He was an evangelist, a “chaplain” of ships crossing the Atlantic, a compassionate friend of orphans and founder of orphanages and schools, a fund raiser for their support, an exhorter of the clergy to godliness, and more. But he is remembered first as a remarkable preacher of the grace of God. George Whitefield was an “awakening preacher,” awakening sleeping sinners to their eternal need and alerting slumbering saints to their divine responsibility.

The life of this English evangelist is singularly instructive to Christians. He reflected true Christian graces while enduring the great trials of the faithful believer. He knew both struggles and success, frustration and fruitfulness, weariness and wonderful joy in the gospel ministry. His mission and his motives were often misunderstood, but the results which accompanied his message were evidences of divine anointing—conviction, conversions, and opposition.

Born in an Inn

His contemporary, John Wesley, was born and reared in a minister’s home; George Whitefield was born in his parent’s tavern, the Bell Inn of Gloucester, England, in December 1714. Although he had ample opportunity to witness the ways of the world in his early years, he seems to have been spared its worst consequences. The youth showed an interest in words and drama, reciting plays frequently during his grammar school days. He knew the drudgery of menial labor, working in and about the tavern (which in the eighteenth century combined the hotel, the restaurant, and the “club” or “bar” of today). He learned the quality of personal industry which was later to keep him busy preaching an average of almost twice a day, every day, for thirty years.

At Oxford University Whitefield worked hard, waiting on tables and studying with diligence. But he was also seeking heart peace. The little “Holy Club” of Methodists with its regimen of humanitarian works attracted him. But the student found that good works, while noble in purpose, did not meet his real need. Whitefield then attempted self-denial, hoping to conquer his flesh and become worthy of God’s release from his sin and guilt. He abandoned his friends and spent long periods in mystic meditation. During six weeks of 1735, Whitefield denied himself any food but coarse bread and tea, and so weakened his body that he required the service of a physician. Still, he found no soul comfort.

After this experience, Whitefield realized that the way of the gospel is not by striving. Now came true conversion. Exhausted with his own ways, at the end of all his human resources, the twenty-year-old threw himself on his bed crying, “I thirst! I thirst!” Submitting to God’s saving grace, he found deliverance “from the burden that had so heavily oppressed me.”

In his Journals, Whitefield wrote about his conversion: “O! with what joy . . . that was full of and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith, broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was . . . a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. . . . My joys were like a spring tide, and overflowed the banks!”

The Field Preacher

The bishop who ordained Whitefield at the age of twenty-one as a deacon in the Church of England had previously asserted he would ordain none so young. But this young man was clearly ready. He possessed a noticeable variety of gifts—he had known the meaning of the world and sin, he was accustomed to hard work, he had an eagerness to learn, he attracted children, his imagination was fertile, and his speech was compelling. A squint in one eye added a commanding seriousness to the lithe youth’s presence. And he had experienced salvation by grace through faith. Now called of God to preach, he responded with vigor.

His preaching was against sin and for Jesus Christ. He invited men, women, and children to be born again. He exhorted clergy of the Church of England to more pious living. His preaching was his very life; in later years when bothered by heart disease, undiagnosed in those days, he was confident that a “good preaching sweat” was his best remedy.

Whitefield soon became known as a strong, vibrant preacher who stirred up his listeners. People of all ranks in life came to hear this man of God, even as he denounced their sins, for he invited them to the Saviour. Many who came to scoff remained to pray. The preaching of the Word of God turned hecklers into converts and detractors into supporters. But the parish ministers of England, jealous of their “territorial rights” over the villages and countryside which provided their congregations, began to close their church doors to the awakening preacher. So George Whitefield turned from the parish churches to “field preaching.” He preached from nearly every kind of pulpit which nature and human ingenuity provided: foundries, mounds, tables, wagons, balconies, boats, wherever his body could be elevated so his voice could be heard.

That voice has been occasion for considerable wonder in the two centuries since it was last heard on earth. When preaching out of doors—which had become for him more the rule than the exception—Whitefield would position himself so that his voice could be carried downwind to reach the greatest number of hearers. That number was often recorded as more than twenty-thousand in the journals of eyewitnesses. They testify also that Whitefield’s voice could be heard more than a mile away.

But far more important than his voice’s volume and clarity was its moving power. Surely this was the empowering of the Holy Spirit of God moving upon the human instrument. That instrument was beautifully tuned to communicate compelling truth. Whitefield was able to accommodate the flavor and application of his message to the immediate circumstance. He would turn a heckler into an illustration. He would turn a thunderstorm into a vivid picture of the judgment of God. He was able to illustrate his text from life and from experience, both his and his hearers’.

Luke Tyerman, an outstanding biographer of George Whitefield, described the awakening preacher: “Half a dozen men like Whitefield would at any time move a nation, stir its churches, and reform its morals. Whitefield’s power was not in his talents, nor even in his oratory, but in his piety. . . . Such men are the gift of God, and are infinitely more valuable than all the gold in the church’s coffers.”

Across the Atlantic

George Whitefield’s preaching ministry took him across the Atlantic for the first time in 1737–1738 as a missionary to the newly established colony of Georgia. John and Charles Wesley had been laboring there, although themselves yet unconverted, to win the heathen, but had returned in defeat. Whitefield preached throughout the area, finding a ready hearing. When he saw the prospect for the orphanage planned by James Oglethorpe, the colony’s founder, Whitefield returned to England to raise funds for the project. The orphanage ministry and the schools in connection prospered as a blessing to many. He raised thousands of dollars for their support, never personally profiting financially, but building up such treasure in heaven that it is certain he enjoyed an abundant entrance to that place for which he helped fit so many.

