The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: With a supplemental chapter on the revival in AmericaHood, Edwin Paxton
History
The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: With a supplemental chapter on the revival in America
Hood, Edwin Paxton
Evangelical Revival
The wild Yorkshire of that day took up the Revival with a will; and
Henry Venn, of Huddersfield, we suppose, has even transcended by his
usefulness the fame of either Berridge or Grimshaw; he was born in 1724,
and died in 1797. His life was genial and fruitful, and to his church in
Huddersfield the people poured in droves to listen to him. It has been
said his life was like a field of wheat, or a fine summer day. And how
are these to be painted or put upon the canvas? He could scarcely be
called eccentric, excepting in the sense in which earnestness, holiness,
and usefulness are always eccentric. His influence may be said, in some
directions, to continue still. He was one of the indefatigable
coadjutors of the Countess in all her work, and towards the close of his
life he came to London to throw his influence round young Rowland Hill,
by preaching for some time in Surrey Chapel.
In another district of Yorkshire, a mighty movement was going on,
commencing about 1734. Benjamin Ingham, whom we met some time since at
Oxford, as a member of the Holy Club, was living at Ossett, near
Dewsbury. He had married Lady Margaret Hastings, a younger sister of the
Countess of Huntingdon. He had received ordination in the Church of
England, but his irregularities had forced him out. Like the Wesleys, in
the earlier part of his history, he became enchanted with the devotional
life of the Moravians, and at this period he introduced with marvellous
results a modified Moravianism into the West Riding of Yorkshire. He
founded as many as eighty Societies; but he appears to have attempted to
carry out an impossible scheme, the union of the Moravian discipline and
doctrine with his idea of Congregationalism. His influence over the West
Riding for a long time was immense; but, most naturally, divisions
arose, and the purely Moravian element separated itself into its own
order of Church life, while the Methodist element was absorbed in the
great and growing Wesleyan Societies. He was a friend of Count
Zinzendorf, who was his guest for a long time at Ledstone House. The
shock which his Society sustained, and the death of Lady Margaret, his
admirable and beloved wife, were blows from which the good man never
recovered; but the effects of his usefulness continued, although he
passed; and if the reader ever visits the little Moravian Colony and
Institution of Fulneck, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, he may be pleased to
remember that this is also one of the offshoots of the Great Revival.
It is a sudden leap from the West Riding of Yorkshire to Truro, the
charming little capital of Western Cornwall. We are here met by an
imperishable and beautiful name, that of Samuel Walker, the minister; he
was born in 1714, and died in 1761. His influence over his town was
great and abiding, and Walker of Truro is a name which to this day
retains its fragrance, as associated with the restoration of his town
from wild depravity to purity and exemplary piety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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