George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America

by Joseph Belcher

When George was about ten years of age, his mother married a second time, thus forming a connection which led to much unhappiness. He was, however, continued at school; and when twelve years old, was transferred to the grammar-school of St. Mary de Crypt, where he remained about three years. Having a graceful elocution and a good memory, he gained much credit for delivering speeches before the city corporation at the annual visitation of the school, and received pecuniary rewards for his performances on those occasions. How deeply he afterwards deplored these celebrations, especially the performance of plays in connection with his school-fellows, may be learned from his own words: "I cannot but observe here, with much concern of mind, how this way of training up youth has a natural tendency to debauch the mind, to raise ill passions, and to stuff the memory with things as contrary to the gospel of Christ, as darkness to light, hell to heaven." This sad tendency was but too clearly evinced in the case of Whitefield himself. "I got acquainted," he says, "with such a set of debauched, abandoned, atheistical youths, that if God, by his free, unmerited, and special grace, had not delivered me out of their hands, I should have sat in the scorner's chair, and made a mock at sin. By keeping company with them, my thoughts of religion grew more and more like theirs. I went to public service only to make sport, and walk about. I took pleasure in their lewd conversation. I began to reason as they did, and to ask why God had given me passions, and not permitted me to gratify them. In short, I soon made great proficiency in the school of the devil. I affected to look rakish, and was in a fair way of being as infamous as the worst of them." These were the things, and not oratory, as has sometimes been said, which Whitefield learned from plays and acting.

In the midst of all this, his conscience often made him unhappy; and he wished, if possible, to combine religion with his pleasures. He purchased and carefully read "Ken's Manual for Winchester Scholars," a book which commended itself as having comforted his mother in her afflictions, and which he afterwards considered to have been "of great benefit to his soul."

At the age of fifteen, he thought he had acquired learning enough for any ordinary occupation in life, and as his mother's business was declining, he persuaded her to allow him to leave school and assist in labor. "I began," says he, "to assist her occasionally in the public-house, till at length I put on my blue apron and my snuffers, washed mops, cleaned rooms, and in one word, became professed and common drawer for nearly a year and a half." In the midst of the activity called for in such a situation, it pleased God to renew his religious impressions, which induced him, at least at intervals, to attend with much earnestness to the concerns of his soul.

From his childhood, Whitefield tells us, he "was always fond of being a clergyman, and used frequently to imitate the ministers' reading prayers." Nor did this tendency towards clerical engagements cease as he became older. "Notwithstanding," he says, "I was thus employed in a large inn, and had sometimes the care of the whole house upon my hands, yet I composed two or three sermons, and dedicated one of them to my elder brother. One day, I remember, I was very much pressed to self-examination, and found myself very unwilling to look into my heart. Frequently I read the Bible when sitting up at night. And a dear youth, now with God, would often entreat me, when serving at the bar, to go to Oxford. My general answer was, 'I wish I could.'"

His mother's difficulties increasing, it became necessary for her to leave the inn; in which she was succeeded by one of her married sons, with whom George for some time remained to continue his assistance in the business. Some disagreement, however, arising between them, he after a time took his departure from the inn, and went to spend a month with his eldest brother at Bristol. Returning from that city to Gloucester, he resided for a short season with his mother. While thus living unemployed, without any definite object before him, and waiting the openings of providence, his mother was visited by an Oxford student, a servitor of Pembroke college in that university. In the course of their conversation, he told her, that after all his expenses at college for the quarter were discharged, he had one penny remaining. She immediately exclaimed, "This will do for my son!" and turning to him, said, "Will you go to Oxford, George?" He replied, "With all my heart." Application was immediately made to several friends who had influence at the college, and they pledged themselves to serve her. In this confidence, her favorite son returned to the grammar-school, where he not only resumed his studies with greater diligence, but endeavored, and not altogether in vain, to promote religion and virtue among his associates.

Having fully secured his literary preparation for the university, Whitefield removed to Oxford in his eighteenth year, and was immediately admitted, as a servitor, into Pembroke college. He soon found that the seat of learning was also a scene of danger. From the period of 1662, when the two thousand Non-conformists had been expelled from the church, the universities had been sinking into a moral lethargy, preferring uniformity to vital religion. Our young servitor was shocked with the impiety of the students in general, and dreading their influence on himself, he as much as possible abstained from their society, and shut himself up in his study.

Before he went to Oxford, Whitefield had heard of a class of young men in the university who "lived by rule and method," and were therefore called Methodists. They were much talked of, and generally despised. Of this party, John Wesley, a Fellow of Lincoln college, and already in holy orders, was the leader, his brother Charles being also as warmly attached to it. They avowed that the great object of their lives was to save their souls, and to live wholly to the glory of God; and rarely have men subjected themselves to greater self-denials and austerities. Drawn towards them by kindred feelings, Whitefield strenuously defended them whenever he heard them reviled, and when he saw them going, through a crowd manifesting their ridicule, every Sunday to receive the sacrament at St. Mary's or Christ church, he was strongly inclined to follow their example.

For more than a year he intensely desired to be acquainted with them, but a sense of his pecuniary inferiority to them prevented his advances. At length, learning that a pauper had attempted suicide, Whitefield sent a poor woman to inform Charles Wesley, that so he might visit her, and administer religious instruction. He charged the woman not to tell Mr. Wesley who sent her, but, contrary to this injunction, she told his name; and Charles Wesley, who had frequently seen Whitefield walking by himself, on the next morning invited him to breakfast. An introduction to the little brotherhood soon followed, and he also, like them, "began to live by rule, and pick up the very fragments of his time, that not a moment might be lost."

It is painful to read Whitefield's own account of the mortifications of body to which he now submitted; and we are not surprised that, as the result, his health was so reduced as to place even his life in danger. All this time he had no clear view of the way of salvation, and was "seeking to work out a righteousness of his own." In this state he lay on his bed, his tongue parched with fever, and the words of the dying Saviour, "I thirst," were impressed on his mind. Remembering that this thirst occurred near the end of the Saviour's sufferings, the thought arose in his mind, "Why may it not be so with me? Why may I not now receive deliverance and comfort? Why may I not now dare to trust and rejoice in the pardoning mercy of God?" There was, as Tracy has said, no reason why he might not—why he ought not. He saw nothing to forbid him. He prayed in hope, borrowing language from the fact which suggested the train of thought—"I thirst, I thirst for faith in pardoning love. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." His prayer was heard. He dared to trust in the mercy of God, as revealed in the death of Jesus Christ for sinners. Conscience and his Bible bore witness that he did right. The load that had so heavily oppressed him, the load of guilt and terror and anxiety, that weighed down his spirit while he sinfully and ungratefully hesitated to trust in divine mercy, was gone. He saw the trustworthiness of the mercy of God in Christ, and his heart rejoiced.

"Though," as Tracy has well said, "the English universities were established mainly for the purpose of educating men for the ministry, Whitefield was not likely to gain a good knowledge of theology there. He took another, and a characteristic course. Some time after his conversion, when he was at Gloucester, he says, 'I began to read the holy Scriptures upon my knees; laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light, and power from above. I thus got more true knowledge in reading the book of God in one month, than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men.'"