There were seven “missionary journeys” to America in Whitefield’s ministry. Each crossing was long and severe, often aggravated by storms or delayed by calms. But each preaching mission in America gave the Awakener notable opportunities. In 1740, in Philadelphia, which then had a population of twelve thousand, one Sunday evening congregation on Society Hill was estimated at fifteen thousand. Then he traveled to New York, preaching at towns along the way. At Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, five thousand heard him; in New Brunswick, New Jersey, “near seven or eight thousand.” After similar meetings in New York, he returned to Philadelphia where his farewell service in the City of Brotherly Love was estimated at nearly twenty thousand, perhaps the largest gathering in America to date.

Charleston, South Carolina, also heard him in great numbers that summer before his return to Savannah, Georgia, and the orphanage. That fall, New England received Whitefield. Four days he preached in Rhode Island before coming to Boston, enjoying much spiritual fruit in both places and in the smaller towns farther to the north.

Whitefield then met Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, an occasion of great joy for both men. In Middletown, Connecticut, he preached to “about four thousand people.” He then preached from New England to Georgia, carrying the Awakening revival up and down the colonies, preaching to literally thousands as he moved along. The Great Awakening of 1740 was only a sample of the ministry Whitefield enjoyed in America.

These revivals, and Whitefield’s constant zeal to proclaim the message always and everywhere drained his bodily energy. In 1770 he preached his last sermon from the stairs of a parsonage in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was still staying in the parsonage when at six o’clock on a September Sunday morning he awakened in heaven.

A Lesson in Balance

There is an interesting postscript to the life of George Whitefield that teaches a lesson of spiritual balance among the people of God.

Today we commonly hear the name of Whitefield with that of John Wesley—contemporaries, sometimes co-laborers, sometimes contenders for opposite doctrinal truths, but always mutually respectful of God’s respective gifts. Their relationship is an instruction to us. Their largeness of soul taught John Wesley and George Whitefield a toleration of different viewpoints when no disobedience to the clear Word of Scripture was concerned. They learned to subordinate their differences to the performance of their callings without compromise of the truth.

John Wesley and George Whitefield, often with an ocean between them, each believed in different aspects of the “mystery of the ages,” divine sovereignty and human responsibility. While both are true, if irreconcilable by finite reason, undue emphasis on either has always divided good men.

In emphasizing man’s responsibility, Wesley decided that a man who believes that God foreknows those whom He calls must also believe that it is useless to preach the gospel to all. Whitefield’s reply was that since we do not know who are the elect, we are to preach to all. And Whitefield, who believed in election but preached to all, wrongly understood that when Wesley said all men may be saved he meant all would be saved. So Whitefield charged Wesley with universalism and Wesley charged Whitefield with teaching the arbitrary damnation of souls. Each accused the other of the logical conclusion of his position, yet neither actually held those extremes.

Although the relationship between the two men was thus strained, their love and respect for each other was never quenched. It was John Wesley, who was to outlive Whitefield by twenty-one years, who gave him the most generous tribute as he gently chided his friend who asked, “Do you think we shall see Mr. Whitefield in Heaven?” Wesley replied, “No, sir, I fear not. Mr. Whitefield will be so near the Throne and we at such a distance we shall hardly get sight of him.”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Arnold Dallimore. George Whitefield. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1970, 1980.

In our overspecialized age, it is easy to forget that men whose lives we study separately—great religious leaders of the past, for instance, and the founding fathers of our country—were contemporaries. They were often at the same places at the same time, sometimes even together as friends. Such was the case with Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield, the English evangelist who was instrumental in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.  

Whitefield’s preaching in England and America brought thousands of souls to the Saviour. A contemporary of such men as John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, he spent his life in the service of His Lord. Franklin, on the other hand, spent his life in the service of his country. Like many of his contemporaries, he was a practical Deist, acknowledging the existence of God as Creator and Provider, but not recognizing the claims of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinful men. Indeed, Franklin’s Autobiography reflects his belief in the perfectibility of man and records his efforts to achieve this perfection.  

Christian and Deist, preacher and printer, glorifier of God and glorifier of the human mind—what had these two men to do with each other? Whitefield visited Franklin’s Philadelphia in 1739, and Franklin—always interested in events around him—recorded the occasion in the Autobiography.  

In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant preacher. He was the first permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy taking a dislike to him, soon refus’d him their Pulpits and he was oblig’d to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and how much they admir’d and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seem’d as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro’ the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street. . . .  

Mr. Whitefield, in leaving us, went preaching all the way thro’ the colonies to Georgia. The settlement of that province had lately been begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen accustomed to labour, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was with the families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors, many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the jails, who, being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for. The sight of their miserable situation inspir’d the benevolent heart of Mr. Whitefield with the Idea of building an Orphan House there, in which they might be supported and educated. Returning northward he preach’d up this charity, and made large collections, for his eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.  

I did not disapprove of the design, but, as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, and it was propos’d to send them from Philadelphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been better to have built the house here and brought the children to it. This I advis’d; but he was resolute in his first project, rejected my counsel, and I thereupon refus’d to contribute. I happened soon after to attend one of his 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. 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 asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the silver; and he finsh’d so admirably, that I empty’d my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all. At this sermon there was also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments respecting the building in Georgia, and suspecting a collection might be intended, had, by precaution, emptied his pockets before he came from home. Towards the conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong desire to give, and apply’d to a neighbour who stood near him, to borrow some money for the purpose. The application was unfortunately [made] to perhaps the only man in the company who had the firmness not to be affected by the preacher. His answer was, “At any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now, for thee seems to be out of thy right senses.”  

Some of Mr. Whitefield’s enemies affected to suppose that he would apply these collections to his own private emolument; but I, who was intimately acquainted with him (being employ’d in printing his Sermons and Journals, etc.), never had the least suspicion of his integrity, but am to this day decidedly of opinion that he was in all his conduct a perfectly honest man; and methinks my testimony in his favour ought to have the more weight, as we had no religious connection. He us’d, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard. Ours was a mere civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and lasted to his death.  

