The effects of that great awakening which we have thus attempted concisely, but fairly, to delineate, are with us still; the strength is diffused, the tone and colour are modified. One chief purpose has guided the pen of the writer throughout: it has been to show that the immense regeneration effected in English manners and society during the later years of the last century and the first of the present, was the result of a secret, silent, most subtle spiritual force, awakening the minds and hearts of men in most opposite parts of the nation, and in widely different social circumstances. We would give all honour where honour is due, remembering that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” There are writers whose special admiration is given to some favourite sect, some effective movement, or some especially beloved name; but a dispassionate view, an entrance—if we may be permitted so to speak of it—into the camera, the chamber of the times, presents to the eye a long succession of actors, and brings out into the clear light a wonderful variety of influences all simultaneously at work to redeem society from its darkness, and to give it a higher degree of spiritual purity and mental and moral dignity.
The first great workers were passing away, most of them, as is usually the case, dying on Pisgah, seeing most distinctly the future results of their work, but scarcely permitted to enter upon the full realisation of it. In 1791, in the eighty-fourth year of her age, died the revered Countess of Huntingdon; her last words, “My work is done; I have nothing to do but to go to my Father!” No chronicle of convent or of canonisation, nor any story of biography, can record, a more simple, saintly, and utterly unselfish life. To the last unwearied, she was daily occupied in writing long letters, arranging for her many ministers, disposing of her chapel trusts; sometimes feeling that her rank, and certain suppositions as to the extent of her wealth, made her an object upon which men were not indisposed to exercise their rapacity. Still, as compared with the state of society when she commenced her work, in this her closing year, she must have looked over a hopeful and promising future, as sweet and enchanting as the ineffably lovely scenery upon which her eyes opened at Castle Doddington, and the neighbouring beauties of her first wedded home.
JOHN WESLEY’S TOMB, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
In 1791, John Wesley, in his eighty-eighth year, entered into his rest, faithfully murmuring, as well as weakness and stammering lips could articulate, “The best of all is, God is with us!” Abel Stevens says, “His life stands out in the history of the world, unquestionably pre-eminent in religious labours above that of any other man since the apostolic age.” It is not necessary, in order to do Wesley sufficient honour, to indulge in such invidious comparisons. It is significant, however, that the last straggling syllables which ever fell from the pen in his beloved hand, were in a letter to William Wilberforce, cheering him on in his efforts for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. Charles Wesley had preceded his brother to his rest in 1788, in the eightieth year of his age.
JOHN WESLEY. M.A.
BORN JUNE 17, 1703; DIED MARCH 2, 1791.
CHARLES WESLEY. M.A.
BORN DECEMBER 18, 1708; DIED MARCH 29, 1788.
“THE BEST OF ALL IS, GOD IS WITH US.”
“I LOOK UPON ALL THE WORLD AS MY PARISH.”
The Wesley Monument.
Thus the earlier labourers were passing away, and the work of the Revival was passing into other forms, illustrating how not only “one generation passeth away, and another cometh,” but also how, as the workers pass, the work abides. It would be very pleasant to spend some time in noticing the interior of many old halls, which were now opening, at once for the entertainment of evangelists, and for Divine service; prejudices were dying out, and so far from the new religious life proving inimical to the repose of the country, it was found to be probably its surest security and friend; and while the efforts were growing for carrying to far-distant regions the truth which enlightens and saves, anecdotes are not wanting to show that it was this very spirit which created a tender interest in maintaining and devising means to make more secure the minister’s happiness at home.
From many points of view William Wilberforce maybe regarded as the central man of the Revival in its new and crowning aspect; as he bore the standard of England at that great funeral which did honour to all that was mortal of his friend William Pitt, on its way to the vaults of the old Abbey, so, as his predecessors departed, it devolved on him to bear the standard of those truths and principles which had effected the great change, and which were to effect, if possible, yet greater changes. By his sweet, winning, and if silvery, yet enchaining and overwhelming eloquence, by his conversation, which cannot have been, from the traditions which are preserved of it, less than wonderful, and by his lucid and practical pen, he continued to give eminent effect to the Revival, and to procure for its doctrines acceptance in the highest circles of society. It is perhaps difficult now to understand the cause of the wonderful influence produced by his Practical View of Christianity; that book itself illustrates how the seeds of things are transmitted through many generations. It is a long way to look back to the poor pedlar who called at the farm door of Richard Baxter’s father in Eaton-Constantine, and sold there Richard Sibbs’s Bruised Reed, but that was the birth-hour of that great and transcendently glorious book, The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. The Saint’s Everlasting Rest was the inspiration of Philip Doddridge, and to it we owe his Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. Wilberforce read that book, and it moved him to the desire to speak out its earnestness, pathos, and solemnity in tones suitable to the spirit of the Great Revival which had been going on around him. A young clergyman read the result of Wilberforce’s wish in his Practical View of Christianity, and he testifies, “To that book I owe a debt of gratitude; to my unsought and unexpected introduction to it, I owe the first sacred impressions which I ever received as to the spiritual nature of the Gospel system, the vital character of personal religion, the corruption of the human heart, and the way of salvation by Jesus Christ.” And all this was very shortly given to the world in those beautiful pieces, which it surely must be ever a pleasure to read, whether, for their tender delineation of the most important truths, or the exquisite language, and the delightful charm of natural scenery and pathetic reflection in which the experiences of The Young Cottager, The Dairyman’s Daughter, and other “short and simple annals of the poor,” are conveyed through the fascinating pen of Legh Richmond.
In this eminently lovely and lovable life we meet with one on whom, assuredly, the mantle of the old clerical fathers of the Revival had fallen. He was a Churchman and a clergyman, he loved and honoured his Church and its services exceedingly; but it seems impossible to detect, in any single act of his life or word of his writings, a tinge of acerbity or bitterness. The quiet and mellowed charm of his tracts—which are certainly among the finest pieces of writing in that way which we possess—appear to have pervaded his whole life. Brading, in the Isle of Wight, has been marvellously transformed since he was the vicar of its simple little church; the old parsonage, where little Jane talked with her pastor, is now only a memory, and no longer, as we saw it first many years since, a feature in the charming landscape; and the little epitaphs which the vicar himself wrote for the stones, or wooden memorials over the graves of his parishioners, are all obliterated by time. Several years since we sought in vain for the sweet verse on his own infant daughter, although about thirty-five years since we read it there: