But her part in the matter shows a deepening beauty from the first in fulfilment of the words of her Journal concerning John, with special reference to his remarkable rescue from the fire, “I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child, that Thou hast so mercifully provided for.”

When, at college, he and his brother, with their young companions, owing to their living by rule, first won the name of “Methodists,” amid sneers and persecutions, his mother cheered him on.  At that juncture, subsequently, when he was in a state of hesitancy as to entering the holy ministry, and his father had encouraged the idea of delay, his mother said, “The sooner you are a deacon the better”—­and broke the spell of what might have been a fatal backwardness.  On that evening, at Aldersgate Street, 24th May, 1738, so memorable in the spiritual history of Methodism, when John Wesley stood up in his newly-found fulness of the assurance of grace, and encountered much sharp rebuke on the spot, he had been well fortified beforehand with his mother’s sympathy, saying, “She was glad he had got into such a just way of thinking.”  She also saw eye to eye with him in his position in the controversy between Calvinism and Arminianism.

The beginning of lay-preaching dates, as we have seen, from her support of Thomas Maxfield, and the leading features of the mode of preaching which John Wesley recommended to his followers may be found, long before, in his mother’s counsels to himself—­“to avoid nice distinctions in public assemblies”—­to exalt Christ and the work of the Spirit.  “Here you may give free scope to your souls,” and “discourse without reserve, as His Spirit gives you utterance.”  Well does her son call her “in her measure and degree a preacher of righteousness.”

So shines the bright light of Susanna Wesley all along the upbuilding of that great Christian society which bears the name of her sons.  Her example must surely also be of special value at the present day, when, alike in the Church and in the world, the place of woman rises in importance, and the demand is for further opportunity of usefulness.  For the life of this gifted and saintly woman is characterised by a modesty that is above criticism, and, at the same time, shows no lack of the greatness of power and achievement in the work of the Lord.

JAMES CUNNINGHAM, M.A.

MRS. HEMANS.

Mrs. Hemans is fully entitled to a place in the ranks of Excellent Women, not only on account of her personal character, but also on account of the work she did—­a work removed from the “stunning tide,” but not the less effectual.