inadvertencies, mistakes, and sins of youth would
rise to your view; and how different the, sentiments of sensitive
pleasures, the desire of sexes and pernicious friendships of the world
would be then from what they are now while health is entire and seems to
promise many years of life."

X

WIDOWHOOD.

The Rector of Epworth had been slowly mastering his difficulties with
the world. The circumstances of the family seem to have taken a
favourable turn from the year 1724, when the small living of Wroote,
four miles distant, and valued at L50 a year, was added to that of
Epworth. The family removed to Wroote, and many of Mrs. Wesley's most
interesting letters are dated from the parsonage there. Her husband
continued to toil for some years at what he meant to be his great
work--his commentary on the Book of Job--but the outer man was visibly
perishing. His now palsied hand required the services of an amanuensis.
"My eyes and my heart," he said, "are now almost all I have left; and
bless God for them!" He died on the 25th of April, 1735, in the 72nd
year of his age.

His death was marked by many utterances of faith and of joy in God, and
by his memorable saying to his sons--"Be steady! The Christian faith
will surely revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I
shall not."

It was Samuel who was now for the most part charged with the support of
his mother; but in this duty there was a generous rivalry among-her
children. The name of John appears in discharge of the last of his
father's liabilities that had been cruelly pressed upon the very day of
the funeral; and Charles writes to Samuel--"My mother desires you will
remember that she is a clergyman's widow. Let the Society give her what
they please, she must be still, in some degree, burdensome to you. How
do I envy you that glorious burden, and wish I could share it with you:"

Mrs. Wesley having now left the "old place," settled for a little in the
neighbouring town of Gainsborough, and afterwards resided with Samuel at
Tiverton from September, 1736, till July, 1737.

Her sons John and Charles had now set out upon their well-known Gospel
enterprise to the State of Georgia in America. Their mother signalised
the hour by a letter full of solemn and ennobling thought, in which she
allows herself but slightly to touch upon the fact of separation, and
gives her own personal version of the apostle's "strait betwixt
two"--"One thing often troubles me: that