| HERE comes one with quick, elastic step; his eye is keen; his thin, yet strongly lined face is surmounted by a gray wig somewhat smitten by the hand of time; his plain, and certainly not polished manners, are perhaps in keeping with the blue suit and coarse blue yarn stockings, in which he is usually seen; He cannot stop for all the elaborate courtesies of life, for manifold cares and duties eat up his time, which he is bent on using wisely, as one who must give account. Behold Rev. William Romaine, curate of St. Dunstans and St. Georges, Hanover-square, London, whose searching and appeals were at once the scorn and the delight of multitudes, and whose "Walk of Faith" hold a prominent place on the bookshelves of our fathers fifty years ago.
He was at Oxford with Whitefield and the Wesleys, whom on account of their religious strictness and singularity he then avoided and despised. Whatever might have been his literary hopes or ambitious longings, he was the child of prayer, and trained by believing parents for the service of God. Thoroughly instructed in the doctrines of the cross, he at length cordially embraced them, and the unfeigned faith which dwelt in his parents now became a living principle within his own bosom.
Having taken orders, he occasionally preached, but for seven years his time had been chiefly occupied in preparing for the press a new edition of the Hebrew Concordance and Lexicon of Marius do Calasio; and it was to further its progress with the printers that we find him in London in 1747 then thirty-three years of age. Having completed his arrangements, he determined to return to the north of England, where his friends resided, and where he was best known. His trunk was on shipboard, and he was hurriedly threading his way through the bustle of Cheapside on his route to the quay, when a stranger suddenly stopped. him and asked if his name were not Romaine. "That is my name," answered the astonished young man. "I knew your father, and I saw at once the father's look in the son," continued the gentleman. The two stood and talked. Before parting the stranger spoke of his interest in the vacant parishes of St. George and St. Botolph, and offered to exert it in his behalf; and thus, on this chance and abrupt meeting, did the young preacher pause and make choice of his destiny for life.
"Had not Mr. Romaine met this stranger - had not the stranger been instantly struck with the son's resemblance to his father - had he not accosted him with a curiosity for which probably he himself could no reason - had he passed a moment sooner or later. - had the lectureship not been vacant - had not the conversation led to the cause of Mr. Romaine's leaving - in short," says Dr. Haweis, "if a thousand unforeseen circumstances had not concurred just at that critical moment, the labors of that great reviver of evangelical truth in the churches of London, humanly speaking, had been lost to the metropolis, and with it all the blessed consequences of his ministry, which thousands have experienced, and for which they will bless God to all eternity."
Thus doeth He who holds the thread of every circumstance: we are the web of his own great purposes.
A general alarm prevailed in London at this time, 1749, for fear of coming judgments. The universal corruption of morals, the mocking spirit of irreligion, and the heartlessness and hollowness of society on one side, the bold rebukes, the searching appeals, the fearless denunciations of the new preachers on the other, united with the report of earthquakes desolating and destroying on the continent, conspired to kindle in the public mind a consciousness of deserved wrath, and a fearful apprehension of approaching calamities. There are times when whole communities are thus startled into a sense of God, and great fears lay hold upon them. The shocks of earthquake were now more sensibly felt in London than for many years. Houses were shaken, chimneys were thrown down, multitudes left the city, while crowds fled for safety to the open fields. Towerhill, Kennington-common, and Moorfields were thronged with men, women, and children. Places of worship became crowded. The Wesleys preached incessantly, and Whitefield went out one time at midnight to address a dismayed and affrighted multitude in Hyde-park.
Romaine also was intent upon improving these solemn opportunities in addition to his forcible appeals from the pulpit, and his faithful conversations in private, he published "An Alarm to the Careless World," which might speak where his voice could never reach. A sermon also appeared from the pen of Dr. Doddridge, entitled, "the Guilt and Doom of Capernaum seriously recommended to the inhabitants of London."
"You have now, sirs," he says in the preface, "very lately had repeated and surprising demonstrations of the almighty power of that infinite and adorable Being, whom in the midst of your hurries and amusements you are so ready to forget his hand hath once and again, within these five weeks, lifted up your mighty city from its basis, and shook its million of inhabitants in their dwellings. The palaces of the great, nay, even of the greatest, have not been exempted, that the princes of the land might be wise, and its judges and lawgivers might receive instruction and is not the voice of this earthquake like that of the angel in the Apocalypse, flying in the midst of heaven, and having the everlasting gospel, saying with a loud voice, 'Fear God, and give glory to him, and worship him that made heaven and earth?'