The following instance will show something of the terms on which we stood. Upon one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could lodge when there. . . . My answer was, “You know my house; if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome.” He reply’d, that if I made that kind offer for Christ’s sake, I should not miss of a reward. And I returned, “Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake.” One of our common acquaintance jocosely remark’d, that, knowing it to be the custom of the saints, when they received any favour, to shift the burden of the obligation from off their own shoulders, and place it in heaven, I had contriv’d to fix it on earth. . . .  

He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great distance. . . . Without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleas’d with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that receiv’d from an excellent piece of musick.  

[The “intimate acquaintance” between the two men was at least partly carried on by letters in which Whitefield did not hesitate to speak of Franklin’s spiritual condition. One letter dealing with business, written in late 1740, closed with these words:]

Dear sir, adieu! I do not despair of your seeing the reasonableness of Christianity. Apply to God; be willing to do the Divine will, and you shall know it. Oh! the love of God to your unworthy friend.

     George Whitefield  

[Franklin’s lack of understanding of the real purposes of Whitefield’s ministry is nowhere more apparent than in a letter written July 6, 1749, in which he observed the following:]

I am glad to hear that you have frequent opportunities of preaching among the great. If you gain them to a good and exemplary life, wonderful changes will follow in the manners of the lower ranks. . . . On this principle, Confucius, the famous eastern reformer, proceeded. When he saw his country sunk in vice, and wickedness of all kinds triumphant, he applied himself first to the grandees; and, having, by his doctrine, won them to the cause of virtue, the commons followed in multitudes. The mode has a wonderful influence on mankind; and there are numbers, who, perhaps, fear less the being in hell, than out of the fashion. Our more western reformations began with the ignorant mob; and, when numbers of them were gained, interest and party-views drew in the wise and great. Where both methods can be used, reformations are likely to be more speedy. O that some method could be found to make them lasting! He who discovers that, will, in my opinion, deserve more, ten thousand times, than the inventor of the longitude.  

[His friend, whose concern was not for reformation of lives but regeneration of hearts, wrote to Franklin after the inventor’s experiments with electricity.]

                                                      London, August 17, 1752

Dear Mr. Franklin,  

I find that you grow more and more famous in the learned world. As you have made a pretty considerable progress in the mysteries of electricity, I would now humbly recommend to your diligent unprejudiced pursuit and study the mystery of the new birth. It is a most important, interesting study, and when mastered, will richly repay you for all your pains. One, at whose bar we are shortly to appear, hath solemnly declared, that, without it “we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” You will excuse this freedom. I must have aliquid Christi [something of Christ] in all my letters.  

I am yet a willing pilgrim for His great name’s sake, and I trust a blessing attends my poor feeble labours. To the giver of every good gift be all the glory! My respects await yourself and all enquiring friends; and hoping to see you once more in the land of the living, I subscribe myself, dear sir, your very affectionate friend, and obliged servant,

     George Whitefield  

[In 1756, twenty years before the events of the American Revolution which were to crown Franklin’s career, he wrote a letter to Whitefield which reflected his uncertainty about his accomplishments. In part, he wrote:]

Life, like a dramatic piece, should not only be conducted with regularity, but, methinks, it should finish handsomely. Being now in the last act, I begin to cast about for something fit to end it with. Or, if mine be more properly compared to an epigram, as some of its lines are but barely tolerable, I am very desirous of concluding with a bright point. . . . I thank you for you good wishes and prayers; and am, with the greatest esteem and affection, dear sir, your most obedient humble servant,           

 Benjamin Franklin  

[Soon, the strained relationship between Great Britain and her American colonies resulted in Franklin’s being sent to London to negotiate with the government concerning the problems of the colonies. He went first in 1757 and stayed until late 1762, and again from 1764 to 1775. During the second mission, news of the unrest at home caused him to write to Whitefield, in a letter dated early in 1768:]  

I am under continued apprehensions that we may have bad news from America. The sending soldiers to Boston always appeared to me a dangerous step; they could do no good, they might occasion mischief. When I consider the warm resentment of a people who think themselves injured and oppressed, and the common insolence of the soldiery who are taught to consider that people as in rebellion, I cannot but fear the consequences of bringing them together. It seems like setting up a smith’s forge in a magazine of gunpowder. I see with you that our affairs are not well managed by our rulers here below; I wish I could believe with you, that they are well attended to by those above; I rather suspect, from certain circumstances, that though the general government of the universe is well administered, our particular little affairs are perhaps below notice, and left to take the chance of human prudence or imprudence, as either may happen to be uppermost. It is, however, an uncomfortable thought, and I leave it.  

[The great preacher, reading those words, wrote on the letter,]

Uncomfortable indeed! and, blessed be God, unscriptural; for we are fully assured that “the Lord reigneth,” and are directed to cast all our care on Him, because He careth for us.  

Franklin’s Autobiography and letters show his perception of Whitefield’s influence on others, but they are sadly imperceptive of his own needs and the answer Whitefield taught. Benjamin Franklin heard the Great Awakener’s sermons, not as a testimony of God’s saving grace, but as an example of great oratory in the interest of human reformation. His friend’s witness and prayers for Franklin’s salvation did not move the influential printer, inventor, and philosopher to repentance, even though Franklin sought for proof of meaning and guidance in the universe. If they had, we can only wonder what might have been the effect on the Great Awakening and American history.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Benjamin Franklin. Autobiography. [Available in several editions]  

Arnold Dallimore. George Whitefield. Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990. [Abridged by the author from his larger two-volume biography of Whitefield]

Keith J. Hardman. The Spiritual Awakeners. Chicago: Moody Press, 1983. [See pp. 75-92.]  

