OXFORD: NEW LIGHTS AND OLD LANTERNS.
It is remarkable that one of the very earliest movements of the new
evangelical succession should manifest itself in Oxford—many minded
Oxford—whose distant spires and antique towers have looked down through
so many ages upon the varying opinions which have surged up around and
within her walls. Lord Bacon has somewhere said that the opinions,
feelings, and thoughts of the young men of any present generation
forecast the whole popular mind of the future age. No remark can be more
true, as exhibited generally in fact. Thus it is not too much to say
that Oxford has usually been a barometer of coming opinions: either by
her adhesion or antagonism to them, she has indicated the pathway of the
nearing weather, either for calm or storm. It was so in the dark ages,
with the old scholastic philosophy; it was so in the times immediately
succeeding them: in our own day, the great Tractarian movement, with all
its influences Rome-ward, arose in Oxford; later still, the strong
tendencies of high intellectual infidelity, and denial of the sacred
prerogatives and rights of the Holy Scriptures, sent forth some of their
earliest notes from Oxford. Oxford has been likened to the magnificent
conservatory at Chatsworth, where art combines with nature, and achieves
all that wealth and taste could command; but the air is heavy and close,
and rich as the forms and colours are around the spectator, there is
depression and repression, even a sense of oppression, upon the spirits,
and we are glad to escape into the breezy chase, and among the old trees
again. This is hardly true of Oxford; no doubt the air is hushed, and
the influences combine to weigh down the mere visitor by a sense of the
hoariness of the past, and the black antiquity and frost of ages; but
somehow there is a mind in Oxford which is always alive—not merely a
scholarly knowledge, but a subtle apprehension of the coming winds—even
as certain creatures forebode and know the coming storm before the rain
falls or the thunder rolls.
We may presume that most of our readers are acquainted with the
designation, “the Oxford Methodists;” but, perhaps, some are not aware
that the term was applied to a cluster of young students, who, in a time
when the university was delivered over to the usual dissoluteness and
godless indifference of the age, met together in each other’s rooms for
the purpose of sustaining each other in the determination to live a holy
life, and to bring their mutual help to the reading and opening of the
Word of God. From different parts of the country they met together
there; when they went forth, their works, their spheres were different;
but the power and the beauty of the old college days seem to have
accompanied them through life; they realised the Divine life as a real
power from that commencement to the close of their career, although it
is equally interesting to notice how the framework of their opinions
changed. Some of their names are comparatively unknown now, but John and
Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and James Hervey, are well known; nor
is John Gambold unknown, nor Benjamin Ingham, who married into the
family of the Countess of Huntingdon, of whom we will speak a little
more particularly when we visit the wild Yorkshire of those days; nor
Morgan of Christ Church, whose influence is described as the most
beautiful of all, a young man of delicate constitution and intense
enthusiasm, who visited and talked with the prisoners in the
neighbourhood, visited the cottages around to read and pray, left his
memory as a blessing upon his companions, and was very early called away
to his reward. This obscure life seems to have been one most honoured in
that which came to be called by the wits of Oxford, “The Holy Club.”
It was just about this time that Voltaire was predicting that, in the
next generation, Christianity would be overthrown and unknown throughout
the whole civilised world. Christianity has lived through, and long
outlived many such predictions. Voltaire had said, “It took twelve men
to set up Christianity; it would only take one” (conceitedly referring
to himself) “to overthrow it;” but the work of those whom he called the
“twelve men” is still of some account in the world—their words are still
of some authority, and there are very few people on the face of the
earth at this moment who know much of, and fewer still who care much for
the wit of the vain old infidel. That Voltaire’s prediction was not
fulfilled, under the Providential influence of that Divine Spirit who
never leaves us in our low estate, was greatly owing to this obscure and
despised “Holy Club” of Oxford. These young men were feeling their way,
groping, as they afterwards admitted, and somewhat in the dark, after
those experiences, which, as they were to be assurances to themselves,
should be also their most certain means of usefulness to others.
