‘For this let men despise my name;
I’d shun no cross; I’d fear no shame;
All hail reproach!’
“I am persuaded you are like-minded. I wish you and all your dear fellow-labourers great prosperity. O to be kept from turning to the right hand or the left! Methinks, for many years, we have heard a voice behind us, saying, ‘This is the way; walk ye in it.’ I do not repent being a poor, despised, cast-out, and now almost worn-out itinerant. I would do it again, if I had my choice. Having loved His own, the altogether lovely Jesus loves them to the end. Even the last glimmerings of an expiring taper, He blesses to guide some wandering souls to Himself. In New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, the word has run and been glorified. Scarce one dry meeting since my arrival. All this is of grace. In various places, there has been a great stirring among the dry bones.
“If you and all yours would join in praying over a poor worthless, but willing pilgrim, it would be a very great act of charity, he being, though less than the least of all,
“Rev. and very dear sir,
“Ever yours in Jesus,
“George Whitefield.”[520]
Whitefield continued a month at Philadelphia; and, on leaving it, about October 21, exclaimed, “O what blessings have we received in this place! Join in crying, Hallelujah!”[521]
On his departure from Philadelphia, Whitefield proceeded to Virginia, and to North and South Carolina. He met with the “new lights” at almost every stage: a nickname given to evangelical preachers and their converts, and analogous to that of “Methodists” in England. The present was a marvellous contrast when compared with the state ofthings, at the time of Whitefield’s first visit to Virginia a quarter of a century before; and no wonder that he wrote, “It makes me almost determine to come back early in the spring. Surely the Londoners, who are fed to the full, will not envy the poor souls in these parts, who scarce know their right hand from the left.”