Lady Huntingdon and Her Friends

Mrs Helen C. Knight

This child, called SELINA SHIRLEY, second daughter of Earl Ferrars, was born in Chartley, August 24, 1707 almost from infancy, an uncommon seriousness shaded the natural gladness of her childhood; in the clear depths of her penetrating eye, and in the curve of her thin lip, were traces of earnest thought, and thought inspired not so much by the sweet solitude and breezy melodies of the grand old trees around her father’s mansion, or the old ruins of Chartley castle, or the storied associations of her own ancestral history, as by other and far deeper things. She loved to visit the grass-grown grave of her departed friend, and would often stray to a little closet in her own room, where, screened from the notice of her sisters, she poured out her heart in supplication to the Author of her being. Without any positive religious instruction, for none knew the inward sorrows of this little girl, nor were there any around her who could have led her to the balm there is in Gilead, Selina devoutly and diligently searched the Scriptures, if haply she might find that precious something which her soul craved. That there was a higher good, a purer joy, a loftier love, she was well assured, for her religious instincts kept climbing upward for light and warmth; but where could they be found?

At the age of twenty-one, she was married to Theophilus, Earl of Huntington, a man of high and exemplary character, and by this connection became allied to a family whose tastes and principles happily coincided with her own.

Both by birth and by marriage Lady Huntington was introduced to all the splendours and excitements of high English life at the residence of her aunt, Lady Fanny Shirley, at Twickenham, which formed one of the literary centres of that day, and whose mistress was a reigning beauty of the court of George II, she mingled freely with the wits, poets, and authors, then distinguished in the walks of English literature among her friends might be numbered the famous Duchess of Marlborough, whose talents were only equal to her temper; Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose intimacy and quarrels with Pope, as well as her eccentricities, have sent her name down to posterity; Margaret, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, a patroness of literature and friend of Miss Robinson, afterwards the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Montague.

The gifts and graces of the young Lady Huntington fitted her to shine in the most elegant circles of England; but whatever she might have been as a leader of fashion, or an actor in political intrigues, or the friend of literary merit, her life comes down to us linked with the Redeemer’s cause, and her name is enrolled among those who have loved and labored for their Lord.

During the first years of her married life, Lady Huntington’s chief endeavor, amid the shifting scenes of town and country life, was to maintain a Conscience void of offence. She strove to fulfil the various duties of her position with scrupulous exactness; she was sincere, just, and upright; she prayed, fasted, and gave alms; she was courteous, considerate, and charitable; at Donnington Park, Ashby de la Zouch, in Leicestershire, the elegant summer residence of the Earl, she was the Lady Bountiful of the neighborhood; she struggled against infirmities within and temptations from without and strove to model her outward and inward life after the divine pattern — yet, was Lady Huntington happy? The consciousness of seeking to live a virtuous and God-fearing life braced her moral powers and quickened her intellect; but where was the faith that could emancipate her soul from the fear of God’s inquisition? “I have done virtuously,” was the complacent suggestion of self-love; “but how can I tell when I have done enough?” was the doubtful inquiry of conscience.

Se passed the early years of Lady Huntington’s life; children were born, mingling their lights and shadows in the stately household; no earthly good was with-holden, nor were earthly blessings abused by riot or excess; dignity, sobriety, and refinement presided over the homes and halls of the Earl. Among the women of her day it might have been said of his wife, “She excelled them all,” yet her heart knew its own sorrows; it was laden with its own hidden burdens.

Lord Huntington had several sisters whose thoughtful cast of mind made them particularly welcome to his house in them, Lady Huntington had found kindred spirits; but now came Lady Margaret from Ledstone Hall, bearing a new and rich experience. She was the same Margaret of old, and yet another.

Yorkshire and Ledstone, among other towns in Yorkshire, had been blessed by the labors of a mighty man of God. He preached the great doctrines of the cross under a profound and thrilling sense of their value. He went from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, and house to house, preaching “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” Men paused and listened to his messages; the clergy were waked from their spiritual slumbers, some to receive a new quickening from his words, others to upbraid and drive him from their churches. The sisters of Ledstone Hall heard of his fame, and hungered for the living manna. Mr. Ingham was invited to the Ledstone church. The preacher’s words fell upon good ground. His simple yet searching appeals alarmed the conscience and melted the heart. Margaret Hastings embraced the truth as it is in Jesus: it was no longer the Christianity of creed and ritual, but a now birth into Christ’s spiritual family, with the conscious heir-ship to a heavenly inheritance.

