esteem in which I held this wonderful man, and the affectionate
veneration which I must ever retain for the memory of one whose
acquaintance and ministry were attended with the most important
spiritual benefit to me, and to tens of thousands besides.
It will not be saying too much, if I term him the apostle
of the English empire, in point of zeal for God, a long
course of indefatigable and incessant labours, unparalleled
disinterestedness, and astonishing extensive usefulness. If the
most absolute command over the passions of immense auditories
be a mark of a consummate orator, he was the greatest of the
age. If the strongest good sense, the most generous expansions
of heart, the most artless but captivating affability, the most
liberal exemption from bigotry, the purest and most transpicuous
integrity, the brightest cheerfulness, and the promptest wit,
enter into the composition of social excellence, he was one
of the best companions in the world. If to be steadfast, and
unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; if a
union of the most brilliant with the most solid ministerial
gifts, ballasted by a deep and humbling experience of grace,
and crowned with the most extended success in the conversion
of sinners and the edification of saints, be signatures of a
special commission from heaven, Mr. Whitefield cannot but stand
highest on the modern list of Christian ministers. He was the
prince of preachers. On the whole, he was the least imperfect
character I ever knew. It appears, from a book in which this
great man of God minuted the times and places of his ministerial
labours, that he preached upwards of eighteen thousand sermons,
from the time of his ordination to that of his death. To which
we may add, upwards of one thousand four hundred and sixty
letters, written to his friends and acquaintance.”[719]
John Newton, in a sermon, preached in his church at Olney, on November
11, said: “I have had some opportunities of looking over the history
of the Church in past ages, and I am not backward to say, that I have
not read or heard of any person, since the days of the apostles, of
whom it may more emphatically be said, ‘He was a burning and shining
light,’ than of the late Mr. Whitefield. The Lord gave him a manner
of preaching, which was peculiarly his own. He copied from none, and
I never met any one who could imitate him with success. Those who
attempted, generally made themselves disagreeable. Other ministers,
perhaps, could preach the gospel as clearly, and in general say the
same things; but, I believe, no man living could say them in his way.”
“I bless God,” added the Olney curate, “that I have lived in
the time of Mr. Whitefield. Many were the winter mornings in
which I got up at four, to attend his Tabernacle discourses
at five; and I have seen Moorfields as full of lanthorns at
these times as, I suppose, the Haymarket is full of flambeaux
on an opera night. If any one were to ask me who was the second
preacher I ever heard, I should be at some loss to answer; but,
in regard to the first, Mr. Whitefield exceeded so far every
other man of my time, that I should be at none. He was the
original of popular preaching, and all our popular ministers are
only his copies.”[720]
Honest Berridge took for his text, at Everton, “Help, Lord, for the
godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of
men.” He told his hearers that the £1,500, of which Whitefield had died
possessed, was money which he had only recently received. By the death
of his wife, two years ago, he had become entitled to £800; and the
remaining £700 had been bequeathed to him, in four separate legacies,
by friends not long deceased.[721]
Many of the newspapers and magazines of the day contained sketches
of Whitefield’s career and character. The following, published in the
_Scots’ Magazine_, is a fair specimen of others:――
“Mr. Whitefield was well known over all the British empire, as a
faithful, laborious, and successful minister of the gospel of
Christ. The character of this truly pious and extraordinary
person must be deeply impressed upon the heart of every friend
to true, genuine, vital Christianity. For above thirty years, he
has astonished the world, as a prodigy of eloquence, by which he
was enabled to melt the most obdurate and stubborn sinners.
Though, in the pulpit, he often found it necessary _by the
terrors of the Lord to persuade men_, he had nothing gloomy
in his nature, being singularly charitable and tender-hearted;
and, in his private conversation, cheerful, communicative, and
entertaining. To the very meanest, he was always easy of access,
and ever ready to listen to, and relieve their bodily as well as
their spiritual necessities; shewing himself, in every respect,
a faithful steward of the extensive charities he drew from his
numerous and compassionate hearers. He constantly enforced upon
his audiences every moral duty, particularly industry in their
different callings, obedience to their superiors, and in a most
especial manner loyalty to our amiable Sovereign, never once
endeavouring in these distracted times to make a factious use
of the great influence he held among his numerous adherents.”
