Carol Mahaney's mother, this is D.B. Neal, died Tuesday.
Funeral services were conducted today in Fort Worth.
Attention, all those scheduled to go on the
spring ski trip, please meet in room 224 at
815 this evening. It's very important that you
attend this meeting.
Elders are reminded of their call meeting
tonight at 815 in the PEC.
Because of spring break, this Sunday we will
have only one morning and one evening service.
Bible classes will be at 930 a.m. Worship
services at 1030 and at 5.
Our class will not meet next week. I shall be
in a meeting at Divine.
This will be my third meeting there. I'm
looking forward to being with them.
In Hendrick, Faye Manley in 3512. In Humana,
Larry Nichols' father in 517.
Bill Nelson in 213. And Jack Turman still in MD Anderson.
Let us all bow.
Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for all the
blessings of this time of year.
We lay before you tonight, these in sorrow and
these in suffering, and pray you'll watch
over and keep them.
We pray that your blessings may be upon all the
students and all the faculties as they
travel for the spring holidays.
We pray a special blessing, Father, for those
involved in the spring campaigns. May they
prove fruitful.
Bless this church, Father. Tonight is study together.
We pray that in all the classes that we may
grow in faith, in zeal for the kingdom, may
our works, Father, be pleasing in thy sight.
And keep us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in
Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while
evil men and impostors will go from bad to
worse, deceivers and deceived.
Now may we join in the hymn of the evil.
Oh, happy day, that takes my joy, Something I
say, God, my God,
Will win its glory, but its joy, Until it's
back the roll of dawn.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away,
He taught me how to watch and pray, And every
joy I seek every day.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away.
Oh, happy God, that gives my heart, To Him who
there is no one more,
Let him go back and fill his mouth, While
through that sacred shrine I move.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away,
He taught me how to watch and pray, And every
joy I seek every day.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away.
Is not the break, and lack not, I am my Lord,
and He is mine,
Into me and I follow God, Time to confess the
voice divine.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away,
He taught me how to watch and pray, And every
joy I seek every day.
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away.
When George Withfield landed in London July 5,
1748, he received a warm welcome from friends,
and he wrote,
Our Lord makes it exceedingly pleasant to me to
preach His unsearchable riches. Multitudes
flock to hear, and many seem to be quicker.
The Association of the Calvinist Methodists met
on July 20, 1748, in London,
and Withfield, as moderator, had to admonish
some disorderly young preachers,
as they were counted at its own approbation. He
warned them against rashly going beyond the
lines that had been assigned to them,
and he urged them to show a teachable mind and
a willingness to submit.
When some think of it, they think back of his
own time in the twenties, how many would like
to have disciplined him.
In a letter to John Wesley, he declared that
his work was not creating societies, but
prosecuting his itinerant ministry in Britain
and America.
He made a quick trip to Wales to visit the
Calvinistic Methodist churches and to preach,
and by August 27, 1748, he was back in London,
preaching in the drawing room of Lady
Huntington to her aristocratic guests and in
the kitchen to her servants.
Very dear to the heart of Withfield and to the
heart of Lady Huntington was the improving of
the Church of England itself.
They wanted to bring an evangelical awakening
to the established Church.
Lady Huntington has been called the Lady of the
Revival and the Queen of the Methods.
She was born at Stanton, Laster Shire, in the
reign of Queen Anne in 1707, the year that the
English and the Scotch Parliaments united.
Her father, Washington Shirley, was the Earl of Ferris.
Her mother, Merit Levine, was the daughter of
Sir Richard Levine, Solicitor General for
Ireland and Speaker of the House of Commons.
From childhood, she was a person of unusual
piety and very passionate religious devotion.
In June 1728, she married Theophilus Hastings,
Earl of Huntington, who was descended from the
brother of Edward the Fourth.
Earl was a man of high principles and liberal
breadth of mind and close to many of the
greatest people of Britain.
The Countess was led to an interest in
Methodism through two of the sisters of her husband.
The two sisters, Lady Margaret, later
Catherine, married Methodist clergymen.
One of them, Benjamin Ingham, who had been a
member of the Holy Club and who became the
founder of the Yorkshire Methodists.
Lady Margaret aroused in Lady Solina Huntington
a deep concern for her own spiritual condition.
After a very serious illness, she experienced a
dramatic conversion in which her surrender to
Christ brought her rest and peace.
About that time, John and Charles Wesley came
to her neighborhood, preaching in private homes
and in barns,
and she sent them a message of goodwill that
identified her with the Methodists.
She had to face a storm of indignation and
insults from the aristocracy.
She was very much impressed by the preaching of
Whitfield, and she made him one of her chaplains.
For the rest of his life, she was one of his
closest and most ardent supporters.
She was tireless in bringing some of the
highest of British nobility to her drawing room
to hear her favorite preacher, Whitfield.
For those who felt that they couldn't afford to
have it known that they'd listened to him,
she had a little room off her drawing room
where they could listen in secret.
