Susanna Wesley, Educator

You might say that Susanna Wesley was an innovative educator when it came to the homeschooling of the 10 of her 19 children who survived infancy.

And she had the background for the task. She was the youngest of the learned Samuel Annesley’s 25 children. Before she was out of her teens she knew Greek, Latin, and French and was proficient in theology and philosophy.

She was married to Samuel Wesley when she was 20 and he 27. As children began to come along, she designated one room of the parsonage as the school room. In that room there was to be no loud talking, and no coming and going except for good cause. For Susanna and her brood, formal learning was scheduled to last six hours a day during weekdays and it was to be serious business.

“The day before a child’s education was to begin,” Susanna wrote to her son John years later, “the house was set in order, everyone’s work appointed them (sic), and a charge given that none except the child involved should come into the room from nine till twelve and from two till five.” These were the inviolate school hours.

Formal learning was to begin the day after each child’s fifth birthday. Each was then given one day to learn the alphabet. Susanna reports that two children, Molly and Nancy, took a day and a half before they knew the letters perfectly. In this she implies that they were slow, but she later revised this view when she saw how very slowly in comparison other children outside her family learned the alphabet.

She would have followed her start-at-age-five rule with Kezzy also but she complains in her letter to John that her husband overruled her and insisted Kezzy be started earlier. She reports that Kezzy was “more years learning, than any of the rest had been months.”

As soon as the children had learned the letters, they began in the first chapter of Genesis by spelling and reading a line, then a verse, then two verses, and so on. They never left a lesson until they could do it perfectly. Susanna writes: “…it is almost incredible, what a child may be taught in a quarter of a year, by a vigorous application, if (the child) have but a tolerable capacity, and good health.”

This kind of regimentation might make a modern educator groan in protest. And Susanna Wesley’s pedagogy might not work equally with a sampling of 20 or so children today. After all, the Wesley children were extraordinarily bright. As well, it is worth noting that she was teaching them to read one at a time, not as a group as we tend to do in today’s classrooms. In any event, in an age when illiteracy was high among men, and even higher among women, and close to universal in Epworth, Susanna’s method is validated by the fact that her little flock all learned to read well and this gift was given them for a lifetime of usefulness and pleasure.

If this little slice-of-life makes Susanna Wesley seem like a severe parent and a Marine sergeant all rolled into one person, consider one other aspect of her pedagogy. She wrote to her husband, Samuel, during one of his long absences in London, giving the following glimpse into her mentoring practices.

“I take such a proportion of time as I can best spare every night to discuss with each child, by itself, on something that relates to its principal concerns. On Monday I talk with Molly; on Tuesday with Hetty; Wednesday with Nancy; Thursday with Jackie (John); Friday with Patty; Saturday with Charles; and with Emily and Sukey on Sunday.”

Think of the emotional or intellectual enrichment that could be added to many an emotionally impoverished or neglected child today by a one hour face-to-face with a parent genuinely interested in sharing the child’s agenda for that hour. It would be far more enriching than the time so commonly devoted these days to cell phones, the internet, and television.

Who today can deny the wisdom of a Christian mother who, on the one hand, insists that her children master the objective symbols of learning like words and numbers and facts while, on the other hand, encouraging the exploration of personal experiences during visits between parent and child when the child sets the subject agenda?

The Fire in the Parsonage

At six years of age, John Wesley came precariously near to losing his life in a raging parsonage fire.

Epworth rectory was an old house — how old nobody knows. One record dated 1607 shows that it had already existed nearly a century before the Wesley family occupied it near the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. The 1607 record describes it as a three story house constructed of ancient timbers, lath and plaster, plus a thatched roof. It was dusty and dry and seven years earlier, in 1702 (the year before John Wesley’s birth) that same parsonage had been damaged by a mysterious fire, but had been saved and repaired.

Then came the raging fire of August 24, 1709. It could well have wiped out the whole family. It began near midnight. Susanna was ill and she and Samuel were sleeping in separate rooms. She had two boys with her. Samuel hearing the cry of “fire” in the streets, ran to Susanna’s room but the door was locked and he could not break in. Fortunately all the commotion awakened her and she and the two boys hurriedly walked through the flames on the front stairs. She received only scorched hand and face. Samuel then raced to the nursery where the younger children were in the care of a maid and hurried them out through the back part of the house. But, once he was out he realized that “Jackie” (son John) was missing.

Just then John’s face appeared at the upstairs window of the room where he had been sleeping. He had been awakened by the fire that was already playing along the ceiling of his room. There was no time for the crowd to get a ladder, and Samuel was sure his son would die, so he knelt and commended him to God.

But a strong man in the crowd stood against the wall beneath the window and another man was hoisted onto his shoulders, bringing him near enough to the height of the upstairs window to reach John.

The appearance of the man frightened John and he disappeared from the window to try the door of his room. It was already in flames. He returned to the window and fell into the arms of the man. At that very moment, the roof collapsed and the burning thatch dropped into the room. John was saved — but just in time.

The cause of the fire was never established but there were suspicions. Someone blamed it on Samuel’s carelessness. There were hints of arson. The ruffians of the town of Epworth had often threatened destructive actions against the rector and his family. And these were more than mere threats. Samuel’s cows had been stabbed, his dog lost a leg, and the children, while at play in the yard, had been threatened menacingly by men who came by.

John’s amazing rescue registered deeply with the parents. All the children had been saved, but Susanna was particularly grateful for the mercy shown to son John. Two years later, May 17, 1711, she wrote a prayer saying she intended “to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavors to instill into his mind the disciplines of thy true religion and virtue.”

In his adulthood, John Wesley himself saw the great deliverance as an expression of God’s providence — his governance of the affairs of all mankind — and was convinced that he had been spared for a special reason. This event had a profound effect upon
the shaping of his ministry.

