In this chapter we propose to review the lives and activities of other prominent servants God used at this epoch.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Christendom was a valley of dry bones. The Dissenters, with whom the power had been in the previous century, were in a comatose state. The Baptists had drifted into Unitarianism. The Church of England was dead too, but it pleased God to awaken a number of Church of England clergymen and use them as powerful instruments in the evangelical revival.
Howell Harris
Although Whitefield’s voice was the first to be heard in England, Howell Harris had already begun to preach the gospel in Wales. The same wonderful results which later followed in England, Ireland and America were seen there. Although denied episcopal ordination three times, Howell Harris was not deterred. His labors were abundantly blessed. In seven years the whole of Wales was roused. Thirty societies for prayer were formed among the converts. Later Howell Harris was associated with the other evangelicals, particularly with Whitefield, Cennick and Lady Huntingdon.
Benjamin Ingham
Benjamin Ingham, born in 1712 at Osset, was one of the first members of that little society at Oxford that was called the “Holy Club.” He accompanied John and Charles Wesley on their first visit to Georgia. He also went with Wesley to visit the Moravian Brethren at Marienborn and was, like him, impressed with their godliness and honesty. On his return, he began to preach. He later became a clergyman at Osset in Yorkshire. He was not content, however, to go through the formalities of the English Church, as so many in his day. He had a heart for the gospel and preached with power, not only in his own parish, but in the whole district between Halifax and Leeds, then an area of wild moorland. He founded no less than fifty little societies for reading and prayer among his converts. The supervision of these little companies was more than he could manage, and he called upon the Moravian Brethren to help. They promptly answered the call and established nearly fifty preaching places in Yorkshire. The preachers suffered much persecution and were opposed by both the Establishment and Dissenters. On one occasion when Ingham preached in Colne, he was attacked by a furious mob egged on by the local vicar. Some were for killing him on the spot; a large stone hit him in the back of the neck, and, at last, to prevent a tragedy, the vicar had to shelter him in the vicarage.
It was through Ingham that Lady Margaret Hastings, sister of Lord Huntingdon, was converted, and her testimony led to Lady Huntingdon’s conversion, the wonderful fruits of which we have dealt with elsewhere. A warm attachment grew up between Lady Margaret and the man used to her salvation. She was married to Ingham in November 1741 and labored wholeheartedly with her husband in the gospel. Her influence was widely felt. Unfortunately, about the year 1760, serious disputes arose among the members of the societies, then numbering about eighty, and they were wrecked and scattered by division. In 1768 Lady Margaret died, exclaiming with her last breath, “Thanks be to God! The moment’s come; the day is dawning.” She was in her sixty-eighth year. Her husband, deeply depressed by the troubles which had overtaken his societies and his constitution worn out by his arduous labors, only survived her for four years. He contributed greatly to the revival of the gospel in Yorkshire.
John Cennick
Born in Berkshire in 1718, John Cennick came from an old Bohemian family which fled from persecution at the time of the destruction of the ancient Bohemian Church. As a youth, he led a wild and godless life, but in time his conscience was awakened, and he went through a period of such intense agony of soul that he longed for death. The light, however, broke through. He came into touch with Whitefield and Wesley and preached to the colliers at Kingswood. He then attended some of the Moravian Brethren’s meetings in London and later did a remarkable work of open-air preaching in Wiltshire. Beginning in the tiny village of Castle Combe, he went from place to place proclaiming the gospel of God’s love two or three times a day. Thousands listened to him. He visited, too, the cottages of the poor and spoke words of comfort to the distressed and the dying. In Swindon, with Howell Harris, he was attacked by a violent mob; at another place he was so violently stoned that his body was black and blue for weeks. He was helped by a company of assistant preachers, and soon many little bodies of believers were gathered together, who were taken over by the Moravian societies. He then went to Ireland, where his labors met with astounding success, great numbers being converted in spite of violence and opposition. Invited to preach in the north of Ireland, the same results followed. In Ballymena ten thousand came to listen. For five years he traveled about northern Ireland, and when it was known he was coming, crowds lined the route. Little companies of believers were planted in the parts where he labored. He was a man of true humility and Christ-like spirit, and his accounts of his labors in his letters told, not of what he had done, but of what the Lord had been pleased to do through him. Like John the Baptist, he was a burning and a shining light, but the Lord took him while in the prime of manhood, for he was only thirty-seven when he died. In his notebook he had written:
Now, Lord, in peace with Thee and all below,
Let me depart and to Thy kingdom go.