With this fresh life in her soul, she visited the house of the Earl. What a new world of hopes, of aims, of privileges could she unfold to Lady Huntington — pardon through a crucified Saviour — peace such as the world could neither give nor take away; and as she spoke one day, those words fell from her lips: “Since I have known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, I have been as happy as an angel.” A believer’s blessed testimony, but it found no response in Lady Huntington’s heart. Margaret’s language was like an unknown tongue.

It was the report of a strange land. There was no answering tone. She felt herself an utter stranger to those sweet assurances which had hushed the disquiet of her sister’s soul, and admitted to the groping spirit a gleam of light from the heavenly world.

Lady Huntington was alarmed. Could she, religious from her youth up, be really ignorant of the true way of acceptance with God? Had she not always been doing, struggling? Yet in spite of all, a conviction of short-coming pressed upon her; and she added austerities and rigors to subdue her sense of indwelling sin.

Alas, she felt only more keenly, that every attempt to make her life answer to the requirements of God’s righteous laws, only widened the breach between herself and the Lawgiver. She beheld herself more and more a spiritual outcast. Thus harassed by inward conflicts, Lady Huntington was thrown upon a sick-bed, and after many days and nights seemed hastening to the grave. The fear of death fell terribly upon her.

“It was to no purpose,” says one of her at this period, “that; she reminded herself of the morality of her conduct in vain did she recall the many encomiums passed upon her early piety. Her best righteousness, so far from justifying her before God, appeared only to increase her condemnation.”

There she lay, with every alleviation which the best skill and the tenderest nursing could impart, but there was a malady of the soul which these could not reach. Was there no balm in Gilead, and no Physician there? Then it was that the words of Lady Margaret came laden with wonderful meaning. “I too will wholly cast myself on Jesus Christ for life and salvation,” was her last refuge; and from her bed she lifted up her heart to God for pardon and mercy through the blood of his Son. With streaming eyes she cast herself on her Saviour: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” immediately the scales fell from her eyes; doubt and distress vanished; joy and peace filled her bosom. With appropriating faith, she exclaimed, “My Lord, and my God” From that moment her disease took a favorable turn; she was restored to health, and what was better, to “newness of life.”

Exemplary as Lady Huntington had been as a wife and mother, and free from the corruptions of fashionable society, no one could fail to see the transforming influence which grace had wrought in her. Love and self-abasement mellowed the sterner traits of her character; the strong sympathies of her heart gushed out towards the people of God, and henceforth, “My God, I give myself to thee,” became the watchword of her life.

At the period of Lady Huntington’s marriage, there was a little band of students in the bosom of Oxford University who, by prayer and fasting and a rigid self-denial, had laid hold upon the great doctrines of the gospel, and were wrestling with them, like one of old, for a heavenly benediction. Shocked by the scoffing tone and degraded aims of their fellows, and disgusted with the prevailing shallow, piety of the pulpit and the church, they asked, “Is there not something holier and loftier than this in the gospel of Jesus Christ?” “Can it not redeem from sin and exalt by the power of an endless life?” Profoundly earnest, they accepted the Bible in its integrity, without abatement or addition, as the charter of their liberties and a missive charged with terrible meaning from God to a fallen world. They gave themselves to the service of the Lord with their whole hearts; nor is it strange, in that period of scepticism and levity, that their devout and steadfast adherence to religious convictions provoked the frowns of their masters, and the ridicule of their companions; but taunts and revilings could not daunt the spirit of such men as Whitefield, the Wesleys, and their more immediate co-partners. Rich in that grace which the Father of our spirits vouchsafes to the waiting and believing followers of his Son, the time came when every comer of England thrilled with the fervid eloquence of their preaching.

