Lady Huntingdon and Her Friends

Mrs Helen C. Knight

But in this evil and desolate hour, there were in secret places the wrestling Jacobs, whose conflicts issued in “newness of life;” and suddenly, strangely as it seemed to men, the electric appeals of Whitefield, and the powerful preaching of the Wesleys, startled the thronging multitudes of London with the awful verities of the world to come. The doctrines of the cross were proclaimed by earnest men, who them-selves had felt their saving power; everywhere souls were sunk in the depths of spiritual want, who laid hold of the “living way” of return ‘to their Father’s house set before them in the gospel; and multitudes, renouncing the pomps and vanities of this life, confessed themselves “strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” and “desired a better country, that is, a heavenly.”

We have singled out from this great company a noble Christian Woman, whose name is blended with the history of this period; whose soul glowed with a fervent faith; and whose princely mansions were open with a tireless hospitality to every one who loved her Lord as we follow her path, Wesley goes out from us to stamp his intrepid spirit upon the organism of one of the largest bodies of Protestant Christians, and at some future day we hope to follow him in his career.

Never, perhaps, since the days of the apostles, did the brave, loving, and rejoicing spirit of the gospel more strikingly manifest itself. It embraced the high and the low, the rich and the poor, who, when imbued with its divine life, became one in Christ Jesus, members of the same household of faith in them the new birth was something more than a theological dogma, or an article in the creed; it was a living reality: they rejoiced and testified that they were born of God, for old things had passed away, all things had become new.” Religion no longer consisted in a formal assent to a dead orthodoxy, but it was the life of God in the soul, the living Christianity of the Bible, which is alone transforming and vital.

It is well to study the spiritual development of a period so marked as this — the very period of the great revival of the work of God in our own country in connection with the labors of Edwards, Brainerd, and the Tennants — in order that we may see clearly the distinguishing elements of the renewed soul: hatred of sin, love to the Redeemer, and flowing from these, love and good-will to man it will help to settle the solemn question, which we doubt not rises upon many a disquieted soul, both within and without the visible church, “Am I really a child of God?” the question returns, Do you honestly and heartily desire to be free from the corruption which underlies your nature, and which makes you an alien from your Father’s house? Does your heart go out in tenderness and love to him who hath borne your iniquities, and by whose stripes you are healed? And with this love in your soul, is it your heart’s desire and prayer to God to bear your part, humble though it be, to bring others to this Saviour of lost men? for this is the fruit of faith.

Such endeavors may be noiseless, quiet, domestic in their nature, like Harlan Page’s, and like many a godly mother’s; but they must exist, for the church of Christ is essentially aggressive: its mission is not only to love but to conquer by love and while the believer should win a hearing by the purity and blamelessness of his life, the singleness of his aim, and the beauty of his holiness, shall he not “go forth bearing precious seed,” be ready to “do good and to communicate;” and in humble imitation of his heavenly Master, distribute the living bread, and pour out the healing waters of salvation to famished ones all along the way-sides of life?

LADY HUNTINGTON AND HER FRIENDS.