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“Prayer draws all the Christian graces into its focus.  It draws Charity, followed by her lovely train, her forbearance with faults, her forgiveness of injuries, her pity for errors, her compassion for want.  It draws Repentance, with her holy sorrows, her pious resolutions, her self-distrust.  It attracts Faith, with her elevated eye,—­Hope, with her grasped anchor,—­Beneficence, with her open hand,—­Zeal, looking far and wide to serve,—­Humility, with introverted eye, looking at home.  Prayer, by quickening these graces in the heart warms them into life, fits them for service, and dismisses each to it appropriate practice.  Cordial prayer is mental virtue; Christian virtue is spiritual action.”—­The Spirit of Prayer (chapters iii., viii., and xi.).

     “If good we plant not, vice will fill the place,
      And rankest weeds the richest soils deface. 
      Learn how ungoverned thoughts the mind pervert,
      And to disease all nourishment convert. 
      Ah! happy she, whose wisdom learns to find
      A healthful fancy, and a well-trained mind. 
      A sick man’s wildest dreams less wild are found
      Than the day-visions of a mind unsound. 
      Disordered phantasies indulged too much. 
      Like harpies, always taint whate’er they touch. 
      Fly soothing Solitude! fly vain Desire! 
      Fly such soft verse as fans the dang’rous fire! 
      Seek action; ’tis the scene which virtue loves;
      The vig’rous sun not only shines, but moves. 
      From sickly thoughts with quick abhorrence start,
      And rule the fancy if you’d rule the heart: 
      By active goodness, by laborious schemes,
      Subdue wild visions and delusive dreams. 
      No earthly good a Christian’s views should bound,
      For ever rising should his aims be found. 
      Leave that fictitious good your fancy feigns,
      For scenes where real bliss eternal reigns: 
      Look to that region of immortal joys,
      Where fear disturbs not, nor possession cloys;
      Beyond what Fancy forms of rosy bowers,
      Or blooming chaplets of unfading flowers;
      Fairer than o’er imagination drew,
      Or poet’s warmest visions ever knew. 
      Press eager onward to these blissful plains,
      Where life eternal, joy perpetual reigns.”

The Search after Happiness.

HENRY JOHNSON.

SUSANNA WESLEY.

I.

PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION.

The mother of John Wesley was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Annesley, an eminent minister of the Church of England at the period of the great Civil War.  He resigned his charge, being one of the two thousand who, after the Restoration, declared for Nonconformity, and preached their farewell sermons in the Established Church, on the 17th of August, 1662.  He found his sphere in the meeting-house of Little St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate.