FIRST STREAKS OF DAWN.
In the history of the circumstances which brought about the Great
Revival, we must not fail to notice those which were in action even
before the great apostles of the Revival appeared. We have already given
what may almost be called a silhouette of society, an outline, for the
most part, all dark; and yet in the same period there were relieving
tints, just as sometimes, upon a silhouette-portrait, you have seen an
attempt to throw in some resemblance to the features by a touch of gold.
Chief among these is one we do not remember ever to have seen noticed in
this connection—the curious invasion of our country by the French at the
close of the seventeenth century. That cruel exodus which poured itself
upon our shores in the great and even horrible persecution of the
Protestants of France, when the blind bigotry of Louis XIV. revoked the
Edict of Nantes, was to us, as a nation, a really incalculable blessing.
It is quite singular, in reading Dr. Smiles’s _Huguenots_, to notice the
large variety of names of illustrious exiles, eminent for learning,
science, character, and rank, who found a refuge here. The folly of the
King of France expelled the chief captains of industry; they came hither
and established their manufactures in different departments, creating
and carrying on new modes of industry. Also great numbers of Protestant
clergymen settled here, and formed respectable French churches; some of
the most eminent ministers of our various denominations at this moment
are descendants of those men. Their descendants are in our peerage; they
are on our bench of bishops; they are at the bar; they stand high in the
ranks of commerce. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, their
ancestors were settled on English shores; in all instances men who had
fled from comfort and domestic peace, in many instances from affluence
and fame, rather than be false to their conscience or to their Saviour.
The cruelties of that dreadful persecution which banished from France
almost every human element it was desirable to retain in it, while they
were, no doubt, there the great ultimate cause of the French Revolution,
brought to England what must have been even as the very seasoning of
society, the salt of our earth in the subsequent age of corruption. Most
of the children of these men were brought up in the discipline of
religious households, such as that which Sir Samuel Romilly—himself one
of the descendants of an earlier band of refugees. Dr. Watts’s mother
was a child of a French exile. Clusters of them grew up in many
neighbourhoods in the country, notably in Southampton, Norwich,
Canterbury, in many parts of London, where Spitalfields especially was a
French colony. When the Revival commenced, these were ready to aid its
various movements by their character and influence. Some fell into the
Wesleyan ranks, though, probably, most, like the eminent scholar and
preacher, William Romaine, one of the sons of the exile, maintained the
more Calvinistic faith, reflecting most nearly the old creed of the
Huguenot.
This surmise of the influence of that noble invasion upon the national
well-being of Britain is justified by inference from the facts. It is
very interesting to attempt to realise the religious life of eminent
activity and usefulness sustained in different parts of the country
before the Revival dawned, and which must have had an influence in
fostering it when it arose. And, indeed, while we would desire to give
all grateful honour to the extraordinary men (especially to such a man
as John Wesley, who achieved so much through a life in which the length
and the usefulness were equal to each other, since only when he died did
he cease to animate by his personal influence the immense organisation
he had formed), yet it seems really impossible to regard any one mind as
the seed and source of the great movement. It was as if some cyclone of
spiritual power swept all round the nation—or, as if a subtle, unseen
train had been laid by many men, simultaneously, in many counties, and
the spark was struck, and the whole was suddenly wrapped in a Divine
flame.
Dr. Abel Stevens, in his most interesting, indeed, charming history of
Methodism, from his point of view, gives to his own beloved leader and
Church the credit of the entire movement; so also does Mr. Tyerman, in
his elaborate life of Wesley. But this is quite contrary to all
dispassionate dealing with facts; there were many men and many means in
quiet operation, some of these even before Wesley was born, of which his
prehensile mind availed itself to draw them into his gigantic work; and
there were many which had operated, and continued to operate, which
would not fit themselves into his exact, and somewhat exacting, groove
of Church life.