Edward M. Panosian. “George Whitefield: The Awakener.” In Faith of Our Fathers: Scenes from Church History, edited by Mark Sidwell, pp. 145-49. Greenville, South Carolina: Bob Jones University Press, 1989.

Preacher, scholar, missionary, philosopher, father, theologian, and saint—these were the earthly roles of Jonathan Edwards. Gentle, firm, industrious, serious, profound, disciplined, and balanced—these were his most compelling characteristics. He was a man of character, involved in controversy, a man who no less now than during his life evokes the praise of brethren and the calumny of foes.

He was called to live during a time of difficult transition, from the colonial to the revolutionary period. In the distance behind him were the fading memories of the pious days of Pilgrim and Puritan; in the distance ahead, the anticipation of secular society, “enlightenment” religion, and separation of church and state. While he sought to renew what was, he sharpened the contrast with what was to come.

Born in 1703, just three months after John Wesley and an ocean apart, the only son among the eleven children of the Reverend Timothy and Esther Edwards, in the parish of East Windsor, Connecticut, with ministers and merchants in his heritage on both sides, this lad, who was to grow to become the foremost theologian of early America, gave early promise of his difference from his peers. As a child he was docile, reflective, affectionate, and sensitive, but, above all, precocious. His intellectual activity was remarkable. He began then what was to be his practice throughout life: writing to cultivate thought.

From Edwards’s pen, when his fingers were but twelve and thirteen years old, came such essays as one, of a thousand words, on the habits of the field spider. Another was an analysis of colors and the rainbow. Another was a demonstration that the soul is not material. If these seem strange subjects for such tender youth, they reflect something of the uniqueness of this fertile mind and its uncommon thirst for knowledge.

That thirst, perhaps first cultivated by the elementary schooling provided him by his father, respected as minister and teacher, was furthered by the lad’s entry at Yale College in 1716, just before his thirteenth birthday. Here he took the established course of ministerial training, read Locke and Newton, wrote essays on Berkeley’s philosophy, yet reflected little participation in typical nonacademic activities of college life. Never outgoing or given easily to social graces, little able to enjoy the frivolous or the vain, he seemed aloof from his fellows. Because he served as college butler in his senior year, one who ladled out the meat and potatoes at mealtime, he enjoyed little society even at meals.

Having completed the course in 1720, a Yale graduate at seventeen, he remained for further study before taking a Presbyterian pulpit briefly in New York in 1722. Even more briefly he preached in Bolton, Connecticut, before being invited back to Yale to take the master’s degree, and serve as tutor and to perform administrative duties during an interlude of several months when there was no president.

It was during these years between graduation and his being “settled” in the Northampton parish which became inextricably linked with his name that Jonathan Edwards was converted, enjoyed that “sweet delight in God and divine things,” and set down in his diary a covenant and a determination to dedicate all his effort to the service of God. As he read Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy, there struck most deeply to his soul verse 17 of chapter one: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Inexplicably, this verse, so atypical of verses which are often used of the Holy Spirit to strike conviction and convert hearts, caused the young man’s soul to be turned to the realization of who God is and His claim on the total being of man. This depth of understanding and solemnity of purpose was typical of this philosopher-genius who was equally soulwinning preacher. In his own words,

As I read the words, there came into my soul . . . a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to Him in Heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! . . . From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehension . . . of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by Him. An inward, sweet sense of these things . . . came into my heart.

Not long afterward, his diary and notebooks of meditations reflect the resolutions of his will in the service of Christ. Particularly beginning in January of 1723, and continuing through the spring and summer of that year are such revealing entries as these:

Now, henceforth, I am not to act, in any respect, as my own. I shall act as my own, if I ever make use of any of my powers, to any thing, that is not to the glory of God, and do not make the glorying of Him, my whole and entire business; if I murmur in the least at affliction; if I grieve at the prosperity of others; if I am in any way uncharitable; if I am angry, because of injuries; if I revenge them; if I do any thing, purely to please myself, or if I avoid any thing, for the sake of my own ease; if I omit any thing, because it is great denial; if I trust to myself, if I take any of the praise of any good that I do, or that God doth by me; or if I am in any way proud.

. . .

Resolved, that no other end but religion, shall have any influence at all on any of my actions; and that no action shall be, in the least circumstance, any otherwise than the religious end will carry it.

. . .

Never let me trifle with a book with which I may have no present concern.

These samples, of so many others like them, reflect the dedication and singleness of mind and heart of the man of twenty-three who was called as colleague pastor to his maternal grandfather, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, at Northampton, Massachusetts, in November of 1726. Here he was to labor in that service and devotion for almost the quarter century that followed.

Northampton was the most important inland city in New England, ecclesiastically second only to Boston. The congregation had sought a likely successor to the aging Mr. Stoddard, who had been pastor over fifty years. More than one generation had grown up knowing only him as pastor. Edwards came with high expectations.

Not long after his coming, he married, when she was seventeen, Sarah Pierrepont, daughter of the minister of New Haven, great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker, combining in that marriage three very illustrious families. Edwards described her as “of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind.” Reared in her father’s parsonage, she was easily able to make of her husband’s a place of singular and practical piety. Both a Mary and a Martha, she did much serving and caring for the material needs of a growing family (there were eleven children in all); she was also meditative and spiritual, a woman of deep feeling.

With the death of Stoddard two years after Edwards was ordained to succeed him, the younger now assumed all the responsibilities of the parish. He was twenty-six. More preacher and teacher than pastor, he regularly spent thirteen hours daily in his study. His practice was to rise at four A.M. (at five in winter). He carefully regulated his diet, eating what could be easily and quickly digested, so that his mind would remain most active. For exercise he chopped wood or rode horseback. Ever eager to “improve his time,” on long rides he would take pins and little pieces of paper; whenever he had an idea he wished to remember, he would pin a paper to his coat to remind him, after the ride, to write down the idea.

