Page 4850 – Christianity Today (2024)

George Whitefield, 1714-1770

1714 Born in Gloucester, England, December 16.

1716 Father, Thomas, dies.

1722 Mother, Elizabeth, marries Capel Longden, an ironmonger, who seizes control of the family tavern (The Bell Inn).

1726 George enrolls at St. Mary de Crypt grammar school, where he enjoys reading plays and acting. Later drops out to help his mother with the inn.

1728 George’s mother leaves her husband. Family conflicts cause George to leave the Bell Inn and cease “drawing wine for drunkards.”

1730 Returns to his studies at St. Mary’s. On Christmas, receives the Lord’s Supper for the first time and determines to be more watchful over his thoughts, words, and actions.

1732 Enrolls at Pembroke College, Oxford University. Pays expenses by working as a servitor (errand boy for other students). Begins praying three times a day and fasting weekly.

1733 Invited to breakfast by Charles Wesley and introduced to the Holy Club’s 10 or 11 earnest members. Borrows from Wesley The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal, which “showed me that I must be born again, or be damned!”

1734 Like his Holy Club friends, seeks salvation through severe discipline and good works, which causes a breakdown of his health from which he never fully recovers.

1735 Following five years of penitence, Whitefield becomes first of the Oxford methodists to experience “a full assurance of faith broke in upon my disconsolate soul!” Begins evangelizing, with converts organized into a society.

1735 Leads the Holy Club (the Wesleys had become missionaries to Georgia). Completes his degree, is ordained a deacon in the Church of England, and preaches his first sermon. Returns to Oxford to pursue graduate studies, but then leaves to substitute preach for various friends. Decides to become a missionary to Georgia.

1737 While voyage is delayed, his preaching electrifies Bristol and London; thousands pack churches to hear him. Publishes six sermons, while opponents publish against him.

1738 Spends three months in Georgia.

1739 Ordained a priest but finds many pulpits are now closed to him. Begins preaching outdoors, and soon tens of thousands hear of Christ in the fields. Some nobility, including the countess of Huntingdon, are drawn to Whitefield. In August, sails for America and preaches to throngs in New York and Philadelphia. Meets Ben Franklin.

1740 In Georgia, selects a site for Bethesda, his orphanage, and preaches at every opportunity. April: Preaches in northern cities like Philadelphia and small towns like fa*gg’s Manor, where 12,000 hear him. Midyear: Back in Georgia. Fall: Preaching tour takes New England by storm.

1741 Arriving in England in March, meets with great hostility, stirred largely by John Wesley’s attacks against his Calvinism. Publishes a counterattack against Wesley. Preaches extensively in England, Scotland, and Wales. Nov. 14: Marries widow Elizabeth James.

1742 Itinerates in several parts of England. June: Begins five months of ministry in Scotland, and his sermons are “attended with much power” and often “a very great but decent weeping.”

1743 Helps form the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Association, serving as first moderator.

1744 His 4-month-old son, John, dies of sickness and is buried February 8. George is attacked in bed and almost killed. August: Sails with his wife for America, arriving desperately ill in October, but soon resumes preaching.

1745-1748 Whitefield’s third visit to the Colonies, though beset with opposition, inspires a great wave of revival. In early 1748, ministers for a month or two in Bermuda.

1748-1751 Lady Huntingdon appoints Whitefield her chaplain, lessening financial perils of his work. Whitefield ministers throughout England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, with extended ministry at the Moorfields (London) Tabernacle. Persecution slackens.

1751-1752 Fourth visit to the Colonies, arriving in Georgia in October with a group of destitute children. Cancels plans for an extensive preaching tour when the Orphan House’s financial needs send him hurriedly back to England.

1752-1754 Tours Wales, visits Edinburgh for the seventh time, and returns to London for the opening of a new, brick Tabernacle.

1754-1755 Fifth trip to the Colonies, with preaching from Boston to Georgia. Sept. 1754: Receives honorary M.A. from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

1755-1763 Preaches often in London, as well as in Bristol, Gloucester, Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow, many places in Wales, and countless towns and villages. Travels briefly to Holland for his health.

1763-1765 Sixth trip to the Colonies. Weak in health, ministers with difficulty in New York, Boston, and other places, generally with greater acceptance than ever.

1765-1769 Devotes attention to London ministries, also traveling to Edinburgh and elsewhere. August 1768: Wife, Elizabeth, dies. Visits Trevecca, Wales, to help open Lady Huntingdon’s College.

1769-1770 Seventh and final trip to the Colonies is a difficult voyage. Arrives in Charleston and preaches for 10 days to large congregations. May 1770: Begins tour from Philadelphia, preaching as often as his frail body permits. Sept. 29: In New Hampshire, preaches final sermon and dies the following morning. Some 6,000 gather for funeral

Whitefield’s World

1718 Blackbeard the Pirate beheaded

1727 George II becomes king of England

1729 Ben Franklin begins Pennsylvania Gazette

1733 Georgia, last of 13 colonies, settled

1742 Handel’s Messiah

1755 George Washington leads British forces in French and Indian War

1758 First Indian reservation

1770 Boston Massacre

Richard Owen Roberts is president of International Awakening Ministries in Wheaton, Illinois, and author of Whitefield in Print: A Bibliographic Record (Richard Owen Roberts, 1988).

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Arnold Dallimore, well-known biographer of George Whitefield, had agreed to contribute to this issue of Christian History, but regrettably, a recent turn in his health prevented that. In place of that article we offer a chapter, condensed, from his monumental biography, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th-Century Revival. In this abridged excerpt, Dallimore shows us a single year in Whitefield’s life—1750.

—The Editors

Seventeen-fifty opened with Whitefield in London. There his chief duty was the pastoral care of the Tabernacle [his congregation]. This called for preaching at 6 o’clock each morning and again at 6:00 each evening (every day except Saturday), three or four times each Sunday, and several other times throughout the week. During these months Whitefield also preached twice a week at Lady Huntingdon’s—a work he found very taxing. He also sometimes conducted funerals and performed weddings, often counseled inquirers, and took the oversight of the several Tabernacle enterprises.

Together with these tasks Whitefield maintained a large correspondence. There were letters relating to Orphan House affairs and letters in relation to his itinerant ministry—arrangements as to place and time of his preaching. And above all there were letters to spiritual inquirers and to persons whom he knew to be in need of exhortation even if they did not write and ask for it, and this correspondence was conducted with people in various parts of Britain and in virtually all the colonies of America.

Whitefield’s letter writing was squeezed in at all possible moments between his other labors. Yet it was never finished, and there were always letters he wanted to write but for which there was no time.

Whitefield said of his life in London, “While there I am continually hurried and scarce have time to eat bread.” He also spoke of his longing for more time “to read, meditate, and write,” yet recognized that it would not be available till he should again take an ocean voyage.

Persecuted Preacher

Thus passed January, but by the first of February, weary of what he called “winter quarters,” he set out on a two-month campaign of open-air itinerant evangelism.

