“Mr. Whitefield’s person was graceful, and well proportioned. His stature was rather above the middle size. His complexion was very fair. His eyes were of a dark blue colour, and small, but sprightly. He had a squint with one of them, occasioned either by the ignorance, or carelessness of the nurse who attended him in the measles, when he was about four years old. His features were in general good and regular. His countenance was manly, and his voice exceeding strong; yet both were softened with an uncommon degree of sweetness. He was always very clean and neat, and often said pleasantly, that ‘a minister of the gospel ought to be without spot.’ His deportment was decent and easy, without the least stiffness or formality; and his engaging polite manner made his company universally agreeable. In his youth, he was very slender, and moved his body with great agility of action, suitable to his discourse; butabout the fortieth year of his age, he began to grow corpulent; which however, was solely the effect of his disease, being always, even to a proverb, remarkable for his moderation both in eating and drinking. Several prints have been done of him, which exhibit a very bad likeness. The best resemblance of him in his younger years, before he became corpulent, is that mezzotinto scraping which represents him at full length, with one hand on his breast, and holding a small Bible in the other; but the late paintings, the one by Mr. Hone,[724] and the other by Mr. Russell, are certainly the justest likenesses of his person.
“In reviewing the life of this extraordinary man, we are struck with his unwearied diligence. Early in the morning, he rose to his Master’s work, and, all the day long, was employed in a continual succession of different duties. When he was visited with any distress or affliction, preaching, as he himself tells us, was his catholicon, and prayer his antidote against every trial. When we consider what exertion of voice was necessary to reach his large congregations,—also that he preached generally twice or thrice every day, and often four times on the Lord’s-day, and above all, the waste of strength and spirits every sermon must have cost him, through the earnestness of his delivery,—it is astonishing how his constitution held out so long.
“His eloquence was great, and of the true and noblest kind. He was utterly devoid of all appearance of affectation. He seemed to be quite unconscious of the talents he possessed. The importance of his subject, and the regard due to his hearers, engrossed all his concern. He spoke like one who did not seek their applause, but was anxious for their best interests. And the effect, in some measure, corresponded to the design. His congregations did not amuse themselves with commending his discourses, but entered into his views, felt his passions, and were willing, for the time at least, to comply with his requests. This was especially remarkable at his charity sermons, when the most worldly-minded were made to part with their money in so generous a manner, that, when they returned to their former temper, they were ready to think that it had been conjured from them by some inexplicable charm.
“He had a strong and musical voice, and a wonderful command of it. His pronunciation was not only proper, but manly and graceful. He was never at a loss for the most natural and strong expressions. The grand sources of his eloquence were an exceeding lively imagination, and an action still more lively. Every accent of his voice spoke to the ear; every feature of his face, and every motion of his hands, spoke to the eye. The most dissipated and thoughtless found their attention involuntarily fixed;and the dullest and most ignorant could not but understand. Had his natural talents for oratory been employed in secular affairs, and been somewhat more improved by refinements of art and embellishments of erudition, it is possible they would soon have advanced him to distinguished wealth and renown.
“But not to dwell longer on his accomplishments as an orator, one thing remains to be mentioned of an infinitely higher order, namely, the power of God, which so remarkably accompanied his labours. It is here Mr. Whitefield is most to be envied. When we consider the multitudes that were brought under lasting religious impressions, and the multitudes that were wrought upon in the same manner by the ministry of others, excited by his example, we are led into the same sentiment with Mr. Wesley in his funeral sermon, ‘What an honour hath it pleased God to put upon His faithful servant!’
“True, this excellent character was shaded with some infirmities. What else could be expected in the present condition of humanity? But it ought to be observed, that, as there was something very amiable in the frankness which prevented his concealing them, so, through his openness to conviction, his teachableness, and his readiness to confess and correct his mistakes, they became still fewer and smaller as he advanced in knowledge and experience.