"I suppose what you have so lately felt, to be the result of natural causes; but remember, they were causes disposed by Him who, from the day in which he founded our island and laid the foundations of the earth, knew every circumstance of their operation with infinitely more certainty than the most skilful engineer the disposition and success of a mine which he hath prepared and directed, and which he fires in the appointed moment and do not your hearts meditate terror? Especially when you consider how much London hath done, and even you yourselves have done, to provoke the eyes of his holiness and awaken the vengeance of his almighty arm? The second shock, it seems, was more dreadful than the first; and may not the third be yet more dreadful than the second? So that this last may seem as a merciful signal to prepare for what may with the most terrible propriety be called an untimely grave indeed - a grave that shall receive the living with the dead. Think what you have lately felt; and think whether in that amazing moment you could have done any thing material to prepare for another world, if eternity had depended upon that momentary preparation. A shriek of wild consternation, a cry as you were sinking, 'The Lord have mercy on us!' would probably have been of very little significance to those that have so long despised mercy, and would not have thought of asking it but in the last extremity."
"Oh London, London," cries the preacher in his sermon, "dear city of my birth and education, seat of so many of my friends, seat of our princes and senators, centre of our commune, heart of our island which must feel and languish and tremble and die with thee, how art thou lifted up to heaven; how high do thy glories rise, and how bright do they shine! How great is thy magnificence; how extensive thy commerce; how numerous, how free, how happy thin inhabitants; how happy, above all, in their religious opportunities; how happy in the uncorrupted gospel, so long and so faithfully preached in thy synagogues! But while we survey these heights of elevation, must we not tremble lest thou shouldst fall so much the lower, lest thou should plunge so much the deeper in ruin?
"My situation, sirs, is not such as renders me most capable of judging concerning the moral character of this our celebrated metropolis. But who can hear what seem the most credible reports of it, and not take an alarm? Whose spirit must not like that of Paul at Athens, be stirred, when he sees the city so abandoned to profaneness, luxury, and vanity? Is it indeed false, all that we hear? Is it indeed accidental, all that we see? Is London wronged, when it is said that great licentiousness reigns among most of its inhabitants, and great indolence and indifference. To religion, even among those who are not licentious? That assemblies for divine worship are much neglected, or frequented with little appearance of seriousness or solemnity, while assemblies for pleasure are thronged, and attended with such eagerness that all the heart and soul scorns to be given to them rather than to God; that the Sabbath, instead of being religiously observed, is given to jaunts of pleasure into neighboring villages, or wasted on beds of sloth, or at tables of excess; That men of every rank are ambitious of appearing to be something more than they are, grasping at business they cannot manage, entering into engagements they cannot answer, and so, after a vain and contemptible blaze, drawing bankruptcy upon themselves and others? That the poorer sort are grossly ignorant, wretchedly depraved, and abandoned to the most brutal sensualities and infirmities; while those who would exert any remarkable zeal to remedy these evils, by introducing a deep and warm sense of religion into the minds of others, are suspected and censured as whimsical and enthusiastical, if not designing men? In a word, that the religion of our divine Master is by multitudes of the great and the vulgar openly renounced and blasphemed? Men and brethren, are these things indeed so? I take not upon me to answer absolutely that they are; but I will venture to say, that if they are indeed thus, London, as rich and grand and glorious as it is, has reason to tremble, and to tremble so much the more for its abused riches, grandeur, and glory."
While some of the preachers were thus careful to improve the general alarm by a vigorous enforcement of divine truth, there were multitudes of the people no less anxious for spiritual instruction. St. Georges, where Romaine preached, was thronged; and of this, some of the regular parishioners grievously complained. The old Earl of Northampton reminded them that they bore the greater crowd of a ballroom, an assembly, and a playhouse, without inconvenience or complaint; "and if," said he, "the power to attract be imputed as a matter of admiration to Garrick, why should it be urged as a crime against Romaine? Shall excellence be exceptionable only in divine things?"