His journey took him first to Gloucester, then on to Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, and at each place he paused for two or three days of preaching. He also reported that his health improved as soon as he left London. March was spent in Devon and Cornwall, in travels that took him nearly to Land’s End and that saw great numbers assembled everywhere.

Thereupon he returned to London, resumed his labors there for two weeks, and then set out again—this time for Portsmouth and other places along the Channel coast.

Something of the spirit which motivated him is manifest in a letter he wrote at this time to James Hervey, who had mentioned to him the physical weakness he frequently suffered. Whitefield replied: “Fear not your weak body; we are immortal till our work is done. Christ’s laborers must live by miracle; if not, I must not live at all; for God only knows what I daily endure. My continual vomitings almost kill me, and yet the pulpit is my cure, so that my friends begin to pity me less, and to leave off that ungrateful caution, ‘Spare thyself!’ ”

Then again he returned to London. After a week in the capital he was on his way once more, on a journey that was to take him, preaching as he went, to Scotland. He preached at Olney, and then came to Northampton where, the next morning, he preached at the home of Dr. Philip Doddridge and “in the afternoon and evening at Kettering to many thousands.”

The following day he reached Ashby, the country estate of Lady Huntingdon. He preached several times in towns and villages round about and also at her home, and during one of the latter services “some of the baser sort rioted before her Ladyship’s door.”

From Ashby he traveled northward again. He preached at Radcliffe, Nottingham, Sutton, and Mansfield, and while at the latter place he said in a letter to Lady Huntingdon: “I must lie down to refresh this weary body: my soul, through grace, smiles at bodily weakness.”

Continuing his northward journey [in May and June] he preached first at Leeds and then at Manchester and at several places in Lancashire and Yorkshire. We notice the following statements:

“[At Rotherham] … the crier was employed to give notice of a bearbaiting. [You] may guess who was the bear.”

“At Bolton a drunkard stood up behind me to preach, and a woman attempted twice to stab the person who was putting up a stand for me to preach on.”

“This last night … some persons got into the barn and stable, and have cut my chaise [two-wheeled carriage] and one of the horse’s tails.”

“The more we do, the more we may do; every act strengthens the habit; the best preparation for preaching on Sundays is to preach every day in the week.”

Reading on the Run

Despite this constant activity Whitefield found a certain amount of time for reading. He provided himself with periods for study directly following his rising at four each morning. He also read while journeying, for at this period of his life he travelled in a two-wheeled chaise. Of course, in an itinerant manner of life such as his he could not be so widely read as a man in a settled pastorate.

Nevertheless, he maintained his familiarity with the writings of the Reformers and the Puritans and also kept abreast of the more important evangelical publications of the time. Moreover, he seems to have been able, after but a short time with a book, to pass a knowledgeable opinion on its contents.

We notice one instance in this regard. William Law had recently produced a new book and, while in Yorkshire, Whitefield wrote [in late June]: “In my way I have read Mr. Law’s second part of The Spirit of Prayer. His scheme about the Fall I think is quite chimerical; but he says many things that are truly noble … Several things at the end of his treatise on regeneration, in my opinion, are entirely unjustifiable: but the sun hath its spots, and so have the best of men.”

Whitefield’s stay in Scotland—his fifth visit—lasted a month. There were the usual tremendous congregations at Edinburgh and Glasgow and other places. By this time September had arrived, but after merely a week in London he set out again, this time for Portsmouth and for Chatham.

Before the middle of the month, however, he was back in London, but soon left on another tour, and this took him to Gloucester, Birmingham, Coventry, Wednesbury, Evesham, and Nottingham. While in the Midlands he spent a day or two at a conference of ministers at the home of Lady Huntingdon at Ashby. The Countess was there, and later she wrote: “It was a time of refreshing from the presence of our God.… Mr. Whitefield’s sermons and exhortations were close, searching, experimental, awful, and awakening.”

There followed another brief period in London, after which Whitefield was on his way once more [in November], journeying this time to the southeast corner of England—to Canterbury and nearby towns.

Thus Whitefield spent the autumn months, and as the year drew toward its close he was again in London. But during December he became very ill and for two weeks was confined to bed. Yet as soon as he was able, he forced himself into activity and wrote: “My disorder was a violent fever: Jesus hath rebuked it. I am raised up once more. O may it be that I may minister unto him! For me to live is Christ. But alas! how little do I live to his glory! Yesterday [December 16] I entered upon my seven-and-thirtieth year. I am ashamed to think I have lived so long and done so little.”

Losing a Child

Amid these physical trials and spiritual labors Whitefield had also his mental burdens. The Tabernacle was ever upon his mind, and the final decision in all its matters invariably rested with him. There was also the constant weight of the Orphan House, the difficulty of obtaining persons to carry on its ministry, and the frustration of trying to conduct its affairs by trans-Atlantic correspondence.

Likewise there was the responsibility he felt in leaving Mrs. Whitefield alone so much of the time. He provided her with a very faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Elizabeth Wood, but his absences could not but have caused her a severe sense of loneliness, especially when he departed on such long missions as the two-months’ trip to Land’s End and the four-months’ journey to Scotland.

Moreover, [his wife] Elizabeth’s sense of wanting him near would have been all the greater at this time, for on October 9 he wrote: “I am now waiting for my wife’s being delivered of her present burden, and hope ere long to rejoice that a child is born into the world.”

As to the outcome of this hope we have no information. But [historian Luke] Tyerman says: “He makes no mention, in any of his letters, of the accouchement of his wife. It is probable that, like her last, the present child was dead.”

We sympathize, of course, with Mrs. Whitefield in this experience, but must also consider what the necessity of leaving her so frequently must have meant to Whitefield himself. It is evident that he felt a constant concern for her, particularly during her pregnancy, and his frequent returns to London throughout the latter part of the year were undoubtedly occasioned by her special need of him.

Counseling Thousands

We must notice that to all his other activities there was added the pressure of being constantly sought by those who wanted to talk with him personally. All manner of Christian people sought him to ask his advice and to have the encouragement of so great a man in the affairs of their lives. We notice in this regard the statement made by John Newton [author of the hymn Amazing Grace].

Newton’s conversion may have been assisted, to some extent, by the reading of Whitefield’s sermons. It is certain that when, some time later, he experienced the call of God to the ministry, he felt a deep longing to hear Whitefield preach and to talk with him.

In 1755 Newton went to London for this express purpose and his Diary of the event reads: “Reached London on Thursday, June 5. On Friday morning … waited on Mr. Whitefield; but he being much engaged, I could not see him. The afternoon at Mr. Hayward’s. He gave me a letter to Mr. Whitefield.… Heard Mr. Whitefield preach in the evening.… After sermon delivered the letter [to Mr. Whitefield]; but he was so engaged in company, he could neither read that nor several others given him, but desired I should call in the morning.

“Saturday … I had five minutes converse with Mr. Whitefield, then he excused himself in a very friendly obliging manner from anything further, upon account of his throng of business.”

