THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JOHN WESLEY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 282, 27 November 1937, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JOHN WESLEY

It will l>e 200 years. i,n January since John Wesley, who had been ordained a priest of the Church of England ten years before, re-turned to his native land from his short and unhappy mission in Georgia, and 200 years in May since, like his brother Charles, he underwent that "warming" of heart that changed him from a rigid High Churchman into one of the most ardent and effective evangelists that ever lived. The part he played from then onward to the end of his long life in the religious and social history of England, more especially his founding of the Methodist Churoh, will be celebrated by Methodists everywhere six months hence. There is appropriateness, therefore, in the publication ot an account of his private life by Mrs. G. Elsie Harrison, under the title "Son to Susanna" (Nicholson i,,nd Watson).

Aire. Harrison is well qualified for the task. She has been for long a student of Wesley, and has had access to original documents. Her work is remarkable for the light it throws on the inner life of both the Wesley brothers. Amusing in vein, and brilliantly written, it grips the. reader. Ho other life of Wesley is at once so vivid, so frank, and so illuminating. There is no mincing of words about his selfcentred, passionate and foolish father, with his head "full of jingling rhymes." His mother—pious, strict and methodical—is made no leas real to us, and her profound influence on him, the influence of his sisters, and, even more, the formative influence of the different women with whom he fell in love, are all brought out. The book will, without doubt, come as a shock to many. They will certainly be surprised to leern some things about Charles, for example, of the part ordinary love played in the composition of many of the wonderful hymns he wrote. The book will excite discussion, but it will be valued for what it professes to be—a "private" life.