In the sixteen years of his active service for Christ, he had accomplished far more than many in a long lifetime.
Cennick’s experience at Swindon illustrates the frequent sufferings of the early Methodists at the hands of the mob. He was with Howell Harris and twenty-four others, singing and praying in the streets of Swindon, when, before he could preach, the mob “fired guns over our heads, holding the muzzles so near our faces that Howell Harris and myself were both made as black as tinkers with the powder. We were not affrighted but opened our breasts, telling them we were prepared to lay down our lives for our doctrine. They then got dust out of the highway and covered us all over, and then played an engine upon us, which they filled out of the stinking ditches. While they played upon brother Harris, I preached, and when they turned the engine upon me, he preached. This continued till they spoiled the engine, and then they threw whole buckets of water and mud over us. Mr. Goddard, a leading gentleman of the town, lent the mob his guns, halberd and engine, and he bade them use us as badly as they could, only not to kill us, and he himself sat on horseback the whole time, laughing to see us thus treated. After we left the town, they dressed up two images and called one Cennick and the other Harris, and then they burned them. The next day, they gathered about the house of Mr. Laurence, who had received us, and broke all his windows with stones, cut and wounded four of his family, and knocked down one of his daughters.”
William Grimshaw
In contrast with the great itinerant preachers Whitefield and Wesley, William Grimshaw lived and died as an incumbent of a parochial district in Yorkshire, and outside of that area his name was hardly known, yet God raised him up and used him just at the time when the gospel trumpet was being sounded throughout Britain and America. He owed nothing, however, to the leading evangelists of the day. Born in 1708 and made a deacon in 1731, he became curate of Rochdale while still an unconverted man. Thence he went to Todmorden, where he stayed eleven years. Like many other clergymen of his day, he spent most of his time hunting, fishing, card playing, reveling and merrymaking. After the first three years at Todmorden, a change came over him. He began to pray in secret three times a day. But he was still groping in darkness, though God was evidently working in his soul. At this point he was bereaved of his wife and left with two children. Two Puritan books afforded him some help, one of which was on justification, by Owen. Several years of inward conflict followed, before the light broke into his soul. When it dawned upon him, he became a new creature. Old things passed away; all things became new. The Bible, of which hitherto he had known the letter, now became a new book to him. In the time of his distress, a woman had come to him to ask what she must do to be saved, but he could only answer, “I cannot tell what to say to you, Susan, for I am in the same state myself, but to despair of the mercy of God would be worse than all.” He told another, in similar exercise, to get into merry company, but when he himself had peace, he went to her and told her he had given the wrong advice.
In 1742 he became Vicar of Haworth (four miles from Keighley) where he labored for the remaining twenty-one years of his life. Haworth was in the center of cold, bleak, desolate moorland, and the people were rough and uncivilized. He began to preach the gospel. Wherever he could gather people together in rooms or barns or the open air, there he preached. Like Paul of old, he went from house to house preaching Christ, warning men and women of their danger. In such labors his life was spent. All the features of the revival then centering around Whitefield and Wesley had their counterpart locally in the bleak moorland country around Haworth. He spoke the language the simple folk understood, and before long there was a great transformation in the lives and manners of the people of the district. Where a converted person was at one time rarely to be found, there were now many. Grimshaw’s fame spread beyond his parish; hearers came from other parishes; his church became crowded. Invitations to “come over ... and help us” (Acts 16:99And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. (Acts 16:9)) reached him from other places, and before long he was preaching throughout Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and North Derbyshire. In all these places little companies of earnest believers were formed and became centers of blessing, for among them were to be found men of some gift who could help others also.
