The other Wesley

Hnaef tells me that as well as being Aldersgate Sunday (Methodist time) on Sunday, today the Anglicans also remember the Wesley brothers. A fine and fair tribute to men who went through hell and high water to preach the Gospel, both in spoken and sung word. But I wonder whether we are missing a trick here.

For who was the most important member of that family? Certainly the one who laid the foundations of her sons' piety and stubbornness in the face of adversity, I can't help thinking that the name "Susanna" is missing from a lot of people's thinking about the Wesleys. I find no mention of the older Mrs Wesley having a date in Common Worship (nor even in that more Anglican edition, "Middle-Class Worship"). Nor does she appear in the Catholic saints lists. Wesleyans mention her occasionally, as rightly they should. But the woman was a hero. She walked out of her father's church to join the good old C of E (TM Church Mouse). She had 19 children - 9 of them died in infancy, just imagine the grief of that. Her husband walked out on her for a year, got jobs with awful stipends, rowed with his patron, spent time in prison and wasted all their money on producing a book on Job. But she sowed the seeds that produced two of the finest Christian minds and two of the most productive English Christians in history. God bless you Susanna.