JAMES HERVEY, born February 26th, 1713; died December 25th, 1758. JAMES HERVEY, when twenty years of age, at Oxford, imbibed the spirit of serious attention to the concerns of religion. He received the communion every Sabbath, visited the prisoners in the jail, and read the Scriptures to the sick and the poor. At this time, however, and during the earlier years of his ministry, he was practically a stranger to those views of Christian doctrine which, as preached by his friend Mr. Whitefield, proved so mighty an instrument of converting many to God; he entertained the deepest aversion to them. He regarded salvation as a blessing which should be bestowed on sincere, pious, and worthy persons. And when he felt himself deficient in duty, he would comfort himself with saying, “Soul, thy God only requires sincere obedience, and perhaps to-morrow may be more abundant in acts of holiness.” When overcome by sin, he would call to mind his righteous deeds, and so hope to commute with Divine justice, and quit scores for his offences by his duties. In order to be reconciled to God, or to ease his conscience, he would promise stricter watchfulness, more alms, and renewed fastings. He did not overlook the death of Christ as procuring the remission of sins; but eternal life, he imagined, must be obtained by his own doings.
In the parish of Weston Favel, where he was his father’s curate, there resided a ploughman, who usually attended the ministry of Dr. Doddridge in the neighbouring town of Northampton. Mr. Hervey frequently accompanied this ploughman in his rural employment for the sake of his health. Understanding the ploughman to be a religious person, he said to him one day, “What do you think is the hardest thing in religion?” To which he replied, “I am a poor illiterate man, and you, sir, are a minister; I beg leave to return the question.” Then said Mr. Hervey, “I think the hardest thing is to deny sinful self,” grounding his opinion on that solemn admonition of our Lord, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.” “I argued,” said Mr. Hervey, afterwards, “upon the import and extent of the duty, showing that merely to forbear the infamous action is little; we must deny admittance, deny entertainment, at least, to the evil imagination, and quench even the enkindling spark of irregular desire. In this way I shot my random bolt.” The ploughman replied, “There is another kind of self-denial to which the injunction goes; it is of great consequence, and the hardest thing in religion, and that is, to deny righteous self.” He went on to say with what pleasure he and his family had for a long time enjoyed the ordinances of religion under the ministry of Dr. Doddridge, and added, “But to this moment I find it the hardest thing to deny righteous self; I mean the renouncing of our own strength, and of our own righteousness; not leaning on that for holiness, nor relying on this for justification.” In repeating the story to a friend, Mr. Hervey observed, “I then hated the righteousness of Christ; I looked at the man with astonishment and disdain, and thought him an old fool, and wondered at what I then fancied the motley mixture of piety and oddity in his notions. I have since clearly seen who was the fool—not the wise old Christian, but the proud James Hervey; I now discern sense, solidity, and truth in his observations.”
The change which this confession indicates took place in the twenty-seventh year of his age. The light which dispelled his errors was not instantaneous, he says, but gradual; “it did not flash upon his soul, but arose like the dawning of the day.” The discovery of the extent of the requirements of the law of God proved fatal to the hopes he was building on his own doings, and happily there came along with it a discovery of the all-sufficiency of the atonement and righteousness of Jesus Christ. His own words are:—”The two great commandments, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,’ and ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ made the first awakening impression on my heart. Amazing! thought I; are these commands of God as obligatory as the prohibition of adultery, or the observation of the Sabbath? Then has my whole life been a continued act of disobedience; not a day, nor an hour, in which I have performed my duty. This conviction,” he says, “struck me as the handwriting upon the wall struck the presumptuous monarch. It pursued me as Paul pursued the Christians, not only to my own house, but to distant cities, nor ever gave up the great controversy till, under the influence of the Spirit, it brought me weary and heavy laden to Jesus Christ.”
Mr. Hervey now wondered how he could have read the Bible so often, and overlooked its revelation of righteousness. “When he saw it he rejoiced with exceeding joy. It solved every problem, and filled every void. It lit up the Bible, and it kindled Christianity. It gave emancipation to his spirit, and motion to his ministry; and whilst it filled his own soul with happiness, it made him eager to transmit the benefit.” But his frame was feeble. He could not imitate his college friend, George Whitefield, in his mode of labour, and he was constrained to use his pen. And with this instrument, dipped in love and beauty, he contributed much to the revival of genuine religion.