They were also called Methodists. It is singular, but neither the
precise etymology nor the first appropriation of the term Methodist has,
we believe, ever been distinctly or satisfactorily settled. Some have
derived it from an allusion in Juvenal to a quack physician, some to a
passage from the writings of Chrysostom, who says, “to be a methodist is
to be beguiled,” and which was employed in a pamphlet against Mr.
Whitefield. Like some other phrases, it is not easy to settle its first
import or importation into our language. Certainly it is much older than
the times to which this book especially refers. It seems to be even
contemporary with the term Puritan, since we find Spencer, the librarian
of Sion College under Cromwell, writing, “Where are now our Anabaptists
and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in
sermons no better than stinking weeds?” A writer in the _British
Quarterly_ tells a curious story how once in a parish church in
Huntingdonshire, he was listening to a clergyman, notorious alike by his
private character and vehement intolerance, who was entertaining his
audience, on a week evening, by a discourse from the text, Ephesians iv.
14, “Whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” He said to his people, “Now,
you do not know Greek; I know Greek, and I am going to tell you what
this text really says; it says, ‘they lie in wait to make you
Methodists.’ The word used here is _Methodeian_, that is really the word
that is used, and that is really what Paul said, ‘They lie in wait to
make you Methodists’—a Methodist means a deceiver, and one who deludes,
cheats, and beguiles.” The Grecian scholar was a little at fault in his
next allusion, for he proceeded to quote that other text, “We are not
ignorant of his devices,” and seemed to be under the impression that
“device” was the same word as that on which he had expended his
criticism. “Now,” said he, “you may be ignorant, because you do not know
Greek, but we are not ignorant of his devices, that is, of his methods,
his deceivers, that is, his Methodists.” In such empty wit and ignorant
punning it is very likely that the term had its origin.
John Wesley passed through a long, singular, and what we may call a
parti-coloured experience, before his mind came out into the light. In
those days his mind was a singular combination of High Churchism,
amounting to what we should call Ritualism now, and mysticism, both of
which influences he brought from Epworth: the first from his father, the
second from the strong fascination of the writings of William Law. He
found, however, in the “Holy Club” that which helped him. He tells us
how, when at Epworth, he travelled many miles to see a “serious man,”
and to take counsel from him. “Sir,” said this person, as if the right
word were given to him at the right moment, exactly meeting the
necessities of the man standing before him, “Sir, you wish to serve God
and to go to heaven: remember you cannot serve Him alone; you must
therefore find companions, or make them. The Bible knows nothing of
solitary religion.” It must be admitted that the enthusiasm of the
mystics has always been rather personal than social; but the society at
Oxford was almost monastic, nor is it wonderful that, with the spectacle
of the dissolute life around them, these earnest men adopted rules of
the severest self-denial and asceticism. John Wesley arrived in Oxford
first in 1720; he left for some time. Returning home to assist his
father, he became, as we know, to his father’s immense exultation,
Fellow of Lincoln College.
In 1733 George Whitefield arrived at Oxford, then in his nineteenth
year. Like most of this band, Whitefield was, if not really,
comparatively poor, and dependent upon help to enable him to pursue his
studies; not so poor, perhaps, as an illustrious predecessor in the same
college (Pembroke), who had left only the year before, one Samuel
Johnson, the state of whose shoes excited so much commiseration in some
benevolent heart, that a pair of new ones was placed outside his rooms,
only, however, creating surprise in the morning, when he was seen
indignantly kicking them up and down the passage. Whitefield was not
troubled by such over-sensitive and delicate feelings; men are made
differently. Johnson’s rugged independence did its work; and the easy
facility and amiable disposition, which could receive favours without a
sense of degradation, were very essential to what Whitefield was to be.