These multiple activities show us something of the background against which the events of Whitefield’s life took place. We look at them again in brief:

He began his day at four in the morning. He endeavored to retire at ten each night, but of course there were times when at that hour he was out on the road, riding perhaps through torrential rain or a blizzard of snow. As to his preaching, Henry Venn said that the actual time he spent at this labor was usually from forty to sixty hours a week. To this there were added his travelling, his correspondence and his reading, and finally this “throng of business” mentioned by Newton, as people begged to see him, even for a few moments.

Arnold Dallimore is author of George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th-Century Revival (Banner of Truth, 1970, 1980).

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

When George Whitefield first journeyed through America’s southern colonies, he was deeply disturbed by how slaves were brutalized by their masters. In 1740, in an angry, open letter to three southern colonies, he wrote: “Your dogs are caressed and fondled at your tables; but your slaves who are frequently styled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege. They are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their masters’ tables.… Although I pray God the slaves may never be permitted to get the upper hand, yet should such a thing be permitted by Providence, all good men must acknowledge the judgment would be just.”

Whitefield was genuinely concerned for blacks: “Their consciences are awake, and consequently prepared in good measure for hearing the gospel.” When preaching to mixed crowds, he often addressed African-Americans as a group, and he chastised slaveholders for not teaching their slaves about Christ.

He also purchased 5,000 acres in Pennsylvania to build a school “for the instruction of these poor creatures.” He intended to do the same in South Carolina. (Neither project succeeded.)

Many African-Americans felt Whitefield’s concern. During a stay in Charleston, he reported, “Several of the Negroes did their work in less time than usual, that they might come to hear me.”

For the most part, though, Whitefield’s sermons avoided talk about masters’ duties to slaves, though not the reverse: “Though [God] hath now called you [slaves] into his own family … he doth not call you thereby from the service of your masters according to the flesh.”

Later, Whitefield took an unfortunate stand. In 1740, he had established an orphanage, called Bethesda, in Georgia. By 1747, both colony and orphanage were suffering economically. The reason, according to Whitefield?

“The constitution of that colony [Georgia] is very bad, and it is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist without the use of slaves.”

The solution? Whitefield allowed some friends to purchase for him “a plantation and slaves, which I propose to devote to the support of Bethesda.… One Negro has been given me. Some more I purpose to purchase this week.”

By the late 1740s, Whitefield advocated legalizing slavery in Georgia. His concern for orphans had won out over his concern for blacks: “Had Negroes been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans without expending above half the sum that has been laid out.”

Whitefield was not out of step with the times. By 1776, only one denomination in America—the Quakers—had declared slaveholding a sin.

As an evangelist, Whitefield was unconventional and remarkable. Lamentably, his views on slavery were conventional and unremarkable.

Mark Galli is Associate Editor of Christian History.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Frugal Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, wrote, “I happened … to attend one of his [George Whitefield’s] sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me.”

The collection was for Whitefield’s Georgia orphanage, which Franklin thought ill-planned, and he had told Whitefield so, to no avail. Thus for some time he had refused to give to it.

At this sermon, though, Franklin said, “I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”

The experience convinced Franklin that Whitefield was an orator who could attract and sway huge crowds. It also was a memorable moment in what was to become a lifelong friendship between two men who were a religious odd couple.

Business First

At first theirs was a simple business relationship. To Franklin, Whitefield was a powerful salesman, capable of overcoming even an avowed skeptic’s sales resistance. Franklin disliked Whitefield’s Calvinism, but he thought Whitefield would be good business. Franklin was locked in competition with his printing rival, Andrew Bradford, and he saw that publishing the popular Whitefield would be a business coup.

As for Whitefield, he wanted to make use of the American press, just as he had effectively exploited the English press for two years, advertising his services in newspapers and seeing scores of titles published there.

We don’t know who originated the agreement, but in November 1739, Franklin advised readers of his Pennsylvania Gazette, “The Reverend Mr. Whitefield having given me copies of his journals and sermons with leave to print the same, I propose to publish them with all expedition.”

Six months later, Franklin announced the first volume. Unlike earlier subscription publications he had promoted, this one was oversubscribed. Whitefield later informed a London correspondent that his journals and sermons were “bought off exceedingly” in America. He triumphantly announced that his printed works were “now in the hands of thousands in these parts.”

Still, Franklin and Whitefield were clearly on opposite ends of the theological spectrum. As Franklin affirmed in his creed, religion consisted primarily of good works. As for theology, he did not speculate on the subject and harbored doubts about the divinity of Jesus. Whitefield, on the other hand, believed that God alone wrought salvation in people’s souls and that conversion was nothing short of a spiritual new birth.

An incident in 1740 illustrates their religious differences. Franklin invited the evangelist to stay in his home when he visited Philadelphia. In his acceptance, Whitefield referred to Franklin’s invitation as a “kind offer for Christ’s sake.” Franklin retorted, “Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake.”

Yet the two men became friends for some thirty years. In a letter to his brother, John, written after the Great Awakening, Franklin said of Whitefield, “He is a good man and I love him.” They may have found each other useful, but they also developed an affectionate bond, and business alone cannot explain it.

Affectionate Bond

In the 1500s and early 1600s, the word friend sometimes meant a “loved one” and other times a “sponsor”—someone who could help you or with whom you could safely do business. By the 1750s, friend had assumed its modern meaning. Samuel Johnson defined it as “one who supports you and comforts you while others do not.” Though brought together by a joint venture, Franklin and Whitefield moved from a friendship of sponsors to one of mutual trust.

Their correspondence reveals an increasing affection over the ensuing years of Whitefield’s life, even after Franklin had left the printing business. In a 1740 letter, Whitefield saluted Franklin formally as “Dear Mr. Franklin.” By 1748, Whitefield’s correspondence indicated even more affection: in one letter Whitefield saluted Franklin, “My Dear Mr. Franklin” and signed it, “your most affectionate, obliged friend and servant.”

Whitefield admired his friend. In a letter of 1752, he told Franklin with delight how London had reacted to his experiments with electricity: “I find that you grow more and more famous in the learned world.” In many letters Whitefield expressed his respect for Franklin’s erudition by addressing him as “my dear Doctor.”

Franklin’s correspondence also reflects a deepening friendship. In the 1740s, he opened his letters with a formal “Dear Sir.” By the 1760s, he saluted Whitefield as “Dear Friend.” Further, he responded graciously and warmly to the evangelist’s continued concern for his soul, a significant change from his earlier attitude. By 1764, he could write, “Your frequently repeated Wishes and Prayers for my Eternal as well as temporal Happiness are very obliging. I can only thank you for them, and offer you mine in return.”

Friends in the “Last Act”

One of Franklin’s last letters to Whitefield best reveals the warmth and depth of the two men’s friendship. Near 50 and growing more aware of his mortality, Franklin shared with the evangelist a dream for his last years: “Life, like a dramatic piece, should … finish handsomely. Being now in the last act, I began to cast about for something fit to end with.”

