spent the best years of her life, of which she might doubtless have used with truth the words of her contemporary, Lady Russell, who in a more exalted position experienced no less the instability of earthly enjoyment, and the satisfaction of a religious life: "I have felt many days of bitter grief as well as others of lesser troubles and provocations, and many of great and true happiness, which was made up by love and quiet at home; abroad, by friendship and innocent diversions."

In order to the intelligent appreciation of what Mrs. Wesley accomplished in her Epworth home, it is necessary to place before the reader the circumstances in which her work was done, and ask him to bear them in mind as shadows to heighten the effect of the positive colors in the picture. And the shadows are deep enough. Poverty, with all its attendant ills, sickness, domestic afflictions and public misfortune, are not wanting. Nineteen sons and daughters, of whom ten at least lived to mature age, were reared at the Epworth parsonage, in intellectual affluence indeed, but extreme worldly destitution. In regard to the latter, so heavy was at times its pressure, that Mrs. Wesley once said to the Archbishop of York, that "though she had never yet quite wanted bread, she had so much trouble to get it, and so much anxiety about paying for it, that bread' on such terms was the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all." Her husband does not seem to have had much worldly wisdom, and the care of providing for the family out of his slender salary devolved principally upon her. Mr. Wesley was persecuted for his political opinions, his home watched, his cows stabbed, and himself cast into prison. "All this, thank God!" writes he, "does not in the least sink my wife's spirits." As the climax of their misfortunes, the rectory was twice on fire, and the last time was nearly consumed, with a great loss of furniture and clothing, which Mrs. Wesley says, twelve years after, had not then been made up. John Wesley escaped from the flames almost by a miracle. There is strong ground for suspicion that these fires had their origin in the same deadly hatred which caused the other persecutions. Family troubles, the ill-conduct of one child. for a time, and the unhappy marriages of several others, led Mrs. Wesley to exclaim, in a letter to her brother in India :

"O, sir! O, brother! happy, thrice happy are you, happy is my sister, that buried your children in infancy, secure from temptation, secure from guilt, secure from want or shame or loss of friends! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of misery; being gone from hence, nothing can touch them farther. Believe, me, sir, it is better to mourn ten children dead than one living; and I have buried many." She goes on: "Innumerable are other uneasinesses too tedious to mention; insomuch that what with my own indisposition, my master's infirmities" (Mr. Wesley was, for some years before his death, in feeble health), "the absence of my eldest, the