Excellent Women

It was in this year the King of Prussia made a state visit to England, and the marked attention he showed to Mrs. Fry was much noticed. He went to meet her at Newgate, and he also insisted on going to Upton to dinner, where Mrs. Fry presented to the King her husband, eight daughters and daughters-in-law, seven sons, and twenty-five grandchildren, with other relatives, Gurneys, Buxtons, and Pellys—an English family scene much enjoyed by the Prussian guest. Other visits are described in her Journals, to the Queen Dowager, the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, and others of the Royal Family; having interesting conversations about "our dear young Queen, Prince Albert, and their little ones; about our foreign journey, the King of the Belgians, and other matters." She often used to say she preferred visiting prisons to visiting palaces, and going to the poor rather than the rich, yet she felt it her duty to "drop a word in season" in high places, and at the same time to be "kept humble, watchful, and faithful to her Lord."

After the fatigues of the Continental and London season, she was glad in the summer to occupy the house of her brother-in-law Mr. Hoare at Cromer, and when there she saw much of the residents at Northrepps Hall, The Cottage, and other places famed far and wide for their philanthropic associations.

She got home to Upton Lane, and spent the winter there. The most noticeable event mentioned is her meeting at dinner Lord Ashley, at her son's house. "He is a very interesting man; devoted to promoting the good of mankind, and suppressing evil—quite a Wilberforce, I think." Such was her opinion of the good Earl of Shaftesbury in his early days.

In the spring of 1843, feeling her health to be somewhat restored, she surprised her friends by announcing her wish to visit Paris again, to complete works of usefulness formerly initiated there. More than once she saw the widowed Duchess of Orleans at the Tuilleries, the only other person present being her stepmother the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg, "an eminently devoted pious woman," by whom the Duchess of Orleans had been brought up from childhood. They spoke much about the children of the House of Orleans, and "the importance of their education being early founded in Christian faith;" a desire which may be re-echoed in another generation. Another important series of interviews was with M. Guizot, then the chief statesman of France. Altogether the last visit to Paris was a pleasant and useful expedition.

XIV.

LAST YEARS

The end was now drawing nigh—the end of her busy, useful life. In June, 1843, Elizabeth Fry attended the Quarterly Meeting at Hertford, the last time she left home expressly on religious service. She felt it her duty, she said, "to encourage the weary, and to stir up to greater diligence the servants of the Lord, who uses weak and foolish instruments for His work," yet who is "made unto His people, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."

Symptoms of increasing feebleness led to her removal that autumn from her home at Upton Lane, to various places, Sandgate, Tunbridge Wells, and Bath, in hope of recovering her strength. But she knew that her time for active service was over. She frequently said to those about her, "I feel the foundation underneath me sure." Her concern was not about herself, but about those near and dear to her.

One of the last entries in her Journal is this: "I do earnestly entreat Thee, that to the very last I may never deny Thee, or in any way have my life or conversation inconsistent with my love to Thee and most earnest desire to live to Thy glory; for I have loved Thee, O Lord, and desired to serve Thee without reserve. Be entreated, that through Thy faithfulness, and the power of Thy own Spirit, I may serve Thee unto the end. Amen."

The year 1844 was one of much trial and affliction. Her husband's only sister died of consumption on July 2nd; a grandson of much promise was taken off at the age of twelve by the same disease towards the end of July; in August and September her second son and two of his young daughters were rapidly carried off by malignant scarlet fever. In the spring of the following year the death of her brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, excited her tenderest feelings. In fact, there was a succession of bereavements, which caused her to say in her Journal, "Sorrow upon Sorrow!" and after writing the long list of deaths, she closes the entry with these words "O gracious Lord! bless and sanctify to us all this afflicting trial, and cause it to work for our everlasting good; and be very near to the widow and the fatherless; and may we all be drawn nearer to Thee, and Thy kingdom of rest and peace, where there will be no more sin, sickness, death, and sorrow."