The wife of Lord Chesterfield and two of his
sisters became lifelong followers of the
teaching of Whitfield.
Lord Chesterfield himself was impressed and
spoke improvingly of the preacher.
Bowenbrook, after accepting an invitation and
hearing Whitfield, sent a notice of thanks to
the counties,
in which he declared, Mr. Whitfield is the most
extraordinary man at now times.
He has the most commanding eloquence I ever
heard in any person.
David Hume, the philosopher, described
Whitfield as the most ingenious preacher he'd
ever heard.
And he went on to describe one of the sermons
that he'd listened to,
in which Whitfield in a most dramatic fashion
called out to Gabriel to stop until he could
carry it to Heaven,
news of a sinner that had been converted to God.
Hume was greatly impressed.
He wrote, This surpassed anything I ever saw or
heard in any preacher.
Lady Huntington was deeply disturbed by the
stormy attacks on the Methodist preachers,
and she made very strong protests to the government.
As Methodist preachers were excluded from the
established churches,
she used a large fortune to help provide
chapels and preaching centers.
Her husband died in 1746 and left her a large fortune.
She established an orphanage at Kingswood.
She contributed to various schools.
Later in Whitfield's life, she founded a
college at Treveca in South Wales to train
Calvinistic Methodist preachers.
She helped build and repair many churches in
different parts of Britain,
York and Huddersfield in the north, Gloucester
and Worcester in the Midlands,
Lewes and Brighton in the south, Swansea in the
West, Margate and Norwich in the east.
To build the church in Brighton, she had to
sell part of her jewels.
She provided preaching centers in Bath and
Bristol, Tunbridge, Wells, Cheltingham.
She helped select and supported some 60
Calvinistic Methodist preachers who rotated in
circuits in these churches.
All of them she placed under the oversight of Whitfield.
She helped generously in the building and
maintaining of what Whitfield called his
cathedral at Moorfields
and then had a great part in building the
Cotton Court Chapel and the chapels at Longacre
and Spa Field.
She took a great interest in lay preachers and
helped Whitfield persuade Wesley that lay
preachers were needed.
Wesley had first objected.
Once when Charles Wesley was preaching in
John's Place in London and Charles' wife was in Bristol,
she was stricken with a bad case of smallpox.
Lady Huntington went to Bristol without any
fear to take care of Charles' wife,
and she sent for Whitfield to go to London to
relieve Charles so that Charles could hasten to
his wife's bedside.
She continued good works like these as long as
she lived.
She outlived Whitfield for some 26 years and
John Wesley by four.
In September 1748, Whitfield paid his third
visit to Scotland.
It was a short visit that included some 12 days
in Glasgow, a return to campus land,
and most of the visit, however, was spent in
Edinburgh where he compared the crowds to those
at Moorfields.
That was always the height for him.
He wrote to the Countess that he was thankful
to the Lord for directing him to Scotland.
There his health improved and that he was able
to preach with greater power to large crowds.
But some of the clergy were rather shy about
supporting him.
Two Simmons were held against him.
He is called before Presbytery.
And the Erskins of the Associated Presbytery
held an assembly on November 16 in Edinburgh
and led their clergy in an oath.
They solemnly engaged themselves to strengthen
one another's hands
in the use of lawful means to extirpate popery,
prelacy, Arminianism, Aryanism, Tritheism,
Sebalianism, and George Whitfieldism.
About November the 10th, Whitfield was back in
London preaching to the great and to the noble.
A bigoted magistrate heavily fined some of the
Welsh Methodists.
Lady Huntington used her influence and got the
government to refund the fines.
On November 25, 1748, Whitfield paid a visit to
the dying Isaac Watts,
a preacher but much greater than him writing.
Watts described himself as one of Christ's
waiting servants.
Whitfield replied, I'm not too good to wait on
a waiting servant of Christ.
And he attempted to raise Watts up in his bed
so that he would be more comfortable.
In a half an hour, Watts was dead.
Watts had written some 761 psalms and hymns
that were a very important part of the
Evangelical revival.
And some 56 of those hymns are still in use,
some 10 of them exceedingly popular.
In November 1748, Whitfield began making plans
to develop the orphan house Bethesda into a college
to train Calvinistic Methodist preachers.
And in December 1748, he wrote to the trustees
of Georgia urging them to legitimatize slavery
in the colony.
He argued that the colony could never prosper
without slave labor because of its hot climate.
He was looking to his plantation in South
Carolina to contribute substantially to the
orphan home and to the college.
In 1749, Whitfield was much concerned for the
Calvinistic Methodists in Wales.
On January 24, with Hal Harris, he held a
meeting of the Association of Calvinistic
Methodists in Waterford in Wales.
In April, there was another meeting of the
Association in London.
There, Whitfield surrendered his moderatorship
to Hal Harris.
It continued great interest in the Calvinistic
Methodists and especially those of Wales.