Like the Jewish priesthood in the early days, the clergy rose up against him. He was called mad Grimshaw; persecution, abuse and even violence pursued him. The Vicar of Colne published a violent and untruthful sermon against him and stirred up the mob, so that when he and Wesley went to Colne in 1748 to preach, the crowd became so violent that the audience had to run for their lives.
More than once he was called to account by the Archbishop of York, but all was overruled by God, and he was never stopped in his work. The local inhabitants had occasion once to know the power of his prayers. He was anxious that proposed horse races should not be held at Haworth and prayed they might be prevented. It rained so hard for three days that the project was abandoned and never again attempted.
He finished his course in 1763 at the comparatively early age of fifty-five. When he lay dying, he said, “Never had I such a visit from God since I first knew Him. I am as happy as I can be on earth and as sure of glory as if I were in it.”
John Berridge of Everton
Among those by whom the Holy Spirit wrought powerfully in the revival, Berridge of Everton has a distinguished place. Born at Kingston in Nottinghamshire in 1716, he graduated at Cambridge and took his M.A. in 1742. He was in those days a popular young man of the world, but divine impressions had been made on his heart when quite young, and these impressions were later revived. He decided to take holy orders and became curate of Stapleford where he carried out his official duties conscientiously but without fruit. In 1755 he became vicar of Everton in Bedfordshire, where he preached the righteousness of the law, but he was still a stranger to the gospel of God’s grace. The lack of results distressed him greatly, and he prayed earnestly that he might be led to know “as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:2121If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: (Ephesians 4:21)). The answer came distinctly: “Cease from thine own works; only believe.” The scales fell from his eyes. He saw that he had been trying to combine the law and the gospel. He resolved now to preach Jesus Christ and salvation by faith in Him. The results were instantaneous. God began to bless his preaching. He burned all his old sermons and wept for joy over their destruction. The whole parish was moved. People crowded to church to hear the true gospel. Souls were convicted and converted. Describing this crisis in his ministry, he said in a letter to a friend, “I preached up sanctification by the works of the law very earnestly for six years in Stapleford and never brought one soul to Christ. I did the same in Everton for two years, without any success at all. But as soon as I preached Jesus Christ and faith in His blood, then believers were added to the Church continually — then people flocked from all parts to hear the glorious sound of the gospel, some coming six miles, others eight and others ten. And what is the reason why my ministry was not blessed, when I preached up salvation partly by faith and partly by works? It is because this doctrine is not of God and because He will prosper no ministers but such as preach salvation in His own appointed way, namely by faith in Jesus Christ.” Thus, apart from human intervention, the Spirit of God taught John Berridge what He had already taught other great leaders of the Revival—Whitefield, Wesley, Grimshaw, Romaine and Rowlands — and led him to proclaim in his own district the same glorious message of free forgiveness in the name of Jesus.
His activities now widened. He began to preach all over the district and, before long, took to preaching in the open air. Soon thousands were gathering to hear him, and he was numbered among the growing band of evangelists whom the world called Methodists (a term applied then to all who preached the gospel, whether Church of England ministers or not). His labors multiplied greatly. His voice was heard all over Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and in parts of Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk. He generally preached twelve times and rode a hundred miles in the week.
He tended his converts like a shepherd and provided lay preachers — some of whom were humble, laboring men whom he maintained at his own expense. As many as four thousand souls were brought to the Saviour in a single year. The strange phenomena of nervous excitement, which sometimes accompanied the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley, at times attended his preaching.
He was bitterly persecuted by the unconverted clergy of his neighborhood, and attempts were made to stop his activities, but, through divine providence, all opposition failed. His work went on in triumph.
After thirty-five years of such activity, he passed into his rest in the year 1793. He had a curious vein of quaintness in his character which marked him all through life, and it is exhibited in the epitaph which he himself composed for his gravestone. It contains the following striking lines:
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 1754;
Was admitted to Everton Vicarage, 1751;
Fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756;
Fell asleep in Christ, January 22, 1793.