We have said it was as if a cyclone of spiritual power were steadily
sweeping round the minds of men and nations, for there were
undoubted gusts of remarkable spiritual life in both hemispheres, at
least fifty years before Methodism had distinctly asserted itself as
a fact. Most remarkable was the “Great Awakening” in America, in
Massachusetts—especially at Northampton (that is a remarkable story,
which will always be associated with the name of Jonathan
Edwards).[3] We have referred to the exodus of the persecuted from
France; equally remarkable was another exodus of persecuted
Protestants from Salzburg, in Austria. The madness of the Church of
Rome again cast forth an immense host of the holiest and most
industrious citizens. At the call of conscience they marched forth
in a body, taking joyfully the spoiling of their goods rather than
disavow their faith: such men with their families are a treasure to
any nation amongst whom they may settle. Thomas Carlyle has paid a
glowing historical eulogy to the memory of these men, and the exodus
has furnished Goethe with the subject of one of his most charming
poems.
Footnote 3:
See Appendix C.
Philip Doddridge’s work was almost done before the Methodist movement
was known. It seems to us that no adequate honour has ever yet been paid
to that most beautiful and remarkably inclusive life. It was public, it
was known and noticed, but it was passed almost in retreat in
Northampton. That he was a preacher and pastor of a Church was but a
slight portion of the life which succumbed, yet in the prime of his
days, to consumption. His academy for the education of young ministers
seems to us, even now, something like a model of what such an academy
should be; his lectures to his students are remarkably full and
scholarly and complete. From thence went forth men like the saintly
Risdon Darracott, the scholarly and suggestive Hugh Farmer, Benjamin
Fawcett, and Andrew Kippis. The hymns of Doddridge were among the
earliest, as they are still among the sweetest, of that kind of offering
to our modern Church; their clear, elevated, thrush-like sweetness, like
the more uplifted seraphic trumpet tones of Watts, broke in upon a time
when there was no sacred song worthy of the name in the Church, and
anticipated the hour when the melodious acclamations of the people
should be one of the most cherished elements of Christian service.
[Illustration:
ISAAC WATTS.
]
And Isaac Watts was, by far, the senior of Doddridge; he lived very much
the life of a hermit. Although the pastor of a city church, he was
sequestered and withdrawn from public life in Theobalds, or Stoke
Newington, where, however, he prosecuted a course of sacred labor of a
marvellously manifold description, inter-meddling with every kind of
learning, and consecrating it all to the great end of the christian
ministry and the producing of books, which, whether as catechisms for
children, treatises for the formation of mental character, philosophic
essays grappling with the difficulties of scholarly minds, or
“comfortable words” to “rock the cradle of declining age,” were all to
become of value when the nation should awake to a real spiritual power.
They are mostly laid aside now; but they have served more than one
generation well; and he, beyond question, was the first who taught the
Protestant Christian Church in England to sing. His hymns and psalms
were sounding on when John Wesley was yet a child, and numbers of them
were appropriated in the first Methodist hymn-book. But Watts and
Doddridge, by the conditions of their physical and mental being, were
unfitted for popular leaders. Perhaps, also, it must be admitted that
they had not that which has been called the “instinct for souls;” they
were concerned rather to illustrate and expound the truth of God, and to
“adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour,” by their lives, than to flash
new convictions into the hearts of men. It is characteristic that, good
and great as they were, they were both at first inimical to the Great
Revival; it seemed to them a suspicious movement. The aged Watts
cautioned his younger friend Doddridge against encouraging it,
especially the preaching of Whitefield; yet they both lived to give
their whole hearts to it; and some of Watts’s last words were in
blessing, when, near death, he received a visit from the great
evangelist.
[Illustration:
PHILIP DODDRIDGE.
]
Thus we need to notice a little carefully the age immediately preceding
the rise of what we call Methodism, in order to understand what
Methodism really effected; we have seen that the dreadful condition of
society was not inconsistent with the existence over the country of
eminently holy men, and of even hallowed christian families and circles.
If space allowed, it would be very pleasant to step into, and sketch the
life of many an interior; and it would scarcely be a work of fancy, but
of authentic knowledge. There were yet many which almost retained the
character of Puritan households, and among them several baronial halls.
Nor ought we to forget that those consistent: and high-minded Christian
folk, the Quakers [Friends], were a much larger body then than now,
although, like the Shunammite lady, they especially dwelt among their
own people. The Moravians also were in England; but all existed like
little scattered hamlet patches of spiritual life; they were respectably
conservative of their own usages. Methodism brought enthusiasm to
religion, and the instinct for souls, united to a power of organisation
hitherto unknown to the religious life.
[Illustration:
Doddridge’s House, Northampton.