On May 15, he set out on another preaching tour
of Wales.
On June 26, 1749, Whitfield's wife arrived from
America and he returned to London.
He had planned to meet her back in America.
In fact, he thought his work in England would
only keep him a month or two, or at the most a year.
Plans had changed.
For a time, he preached in the drawing room and
kitchen of Lady Huntington.
And then he toured Western England, preached in
Gloucester, Bristol.
For two weeks, he preached in Portsmouth at
King Bridge with thousands listening in the street.
And one young man, perched in a tree so he
could see it while he was listening,
came down and surrendered to Christ.
He became a faithful minister.
Whitfield was proud.
It was like Zacchaeus in the tree.
Whitfield spent a couple of happy days in his
wife's home in Abergravey
before beginning an eight-day revival in the
town in which he preached 14 times.
And then he spent a month touring Wales and
awakened a great revival.
In July of 1749, he received a letter from
Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin had just received two large boxes of
his books to sell.
And Franklin commended him because he had heard
that he was preaching among the great in Lady
Huntington's drawing room.
Franklin pointed out to him that Confucius, he
called a great Eastern scholar,
had greatly improved life in his country at a
time when crime was high.
Confucius greatly improved things by preaching
to the great,
and that when the great changed, then the
multitudes followed him in the course of Virtue.
Franklin wrote that there are numbers who
perhaps feel less being in hell than being out
of fashion.
And so he urged Whitfield to continue to preach
to the great.
Franklin pointed out that more of the Western
reformations had preached to the ignorant mob.
He admitted that both needed it,
but he felt the greatest effect would become
once the great had been turned to the Gospel.
Whitfield, in his reply, commended Franklin for
the progress he'd made in the study of the
mysteries of electricity.
And then he recommended to Franklin, with
diligent and unprejudiced pursuit and study,
he should seek to understand the mysteries of
the new birth.
He urged that such a study would richly repay,
because one at whose bar we are shortly to
appear has solemnly declared, without it,
we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.
Whitfield devoutly hoped through the years that
he would convert Franklin.
Of course, this was not to be.
In the summer of 1749, Whitfield found himself
in a bitter controversy with Dr. Levington, the
Bishop of Exeter,
who had accused the Methodists of using armed
guards and clubs to frighten people into
joining them.
Whitfield very ably defended the Methodists
and, more sincerely but in great detail,
pictured how the Methodists had suffered
greatly from the mobs.
But he did confess that maybe some of their
persecution had come from words from him that
were too harsh,
and he apologized for the harsh words that he'd
spoken against Archbishop Tillotson.
In the fall of 1749, Whitfield had to reconcile
John and Charles Wesley.
John had courted and planned to marry a
beautiful, gifted, and good-withered Grace Murray.
Charles strongly objected to the marriage, and
behind John's back arranged for Grace to marry
John Bennett, one of their preachers.
John Wesley was furious when he found out what
his brother had done to him,
and he declared that his brother from this time
would be to him a publican and a heathen.
Whitfield, with tears and prayers, brought the
brothers to a tearful reconciliation.
In the winter of 1749-50 proved a wonderful
season in Whitfield's London Tabernacle.
Large crowds assembled every morning at 6:00 to
hear him preach before they went to the day's work.
Whitfield and Wesley exchanged pulpits, and
they shared in each other's communion service,
and they observed that this exchange greatly
heightened the enthusiasm in both of their camps.
Both men made the most of an earthquake that
shook London.
They declared that the people after that
earthquake were like ripe greens waiting for
the sickle.
In July, Whitfield made his fourth visit to
Scotland, preaching mainly in Edinburgh.
Again, great crowds came to hear him.
By August, he was back in London, and soon he
was off again on another preaching tour through England.
The high point was in the village of Hayworth,
where William Grimshaw was the preacher.
It was in a section where the people were few
and scattered.
Whitfield sensed that Grimshaw, who preached 30
times a week in that scattered Parish,
was very stern and hard at his preaching.
They were somewhat surprised when 6,000 people
turned out to hear Whitfield.
Over 1,000 remained for communion, and
Whitfield tried to compliment him as a sincere,
godly people.
Grimshaw strongly protested that he must not
flatter his people,
because he feared that the greater part of them
were going to hell with their eyes open.
Later, Grimshaw confessed that he had about
1,200 that were in communion, and that he
believed that most of them were one with Christ.
Well, there in Grimshaw's town, they put up a
scalpel for Whitfield to preach on.
A great crowd gathered, and he preached.
It's appointed unto men once to die, but after
that comes the judgment.
And as he preached the terrors of the judgment,
there was a wild streak of terror in the audience.
Grimshaw plunged into the dense crowd to
investigate and called out to Whitfield,
Brother Whitfield, you stand among the dead and
the dying.
An immortal soul has been called to eternity.
The destroying angel is passing over the congregation.
Crowd out, spare not!
One in the audience had dropped dead.