As to her own health, she rallied a little after returning home from Bath, but it was thought well to move from place to place for change of air, and for the pleasure of communion with loved friends. The beginning of 1845 saw her again in Norfolk, her husband and her daughter taking her to Earlham, where she enjoyed, for several weeks, the companionship of her brother, Joseph John Gurney, his wife, and other relatives. She went frequently to Meeting at Norwich, drawn in her wheeled chair, and thence ministering with wonderful life and power to those present.

The Annual Meeting of the British Ladies Society, an excellent organisation for visiting and caring for female convicts, although usually held at Westminster, was this year held in the Friends' meeting-house at Plaistow. After the meeting, which she had addressed several times in a sitting posture, she invited those present to come to her home, and it was felt that her affectionate words at parting were probably the last they would hear from her in this world.

As the year passed, it was thought that the air of the south coast might be useful, and the house at Ramsgate, Arklow House, which proved her last abode, was prepared for her. Her bed-chamber adjoined the drawing-room, with pleasant views of the sea, in which she delighted. While driving in the country, or being wheeled to the pier in a Bath-chair, she still strove to be useful, distributing Bibles and tracts, accompanied with a few words of kindly exhortation. Thus she was employed till the close of her days in work for the Master. She lingered, with gradual decay; and passed away, after a few days' illness which confined her to bed, on the morning of the 13th of October, 1845, in her 66th year. The last words she was heard to articulate, were "O dear Lord, help and keep Thy servant."

There was much sorrow when she had ended her useful life; and when she was taken to Barking for interment, a great number of people assembled, and a solemn meeting was held. But far beyond any local gathering, her example will continue to speak, through all the ages, and in many a land. There are many workers in our time in every branch of Christian usefulness, but the name and the work of Elizabeth Fry will be for ever remembered.

JAMES MACAULAY, M.D.

SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

Lady Selina Shirley, afterwards Countess of Huntingdon, was born August 24, 1707. She died June 17, 1791. Hence her long and useful life extended over almost the whole of the eighteenth century. She witnessed the rise of the great evangelical revival, which, beginning with the Holy Club at Oxford, gradually spread over the United Kingdom and the English colonies in America. For half a century she was a central figure in that great religious movement which affected so deeply all classes of the community, consecrating her position, her means, her influence to the glory and the extension of His kingdom.

I.

EARLY YEARS

Lady Selina Shirley was the second of the three daughters of Washington Shirley, who in 1717 succeeded to the Earldom of Ferrars, being the second to bear that title. She was born at Stanton Harold, a country seat near Ashby de la Zouch, in Leicestershire. At a very early age she gave evidence of intelligence above the average, of a retentive memory, and of a clear and strong understanding. She manifested when but on the threshold of womanhood that sound common sense and keen insight into character and the true bearing of affairs which distinguished her so pre-eminently in mature and late life. She was serious by temperament, and when at the age of nine years she happened to meet the funeral cortège of a child the same age as herself, she was attracted to the burial, and used afterwards to trace her first abiding sense of the eternal world to the profound impressions produced upon her mind by that service. In after life she frequently visited that grave. She was earnest in her study of the Bible, much given to meditation, and at times almost oppressed by her convictions of the certainty and duration of a future state. By her station and education she was compelled to go out into society, and to take her place in circles in which religion was as far as possible ignored. But her prayer was that she might not marry into a frivolous, pleasure-seeking family.

On June 3, 1728, she became the wife of Theophilus, the ninth Earl of Huntingdon, who resided at Donnington Park. This proved a happy union, and even if, in later life, her husband was not always able fully to share her beliefs and sympathise with her actions, he never threw any obstacles in her way.

II.

