A GALLERY OF REVIVALIST PORTRAITS.
If we were writing a sustained history of the Revival, we might devote
some pages, at this period, to notice the varied forms of satire and
ribaldry by which it was greeted. While the noble bands of preachers
were pursuing their way, instructing and awakening the popular mind of
the country, not only heartless and affected dilettanti, like Horace
Walpole, regarded it with the condescension of their supercilious
sneers, but for the more popular taste there was _The Spiritual
Quixote_, a book which even now has its readers, and in which Whitefield
and his followers were held up to ridicule; and Lackington, the great
bookseller, in his disgraceful, but entertaining autobiography,
attempted to cover the Societies of Wesley with his scurrility. It was
about the year 1750 that _The Minor_ was brought out on the stage of the
Haymarket Theatre; the author was that great comedian, but most
despicable and dissolute character, Foote. The play lies before us as we
write; we have taken it down to notice the really shameless buffoonery
and falsehood in which it indulges. Whitefield is especially libelled
and burlesqued. The Countess of Huntingdon waited personally on the Lord
Chamberlain, and besought him to suppress it; it was not much to the
credit of his lordship’s knowledge, that he declared, had he known the
evil influence of the thing before it was licensed, it should not have
been produced, but being licensed, it was beyond his control. Then the
good Countess waited on David Garrick; Garrick knew and admired
Whitefield; he received her with distinguished kindness and respect, and
it is to his honour that, through his influence, it was temporarily
suppressed. It seems a singular compensation that the author of this
piece, who permitted himself to indulge in the most disgraceful
insinuations against one of the holiest and purest of men, a few years
after was charged with a great crime, of which he was, no doubt, quite
innocent, and died a broken-hearted and beggared man.
Another of these disgraceful stage libels, _The Hypocrite_, appeared at
Drury Lane in 1768; in it are the well-known characters of Dr. Cantwell,
and Mawworm, and old Lady Lambert. There is more of a kind of genius in
it than in _The Minor_, but it was all stolen property, and little more
than an appropriation from Molière’s _Tartuffe_ and Cibber’s _Nonjuror_.
All these things are forgotten now; but they are worthy of notice as
entering into the history of the Revival, and showing the malice which
was stirred in multitudes of minds against men and designs, on the
whole, so innocent and holy. Was it not written from of old, “The carnal
mind is enmity against God”?
But as to the movement itself, companions-in-arms, and of a very high
order alike for valour and character, crowded to the field; we have
referred to several distinguished laymen; it is at least equally
important to notice that while the leaders of the Church were, as a
body, set in array against it—while archbishops and bishops of that day
frowned, or scoffed and scorned, there were a number of clergymen whose
piety, whose wit and eloquence, whose affluent humour, whose learning,
whose intrepidity and sleepless variety of labour, surround their names,
even now as then, with a charm of interest, making every life as it
comes before us a readable and delightful recreation. Some of them were
assuredly oddities; it is not long since we made a pilgrimage to
Everton, in Bedfordshire, to read the singular epitaph, on the tomb in
the churchyard, of one of the oddest and most extraordinary of all these
men. Even if our readers have read that epitaph, it will do them no harm
to read it again:
Here lie
The earthly remains of
JOHN BERRIDGE,
Late Vicar of Everton,
And an itinerant servant of Jesus Christ,
Who loved his Master, and His work,
And after running on His errands many years,
Was called up to wait on Him above.
Reader,
Art thou born again?
No salvation without a New Birth!
I was born in sin, February, 1716,
Remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730,
Lived proudly on Faith and Works for Salvation
Till 1751.
Was admitted to Everton Vicarage, 1755.
Fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756.
Fell asleep in Christ Jesus, January 22, 1793.
With the exception of the date of his death, it was written by the hand
that moulders beneath the stone; it is characteristic that its writer
caused himself to be buried in that part of the churchyard where, up to
that time, only those had been interred who had destroyed themselves, or
come to an ignominious end. Before his death he had often said that he
would take this effectual means of consecrating that unhallowed spot.