Whitfield continued the sermon on the judgment,
but soon there was a second streak.
Another soul dropped dead, then called to the judgment.
The audience was filled with awe.
Whitfield waxed even more eloquent, as you
would expect on that kind of an occasion.
Whitfield was back in London in December, but
was quite ill.
When he received an urgent appeal to come to
Ireland because the Methodist societies in
Dublin and Cork were undergoing cruel persecution,
he was only able to write and to express his sympathies.
In the spring of 1751, Whitfield was again, as
he described it, cross-plowing the land of England.
By June he was in Ireland.
In Dublin in five days he preached fourteen times.
Above ten thousand attended on the Lord's Day.
It reminded him of Moore's Feast.
Whitfield moved on to Scotland for his fifth
visit, and for twenty-eight days in Glasgow and
Edinburgh he preached over ten thousand every day.
He returned to London about the middle of
August, but by the end of the month he was on
his way to America.
He left his wife with friends in Scotland.
On his fourth visit to America, Whitfield
carried with him a number of destitute children
for the orphan house.
He reached Bethesda on November 20, 1751.
On January 1, 1752, he began planning a great
spring preaching tour.
In April he made a sudden decision to return to England.
He had found Bethesda in good condition.
His prosperity and success had fired him with
the ambition to add to the orphan house of
college to train preachers.
The trustees' charter was nearing its end, and
before it expired he wanted to present the
petition for the college.
By May 1752 Whitfield was back in England.
The trustees were willing to grant permission
for the college, provided that the minister of
the church there at the orphan's house be an Anglican,
and that the liturgy of the Church of England
be followed in the chapel of the college.
Whitfield was unwilling to accept these conditions.
The Archbishop asked him, well upon what bottom
do you intend the college to be founded?
Whitfield replied, undoubtedly on a broad bottom.
Whitfield gave up the idea for a college.
He devoted himself to his attendant preaching,
but one of his good friends, John Barrett,
quipped that the failure to establish the college
meant that Whitfield was spared becoming the
father of a race of unconverted ministers.
You can see what their attitude towards
colleges and education was.
Back in England, Whitfield began preaching
again at Moores Fields.
Thousands came to hear him daily, but he was
soon off on another tour of England.
On to Wales.
He came back to preach in the Midlands.
Then he went to Scotland for six visits.
He preached twice daily for two weeks.
Then he was back to England for more preaching.
One of the places that he visited was
Wycliffe's Lutterworth.
By fall, he was back in London where he
initiated the building of a larger Moores Field Tabernacle.
The new tabernacle opened on June 10, 1753.
But soon he was off again cross-plowing the
land, visiting most of the places where he had
preached earlier.
Crowds were even larger, often estimated at
20,000 or more.
On July 20, he began his seventh visit to
Scotland, again preaching to great crowds in
both Edinburgh and Glasgow.
By September 25, he was back in London, taking
up his work there.
In November, 1753, he opened his first
tabernacle in Bristol.
From the first, it was not large enough.
He was called back to London where John Wesley
was dangerously ill and expected to die.
But Wesley would recover. He had 40 more years
to work.
In December 1753, Gilbert Tennant and Samuel
Davies arrived in London to solicit support for
the new College of New Jersey at Princeton.
Whitfield invited them to make his home their
home during their stay.
They were advised by friends that it would not
be prudent for them to associate publicly with Whitfield.
They did visit him privately one evening.
He greatly encouraged them, and they prayed
together until 3:00 in the morning.
Whitfield greatly fired their spirits.
Governor Belcher, back in New Jersey, had hoped
for help from Whitfield, and he was not disappointed.
In spite of the fears of those friends,
Whitfield proved a great help in raising the
money that they needed.
Whitfield spent January and February of 1754
preparing for another trip to America.
On March the 7th, he departed from Gravesend
aboard a ship of success with 22 destitute children.
The ship spent a month in Lisbon, where
Whitfield got another view of poultry.
He declared he witnessed even more ridiculous
fauperies than ever disgraced pagan theology.
Whitfield and his orphans reached Charleston in
May 1754.
Eight days after depositing the orphans at
Bethesda, he sailed for New York.
He had a great reception and preached there for
a week.
He traveled through New Jersey, preaching at
New Brunswick Trip Town on his way to Philadelphia.
And there he preached in the new building that
he called the Academy.
In September, he received an MA degree from the
College of New Jersey.
By October the 13th, he was back in Boston.
Old North Church.
7:00 in the morning, he preached to 3,000.
The number soon rose to 4,000.
He preached in four other meeting houses.
They were so full that he had to be helped into
the pulpit through the windows.
Couldn't get through the crowd.
He traveled on to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
And then he set out on a 1,600-mile journey on
horseback, determined that he'd preach all
along the way back to Georgia.
He preached at Newbury, York, Kittery, Rowley,
Byfield, Ipswich, and Key Pan on his way back
to Boston.
