HEARTS AFLAME

Prayers of Susanna, John and Charles Wesley

Edited by MICHAEL D. Triangle

Autor: Michael Mc Mullen

Michael McMullen was born in 1960, and grew up in Yorkshire. He studied Divinity at Aberdeen University for nine years, graduating with an Honours Degree in Divinity; followed by Master’s Degree, and then a Doctorate, in Historical Theology. He is an Associate Editor on Oxford’s New Dictionary of National Biography, He presently acts also as a part-time tutor in the Divinity Faculty of Aberdeen University and also in the Centre for Continuing Education there.

Pauline Webb is a broadcaster and an accredited lay preacher in the Methodist Church. She is a Fellow of King’s College, London, where she graduated in English Language and Literature, and also of the Selly Oak Colleges. She holds a Master’s degree in Theology from Union Theological Seminary, New York and is a former Vice-Moderator of the World Council of Churches. Pauline is a co-editor of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement.

 

 

First published 1995

Triangle

SPCK

Holy Trinity Church

Marylebone Road

London NW1 4DU

Selection and arrangement copyright 1995 Michael McMullen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-281-04791-X

Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain by BPC Paperbacks Ltd

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As one who travels a lot on ecumenical journeys, I have learned to travel lightly. Packing my case therefore places me in a dilemma. What books can I afford to include in my luggage alongside my Bible and the bulky documents which are always prescribed reading for conference proceedings? Eager to share with those of other traditions something of my own spiritual heritage I have always felt it essential to take with me two books. The first is Hym ns and Psalms, which contains some of the best of Charles Wesley’s theological and devotional verse. This poet of Methodism expresses in pristine simplicity both the funda-mental doctrines of the whole catholic church and the personal experience of faith which kindled the flames of the Methodist revival. A hymn that has become universally loved uses this powerful image:

0 Thou who Gamest from above

The pure celestial fire to impart

Kindle a flame of sacred love

On the mean altar of my heart

Devout Christians of every tradition would echo the prayer quoted in this present volume:

Spirit of interceding grace,

I know not how or what to pray,

Assist my utter helplessness,

The power into my heart convey.

That God, acknowledging your groan,

may answer in my prayers His own.

Beside the heavy tome of Charles Wesley’s hymns, I carry too a less well-known book of John Wesley’s prayers. In prose as concise and at times as sublime as his brother’s poetry, he too takes us into that heart-warming experience which so inflamed an earnest, pious priest that he became a fervent and enthusiastic evangelist. The flavour of those prayers is caught in many of the following pages of this present book. Addressing God as his ‘Covenant Friend’, John anticipates that Covenant Service which was to be-come Methodism’s unique contribution to the store of ecumenical liturgy:

I give Thee my will.

May I have no will of my own.

Whatsoever Thou wiliest

may I will and that only.

May I will Thy glory

in all things as Thou doss

and make that my end in everything.

Now, thanks to the publication of Hearts Aflame I shall be able to replace my two volumes of poems and prayers with one slimmer handbook, which distils the essence of both Charles’s and John’s devotional writing, but brings the added bonus of revealing a treasure trove I have never stumbled on before. Here we are presented with the prayers of that remarkable woman who was the mother of these founders of Methodism, and whose own meditations were the inspiration of so much of what I had hitherto known only through the writings of her sons.

Like so many women, Susanna Wesley is remembered mainly through her relationship with others. She was the loyal wife of a rector who gained a certain notoriety because of his frequent debts, and she was the mother of nineteen children. Yet somehow in the midst of this hectic household she managed to find time and space for herself and her own spiritual needs. She devoted a large part of every day of her life to the nurture of her family. She drew up bye-laws for their education which were far in advance of the custom of the time. Children of the eighteenth century were expected to be seen and not heard. Susanna makes the remarkable claim that she managed to teach each of her children to ‘cry quietly’ by the end of the first year, so that ‘the odious sound of children crying’ was never heard in her household. Nevertheless she treated her children with respect and kindness. Her husband Samuel once remarked: ‘I wonder at your patience: you have told that child twenty times the same thing.’ Susanna calmly replied ‘If I had satisfied myself by mentioning it only nineteen times I should have lost all my labour.’