The _Pennsylvania Journal_ also published a letter, dated “Boston,
October 1, 1770,” from which the following is an extract:――
“In his public performances, Mr. Whitefield has, for a long
course of years, astonished the world as a prodigy of eloquence
and devotion. With what divine pathos did he plead with the
impenitent sinner! Filled with the spirit of grace, he spoke
from the heart; and with a fervency of zeal perhaps unequalled
since the days of the Apostles. He was unrivalled in the command
of an ever-crowded and admiring auditory; nor was he less
entertaining and instructive in his private conversation.
Happy in a remarkable ease of address, willing to communicate,
studious to edify, and formed to amuse――such, in more retired
life, was he whom we now lament.”[722]
Except the Wesleys, perhaps no one was better acquainted with
Whitefield than the Rev. Dr. Gillies, of Glasgow, whose “Memoirs of
Whitefield” were published in the month of June, 1772.[723] Omitting,
as far as possible, the traits of Whitefield’s character already
noticed, Dr. Gillies’ sketch may fitly close these eulogies by
Whitefield’s friends.
“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; but about 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 had better 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 and Christ, 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 counteracted the 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.
All this may be said with truthfulness respecting the influence he
exerted in his native country; but, perhaps, his usefulness in America
was greater even than in England. An American author,[727] of great
eminence, observes:――
“The ‘Great Awakening’ here had commenced before his arrival,
but it was comparatively local, and its visible interest at
least had mostly subsided. Edwards and some of his ministerial
associates were yet praying and writing respecting it in New
England; and the Tennents, Blairs, Finley, Rowland, and others,
were devotedly labouring, in detail, in the Middle States,
against the moral stupor of the times; but Whitefield’s coming
at once renewed the revival and gave it universality, if not
unity. He alone of all its promoters represented it in all
parts of the country; and, at every repeated visit, renewed
its progress. In the South, he was almost its only labourer.
His preaching, and especially his volume of sermons, read by
Morris, founded the Presbyterian Church in Virginia; for, before
that period, there was not a Dissenting minister settled in
the colony. In the Middle States, Whitefield’s labours had a
profound effect. He was an apostle to Philadelphia; he rallied
around him its preachers, and stimulated them by his example.
In New Jersey and New York, he exerted a similar influence;
and the frequent repetition of his visits through about thirty
years did not allow the evangelical interests of the churches
to subside. The ministers in the Synod of New York more than
tripled in seven years after his first visit. In New England,
the effects of Edwards’s labours were reproduced and rendered
general by Whitefield’s frequent passages. One hundred and
fifty Congregational Churches were founded in less than twenty
years; and it has been estimated that about forty thousand
souls were converted in New England alone. The effects of
the great revival, of which Whitefield had thus become the
ostensible representative, have been profound and permanent.
The Protestantism of the United States has taken its subsequent
character from it; and the ‘Holy Club’ at Oxford maybe
recognized as historically connected with the evangelical
religion of all this continent. The effect of the ‘awakening’ on
the character of the ministers was one of its greatest results.
Since that period, the ‘evangelical’ character of the American
pastorate has not, as before, been exceptional, but general.
Its influence on the discipline of the Church was also one
of its most important blessings. It banished the ‘Halfway
Covenant,’ which had filled the eastern churches with unconverted
members. It made personal regeneration a requisite among the
qualifications for the Christian ministry; and it introduced
that general and profound conviction of the essential
spirituality of religion, and the necessary independence
of Church and State, which soon after began, and has since
completed, the overthrow of all legal connection between the two
throughout the country. It gave origin to Princeton College and
its distinguished Theological Seminary, and also to Dartmouth
College; for both were founded by Whitefield’s fellow-labourers,
and the Methodists of England contributed their money to both.”