He made his way through Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
By Christmas 1754, he'd reached Maryland.
In January 1755, in Virginia, he received a
great reception.
Samuel Davies' first church there had been the
result of reading Whitfield sermons in little
prayer circles.
Now Whitfield found seven thriving churches.
There were 300 communicants and 40 slaves had
been baptized.
And he wrote Charles Wesley, that scenes of
wonder have opened up all the way.
On February 26, 1755, he reached Bethesda.
After a short visit, he went to Charleston to
preach before embarking again for England.
He sailed for England on March 27, 1755.
He couldn't. He didn't know.
There would be some eight years before he'd
return to America.
The outbreak of the Seven Years' War would keep
him in England.
Whitfield reached England on May 5, 1755.
After a month of successful preaching in
London, he left for a tour of Western England,
visiting Gloucester in Bristol.
On August 9, at Norwich, the tabernacle built
for James Wheatley was reopened,
and he preached to great crowds.
He returned to London on August 20 to resume
his usual winter preaching.
In March 1756, he began a spring campaign in Bristol,
where he had to face very hostile, organized
rioting during his services,
trying to drown him out.
He returned to London in June, but soon set out
on another tour
that took him to Bristol, Bath, Westbury,
Gloucester from one minister, Portsmouth.
On August 20, he began his eighth visit, Edinburgh.
For three weeks, he preached twice daily.
On October 27, he returned to London.
The high point of the fall was the opening of
the Trottingham Court Road Chapel on November
7, 1756.
It was erected in the open field on the edge of London.
From the beginning, it was filled, filled with
both the rich and the poor, the great and the small.
By 1758, twelve almshouses had been built
around the chapel there,
and a special chapel house was added.
The chapel was enlarged to seat 5,000.
It was the largest non-conformist church in the
world at that time.
On May 11, 1757, Whitfield began his ninth
visit to Scotland in Edinburgh.
At the end of June, he set out for Ireland.
On July 3 and 4, he faced terrible persecution
from the Papacy.
In the midst of a sermon in the open, all at
once stones began coming from every quarter.
Soon he was covered with blood.
Beaver hat was knocked off.
A large stone hit him near the temple.
He'd bear the scar the rest of his life.
He managed to escape to a nearby house where
the owner was very reluctant to let him in.
A carpenter tried to get him to disguise
himself with a wig and a coat.
He put them on but quickly took them off.
He felt ashamed to try to escape in Disguise.
When a group of Methodists came through the
hostile crowd and the coats, he was glad to be rescued.
But the persecution wasn't wasted.
That day in the audience was a man named John
Edwards, smitten in heart and converted.
He became a powerful itinerant preacher,
traveling over England and Scotland and Ireland.
Once he escaped the mob, Bang, being let down
from a window in a basket.
Whitfield preached his way back to London,
which he reached by November the 26th.
And in spite of very poor health, he preached
regularly to thousands throughout the winter.
In May 1757, he set out on another preaching
tour of England and Wales.
On August the 4th, he arrived at Edinburgh for
his 10th visit.
In 1758, he had to cut his preaching to once a
day and to three times on Sunday because of his
declining health.
He returned to London October the 28th.
On June the 30th, 1759, he arrived at Edinburgh
for 11th visit.
In 1759, he had to give up the horseback riding
for a one-horse chase because of his health.
And before the year was out, he exchanged for a
four-wheel carriage, hoping that he'd be able
to read as he traveled over the terribly rough roads.
In Scotland, a Miss Hunter tried to give him
her entire state of money and lands worth 7,£000.
But Whitfield wouldn't let her give it to him,
wouldn't even let her give it to the orphan house.
He thought it wasn't wise for a single lady to
give away all that she had.
In March of 1760, Whitfield was busy collecting
aid for sufferers in Brandenburg, suffering war drop.
On the feast day of March the 14th, he
collected £400.
He spent June in Wales preaching.
In July 1760, he was crudely and cruelly
burlesque in the drum of the miner.
The author, Samuel Foote, was a well-born
Oxford graduate who failed in law and failed in marriage.
He turned playwright and actor and achieved
great success in merciless caricature.
And it was the Methodists who were made the bud
of his wit.
Whitfield was Dr. Squenum. Remember, he was cross-eyed.
Dr. Squenum converts Ms. Cole, the outrageous
bawd and Procurus who continued her occupation
after being justified by fate.
The play first appeared on the stage of the
Playhouse owned by David Garrick, England's
favorite, most popular actor at the time.
Lady Huntington protested strongly against the
play to the Duke of Devonshire, who was Lord Chamberlain,
and also to David Garrick in an effort to have
the license of the Playhouse revoked and the
play suppressed.
Garrick strongly refused. The play was making
too much money.
In another play of the 1760s, The Register
Office, Whitfield was Mr. Watchlight, who
converted the reprobate Ms. Snarewell,
and he became the beneficiary of his will.