To ensure the spiritual well-being of her family, Susanna allotted an hour each day to private conversation with each of her children separately, so that the ten who survived into adult life inherited a rich store of spiritual wisdom and personal counsel, which she continued to provide through continual correspondence after they had left home. Of John particularly she took special care. His rescue from the burning rectory at Epworth when he was still a small child convinced his mother that he was destined for some special purpose, as ‘a brand plucked from the burning’. In response to her care, throughout his life he relied on her advice, which she always gave with what he described as ‘a calm serenity’.

That serenity no doubt sprang from the fact that each day she also set aside time for herself and for her own devotional life. She was a woman of ’serious godliness’ but also one who enjoyed and meditated on the simple delights of life. She kept her mind alert through extensive reading. This demanding blend of an active and contemplative life finds expression within her prayers. One can almost hear within them the constant interruptions which threaten the peace of any household. In her prayer ‘Setting the Mind on Heaven’ she reflects, with some frustration, on how difficult it is for a busy mother to pray, even on the Lord’s day:

Another blessed day !

Lord, how could we support the cares and pains of life were it not for the refreshments of Thy dear and holy Day. How often do unforeseen accidents, indispositions and company divert the thoughts, alienate the affections and strongly turn aside the mind from intending and pursuing its eternal happiness!

Lord, might Thy creature remonstrate with Thy infinite Majesty, I would humbly beseech Thee to discover unto me the cause why I so long labour under such and so many difficulties in my way to Heaven,

as make me often of despairing ever to arrive there.

The prayers show an aspect of Susanna’s life which is not so well known as her domesticity. Not only was she a skilled housewife, she was also a thoughtful and questioning theologian, a disciplined writer and a fluent linguist. The extracts from her Devotional Journal quoted in this book do not shirk the larger questions of faith and doubt. Though she is often concerned with self-examination, there are some magnificent paeans of praise in sheer wonder at the greatness and goodness of God. From one who by all accounts had a hard life, beset by frequent illness and tragedy, she yet manages to write prayers that meet every circumstance of life with a glad response of faith. Prayers such as the one entitled ‘God’s Happy Day’ have a poignant power:

You did not give us being

to increase your own happiness and glory,

but to communicate Your happiness and glory.

Susanna’s prayers communicate that happiness to us across the centuries, calling us with her to rise above the chores of our daily life into the unending delights of eternity. For recovering these hitherto unpublished gems from obscurity, Michael McMullen will earn not only the gratitude of the people called Methodists but the appreciation of all women and men who long to learn how to pray in the midst of their busy lives.

Pauline Webb

 

The eighteenth century could be described as an age of cynicism fostering a spirit of indifference, at least as far as ‘True Religion’ was concerned. The Church of England, in the sad state that it was in at the time, was certainly not going to be the answer. Personal, living faith was not an issue: it just did not matter. Instead, dead morality was the stuff of sermons.

In the midst of this, God touched a handful of his servants in a special way, and thus the flame of the Evangelical Revival was lit. God granted great success to travelling preachers as they once again called sinners to repentance and to a personal faith in Christ. Both John Wesley and his brother, Charles, held key leadership positions in the Revival.

However, it was not from a void that these two men emerged. The influence of their remarkable mother, Susanna, on their lives and ministries is incalculable. This book consists of a selection of prayers taken from the writings of three particular members of the Wesley family: Susanna, John, and Charles.

It was suggested in W. L. Doughty’s 1956 collection of Susanna’s prayers that Susanna’s name would be familiar to most people of cultured interests. This comment was made not only because she was the mother of Charles and John Wesley, but also on her own account too. She was a woman with a wide breadth of understanding, keen intellectual sympathies, and deep religious convictions. Sadly, today one suspects that the name of Susanna Wesley has become as neglected as the names of many other Christian giants.