He, however, when he came to Oxford, was caught in the same glamour of
mysticism as John Wesley. But in this case it was Thomas à-Kempis who
had besieged the soul of the young enthusiast; he was miserable, his
life, his heart and mind were crushed beneath this altogether inhuman
and unattainable standard for salvation. He was a Quietist—what a
paradox!—Whitefield a Quietist! He was seeking salvation by works of
righteousness which he could do. He was practising the severest
austerities and renouncing the claims of an external world; he was
living an internal life which God did not intend should bring to him
either rest or calm; for, in that case, how could he ever have stirred
the deep foundations of universal sympathy?
But that heart, whose very mould was tenderness, was easily called aside
by the sight of suffering; and there is an interesting story, how, at
this time, in one of his walks by the banks of the river, in such a
frame of mind as we have described, he met a poor woman whose appearance
was discomposed. Naturally enough, he talked with her, and found that
her husband was in the gaol in Oxford, that she had run away from home,
unable to endure any longer the crying of her children from hunger, and
that she even then meditated drowning herself. He gave her immediate
relief, but arranged with her to meet him, and see her husband together
in the evening at the prison. He appears to have done them both good,
ministering to their temporal necessities; he prayed with them, brought
them to the knowledge of the grace which saves, and late on in life he
says, “They are both now living, and I trust will be my joy and crown of
rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Happy is the man to whose life
such an incident as this is given; it calls life away from its dreary
introspections, and sets it upon a trail of outwardness, which is
spiritual health; no one can attain to much religious happiness until he
knows that he has been the means of good to some suffering soul. Faith
grows in us by the revelation that we have been used to do good to
others.
It was about this time that Charles Wesley met Whitefield moodily
walking through the college corridors. The misery of his appearance
struck him, and he invited him to his rooms to breakfast. The memory of
the meeting never passed away; Charles Wesley refers to it in his elegy
on Whitefield. In a short time he leaped forth into spiritual freedom,
and almost immediately became, youth as he was, preacher, and we may
almost say, apostle. The change in his mind seems to have been as
instantaneous and as luminous as Luther’s at Erfurt. Whitefield was at
work, commencing upon his own great scale, long before the Wesleys. John
had to go to America, and to be entangled there by his High Church
notions; and then there were his Moravian proclivities, so that,
altogether, years passed by before he found his way out into a light so
clear as to be able to reflect it on the minds of others.
To some of the members of this “Holy Club,” we shall not be able to
refer again; we must, therefore, mention them now. Especially is some
reference due to James Hervey; his name is now rather a legend and
tradition than an active influence in our religious literature; but how
popular once, do not the oldest memories amongst us well know? On some
important points of doctrine he parted company from his friends and
fellow-students, the Wesleys. John Wesley used to declare that he
himself was not converted till his thirty-seventh year, so that we must
modify any impressions we may have from similar declarations made by the
amiable Vicar of Weston Favel: the term conversion, used in such a
sense, in all probability means simply a change in the point of view, an
alteration of opinion, giving a more clear apprehension of truth. Hervey
was always infirm in health, tall, spectral; and, while possessing a
mind teeming with pleasing and poetic fancies, and a power of perceiving
happy analogies, we should regard him as singularly wanting in that fine
solvent of all true genius, geniality. Hence, all his letters read like
sermons; but his poor, infirm frame was the tabernacle of an intensely
fervent soul. Shortly after his settlement in his village in
Northamptonshire he was recommended by his physician to follow the
plough, that he might receive the scent of the fresh earth; a curious
recommendation, but it led to a conversation with the ploughman, which
completely overturned the young scholar’s scheme of theology. The
ploughman was a member of the Church of Dr. Doddridge, afterwards one of
Hervey’s most intimate friends. As they walked together, the young
minister asked the old ploughman what he thought was the hardest thing
in religion? The ploughman very respectfully returned the question.