HER CONVERSION

At Donnington Park the Countess began the kindly and charitable deeds for which she afterwards became so noted. Her religious feelings were strong, and she strove earnestly to discharge fully her responsibilities to both God and man. And yet, as she afterwards came clearly to see, she was ignorant of the true nature of the Gospel, and she was attempting, by strict adherence to prayer, meditation, right living, and charitable action, to justify herself in the sight of God. But, all unknown to her, the mighty religious awakening begun at Oxford in 1729, and publicly preached in 1738 by Whitefield and the Wesleys, was destined to be the cause of her spiritual awakening also. Lady Margaret Hastings and Lady Betty Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon's sisters, had come at Oxford under the influence of the Methodist movement. While on a visit at Ledstone Hall, in Yorkshire, they received great blessing under the preaching of Benjamin Ingham, a well-known member of the Holy Club, whom in 1741 Lady Margaret married. They both received the truth as it is in Jesus, and were led by the influence of the Holy Spirit to labour and pray for the salvation of their relatives and friends. In talking with her sister-in-law one day, Lady Margaret affirmed "that since she had known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for life and salvation she had been as happy as an angel."

These words depicted an experience so different from her own that they exerted a very abiding influence upon Lady Huntingdon's thoughts. She felt her need, she was conscious of sin, and yet the more she strove to attain salvation the further she seemed removed from it. "A dangerous illness having, soon after, brought her to the brink of the grave, the fear of death fell terribly upon her, and her conscience was greatly distressed. She now perceived that she had beguiled herself with prospects of a visionary nature; was entirely blinded to her own real character; had long placed her happiness in mere chimaeras, and grounded her vain hopes upon imaginary foundations. It was to no purpose that she reminded herself of the morality of her conduct; in vain did she recollect the many encomiums that had been passed upon her early piety and virtue. Her best righteousness now appeared to be but 'filthy rags,' which, so far from justifying her before God, increased her condemnation. When upon the point of perishing, in her own apprehension, the words of Lady Margaret returned strongly to her recollection, and she felt an earnest desire, renouncing every other hope, to cast herself wholly upon Christ for life and salvation. From her bed she lifted up her heart to her Saviour, with this important prayer, and immediately all her distress and fears were removed, and she was filled with peace and joy in believing…. Her disorder from that moment took a favourable turn; she was restored to perfect health, and, what was better, to newness of life. She determined thenceforward to present herself to God, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which she was now convinced was her reasonable service…. No sooner was her heart surrendered to God, and her alienated affections restored to their original claimant, than outward fruits appeared in her conversation: her renovation introduced new light into her understanding, and new desires into her heart and affections, and produced its effect upon her temper; not wholly to eradicate its constitutional peculiarity, but to sanctify and render it subservient to the glory of God and the good of souls."2

The Countess on recovering from her illness, hearing that John and Charles Wesley were preaching near by, sent them a message wishing them God-speed and testifying to her own purpose to live entirely for the Saviour who had died for her. Her friends failing in their attempt to persuade her husband to exert his influence against what they considered fanaticism, enlisted the aid of Dr. Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, who had been Lord Huntingdon's teacher. But the bishop, as many another in later days, found that the Countess was fully equal to giving cogent reasons for her faith and practice. It was he who had ordained Whitefield, and to the latter the bishop ascribed the change in her opinion. So far from accepting the bishop's view, the Countess urged home upon him her opinion of his duty, enforcing her argument with such apt quotations from the Bible, the Articles, and the Homilies, that at length he left her presence openly regretting the fact that he had ever laid his hands upon Whitefield's head. "My Lord," was the last word of the Countess, "mark my words: when you are on your dying bed that will be one of the few ordinations you will reflect upon with complacence." It is pleasing to know that when on his death-bed in 1752, this prelate sent to Whitefield, and asked to be remembered in his prayers.

III.