His vision was a joint venture: “I sometimes wish, that you and I were jointly employ’d by the Crown to settle a colony on the Ohio … to settle in that fine country a strong body of religious and industrious people!” He concluded, “Might it not greatly facilitate the introduction of pure religion among the heathen, if we could, by such a colony, show them a better sample of Christians than they commonly see in our Indian traders?”

Whitefield’s reply has not survived, but he must have been touched that Franklin not only wanted him as a partner but entrusted him to produce a “better sample of Christians.”

In his last surviving letter to Franklin, Whitefield turned his thoughts to friendship beyond the grave. On the eve of his final departure for America in 1769, Whitefield wrote Franklin, expressing his hope that he and his friend would “be in that happy number of those who in the midst of the tremendous final blaze shall cry Amen.” Whitefield died in 1770, however, without witnessing his friend’s conversion.

Though they occupied different theological worlds, Franklin and Whitefield found common ground in promoting revivals. They were both convinced that print could expand audiences and reach strangers at great distances. Their joint venture succeeded. The subscription publication was profitable: Franklin made money; Whitefield gained souls.

And two men became friends.

Dr. Frank Lambert is assistant professor of history at Purdue University and author of The Commercialization of Religion: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737–1770 (Princeton, 1993). An expanded version of this article appeared in the July 1993 William and Mary Quarterly.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)

Passionate theologian

At age 14, Jonathan Edwards, already a student at Yale University, read philosopher John Locke with more delight “than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered treasure.”

He also treasured spiritual qualities. At age 17, after a period of distress, he said holiness was revealed to him as a ravishing, divine beauty. His heart panted “to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child.”

This rare blend of spiritual passion and searching intellect, in fact, characterized Edwards throughout his Connecticut childhood, his marriage (to Sarah Pierpont in 1727), and his ministry.

By 1729, he had become sole preacher of a Northampton, Massachusetts, parish. Five years later his preaching on justification by faith sparked an awakening.

It was not due to theatrics. One observer wrote, “He scarcely gestured or even moved; and he made no attempt by the elegance of his style, or the beauty of his pictures, to gratify the taste, and fascinate the imagination.” Instead, he convinced “with overwhelming weight of argument, and with such intenseness of feeling.”

In December 1734, there were six sudden conversions. By spring, there were about thirty a week. The revival spread throughout Connecticut. Wrote Edwards in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), “It was no longer the tavern, but the minister’s house that was thronged.”

Edwards was sought out by Whitefield during Whitefield’s 1740 pass through New England. Edwards invited Whitefield to preach and reported, “The congregation was extraordinarily melted … almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of the time.” “The whole assembly” included Edwards himself.

During the 1740s, Edwards preached his most well-known sermon (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God) and defended the emotional nature of the Great Awakening, especially in A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections (1746), a masterpiece of psychological and spiritual discernment.

Later, Edwards reversed the tradition in his parish and insisted only converted persons could receive Communion, so his church ousted him. He became missionary pastor to native Americans in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1751, and wrote, among other theological treatises, Freedom of the Will (1754), a brilliant defense of divine sovereignty. Such were the fruits of his lifelong habit of rising at 4:00 and studying 13 hours a day.

The College of New Jersey (later Princeton) called him as president in 1758. To its great loss and that of the American church, Edwards died of the new smallpox vaccination soon after his arrival. He was 55. Some consider him to be the finest theologian America has produced.

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707–1791)

Evangelical “archbishop”

When her husband died, Lady Huntingdon, age 39, sought advice from leading preacher Howell Harris: “She consulted me about which was it best, to live retired and give up all, or fill her place, and I said the latter I thought was right.” Thus began four decades of strongwilled and generous leadership in the evangelical movement.

Born into English aristocracy, Selina married Theophilus Hastings, ninth earl of Huntingdon, in 1728. Though a devout Anglican, after a period of intense spiritual struggle she converted to the methodist cause in 1739. Her aristocratic friends were dismayed and asked Lord Huntingdon to interfere. He arranged for a bishop to talk with her, but to no avail.

Lady Huntingdon soon became friends with the brothers Wesley (she was a member of their first methodist society) and then with Whitefield. She became, in fact, Whitefield’s closest female friend, closer even than his wife.

After her husband’s death, Lady Huntingdon and some of her titled friends met daily to pray and study the Bible. She invited Howell Harris and George Whitefield to preach at these meetings.

Lady Huntingdon founded a religious society, called a “connexion,” which grew. She built her first regular chapel, in Brighton, by selling her jewels. She also built chapels in Bath, Bristol, and London to attract the upper classes.

She purchased vacant benefices (endowed church offices) and appointed evangelical clergy to them. She also exercised her right to appoint personal chaplains, which afforded legal protection for many “methodist” clergy, including Whitefield, who were harassed by British authorities.

In 1768, she established a seminary in Trevecca, Wales. Over her lifetime, when many parishes paid clergy 40 pounds a year, she donated over 100,000 pounds to the methodist cause. Never afraid of controversy, she engaged in heated discussions with John Wesley, Count Zinzendorf (the founder of the Moravians), and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lady Huntingdon’s impact on the evangelical movement was undeniable. When Whitefield saw her with many of her chaplains, he wrote, “She looks like a good archbishop with his chaplains around him.” Because of official persecution, she and many of her chaplains were eventually forced to leave the Anglican communion and become dissenting ministers. She died in June 1791, but her connexion is still active today.

John Cennick (1718–1755)

Sensational lay preacher

Though trained as a land surveyor and writing instructor, John Cennick once was asked to fill in for an absent preacher. He wrote, “I was naturally fearful of speaking before such a company, having never done such a thing as this.”

But when he preached, “tears fell from many eyes.” When he stood to preach again the next Sunday, 4,000 people gathered. Though never ordained, he soon became one of the top preachers of his day.

Cennick was born in Wales and converted at age 19. After he read a copy of Whitefield’s journal, he wrote, “My heart cleaved to him.” The next time Whitefield was in London, Cennick walked all night to get there: “I met my dear brother and fell on his neck and kissed him. Our communion was sweet, and I stayed with him several days.”

Whitefield soon asked Cennick to be headmaster of a school for coal-mining families. In 1744, Whitefield gave him charge of his Moorfields congregation and the Calvinist branch of methodism. The responsibilities proved too much, though, and coincided with a shift in theology. By late 1745, Cennick joined the Moravians and became a missionary to Ireland.

Before long, as one historian put it, “All walls and windows [of his meeting house] were covered with people, and Cennick had to go in at the window, creeping over the heads of the people to reach his pulpit.”

His days were consumed with traveling, and he endured beatings and arrests. Though ill much of the time, he preached up to 20 times a week. All told, he established in northern Ireland 40 societies and 10 Moravian churches. Finally, at age 36, his body could take no more.

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

Lost and found friend

One September morning in 1733, Charles Wesley violated Oxford conventions: He invited a poor servitor, George Whitefield, to breakfast. Servitors worked their way through college by running errands for students of higher social standing. Servitors were excluded from many college functions, even Communion.

Still, Charles was impressed with the “modest, pensive youth” who had keen spiritual interest. He invited Whitefield to the Holy Club, and thus began a lifelong, though interrupted, friendship.

