Heavenly fire... which shattered the terrain

Haworth and the Brontes! The two are inextricably linked. Drawn from all over the world, coach loads of visitors regularly spill out into the car park of this Yorkshire village.

Then they slowly mount the steep cobbled Main Street up towards the Bronte museum and here wander around the old parsonage, reliving the sad short lives of the Bronte sisters, marvelling at the creative genius that gave the English language such masterpieces as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

Few, however, have any idea of another scene, some 70 years before Patrick Bront‘ and his young family arrived in Haworth in 1820, a scene that explains why the Bronte family ever came to Haworth at all. If we could travel back in time to 1756 we would witness a sight more astonishing and more significant than anything to be seen in the village today. A vast crowd of men and women numbering almost 6,000 is patiently waiting, packed into the expansive graveyard surrounding Haworth parish church. Some are even clinging on precariously to the church tower. Forgetful of the bitter winds sweeping down from the moors above, all are intent on listening to a preacher standing on a makeshift pulpit outside the church: none other than George Whitefield himself.

Beside him on the scaffolding pulpit stands a burly figure, that of William Grimshaw Ð the curate of Haworth. ‘Do not flatter them’, he cries to the preacher, ‘for I fear the greater part of them are going to hell with their eyes open.’ This brief snapshot drawn from the year 1756 gives a vivid picture of the effects of William Grimshaw’s ministry in Haworth begun 14 years earlier in 1742.

Small church

On his arrival Grimshaw could only count upon 12 regular communicants at the services, but the situation rapidly changed. Newly converted to God himself after a lonely and desperate seven-year search for peace of conscience and a righteousness that would make him acceptable in God’s sight, Grimshaw’s preaching was passionate, forthright and urgent. ‘He frequently rolled like thunder’, said one who heard him, ‘but mingled tears like the Saviour’s over Jerusalem with his severity.’ And as the people learned of the seriousness of their sins in the sight of God and the eternal punishment stored up for them apart from the forgiveness and mercy of God, they too wept with the preacher.

Before the year was out Haworth church was filled to capacity with hearers streaming into the village from a wide area. These were the early days of the 18th century evangelical revival when John and Charles Wesley were crisscrossing the country preaching with power and enormous effect wherever they could gain a hearing. Suspicious at first of the ‘Methodists’, as they were called, Grimshaw had guarded his pulpit carefully against such preachers. But, after meeting both John and Charles, a warm bond of fellowship and common endeavour was established and Grimshaw himself now became a ‘Methodist’ Ð a term initially used to describe men and women touched by the new breath of spiritual life sweeping areas of the country.

Ordained but not converted

Born in September 1708, exactly 300 years ago, William Grimshaw, son of a farm worker, had been ordained in 1732 following his graduation from Christ’s College, Cambridge. A casual, sport-loving young man, he did little for his first parishioners at Todmorden, near Halifax, spending his time hunting, fishing and socialising.

To refrain from entering the pulpit drunk was the highest extent of his resolutions, until God intervened in his life in a remarkable way. When at last he became aware of his woeful spiritual deficiencies, Grimshaw knew of no one who could help him. The death of his young wife after only four years of marriage, leaving him with two small children, brought him into dark despair. Desolate and even suicidal, he struggled to appease God’s wrath against his sin by means of his upright lifestyle, but constantly fell short of his own standards, let alone God’s.

Justified!

But early in 1742 he found relief when he unexpectedly came across a book by the great Puritan theologian, John Owen, entitled Justification by Faith. As he anxiously turned its pages he discovered the answer to his need: Christ had satisfied God’s righteous demands on his behalf. With joy and relief he could exclaim:

‘I was now willing to renounce myself, every degree of fancied merit and ability and to embrace Christ only for my all in all. O what light and comfort did I now enjoy in my own soul, and what a taste of the pardoning love of God.’

Freed from the crushing burden of guilt, Grimshaw remarried and accepted the invitation to become curate of Haworth. So began a 21-year ministry which would leave an imprint on the whole area, and one that would eventually lead to the appointment of the evangelical Patrick Bronte in 1820. Even the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes (1930-98), brought up near Haworth, was aware of Grimshaw’s influence and could speak of his ‘heavenly fire’…which ‘shattered the terrain into biblical landmarks’.

Grimshaw legends

Enjoying all the prestige and deference paid to an 18th-century cleric, Grimshaw’s methods of retaining discipline in his parish have become legendary. Some of the anecdotes, told and retold, are tinged with myth or exaggerated by his opponents with the passing of time, but many are essentially factual. Although Grimshaw did not horsewhip reluctant parishioners into church as novelist Elizabeth Gaskell maintains, he was quite able to use a horsewhip on thugs who were assaulting defenceless people as they entered a cottage for a prayer meeting.

With the canon laws of the Church of England restricting a preacher from ministry beyond the bounds of his own parish, Grimshaw was at first reluctant to preach anywhere apart from Haworth. But, after 1747, his friendship with the Wesleys and his intense concern for the souls of the people gave him courage to flout such restrictive laws, cost what it may in terms of persecution and hostility from neighbouring clergy. So was born what was called the ‘Great Haworth Round’.

And great it was. Anywhere from Westmoreland to the north to Sheffield south of Haworth, from Chester in the west to Hull in the east, Grimshaw and his assistants could be found preaching to congregations large and small, in cottages, barns or in the open air. During an ‘idle’ week he would often preach 14 times and more than 20 times during a ‘busy’ week. And always he could be found back in Haworth on a Sunday, sometimes preaching four times. Declaring his supreme motivation he would say, ‘I cannot do enough for my Lord Jesus who has done so much for me’.

Genuine love

One of Grimshaw’s outstanding characteristics was his genuine love for all true believers, whatever their denominational label. ‘I love them and will love them and none shall make me do otherwise’, he declared. Once he told his friend John Newton that at least five Dissenting congregations had sprung from his own ministry. Men whom he had influenced had become either Baptist or Independent. Even when his young convert James Hartley began a Baptist cause in Haworth itself, he could say with generous exuberance, ‘God bless thee, James; God bless thy undertaking. Perhaps God has given thee more light than he has given me Ð God bless thee’.

With the Wesley brothers and particularly George Whitefield as frequent visitors to Haworth, vast congregations would gather. Many conversions took place leading to significant changes in the lives of the people. ‘What has God wrought in the midst of these rough mountains!’ exclaimed John Wesley as he visited Haworth in 1761.

William Grimshaw had only two more years to live. Even though he was not yet 55, he anticipated an early death, his health undermined by his exhaustive labours. ‘I expect my stay on earth to be short and will endeavour to make the best of a short life, and so devote my whole soul to God as not to go creeping to heaven at last’, Grimshaw would say. So, when an epidemic of typhus fever swept through the village in 1763, he was not surprised that he succumbed to the infection. Hearing that Grimshaw was seriously ill, Benjamin Ingham visited him. ‘My last enemy has come’, Grimshaw declared, ‘the signs of death are on me, but I am not afraid! No, blessed be God, my hope is sure and I am in his hands.’

Long meditation on death and on the joys of the world to come had prepared William Grimshaw to face this last enemy without flinching. His words to Henry Venn are indeed heroic. Despite a burning fever and violent headaches, he announced, ‘I am as happy as I can be on earth and as sure of glory as if I were in it’. He asked Venn to conduct his funeral and to preach on words of the apostle Paul that had been his guiding beacon ever since his conversion: ‘For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’

On this 300th anniversary of the birth of William Grimshaw, his life and death still have much to teach us today.