17 June: Boreham on the Countess of Huntingdon

A Sublimated Democracy
It was the distinctive glory of the Countess of Huntingdon, the anniversary of whose death we mark today, that she democratised religion, not by carrying it from castles to cottages, but by an identically opposite process. Like a bee that gathers the sweetness of the wildflowers in the hedgerows and bears it to her own hive, the Countess caught the spirit of the revival that was transfiguring the lives of the lowliest in the land, and distributed it among princes and peers. Seymour, her biographer, claims that she was the greatest woman who ever lived; Macaulay declares that, if she had been a Catholic, she would have been canonised as Saint Selina.

Cardinal Newman felt that it would be very difficult to exaggerate her influence. She opened new worlds, he says, for the religious impulse. He salutes her as one who simply, unconditionally, and even joyously, sacrificed the honours and glories of this world in order to impress men with the realities of the next. She stands, as the Cardinal avers, as an example for all time. "In an evil day," he adds, "she was the representative of the rich becoming poor for Christ; of delicate women putting off their soft attire and wrapping themselves in sackcloth for the kingdom of heaven's sake." Newman confesses that he finds the whole story very stirring and very touching.

A Brilliant Star In A Dark Sky
Born in 1807 of the noble house of Shirley, Selina, at the age of nine passed through such a profound emotional and spiritual experience as enabled her to gaze upon the world with the eyes of one who stands apart. At the dawn of the 18th Century, English standards and English manners were at their lowest ebb. Amid the degradations of court and of society, Selina remained utterly unsophisticated and unspoiled, until, in the year in which she came of age, she became the bride of the Earl of Huntingdon. The earl shared to the full her lofty ideals and the marriage was an exceedingly happy one. Soon after her wedding, Selina began to display extraordinary interest in public affairs. Indeed, she became something of a suffragette. In 1838 the House of Lords unanimously resolved that, during a certain debate, no woman should be admitted to the Chamber. Selina and a number of her titled friends were up in arms in an instant. They stormed the House in a body and created such a din outside the doors that members could scarcely hear each other's voices. All efforts to remove or silence them proved futile; but, on the other hand, they could not gain admission. But what could not be effected by force was attained by guile. After a long period of pandemonium, they subsided into sudden quiet. Half an hour having passed, the Lord Chancellor assumed that the enemy had withdrawn, and ordered the doors to be opened, whereupon the women poured helter-skelter into the chamber.

A year or two later Lady Huntingdon was caught in the sweep of great revival. Her husband's sisters, Lady Betty and Lady Margaret Hastings, drew her attention to this new phenomenon. All over the country men were preaching; they were preaching without notes or manuscripts; they were preaching in fields, on village greens, and by the open roadside. Moved by curiosity, the three titled young ladies went to hear these wayside orators. They could scarcely believe their ears. These men talked of religion as if religion really mattered. They spoke with fervour, with urgency, and with persuasive entreaty. As the ladies observed the immediate effect of this amateur, but impassioned eloquence upon the crowds that gathered, and marked the salutary influence that the new movement was exerting upon the life of the nation, they felt that they had no alternative but to enlist in the forces that were effecting so wholesome and notable a change.

Life Spent For All Creeds And Classes
From that moment to the end of her long life, the Countess spent all her energy and devoted her entire income to the spread of the revival. For the preachers who resorted to the fields and the highways, she built attractive sanctuaries. She made George Whitefield her chaplain, John Fletcher the president of her college, and called John Wesley and the other flaming spirits of that stirring time to her drawing room, summoning the lordliest in the land to come and hear them. She eagerly cooperated with leaders of all denominations and welcomed to her college studious young men of all the Churches. The most dissolute grandees of the period and the most notorious scoffers in the country partook of her hospitality. Princes and peers, actors and poets, scientists and statesmen; you will scarcely find one distinguished name in the annals of the time but you will find that name also among the guests of the Countess. She took the movement that was struggling for expression in lonely lanes and at crowded street corners, and enthroned it among courts and palaces.

As long as she had money she built churches all over the country, and then sold her jewels to build more.[1] Before our great missionary societies were established, she planted missions on the West Coast of Africa, in the South Seas, and among the Red Indians of North America. She made religion so lovable that the entire nation was sweetened by her influence. The King sent for her. "I have heard so much about you," said George the Third, "that I wanted to see if, in any respect, you resembled other women. You know," he continued, with a sly twinkle in his royal eye, "my bishops are very jealous of your preachers. I tell them that they should make bishops of them; but they object that they can't make a bishop of the Countess of Huntingdon!" King George told one of his prelates that he fervently wished that he had a Countess of Huntingdon in every diocese in the kingdom. In view of its exalted source and evident sincerity, this was as eloquent a tribute as any woman could very well covet.

F W Boreham

Image: Countess of Huntingdon


[1] After some years at the Church of England in Tunbridge Wells, the Boreham family became involved with the Immanuel Church, which was one that had been established by the Countess of Huntingdon.