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.
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 many 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.
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!”