All kinds of stories were circulating, how he
raised money and how he used it.
Tobias Smollett accused Whitfield and the
Methodists of seducing weak minds with
delusions of superstition.
And in his history, in his novel Umphery
Clinger, he had Whitfield in mind.
Samuel Johnson also gave unflattering estimates
of Whitfield, how he vociferated and made an impression.
Horace Walpole, who regarded Whitfield as a
pied biker, considered him a fanatic, but he
didn't want to make a martyr out of him.
And so he urged the preachers to fight him with
ridicule, fight the Methodists with the ridicule.
The Methodists, a burlesque poem appeared that
pictured Whitfield as an instrument of Satan.
And Hogarth, in a series of prints, represented
Whitfield in one of the most famous, it was called,
Credulity and Superstition and Fanaticism.
In another print, Whitfield was enthusiasm delineated.
In Richard Grave's book, The Spiritual Quixote,
Whitfield was Jeffrey Wildgoose.
The London Magazine and the Gentleman's
Magazine printed both defenses and attacks on Whitfield.
In February 1,761, Whitfield collected some
£600 to aid the victims of a fire in Boston.
By the end of April 1761, Whitfield was a semi-injury.
By November, he visited Edinburgh, but he
wasn't able to preach when he got there.
In June 1762, he went to Holland, hoping to
improve his health.
By August, he was able to attend the conference
held by John Wesley at Leeds.
And in September, he began his 12th preaching
visit in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
He was back in London by October the 15th.
On March the 19th, 1763, he arrived in
Edinburgh for his 13th preaching tour in Scotland,
preaching frequently in spite of poor health.
On June the 4th, 1763, Whitfield embarked from
Greenup on the Fanny for his sixth visit to America,
a visit that lasted two years.
When he arrived in America, his health had
improved enough for him to resume the preaching tours.
In September 1643, after spending two months
with friends in Philadelphia, he went on to Virginia.
And he spent some four days at the College of
New Jersey, and then two days at Elizabeth Tower,
preaching, he said, with his old vigor.
And then he preached again in New York.
By February the 20th, he was back in Boston,
where he received an overwhelming welcome.
And the city of Boston gave him public thanks
for the charitable collection that he had raised
to relieve the sufferers from the great fire.
For seven weeks, he preached twice a week in
and around Boston, and his reception was
greater than ever.
He collected money for Wheatley's Indian School
at Lebanon.
That would become Dartmouth College.
When fire destroyed the library at Harvard, he
wrote back to England, urging his friends to
send books
and to send money for the new library.
The Harvard Corporation would vote him hearty
thanks for his candor and his generosity.
Candor, because he had sent them a written
apology for the harsh things that he had said.
And asking for their forgiveness if he'd harmed
them in any way, and that if they had harmed him,
they didn't have to bother, because he had
already forgiven them.
He preached with great effectiveness in
Concord, Portsmouth, Newbury.
And when he said he was heading south, the
people of Boston raised such a cry for him to stay
that he ministered in the city for eight more
weeks, lecturing every morning at 6:00.
Finally, he traveled on and came to Yale.
Yale earlier had published a very strong
pamphlet against him.
But this time, the Yale students packed the chapel.
And when finally the time came for Whitfield to
leave, despite all their protests,
he had seated himself in the carriage.
The students begged the president to go and beg
him to get out
and to just give him one more quarter hour of exhortation.
You can imagine Whitfield just a quarter of an hour.
No, he preached to the students with all of his heart.
By September 1754, he was back in Philadelphia
after heartbreaking farewells,
Boston, Yale, New York.
In Philadelphia, he delivered the commencement
sermon at the College of Philadelphia.
He wrote John Wesley that he had begun to begin
in America
and that a hundred itinerants were needed.
He begged Wesley to send anyone that he could.
He finally reached Bethesda, where he began
making new plans for a college.
In December 1754, he approached Governor James
Wright of Savannah
on the matter of making a college after Bethesda.
And he received favorable action from both
houses of the Georgia Assembly.
Whitfield went on another preaching tour
through Charleston,
up through Virginia, Maryland, on up to Philadelphia.
And then on June the 9th, 1765, he embarked
from New York for England.
Hard aflame again with the idea of a college at Bethesda.
Whitfield landed in England on June the 9th, 1765.
One of his preaching tours took him to Bath,
where he opened Lady Huntington's Chapel.
By October the 26th, he was back in London to
spend the rest of the year.
In January 1767, he was called to heal a breach
in Wesley's Society in London.
He preached, he was able, and spent much time
writing letters and revising his journals.
He took Cornelius Winter in to be his assistant
and gave him a place in his home
in hopes of training him to carry on the work.
And it proved a happy arrangement.
Winter would be developed into a powerful preacher.
He did write of his early days in Whitfield's home.
He was surprised that Whitfield told him he
wouldn't need to learn Latin.
He didn't have to have Latin to preach.