Hervey replied, “I think the hardest thing in religion is to deny sinful
self,” and he proceeded, at some length, of course, to dilate upon and
expound the difficulty, from which our readers will see that, at this
time, his mind must have been under the same influences as those we meet
in _The Imitation_ of Thomas à-Kempis. “No, sir,” said the old
ploughman, “the hardest thing in religion is to deny righteous self,”
and he proceeded to unfold the principles of his faith. At the time,
Hervey thought the ploughman a fool, but the conversation was not
forgotten, and he declares that it was this view of things which created
for him a new creed. Our readers, perhaps, know his _Theron and
Aspasia_: we owe that book to the conversation with the ploughman; all
its pages, alive with descriptions of natural scenery, historical and
classical allusion, and glittering with chromatic fancy through the
three thick volumes, are written for the purpose of unfolding and
enforcing—to put it in old theological phraseology—the imputed and
imparted righteousness of Christ, the great point of divergence in
teaching between Hervey and John Wesley.
Thus the term Methodism cannot, any more than Christianity, be contented
with, or contained in one particular line of opinion. Thus, for
instance, among the members of the “Holy Club” we find the two Wesleys
and others distinctly Arminian—the apostles of that form of thought
which especially teaches us that we must attain to the grace of God;
while Whitefield first, and Hervey afterwards, became the teachers of
that doctrine which announces the irresistible grace of God as that
which is outside of us, and comes down upon us. No doubt the doctrines
were too sharply separated by their respective leaders. In the ultimate
issue, both believed alike that all was of grace, and all of God; but
experience makes every man’s point of view; as he feels, so he sees. The
grand thought about all these men in this Great Revival was that they
believed in, and untiringly and with immense confidence announced, that
which smote upon the minds of their hearers almost like a new
revelation; in an age of indifference and Deism they declared that “the
grace of God hath appeared unto all men.”
There is a very interesting anecdote showing how, about this time, even
the massive and sardonic intellect of Lord Bolingbroke almost gave way.
He was called upon once by a High Church dignitary, his intimate friend,
Dr. Church, Vicar of Battersea, and Prebendary of St. Paul’s, to whom we
have already referred as from the first opposed to the Revival, and, to
the doctor’s amazement, he found Bolingbroke reading Calvin’s
_Institutes_. The peer asked the preacher, the infidel the professed
Christian, what he thought of it. “Oh,” said the doctor, “we think
nothing of such antiquated stuff; we think it enough to preach the
importance of morality and virtue, and have long given up all that talk
about Divine grace.” Bolingbroke’s face and eyes were a study at all
times, but we could wish to have seen him turn in his chair, and fix his
eyes on the vicar as he said: “Look you, doctor. You know I don’t
believe the Bible to be a Divine revelation, but those who do can never
defend it but upon the principle of the doctrine of Divine grace. To say
the truth, there have been times when I have been almost persuaded to
believe it upon this view of things; and there is one argument I have
felt which has gone very far with me on behalf of its authenticity,
which is, that the belief in it exists upon earth even when committed to
the care of such as you, who pretend to believe in it, and yet deny the
only principle upon which it is defensible.” The worn-out statesman and
hard-headed old peer hit the question of his own day, and forecast all
the sceptical strife of ours; for all such questions are summed in one,
Is there supernatural grace, and has that grace appeared unto men? This
was the one faith of all these revivalists. The world was eager to hear
it, for the aching heart of the world longs to believe that it is true.
The conversation we have recited shows that even Bolingbroke wished that
it might be true.
[Illustration:
WESTON FAVEL CHURCH,
(Where James Hervey Preached.)
]
The new creed of Hervey changed the whole character of his preaching.
