The inroads which death had made in her circle of intimate friends, a growing dissatisfaction with the enjoyments of London life, and especially a keener sense of her responsibility, as a professed Christian, than she had hitherto experienced, led to a close self-examination, and to a scrutiny of the real motives of her life.

The result of this testing process showed itself in various ways.  During occasional visits to London and attendance at parties she lost no opportunity of enforcing the truths of religion.  Her silent witnessing was now exchanged for active exertion.  The manners and practices of people who were amongst her most effusive admirers sometimes met with her indignant rebuke.  Ladies of title, society beauties, and leaders of fashion, who were unapproachable by other religious influences, she urged in private to consider their spiritual interests.  The method she adopted was not, usually, to start religious topics, but “to extract from common subjects some useful and awful truth, and to counteract the mischief of a popular sentiment by one drawn from religion.”  Perhaps a message which John Wesley once sent to her through a sister may have weighed considerably in deterring her from an entire severance from the fashionable world.  “Tell her to live in the world; there is the sphere of her usefulness; they will not let us come nigh them.”

Not content with personal and private reproof, advice, and entreaty, she now devoted her pen to the denunciation of folly and vice in high places.  In her work, Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, whilst protesting against prevalent irreligious practices and habits of dissipation, which even good people sanctioned, she sought to arouse a sensitive regard for mutual responsibility as set forth in the New Testament.

In 1788 the slave trade formed a burning question in Parliament.  Miss More, intensely aroused by the descriptions presented of the horrible traffic, found vent for her feelings in a poem on the subject.  About the same time a close friendship began with Wilberforce, which lasted to the end of life.

A yet more important friendship commenced at this period—­one that was destined to work a powerful influence on Miss More’s life.  The Rev. John Newton, one of the leaders amongst the evangelical clergy, held the incumbency of St. Mary Woolnoth.  Attendance on his ministry led to a correspondence and a deep friendship.  John Newton was precisely the kind of man whom Hannah More needed to assist her in spiritual progress, and to direct her steps into paths of settled peace.  Her letters to Mr. Newton, stating her difficulties and seeking counsel, breathe the spirit of the humble and sincere scholar of Christ.  Her willingness to obey the Master whom she professed to serve, and her earnest desire to be brought into closer relations with God, although checked, had never been stifled by the claims of intellect or by the attractions of the world.  From this time the work of the Holy Spirit in deepening her love for the Saviour became more and more prominent.  Turning for a time from Christian work amongst the rich, Miss More now devoted her efforts to the improvement of the moral and religious condition of the poor.