George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America

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R Belcher. George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. MORAL STATE OF GREAT BRITAIN IN THE EARLY PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY – WHITEFIELD FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS FIRST SERMON

CHAPTER II. WHITEFIELD'S SUCCESS AS A PREACHER IN ENGLAND – FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA. 1736-1738

CHAPTER III. OPEN-AIR PREACHING IN ENGLAND AND WALES – ERECTION OF THE TABERNACLE IN LONDON. 1738-1739

CHAPTER IV. WHITEFIELD'S SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 1739, 1740

CHAPTER V. CONTINUATION OF WHITEFIELD'S SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 1740

CHAPTER VI. WHITEFIELD'S FIRST VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND. SEPTEMBER TO NOVEMBER, 1740

CHAPTER VII. LABORS IN NEW YORK AND THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN STATES. 1740, 1741

CHAPTER VIII. FIRST AND SECOND VISITS TO SCOTLAND – LABORS IN ENGLAND AND WALES. 1740-1744

CHAPTER IX. WHITEFIELD'S SECOND VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND. 1744, 1745

CHAPTER X. FROM HIS LEAVING NEW ENGLAND TILL HIS ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND – LABORS IN THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN STATES – THE BERMUDAS. 1745-1748

CHAPTER XI. LABORS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND – CHAPLAIN TO LADY HUNTINGDON. 1748, 1749

CHAPTER XII. LABORS IN GREAT BRITAIN – FOURTH VISIT TO AMERICA – NEW TABERNACLE IN LONDON, AND TABERNACLE AT BRISTOL. 1750-1754

CHAPTER XIII. FIFTH VISIT TO AMERICA – RENEWED LABORS IN GREAT BRITAIN – TOTTENHAM-COURT-ROAD CHAPEL. 1754-1763

CHAPTER XIV. SIXTH VISIT AND LABORS IN AMERICA – RENEWED LABORS IN GREAT BRITAIN. 1763-1767

CHAPTER XV. HIS LAST LABORS IN GREAT BRITAIN – COLLEGE AT TREVECCA – EARL OF BUCHAN – TUNBRIDGE WELLS. 1767-1769

CHAPTER XVI. SEVENTH VISIT AND LABORS IN AMERICA – DEATH. 1769, 1770

CHAPTER XVII. TESTIMONIES AND FACTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF WHITEFIELD'S CHARACTER

CHAPTER XVIII. CHARACTER OF WHITEFIELD AS A PREACHER – CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATIONS

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That we may have a clear and comprehensive view of the labors and success of George Whitefield, it is important that we consider the moral condition of Great Britain and its dependencies when the Head of the church brought him on the field of action. The latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries presented in that country a scene of moral darkness, the more remarkable as it so soon succeeded the triumph of evangelical truth which distinguished the seventeenth century, and which is perpetuated in a religious literature that will bless the world. Causes had long been at work which produced such insensibility and decline as to all that is good, and such a bold and open activity in evil, as it is hoped the grace of God may avert from his churches in all future time. The doctrine of the divine right of kings to implicit obedience on the part of their subjects; the principle of priestly control of the minds of men in religious matters; and clerical influence, sustained by kingly authority, in favor of sports on the Lord's day, together with the evil examples of men high in rank and power, had produced their natural results on the masses of the people, and make it painful, even at this distant period, to survey the scene.

Nor were these all the evils of that day. The expulsion from their pulpits, by the "Act of Uniformity," of two thousand of the most able and useful of the clergy in England, had led to great ignorance and neglect of religion; and though men like Leighton and Owen, Flavel and Baxter, with Bunyan and a host of others, had continued, in spite of opposing laws, to preach when they were not shut up in prison, and to write their immortal practical works, by the time of which we are speaking they had been called to their eternal reward, leaving very few men of like spirit behind them. Thus infidelity, profligacy, and formalism almost universally prevailed.

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For more than a year he intensely desired to be acquainted with them, but a sense of his pecuniary inferiority to them prevented his advances. At length, learning that a pauper had attempted suicide, Whitefield sent a poor woman to inform Charles Wesley, that so he might visit her, and administer religious instruction. He charged the woman not to tell Mr. Wesley who sent her, but, contrary to this injunction, she told his name; and Charles Wesley, who had frequently seen Whitefield walking by himself, on the next morning invited him to breakfast. An introduction to the little brotherhood soon followed, and he also, like them, "began to live by rule, and pick up the very fragments of his time, that not a moment might be lost."

It is painful to read Whitefield's own account of the mortifications of body to which he now submitted; and we are not surprised that, as the result, his health was so reduced as to place even his life in danger. All this time he had no clear view of the way of salvation, and was "seeking to work out a righteousness of his own." In this state he lay on his bed, his tongue parched with fever, and the words of the dying Saviour, "I thirst," were impressed on his mind. Remembering that this thirst occurred near the end of the Saviour's sufferings, the thought arose in his mind, "Why may it not be so with me? Why may I not now receive deliverance and comfort? Why may I not now dare to trust and rejoice in the pardoning mercy of God?" There was, as Tracy has said, no reason why he might not – why he ought not. He saw nothing to forbid him. He prayed in hope, borrowing language from the fact which suggested the train of thought – "I thirst, I thirst for faith in pardoning love. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." His prayer was heard. He dared to trust in the mercy of God, as revealed in the death of Jesus Christ for sinners. Conscience and his Bible bore witness that he did right. The load that had so heavily oppressed him, the load of guilt and terror and anxiety, that weighed down his spirit while he sinfully and ungratefully hesitated to trust in divine mercy, was gone. He saw the trustworthiness of the mercy of God in Christ, and his heart rejoiced.

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