On March the 4th, he enjoyed the fellowship of
Wesley the Dinner in the home of a friend.
On March the 20th, he was in Brighton to reopen
Lady Huntington's Chapel.
But June, he was back in London.
August 20th and 21st, he met in the conference
with the ministers of John Wesley.
And in September, he began another preaching tour.
On October, he preached to more than 6,000 at
the Moorfield Tabernacle.
They said it was as much power as he had ever preached.
Early in 1768, he defended a Methodist student
who had been expelled from Oxford
for nothing but being a Methodist.
He busied himself with collecting and editing
his letters
and with further revisions of the journals.
In June 1768, he paid his last visit to
Scotland where he was still tremendously popular.
Before his return to London, he found his wife
very ill.
She passed away October the 9th, 1768.
Whitfield himself preached her funeral, paying
tribute to her courage and to her faithfulness.
He referred to her as his right hand.
It left him in deep grief and loneliness.
On August the 24th, he was in Wales to open
Lady Huntington's College
for the training of Methodist preachers, the
College at Trafford.
When his return to London, his health continued
to fail.
His last winter in England was spent in London.
When he was able, he preached at the Moorfield
Tabernacle, trotting him a court road chapel.
He met frequently with John and Charles Wesley.
Charles, in a letter to his wife, described
their last dinner together as a love feast.
Mr. Adams and Hal Harris, the leader of the
Welch Methodist Calvinistic Methodists, were there.
Mrs. Hermitage was the hostess who prepared the
dinner there at the chapel.
On his last Sunday morning in England,
Whitfield preached in the Methodist Tabernacle
at Gravesend.
In the afternoon, he preached in the Marketplace.
His text was John 12:32,
And I, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men
unto me.
On Monday, September the 4th, 1769, he left
England for the last time
to make his thirteenth voyage across the Atlantic.
On November the 30th, 1769, he landed at
Charleston on board the Friendship.
On January the 28th, 1770, he entertained
Governor Wright and the Savannah officials at Bethesda,
still interested in his college.
In May, he left Bethesda for the last time,
traveling to Philadelphia.
In June, he began a preaching tour that covered
some 150 miles.
June the 23rd, he was in New York.
On August the 30th, he arrived at Newport,
Rhode Island,
and began a very successful preaching tour of
New England that lasted two months.
He was never more popular or more powerful.
It was a kind of Indian summer of his itinerant ministry.
As Sharon, he preached on You Must Be Born Again.
The audience was filled with great emotion, and
a rough old shipbuilder
declared it ordinary on an ordinary Sunday
under the usual sermon.
While the preacher was preaching, in his mind
he'd build a whole ship.
He said when he listened to Whitefield, he
didn't even add a plank.
He preached in Providence, Attleboro, Rentham,
Malden, and for ten days in Boston.
He went to Medford, Charleston, and Cambridge,
back to Boston.
He preached in Roxbury Plain, Milton, Roxbury,
and back to Boston.
He went to Salem, North Ed, back to Salem, to
Keep Ann, Ipswich, and Newbury Port.
He was ill when he reached Portsmouth, but he
preached for two days.
He went on to York, and then came back to
Portsmouth to preach again.
Whitefield preached his last sermon in the open
air at Exeter on September the 29th, 1770.
He was on his way to Boston, but the people at
Exeter begged him to preach to them one more time.
A friend remarked, You're more fit to go to bed
than to preach.
But he replied, Lord Jesus, I'm weary in Thy
Word, but not of it.
If I have not yet finished my course, let me
go, and speak for Thee once more in the fields,
to seal Thy truth, and then to come home and die.
He took for his text, examine yourselves,
whether you be in the faith.
He spoke for two hours.
After the sermon, he dined with Captain Gilman,
and then started by boat to Newbury Port.
When he arrived, he was too weak to leave the
boat, and he had to be held to the parsonage of
the Old South Church.
Toward evening, he revived, and after supper, a
great crowd gathered around the parsonage.
He declared that he was too tired to preach and
had to go to bed.
But with the crowd begging, he took a candle
and began to speak to the crowd.
Soon he was preaching, pleading, exhorting, and
he preached till the candle burned out.
At 2:00 in the morning, he was overcome by a
violent attack of asthma.
He passed away at 6:00 the next morning, Sunday
morning, September the 30th, 1770.
Word spread rapidly through New England.
A young sailmaker of Portsmouth named Benjamin
Randall, who'd hated him and reviled him,
was so shaken by the news as he heard it hawked
on the street, Whitfield is dead.
He testified that he heard within himself a
voice, an inner voice, Whitfield is dead.
Whitfield is in Heaven, and I'm on the road to hell.
And Randall surrendered to the Lord and later
became the founder of the Free Will Baptist Church.
On Tuesday, October the 2nd, 1770, Whitfield
was buried beneath the pulpit of the First
Presbyterian Church in Newburyport,
best known as the Old South Church, which
Whitfield had had apart and founded.
