CHAPTER XI.
LABORS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND—CHAPLAIN TO LADY HUNTINGDON.
1748, 1749.
On the evening of July 6, 1748, Whitefield again found himself in London, after an absence of nearly four years. Here he was welcomed with joy by many thousands. The large church of St. Bartholomew was at once thrown open to him, where multitudes flocked to hear, and where on the first Sabbath he had a thousand communicants. But in his own more immediate circle many things were in an unhappy condition. His congregation at the Tabernacle had been much scattered during his absence; Antinomianism had made sad havoc among the people; and one of this party threatened to rival him in Moorfields. Whitefield sent him word, "The fields are no doubt as free to you as to another. God send you a clear head and a clean heart. I intend preaching there on Sunday evening." He did so; and found "Moorfields as white to harvest as ever." Our evangelist was again called to mourn the evils of poverty. He found himself compelled to sell his household furniture, to pay, in part, the debts of his orphan-house, which were yet far from being cancelled; his aged mother, for whom he always retained the highest regard, also needed his aid. These and other trials pressed him sorely; but on the other hand, he felt happy in his work, and his congregation were soon reunited, and happy in his labors.
We have seen that as early as 1738, Lady Huntingdon, with his lordship her husband, as frequently as they could, heard Whitefield preach; since that period his lordship had died, leaving her ladyship a widow, in the thirty-ninth year of her age. At what period she became more openly and intimately Whitefield's friend does not appear; but when he landed at Deal from his third visit to America, she sent Howel Harris to bring him to her house at Chelsea, where he preached to large circles of the gay world, who thronged this then fashionable watering-place. For the benefit of this class of hearers, she soon after removed to London, at that time some three miles distant from Chelsea, appointed Whitefield her chaplain, and during the winter of 1748 and '49, opened her splendid mansion in Park-street for the preaching of the gospel. "Good Lady Huntingdon," he writes, "has come to town, and I am to preach twice a week at her house to the great and noble. O that some of them might be effectually called to taste the riches of redeeming love." On the first day appointed, Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, both of them well-known for their gayety and infidelity, and a circle of the nobility, attended; and having heard him once, they desired to come again. "Lord Chesterfield thanked me," he says. "Lord Bolingbroke was moved, and asked me to come and see him the next morning. My hands have been full of work, and I have been among great company. All accepted my sermons. Thus the world turns round. 'In all time of my wealth, good Lord, deliver me.'"
The death-bed of Lord St. John Bolingbroke, whom we have already mentioned as one of his parlor-hearers, exhibited scenes unusual in the circle where he moved. The Bible was read to him, and his cry was, "God be merciful to me a sinner." "My Lord Bolingbroke," wrote Lady Huntingdon to Whitefield, "was much struck with his brother's language in his last moments. O that his eyes might be opened by the illuminating influence of divine truth. He is a singularly awful character; and I am fearfully alarmed, lest the gospel which he so heartily despises, yet affects to reverence, should prove the savor of death unto death to him. Some, I trust, are savingly awakened, while many are inquiring; thus the great Lord of the harvest hath put honor on your ministry, and hath given my heart an encouraging token of the utility of our feeble efforts."
It is related that the Rev. Mr. Church, a clergyman who died curate of Battersea, near London, one day called on Bolingbroke, who said to him, "You have caught me reading John Calvin; he was indeed a man of great parts, profound sense, and vast learning; he handles the doctrines of grace in a very masterly manner." "Doctrines of grace," replied the clergyman; "the doctrines of grace have set all mankind by the ears." "I am surprised to hear you say so," answered Lord Bolingbroke, "you who profess to believe and to preach Christianity. Those doctrines are certainly the doctrines of the Bible, and if I believe the Bible I must believe them. And let me seriously tell you, that the greatest miracle in the world is the subsistence of Christianity, and its continued preservation, as a religion, when the preaching of it is committed to the care of such unchristian men as you."
At this period Whitefield renewed his acquaintance with the Rev. James Hervey, who has not improperly been called the Melancthon of the second reformation in England. Among all the converts of our evangelist, no one was more distinguished for piety, or for his fascination as a writer, than this admirable clergyman. His writings, though too flowery in their style, were eminently suitable, as Whitefield himself says, "for the taste of the polite world." Hervey wrote to Whitefield, "Your journals and sermons, and especially that sweet sermon on 'What think ye of Christ?' were a means of bringing me to the knowledge of the truth." Whitefield felt the warmest attachment to Hervey in return, and when he introduced some of his works into America, wrote, "The author is my old friend; a most heavenly-minded creature; one of the first Methodists, who is contented with a small cure, and gives all he has to the poor. We correspond with, though we cannot see each other." Whitefield intimated in one of his journals his intention of sketching Hervey's character, but this was one of the many intended things which were never accomplished. Dr. Doddridge wrote a preface to one of his works, which Warburton, as might be expected, called "a weak rhapsody."