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

And gracious wonders wrought,
Or fed the famished multitude.

So did apostles teach;
So did our Whitefield preach;
These hills have heard his fervent prayer:
Oh, let the saving word
Throughout our land be heard,
Free as the light, and open as the air.

II

Where is the voice of Whitefield now?
Where does his mantle rest?
Oh, for Elisha's from the plough,
With kindred zeal possessed!
Apostles of heroic mould,
With love seraphic fired,
Divinely called, like those of old
At Pentecost inspired!

Oh Thou, our Head, enthroned on high,
By whom thy members live,
Wilt thou not hear our fervent cry,
The holy unction give?
In all the plenitude of grace
Thy gifts of might bestow;
And by us, Lord, in every place,
Thy saving virtue show.

This Christian land with error teems,
The blind by blinder led;
The sophist weaves his Atheist schemes;
Wide has the poison spread.
Arise, O Lord, send forth thy word;
Thy faithful heralds call;
And while the gospel trump is heard,
Let Satan's bulwarks fall.

Free, pure, and vital as the light,
God's message to our race;
Like genial gales the Spirit's might,
Sovereign, mysterious grace.
Breathe forth, O wind, and to new birth
Quicken the bones of death;
Regenerate this withered earth;
Give to the dying breath.

It is pleasant to add to this account, that satisfactory evidences were given that some, during these services, were brought to the saving knowledge of "the truth as in Jesus." And it may be mentioned as a singular circumstance, that an old man one hundred and three years of age attended on this occasion, who had been carried in his mother's arms to this same spot to hear Whitefield preach just a century before.

The last centenary service to which we shall make reference, is the one held at the Bristol Tabernacle, November 25, 1853. The sermon on The Character of Whitefield, by the Rev. John Angell James, was from the text, "This one thing I do." Phil. 3:13. In it he said:

"We hear much in our days about the adaptation of the gospel to the age. There is no word I more hate or love, dread or desire, according to the sense in, or the purpose for which it is used, than this word adaptation as applied to preaching. Now, if by adaptation be meant, more philosophy, and less Christianity; more of cold abstract intellectualism, and less of popular, simple, earnest statement of gospel truth; more profound discussion and artificial elaboration addressed to the learned few, and less of warm-hearted appeal to the multitude, may God preserve us from such adaptation, for it is high-treason against truth and the salvation of souls. But if by this be meant a stronger intelligence, a chaster composition, a sterner logic, a more powerful rhetoric, a more correct criticism, and a more varied illustration, but all employed to set forth the gospel as comprehending those two great words, redemption and regeneration, let us have it; we need it; and come in ever such abundance, it will be a blessing.

"Adaptation! the gospel is adaptation, from beginning to end, to every age of time, and to all conditions of humanity. It is God's own adaptation. It is he who knows every ward of the lock of man's nature, who has constructed this admirable key; and all the miserable tinkering of a vain and deceitful philosophy can make no better key, nor can all the attempts of a philosophizing theology make this key better fit the wards of the lock.

"Adaptation! was not the gospel in all its purity and simplicity adapted to human nature as it existed in commercial, scholastic, philosophical Corinth? And did not Paul think so when he determined to know nothing there, but 'Christ, and him crucified?' Was it not by this very gospel, which many are "beginning to imagine is not suited to an intellectual and philosophical age, that Christianity fought its first battles, and achieved its victories over the hosts of darkness? Against the axe, the stake, the sword of the gladiator, and the lions of the amphitheatre; against the ridicule of wits, the reasoning of sages, the interests, influence, and craft of the priesthood; against the prowess of armies, and the brute passions of the mob, Christianity, strong in its weakness, sublime in its simplicity, potent in its isolation, asking and receiving no protection from the sceptre of the monarch or the sword of the warrior, went forth to do battle with the wisdom of Greece and the mythology of Rome. Everywhere it prevailed, and gathered its laurels from the snows of Scythia, the sands of Africa, the plains of India, and the green fields of Europe. With the gospel alone she overturned the altars of impiety in her march. Power felt his arm wither at her glance. She silenced the lying oracles by the majesty of her voice, and extinguished the deceptive light of philosophy in the schools, till at length she who went forth forlorn and weeping from Calvary to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, ascended, upon the ruins of the temples, the idols, and the altars she had demolished, to the throne of the Cæsars, and with the diadem on her brow, and the purple on her shoulders, gave laws to the world from that very tribunal where she had been dragged as a criminal and condemned as a malefactor.[3 - See Dr. John M. Mason's Funeral Sermon for Mrs. Graham.]

"Adaptation! is not justification by faith the very substance of the gospel, and was it not by this doctrine that Luther effected the enfranchisement of the human intellect, from the chains of slavery which had been forged in the Vatican; achieved the liberation of half Europe from the yoke of Rome, and gave an impulse to human thought and vital Christianity which has not yet spent itself, and never will, till it issues in the jubilee of the nations and the glories of the millennium?

