"No, dear sinners, a thousand and a thousand times no! Over that guilty head the fiat of the Eternal had gone forth, 'This is the son of perdition, this is he who shall betray the Son of God.'"
Then, after a long pause, sinking his mighty voice almost to a whisper, the preacher asked—
"Is there any son of perdition here to-night? Is there one among you whose stubborn heart answers not to his Saviour's call—a wretch in love with vice, who would rather have sensual pleasures on earth than everlasting bliss in heaven—a modern Judas who sells his Redeemer's love for thirty pieces of the devil's money, thirty profligate raptures, thirty vicious indulgences, thirty debauches in filthy taverns, thirty nights of riot and wantonness among gamesters and loose women?
"If there be any such, cast him from you. However near, however dear—father, brother, husband, son, flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. Cast him out; oh, you who value your eternal happiness! You cannot mistake the mark of the lost soul. The son of perdition bears a brand of sin that no eye can fail to recognize. 'Tis Satan's broad-arrow, and stamps the wretch foredoomed to hell. You who would taste the joys of heaven, hold no fellowship with such on earth."
The great throng heard those concluding phrases in a profound silence. The heavy stillness of a sultry night, the muffled roll of distant thunder, the fitful lightning, now faint, now vivid, that flashed across the scene, intensified the dramatic effect of the sermon, and the crowds that had gathered noisily with much talk and some jeering, dwindled and melted away subdued and thoughtful.
Like many other of Whitefield's sermons which moved multitudes, there was little left after the last resonance of the mighty voice had sunk into silence. But the immediate effect of his oration was tremendous. Garrick had said that he would give a hundred pounds if he could say "Oh!" like Whitefield; and what Garrick could not do must have been something of exceptional power.
Antonia had given her whole mind to the preacher; yet for her his sermon was but a dramatic effort, and she went back to her coach full of wonder at that vast influence which a fine voice and a cultivated elocution had exercised over the multitude in England and America.
Upon George Stobart the preacher's influence was stronger.
"The man makes me believe against my own reason," he said, "which has ever striven against the idea of a fatal necessity. Come, Lady Kilrush, confess that his eloquence moved you."
"I confess as much with all my heart; and I am very glad to have heard him. He is a finer actor—an unconscious actor, of course—than Garrick; at least, he has a greater power to appal an ignorant crowd."