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

by Joseph Belcher

While he was now fully engaged in preaching, and was surrounded with flatteries, he did not forget his duty to conflict with sin. He writes, "I find a love of power sometimes intoxicates even God's dear children. It is much easier for me to obey than govern. This makes me fly from that which, at our first setting out, we are apt to court. I cannot well buy humility at too dear a rate."

Dr. Philip Doddridge, as every reader knows, was one of the most pious and accomplished preachers and writers of the Non-conformists of England in his day. Nor was his missionary zeal small in its degree. Though he died as early as 1751, he had said, "I am now intent on having something done among the dissenters, in a more public manner, for propagating the gospel abroad, which lies near my heart. I wish to live to see this design brought into execution, at least into some forwardness, and then I should die the more cheerfully." It was indeed the passion of his life to promote the interests of evangelical truth, and save the souls of men. And though, as his recent eulogist, the Rev. John Stoughton, has said, condemned by some, and suspected by others for so doing, he took a deep and sympathetic interest in the evangelical labors of Whitefield. It seems strange in our day to think of Whitefield being regarded as an enthusiast by orthodox dissenters. Yet there were those who did thus regard him. Bradbury poured on him streams of wit; Barker regarded his sermons as low and coarse; and another in writing calls him "honest, crazy, confident Mr. Whitefield." But Doddridge regarded him as far otherwise, and spoke of him as "a flaming servant of Christ." He prayed on one occasion at the Tabernacle, but Dr. Watts was much grieved by it; and when, on Whitefield's visiting Northampton, Doddridge gave him the use of his pulpit, the managers of the college of which he was president remonstrated with him for so doing.

The visit of Whitefield to Doddridge was in February, 1750, where he met with the Rev. Dr. Sir James Stonehouse, and the Rev. Messrs. Hartley and Hervey. The latter eminent clergyman thus writes: "I have lately seen that most excellent minister of the ever-blessed Jesus, Mr. Whitefield. I dined, supped, and spent the evening with him at Northampton, in company with Dr. Doddridge, and two pious, ingenious clergymen of the church of England, both of them known to the learned world by their valuable writings. And surely I never spent a more delightful evening, or saw one that seemed to make nearer approaches to the felicity of heaven. A gentleman of great worth and rank in the town invited us to his house, and gave us an elegant treat; but how mean was his provision, how coarse his delicacies, compared with the fruit of my friend's lips: they dropped as honey from the honey-comb, and were a well of life. Surely people do not know that amiable and exemplary man, or else, I cannot but think, instead of depreciating, they would applaud and love him. For my part, I never beheld so fair a copy of our Lord, such a living image of the Saviour, such exalted delight in God, such enlarged benevolence to man, such a steady faith in the divine promises, and such a fervent zeal for the divine glory; and all this without the least moroseness of humor, or extravagance of behavior, sweetened with the most engaging cheerfulness of temper, and regulated by all the sobriety of reason and wisdom of Scripture; insomuch that I cannot forbear applying the wise man's encomium of an illustrious woman to this eminent minister of the everlasting gospel: 'Many sons have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.'"

In the month of March, 1750, a general alarm had been awakened by earthquakes in London, and fears were excited by pretended prophecies of still greater devastation. These signal judgments of Jehovah were preceded by great profligacy of manners, and its fruitful parent, licentiousness of principle. Dr. Horne, afterwards dean of Canterbury and bishop of Bristol, in a sermon preached at the time, says, "As to faith, is not the doctrine of the Trinity, and that of the divinity of our Lord and Saviour—without which our redemption is absolutely void, and we are yet in our sins, lying under the intolerable burden of the wrath of God—blasphemed and ridiculed openly in conversation and in print? And as to righteousness of life, are not the people of this land dead in trespasses and sins? Idleness, drunkenness, luxury, extravagance, and debauchery; for these things cometh the wrath of God, and disordered nature proclaims the impending distress and perplexity of nations. And Oh, may we of this nation never read a handwriting upon the wall of heaven, in illuminated capitals of the Almighty, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin—God hath numbered the kingdom, and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances of heaven, and found wanting the merits of a rejected Redeemer, and therefore the kingdom is divided and given away."

The shocks felt in London in February and March of this year, were far more violent than any remembered for a long series of years. The earth moved throughout the whole cities of London and Westminster. It was a strong and jarring motion, attended with a rumbling noise like that of thunder. Multitudes of persons of every class fled from these cities with the utmost haste, and others repaired to the fields and open places in the neighborhood. Towerhill, Moorfields, and Hyde Park were crowded with men, women, and children, who remained a whole night under the most fearful apprehensions. Places of worship were filled with persons in the utmost state of alarm. Especially was this the case with those attached to Methodist congregations, where multitudes came all night, knocking at the doors, and for God's sake begging admittance. As convulsions of nature are usually regarded by enthusiasts and fanatics as the sure harbinger of its dissolution, a soldier "had a revelation," that a great part of London and Westminster would be destroyed by an earthquake on a certain night, between the hours of twelve and one o'clock. Believing his assertion, thousands fled from the city for fear of being suddenly overwhelmed, and repaired to the fields, where they continued all night, in momentary expectation of seeing the prophecy fulfilled; while thousands of others ran about the streets in the most wild and frantic state of consternation, apparently quite certain that the day of judgment was about to commence. The whole scene was truly awful.