]
At what hour shall we fix the earliest dawn of the Great Revival? Among
the earliest tints of the “morning spread upon the mountains,” which was
to descend into the valley, and illuminate all the plains, was the
conversion of that extraordinary woman, Selina Shirley, the Countess of
Huntingdon; it is scarcely too much to call her the Mother of the
Revival; it is not too much to apply to her the language of the great
Hebrew song—“The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased until
that I arose: I arose a mother in Israel.” She illustrates the
difference of which we spoke just now, for there can be no doubt that
she had a passionate instinct for souls, to do good to souls, to save
souls. Her injunctions for the destruction of all her private papers
have been so far complied with as to leave the earlier history of her
mind, and the circumstances which brought about her conversion, for the
most part unknown. It is certain that she was on terms of intimate
friendship with both Watts and Doddridge, but especially with Doddridge.
Another intimate friend of the Countess was Watts’s very close friend,
the Duchess of Somerset; and thus the links of the story seem to run,
like that old and well-known instance of communicated influence, when
Andrew found his own brother, Simon, and these in turn found Philip and
Nathaniel. It was very natural that, beholding the state of society
about her, she should be interested, first, as it seems, for those of
her own order; it was at a later time, when she became acquainted with
Whitefield, that he justified her drawing-room assemblies, by reminding
her—not, perhaps, with exact critical propriety—of the text in
Galatians, where Paul mentioned how he preached “privately to those of
reputation.”[4] For some time this appears to have been the aim of the
good Countess, much in accordance with that pretty saying of hers, that
“there was a text in which she blessed God for the insertion of the
letter M: ‘not _m_any noble.’” The beautiful Countess was a heroine in
her own line from the earliest days of her conversion. Belonging to one
of the noblest families of England, she had an entrance to the highest
circles, and her heart felt very pitiful for, especially, the women of
fashion around her, brokenhearted with disappointment, or sick with
_ennui_.
Footnote 4:
Appendix D.
Among these was Sarah, the great Duchess of Marlborough, apparently one
of the intimate friends of the Countess; her letters are most
characteristic. She mentions that the Duchess of Ancaster, Lady
Townshend, and others, had just heard Mr. Whitefield preach, and “What
they said of the sermon has made me lament ever since that I did not
hear it; it might have been the means of doing me some good, for good,
alas! I do want; but where among the corrupt sons and daughters of Adam
am I to find it?” She goes on: “Dear, good Lady Huntingdon, I have no
comfort in my own family; I hope you will shortly come and see me; I
always feel more happy and more contented after an hour’s conversation
with you; when alone, my reflections and recollection almost kill me.
Now there is Lady Frances Saunderson’s great rout to-morrow night; all
the world will be there, and I must go. I hate that woman as much as I
hate a physician, but I must go, if for no other purpose than to mortify
and spite her. This is very wicked, I know, but I confess all my little
peccadilloes to you, for I know your goodness will lead you to be mild
and forgiving; and perhaps my wicked heart may gain some good from you
in the end.” And then she closes her note with some remarks on “that
crooked, perverse little wretch at Twickenham,” by which pleasant
designation she means the poet, Pope.
Another, and another order of character, was the Duchess of Buckingham;
she came to hear Whitefield preach in the drawing-room, and was quite
scandalised. In a letter to the Countess, she says, “The doctrines are
most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence: it is
monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common
wretches that crawl the earth; this is highly offensive and insulting,
and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments
so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.” Such were some of
the materials the Countess attempted to gather in her drawing-rooms, if
possible to cure the aching of empty hearts. If the two duchesses met
together, it is very likely they would be antipathetic to each other; a
prouder old lady than Sarah, the English empire did not contain, but she
was proud that she was the wife and widow of the great Marlborough. The
Duchess of Buckingham was equally proud that she was the natural
daughter of James II. When her son, the Duke of Buckingham, died, she
sent to the old Duchess of Marlborough to borrow the magnificent car
which had borne John Churchill’s body to the Abbey, and the fiery old
Duchess sent her back word, “It had carried Lord Marlborough, and should
never be profaned by any other corpse.” The message was not likely to
act as an _entente cordiale_ in such society as we have described.
The mention of these names will show the reader that we are speaking of
a time when the Revival had not wrought itself into a great movement.