HELP IN THE WORK OF WESLEY AXD WHITEFIELD

Although in 1738 and 1739 Wesley and his followers frequented the Moravian meeting-house in Neville's Court, Fetter Lane, the first home of organised Methodism in London was the Foundry in Moorfields. Lady Huntingdon had identified herself with the Methodists, and thus was enabled to exert great influence upon a movement, small at first, but soon fraught with most potent consequences, the employment by Wesley of lay evangelistic agency. Wesley had already allowed some of his lay helpers to expound, but not to preach. Yet here, as in his strong desire to keep the Methodist movement within the borders of the Established Church, he was to find that his personal view, if enforced, would hinder the work which was so manifestly of God, and with his clear common sense he at once gave way. During 1739 Lady Huntingdon had frequently heard Thomas Maxfield pray, and, according to her biographer, it was at her suggestion that he began to expound the Scriptures. Wesley had been summoned from London, and no clergyman being available at that moment, he left Maxfield in charge, to pray with the members of the society and to give them such helpful advice as he could. In a letter to Wesley, written either at the close of 1739 or the beginning of 1740, Lady Huntingdon writes of Maxfield: "He is one of the greatest instances of God's peculiar favour that I know: he is raised from the stones to sit amongst the princes of His people. The first time I made him expound, expecting little from him, I sat over against him and thought what a power of God must be with him to make me give any attention to him. But before he had gone over one-fifth part, any one that had seen me would have thought I had been made of wood or stone; so quite immovable I both felt and looked. His power in prayer is quite extraordinary."

The border line between such expounding and preaching is very narrow, and it is hardly to be wondered at that Maxfield soon found that he was not only preaching, but doing so with the most true and certain warrant of fitness for the office—souls were being born again under his ministrations. On hearing such unexpected tidings, Wesley hurried back to London, and entering his house next door to the Foundry with clouded face, replied to his mother's question as to the cause, "Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I find." Great was his surprise to receive the rejoinder, "Take care what you do with respect to that young man, for he is as surely called of God to preach as you are." Such testimony from such a source could not fail to move John Wesley. He wisely heard for himself, and expressed his judgment in the words of Scripture—"It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good."

Thus Methodism passed through what might have been its first great crisis. Thus it equipped itself to keep pace with the ever-increasing claims of its work. The quick spiritual insight of Lady Huntingdon recognised both the need and the fitness of the hitherto unrecognised worker.

One of the first members of the noble band of itinerating preachers thus called into the active exercise of their spiritual gifts was David Taylor, a servant in Lord Huntingdon's household, who did much fruitful evangelistic work in the villages surrounding Donnington Park. It was this man who stood by John Wesley's side when the drunken curate of Epworth refused him admission to what had been his father's pulpit, and who announced to the congregation as they left the church that in the afternoon Wesley would preach in the graveyard. And there that same afternoon Wesley, standing upon his father's tombstone, preached to a congregation, the like of which Epworth had never seen before, the first of a series of sermons that afterwards became famous.

Having thus aided one of the brothers during a critical administrative stage, Lady Huntingdon shortly afterwards was of great service to the other in a crisis of spiritual experience. Soon after the organisation of the first Methodist Society, the "still" heresy developed among the Moravian members of the Fetter Lane Chapel. This was the view, "that believers had nothing to do with ordinances—were not subject to them—and ought to be still; that they ought to leave off the means of grace, and not go to church; not to communicate; not to search the Scriptures; not to use private prayer till they had living faith; and to be still till they had it."3 Wesley used all his influence and all his persuasive power to counteract these opinions, but without avail. At length he decided to sever all connection with those who insisted upon acting in accordance with them, and removed Methodism to the Foundry. Charles Wesley at first went cordially with his brother, but at a later date he ceased attending the Foundry, and manifested signs of a desire to return to Fetter Lane. Lady Huntingdon, for whose views he entertained feelings of the deepest respect, remonstrated with him, and in conjunction with John Wesley's efforts kept him from a step that might have proved fatal to his further usefulness. In a letter written to John Wesley in October, 1741, Lady Huntingdon writes: "Since you left us the still ones are not without their attacks. I fear much more for your brother than for myself, as the conquest of the one would be nothing to the other…. I comfort myself very much that you will approve a step with respect to them your brother and I have taken. No less than his declaring open war with them…. Your brother is also to give his reasons for quite separating. I have great faith God will not let him fall; He will surely have mercy on him, and not on him only, for many would fall with him."

IV.

