Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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Doddridge’s House, Northampton.

At what hour shall we fix the earliest dawn of the Great Revival? Among the earliest tints of the “morning spread upon the mountains,” which was to descend into the valley, and illuminate all the plains, was the conversion of that extraordinary woman, Selina Shirley, the Countess of Huntingdon; it is scarcely too much to call her the Mother of the Revival; it is not too much to apply to her the language of the great Hebrew song—“The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased until that I arose: I arose a mother in Israel.” She illustrates the difference of which we spoke just now, for there can be no doubt that she had a passionate instinct for souls, to do good to souls, to save souls. Her injunctions for the destruction of all her private papers have been so far complied with as to leave the earlier history of her mind, and the circumstances which brought about her conversion, for the most part unknown. It is certain that she was on terms of intimate friendship with both Watts and Doddridge, but especially with Doddridge. Another intimate friend of the Countess was Watts’s very close friend, the Duchess of Somerset; and thus the links of the story seem to run, like that old and well-known instance of communicated influence, when Andrew found his own brother, Simon, and these in turn found Philip and Nathaniel. It was very natural that, beholding the state of society about her, she should be interested, first, as it seems, for those of her own order; it was at a later time, when she became acquainted with Whitefield, that he justified her drawing-room assemblies, by reminding her—not, perhaps, with exact critical propriety—of the text in Galatians, where Paul mentioned how he preached “privately to those of reputation.”[4] For some time this appears to have been the aim of the good Countess, much in accordance with that pretty saying of hers, that “there was a text in which she blessed God for the insertion of the letter M: ‘not many noble.’” The beautiful Countess was a heroine in her own line from the earliest days of her conversion. Belonging to one of the noblest families of England, she had an entrance to the highest circles, and her heart felt very pitiful for, especially, the women of fashion around her, brokenhearted with disappointment, or sick with ennui.