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 oincidence or Miracle?
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, was
guided by faith. An associate called on her one day to urge that she not
open another chapel in London since she did not have the money to finish
projects already begun. Selina insisted on pushing ahead. While they debated,
the mail arrived. In it was this note: "An individual who has heard of
Lady Huntingdon's exertions to spread the gospel, requests her acceptance
of the enclosed draft."
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Tears of joy rolled down Selina's cheeks. Enclosed was 500 pounds, the
very sum needed. "Here," she said to her coworker, "Take it and pay for
the chapel; and be no longer faithless but believing." Her faith had not
always been so confident.
Desperation and Dread
By June 1739, the birth of seven babies in rapid succession had left Selina
with gynecological injuries and frequent "colic." Some of the best doctors
in England examined her, but she seemed only to get worse and feared for
her life. And in the hidden recesses of her heart, she hugged a secret
dread.
At thirty-two years of age, she was known for her charitable works. She
took seriously her responsibility to educate her servants in Christian
living, distributing religious books among them. No one could fault her
church attendance. She read religious books and contributed to orphanages,
to the Anglican Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and other charities,
including a school for poor children, which she took under her protection.
And yet Selina feared for her soul. It seemed to her that she always
fell short of the standard God asks. No matter what she did, she felt
the distance between herself and God widening.
Pardoned Not for Any Good She'd Done
July, 1739, marked a turning point in Selina's religious life. She remembered
something her sister had said. Margaret, despite ridicule, was attending
the meetings of Benjamin Ingham, a Moravian closely associated with John
and Charles Wesley, the Methodist leaders. What Margaret said was, "Since
I have known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, I have
been as happy as an angel."
Such words were like a foreign language to Selina. What did they mean?
As Selina pondered them, a truth suggested itself to her. She could expect
pardon for her bad attitudes and raging temper not because of any good
she had done but only because Jesus offered it as a free gift. "I believe!"
she cried.
Enthusiastic about Enthusiasts
Selina's conversion came at an opportune time. Throughout England, Methodists
were preaching in fields and calling common people to lives of faith.
Often local authorities opposed them, labeling them "enthusiasts" and
even siccing attacks on them.
Selina defended the victims of this bullying. For example, when Sir Watkins
Wynn, a foe of the revivalists, fined several men for listening to preacher
Howell Harris, Selina immediately appealed to the government, invoking
the Toleration Act, and Sir Watkin Wynn was forced to refund the fines.
She also protected Methodist preachers by making them her personal chaplains.
After attending the Wesleys' 1739 Fetter Street meetings, Selina became
enthusiastic about the Methodists and imitated them. At once she sent
one of her own staff, David Taylor, to preach in the fields and pleaded
with her employees to become spiritually minded.
"Thomas, I fear you never pray, or look to Christ to salvation," she
said to one.
"Your ladyship is mistaken," replied Thomas. "I heard what passed between
you and James at the garden wall, and the word you meant for him took
effect on me."
"How did you hear it?" she asked.
"Through a hole in the wall, and I shall never forget the impression
I received."
Selina wrote letters to her friends-duchesses and leading ladies-assuring
them that having Christ as a companion would transform their lives. She
coaxed several to attend chapel with her and was disappointed when they
weren't converted.
But if the rich closed their ears to the gospel, common folk listened.
Selina hired zealous speakers and whenever she took a Summer holiday,
she had them preach to crowds at every stop, winning many converts to
Methodism.
When It Rains It Pours
Several painful events overtook Selina in her middle years. Within the
space of a few years her mother and two sons died, her family quarreled
over a will and the Jacobite rebellion, with which she sympathized, failed
in Scotland. It would have placed a descendant of Charles I on the throne.
Selina hoped it would succeed, for she considered the court of King George
II to be dreadfully corrupt. In 1746, the year after the Jacobite fiasco,
Selina's husband died, too, adding to her sorrow. Little wonder she was
sorely distressed.
A Falling Out in the Methodist Camp
Increasingly Selina had leaned on John and Charles Wesley. In 1741, she
invited the brothers for a visit to her estate at Donington. She adopted
John's doctrines, saying she hoped to live and die by his teaching. But
her friendship with John and Charles cooled as she drew closer to another
Methodist in 1744, the Calvinist George Whitefield. She embraced his doctrine
of predestination, which emphasized God's sovereign choice in salvation,
whereas Wesleyan teaching emphasized man's response to God's grace.
Eventually the Methodists split over this issue Selina tried to reconcile
the two sides in 1749 but finally broke with the Wesleys. She couldn't
accept some of John's doctrines and openly attacked them and denounced
him.
Devotion to the Methodist Cause
In spite of her shift in doctrine and allegiance, Selina remained a devoted
supporter of the Methodist movement. The people of Brighton could speak
on that point. Its poor needed a place to worship. She had no money to
give, so she sold her jewels to build them a chapel. It was one of more
than sixty chapels she built across England.
Selina's chapels were built with the belief that, as a peeress, she had
the legal right to employ any number of chaplains she wished, cloaking
them with her authority. This interpretation of the law was challenged
in 1779 by a Church of England clergyman. The court ruled against the
Countess. Selina and her associates had to register as dissenters under
the Act of Toleration and were no longer considered members of the Church
of England.
All these years, Selina had remained loyal to the established church,
viewing Methodism as merely a reform movement within it. "I am to be cast
out of the church now only for doing what I have been doing these forty
years--speaking and living for Jesus Christ," she grieved.
I Shall Go to My Father Tonight"
Always sickly, Selina felt the brush of death several times in her life.
In 1791, when she was 83, she came from her chamber one morning with an
unusual fight upon her face.
"The Lord has been present with my spirit this morning in a remarkable manner;
what he means to convey to my mind I do not know; it may be my approaching
departure: my soul is filled with glory--I am as in the element of heaven
itself." A few days later she ruptured a blood vessel and never recovered.
Hours before her death she whispered, I shall go to my father tonight."
Few women have had so unique an opportunity to defend a reform movement
within the church or used it so willingly. Thousands benefited from Selina's
life.
Selina in Her Own Words
"What blessed effects does the love of God produce in the hearts of those
who abide in him. How solid is the peace, and how divine the joy that
springs from an assurance that we are united to the Savior by a living
faith.... I am deeply sensible that daily, hourly, and momentarily I stand
in need of sprinkling of my Savior's blood. . . ." (Letter to Charles
Wesley)
Which Was Selina: Devoted Saint or Sectarian Dictator?
On the one hand: Hymn writer Augustus Toplady called Selina "the
most precious saint of God" he ever knew, and Philip Doddridge, a noble-minded
clergyman and author of the influential book Rise and Progress of Religion
in the Soul, wrote to his wife, "Selina is quite a mother to the poor;
she visits them and prays with them in sickness, and they leave their children
to her for a legacy when they die, and she takes care of them. I was really
astonished at the traces of religion which I discovered in her ... and cannot
but glorify God for diem. More cheerfulness I never saw mingled with so
much devotion."
On the Other Hand: Her own children and husband never accepted her doctrines--she
laid all but one of them in the grave unconverted; and that one was a
death bed repentance whose sincerity she doubted. Was she divisive? Writers
claim she played the Wesleys against each other, so much so that Charles
refused to answer her last letter. Did she overreach in the name of faith?
She left heavy debts and made inadequate provision for her institutions
in her will. Was she exacting? She broke not only with the Wesleys but
with most of her own chaplains, unable to accept their inevitable flaws. |