The Countess continued to make enthusiastic efforts for those of her own
order—we are afraid, with a few distinguished exceptions, without any
great amount of success; but certainly, were it possible for us to look
into the drawing-room in South Audley Street, in those closing years of
the reign of George II., we might well be astonished at the brilliancy
of the concourse, and the finding ourselves in the company of some of
the most distinguished names of the highest rank and fashion of the
period. It was the age of that cold, sardonic sneerer, Horace Walpole;
he writes to Florence, to his friend Sir Horace Mann, in his scoffing
fashion: “If you ever think of returning to England, you must prepare
yourself with Methodism; this sect increases as fast as almost any
religious nonsense ever did; Lady Fanny Shirley has chosen this way of
bestowing the dregs of her beauty, and Lyttleton is very near making the
same sacrifice of the dregs of all those various characters that he has
worn. The Methodists love your big sinners as proper subjects to work
upon, and indeed they have a plentiful harvest.” Then he satirises Lady
Ferrars, whom he styles “General, my Lady Dowager Ferrars.” But, indeed,
it is impossible to enumerate the names of all, or any proportion of the
number who attended this brilliant circle. Sometimes unhappy events took
place; Mr. Whitefield was sometimes too dreadfully, although
unconsciously, faithful. Lady Rockingham, who really seems to have been
inclined to do good, begged the Countess to permit her to bring the
Countess of Suffolk, well known as the powerful mistress of George II.
Whitefield “knew nothing of the matter;” but some arrow “drawn at a
venture,” and which probably might have as well fitted many another lady
about the court or in that very room, exactly hit the Countess. However
much she fidgeted with irritation, she sat out the service in silence;
but, as soon as it was over, the beautiful fury burst forth in all the
stormful speech of a termagant or virago. She abused Lady Huntingdon;
she declared that the whole service had been a premeditated attack upon
herself. Her relatives, Lady Bertie, the celebrated Lady Betty Germain,
the Duchess of Ancaster, one of the most beautiful women in England, and
who, afterwards, with the Duchess of Hamilton, conducted the future
queen of George III. to England’s shores, expostulated with her,
commanded her to be silent, and attempted to explain her mistake; they
insisted that she should apologise to Lady Huntingdon for her behaviour,
and, in an ungracious manner, she did so; but we learn that she never
honoured the assembly again with her presence.
What a singular assembly from time to time! the square dark face of that
old gentleman, painfully hobbling in on his crutched stick—face once as
handsome as that of St. John, now the disappointed, moody features of
the massive, but sceptical intelligence of Bolingbroke; poor worn-out
old Chesterfield, cold and courtly, yet seeming so genial and humane,
coming again and again, and yet again; those reckless wits, and leaders
of the _ton_ and all high society, Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord
Melcombe, and George Selwyn; the Duchess of Montague, with her young
daughter; Lady Cardigan, often there, if her mother, Sarah of
Marlborough, were but seldom a visitor. Charles Townshend, the great
minister, often came; and his friend, Lord Lyttleton, who really must
have been in sympathy with some of the objects of the assembly, if we
may judge from his _Essay on the Conversion of St. Paul_, a piece of
writing which will never lose its value. There you might have seen even
the great commoner, William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham; but we can
understand why he would be there to listen to the manifold notes of an
eloquence singularly resembling, in many particulars, his own. And, in
fact, where such persons were present, we might be sure that the entire
nobility of the country was represented. It might be tempting to loiter
amidst these scenes a little longer. It was an experiment made by the
Countess; she probably found it almost a failure, and, in the course of
a few years, turned her attention to the larger ideas connected with the
evangelisation of England, and the training of young men for the work of
the ministry. She long outlived all those brilliant hosts she had
gathered round her in the prime of life. But we cannot doubt that some
good was effected by this preaching to “people of reputation.” Courtiers
like Walpole sneered, but it saved the movement to a great degree, when
it became popular, from being suspected as the result of political
faction; and probably, as all these nobles and gentry passed away to
their various country seats, when they heard of the preachers in their
neighbourhoods, and received the complaints of the bishops and their
clergy, with some contempt for the messengers, they were able to feel,
and to say, that there was nothing much more dreadful than the love of
God and His good will to men in their message.
