Sermon Illustrations

BEWARE OF JEALOUSY

Mrs. Wesley was extremely jealous of her husband. His work set him in the position of friend and counselor to many women. Among his helpers and in the institutions that were springing up under his care, women were employed, and each one was for his insanely jealous wife an object of deadly suspicion.

Wesley on his part was apt to be tolerant, in a masculine and broad-minded way, of the facts and relationships of some women, which other women, even the best, would hardly forgive. Sally Ryan, for example, the housekeeper at one of his orphanages, was a woman with a past. She was at this time only thirty-three, but she had three husbands living and was separated from them all. Wesley was in constant correspondence with her, a fact which kindled his wife to fury.

She stole Wesley’s correspondence to satisfy her doubts. She would travel one hundred miles to see who his companions were at a particular stage of his preaching tour. Her fury threw her sometimes into paroxysms of mad violence and sometimes into acts of almost incredible treachery. She not only stole her husband’s letters to satisfy her doubts, but she tampered with them so as to give them an evil sense and put them into the hands of his enemies to be published.

Beware of jealousy. It can make the light of God in your heart so dark you see only evil, never good, in everyone.

(Illustration of Bible Truths).

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