Whitefield sighed for union; and, by keeping apart from controversy, and simply testifying the gospel of the grace of God, he did his utmost to make professing Christians a loving brotherhood. Sometimes, the prospect of this began to brighten; and, at all times, he had reason to exult on account of new conversions. The following extracts from letters, that he wrote in the month of April, will be welcome:—
"London, April 6, 1742.
"O what a blessing it is to be redeemed from a vain conversation! O that every poor sinner felt it! Then would the children of God agree in one, and divisions would be at an end. Blessed be our Lord! there is a greater prospect of union than ever. It is what my soul longs after, and labours for. It is a great pity that poor pilgrims should fall out in their way to heaven; but this will be, till we get more of the Divine Spirit.
"I believe there is such a work begun, as neither we nor our fathers have heard of. The beginnings are amazing; how unspeakably glorious will the end be! In New England, the Lord takes poor sinners by hundreds, I may say by thousands. In Scotland, the fruits of my poor labours are abiding and apparent. In Wales, the word of the Lord runs and is glorified; as also in many places in England. In London, our Saviour is doing great things daily. We scarce know what it is to have a meeting without tears. Our Lord always meets with us. I sleep and eat but little, and am constantly employed from morning till midnight; and, yet, I walk and am not weary, I run and am not faint. O free grace! It fires my soul, and makes me long to do something more for Jesus. It is true, indeed, I want to go home; but here are so many souls ready to perish for lack of knowledge, that I am willing to tarry below, as long as my Master has work for me to do."
To John Cennick, now evangelizing in Whitefield's native county, he wrote as follows:—
"London, April 8, 1742.
"I rejoice to hear that the Lord is with you, and that He was pleased to bless my poor labours in Gloucestershire. I would have you to dispute as little as possible. Awakened souls should be told to look continually to the Lord Jesus. Our Lord is with us much in London. I preach twice daily. Our Society grows."
Whitefield longed for union; Wesley, for the present, seems to have been indifferent concerning it, and was also beset with those who wished to make him think that Whitefield was not sincere. The following is a significant entry in Wesley's Journal:—
"1742. April 23. I spent an agreeable hour with Mr. Whitefield. I believe he is sincere in all he says concerning his earnest desire of joining hand in hand with all that love the Lord Jesus Christ. But, if (as some would persuade me) he is not, the loss is all on his own side. I am just as I was. I go on my way, whether he goes with me, or stays behind."[508]
Whitefield had now spent nearly two months of wintry weather in the metropolis, and, of course, his ministry had been mainly confined to his wooden meeting-house, in the neighbourhood of Moorfields. At length, the sun was again shining, the birds were singing, and the breezes balmy. It was time for Whitefield to resume his "field-pulpit," and to use the bright blue heavens as his sounding-board. During the Easter holidays, commencing on Easter Monday, April 19, Whitefield preached six or seven sermons in his old open-air cathedral, Moorfields;[509] and, writing to a friend in Philadelphia, remarked, "We have had a glorious Easter, or rather a Pentecost." The scenes witnessed on these three memorable days—Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday—are described by himself in two letters, written three weeks afterwards. The letters are here thrown into one continuous narrative.
"London, May 11, 1742.
"With this, I send you a few of the many notes I have received from persons who were convinced, converted, or comforted in Moorfields, during the late holidays. For many weeks, I found my heart much pressed to preach there at this season, when Satan's children keep their annual rendezvous.
"I must inform you, that Moorfields is a large, spacious place, given, as I have been told, by one Madam Moore, for all sorts of people to divert themselves in. For many years past, from one end to the other, booths of all kinds have been erected, for mountebanks, players, puppet-shows, and such-like.
"With a heart bleeding with compassion for so many thousands led captive by the devil at his will, on Easter Monday,[510] at six o'clock in the morning, attended by a large congregation of praying people, I ventured to lift up a standard amongst them, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps, there were about ten thousand waiting, not for me, but for Satan's instruments to amuse them. I was glad to find that, for once, I had, as it were, got the start of the devil. I mounted my field-pulpit,[511] and almost all flocked immediately around it. I preached on these words, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,' etc. They gazed, they listened, they wept. All was hushed and solemn; and I believe many felt themselves stung with deep conviction of their past sins.
"Being thus encouraged, I ventured out again at noon: but what a scene! The fields, the whole fields, seemed, in a bad sense of the word, all white, ready, not for the Redeemer's, but, for Beelzebub's harvest. All his agents were in full motion, drummers, trumpeters, merry-andrews, masters of puppet-shows, exhibitors of wild beasts, etc., etc.,—all busy in entertaining their respective auditories. I suppose, there could not be less than twenty or thirty thousand people.
"My pulpit was fixed on the opposite side, and immediately, to their great mortification, they found the number of their attendants sadly lessened. Judging that, like St. Paul, I should now be called, as it were, to fight with beasts at Ephesus, I preached from these words: 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' You may easily guess, that there was some noise among the craftsmen, and that I was honoured with having stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me, whilst engaged in calling them from their favourite, but lying vanities. My soul was indeed among lions; but far the greater part of my congregation seemed to be turned into lambs.