"Adaptation! did not Whitefield move this kingdom almost to its centre, and equally so our then great transatlantic colony to its extremities, fascinating alike the colliers of Kingswood and the citizens of the metropolis; and by this mighty theme enable myriads to burst the chains of sin and Satan, and to walk abroad disenthralled by the mighty power of redeeming grace?

"Adaptation! is not this gospel now proving its power in heathen countries to raise the savage into civilized man, the civilized man into the saint, and in this ascending scale of progression, the saint into the seraph?

"And yet, with these proofs of the power of the gospel to adapt itself to every age of the world, and to every condition of humanity, there are those who want something else to effect the regeneration of mankind. 'And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' So said the Saviour of men. The cross is the great moral magnet for all ages and all countries, to draw men from barbarism to civilization, from sin to holiness, from misery to happiness, and from earth to heaven; and it were as rational to say the loadstone had lost its original power of polar attraction, and the mariner's compass is an old, stale invention, and must now be replaced with some new device, better adapted to the modern light of science, as to suppose that the doctrine of the cross had become effete, and must give way to some new phase of theological truth.

"I now consider the manner in which Whitefield carried out his own purpose into action. 'One thing I do:' and how did he accomplish it?

"Never was the joyful sound sent over the world by a more magnificent voice. All his biographers labor, as do the historians of Greece in describing the power of Demosthenes, to make us understand his wondrous oratory. Perhaps, after all, that which gives us the most vivid idea of it is, not the crowds it attracted, moved, and melted, but that it warmed the cold and calculating Franklin, and fascinated the philosophical and sceptical Hume. Heaven rarely ever gave, or gives to man the faculty of speech in such perfection. But what is particularly worthy of notice is, that he trusted not to its native power, but increased that power by assiduous cultivation. His matchless elocution was not only an endowment, but an acquirement. If he preached a sermon twenty times, he went on to the last improving his method of delivering it, both as to tones and action; not for theatrical display – no man was ever more free from this – but to carry out his 'one thing' —the salvation of souls. He knew, and deeply and philosophically entered into the meaning of that text, 'Faith cometh by hearing;' and he also knew that attentive hearing comes by the power of speaking. With such a theme as the gospel, with such an object as salvation, with such an aim as eternity, and such a Master to serve as Christ, he would not give utterance to such subjects, and for such purposes, in careless and slovenly speech. He studied to be the orator, that he might thus pluck souls as brands from the burning. In this let us imitate him. Of all our faculties, that of speech is perhaps least cultivated, yet is most susceptible of cultivation, and pays best for the pains bestowed upon it. My brethren, speech is the great instrument of our ministerial labor. Our assault upon the rebel town of Mansoul is to be carried on, and our entrance to be effected, to use the language of Bunyan, at ear-gate. The tongue, rather than the pen, is the weapon of most of us. For the love of souls, let us endeavor to be good speakers. With the loftiest themes in the universe for our subjects, do, do let us endeavor to speak of them in some measure worthily. It is an instructive and astounding, and to us humiliating and disgraceful fact, that the stage-player, whether in comedy or in tragedy, takes ten times more pains to give effective utterance to his follies, vices, and passions, for the amusement of his audience, than we do to eternal and momentous truths for the salvation of ours. The stage seems the only arena where the power of oratory is much studied. Should this be?

"A few characteristics of Whitefield's manner deserve emphatic mention and particular attention, as connected with the execution of his one great purpose. The first I notice is solemnity. He never, as did some of his followers, degraded the pulpit by making it the arena of low humor and wit; abounding in anecdote, and even in action, he was uniformly solemn. His deep devotional spirit contributed largely to this, for his piety was the inward fire which supplied the ardor of his manner. He was eminently a man of prayer; and had he been less prayerful, he would also have been less powerful. He came into the pulpit from the closet, where he had been communing with God, and could no more trifle with merry humor at such a time than could Moses when he came down from the mount to the people; or than the high-priest when he came out from the blazing symbols of the divine presence between the cherubim in the holy of holies; or Isaiah when he saw the Lord of hosts, high and lifted up, with his train filling the temple. Happily the age and taste for pulpit buffoonery is gone, I hope never to return.

''Tis pitiful to count a gain when you should woo a soul.'