This epitaph sufficiently shows that John Berridge was an original
character. Southey says of him that he was a buffoon and a fanatic.
Southey’s judgments about the men of the Revival were frequently as
shallow as they were unjust; he must have felt a sharp sting when, as
doubtless was the case, he heard the well-known anecdote of George IV.,
who, on reading Richard Watson’s calm reply to Southey’s attacks on the
Methodist leaders, exclaimed, as he laid down the book, “Oh, my poor
Poet Laureate!” He deserved all that and a good deal more, if only for
the verdict we have quoted on Berridge. So far as scholarship may test a
man, John Berridge was most likely a far deeper scholar than Dr.
Southey; he was a distinguished member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and for
many years read and studied fourteen hours a day; but he was an
uncontrollable droll and humourist; pithy proverbs fell spontaneously
along all his speech. As one critic says of his style, “It was like
granulated salt.” As a preacher, he was equal to any multitudes; he
lived among farmers and graziers, and the twinkling of his eye, all
alive with shrewd cheerfulness, compelled attention even before he
opened his lips. The late Dr. Guthrie, not long before his death,
thought it worth his while to republish _The Christian World Unmasked;
pray Come and Peep_; and it is characteristic of Berridge throughout.
After his conversion, his Bishop called him up and threatened to send
him to gaol for preaching out of his parish. Our readers may imagine
with such a man what sort of conference it was, and which of the two
would be likely to get the worst of it: “I tell you,” said the Bishop,
“if you continue preaching where you have no right, you are very likely
to be sent to Huntingdon Gaol.” “I have no more regard for a gaol than
other folks,” said he; “but I would rather go there with a good
conscience than be at liberty without one.” The conference is too long
for quotation, but Berridge held on his way; he became one of the most
beloved and intimate friends of the Countess of Huntingdon; and if he
shocked his bishop by preaching out of his own parish, he must have
roused his wrath by preaching in her ladyship’s chapel in London, and
throughout the country. His letters to the Countess are as
characteristic as his speech, or any other of his writings. Thus he
writes to her about young Rowland Hill, “I find you have got honest
Rowland down to Bath; he is a pretty young spaniel, fit for land or
water, and he has a wonderful yelp; he forsakes father and mother and
brethren, and gives up all for Jesus, and I believe he will prove a
useful labourer if he keeps clear of petticoat snares.” No doubt,
Berridge sometimes seemed not only racy, but rude; but his words were
wonderfully calculated to meet the average and level of an immense
congregation. While he lived on terms of fellowship with all the great
leaders of the movement, he was faithful as the vicar of his own parish,
and was the apostle of the whole region of Bedfordshire.
With all his shrewd worldly wisdom, Berridge had a most benevolent hand;
he was rich, and devoted far more than the income of his vicarage to
helping his poor neighbours, supporting itinerant ministers, renting
houses and barns for preaching the Gospel, and, however far he travelled
to preach, always disbursing his expenses from his own pocket. How he
would have loved John Bunyan, and how John Bunyan would have loved him!
It is curious that within a few miles of the place where the illustrious
dreamer was so long imprisoned, one should arise out of the very Church
which persecuted Bunyan, to do for a long succession of years, on the
same ground, the work for which he was persecuted.
[Illustration:
Haworth Church.
]
From the low Bedford level, what a flight to the wildest spot in wild
Yorkshire, Haworth, and its venerable old parish church, celebrated now
as a classic region, haunted by the memory of the author of _Jane Eyre_,
and all the Brontë family; but in the times of which we are writing, the
vicar, William Grimshaw, was quite as queer and quaint a creature as
Berridge. A wild spot now—a stern, grand place; desolate moors still
seeming to stretch all round it; though more easily reached in this day,
it must indeed have been a rough solitude when William Grimshaw became
its vicar, in 1742. He was born in 1708; he died in 1763. He was a man
something of the nature of the wild moors around him. When he became the
pastor of the parish, the people all round him were plunged in the most
sottish heathenism. The pastor was a kind of son of the desert, and he
became such an one as the Baptist, crying in the wilderness. The people
were rough, they perhaps needed a rough shepherd; they had one. The
character of Grimshaw is that of a rough, faithful, and not less
beautiful shepherd’s dog. On the Sabbath morning he would commence his
service, giving out the psalm, and having taken note of the absentees
from the congregation, would start off, while the psalm was being sung,
to drive in the loiterers, visiting the ale-houses, routing out the
drinkers, and literally compelling them to come into the parish church.