On Pentecost 1738, Wesley finally found “peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ.” Thereafter, he preached in homes and prisons. Whitefield urged Charles to join him in preaching outdoors. Wesley refused because of “the fear of man”—how it would look to his cultured friends. Then Whitefield simply informed him that the following Sunday, Charles would be taking his place at Moorfields.

Wrote Charles, “My inward conflict continued.” But “I prayed and went forth in the name of Jesus Christ. I found near ten thousand helpless sinners waiting for the Word.… The Lord was with me, even me, his meanest messenger.”

Charles’s passion, which caused him often to pray with strong cryings and tears, sometimes went to extremes. He consulted “the oracle,” opening the Bible at random for guidance.

Once, Charles was dining with John Cennick, Whitefield’s close associate, and began “to dispute about election.” Cennick wrote, “He fell into a violent passion and affrighted all at the table.… He called Calvin the firstborn son of the Devil, and set all his people into a bitter hatred of me.”

As a result, Charles remained aloof from Whitefield for six or seven years. After 1749, he and Whitefield reconciled, addressing each other as “My old dear Friend.”

Charles is best known for his 5,500 hymns (some scholars say over 8,000), including “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”

Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764)

American awakener

Upon hearing Gilbert Tennent preach, Whitefield wrote, “I never before heard such a searching sermon.… He has learned … to dissect the heart of a natural man. Hypocrites must either soon be converted or enraged at his preaching.” They were both.

Born in Ireland, Tennent graduated from Yale in 1725 and assumed a Presbyterian pastorate in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Impressed with the piety and fervor of Dutch Reformed minister Theodorus Frelinghuysen, Tennent became passionate leader of a minority in the Presbyterian church. When George Whitefield arrived in the Middle Colonies in 1739, he sought out Tennent. After Whitefield started an awakening in Boston, he insisted Tennent continue his work there.

The effect of Tennent’s preaching was perhaps as great as Whitefield’s—and just as controversial. One minister wrote, “[Then] came one Tennent, a minister impudent and saucy; and told them all they were damned, damned, damned! This charmed them; and in the dreadfullest winter I ever saw, people wallowed in the snow night and day for the benefit of his beastly braying.”

Soon Tennent preached The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, vividly portraying most ministers as plastered hypocrites. Its wide circulation contributed to a 1741 schism in the Presbyterian church, which lasted seventeen years.

In 1743 Tennent became pastor of Philadelphia’s Second Presbyterian Church. While continuing to support the Awakening, he eventually led in the reconciliation of his denomination, admitting he had contributed to the schism.

Married three times (his first two wives died), he fathered three children. He was originally buried beneath the middle aisle of his Philadelphia church.

Howell Harris (1714–1773)

Dread-filled preacher

One frequent listener said of him, “He used to speak of hell as though he had been there himself.” And he himself said God filled his mouth “with terrors and threatenings. I was given a commission to rend and break sinners in the most dreadful manner.”

Such was the preaching of Howell Harris, the founder of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism.

As a young man in a Welsh working-class family, Harris was indifferent to religion. But at 21, he heard a vicar say, “If you are not fit to come to the Lord’s table, you are not fit to live, and you are not fit to die!” Harris wrote, “All my natural faculties were confounded in the shock.” After a period of inner turmoil, “I lost my burden; I went home leaping for joy!”

Immediately he began sharing his experience, and in a few weeks his house overflowed with hearers. In the next few years, he founded 30 methodist societies—groups meeting to pray, study the Bible, and plan evangelism. Harris established his earliest societies, in fact, two years before John and Charles Wesley were converted.

Whitefield called Harris “a burning and shining light.” When they finally met, they agreed to preach in each other’s societies.

Harris’s furious preaching sometimes lasted four hours. His denunciations of clergy (“Many who wear the cloth … what good they do, I know not”) undermined his efforts to become ordained. Often his life was in peril: once a mob rushed him, swearing and throwing rocks, and once he was shot at.

Perhaps due to such pressures, Harris became paranoid. He also began associating with Mrs. Sidney Griffith, who left her drunken husband to move into Harris’s home (with Harris’s wife’s consent).

After Griffith died, Harris regained his mental poise. He preached two or three times a day and in 1752 began a kind of Protestant monastery that soon attracted about 150 people.

Toward the end of his life, he apologized to evangelical leaders for his aberrant behavior, and he helped establish Lady Huntingdon’s seminary in lower Trevecca. The death of his wife greatly affected him, and he died soon after.

Mark Galli is Associate Editor of Christian History.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

When George Whitefield preached his first sermon, at age 21, someone complained to the bishop that Whitefield (pronounced WlT-field) had driven 15 people insane.

Anglican ministers of the day were controlled, dignified, even stuffy in preaching. Whitefield, though, was intense, emotional, and dramatic. “I could hardly bear such unreserved use of tears,” wrote one observer, for Whitefield was “frequently so overcome, that, for a few seconds, you would suspect he never could recover.” Whitefield explained, “You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction?”

In America, Whitefield was a sensation. His impassioned preaching on the “New Birth” in 1739 helped spark what historians have called The Great Awakening. It’s easy to “underestimate the effect of the Awakening on eighteenth-century society,” writes Richard Bushman in The Great Awakening, 1740–1745. “The Awakening was more like the civil-rights demonstrations, the campus disturbances, and the urban riots of the 1960s combined.”

But in colonial America, the social upheaval was caused chiefly by one young British field preacher who considered himself “less than the least of all.” Whitefield traveled from New Hampshire to Georgia (where he founded America’s first charity) and unified the colonies as no one had before. Thousands discovered, as one Connecticut farmer put it, “my righteousness would not save me.”

An American First

In Boston, Thomas Prince, Jr., a leading supporter of the Awakening, decided to launch something never seen in the colonies: a religious magazine. The Christian History contained accounts of this astounding “propagation and revival of religion.”

The premier issue in March 1743 reported awakening in Kilsyth, Scotland: “The bodies of some of the awakened are seized with trembling, fainting, histerisms in some few women, and with convulsive motions in some others, arising from the apprehension and fear of the wrath of God … ”

Like its historic namesake, today’s Christian History seeks to provide “authentick accounts” and “give the reader the most remarkable passages, historical and doctrinal, out of the most famous old writers.”

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

It is better to be a saint than a scholar; indeed, the only way to be a true scholar is to be striving to be a true saint.

The bank of heaven is a sure bank. I have drawn thousands of bills upon it, and never had one sent back protested.

There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people.

I am burning with a fever, and have a violent cold; but Christ’s presence makes me smile at pain; and the fire of his love burns up all fevers whatsoever.

We must be made perfect by sufferings. If we do not meet them in our younger days, we shall certainly have them in the decline of life.

God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through.

Suffering times are a Christian’s best-improving times.

God forbid that I should travel with anybody a quarter of an hour without speaking of Christ to them.

O may God put me into one furnace after another, that my soul may be transparent; that I may see God as he is.