But the thing was not to be borne if the parishioners could bear the preaching of the curate, the rector would not. Zeal in the preacher was at that time looked upon, in certain quarters, as one of the unpardonable sins of the pulpit; for it reflected discredit upon a large body of the clergy, and whether he meant it or not, was a rebuke upon the dead and formal ministry of his brethren. Romaine was therefore summarily dismissed from his curacy. Turned out of St. Georges, but reluctant to part from many of his parishioners, he ventured to meet them at the house of one of their number; for which alleged irregularity he was threatened with prosecution from the ecclesiastical court. On learning this, Lady Huntington immediately invited him to her house in Parkstreet, offered him her scarf, and made him her chaplain. Thus shielded by a peeress of the realm, he continued his labors, more vigorously than ever, for the spiritual good of his fellows. Romaine was at this time thirty-five years of age.
"God has been terribly shaking the metropolis," wrote Whitefield to Lady Huntington. "I hope it is an earnest of his giving a shock to secure sinners, and making them to cry out, 'What shall we do to be saved?' I trust, honored madam, you have been brought to believe on the Lord Jesus. What a mercy is this: to be plucked as a brand from the burning, to be one of those few mighty and noble that are called effectually by the grace of God. What can shake a soul whose hopes are fixed on the Rock of ages? Winds may blow, rains may and will descend even upon persons in the most exalted stations, but they that trust in the Lord never shall, never can be totally confounded."
As the season advances, we turn from the exciting scenes of the metropolis, from its din and depravity, to the green lawns and hawthorn hedges of the country. We hear the lark,
" - Blithe spirit,
Pouring its full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art;"
we cross the Ouso, perhaps at Olney, and see "displayed its lilies newly blown;" and following Whitefield, find him at Northampton in the hospitable home of Dr. Doddridge. The famous and somewhat unquiet visitor cannot disturb the sweet accord of the minister's family, though the children gather around him, drawn by the tender warmth of his love for them. How vividly he tells the story of his London labors, and of the good countess whom their father loves; or perhaps he recounts his travels among the wild forests and the tall red men of the new world, to which they listen with eager interest; or perhaps he discourses with the parents upon the marvellous works of God, or urges upon the young men of the academy the glorious gospel of his blessed Lord. But private ministrations are not for him. On a Tuesday morning we find him preaching to Doddridge's family, and in the afternoon to above two thousand people in the neighboring field.
Hervey comes to welcome him, James Hervey, one of the Oxford band, now curate in the little village of Western Flavel, so near Northampton that he and Doddridge may often thread the green lanes to each other's houses and take sweet counsel in heavenly things. Hervey is pale and attenuated, but great men find their way to his retired church, for his works are admired among the literary circles of the land. On this side of the waters he is best known as the author of "Meditations in a Graveyard," once a popular little volume, but now cast in the shade less for the serious tone of it, than for its airy flights of style. Harvey's heart glows while Whitefield talks.
"Surely, I never spent a more delightful evening," exclaimed he, "or saw one that seemed to make nearer approaches to the felicity of heaven. A gentleman of great worth and rank invited us to his house and gave us an elegant treat; but how mean was his provision, how coarse his delicacies, compared with the fruit of my friend's lips. They dropped as a honeycomb, and were a well of life."
Dr. Stonehouse is also of the company, once Doddridge's beloved family physician, now a physician of souls an avowed infidel when he first came to Northampton, the preaching, conversation, writings, and counsels both of Doddridge and Hervey led him to reconsider the ground upon which he stood, discover his perilous condition, and flee to Jesus Christ for refuge from the wrath to come. He afterwards settled at Great and Little Cheveril, Wilts, where he became the spiritual guide of Hannah More, and the "Mr. Johnson" of her admirable and far-famed tract, "the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." After the death of his wife he married Miss Ekins, a tenderly beloved ward of Dr. Doddridge, "whose account of her expenses and estate was so just," says the husband on receiving the property of his bride, "that he really did not do justice to himself, in consequence of which he made his widow a handsome present for his undercharges."
Meanwhile Lady Huntington is at Ashby de is Zouch, in Leicestershire, one of the manors belonging to Lord Huntington's family, a day's journey from Northampton, if the lumbering vehicles of a hundred years ago could make fifty miles a day. Here were the ladies Hastings, Frances, Anne, and Betty. After a while, Doddridge pays her a visit. On Sabbath forenoon he preached, while her domestic chaplain read. The service; in the evening the order was reversed, Doddridge prayed and the chaplain preached. "This is a true catholic spirit," exclaims the countess, "that wishes well to the cause of Christ in every denomination. I wish all the dissenting ministers were like-minded, less attached to little punctilios, and more determined to publish the glorious gospel wherever men are assembled to hear, whether in a church, a meeting-house, a field, or a barn - less anxious to convince their brethren in errors of discipline, and more solicitous to gather souls to Christ."