One Sabbath morning, a stranger riding through Haworth, seeing some men
scrambling over a garden wall, and some others leaping through a low
window, imagined the house was on fire. He inquired what was the matter.
One of them cried out, “The parson’s a coming!” and that explained the
riddle. Upon another occasion, as a man was passing through the village,
on the Sabbath day, on his way to call a doctor, his horse lost a shoe.
He found his way to the village smithy to have his loss repaired. The
blacksmith told him that it was the Lord’s day, and the work could not
be done unless the minister gave his permission. So they went to the
parson, who, of course, as the case was urgent and necessary, gave his
consent. But the story illustrates the mastery the vicar attained over
the rough minds around him. He was a man of a hardy mould. He was
intensely earnest. He not only effected a mighty moral change in his own
parish, but Haworth was visited every Sabbath by pilgrims from miles
round to listen to this singular, strong, mountain voice; so that the
church became unequal to the great congregations, and he often had to
preach in the churchyard, a desolate looking spot now, but alive with
mighty concourses then. It is said that his strong, pithy words haunted
men long after they were spoken, as the infidel nobleman, who, in an
affected manner, told him he was unable to see the truth of
Christianity. “The fault,” said the rough vicar, “is not so much in your
lordship’s head as in your heart.”
[Illustration:
GRIMSHAW’S HOUSE.
]
Grimshaw was the first who kindled in the wild heights of Yorkshire the
flames of the Revival. His mind was stirred simultaneously with others,
but he does not appear to have received either from Whitefield or Wesley
the impulses which created his extraordinary character, though he, of
course, entered heartily into all their work. They visited Haworth, and
preached to immense concourses there. As to Grimshaw himself, in the
most irregular manner, he preached in the Methodist conventicles and
dissenting chapels in all the country round. He effected an entire
change in his own neighbourhood. He put down the races; he reformed the
village feasts, wakes, and fairs. He was often expecting suspension, and
at last he was cited before the Archbishop, who inquired of him as to
the number of his communicants. “How many,” said his grace, “had you
when you first went to Haworth?” “Twelve.” “And how many now?” “In the
summer, about twelve hundred.” The astonished Archbishop turned to his
assistants in the examination, and said, “I really cannot find fault
with Mr. Grimshaw when he brings so many people to the Lord’s Table.”
Southey is also complimentary, in his own way, to this singular
clergyman, and says, “He was certainly mad!”
[Illustration:
William Grimshaw.
]
It was what Festus said to Paul; but the madness of the pastor of
Haworth was a blessing to the farms and cottages of those wild
moorlands. He was a child of nature in her most beautiful moods,
glorified by Divine grace. The freshness and buoyancy of the heath his
foot so lightly pressed, and the torrents which sung around him, were
but typical of his hardy naturalness and beauty of character. Truly it
has been said, it was not more natural that the gentle lover of nature
should lie at the foot of Helvellyn, than that this watchman of the
mountains should sleep at the foot of the hills amongst which he had so
faithfully laboured. He died comparatively young. His last words were
very characteristic. Robert Shaw, an old Methodist preacher, called upon
him; he said, “I will pray for you as long as I live, and if there is
praying in heaven, I will pray for you there; I am as happy as I can be
on earth, and as sure of glory as if I were in it.” His last words were,
“Here goes an unprofitable servant!”