"This encouraged me to give notice, that I would preach again at six o'clock in the evening. I came, I saw, but what? Thousands and thousands more than before, still more deeply engaged in their unhappy diversions; but, among them, some thousands waiting as earnestly to hear the gospel. This was what Satan could not brook. One of his choicest servants was exhibiting, trumpeting on a large stage; but, as soon as the people saw me, in my black robes, and my pulpit, I think, all of them, to a man, left him and ran to me. For a while, I was enabled to lift up my voice as a trumpet. God's people kept praying; and the enemy's agents made a kind of roaring at some distance from us. At length, they approached nearer, and the merry-andrew (who complained that they had taken many pounds less that day on account of my preaching) got upon a man's shoulders, and, advancing near the pulpit, attempted, several times, to strike me with a long, heavy, whip; but always, with the violence of his motion, tumbled down. Soon afterwards, they got a recruiting sergeant, with his drum, etc., to pass through the congregation. I gave the word of command, and ordered that way might be made for the king's officer. The ranks opened, while all marched quietly through, and then closed again. Finding those efforts to fail, a large body, on the opposite side of the field, assembled together, and, having got a large pole for their standard, advanced towards us with steady and formidable steps, till they came very near the skirts of our congregation. I saw, gave warning, and prayed to the Captain of our salvation for support and deliverance. He heard and answered; for, just as they approached us, with looks full of resentment, they quarrelled among themselves, threw down their pole, and went their way, leaving, however, many of their company behind. I think, I continued in praying, preaching, and singing (for the noise, at times, was too great to preach), about three hours.
"We then retired to the Tabernacle. My pocket was full of notes from persons brought under concern. I read, them, amidst the praises and spiritual acclamations of thousands, who joined with the holy angels in rejoicing that so many sinners were snatched, in such an unlikely place and manner, out of the very jaws of the devil. This was the beginning of the Tabernacle Society. Three hundred and fifty awakened souls were received in one day; and, I believe, the number of notes exceeded a thousand.
"The battle, that was begun on Monday, was not quite over till Wednesday evening, though the scene of action was a little changed.
"Being strongly invited, and a pulpit being prepared for me by an honest Quaker, a coal merchant, I ventured, on Tuesday evening, to preach in Marylebone Fields, a place almost as much frequented by boxers, gamesters, and such-like, as Moorfields. A vast congregation was assembled, and, as soon as I got into the field-pulpit, their countenances bespoke the enmity of their hearts against the preacher. I opened with these words: 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' I preached in great jeopardy; for the pulpit being high, and the supports not well fixed in the ground, it tottered every time I moved, and numbers of enemies strove to push my friends against the supports, in order to throw me down. But the Redeemer stayed my soul upon Himself, and I was not much moved, except with compassion for those to whom I was delivering my Master's message.
"Satan, however, did not like thus to be attacked in his strongholds, and I narrowly escaped with my life; for, as I was passing from the pulpit to the coach, I felt my hat and wig to be almost off. I turned about, and observed a sword just touching my temples. A young rake, as I afterwards found, was determined to stab me, but a gentleman, seeing the sword thrust near me, struck it up with his cane, and so the destined victim providentially escaped. Such an attempt excited abhorrence. The enraged multitude seized the man, and had it not been for one of my friends, who received him into his house, he must have undergone a severe discipline.
"The next day, I renewed my attack in Moorfields; and, after the mob found that pelting, noise, and threatenings would not do, one of the merry-andrews got up into a tree, very near the pulpit, and shamefully exposed his nakedness before all the people. Such a beastly action quite abashed the serious part of my auditory; but hundreds, of another stamp, instead of rising up to pull down the unhappy wretch, expressed their approbation by repeated laughs. I must own, at first it gave me a shock. I thought Satan had now almost undone himself; but, recovering my spirits, I appealed to all, since now they had such a spectacle before them, whether I had wronged human nature, in saying, after pious Bishop Hall, 'that man, when left to himself, is half a devil and half a beast;' or, as the great Mr. Law expressed himself, 'a motley mixture of the beast and devil.'
"Silence and attention being thus gained, I concluded with a warm exhortation; and closed our festival enterprises by reading fresh notes that were put up, and by praising and blessing God, amidst thousands at the Tabernacle, for what He had done for precious souls, and on account of the deliverances He had wrought out for me and His people.
"I cannot help adding, that, several little boys and girls were fond of sitting round me on the pulpit, while I preached, and handing to me the people's notes. Though they were often struck with the eggs, dirt, etc., thrown at me, they never once gave way; but, on the contrary, every time I was struck, turned up their little weeping eyes, and seemed to wish they could receive the blows for me."
This is a simple and strange story. Seldom do the annals of the Christian Church present a more remarkable example of the power of gospel truth. Here were assembled thousands, "the devil's castaways," as Whitefield would have called them,—the very scum of London's teeming population, many of them clad in rags, and almost all of them labelled with the marks of vice and wretchedness; and, yet, even in such a congregation, hundreds become penitent, and begin to call upon God for mercy. Even the wildest mob only need "the truth as it is in Jesus" simply and faithfully proclaimed, for there is always in that glorious truth a something which meets the yearnings of the most degraded soul. Whitefield's Easter-tide services, in the midst of the Moorfields mobs, were not unworthy of the name he gave them—"a glorious Pentecost."[512]
Whitefield continued the services thus begun; and no wonder. The following announcement was made in the Weekly History, of May 8, 1742:—