His friend Jonathan Parsons was the pastor.
Some 6,000 people crowded in and about the
church, but the hymns could not be sung because
of the crying and sobbing.
The ships in the harbor hung their flags at
half-mast, and their guns fired a salute.
In Georgia, the governor and the council led
the procession to the memorial Sermon.
In London, in the tabernacle, and then in the
chapel, John Wesley delivered eloquent tributes
to great multitudes.
The Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier penned the tributes.
So the flood of emotion deep and strong
troubled the land as it went along, and left a
result of holier lies.
Tenderer mothers were their wives.
The husband and father whose children fled, and
sad wife wept when his drunken treads
frightened peace from the roof, trees shaved.
And a rock of offense his hearthstone made.
In a strength that was not his own, began to
rise from the brute to the plane of a man.
Old friends embraced, long held apart by evil
counsel and pride of heart.
And penitence saw through the misty tears in
the bow of hope, on its cloud of fears, the
promise of Heaven's eternal years.
The peace of God for the world's annoy, beauty
for ashes, and all for joy.
George Whitfield was one of the great preachers
of all times, perhaps the greatest of the revivalists.
He must have had one of the greatest speaking
voices that the world's ever known.
On one occasion in Scotland, he was said to
have preached to almost 100,000 people at one time.
And that after an hour and a half of that
Sermon, 10,000 had been converted.
Often his audiences were estimated 20,000-25,000.
Benjamin Franklin declared that his voice had
perfect modulation.
His emphasis and his actions were perfectly
fitted to the voice.
That the effect was that of an excellent piece
of music.
One contemporary said his voice resembled an
organ of flute or harp all in one.
David Garrick, the noted actor of his day, said
Whitfield could melt an audience and move even
the hardest men to tears simply by the way he
pronounced the word Mesopotamia.
And Garrick went on to say that he would freely
give 100 guineas if just once on the stage he
could pronounce oh, like Whitfield pronounced
it often in his preaching.
Whitfield didn't pretend to be a scholar, but
he knew his Bible.
Sometimes his interpretations were very
strangely peculiar in his own.
He preached without notes, but he spent a great
deal of time carefully preparing the sermons.
He frequently wept as he preached.
He used the language of the people, and he
filled his sermons with homely illustrations
and sometimes lengthy personal references.
He was very dramatic, and he held his audiences spellbound.
During his ministry, he preached over 18,000
times, on average of some 500 sermons a year,
10 a week.
Whitfield was not theologian.
He didn't found the school of theology.
He took a great and continuing interest in the
small circle of Calvinistic Methodists, but his
main interest was in preaching, not forming a society.
The Welsh Calvinist Methodist Church would continue.
Whitfield left behind a great host of ministers
who under his influence had felt called priests.
Many felt that there was a great contradiction
between the theology he preached and his
personal faith.
He believed and preached that the Bible was the
authority and that it gave specific directions
for all circumstances.
God was a stern judge.
He intervened personally and directly in the
affairs of individuals.
Jesus was tender and loving and merciful.
Whitfield held to a Calvinistic theology that
included predestination, election, total
depravity, limited atonement.
No man could come to God unless God called him,
but he preached the new birth, and he entreated
all men to come.
If they came, it was a sufficient sign that God
had called them.
He preached and exhorted all men as if they
were free to come.
He denied that good works had any worth, and
yet he insisted that good works were a
necessary sign of the new birth,
and that God kept a careful and complete
record, and his books would be open at the
judgment where men would be judged what they
had done.
Much of the spirit of the times was against
Calvinism, many of Whitfield's followers would
find their way into Wesleyan and Aryan Methodism.
Some were drawn into the sinning bodies, and
revival spread among them.
Many stayed in or were drawn to the evangelical
revival in the established church, where they
became a part of low-church Anglicanism.
Whitfield remained the hero of revivalists and
offered a model of the converting, bearing the
good fruit of charitable works.
This was especially true of the Second Great
Awakening that followed the Revolutionary War.
Perhaps Whitfield's heart was best revealed in
a sermon from the balcony of the courthouse in
Philadelphia when he said,
Father Abraham, whom have you in Heaven? Any
Episcopalians? No. Any Presbyterians? No.
Have you any Independents or Seeders? No. Have
you any Methodists? No, no, no. Whom have you there?
We don't know those names here. All who are
here are Christians.
In John Wesley's final tribute, have we heard
or read of any person who called so many
thousands, so many myriads of sinners to repentance?
Above all, have we read or heard of anyone who
has been the blessed instrument of bringing so
many sinners from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to God?
Whit here, on visiting the Whitfield Church, a
Newbury poet wrote, he erred. Shall we count
his gifts as naught?
Was the work of God in him unwrought? The
servant made through his deafness air, and
blind may be God's messenger.
But the errand is sure they go upon, the word
is spoken, the deed is done.
Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good that
Solomon bowed to gods of wood?
I hope you have a good spring holiday.