Daniel Rowlands of Llangeitho (Cardigan)
Another example of the sovereign and universal character of God’s operations at this time is Daniel Rowlands, whom the Spirit of God used powerfully in a remote part of Wales. Born in 1713 and ordained in 1733, he began, like many others of his day, to minister without any knowledge of the gospel. After his Sunday morning duty, he would spend the rest of the day in sport and even drunkenness. His conversion in 1738 is attributed to Griffiths Jones, a well-known evangelical of those days, himself much used to revive Christianity in Wales. Rowlands’ preaching, thenceforward, was entirely different. The effects were tremendous. His preaching was of a solemn and warning character, yet people crowded to hear him. The churches were filled to suffocation. People came from all parts to hear him. Not only the churches but the churchyards also were filled. In one place, numbers fell to the ground under deep conviction of sin. It was as yet the terrors of Sinai rather than the love of God which he preached, but many were aroused and cried for mercy.
At this period, a Dissenting minister named Pugh said to him, “Preach the gospel to the people, apply the balm of Gilead — the blood of Christ — to their spiritual wounds, and show the necessity of faith in a crucified Saviour.”
He now became acquainted with Howell Harris, and gradually the full light of the gospel dawned in his own soul.
“The effect of Rowlands’ ministry from this time forward to his life’s end was something so vast and prodigious that it almost takes away one’s breath to hear of it. ... People used to flock to hear him preach, from every part of the Principality, and to think nothing of traveling fifty or sixty miles for the purpose. On sacrament Sundays it was no uncommon thing for him to have fifteen hundred or two thousand or even twenty-five hundred communicants! The people on these occasions would go together in companies like the Jews going up to the temple feast in Jerusalem, and they would return home afterwards singing hymns and psalms on their journey, caring nothing for fatigue.”
This was not mere revivalism either. Rowlands’ ministry continued for nearly fifty years, and the results were solid and lasting. No preacher in Britain in the eighteenth century preached with greater evidence of the Holy Spirit’s power; some said he was excelled by none. Lady Huntingdon placed him next to Whitefield as a preacher of the gospel. He lived to be seventy-seven. In his closing hours, he uttered the same triumphant words as Wesley: “God is with us.”
Henry Venn
Henry Venn was born at Barnes in 1724. After he had taken his degree of M.A. at Cambridge in 1749, he became a minister, but without any knowledge of the gospel. He was, however, honest and conscientious, and on his ordination he gave up cricket as inconsistent with his calling. He was greatly exercised by the words of the prayer, “That I may live to the glory of Thy name,” and he began to strive after perfection. Like many others at that time, his conscience was affected by Law’s Serious Call. He fasted often and took long, solitary walks. For four years his ministry was fruitless. He removed to Clapham in London, where he met a number of evangelical men — Whitefield, John Thornton, Haweis and also Lady Huntingdon. She was really the means of his conversion. She had observed the defects in his preaching and wrote pointing out that we could not approach God in the filthy rags of our own righteousness. “You must come,” she told him, “like the dying thief, without any conditions. No longer let false doctrines,” she said, “disgrace your pulpit. Preach Christ crucified as the only foundation of the sinner’s hope.” With such words she persuaded and exhorted him to preach a true gospel. About this time, he was laid aside for many months with illness. After this, his preaching was entirely changed, and Whitefield wrote enthusiastically to Lady Huntingdon, saying, “Your exertions in bringing him to a clearer knowledge of the gospel have indeed been blessed.” Two years after, in 1759, Venn became vicar of Huddersfield, then a dark, immoral, irreligious, industrial town. He left it a changed place, and he left behind many faithful men, converted under his ministry, whose light continued to shine in the town after his departure. So continuous and abundant were his exertions that his health gave way under the strain, and he spent the remaining twenty years of his life in the rural parish of Yelling in Huntingdonshire. He maintained close contact with the other evangelists whom God was using and often preached further afield. He was often found preaching in one of Lady Huntingdon’s chapels at Oathall in Sussex, while visits are recorded to Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Gloucester and other towns. The same evidences of the Spirit’s power accompanied his activities as were witnessed in the case of Whitefield and others God was using at that time — clear proof that the revival was no human work but a sovereign movement of the Holy Spirit. He died full of joy and peace in 1797 at the age of seventy-three.