Whitefield in his rounds at length halts at Ashby. "And Ashby-place is like a Bethel," he exclaims; "we have the sacrament every morning, heavenly conversation all day, and preaching at night This is "to live at court indeed." Does not this picture remind us of the primitive Christians, when they continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, eating their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, and praising God?
But the spirit and the preaching of Ashby-placa did not suit the humor of the neighborhood. Riotous proceedings took place on various occasions, inflamed, it was said, by the dissenters; perhaps Whitefield comes nearer the truth when he exclaims, "Alas, how great and irreconcilable is the enmity of the serpent." the countess' house is threatened with ruin, and some persons on their way home narrowly escaped being murdered. "Ungrateful Ashby," cries Whitefield, "O that thou knewest the day of thy visitation. I shall be glad to hear what becomes of the rioters. O that your ladyship may live to see many of those Ashby stones become children to Abraham."
To Lady Gertrude Hotham, one of his London converts, he wrote, "Good Lady Huntington is weak in body, but strong in grace. Thousands and thousands flock to hear the word twice every day, and the power of God has attended it in a glorious manner. But the good people of Ashby were so kind as to mob round her ladyship's door while the gospel was preaching. Ashby is not worthy of so rich a pearl. You and Lady Fanny were constantly remembered at Ashby at the holy table."
Whitefield staid here a fortnight, continuing instant in season and out of season in his Master's work, when he took leave and pushed on towards the north as mails were not carried by coaches in England until nearly thirty years after this time, we may suppose there was little public accommodation for travellers. People went in their own conveyances. Let us take a look at Whitefield, as his carriage drives out of Ashby on the road to Nottingham, drawn by a favorite pair of handsome black horses, doing credit to their keeping at the Ashby stables. It was on this journey, while he was preaching at Kendal, surrounded by a listening multitude, that some of the baser sort, honoring the preacher in their own way, entered the barn where his carriage was housed, hacked the leather, abused the trimmings, and cut off the horses' tails. "Still," he observes, "God vouchsafes to prosper the gospel plough. Such an entrance has been made at Kendal as could not have been expected. The people are importunate that I should return again, and the power of the Lord has been wonderfully displayed."
At Nottingham, he was attended by great multitudes, who thronged every avenue to the place appointed for him to preach in; in some places, "Satan rallied," he says, "giving notice of me by calling the people to a bear-baiting: a drum is beat, and men are called to the market-place; but the arrows of the Lord can disperse them." It was at Rotherham that several young men met at a tavern, and undertook on a wager to see who could best mimic him; each in turn mounted the table, and opening a Bible, entertained his companions at the expense of every thing sacred. A youth by the name of Thorpe was to close the scene; and he exclaimed, on taking his stand, "I shall beat you all." Opening the Bible, his eye fell on the solemn sentence, "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." It pierced the young man's soul. The truth mastered him. He spoke, but it was like a dying man to dying men. A profound seriousness spread over the company, and those who came to scoff went away to weep. He afterwards became a preacher, and for many years faithfully ministered in holy things; and his son, Rev. William Thorpe, was for a long time one of the stated supplies of the Whitefield chapel in London.
Whitefield visited Aberford, the residence of Ingham and Lady Margaret, where Ingham and Grimshaw joined him on his tour in Yorkshire. From Leeds he writes to Lady Huntington, "Last night I preached to many, many thousands, and this morning also at five o'clock. Methinks I am now got into another climate it must be a warm one, where there are so many of God's people. Our Pentecost is to be kept at Mr. Grimshaw's. While at Haworth, Mr. Grimshaw's curacy, the Lord's supper was frequently administered not only to the stated communicants, but to hundreds from other quarters, who resorted hither on these solemn occasions, when it seemed emphatically, that the "Spirit was poured out from on high." "Pen," he writes to Hervey, "can-not well describe what glorious scenes have opened in Yorkshire. Since I was in Ashby, perhaps seventy or eighty thousand have attended the word preached in divers places. At Haworth, on Whit-Sunday, the church was thrice filled with communicants it was a precious season."