Under these circumstances, the ministers of Christ preached almost incessantly, and many were awakened to a sense of their awful condition before God, and to rest their hopes of eternal salvation on the Rock of ages. Mr. Whitefield, animated with that burning charity which shone so conspicuously in him, ventured out at midnight to Hyde Park, where he proclaimed to the affrighted and astonished multitudes that there is a Saviour, Christ the Lord. The darkness of the night, and the awful apprehensions of an approaching earthquake, added much to the solemnity of the scene. The sermon was truly sublime, and to the ungodly sinner, the self-righteous pharisee, and the artful hypocrite, strikingly terrific. With a pathos which showed the fervor of his soul, and with a grand majestic voice that commanded attention, he took occasion from the circumstances of the assembly, to call their attention to that most important event in which every one will be interested, the final consummation of all things, the universal wreck of nature, the dissolution of earth, and the eternal sentence of every son and daughter of Adam. The whole scene was one of a most memorable character. Mr. Charles Wesley, Mr. Romaine, and others preached in a similar manner, and with like happy results.

At this period, Whitefield and his female friends especially, were the subjects of royal attention at the court of George the Second. It is said that on one occasion Lady Chesterfield appeared in a dress "with a brown ground and silver flowers," of foreign manufacture. The king, smiling significantly, said to her aloud, "I know who chose that gown for you—Mr. Whitefield; I hear you have attended on him for a year and a half." Her ladyship acknowledged she had done so, and professed her approbation of his character and ministry; and afterwards deeply regretted that she had not said more when she had so good an opportunity. Whitefield had occasion to wait on the secretary of state, in company with Dr. Gifford, a Baptist pastor in London, to ask relief for some persecuted Christians in Ireland, and was assured that "no hurt was designed by the state to the Methodists." He also renewed his friendship with the Messrs. Wesley, and several times exchanged pulpits with them. He writes, "I have now preached thrice in Mr. Wesley's chapel, and God was with us of a truth."

Again was our evangelist tired of London, and again had he grown sick for want of field-preaching. Accordingly he set out for Bristol and other parts of the west of England; and although rain and hail pelted him in his field-pulpits, he preached "about twenty times in eight or nine days." As soon as he found himself in his own element, he saw every thing in his old lights. He says, "Every thing I meet with seems to carry this voice with it: 'Go thou and preach the gospel; be a pilgrim on earth; have no party, or certain dwelling-place.' My heart echoes back, 'Lord Jesus, help me to do or suffer thy will. When thou seest me in danger of nestling, in pity, in tender pity put a thorn in my nest, to prevent me from it.'"

From Bristol, Whitefield went to Taunton, where he met with the Rev. Richard Pearsall, an eminent and excellent Presbyterian minister, of whom he speaks very highly; and from thence, on his way to Plymouth, he stayed at Wellington, to preach for the Rev. Risdon Darracott, who has ever since been distinguished as "the star in the west." Mr. Darracott was the son of a dissenting minister in Dorsetshire, where he was born in 1717, when Whitefield was three years old. He studied for the ministry under the Rev. Dr. Doddridge, at Northampton, and entered on his ministerial course in Cornwall in 1738, which situation he was most reluctantly compelled to leave two years afterwards from violent hemorrhage of the lungs. Under this alarming visitation he spent about six months with his friends in Devonshire, where his fervent-minded father had preached till his death at the age of forty. While here, he had a call to succeed a venerable minister at Wellington, who had recently deceased. He found the congregation small, and the number of communicants but twenty-eight. His ministry soon drew a large congregation, many of whom had never before made a profession of religion, and were first attracted into the town from the neighboring villages out of mere curiosity to hear him. The house of worship was soon insufficient to contain his hearers; and even when it was enlarged, many were frequently compelled to stand out of doors, unable to obtain an entrance. The Rev. Benjamin Fawcett, who preached his funeral sermon, said, "I never knew any congregation which appeared to have so many instances of abiding religious impressions;" and added, "I have good reason to believe that his ministry was owned to the effectual conversion of many hundreds of souls."

The night before the death of this excellent man, which took place in his forty-second year, he exclaimed, "Oh, what a good God have I, in and through Jesus Christ. I would praise him, but my lips cannot. Eternity will be too short to speak his praises." The physician coming in, he said to him, "Oh, what a mercy is it to be interested in the atoning blood of Jesus. I come to the Lord as a vile sinner, trusting in the merits and precious blood of my dear Redeemer. O grace, grace, free grace!" His last words were, "I am going from weeping friends to congratulating angels, and rejoicing saints in glory. He is coming. Oh, speed thy chariot wheels; why are they so long in coming? I long to be gone!" He left in his church more than two hundred communicants.