John Fletcher of Madeley
Another of the evangelical clergymen of those days of revival was John Fletcher, vicar of Madeley. A Swiss by birth, he came to this country and became a tutor in a gentleman’s family. He was a God-fearing young man, well acquainted with the Scriptures, but he had not the knowledge of Christ as his Saviour.
One day when at St. Albans with his employer, a Mr. Hill, he strolled into the town and met a poor old woman who he said “talked so sweetly of Christ that I knew not how the time passed away.”
Mrs. Hill said, on hearing this, “I shall wonder if our tutor does not turn Methodist by and by.”
“Methodist, Madam,” said Fletcher, “pray what is that?”
“The Methodists,” she replied, “are a people that do nothing but pray; they are praying all day and all night.”
“Are they?” said Fletcher. “Then by the help of God, I will find them out, if they be above ground.”
And he did find them out not long after and became a member of one of their societies. But he had not yet found peace with God. Hearing an evangelist speak on faith, he came to realize that his knowledge of it was merely mental. From then on he went through the bitter soul struggle that so many have known, especially those whom God has afterwards used in a special manner. From now on he longed to tell others the secret of sins forgiven and peace with God, and his efforts in a private way were not without blessing. In 1757 he was ordained. About this time he was to be found preaching in a variety of places, having links with both Wesley and Lady Huntingdon. Later he became vicar of Madeley, a mining town in Shropshire. There for twenty-five years he “did the work of an evangelist among his semi-heathen parishioners in a way that few have ever equaled and none have surpassed.” John Wesley wrote of him: “From the beginning of his settling there, he was a laborious workman in the Lord’s vineyard, endeavoring to spread the truth of the gospel and to suppress vice in every possible way. Those sinners who tried to hide themselves from him he pursued to every corner of his parish, by all sorts of means, public and private, early and late, in season and out of season, entreating and warning them to flee from the wrath to come.” On another occasion, Wesley said he had known many excellent men, holy in heart and life, but never one equal to Fletcher, one so uniformly devoted to God. Such was the general testimony to his life.
He was closely associated with the other leading evangelical men of his time. His health failed while comparatively young, and he was taken to be with Christ when only fifty-six years of age.
Charles Simeon
Charles Simeon, who became vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, in 1783, was one of the later accessions to the ranks of evangelical clergymen in the Church of England. In the early days of his ministry, he encountered the most bitter opposition. Even the pews were locked, and his audience had to stand in the aisles. But his Christian testimony, his humility and his patience gradually wore down all opposition. He came to be respected by all and loved by many. His influence extended far beyond his own parish, and he became an acknowledged leader among the evangelical clergymen of his day. He was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society and an early supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
We have reviewed very briefly the life and work of some of the spiritual giants God raised up in this wonderful age of revival. Space fails us to include many others who also played their part. Among the well-known names that come to mind are Perronet of Shoreham, Toplady (who wrote the famous hymn “Rock of Ages”), Newton (the onetime sailor and “slave of slaves,” who became a powerful preacher and hymn writer), Cowper (the great Christian poet), Spangenberg, Boehler and Latrobe among the Moravians, and still the list might be prolonged, apart from the many faithful servants whose names have not been handed down or have remained in comparative obscurity.
The Lord of the harvest sent forth many laborers at this time into His harvest, and the work went on increasing in strength as the century closed. The vitalizing force of the Holy Spirit pervaded the whole of our favored land, and its influence spread across the Atlantic to the New World. The so-called Methodist societies sprang up everywhere, but the blessing was not confined to them. The Church of England and the Dissenters received fresh life, for the living water flowed over the sectarian barriers and brought refreshment and life and fruit wherever it spread.