"'Believe me, youth (for I am read in cares, And bend beneath the weight of more than fifty years).'
"Believe me, old age is the worst time we can choose to mend either our lives or our fortunes. Ah! my dear son, did you with me stand on the verge of life, and saw before your eyes a vast expanse, an unlimited duration of being, which you might shortly enter upon, you can't conceive how all the 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."
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 £50 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:"