“Bath, October 7, 1765.
“The Chapel is extremely plain, and yet equally grand. A most beautiful original![529] All was conducted with great solemnity. Though a very wet day, the place was very full; and assuredly the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, by His presence, consecrated and made it holy ground. I preached in the morning, and Mr. Townsend in the evening. I am to preach to-morrow night, and have hopes of setting off on Wednesday morning.”
Whitefield, probably, spent the remainder of the year in London. Wesley breakfasted with him on October 28, and spoke of him as “an old, old man, fairly worn out in his Master’s service, though he has hardly seen fifty years.”[530] No doubt, he preached as often as he could. He was also occupied with his project for converting his Orphan House into a college. In a letter to Mr. Dixon, his manager, he wrote:—
“London, October 26, 1765.
“Bethesda matters are likely to come to a speedy and happy issue. We talk of my coming over again. It is not impossible, if my health admits. At present, blessed be God! I am better than I was last year. The word runs and is glorified in London.”
This was written only two days before he and Wesley breakfasted together. Evidently, he scarcely considered his case so serious as Wesley did. Hopefulness, throughout life, was one of his prominent characteristics. This was true at present, both in reference to his health and to the affairs of Bethesda. He was pushing the proposal for a college as much as possible; but the accomplishment of his wish was more remote than he expected. He had sent a memorial to the king, in which he embodied nearly the whole of his memorial to the Governor and Council of Georgia. That to the king concluded thus:—
“Upon the arrival of your memorialist, he was informed that this address, ‘of the General Assembly to the Governor of Georgia,’ was remitted to, and laid before the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations; and, having received repeated advices that numbers both in Georgia and South Carolina are waiting with impatience to have their sons initiated in academical exercises, your memorialist therefore prays that a charter, upon the plan of New Jersey College, may be granted; upon which your memorialist is ready to give up his present trust, and make a free gift of all lands, negroes, goods, and chattels, which he now stands possessed of in the Province of Georgia, for the present founding, and towards the future support of a college, to be called by the name of Bethesda College, in the Province of Georgia.”
At this stage of the business, Bethesda must be left until the beginning of the year 1767.
One of the first of Whitefield’s good deeds, in 1766, was to heal a breach. Four years before, Wesley’s Society in London had been thrown into great confusion, by a large number of its members using the most fanatical expressions in reference to the doctrine of Christian Perfection. Thomas Maxfield, generally reputed (though incorrectly) to havebeen the first layman, whom Wesley authorised to preach, and George Bell, a corporal in the Life Guards, and who, for a season, seemed to be insane, became the chief agitators. The result was a great scandal, a reduction of Wesley’s metropolitan Society from 2,800 members to 2,200, and a Society debt of more than £600. After many strange vicissitudes, Bell was brought back to a better state of feeling, and Whitefield was the means of it. Wesley writes:—
“January 3, 1766. Mr. Bell called upon me, now calm, and in his right mind. God has repressed his furious, bitter zeal, by means of Mr. Whitefield.”