It was the stamp and impress of eternity upon his preaching, that gave Whitefield such power. He spoke like a man that stood upon the borders of the unseen world, alternately rapt in ecstasy as he gazed upon the felicities of heaven, and convulsed with terror as he seemed to hear the howlings of the damned, and saw the smoke of their torment ascending from the pit for ever and ever. His maxim was to preach, as Apelles painted, for eternity, and he said, if ministers preached for eternity, they would then act the part of true Christian orators. And tell me, my brethren, what are all the prettinesses, the beauties, or even sublimities of human eloquence – what the similes, metaphors, and other garniture of rhetoric – what the philosophy and intellectualities which many in this day are aiming at, to move and bow and conquer the human soul, compared with 'the powers of the world to come?'

"But there was another characteristic of Whitefield's manner, and that was its tenderness. Our Lord, as to his humanity, was a man of sorrows, and therefore of tears; so was Paul, so was Whitefield. Perhaps the latter somewhat too much so, at any rate far too much so for any preacher but himself, and with him the fountain of his tears was somewhat too full and flowing. But Oh, what an apology for this, and what a stroke of pathetic eloquence was that appeal when on one occasion he said, 'You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it, when you will not weep for yourselves, although your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and for aught I know you are hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ offered to you.' Man is an emotional as well as an intellectual creature, and sympathy is one of the powers of our physical and mental economy. The passions are of an infectious nature, and men feel more in a crowd than in solitude. The adage of the ancient elocutionist is still true, 'If you wish me to weep, weep yourself.' Whitefield's tears drew forth those of his audience, and his pathos softened their hearts for the impressions of the truth. It is forgotten by many preachers that they may do much by the heart, as well as by the head. We are not the teachers of logic, mathematics, metaphysics, or natural philosophy, which have nothing to do with the heart, but of religion, the very seat of which is there; and we address ourselves not only to the logical, but to the æsthetical part of man's complex nature. By argument, I know we must convince, but we must not stop in the judgment, but go on to reach the heart, and we ourselves must feel as well as reason. 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. A cold preacher is likely to have cold hearers. Cold! What, when the love of God, the death of Christ, the salvation of souls, the felicities of heaven, and the torments of hell are the theme? Enthusiasm here is venial, compared with lukewarmness.

"Need I say that earnestness was characteristic of Whitefield's preaching? Yes, that one word, perhaps, more than any other in our language, is its epitome. An intense earnestness marked its whole career, and was carried to such a pitch as to subject him, as did that of Paul, to the imputation of madness. The salvation of souls was so entirely the one thing that engrossed his soul, his time, his labors, that not a step deviated from it. Every moment, every day, was an approximation to it. His devotions, his recreations, if any such he had, his journeys, his voyages, his sermons, his correspondence, were all referred to this one end. His exertions never relaxed for a moment, and he, with his great compeer Wesley, made the trial so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which, in the way of saving souls, may be granted to any one preacher of the gospel in any age or country.

"What may not be done, and is not done by earnestness? It gives some success to any error, however absurd or enormous, and to any scheme of wickedness, however flagrant and atrocious. What is it that has given such success to popery, to infidelity, to Mormonism? Earnestness. And shall the apostles and advocates of error be more in earnest than the friends of truth? Whitefield often quoted Betterton the player, who affirmed that the stage would soon be deserted if the actors spoke like the preachers. And what would empty the play-house, that is, dulness and coldness, does often empty the meeting-house. 'Mr. Betterton's answer to a worthy prelate,' says Whitefield, 'is worthy of lasting regard.' When asked how it is that the clergy, who speak of things real, affected the people so little, and the players, who speak only of things imaginary, affected them so much, replied 'My lord, I can assign but one reason – we players speak of things imaginary as though they were real, and too many of the clergy speak of things real as though they were imaginary.' It is not always so. Many a preacher, even in our own day, by the unaffected earnestness of his manner, carries away his audience upon the tide of his own feeling. They hear what he says, they see what he feels, his eye helps his tongue, the workings of his countenance disclose the feelings of his heart; his manner is a lucid comment upon his matter, breaks down the limits which words impose upon the communication of ideas, and gives them not only an apprehension of the meaning, but a sense of the importance of his subject, which unimpassioned language and manner could not have done.

"I name but one thing more as characteristic of this great man, and which it would be well for us to imitate, and that is, his dauntless courage. See him not only facing mobs, defying threats, and even lifting up his pulpit amid the wild uproar of a London fair, the boldest achievement that a speaker ever accomplished, but holding on his noble career unterrified, and working amid the storm of obloquy that came upon him from so many quarters. Who that has ever read, can ever forget Cowper's exquisite description of him?

"'Leuconomus – beneath well-sounding Greek
I show a name a poet must not speak —
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting storm of half an age,
The very butt of slander, and the blot
For every dart that malice ever shot.
The man that mentioned him at once dismissed
All mercy from his lips, and sneered and hissed.
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,
And perjury stood up to swear all true;
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common-sense:
A knave when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And when by that of reason, a mere fool.
The world's best comfort was, his doom was passed,
Die when he might, he must be damned at last.