And trust Him for all that’s to come.’
“In about half an hour the bell rung for dinner. All went down, in order, to a large dining room, intended hereafter for academical exercises. It is forty feet long, with eight sash windows, and the Founder’s picture, at full length, at the upper end. Two tables, the one long and the other oval, were well covered with a proper variety of plain and well-dressed dishes. After dinner, two toasts were given by his Excellency, viz., ‘The King,’ and ‘Success to the Orphan House College.’ The whole company broke up, and went away, in their several carriages, about five in the afternoon. One thing gave me particular pleasure: when the Governor drank ‘The King,’ Mr. Whitefield added, ‘And let all the people say, Amen;’ upon which a loud amen was repeated from one end of the room to the other.
“Upon the whole, all seemed most surprisingly pleased with their spiritual and bodily entertainment, as well as with the elegance, firmness, and dispatch of the late repairs, and additional buildings and improvements. The situation is most salubrious and inviting; the air free and open; and a salt-water creek, which will bring up a large schooner east and west, ebbs and flows at a small distance from the house. I suppose there might be above twenty carriages, besides horsemen; and there would have been as many more, had not the invitation been confined, by way of compliment, to the Governor, Council, and Commons House of Assembly. A strange sight this, in the once despised, deserted Province of Georgia, where, as Mr. Whitefield told us in his discourse, about thirty years ago, scarce any person of property lived; and lands, which now sell for £3 an acre, might have been purchased almost for threepence.
“But I must have done. Excuse me for being so prolix. Yesterday’s scene so lies before me, that, to tell you the truth, I wanted to vent my feelings. If Mr. Whitefield intends, as I am informed he does, to give a more general invitation to the gentlemen in and about Savannah, I will endeavour to be amongst them. Accept this hasty scribble (as I hear the ship sails to-morrow), as a mark of my being, dear sir, your obliged friend and servant.”
The “more general invitation,” mentioned at the close of this long letter, was issued. Hence the following extract from the Georgia Gazette:—
“Bethesda, January 29, 1770. A more particular application being impracticable, the Rev. Mr. Whitefield takes this method of begging the favour of the company of as many gentlemen and captains of ships in and about Savannah, as it may suit to accept this invitation, to dinewith him at the Orphan House Academy next Sunday. Public service to begin exactly at eleven o’clock.
“George Whitefield.”
Of this second assembly at Bethesda, no record now exists. Bethesda was ten miles from Savannah, a considerable distance for the rulers and legislators of Georgia to travel. They all went by Whitefield’s own invitation. They gratefully acknowledged the great service which he had rendered, not only to the Orphan House in particular, but to Georgia in general. They had “a handsome and plentiful dinner.” This could hardly be avoided, considering the distance the company had travelled; but the entertainment would have been more appropriate on a weekday than on a Sunday.[645] The new buildings were in a state of forwardness, and were tasteful, and well executed. Whitefield’s sermon was “suitable and pious.” And the behaviour of the Orphan House inmates was decent and proper. Perhaps, the official reports of the Assembly and of the Gazette of Georgia were, in some respects, more eulogistic than they should have been. At all events, Whitefield’s Sunday entertainment, his orphans, and Mr. Wright, the architect and builder of his additional accommodations, were unfavourably regarded by certain of his friends in England. Berridge, often his honest and hearty assistant at Tottenham Court Road, in a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon, dated May, 1771, observed:—
“Cornelius Winter, who went to Georgia with Mr. Whitefield, says there are but few orphans in the House, and no symptoms of grace in any. Mr. Wright has the management of the whole house, and seems neither to have zeal nor grace enough for the work. Mr. Whitefield made a sumptuous feast on a Sunday, for all the better-dressed people, intending to renew this every year by way of commemoration; but I hope you will put a stop to this guttling business. I wish the Orphan House may not soon become a mere blue-coat hospital and grammar school. If Mr. Fletcher would go to Georgia for a year, things might be on a betterfooting. I never could relish Mr. Wright; he seems a mere cabinet-maker, without godliness.”[646]
Berridge was dissatisfied; but it is only fair to add, that, when he thus wrote to Lady Huntingdon, he was looking at things through the spectacles of young Cornelius Winter, and that Winter was disappointed and soured because Whitefield had not done all he wished in endeavouring to obtain for him episcopal ordination.