In 1737, at 34 years of age, he began to ascribe to the event the biblical expression, “a brand plucked from the burning” (Zech. 3:2). A modern version says: “Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire? (NIV) In other words, he was saved from a fiery death by the Divine Hand so that he could carry out a special ministry at God’s behest.

We all have had such providences — perhaps not so dramatic but equally real and lifeshaping. And we should reflect on them as evidences of God’s immeasurable mercies toward us to some purpose!

In the light of these mercies, dare we take lightly the call of Christ to personal salvation and then to lives of committed service?

The Mother of Methodism

Susanna Wesley is sometimes referred to as the Mother of Methodism. She played no active part in the movement but raised the sons, John and Charles, who led it. She was an unusually intelligent, gifted, and attractive woman. There is ample historical evidence to bear this out. While still in her teens she knew Latin, Greek and French. As a youth she had steeped herself in theology. She was also a deeply involved mother. She stands high among the women of the Eighteenth Century.

She gave birth to 19 children in 21 years, although only ten of them lived to adulthood, seven girls and three boys. Along with her husband, she raised this family in an impoverished parish in the county of Lincolnshire, on the eastern side of the England north of London. It was the Fen Country, an area that had to be repeatedly drained because it was surrounded on three sides by rivers that periodically flooded. Most people of the area were rude and illiterate and did not take well to “intruders.” Some of them were vicious in their attacks on the Wesley household, both verbally and physically. This was the environment in which the Wesley children were raised.

Susanna’s husband, Samuel, was brilliant, a serious scholar and a faithful vicar, but a man who was not skilled in avoiding conflict. Nor did he handle the family’s sparse income well. And he did not seem to have strong child rearing instincts. She herself confessed to son John that, “’tis an unhappiness peculiar to our family that your father and I seldom think alike.”

So what were Susanna’s rules for raising the ten children who lived? John asked her for them and she complied in a long letter. Years later, July 24, 1732, he incorporated the letter into his journal. Her rules are detailed and fascinating.

For example, in raising children she notes that “the first thing to be done is to conquer their will, and bring them to an obedient temper.” (Two centuries later James Dobson qualified the idea by saying children’s wills must be conquered without wounding their spirits.) Her rationale for this first principle? She writes, “religion is nothing else than doing the will of God, and not our own” and explains that “As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after-wretchedness and irreligion.” That is why she was determined at the outset to insist on obedience as a first principle.

She also explains that she taught the children to be courteous in speech, to cry softly, and, at the same time, she enforced the rule that they would never get anything they cried for. She taught them to pray, and to distinguish the Sabbath from other days. (Remember that she came from devout Puritan stock). She explains that she created her own schoolroom in which the children were taught to read. She insisted that “no girl be taught to work (sewing, scrubbing, etc.) till she can read very well.” Illiteracy was widespread in the community but not in the rectory. Later the girls were taught to work with the same application and thoroughness.

Some students of the Eighteenth Century complain that children were treated as though they were no more than little adults. There may be some truth to that. Thus, they argue that Susanna’s rules are unacceptable for us today. But that is not always the response of those in our day who become acquainted with them.

Some years ago I was invited to be the speaker at a Baptist Parent-Teacher meeting. I decided I would introduce the audience to Susanna Wesley’s rules for child rearing, so I made copies as handouts. Even so, I was apprehensive that modern parents might react negatively because present ideas and practices for child-rearing are much more permissive. So I decided that I would distribute the Wesley rules, use them as the basis for my talk, and then gather them up afterwards.

The parents, mostly mothers, were fascinated and would not hear of it. They were avid about keeping their copies. My apprehension dissolved. It was as though Susanna’s words spoke to a felt need in the midst of today’s uncertainties about child-rearing.

Good child rearing practices are not a guarantee that children will make the wisest of decisions when they reach adulthood. And environment does have a bearing on how children come to their maturity. There were disappointments in the Wesley family especially among the girls. But these cannot diminish the mark Susanna Wesley left on the world through her devout and careful child-rearing practices. Her three clergymen sons, Samuel, John, and Charles, bear witness.

The Three John Wesleys

In late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century England, there were three John Wesleys born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley. First there was a John who died in infancy. Then came a John Benjamin, who also died in infancy. Then a third child named John Wesley was born. This John survived the ravages of infant mortality, reached adulthood, and became the main voice and organizer of a revival that brought the Methodist movement into being.

In those times of large families and high infant mortality it was not uncommon for parents to use the same name again when an earlier child bearing the name did not survive. That is precisely what Susanna Wesley did.

The John who survived is thought to be the 14th of 19 children born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley across the span of 21 years. Nine children died in infancy. What woman today can fathom the grief of a mother’s heart who must follow her cherished babies to the grave on nine different occasions?

There would be no solace in the fact that there were 19 children and thus other children were left for her to nurture and love. To a mother’s heart, every child is as precious and unique as if it were her only child, and no other child could fill its place. Susanna Wesley grieved her losses profoundly each of nine times.

If John Wesley is counted as the 14th child of Samuel and Susanna, born on June 28, 1703, his younger brother, Charles is believed to be the 17th, born December 18, 1707. Only three of Susanna’s male children survived to adulthood – John and Charles plus Samuel, an older brother, who, like them, was also an Anglican priest. So, John Wesley grew up in a household of girls.

John and Charles survived to become the divinely-appointed instruments for a revival of Christian faith that changed the face of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, then over-leaped the ocean to the American Colonies. John preached and wrote copiously, Charles composed hundreds of hymns that fueled the joy of the revival and credited him as the greatest hymn writer of the English world.

That the two survived to be God’s servants in such a special way when nine siblings did not we can only attribute to the mystery of God’s divine purposes.