After travelling through different parts of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, accompanied by Ingham and one or two other kindred spirits, he departs for Scotland; while we return to Ashby, and find Hervey there, among other guests. How feeble is he. Dr. Stonehouse can administer nothing for his relief, but advises him to go to London by easy stages, and try the effect of change of air; and Lady Huntington urges it. The next winter finds him lodged not with "his brother after the flesh," but with "the brother of his heart," Mr. Whitefield, at his house near Moorfields. Lady Huntington commends the invalid to the kind notice of her female friends; at the house of Lady Fanny Shirley and Lady Gertrude Hotham, he preaches as often as his strength admits, and it was to the former that he dedicates his new volume, "Theron and Aspasio."
Early in the month of October, Whitefield comes back to Ashby, after long ranging about as he says, to see who would believe the gospel report.
"Your kind letter," he answers Doddridge, "finds me happy at our good Lady Huntington's, whose path shines brighter and brighter till the perfect day. Gladly shall I call upon you again, if the Lord spares my life; but in the meanwhile, I shall not fail to pray that the work of our common Lord may more and more prosper in your hand I thank you a thousand times for your kindness to the chief of sinners, and assure you, reverend sir, the affection is reciprocal I go with regret from Lady Huntington. Do come and see her soon."
There were five clergymen now beneath her hospitable roof, "and it is a time of refreshing from the presence of our God," she writes to her aunt, Lady Fanny. "Several of our little circle have been wonderfully filled with the love of God, and have had joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is impossible to conceive more real happiness than Lady Frances enjoys. Dear Mr. Whitefield's sermons and conversation are close , searching, experimental, awful, and awakening. Surely God is wonderfully with him."
Whitefield now returned to London. Lady Huntington remained with her family at Ashby-place her health is delicate: Dr. Stonehouse still administers to her in bodily things, though he has just taken the cure of souls. He is thrown much into the society of those who are movers and actors in the great religions movements of the day, some of whom are among his choicest friends; yet he seems to have felt a strong repugnance to the term 'Methodist,' and perhaps it was in reference to his timid conservatism upon this point, that Lady Huntington urges, 'Go forth boldly, fear not the reproach of men, and preach the inestimable gift of God to impotent sinners.'"
"For Christ's sake, dear Mr. Hervey," wrote Whitefield, "exhort Dr. Stonehouse, now that he hath taken the gown, to 'play the man;"' and to the doctor himself he says, "I have thought of you and prayed for you much, since we parted at Northampton. How wonderfully doth the Lord Jesus watch over you. How sweetly doth he lead you out of temptation. O follow his leadings, my dear friend, and let every, even the most beloved Isaac, be immediately sacrificed for God. God's law is our rule', and God will have all the heart or none. Agars will plead, but they must be hewn in places. May you quit yourself like a man, and in every respect behave like a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
"Allow me to express my heartfelt gratitude for the very faithful manner in which you have placed my serious duties before me," he courteously replies to Lady Huntington, "duties high and honorable, but arduous indeed. What holy and excellent examples have I in the exalted piety and ministerial fidelity of Doddridge, Hervey, and Hartley, and the undaunted zeal of that great apostle, Mr. Whitefield. May I be a follower of them as they are of Christ, and whatever little differences may exist between us, may we all finally meet before the throne of God and the Lamb."
Dr. Stonehouse is said to have become one of the most elegant preachers of the kingdom, and for the grace of propriety perhaps he was mainly indebted to Garrick, whose famous criticism will bear repeating.
Being once engaged to read prayers and preach at a church in London, he prevailed upon Garrick to go with him after the service, the actor asked the preacher what particular business he had to do when the duty was over.
"None," said the other.
"I thought you had," said Garrick, "on seeing you enter the reading-desk in such a hurry. Nothing can be more indecent than to see a clergyman set about sacred business as if he were a tradesman, and go into church as if he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible." he next asked the doctor what books he had before him.
"Only the Bible and Prayer-book."
Only the Bible and Prayer-book?" replied the player; "why, you tossed them backwards and forwards, and turned the leaves as carelessly, as if they were those of a daybook and ledger."
The doctor acknowledged the force of the criticism by henceforth avoiding the faults it was designed to correct. Might not many a young preacher of our own day wisely profit by the same?
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