CHAPTER XIV.

WIDOWHOOD.

THERE was nothing to detain Mrs. Wesley at Epworth after her few affairs were settled and her sons had returned to Tiverton and Oxford. Samuel took Kezia home with him, and the mother took up her abode for a season with her eldest daughter at Gainsborough. It was no doubt a comfort to her to be with Emilia, as the attachment between them had always been very strong, and Martha, the other daughter, who was particularly devoted to her mother, was in London, and preparing to be married. The man to whom she was engaged was Mr. Wesley (or Westley) Hall, the friend and disciple of her brothers at Oxford, who was mentioned in some of Mrs. Wesley's letters to her sons. Martha first met him while keeping her uncle Matthew's house in London, where he proposed to her and was accepted, and he afterwards accompanied John and Charles to Epworth, where, curiously enough, no one

seems to have known anything about his engagement, and he made diligent love to Kezia. After winning her affections, he pretended to have a vision from Heaven forbidding the match, and, probably being quite aware of Mr. Matthew Wesley's kind intentions towards his favorite niece, returned to his allegiance to Martha. When the brothers heard that she was about to marry Mr. Hall, they accused her of having robbed Kezia of her lover, and then she wrote a full account of the whole affair to her mother, who considered her quite justified in accepting Mr. Hall, and formally gave her consent to the match, adding that if the uncle also gave his, there could be no obstacle.

The pair were united in the summer of 1735, and went to reside at Wootton in Gloucestershire, where the bridegroom had a curacy. The wedding was celebrated by quite a long poem, which appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for September of that year.

The attention of John and Charles Wesley was just then much engrossed by their approaching departure to Georgia. General James Oglethorpe had some years previously founded the State of Georgia; he was, as we have seen, in correspondence with the

Rector of Epworth, and personally acquainted with Samuel Wesley of Westminster, and in this manner came to know his energetic and zealous young brother. In 1732 he returned to England to beat up recruits for the better population of his colony and mission work among the natives. Through the assistance of the Government he got together one hundred and thirty Highlanders and one hundred and seventy Germans to go back with him, and engaged John Wesley as chaplain and missionary, and Charles as his private secretary. When this expedition was first proposed to them it was personally distasteful, and John decidedly refused it. The general and the trustees urged him to reconsider his determination, and he, no doubt, remembered his father's warm interest in the colony. He was somewhat shaken in his resolution, but still said he could not leave England while his aged and infirm mother lived. Then he was asked whether her consent to his going would alter the case; so he went down to Gainsborough and spent three days with Mrs. Wesley and Emilia, resolving in his own mind to accept his mother's decision as the voice of Providence. Her reply to what he had to say to her was, "Had I twenty sons, I should

rejoice that they were all so employed, though I should never see them more."

This, of course, was conclusive; Charles was at once ordained, taking deacon's and priest's orders within a few days on account of the exigence of the circumstances, and with two Oxford friends, Mr. Ingham and Mr. Delamotte, they started in faith, and not without a spice of the love of adventure and change of scene natural to men of their age. They all sailed from Gravesend, in the good ship "Symmonds," on the 14th of October, 1735, about six months after the break-up of the home at Epworth.

It is not to be supposed that Mrs. Wesley did not exchange many letters with her sons on the subject, but only one has been preserved. The following short epistle was probably her first after they sailed:

GAINSBOROUGH, November 27, 1735. DEAR SON, — God is Being itself, the I AM, and therefore must necessarily be the Supreme Good! He is so infinitely blessed, that every perception of His blissful presence imparts a glad vitality to the heart. Every degree of approach towards Him is, in the same proportion, a degree of happiness; and I often think that were He always present to our mind, as we are present to Him, there would be no

pain nor sense of misery. I have long since chose Him for my only Good, my All, my pleasure, my happiness, in this world as well as in the world to come. And although I have not been so faithful to His grace as I ought to have been, yet I feel my spirit adheres to its choice, and aims daily at cleaving steadfastly unto God. Yet one thing often troubles me that notwithstanding I know that while we are present with the body we are absent from the Lord, notwithstanding I have no taste, no relish left for anything the world calls pleasure, 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,

SUSANNA WESLEY.

In September, 1736, Mrs. Wesley, who moved about more in her widowhood than she had done during all her previous life, went to reside with her eldest son at Tiverton, most likely taking the place of Kezia, who was invited by the Halls to go and live with them. She was heartily welcomed by Samuel and his wife, and Mrs. Berry, the mother of the latter. Samuel declared himself to be socially in a desert, "having no conversable person except my wife, until my mother came last week." It is almost certain that while at Tiverton Mrs. Wesley must have told her