The wild Yorkshire of that day took up the Revival with a will; and
Henry Venn, of Huddersfield, we suppose, has even transcended by his
usefulness the fame of either Berridge or Grimshaw; he was born in 1724,
and died in 1797. His life was genial and fruitful, and to his church in
Huddersfield the people poured in droves to listen to him. It has been
said his life was like a field of wheat, or a fine summer day. And how
are these to be painted or put upon the canvas? He could scarcely be
called eccentric, excepting in the sense in which earnestness, holiness,
and usefulness are always eccentric. His influence may be said, in some
directions, to continue still. He was one of the indefatigable
coadjutors of the Countess in all her work, and towards the close of his
life he came to London to throw his influence round young Rowland Hill,
by preaching for some time in Surrey Chapel.
In another district of Yorkshire, a mighty movement was going on,
commencing about 1734. Benjamin Ingham, whom we met some time since at
Oxford, as a member of the Holy Club, was living at Ossett, near
Dewsbury. He had married Lady Margaret Hastings, a younger sister of the
Countess of Huntingdon. He had received ordination in the Church of
England, but his irregularities had forced him out. Like the Wesleys, in
the earlier part of his history, he became enchanted with the devotional
life of the Moravians, and at this period he introduced with marvellous
results a modified Moravianism into the West Riding of Yorkshire. He
founded as many as eighty Societies; but he appears to have attempted to
carry out an impossible scheme, the union of the Moravian discipline and
doctrine with his idea of Congregationalism. His influence over the West
Riding for a long time was immense; but, most naturally, divisions
arose, and the purely Moravian element separated itself into its own
order of Church life, while the Methodist element was absorbed in the
great and growing Wesleyan Societies. He was a friend of Count
Zinzendorf, who was his guest for a long time at Ledstone House. The
shock which his Society sustained, and the death of Lady Margaret, his
admirable and beloved wife, were blows from which the good man never
recovered; but the effects of his usefulness continued, although he
passed; and if the reader ever visits the little Moravian Colony and
Institution of Fulneck, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, he may be pleased to
remember that this is also one of the offshoots of the Great Revival.
It is a sudden leap from the West Riding of Yorkshire to Truro, the
charming little capital of Western Cornwall. We are here met by an
imperishable and beautiful name, that of Samuel Walker, the minister; he
was born in 1714, and died in 1761. His influence over his town was
great and abiding, and Walker of Truro is a name which to this day
retains its fragrance, as associated with the restoration of his town
from wild depravity to purity and exemplary piety.
How impossible it is to do more than merely mention the names of men,
every action of whose lives was consecrated, and every breath an ardent
flame, all helping on and urging forward the great work of rousing a
careless world and a careless Church. What an influence had William
Romaine, who for a long time, it has been said, was one of the sights of
London; it was rather drolly put when it was said, “People came from the
country to see Garrick act and to hear Romaine preach!” Nor let our
readers suppose that he was a mere sensational orator; he was a great
scholar. We hear of him first as the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and
the editor of the four volumes of Calasio’s _Hebrew Concordance_; then
he caught the evangelic fire; he became one of the chaplains of the
Countess of Huntingdon, and, so far as the Church of the Establishment
was concerned, he was the most considerable light of London for a period
of nearly fifty years; and very singular was his history in this
relation, especially in some of the churches whose pulpits he filled. It
seems singular to us now how even his great talents could obtain for him
the place of morning lecturer at St. George’s, Hanover Square; but the
charge was soon urged against him that he vulgarised that most
fashionable of congregations, and most uncomfortably crowded the church.
He was appointed evening lecturer at St. Dunstan’s in Fleet Street; but
the rector barred his entrance into the pulpit, seating himself there
during the time of prayers, so that the preacher might be unable to
enter. Lord Mansfield decided that, after seven in the evening, the
church was not the rector’s, but that Mr. Romaine was entitled to the
use of it; then, at seven in the evening, the churchwardens closed the
church doors, and kept the congregation outside, wearying them in the
rain or in the cold. At length, the patience of the churchwardens gave
way before the persistency of the people and the preacher; but it was an
age of candles, and they refused to light the church, and Mr. Romaine
often preached in a crowded church by the light of one candle. They paid
him the merest minimum which he could demand, or which they were
compelled to pay; sometimes only eighteen pounds a year. But he was a
hardy man, and he lived on the plainest fare, and dressed in homespun
cloth. He was dragged repeatedly before courts of law, but he was as
difficult to manage here as in the church; he brought his judges to the
statutes, none of which he had broken. Every effort was made to expel
him from the Church, but he would not be cast out; and at last he
appears to have settled himself, as such men generally do, into an
irresistible fact. He became the Rector of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars. There
he preached those sermons which were shaped afterwards into the
favourite book of our forefathers, _The Life, Walk, and Triumph of
Faith_. Born in 1714, he died in 1795. His last years were clothed with
a pleasant serenity, although, perhaps, some have detected in his
character marks of a severity, probably the result of those conflicts
which, through so many years, he had with such remarkable consistency
sustained.