This seems such a tragedy when one becomes aware of the living, vital relationship that Susanna had with God, and of the priceless, written legacy that she has left to the church. Her original writings, which have been consulted in the preparation of this volume, consist mainly of entries she made in her Devotional Journal in the early part of the eighteenth century.

From an early age, Susanna resolved to spend part of each day in personal communion with God. This usually consisted of devotions for one hour morning and evening. One finds from her Journal that she kept her resolution faithfully, even adding the noonday to her time spent alone with God.

Susanna sometimes recorded the results of her frequent communing with God in the form of the meditations already mentioned. As she herself records on the title page of one of the Manuscripts, they are the reflections and meditations of her heart as she communed with her God. They are the outpourings of a soul as it bathed in the presence of its Redeemer, as it rejoiced in the love of its Lord.

As we read in one of her meditations, prayer is very precious, in that it is the immediate approach of a soul into God’s presence. As such, she says, it should not be entered into lightly. For Susanna, it was an honour to speak to the Sovereign Lord of the universe. God was too great to be trifled with; too wise to be fooled by insincere devotion, a sacrifice without a heart. The only protection against cold and formal performances, Susanna realizes, is to commune regularly and constantly with God.

We learn from Clarke’s Memoirs of the family that Susanna read widely, and though she endeavoured to conceal much of her extensive knowledge, it is felt to great advantage in all her writings. We learn of Susanna, for example, that early in her life she not only learned Latin, Greek, and French, but also became fluent in these languages.

As for her religion, it was as rational as it was scriptural and profound. In forming her creed, Susanna dug deep and laid her foundation upon a rock, and the storms and adversities of life never shook it. Even though she said that she did not despise or neglect the light of reason, speculative knowledge for its own sake was not the type of knowledge she desired.

To share in her own personal devotions is a great, but humbling, privilege. In her prayers, one experiences some- thin of the majesty of God, his transcendence, and his love for mankind, as well as something of the life and character of Susanna, and the great pressures that she lived and worked under. I have taken the words as she wrote them, and, with very little change, have presented them –together with those of John and Charles – as prayers and reflections that can be used in both private and public devotions.

Susanna’s maiden name was Annesley, daughter of Dr Samuel Annesley, a famous dissenter. She was born on 20 January 1669. At the age of twenty, she married the Revd Samuel Wesley, a committed Anglican. Samuel graduated with a BA from Oxford in 1688; was ordained priest in 1690; and became the rector at Epworth in 1695.

During the course of their marriage, the couple produced nineteen children, two of the most famous being John and Charles. Samuel was inept at financial management – even spending time in prison for debt – and therefore the resulting stresses upon Susanna were often very great. Also, Samuel was not altogether popular as a preacher, and it is even possible that the fire that destroyed the Wesleys’ Epworth home was arson rather than an accident. In addition, Susanna suffered from prolonged bouts of ill-health.

When one is aware of something of the life of Susanna, the prayers of this remarkable woman, with their over-flowing joy and wholehearted trust in God, become all the more real. They indeed testify to the great, all-encompassing vision she had of her Almighty Saviour, a vision that the church desperately needs to recapture today. To that end, these prayers are taken from her journal, that they might be prayed and believed again.

As far as John is concerned, he was born some four years earlier than his brother Charles, in 1703, the fifteenth child in his family. At the age of ten he went to Charterhouse School in Surrey, followed by University at Oxford. He was ordained Deacon in 1725, and the following year he was elected a Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford.

The following year he graduated with an MA, and in 1728 he was ordained Presbyter. In May 1738, John recorded that God strangely warmed his heart in an evangelical conversion experience. The impact of that event had far-reaching consequences, as the Evangelical Revival and the rise of Methodism testify.

In his teaching at Lincoln College, Oxford, we discover that John’s aim in his teaching was not only to produce scholars, but Christian scholars. To that end, he wrote prayers for them for each day of the week. The original Collection is made up of devotions gleaned and composed from a wide variety of sources, including Scripture, prayer books, and other popular devotional books of his time.