The pulpit was his throne. Jonathan Edwards gave most of his mental and physical energy to the preparing and delivering of sermons. We possess today manuscripts or outlines for about a thousand of these. He preached on Sunday (usually for two hours) and gave the teaching lecture on Thursday. To his congregation of about six hundred, he would usually read (from the small booklet he had made by sewing together small pieces of paper, 3 7/8 by 4 1/8 inches, most of which had been used for other purposes on the other side—a picture of his native frugality, of things no less than time) the closely reasoned exposition in the Puritan style.

Each sermon was begun with the assertion of a subject, “the doctrine”; next came the series of developed points, “the reasons, or proofs”; finally, the applications or “uses.” The text was often not immediately obvious and usually an unfamiliar one, but wonderfully replete with the “doctrine” he was presenting. His best known sermon, for example—"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"—developed an almost unknown text: “Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deut. 32:35).

And his people listened. His voice was not strong, but solemn and distinct. He possessed a quiet intensity, “looking and speaking as in the presence of God.” He was deliberate and piercing. He spoke less a series of words than a message. His was the eloquence that moves to action after the words are forgotten.

Contributing to his later difficulties with his people was his preference for his study over their society. He believed he could do more good for his people by writing and preaching, catechizing the children in small groups, and counseling his people in his study, than by visiting in their homes. Some interpreted this practice, so in contrast with the late Mr. Stoddard, as an aloofness, rather than his natural reticence. Physically frail most of his life, Edwards conserved his energy for what he believed was its most profitable use. Yet he always went to his people when sent for, to the sick and to the afflicted. And ministers and other dignitaries, when passing through, found—and often later wrote of—his cordial hospitality and gracious care and provision for their welfare. George Whitefield was one such.

Whitefield reminds of the renewal of the Great Awakening in New England. Earlier, in the last months of 1734, a series of sermons Edwards preached in his parish was followed by several sudden and violent conversions, particularly of individuals known to be notorious sinners. That winter and spring a genuine revival broke out in Northampton, with perhaps three hundred saved. Strife, backbiting, and gossiping subsided among the people. Almost as quickly as it had begun, the revival ended by May and June. For the next several years Edwards sought to revive the spirit of 1735.

By the 1740s the Awakening, part of a movement which had begun simultaneously in the middle colonies, was again reaping a harvest of souls in New England. Whitefield was helping to spread it as well. Never primarily an itinerant like Whitefield, Edwards was occasionally invited to preach at other parishes. In this context he preached the sermon so blessed at Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” God honored it mightily.

Because of emotional and physical excesses accompanying some of the Awakening, Edwards, by a series of writings and by his preaching, counseled moderation and balance, of the head and the heart. Aware of excesses and “false fire,” he suggested ways of distinguishing false from true conversions. Among his significant works in the 1730s and 1740s are these, their titles clearly proclaiming their content: A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God; The Distinguishing Marks of God; The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God; Personal Narrative; Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival in New England; and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.

But for Jonathan Edwards, as minister at Northampton, the tide was turning and the sands were running out. In 1744 he had made a number of enemies by refusing to compromise his beliefs on church discipline when a group of young people were discovered reading and exchanging “lascivious and obscene” books, probably manuals for midwives. Although the congregation agreed the matter should be investigated, when their pastor read publicly a list of names of those he wished to interrogate—unwisely not distinguishing between witnesses and accused—the congregation was inflamed. Too many sons of too many families of prominence were included in the yet indiscriminate list. This attitude made bolder the insolence of the guilty and left embers to smolder long after the fire had subsided.

In the interlude before the final conflict, the Edwards home experienced a grievous event. The young missionary to the American Indians, David Brainerd, betrothed to Jonathan and Sarah’s daughter Jerusha, died in their home after several months of nursing the body which had been wasted for several years by tuberculosis. Jerusha herself followed her beloved David in death after just four months.

Two brief chapters remain. The first is Edwards’s dismissal from Northampton. The issue was joined in 1749 and consummated in June of 1750. Edwards, after more than twenty years of concurrence, concluded that “Stoddard’s Way” was wrong. Stoddard had gone beyond the “Half-Way Covenant” of 1662 (which had permitted a “half-way” church membership for those baptized as infants but who had never “owned the covenant,” given evidence or an account of conversion). Although these “half-way” members had been denied access to the Lord’s Supper, as unconverted church members, Stoddard had further permitted them to participate in that ordinance, giving them all the privileges of believers, as long as they were not “openly scandalous” in their way of life.

While we may wonder at his tardiness in doing so, Pastor Edwards, in seeking to restore stricter definitions for church members, published his “Qualifications for Full Communion,” demanding examination of the heart condition of those who presented themselves as members. This was nothing more than separating chaff from wheat, sheep from acknowledged goats. But the obscene books episode and the apparent aloofness of their pastor joined now with this new resentment to cause the camel, whose head had been allowed in the tent, to expel the tent chief. In 1750, after twenty-three years as their pastor, at age forty-seven, with eight children at home, Jonathan Edwards was turned out of the pastorate of his lifetime, unpracticed in the ways of the world, but dependent on the will of Heaven.

The last chapter is the fruitful harvest at Stockbridge, sixty miles away. Here Edwards was called to be a pastor to a small flock and missionary to the Housatunnock Indians. Twelve white families and 250 Indian families made up the population. Not well-fitted for such a role, yet isolated still farther from the bustle of the world, he was given now of God the opportunity to reap with his pen the harvest of decades of sowing of seed thoughts. It was here at Stockbridge that he wrote works on the freedom of the will, on the nature of virtue, and on original sin, for which he is chiefly noted.

