Queen of the Methodists; Selina Hastings and the Power of the Peerage
Coincidence 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."
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.
Originally published June 11, 2010.