It is a remarkable fact that Wesley produced this Collection some five years before his heart was warmly touched by God. John did produce a second Collection later in his life, and this formed part of his Collected Works. John’s intention for his first publication was that it might encourage those who read it to give their whole hearts and lives to God. This worthy aim is echoed in the selection of prayers in Hearts Aflame, which includes a number from Wesley’s Collection.

The journal of John Wesley reveals very quickly the fact that John was a man who lived in a constant attitude of prayer. His writings reflect the fact that his experience of God was close, joyful, and life-changing, and this comes across clearly in his prayers and devotions. In one of his prayers included here, for example, John reminds us that it was by prayer, by our communion with God, that the life of God was preserved in the soul. Prayer is something that is as vital for the spiritual life as air is to the natural life. John would have all Christians know that all they do, even when eating and sleeping, is prayer, when we have no other object in mind than God’s love and the desire to please him.

Thus John Wesley’s Christianity consisted of a deep and personal relationship with his loving, heavenly Father; and this was a relationship that John wanted as many as he could reach with the gospel to experience. This was the impetus behind John’s miraculous record of preaching tours. It is calculated that throughout his ministry, John Wesley must have travelled 4,000 miles every year for over fifty years, covering in all some 250,000 miles, and preaching 40,000 sermons.

John’s younger brother Charles was born in 1707, the eighteenth child of Samuel and Susanna. Charles also went to Oxford, and was ordained in 1735. Three years later, he — like John — experienced something of a conversion to a living, evangelical faith.

It appears that Charles may have inherited some of the talent that he possessed for hymn writing from his father, Samuel. It should come as little surprise to learn that Samuel also earned some degree of fame for his prose and poetic writings, even if it was in small measure compared to that of his son, Charles. Charles Wesley composed over seven thousand hymns and spiritual poems, many of which remain in constant use by the world-wide Church. We should not underestimate the enormous contribution hymn singing made to the success of the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century. Thus much of the credit must go directly to Charles Wesley.

Through such hymns as he and others wrote, ordinary people were able to sing of their new-found Christian experiences, while all the while imbibing biblical and spiritual truths. Charles wrote his hymns and spiritual poetry with the intention that they be used both in public praise and private devotion.

The selection reprinted here is taken from the multi-volume series entitled The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley. Charles’s prayers, for that is what they truly are if prayer is the communing of the heart and soul with God, also tell us much about the man who composed them: a man filled with reverence for a holy, almighty, omniscient God; a man who knew what it was to have his spirit rise up in praise and adoration to a Being supremely worthy of all and more, and to whom he could return. He was also a man who knew that his God was the God who so loved humanity that he sent his own Divine Son to die for us all.

It is clear that Charles Wesley lived and breathed God’s word. It permeates all that he wrote, and in his words one finds oneself constantly speaking, singing, and praying the written word of God. This is one of the reasons that make the words of Charles, as included in this book, so rich, so living and powerful, so vital and relevant. The other reason that his words are still among the most widely used in public and private devotion the world over is that they reflect the fact that they are the product of a heart and mind that are wholly committed to God. In his words, Charles Wesley reveals God to us afresh, as the infinite God who is far above all that we can imagine, and yet who, in Christ, has come to suffer to bring us back into fellowship with God.

However, this is not only the God of Charles Wesley; this is the God of his brother and of his mother. It is the God, too, of the Bible and the whole earth. It is to this living God that these prayers were originally prayed, and it is the aim of this book that Christians will once again utilize this part of their great and precious heritage and rejoice together in Christ.

I will end this preface with a prayer by John Wesley from his Preface to his 1733 Collection:

May He so enlighten our eyes, that we may reckon all things but loss, for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord; and so establish our hearts that we may rejoice to suffer the loss of all things, and count them but Dung, that we may win Christ.

Dr Michael D, McMullen

Aberdeen, 1994