Finally, in 1757, Jonathan Edwards was called to be president of the College of New Jersey, which had moved to and was eventually to be known as Princeton. However, this apparent earthly honor, a fitting recognition of his singular and pious gifts—in a day when Princeton was known for such virtues—was not to be. He arrived in February of 1758 was installed as president. There had been a serious epidemic of smallpox in neighboring towns. It was sensible to be inoculated, and so was the new president a week later. A month later he was dead.

He had finished a course and left a heritage of submission to the God who doeth all things well. Whatever and wherever in his life change had come, his will had been actively resigned to the will of God. He stood for “heart religion.” He delighted in the “sweet things of religion,” and in his life he sought to live to the honor and glory of “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.” When shall we see another?

Suggestions for Further Reading

Keith J. Hardman. The Spiritual Awakeners. Chicago: Moody Press, 1983. [See pp. 61-73.]

“Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening.” Christian History, vol. 4, no. 4 (1985). [Entire issue]

Iain H. Murray. Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987.

“A surprising work of God” Jonathan Edwards called the Great Awakening. In the early 1700s the moving of God’s Spirit touched, convicted, and converted thousands of Americans. The Reformed denominations (Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Dutch Reformed) found themselves swept along in a mighty outpouring of God’s saving grace. Probably most Christians are at least generally familiar with this “surprising work,” but many are unaware of another phase of that same revival. This other phase occurred not in the North, but in the South; not among the Reformed groups of New England, but among the Sandy Creek Baptists of North Carolina.

The man responsible for carrying the fervor of the Great Awakening to the South, Shubal Stearns, was among those influenced by George Whitefield, the powerful English evangelist of the Great Awakening. Stearns was born in Boston in 1706. After his conversion to Christ around 1740, he eventually became a minister with the Baptists. In 1754 God called Stearns from his home in Connecticut to fields farther South. He labored for a short time in Virginia, then moved to Sandy Creek, North Carolina.

North Carolina’s piedmont area in the middle of the eighteenth century was part of America’s wild frontier. The people were usually irreligious and coarse, and marriages often little more than informal agreements. Backwoods North Carolina was a spiritual as well as a physical wilderness, and into this religiously barren land came Stearns and his family.

The small church at Sandy Creek began with sixteen members, half of whom were Stearns’s own family. Then the New England minister began to preach, and God’s Spirit began to move in North Carolina as He had in Massachusetts. Eighteenth-century Baptist historian Morgan Edwards described Stearns as a man and a preacher:

Mr. Stearns was but a little man, but of good natural parts, and sound judgment. Of learning he had but a small share, yet was pretty well acquainted with books. His voice was musical and strong, which he managed in such a manner, as one while to make soft impressions on the heart . . . and anon to shake the nerves, and to throw the animal system into tumults and perturbations. His character was indisputably good, both as a man, a Christian, and a preacher.

A noted characteristic of Shubal Stearns was his penetrating gaze. One man, Tidance Lane, described Stearns’s influence: “He fixed his eyes upon me immediately,” he said, “which made me feel in such a manner as I never felt before.” Burdened with conviction, Lane sought relief in walking around, trying to leave, and even shaking hands with the preacher, but all was in vain. When Stearns finally began to preach, Lane’s resistance collapsed, and he was converted.

Another story, that of Elnathan Davis, illustrates the convicting power of Stearns’s preaching. Davis and some of his rough friends attended a baptism conducted by Stearns. Their interest was hardly spiritual; the subject of baptism was a very large man, while the preacher was rather small, so the idlers half-expected and hoped to see one or the other drown. As Davis drew near, he heard the little minister preaching, and he fell under conviction. He fled back to his companions and said, “There is a trembling and crying spirit among them, but whether it be the spirit of God or the devil I don’t know; if it be the devil, the devil go with them, for I will never more venture myself among them!” His resolve melted, however, as God worked in his heart. Davis returned to the preaching, eventually was converted, and later replaced Stearns, after the latter’s death, as the most influential minister in the Sandy Creek region.

The work in North Carolina prospered. In a short time, the Sandy Creek church swelled from sixteen members to over six hundred. The “super-churches” of our day diminish for us the impact of this growth, but consider that in the 1700s there were no modern means of transportation or good roads. The people were not concentrated in large cities, but were scattered over the countryside, having to travel difficult miles to attend services. Nor was the Sandy Creek church’s impact limited to its own members. Regarding its influence, Morgan Edwards wrote:

From this Zion went forth the word, and great was the company of them that published it; it . . . had spread branches westward as far as the great river Mississippi; southward as far as Georgia; eastward to the sea and Chesapeake Bay; and northward to the waters of the Potomac; it . . . is become the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to 42 churches from which sprang 125 ministers.

The churches that grew out of Stearns’s ministry banded together in 1758 as the Sandy Creek Baptist Association. This group, under Stearns’s benevolent but firm leadership, sought to advance God’s work throughout the southern colonies. Association meetings were marked by prayer, fasting, and exhortation. Aflame with revival, the churches in the association continued to increase in number and influence.

By 1770, however, the association had grown too large and had spread over too great an area to maintain a united, concerted effort. In that year the group divided into three separated associations, one each for North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. The following year Shubal Stearns, the great patriarch of the movement, died and was buried near the meetinghouse in which he had preached. Within a few years Stearns’s church had dropped in attendance to a level below that with which it had started. The Awakening ended, but the story did not.

Subsequent history has justified Morgan Edwards’s appraisal of the importance of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church. The Sandy Creek Awakening was one of the first revivals in America’s South. During the revival souls were saved, lives changed, and perhaps even history shaped. A rich and godly heritage belongs to a small church in the Carolina backwoods.

Suggestions for Further Reading

William L. Lumpkin. Baptist Foundations in the South. Nashville: Broadman, 1961.