Young Christians are like little rivulets that make a large noise, and have shallow water; old Christians are like deep water that makes little noise, carries a good load, and gives not way.

I have put my soul, as a blank, into the hands of Jesus Christ my Redeemer, and desired him to write upon it what he pleases. I know it will be his own image.

I hope to grow rich in heaven by taking care of orphans on earth.

It is very easy talking what we can bear, and what we can do, but let God lay his hand on us, and we shall see what we are.

When I die the only epitaph that I desire to be engraved upon my tombstone is “Here lies George Whitefield; what sort of man he was the great day will discover.”

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Perhaps no eighteenth-century religious figure was better known than George Whitefield. He was termed the “marvel of the age”—a preacher capable of commanding mass audiences (and offerings) across two continents, without any institutional support, through the sheer power of his personality. Whitefield wrote best-selling journals and drew audiences totaling in the millions. White and black, male and female, friends and enemies—all flocked in unprecedented numbers to hear the “Grand Itinerant.” Wherever he visited, people could do anything, it seemed, but stay away.

Yet time has not been so kind. Today few people have heard of Whitefield, or if they have, they have little sense of his significance. Whitefield founded no movement or denomination. No college or seminary bears his name. Indeed, he deliberately rejected all attempts to found a movement, preferring instead to serve alone as a self-confessed “fool for Christ.”

Who was George Whitefield? What was his significance?

Mother and Theater

We begin in the urban center of Gloucester, England, where Whitefield was born on December 16, 1714, the youngest child of Thomas and Elizabeth Whitefield. Whitefield’s father died soon after, and his mother remarried. The marriage proved disastrous and culminated in a divorce, leaving Elizabeth with seven children and ownership of the Bell Inn.

Of Whitefield’s childhood, two facts stand out: his mother’s influence and his infatuation with the English theater.

From his mother, Whitefield inherited a strong ambition to be “somebody” in the world, most likely in service to the established Anglican church. He recalled how his mother “endured fourteen weeks’ sickness after she brought me into the world but was used to say, even when I was an infant, that she expected more comfort from me than any other of her children. This, with the circ*mstance of my being born in an inn, has been often of service to me in exciting my endeavors to make good my mother’s expectation, and so follow the example of my dear Saviour, who was born in a manger belonging to an inn.”

From the stage, Whitefield inherited a dramatic presence that he would later take into the pulpit. As a boy he read plays insatiably and often skipped school to practice for his schoolboy performances. Later in life, though, he would repudiate theater as a false competitor of the church.

But beneath the rejection lay a born actor whose intrinsic need and special gift for dramatic self-expression never disappeared. He would apply the methods and ethos of acting to preaching with revolutionary results. More than any of his peers or predecessors, Whitefield turned his back on the academy to concentrate on perfecting what today we would call “body language.” Passion would be the key to his preaching of traditional spiritual truths.

Through the efforts of his mother, young Whitefield was granted a “servitor’s” spot at Pembroke College, Oxford: He would put himself through college by waiting on the wealthier Oxford students. The experience of being a mere servant proved humiliating, but Whitefield soon fell in with a group of pious “methodists” led by the Wesley brothers, John and Charles. Soon Whitefield was lost in the rigors of methodist devotions that culminated in a highly personal and emotional “New Birth.”

He determined to use the pulpit to bring others to a conversion experience. At Oxford it became clear to Whitefield he was no scholar, but equally clear he was a communicator without peer. With encouragement from the Wesleys he determined to be a missionary to the new Georgia colony.

Electrifying Delivery

In the summer of 1736, while waiting to embark for Georgia, Whitefield was ordained a deacon in the Anglican church and began preaching in and around London. Wherever he spoke, crowds materialized and hung on every word of the “boy preacher’s” dramatic delivery.

Though inexperienced in homiletics, Whitefield possessed dramatic sensitivity that quickly vaulted him into a class of his own. Tears, heightened emotions, agitated bodily movement—and above all, an intensely personal encounter with the New Birth—characterized his preaching and his hearers’ responses. A prodigious memory for character and dialogue enabled him to transform the pulpit into a sacred theater that represented the lives of biblical saints and sinners to his captivated listeners. Among the enthralled was great British actor David Garrick, who exclaimed: “I would give a hundred guineas if I could say ‘Oh’ like Mr. Whitefield.”

Soon Whitefield’s novel preaching and mass audiences came to the attention of the press. Whitefield possessed an instinct for publicity. He knew it mattered little whether journalistic items were written in praise or condemnation (and there was no shortage of the latter). In either case newspapers generated interest, and interest produced crowds, which produced still further journalistic comment.

To augment newspaper coverage, Whitefield published his first sermon in London in 1737: The Nature and Necessity of Our Regeneration or New Birth in Christ Jesus. The sermon’s theme was not new, but lying behind it was an electrifying delivery. Often Whitefield would employ his vivid imagination to bring home gospel truths.

Once, when preaching on eternity, he invited his startled listeners to imagine heaven: “Lift up your hearts frequently towards the mansions of eternal bliss, and with an eye of faith, like the great St. Stephen, see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man with his glorious retinue of departed saints sitting and solacing themselves in eternal joys, and with unspeakable comfort looking back on their past sufferings and self-denials, as so many glorious means which exalted them to such a crown. Hark! Methinks I hear them chanting their everlasting hallelujahs, and spending an eternal day in echoing forth triumphant songs of joy. And do you not long, my brethren, to join this heavenly choir?”

When Whitefield returned to London from Georgia in late 1738, he found many churches closed to him. He then experimented with outdoor, extemporaneous preaching, where no document or wooden pulpit stood between him and his audience. Whitefield did not invent extemporaneous preaching, but he did bring it to its highest art. Where others felt hesitant or at a loss with no notes, he discovered release.

Whitefield moved outside familiar church buildings and denominations and conceived of revivals as outdoor events staged to compete in the secular marketplace. Revivals could become, in effect, a product—part of a growing “Consumer Revolution.” Whitefield would “market” the New Birth not primarily in the churches, but in the public square.

Attracting America

On February 2, 1738, young Whitefield departed for Georgia, intending to follow the Wesleys and become a permanent missionary to the colony. This was not to be. Soon after arrival he concluded his calling was as an itinerant preacher to urban areas throughout the Anglo-American world.

Nevertheless, Georgia would remain important to him as the site of an orphan house he founded for wayward boys. That orphan house became Whitefield’s American home. Critics of Whitefield argued that the orphan house was merely a fund-raising excuse to invade the parishes of Anglican priests, but Whitefield showed genuine concern for the needy. Alongside Whitefield’s evangelical zeal was a powerful charitable instinct that would leave him personally broke but widely admired, even by skeptics like Benjamin Franklin.

In ways Whitefield never could have predicted, the London campaign of 1739 proved to be a dress rehearsal for even more stunning engagements in North America. His first preaching tour of the American colonies, in 1739–40, generated such response that later scholars dubbed it a “Great Awakening.”

