“Every day, sir, we hear of fresh work. Scores of notes are put up by persons brought under conviction; and God’s people are abundantly refreshed. Last night, the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. I cannot tell you half. I am lost in wonder. For the present, my dear sir, adieu!”
In such a spirit Whitefield ended the year 1753. On Tuesday, January 1, 1754, he preached, in the Tabernacle, to a densely crowded congregation, from the parable of the barren fig-tree. His American friends, Tennent and Davies, were present, and the latter wrote: “Though the discourse was incoherent, it seemed to me better calculated to do good to mankind than all the accurate, languid discourses I had ever heard. After the sermon, I enjoyed his pleasing conversation at his house.”
Whitefield spent the first two months of 1754 in London, and was fully occupied, partly in preaching, and partly in preparing for his intended voyage to America. He wrote: “I meet with my share of trials. Every sermon preached this winter has been fetched out of the furnace. But what are we to expect, as Christians and ministers, but afflictions? Our new Tabernacle is completed, and the workmen all paid. What is best of all, the Redeemer manifests His glory in it. Every day, souls come crying, ‘What shall we do to be saved?’ I expect, in a fortnight, once more to launch into the great deep, with about ten or twelve destitute orphans under my care.”[354] He embarked at Gravesend, on the 7th of March; and, in another chapter, we must follow him.
FIFTH VISIT TO AMERICA.
March 1754 to May 1755.
NINE days after leaving England, the ship, in which Whitefield sailed, anchored in Lisbon harbour, where it remained about a month. This was a long detention for Whitefield and his “destitute orphans;” but he usefully employed the time in making himself acquainted with the full-blown Popery of the metropolis of Portugal. His letters on this subject fill twenty-four closely printed pages, in his collected works. At his return to England, in 1755, four of these letters were printed, with the title, “A brief Account of some Lent and other Extraordinary Processions and Ecclesiastical Entertainments, seen last Year at Lisbon. In four Letters to an English Friend. By George Whitefield.” (8vo. 29 pp.) Whitefield’s letters were extensively quoted by the newspapers and magazines of the day; and even the Monthly Review—no great friend to Whitefield—said, “Our celebrated itinerant preacher expresses a just and manly resentment of the miserable bigotry of the Portuguese, and the priestly delusion with which they are led into even more ridiculous fopperies than ever disgraced the pagan theology.”[355]
What did Whitefield see? Extracts from the letters—as brief as possible—shall supply an answer.
“Lisbon Harbour, March 17, 1754.
“Yesterday we anchored in this port. We are now lying before a large place, where we see hundreds going to worship in their way. We have just been at ours. Though sent without a friend, yet I am not left alone. ‘O my God, Thy presence on earth, Thy presence in heaven, will makeamends for all!’ Indeed, Jesus Christ is a good master. He has given me the affections of all on board, and as kind a captain as we could desire.”
“Lisbon Harbour, March 19, 1754.