[Illustration:
ST. ANN’S, BLACKFRIARS.
]
And surely we ought to mention, in this right noble band, John Newton;
but he brings us near to the time when the passion of the Revival was
settling itself into organisation and calm; when the fury of persecution
was ceasing; Methodism was becoming even a respectable and acknowledged
fact. John Newton was born in 1725, and died in 1807. All his sympathies
were with the theology and the activities of the revivalists; but before
he most singularly found himself the Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, and
St. Mary Woolchurch, he had led a life which, for its marvellous variety
of incident, reads like one of Defoe’s fictions.
[Illustration:
St. Mary Woolnoth.
John Newton.
]
But his parlour in No. 8 Coleman Street Buildings, on a Friday evening,
was thronged by all the dignitaries of the evangelical movement of his
day. As he said, “I was a wild beast on the coast of Africa, but the
Lord caught me and tamed me; and now you come to see me as people go to
see the lions in the Tower.” A grand old man was John Newton, the young
sailor transformed into the saintly old rector; there he sat with few
traces of the parson about him, in his blue pea-jacket, and his black
neckerchief, liking still to retain something of the freedom of his old
blue seas; full of quaint wisdom, which never, like that of his friend
Berridge, became rude or droll; quietly sitting there and meditating;
his enthusiastic life apparently having subsided into stillness, while
the Hannah Mores, Wilberforces, Claudius Buchanans, and John Campbells,
went to him to find their enthusiasm confirmed. The friend of Cowper,
who surely deserves to be called the Poet Laureate of the
Revival—himself the author of some of the sweetest hymns we still sing;
the biographer of his own wonderful career, and of the life of his
friend and brother-in-arms, William Grimshaw; one of the finest of our
religious letter-writers; with capacities within him for almost
everything he might have thought it wise to undertake, he now seems to
us appropriately to close this small gallery we have attempted to
present. When the spirit of the Revival was either settling into
firmness and consolidation, or striking out into those new and
marvellous fields of labour—its natural outgrowth—which another chapter
may present succinctly to the eye, John Newton, by his great experience
of men, his profound faith, his steady hand and clear eye, became the
wise adviser and fosterer of schemes whose gigantic enterprise would
certainly have astonished even his capacious intelligence.
In closing this chapter it is quite worth while to notice that, various
as were the characters of these men, and of their innumerable comrades,
to whom we do homage, although we have no space even to mention their
names, their strength arose from the certainty and the confidence with
which they spoke; there was nothing tentative about their teaching. That
great scholar, Sir William Hamilton, says that “assurance is the
_punctum saliens_, that is the strong point of Luther’s system;” so it
was with all these men, “We speak that we do know, and testify that we
have seen;” it was the full assurance of knowledge; and it gave them
authority over the men with whom they wrestled, whether in public or
private. Whitefield and Wesley alike, and all their followers, had
strong faith in God. They were believers in the personal regard of God
for the souls of men; and every idea of prayer supposes some such
personal regard, whether offered by the highest of high Calvinists, or
the simplest primitive Methodist; the whole spirit of the Revival turned
on this; these men, as they strongly believed, were able, by the strong
attractive force of their own nature, to compel other minds to their
convictions. Their history strongly illustrates that that teaching which
oscillates to and fro in a pendulous uncertainty is powerless to reform
character or influence mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------