“When he first set out in the ministry, his youth and inexperience led him into many expressions which were contrary to sound doctrine, and which made many of the sermons he first printed justly exceptionable; but reading, experience, and a deeper knowledge of his own heart, convinced him of his errors, and, upon all occasions, he avowed his belief of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and the Standards of the Church of Scotland. ‘He loved his friend’ (Wesley), ‘but he would not part with a grain of sacred truth for the brother of his heart.’”[725]
My task is nearly ended. I am not conscious of having omitted a single fact, of any importance, in Whitefield’s history. His life is a suggestive one; but want of space prevents enlargement on the countless incidents in his remarkable career. These have been narrated with as much clearness as the writer could command. The reader can form his own reflections. Preachers, especially, will do well to make Whitefield the subject of prayerful study. Let them try to imitate him in the use of his matchless voice. A man hadbetter not preach at all, than preach so mumblingly that only half of what he says is heard. He vexes his hearers without doing them any good. If Whitefield had tried to add to his facial beauty, by omitting to shave his upper lip, even he would not have spoken so distinctly and audibly as he did. Whitefield’s preaching was always warm, earnest, pointed,—addressed to the heart rather than the head. He left the impression that he intensely believed what he said. “Clear but cold, is too descriptive of much modern preaching. It is the frosty moonlight of a winter’s night, not the warm sunshine of a summer’s day.”[726] If such had been Whitefield’s preaching, what would his success have been? The man’s faith filled and fired him with enthusiasm. On themes such as the ruin of man, the love of God, the death of Christ, the salvation of souls, the felicities of heaven, and the torments of hell, it was impossible for Whitefield to be calm. If Whitefield had preached on little subjects, he might have been as cool as many of his fellows, and might have courted favour by yielding to the fastidious tastes of respectable congregations, desiring the sentimental, the picturesque, and the imaginative, but turning with disgust from the solemn, the alarming, the awakening. Whitefield was not a coward. No fetters of custom, or trammels of conventionality, could enslave him. He never unmanned himself by prophesying smooth things, for fear of offending his auditors. His life was spent in testifying a few great truths in which he had an intense, divinely given, vivid faith,—truths, always unpopular among philosophers, but truths everywhere needed by human beings,—the only truths which meet the yearnings of human nature. Whitefield had no time for lesser truths. He durst not amuse his hearers by preaching them. He saw the people perishing, and he had not the hardihood to trifle in his attempts to save them. His congregations always knew what would be the substance of his sermons. Added to all this, Whitefield was full of religious feeling. Except when sleeping, he seemed to pray and praise always and everywhere. He was “full of faith and the Holy Ghost.” A vivid spirituality inflamed his soul. His ideas of God andChrist, of sin and holiness, of faith and pardon, of heaven and hell, were not merely thoughts, but sentiments. Without this, Whitefield’s eloquence would only have been elocution, and his sermons, instead of being “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,” would have been—what?—theatrical orations!
Whitefield left no “Societies,” as his friend Wesley did; but Whitefield’s ministry was the means of converting tens of thousands of sinners from the errors of their ways. O that this could be said of twenty of the preachers of the present day! Their influence, direct and indirect, would set “the kingdoms on a blaze.” Not a few of Whitefield’s converts became ministers; and, as children often resemble their parents, most of the ministers who owned Whitefield as their spiritual father, were, though in an inferior degree, a resemblance of himself, in their spirit, labours, and success. Except at the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court Road, Whitefield created no “golden candlestick” (Rev. i. 20), but he everywhere carried a torch kindled at the altar of heaven, and with it lighted “candlesticks that had gone out.” He is inseparably connected with the history of the evangelical party of the Church of England, beginning with men like Berridge, Venn, Madan, Romaine, Newton, and others, and resulting in a fact of inconceivable importance, namely, that, thousands of the pulpits of the Established Church are now occupied by ministers of a kindred spirit. Plenty of evidence has been furnished, in the first volume of the present work, of the apathy and worldliness of the Congregationalists of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland. The contrast between the state of these churches in 1739 and 1876 is almost a contrast between life and death. Whitefield is credited with having preached for the Dissenters of England to a greater extent than he is entitled to; but he did preach for them, in Northamptonshire, Herts, Gloucestershire, and other places, and they, not improperly, attribute much of their revived religion to his instrumentality. His usefulness in Scotland is much more apparent and undoubted. With no wish to depreciate the Erskines and their friends, it is not too much to say, that, Whitefield was the first great agent of that resuscitation of religion, which has effectually counteractedthe Socinian and semi-infidel tendencies which prevailed in the Presbyterian Churches across the border, and which has infused into them the new and universal life they now exhibit. Whitefield’s service to Ireland was small,—a contrast to that rendered by his friend Wesley; but his usefulness in Wales was incalculable. Though not the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists, he was, for years, and until he resigned the honour, their elected moderator; and, to the end of life, he took a warm and active interest in their welfare and prosperity. Their chapels are found in every town and almost every village of the Principality; their ordained ministers number more than four hundred; their communicants nearly a hundred thousand; and their hearers about a quarter of a million. What is called “Lady Huntingdon’s Connection” was not formally established until thirteen years after Whitefield’s death; but Whitefield chiefly, in connection with other clergymen of the Established Church, had prepared the way for this; and now, in the days of its decline, it possesses about half a hundred chapels, and its Cheshunt College, the substitute of the one at Trevecca, which Whitefield opened two years before he died.
In other ways, Great Britain was immensely benefited by Whitefield’s labours. Methodists especially, and other evangelists, must not forget that Whitefield was the first who revived the good old practice of preaching out of doors. He was not formally one of Wesley’s “assistants;” but, for many years, he preached, in the north of England, and other places, to Wesley’s congregations, and fostered and promoted their religious life. His enormous collections, also, were, to a great extent, the beginning of the marvellous beneficence which now distinguishes the British churches. And, once again, his catholicity of spirit greatly tended to usher in the age of friendliness among professing Christians.