Whitefield selected Philadelphia as his first American stop. It was a wise choice—a major port city with a thriving market economy, the most cosmopolitan city in the New World. On November 6, 1739, Whitefield read prayers and preached at Christ Church to a “numerous congregation.” Soon churches could not hold the vast crowds that came to hear him, and he took his ministry out of doors, where he was always at his improvisational best. Every stop along Whitefield’s trip from Philadelphia to New York and back was marked by record audiences, often exceeding the population of the towns in which he preached. From 8,000 in Philadelphia to nearly 5,000 in the village of Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, Whitefield garnered record audiences and unrivaled offerings for the Georgia orphan house.

In America, news traveled rapidly, and Whitefield was often surprised to discover how crowds “so scattered abroad, can be gathered at so short a warning.” The advance work of loyal assistants like William Seward and the cooperation of the Tennent ministers in Pennsylvania served him well. Not only were the crowds unprecedented in size, they were virtually spellbound. “Even in London,” Whitefield remarked, “I never observed so profound a silence.”

Whitefield also spoke often on the needs of the slave community. Despite his outspoken plea to legalize slavery in Georgia, and his employment of slaves at the orphan house, he increasingly sought out audiences of slaves and wrote on their behalf. Historian Gary B. Nash dates “the advent of black Christianity” in Philadelphia to Whitefield’s first preaching tour. Perhaps a thousand slaves heard Whitefield’s sermons in Philadelphia, often in private supplemental meetings.

They heard from him that they had souls as surely as the white folk who had enslaved them, and that their master owed them the freedom of religious conscience. Unlike the Wesleys, however, Whitefield was unwilling to concede their right to freedom in this life, showing the tragic limits as well as the noble extent of his charitable concerns.

Some of Whitefield’s greatest preaching triumphs were reserved for a whirlwind thirty-nine-day tour of New England towns. Attracted by printed itineraries in the New England press and by word of mouth, audiences grew.

In Boston, he filled the town common repeatedly. At seaport towns such as Marblehead and Salem, and in suburbs such as Charlestown and Roxbury, he generated an enthusiasm verging on panic as crowds “elbowed, shoved, and trampled over themselves to hear of ‘divine things’ from the famed Whitefield.”

On October 17, 1740, Whitefield preached in Northampton, Massachusetts, and stayed with the famed Jonathan Edwards. Edwards attended all of Whitefield’s sermons and repeatedly broke down in tears. Edwards’s wife, Sarah, an astute judge of pulpit manner, marveled: “He makes less of the doctrines than our American preachers generally do and aims more at affecting the heart. He is a born orator.”

The effects, she continued, were spectacular: “It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simple truths of the Bible. I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-suppressed sob.… A prejudiced person, I know, might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display; but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him.”

For his part, Whitefield was much taken with Sarah Edwards, whom he found “adorned with a meek and quiet spirit,” a model for the type of wife he hoped to find.

Unfortunately, Whitefield’s successes in the pulpit were not matched in his private family life. Like many methodist itinerants, Whitefield was suspicious of marriage and feared a wife would become a rival to the pulpit. When he finally married an older widow, Elizabeth James, the union never seemed to flower into a deeply intimate, sharing relationship.

Trans-Atlantic Awakening

Having conquered England and North America, all that remained for Whitefield was to complete a trans-Atlantic revival by awakening Scotland. In many ways, America and Scotland were kindred spirits in the eighteenth century. Both were Calvinist and perceived themselves on the margins of British civilization. Scotland’s principal city, Edinburgh, dwarfed Philadelphia and Boston, yet remained tiny in contrast to London.

Whitefield would make fourteen trips to Scotland and grow steadily in popularity. Of all the Scottish revivals in which Whitefield participated, the most dramatic came on his second visit. Throughout the spring of 1742, Whitefield received news of great spiritual enthusiasm from the small village of Cambuslang, outside of Glasgow.

On June 6, he arrived in Cambuslang just in time to catch the revivals at their peak. He began immediately to preach that morning and evening. His evening service attracted thousands and continued until 2:00 A.M. “There were scenes of uncontrollable distress, like a field of battle.… All night in the fields, might be heard the voice of prayer and praise.” Whitefield concluded, “It far outdid all that I ever saw in America.”

On Saturday, Whitefield, in concert with area pastors, preached to an estimated 20,000 people in services that stretched well into the night. On Sunday, at a special Communion service in the fields, more than 1,700 communicants streamed alongside long Communion tables set up in tents. Whitefield preached again in the evening—by many accounts, the most powerful sermon of the revival. Later he recalled that wherever he walked “you might have heard persons praying to, and praising, God.”

American Hero

Throughout his life Whitefield continued to itinerate widely, ignoring friends and doctors who urged him to protect his ailing body from the rigors of transatlantic travel. With every trip he became more popular. Indeed, much of the early controversy that surrounded Whitefield’s revivals disappeared, and former foes like Harvard and Yale Colleges or the Georgia legislature warmed to a mellowed Whitefield. Before his whirlwind tours of the colonies were complete, virtually every man, woman, and child had heard the “Grand Itinerant” at least once.

So pervasive was Whitefield’s impact in America that he can justly be styled America’s first cultural hero. Before Whitefield, there was no unifying intercolonial person or event. Indeed, before Whitefield, it is doubtful any name other than royalty was known equally from Boston to Charleston. But by 1750 virtually every American loved and admired Whitefield and saw him as their champion.

As colonial tensions with the Mother Country rose, Whitefield clearly sided with the Americans. When Benjamin Franklin appeared before Parliament, Whitefield attended every session and gave his old friend public support. Franklin would go on to win fame as America’s “representative man.” Time did not so honor Whitefield.

Final Cry of Thunder

Ignoring the advice of doctors, he continued his 1770 preaching tour in the colonies as if he were still a young itinerant. Late summer found him in New England, insisting to friends that “I would rather wear out than rust out.” He ignored the danger signs, in particular asthmatic “colds” that brought “great difficulty” in breathing. Instead of resting, he rode on, preaching more rather than less, depending on the moment of preaching to bring out a “good pulpit sweat” that would grant him one more day’s reprieve. The pace continued even after he was “taken in the night with a violent lax, attended with retching and shivering.”

On Saturday morning, September 29, Whitefield concluded another successful sermon at Portsmouth and immediately set out for the next stop at Newburyport. Eyewitnesses described him as nearly collapsing, being helped onto his horse, and then plodding on despite the entreaties of friends and admirers.

At a midday stop in Exeter, Whitefield was enjoined to preach, and he complied. One friend, on observing the “oppressive heavings of his bosom,” counseled, “Sir, you are more fit to go to bed than to preach.” Whitefield ignored the warning and answered with a prayer: “Lord, if I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for Thee once more in the fields, seal thy truth, and come home and die!”

Whitefield’s prayer was answered. His last discourse took place mid-afternoon in the fields, atop a hogshead [large barrel]. His text was “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in faith,” and his subject was the New Birth.

A listener recounted for the press, “He rose up sluggishly and wearily, as if worn down and exhausted by his stupendous labours. His face seemed bloated, his voice was hoarse, his enunciation heavy. Sentence after sentence was thrown off in rough, disjointed portions, without much regard to point or beauty. [But then] his mind kindled, and his lion-like voice roared to the extremities of his audience.

