CHAPTER VIII

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.

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.”

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!”

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.

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.

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.