H. Leon McBeth. The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness. Nashville: Broadman, 1987. [Pages 200–51 trace the history of Baptists in the Great Awakening; pages 227–32 concern Sandy Creek in particular]

George W. Purefoy. A History of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association. 1859. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1980.

William Tennent, Sr., middle-aged Scotch-Irishman, sailed from Northern Ireland to America about 1718 with his wife and children. Soon after landing at Philadelphia, he settled into his life-pastorate, the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was here that Mr. Tennent resolved to establish a school to educate his four sons for the ministry. Nine additional students brought the original enrollment to thirteen. Before then, no young man could enter the Presbyterian ministry without traveling to New England or even to Scotland for his education.

During the first few months, the students boarded at nearby farms or lived in the Tennent household where Mrs. Tennent tried to give them the necessary “mothering.” Tennent soon erected a humble log building within a few steps of his parsonage. Some of this small group of dedicated young men moved into the crude attic above the single classroom and cooked their meals in the open fireplace. The students’ day began in prayer at 5:00 A.M. and concluded with bedtime at 9:00 P.M., after a full day of class instruction. They attended the Neshaminy church on Sundays. Like every good work, however, the little college had its enemies. Critics who had grown accustomed to the European universities’ handsome stone edifices contemptuously referred to Mr. Tennent’s school as the “Log College.”

William Tennent, Sr.—making the most of the facilities at his disposal—was a well read theologian, educated at Edinburgh University, as well as a warm and faithful teacher. He was a Greek and Hebrew scholar and could write and speak Latin with perfect ease. Most important, however, he was a pastor of unusual ability and a man of genuine piety and evangelistic zeal. His little “school of the prophets” as the English evangelist George Whitefield called it, marked an epoch in the history of ministerial training in America.

When the English evangelist George Whitefield first visited Philadelphia, in 1739, Mr. Tennent traveled twenty miles to the city to enjoy his fellowship. The entry in Mr. Whitefield’s diary describes the occasion: “At my return home [from visiting a family] was much comforted by the coming of one Mr. Tennent, an old gray-headed disciple and servant of Jesus Christ [who] keeps an Academy about twenty miles from Philadelphia, and has been blessed with four gracious sons.”

On his return from New York, Whitefield visited Neshaminy where he preached to about three thousand people gathered in the “meeting house yard.” The Spirit of the Lord blessed the service with a “great melting down” in the hearts of the people. Whitefield, on this occasion, penned a description of the old Tennent school: “The place wherein the young men study now is in contempt called the college. It is a Log-House, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad.”

All of the thirteen original Log College students became pioneers of Christian education in America, and a number of these young preachers founded educational institutions. A monument at the site of the Log College lists fifty-one colleges which stemmed from this little school. William Tennent, Sr., died in 1746 at the age of seventy-three. The following year the log building closed with the opening of its successor—the College of New Jersey (later named Princeton University).

Dr. Archibald Alexander later observed that a major advantage which the Log College students possessed was that “the spirit of piety seems to have been nourished in that institution with assiduous care. . . . They had, we have reason to believe, the teaching of the Holy Spirit.” The major factor which contributed to the school’s success in those years was that William Tennent, Sr.’s sons stood faithful to “the cause” for which he himself had so faithfully given his life.

Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764)

Gilbert, the eldest son, came with his family from Ireland when he was fourteen years old. After his log-college training, he tutored at the school for about a year. Struggling for perfect assurance about God’s call into the ministry, he studied medicine for a while. Finally, he settled the matter once for all—Gilbert Tennent knew that he must preach the gospel. Yale University conferred an honorary Master of Arts degree upon him in 1725, the same year that the Presbyterian church licensed him to preach. After preaching for a while in Newcastle, Delaware, Gilbert settled into the pastorate at New Brunswick, New Jersey, and received ordination in 1727.

For at least six months after his coming to New Brunswick, the young pastor did not see a single conversion to Christ. Already distressed and discouraged, he became deathly ill. It was during this crisis that Gilbert promised God that if He would allow him six more months, he would “stand upon the stage of the world, as it were, and plead more faithfully for his cause, and take more earnest pains for the salvation of souls.”

Gilbert Tennent kept his promise. The Lord God transformed his health and his ministry, and the preacher ministered with a new sense of urgency. About 1739 at Nottingham, Pennsylvania, he preached one of America’s most famous sermons—"The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry." He used Mark 6:34 as his text. Gilbert feared that many pastors—even in that day—were failing to declare the whole counsel of God and that some had never experienced saving grace.

In 1740 George Whitefield persuaded Gilbert to make a preaching tour as far as Boston, to water the good seed which Whitefield himself had sown. Preaching almost every day for three months, Tennent witnessed a spiritual “shaking among the dry bones.” Local Boston pastors rejoiced that literally hundreds of concerned souls came to them during this short time to find salvation or assurance. One pastor declared that more had come to him in one week than during his entire twenty-four-year ministry. Gilbert never kept a written account of the number of conversions under his ministry: “I cannot offer any precise conjecture,” he remarks, “and shall therefore leave it to be determined at the judgment-day.”

In 1743, after sixteen years in his New Brunswick pastorate, Gilbert answered God’s call to Philadelphia to serve as pastor of a new work which a dedicated group of Whitefield’s converts was establishing.

He considered himself the father of his people, whom he counseled, warned, and reproved with all the tenderness and solicitude of a father’s heart. Dr. Samuel Finley said of Gilbert, “Above other things, the purity of the ministry was his care; and. . . he zealously urged every scriptural method, by which carnal and earthly-minded men might be kept from entering into it.”

Gilbert Tennent died at the age of sixty-one almost forty years after that despairing day on which he had begged God for just six more months to preach. Those who heard him never forgot that preaching. “Hypocrites must either soon be converted or enraged,” wrote George Whitefield of Gilbert’s message.