The little church of Weston Favel, a short distance from the town of
Northampton, became quite a shrine for pilgrimages; he was often
compelled to preach in the churchyard. He was assuredly an intense lover
of natural scenery, a student of natural theology of the old school. His
writing is now said to be meretricious and gaudy. One critic says that
children will always prefer a red to a white sugar-plum, and that the
tea is nicer to them when they drink it from a cup painted with coloured
flowers; and this, perhaps, not unfairly, describes the style of Hervey;
we have prettiness rather than power, elegant disquisition rather than
nervous expression, which is all the more wonderful, as he must have
been an accomplished Latin scholar. But he had a mind of gorgeous
fullness, and his splendid conceptions bore him into a train of what now
seem almost glittering extravagances. Hervey was in the manner of his
life a sickly recluse, and we easily call up the figure of the old
bachelor—for he never married—alternately watching his saucepan of gruel
on the fire, and his favourite microscope on the study table. He was
greatly beloved by the Countess of Huntingdon, perhaps yet more by Lady
Fanny Shirley—the subject of Walpole’s sneer. He was, no doubt, the
writer of the movement, and its thoughts in his books must have seemed
like “butter in a lordly dish.” But his course was comparatively brief;
his work was accomplished at the age of forty-five. He died in his
chair, his last words, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in
peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy most comfortable salvation;” shortly
after, “The conflict is over; all is done;” the last words of all,
“Precious salvation.” And so passed away one of the most amiable and
accomplished of all the revivalists.
John Gambold, although ever an excellent and admirable man, lived the
life rather of a secluded mystic, than that of an active reformer. He
became a minister of the Church of England, but afterwards left that
communion, not from any dissensions either from the doctrines or the
discipline of the Church, but simply because he found his spiritual
relationships more in harmony with those of the Moravians, of whose
Church he died a bishop. We presume few readers are acquainted with his
poetical works; nor are there many words among them of remarkable
strength. _The Mystery of Life_ is certainly pleasingly impressive; and
his epitaph on himself deserves quotation:
“Ask not, ‘Who ended here his span?’
His name, reproach, and praise, was Man.
‘Did no great deeds adorn his course?’
No deed of his but showed him worse:
One thing was great, which God supplied,
He suffered human life—and died.
‘What points of knowledge did he gain?’
That life was sacred all—and vain:
‘Sacred, how high? and vain, how low?’
He knew not here, but died to know.”
Such were some of the men who went forth from Oxford. Meantime, as the
flame of revival was spreading, Oxford again starts into singular
notice; how the “Holy Club” escaped official censure and condemnation
seems strange, but in 1768 the members of a similar club were, for
meeting together for prayer and reading the Scriptures, all summarily
expelled from the university. Their number was seven. Several of the
heads of houses spoke in their favour, the principal of their own hall,
Dr. Dixon, moved an amendment against their expulsion, on the ground of
their admirable conduct and exemplary piety. Not a word was alleged
against them, only that some of them were the sons of tradesmen, and
that all of them “held Methodistical tenets, taking upon them to pray,
read and expound the Scriptures, and sing hymns at private houses.”
These practices were considered as hostile to the Articles and interests
of the Church of England, and sentence was pronounced against them.
Of course this expulsion created a great agitation at the time; and as
the moral character of the young men was so perfectly unimpeachable, it
no doubt greatly aided the cause of the Revival. Dr. Horne, Bishop of
Norwich, author of the Commentary _On the Psalms_—no Methodist, although
an admirable and evangelical man—denounced the measure in a pamphlet in
the strongest terms. The well-known wit and Baptist minister of
Devonshire Square in London, Macgowan, lashed the transaction in his
piece called _The Shaver_. All the young men seem to have turned out
well. Some, like Thomas Jones, who afterwards became curate of Clifton,
and married the sister of Lady Austen, Cowper’s friend—found admission
into the Church of England; the others instantly found help from the
Countess of Huntingdon, who sent them to finish their studies at her
college in Trevecca, and afterwards secured them places in connection
with her work of evangelisation. The transaction gives a singular idea
of what Oxford was in 1768, and prepares us for the vehement
persecutions by which the representatives of Oxford all over the country
armed themselves to resist the Revival, whilst it justifies our
designation of this chapter, “New Lights and Old Lanterns.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------