It seems a very sudden leap from the saloons of the West End to a
Lincolnshire kitchen; but in the kitchen of that most romantic old
vicarage of Epworth, it has been truly said, the most vigorous form of
Methodism had its origin. There, at the close of the seventeenth
century, and the commencement of the eighteenth, lived and laboured old
Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles Wesley. Samuel was in
every sense a wonderful man, more wonderful than most people know,
though Mr. Tyerman has done his best to set him forth in a very clear
and pleasant light, in his very entertaining biography. Scholar,
preacher, pastor, and poet was Samuel Wesley; he led a life full of
romantic incident, and full of troubles, of which the two most notable
are debts and ghosts: debts, we must say, in passing, which had more to
do with unavoidable calamity than with any personal imprudence. The good
man would have been shocked, and have counted it one of his sorest
troubles, could he, in some real horoscope, have forecast what “Jackey,”
his son John, was to be. But it was his wife, Susannah Wesley, patient
housewife, much-enduring, much-suffering woman, Mary and Martha in one,
saint as sacredly sweet as any who have seemed worthy of a place in any
calendar of saints, Catholic or Protestant, mother of children, all of
whom were remarkable—two of them wonderful, and a third highly
eminent—it was Susannah Wesley, whose instinct for souls led her to look
abroad over all the parish in which she lived, with a tender, spiritual
affection; in her husband’s absence, turning the large kitchen into a
church, inviting her poor neighbours into it, and, somewhat at first to
the distress of her husband, preaching to and praying with them there.
This brief reference can only memorialise her name; read John Kirk’s
little volume, and learn to love and revere “the mother of the Wesleys!”
The freedom and elevation of her religious life, and her practical
sagacity, it is not difficult to see, must have given hints and ideas
which took shape and body in the large movement of which her son John
came to be regarded, and is still regarded, as the patriarch. Thus Isaac
Taylor says, “The Wesleys’ mother was the mother of Methodism in a
religious and moral sense, for her courage, her submissiveness to
authority, the high tone of her mind, its independence, and its
self-control, the warmth of her devotional feelings, and the practical
direction given to them, came up, and were visibly repeated in the
character and conduct of her sons.” Later on in life she became one of
the wisest advisers of her son, in his employment of the auxiliaries to
his own usefulness. Perhaps, if we could see spirits as they are, we
might see in this woman a higher and loftier type of life than in either
of those who first received life from her bosom; some of her quiet words
have all the passion and sweetness of Charles’s hymns. Our space will
not permit many quotations, but take the following words, and the sweet
meditation in prose of the much-enduring, and often patiently suffering
lady in the old world country vicarage, which read like many of her
son’s notes in verse: “If to esteem and have the highest reverence for
Thee; if constantly and sincerely to acknowledge Thee the supreme, and
only desirable good, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If to rejoice in
Thy essential majesty and glory; if to feel a vital joy overspread and
cheer the heart at each perception of Thy blessedness, at every thought
that Thou art God, and that all things are in Thy power; that there is
none superior or equal to Thee, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE! If
comparatively to despise and undervalue all the world contains, which is
esteemed great, fair, or good; if earnestly and constantly to desire
Thee, Thy favour, Thy acceptance, Thyself, rather than any, or all
things Thou hast created, be to love Thee, I DO LOVE THEE!” At length
she died as she had lived, her last words to her sons breathing the
spirit of her singular life: “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a
psalm of praise to God!”
Thus, from the polite circles of London, from the obscure old farm-like
vicarage, the rude and rough old English home, events were preparing
themselves. John Wesley was born in 1703; the Countess of Huntingdon in
1707: near in their birth time, how far apart the scenery and the
circumstances in which their eyes first opened to the light. Whitefield
was born later, amidst the still less auspicious scenery of the old Bell
Inn, at Gloucester, in 1714. These were undoubtedly among the foremost
names in the great palpitation of thought, feeling, and holy action the
country was to experience. Future chapters will show a number of other
names, which were simultaneously coming forth and educating for the
great conflict. So it has always been, and singularly so, as
illustrating the order of Providence, and the way in which it gives a
new personality to the men whom it designs to aid its purposes. In every
part of the country, all unknown to each other, in families separated by
position and taste, by birth and circumstances, a band of workers was
preparing to produce an entire moral change in the features of the
country.
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