affords in every situation and in every time of our need!  Mr. Madan has been with him often, and he seems much attached to him.”  With Giardini also, whose skill on the violin was at that time the theme of universal admiration, Lady Huntingdon was well acquainted.  He often played at concerts of sacred music given at her house, and those of Lady Gertrude Hotham and Lady Chesterfield.  At the request of the Countess he composed tunes for some of the hymns in frequent use at her chapels, thus giving Horace Walpole occasion to remark, “It will be a great acquisition to the Methodist sect to have their hymns set by Giardini.”  Tomaso Giordani, another Italian, composed at her request the old familiar tune “Cambridge,” for the hymn in the Countess’s book commencing, “Father, how wide Thy glory shines!”

VI.

LADY HUNTINGDON’S CHAPELS.

From the appointment of Whitefield as her chaplain, Lady Huntingdon took a commanding position in the development of that section of Methodism which looked rather to Whitefield than to Wesley as its leader, and which held Calvinistic views.  Around the Countess gradually gathered such fellow-workers as Romaine, Venn, Toplady, Fletcher of Madeley, and many others equally with them aflame with love for the perishing souls of men.  Religion having become largely a mere matter of outward form where it was not wholly ignored, great numbers of the clergy being both ignorant of the true nature of the Gospel and very unwilling that others should preach it, Lady Huntingdon was led to establish chapels in different parts of Great Britain.  In some parts she rented buildings; in others she built chapels; and gradually a considerable number of places of worship, largely originated by her, and almost wholly sustained by her, came into being.  She herself always wished these to remain connected with the Church of England.  She endeavoured to keep their pulpits supplied with clergymen of her way of thinking, and for a time succeeded.  But the growth of the work early led her to apply the free agency of lay preachers; and later in life the refusal of the Church of England, upheld by the Courts, to consider her action legal in considering them to belong to the Established Church, drove her in self-defence to constitute her chapels into a connexion with a legal standing and rights.  The hostility on the part of many within the Established Church of the eighteenth century, to true New Testament ministry and practice, on the one hand expelled the Wesleyans from the National Church, and on the other compelled Lady Huntingdon to add one more to the dissenting bodies.

The most noted of the churches which thus came into being were those at Brighton, Bath, and Spa Fields.  The first named stood upon the site in North Street, now occupied by a later, larger, and more ornate structure.  Whitefield visited Brighton, first preaching there in the open air in 1759.  This led to the formation of a Christian Society, and in 1761 Lady Huntingdon built a chapel, to defray the cost of which she sold her jewels, realising in this way the sum of nearly L700.  The building was opened in 1761, Martin Madan conducting the first services, and being immediately succeeded by such notable preachers as Romaine, Berridge, Venn, and Fletcher.