After leaving Oxford, Whitefield at Bristol, Ingham in Yorkshire, and Wesley at London, began those fearless and awakening appeals which quickened the vitality of English Christianity, reasserting its demands upon the moral consciousness of the nation.
The Wesleys with Ingham went to Georgia, where, after laboring two years with success ill-proportioned to their zeal, they returned to England. On the voyage and during their stay, having been thrown into the society of some Moravian missionaries, whose simple piety won their confidence and love, they lost no time on their arrival at London in visiting the Moravian chapel at Fetter’s-lane, where Wesley’s career properly begins, but whence he not long after withdrew to lay, as it seemed, not only the foundations of a new encampment in the great Christian army, but to give urgency and a name to that religious renovation which the church needed, both to maintain her supremacy, and to quicken her onward march in the conquest of the world.

As Margaret Hastings, from whose lips she first heard the joyful language of a saving faith, was a disciple of Ingham, no wonder that when Lady Huntington experienced its blessed effects in her own soul, she turned from the more frigid and formal teaching of former spiritual guides with a yearning heart towards the new. On her recovery, she sent for John and Charles Wesley, then in London, to come and visit her, expressing a warm interest in their labors, and bidding them God speed in the great and glorious work of urging men to repentance and to heaven. This was in the year 1739, and Lady Huntington was at the age of thirty-two.

In Lady Huntington they found an ardent friend, and a fearless advocate of their new movements. To her, new movements were no portentous look when the church was sleeping at her post, and the world around was sinking to ruin. The vigorous itinerant preaching which constituted the then new, though revised instrumentality for meeting the wants of the time, whether among the colliers of Kingswood, the London rabble on Kennington common, or the farmers of the Yorkshire dales, strongly contrasted with, and boldly rebuked the stagnant ministrations of the sporting clergy, the grave decorum of their more serious brethren, and the utter indifference generally felt about providing suitable means of moral culture for the great masses of half-savage workmen living in the principal cities of the kingdom.

Both the Earl and his wife became frequent attendants upon the ministry of Wesley; and while Lady Huntington took great delight in the society of her new Christian friends, she did not neglect to urge upon her former associates the claims of that gospel which she had found so precious to her own soul. The rebuffs which she sometimes met with on these occasions form a curious page in the chapter of human pride.

“The doctrines of these preachers are most repulsive,” writes the proud Duchess of Buckingham, “and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions it is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl upon 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.”

“Your concern for my religious improvement is very obliging,” thus discourses the unhappy Lady Marlborough; “God knows we all need friending, and none more than myself. I have lived to see great changes in the world — have acted a conspicuous part myself — and now hope in my old age to obtain mercy from God, as I never expect any at the hands of my fellow-creatures. good, alas, I do want; but where among the corrupt sons of Adam am I to find it? Your ladyship must direct me. But women of wit, beauty, and quality cannot bear too many humiliating truths — they shock our pride. Yet we must die — we must converse with earth and worms I have no comfort in my own family, and when alone my reflections almost kill me, so that I am forced to fly to the society of those whom I detest and abhor. Now there is Lady Frances Sanderson’s great rout to-morrow night; all the world will be there, and I must go I do hate that woman as much as I hate a physician; but I must go, if for no other purpose but to mortify and spite her. This is very wicked, I know, but I confess my little peccadilloes to you; your goodness will lead you to be mild and forgiving.”

This, then, is the bitter experience of one who had been the companion of princesses and the ornament of courts; “vanity and vexation of spirit.” It tears away the trappings of wealth and station, and startles us by a sight of the bad passions which he cankering beneath. Let it be contrasted with the freshness and beauty of the believer’s life.

“What blessed effects does the love of God produce in the hearts of those who abide in him,” writes Lady Huntington to Charles Wesley. “How solid is the peace and how divine the joy that springs from an assurance that we are united to the Saviour by a living faith. Blessed be his name I have an abiding sense of his presence with me, notwithstanding the weakness and unworthiness I feel, and an intense desire that he may be glorified in the salvation of souls, especially those who he nearest my heart after the poor labors of the day are over, my heart still cries, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ I am deeply sensible that daily, hourly, and momentarily I stand in need of the sprinkling of my Saviour’s blood. Thanks be to God, the fountain is always open; O what an anchor is this to my soul!”