CHAPTER II

FIRST STREAKS OF DAWN.

In the history of the circumstances which brought about the Great Revival, we must not fail to notice those which were in action even before the great apostles of the Revival appeared. We have already given what may almost be called a silhouette of society, an outline, for the most part, all dark; and yet in the same period there were relieving tints, just as sometimes, upon a silhouette-portrait, you have seen an attempt to throw in some resemblance to the features by a touch of gold.

Chief among these is one we do not remember ever to have seen noticed in this connection—the curious invasion of our country by the French at the close of the seventeenth century. That cruel exodus which poured itself upon our shores in the great and even horrible persecution of the Protestants of France, when the blind bigotry of Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, was to us, as a nation, a really incalculable blessing. It is quite singular, in reading Dr. Smiles’s _Huguenots_, to notice the large variety of names of illustrious exiles, eminent for learning, science, character, and rank, who found a refuge here. The folly of the King of France expelled the chief captains of industry; they came hither and established their manufactures in different departments, creating and carrying on new modes of industry. Also great numbers of Protestant clergymen settled here, and formed respectable French churches; some of the most eminent ministers of our various denominations at this moment are descendants of those men. Their descendants are in our peerage; they are on our bench of bishops; they are at the bar; they stand high in the ranks of commerce. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, their ancestors were settled on English shores; in all instances men who had fled from comfort and domestic peace, in many instances from affluence and fame, rather than be false to their conscience or to their Saviour. The cruelties of that dreadful persecution which banished from France almost every human element it was desirable to retain in it, while they were, no doubt, there the great ultimate cause of the French Revolution, brought to England what must have been even as the very seasoning of society, the salt of our earth in the subsequent age of corruption. Most of the children of these men were brought up in the discipline of religious households, such as that which Sir Samuel Romilly—himself one of the descendants of an earlier band of refugees. Dr. Watts’s mother was a child of a French exile. Clusters of them grew up in many neighbourhoods in the country, notably in Southampton, Norwich, Canterbury, in many parts of London, where Spitalfields especially was a French colony. When the Revival commenced, these were ready to aid its various movements by their character and influence. Some fell into the Wesleyan ranks, though, probably, most, like the eminent scholar and preacher, William Romaine, one of the sons of the exile, maintained the more Calvinistic faith, reflecting most nearly the old creed of the Huguenot.

This surmise of the influence of that noble invasion upon the national well-being of Britain is justified by inference from the facts. It is very interesting to attempt to realise the religious life of eminent activity and usefulness sustained in different parts of the country before the Revival dawned, and which must have had an influence in fostering it when it arose. And, indeed, while we would desire to give all grateful honour to the extraordinary men (especially to such a man as John Wesley, who achieved so much through a life in which the length and the usefulness were equal to each other, since only when he died did he cease to animate by his personal influence the immense organisation he had formed), yet it seems really impossible to regard any one mind as the seed and source of the great movement. It was as if some cyclone of spiritual power swept all round the nation—or, as if a subtle, unseen train had been laid by many men, simultaneously, in many counties, and the spark was struck, and the whole was suddenly wrapped in a Divine flame.

Dr. Abel Stevens, in his most interesting, indeed, charming history of Methodism, from his point of view, gives to his own beloved leader and Church the credit of the entire movement; so also does Mr. Tyerman, in his elaborate life of Wesley. But this is quite contrary to all dispassionate dealing with facts; there were many men and many means in quiet operation, some of these even before Wesley was born, of which his prehensile mind availed itself to draw them into his gigantic work; and there were many which had operated, and continued to operate, which would not fit themselves into his exact, and somewhat exacting, groove of Church life.

We have said it was as if a cyclone of spiritual power were steadily sweeping round the minds of men and nations, for there were undoubted gusts of remarkable spiritual life in both hemispheres, at least fifty years before Methodism had distinctly asserted itself as a fact. Most remarkable was the “Great Awakening” in America, in Massachusetts—especially at Northampton (that is a remarkable story, which will always be associated with the name of Jonathan Edwards).[3] We have referred to the exodus of the persecuted from France; equally remarkable was another exodus of persecuted Protestants from Salzburg, in Austria. The madness of the Church of Rome again cast forth an immense host of the holiest and most industrious citizens. At the call of conscience they marched forth in a body, taking joyfully the spoiling of their goods rather than disavow their faith: such men with their families are a treasure to any nation amongst whom they may settle. Thomas Carlyle has paid a glowing historical eulogy to the memory of these men, and the exodus has furnished Goethe with the subject of one of his most charming poems.

Footnote 3:

See Appendix C.

Philip Doddridge’s work was almost done before the Methodist movement was known. It seems to us that no adequate honour has ever yet been paid to that most beautiful and remarkably inclusive life. It was public, it was known and noticed, but it was passed almost in retreat in Northampton. That he was a preacher and pastor of a Church was but a slight portion of the life which succumbed, yet in the prime of his days, to consumption. His academy for the education of young ministers seems to us, even now, something like a model of what such an academy should be; his lectures to his students are remarkably full and scholarly and complete. From thence went forth men like the saintly Risdon Darracott, the scholarly and suggestive Hugh Farmer, Benjamin Fawcett, and Andrew Kippis. The hymns of Doddridge were among the earliest, as they are still among the sweetest, of that kind of offering to our modern Church; their clear, elevated, thrush-like sweetness, like the more uplifted seraphic trumpet tones of Watts, broke in upon a time when there was no sacred song worthy of the name in the Church, and anticipated the hour when the melodious acclamations of the people should be one of the most cherished elements of Christian service.

And Isaac Watts was, by far, the senior of Doddridge; he lived very much the life of a hermit. Although the pastor of a city church, he was sequestered and withdrawn from public life in Theobalds, or Stoke Newington, where, however, he prosecuted a course of sacred labor of a marvellously manifold description, inter-meddling with every kind of learning, and consecrating it all to the great end of the christian ministry and the producing of books, which, whether as catechisms for children, treatises for the formation of mental character, philosophic essays grappling with the difficulties of scholarly minds, or “comfortable words” to “rock the cradle of declining age,” were all to become of value when the nation should awake to a real spiritual power. They are mostly laid aside now; but they have served more than one generation well; and he, beyond question, was the first who taught the Protestant Christian Church in England to sing. His hymns and psalms were sounding on when John Wesley was yet a child, and numbers of them were appropriated in the first Methodist hymn-book. But Watts and Doddridge, by the conditions of their physical and mental being, were unfitted for popular leaders. Perhaps, also, it must be admitted that they had not that which has been called the “instinct for souls;” they were concerned rather to illustrate and expound the truth of God, and to “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour,” by their lives, than to flash new convictions into the hearts of men. It is characteristic that, good and great as they were, they were both at first inimical to the Great Revival; it seemed to them a suspicious movement. The aged Watts cautioned his younger friend Doddridge against encouraging it, especially the preaching of Whitefield; yet they both lived to give their whole hearts to it; and some of Watts’s last words were in blessing, when, near death, he received a visit from the great evangelist.

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.

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