“He was speaking of the inefficiency of works to merit salvation, and suddenly cried out in a tone of thunder, ‘Works! works! A man gets to heaven by works! I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand.’ ” The exhortation would be Whitefield’s final public words. The following morning he died.

In Whitefield’s Wake

In seeking to understand the reasons for Whitefield’s success, several factors come to mind.

First, Whitefield’s revivals were a new religious form. They were not really a church, nor were they connected to local communities. Whitefield’s audiences defied the term congregation. They changed with every meeting and were routinely enjoined to support their local parishes. In effect, they were the first “parachurch”—a religious association, outside of denominational lines, premised on revival. And central to that revival was the highly personal experience of the New Birth.

Whitefield’s itinerant ministry taught him—and “evangelicals” in his wake—that rival churches with visions of national hegemony could be a thing of the past. They were old history—the history of a traditional, aristocratic, and hierarchical culture. A new religious history, fit for a new consumer age, would have to be voluntary, and this meant popular and entertaining. Whitefield’s revivals were just that. In them, churches were not supplanted so much as sidestepped to create larger, trans-local associations.

Whitefield’s mode of revivalism—theatrical, passion-based, non-denominational, international, experience-centered, and self-consciously promoted through media—outlived him. Whether or not they knew it, generations of evangelical revivalists, chaplains, youth and student parachurch leaders, and religious philanthropists followed a trail first blazed by George Whitefield.

Unlike many charismatic performers who followed in his footsteps, Whitefield remained undistracted by the allure of sex or wealth. Nor was he obsessed with fame and the need for a new denomination to bear his name. His character matched that of the biblical saints he portrayed, and his vast charitable efforts left him perennially near bankruptcy.

If Whitefield was a promoter, he was also a caring minister who directed his work first at the soul and second at charity, and never one without the other. In this sense, Whitefield was his own finest convert to the New Birth he proclaimed.

Dr. Harry S. Stout is Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale University and author of The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1991).

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

On George Whitefield’s first journey to America, in 1738, he took “thirteen hundred pounds contributed for the poor of Georgia and for charity schools.” Whitefield surveyed the state of Savannah’s children and later wrote, “What I have most at heart is the building of an orphan-house.”

Returning to America the following year, Whitefield took many gifts, which were sold in Philadelphia to finance the erection of the orphan house. Whitefield also made appeals in his sermons; as Benjamin Franklin put it, “He made large collections, for his eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers.” The donations allowed work to begin on what Whitefield called, “Bethesda,” the “House of Mercy.”

The day after his arrival in Savannah, Whitefield inspected a 500-acre plot ten miles north of town. Soon, Whitefield, along with a carpenter and surveyor, found themselves forced to make architectural decisions. Many of the laborers came from English prisons and proved incapable. Added expenses drained the treasury. One writer openly questioned, “Where is the fund for its support: and what service can an orphan-house be in a desert and a forsaken colony?”

On March 25, 1740, Whitefield noted in his journal that “nearly forty children are under my care, and nearly a hundred mouths are daily supplied with food from our store.… The expense is great, but our great and good God, I am persuaded, will enable me to defray it.” Whitefield believed assistance would come from wealthy friends in Britain and America.

Before long, though, disagreement arose between Whitefield and the trustees, who withdrew their support. Then supplies bound for the orphanage were stolen. Soon Whitefield owed about 500 pounds—20 years’ wages.

Worse, William Seward, who had supported the endeavor, died without a will. A distraught Whitefield confessed: “I was embarrassed with Mr. Seward’s death. He died without making any provision for me, and I was at the same time much indebted for the Orphan House.” Earlier that same year, in near total despair, Whitefield declared: “I am almost tempted to wish I had never undertaken the Orphan House.”

The debt against Bethesda put Whitefield in jeopardy of being jailed. In a letter to one creditor, Whitefield pleaded, “If possible I shall discharge the debt within six months, but I am afraid it will be out of my power, having met with many disappointments. As we are brethren of the same Lord, and as the debt was contracted for him, I hope you will be patient with me.” Whitefield felt the debt as “lying like a dead weight upon me.” To relieve his debt, Whitefield even purchased a plantation and slaves in South Carolina.

Many years later, in Scotland, in 1768, Whitefield received a legacy. “The Orphan House shall have it all,” he said. Whitefield the debtor was free at last.

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Though little known today, George Whitefield was America’s first celebrity. About 80 percent of all American colonists heard him preach at least once. Other than royalty, he was perhaps the only living person whose name would have been recognized by any colonial American.

America’s Great Awakening was sparked largely by Whitefield’s preaching tour of 1739–40. Though only 25 years old, the evangelist took America by storm. Whitefield’s farewell sermon on Boston Common drew 23,000 people—more than Boston’s entire population. It was probably the largest crowd that had ever gathered in America.

In his search for God before his conversion, Whitefield fasted to the point that he broke his health and, under doctor’s orders, was confined to bed for seven weeks.

Whitefield preached at both Harvard and New Haven College (Yale). At Harvard it was reported that “The College is entirely changed. The students are full of God.” Yet Harvard’s leading professors later wrote a pamphlet denouncing Whitefield.

Brutal mobs sometimes attacked Whitefield and his followers, maiming people and stripping women naked. Whitefield received three letters with death threats, and once he was stoned until nearly dead.

Whitefield usually awoke at 4 A.M. before beginning to preach at 5 or 6 A.M. In one week he often preached a dozen times or more and spent 40 or 50 hours in the pulpit.

George Whitefield married a woman he barely knew. Though he and his bride had corresponded, they had probably spent less than a week together before marrying. As many as four different ministers refused to marry the couple.

John Wesley is known as founder of the Methodist movement, but Whitefield formed a methodist society first. In fact, Whitefield pioneered most methods used in the 1700s’ evangelical awakenings: preaching in fields rather than churches, publishing a magazine, and holding conferences.

Whitefield pushed himself so hard and preached with such intensity that often afterward he had “a vast discharge from the stomach, usually with a considerable quantity of blood.”

Whitefield became close friends with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin once estimated that Whitefield, without any amplification, could be heard by more than 30,000 people.

George Whitefield traveled seven times to America, more than a dozen times to Scotland, and to Ireland, Bermuda, and Holland.

In his lifetime, Whitefield preached at least 18,000 times. He addressed perhaps 10,000,000 hearers.

When his 4-month-old son died, Whitefield did not stop preaching; he preached 3 times before the funeral and was preaching as the bells rang for the service itself.

Though Whitefield has been praised as “the greatest preacher that England has ever produced,” he spent little time formally preparing sermons. Whitefield’s secretary said, “I believe he knew nothing about such a kind of exercise.”

Whitefield was made the butt of several off-color songs and a satirical play. Yet he was honored by famous poets Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and later, John Greenleaf Whittier, who described Whitefield as “That life of pure intent / That voice of warning yet eloquent, / Of one on the errands of angels sent.”

Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.