FAMILY BEREAVEMENTS

Lady Huntingdon at this period of her life was called upon to endure some very heavy domestic griefs. She had to mourn for two of her sons, George, aged thirteen, and Fernando, aged eleven, who died of small-pox. They were both buried in Westminster Abbey. On October 13, 1746, she lost her husband, who was carried off by an apoplectic seizure, in his fiftieth year. The Countess had only just passed her thirty-ninth birthday when this last great sorrow came upon her. She herself was at the same time tried by a long and severe illness. The effect of these repeated and heavy afflictions was to further develop her character, and to increase the devotion and self-sacrifice with which she gave herself to works of benevolence and to the extension of the Saviour's kingdom. On Lord Huntingdon's death, besides having entire control of her own means, she became sole trustee of the children and their fortune. In regard to the latter she proved herself a good steward; the former she devoted very largely to the evangelistic and charitable work in which she delighted.

Early in 1747 she wrote to Dr. Doddridge: "I hope you will comfort me by all the accounts you can gather of the flourishing and spreading of the glad tidings. Oh, how do I lament the weakness of my hands, the feebleness of my knees, and coolness of my heart! I want it on fire always, not for self-delight, but to spread the Gospel from pole to pole." And in other letters: "My heart wants nothing so much as to dispense all—all for the glory of Him whom my soul loveth." "I am nothing—Christ is all; I disclaim, as well as disdain, any righteousness but His. I not only rejoice that there is no wisdom for His people but that from above, but reject every pretension to any but what comes from Himself. I want no holiness He does not give me, and I could not accept a heaven He did not prepare me for; I can wish for no liberty but what He likes for me, and I am satisfied with every misery He does not redeem me from; that in all things I may feel that without Him I can do nothing…. To preach Christ and His blessing upon repentance over the earth is the commission—the event must be with Him—all else is from man and of man. May the Lord give us all such love, to live and die to Him and for Him alone."

At a later period in life, May, 1763, she sustained another serious bereavement in the loss of her youngest daughter. Although only twenty-six years of age, she had long been a great comfort to her mother, who, writing after her death, called her "the desire of my eyes and the continual pleasure of my heart." Many were the letters of sympathy she received from Venn, Berridge, Romaine, Fletcher, and others; but it was a loss that could not be replaced. But it could and it did help to purify still more the loving and trusting heart which could see, even as Fletcher urged, in so sore a trial, "mercy rejoicing over judgment." One of the sayings of her daughter on that death-bed must often have come to the mother's mind in later days, "I am as happy as my heart can desire to be."

V.

WHITEFIELD AS LADY HUNTINGDON'S CHAPLAIN

Prior to 1744, the date of Whitefield's first voyage to the American colonies, the Countess had made his acquaintance, and had often heard him preach. She, in common with multitudes of her contemporaries, had come under the extraordinary spell of his pulpit oratory. In 1748, after a four years' absence in North America, Whitefield returned to England, and at her request Howel Harris, the famous Welsh evangelist, brought the great preacher to Lady Huntingdon's house in Chelsea. In a reply to a letter sent the next day, conveying the request that he would come again, as "several of the nobility desired to hear him," Whitefield wrote, August 21, 1748: "How wonderfully does our Redeemer deal with souls! If they will hear the Gospel only under a ceiled roof, ministers shall be sent to them there. If only in a church or a field, they shall have it there. A word in the lesson, when I was last at your Ladyship's, struck me, 'Paul preached privately to those who were of reputation.' This must be the way, I presume, of dealing with the nobility who yet know not the Lord. Oh, that I may be enabled, When called to preach to any of them, so to preach as to win their souls to the blessed Jesus! I know that you will pray that it may be so."

Thus began the series of drawing-room services which were attended by so many of those who were high in rank, and at which some of the most famous incidents in Whitefield's career occurred. At these services the Word of God often found an entrance into worldly hearts, and once and again Whitefield tried to win for the Saviour such men as Chesterfield and Bolingbroke. Lady Huntingdon made him one of her chaplains, and in order to afford greater facilities for this special work, she removed from Chelsea to a house in Park Street, and for six weeks Whitefield carried on these special services, in addition to all his other work. When, for his own spiritual refreshment, he left London for an evangelistic tour to Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, this special work was continued by John and Charles Wesley, and several of their fellow-workers.