John Tennent (1706–1732)

John, the third son of William Tennent Sr., was twelve when his family came to America. After receiving his training at his father’s Log College, he accepted the call to become a pastor of a church near Freehold, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. After a brief but fruitful ministry, John died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five. His brother Gilbert said of him, “He gained more poor sinners to Christ in that little compass of time . . . , about three and half years, than many in the space of twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years.”

William Tennent, Jr. (1705–1777)

William Tennent, Jr.—born in Ireland—arrived in America with his family when he was thirteen. Early in life, William revealed an uncommon thirst for knowledge. He graduated from his father’s Log College, then traveled to New Brunswick to study under his brother Gilbert.

During the laborious preparation for his ministerial examination, at the age of nineteen, William fell sick. He lapsed into a “remarkable trance,” which lasted three days. His relatives, thinking that he was dead, were at the point of burying him, when he revived—breaking up his own funeral. William regained his health after about a year, but he had lost all previous learning, including the ability to read and write. After a time, however, his knowledge began rapidly to return.

Upon his brother John’s death, William accepted the call to succeed him as pastor of the Old Tennent Church. Students at the College of New Jersey often walked twenty miles to hear him preach. As a trustee of the college, William Tennent, Jr., always kept a watchful eye over the school’s spiritual well-being. He once arrived late at a board meeting, to hear his colleagues favorably discussing a proposition from the governor of New Jersey which would revise the college’s charter, to place the school under “state” control in exchange for a monetary benefit. After a while, Mr. Tennent rose to his feet and said, “Brethren! are you mad? I say, brethren, are you mad? Rather than accept the offer . . . , I would set fire to the College edifice at its four corners, and run away in the light of the flames.” Needless to say, the trustees ended the bargaining.

William faithfully served until his death in 1777. Dr. Elias Boudinot said of him, “His people loved him as a father; revered him as the pastor and bishop of their souls; obeyed him as their instructor; and delighted in his company and private conversation as of a friend and brother.”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Archibald Alexander. The Log College. 1851. Reprint. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1968.

I observed, Sir, before, that I obtained the Licensure of four Meeting-Houses when I first came to the Colony. In October 1748, the People petitioned for the Licensure of three more, which with great Difficulty was obtained. Among these seven, I have hitherto divided my Time, in Proportion to the Number of Dissenters at each Meeting-House: Three of them lie in Hanover County, one in Henrico County, which lies Southward; one in Caroline County, which lies Northward; one in Louisa County, situated to the Westward; and one in Gocchland, to the South-west of Hanover. The nearest are 12 or 15 Miles distant from each other, and the Extremes about 40. My Congregation is very much dispersed; and notwithstanding the Number of the Meeting-Houses, some live 20, some 30 and a few 40 Miles from the nearest. Were they all compactly situated in one County, they would be sufficient to form three distinct Congregations; but in their present Situation, I believe they could constitute but two large ones, each capable of affording a competent Maintenance to a Minister. At the lower Meeting-House in Hanover, which I took more immediately as my Charge when I accepted their Call, there is a sufficient Number to form a large Congregation; but as it lies between that in Caroline, and that in Henrico which are but weak, it would seem cruel to separate it from them, as they could not each of them maintain a Minister of their own. The People about the four upper Meeting-Houses are waiting for a Minister with impatient Eagerness, and intend to reduce their Houses into three.

Were you Sir, to preach at any of these Houses, where there is the smallest Number of Dissenters, you would imagine there was a sufficient Number of People to form a distinct Congregation at each of them; for where there are not above 15 or 20 Families that have fully join’d with me, you’d see perhaps 4 or 500 Hearers, and sometimes twice that Number; the Church-People in general being very eager to hear. This I looked upon at first as a meer Curiosity after Novelty; but as it continues in general without Abatement, and in some Places seems to increase; I cannot but look upon it as a happy Presage. This I have the more Reason to do now, as I have observed many of these neutral Hearers become at length thoroughly engaged, and sundry of them bro’t to be solemnly tho’tful. I believe I could number up 50 or 60 Families, who have thus been happily intangled in the Net of the Gospel by their own Curiosity, or some such Motive, since my coming here; and I have Reason to hope, that were there another Minister settled here, it would cause a very great Addition to our Number. Indeed this appears to me the most promising Circumstance that at present attends us; for alas! there seems no great Prospect of the Conviction of those that are thoroughly proselyted, and yet have rested short of real Religion (tho’ blessed be the Lord, a few of them are awakened now and then) but when any of these transient Hearers, that are at their own Disposal, and not under the Influence of their Relations, &c. who are already attached, do join with us, ‘tis generally a Sign of some considerable Degrees of Conviction; as the Epithet New-Light (the usual Brand with which we are here stigmatized) is so reproachful, that the Secure will not venture to incur the Odium.

There are about 300 Communicants in my Congregation, who make an external Profession of real Religion. I am not fond of publishing a Calculation of Christians; as I am sensible of the Fallibility of my Judgment in such Cases: but it is impossible for a Heart anxious for the Salvation of Men, to deny itself the Comfort of counting up at Times the Number of those that appear such in a Judgment of rational Charity; and I entertain the pleasing Hope that the greatest Number of these Communicants are sincere in their Profession, and shall walk with Christ in White in the Fields of immortal Glory. Besides these, there are many that are constant Hearers and cordial Proselytes, who thro’ a consciousness of Unfitness, or execessive Scrupulosity, do not seek Admission as yet to the Lord’s Table.

R. and D. S.—If the publication of a narrative of the rise, progress, and present situation of religion in Virginia, may not only gratify good people, but (as you give me reason to hope) animate their prayers for us, and also encourage preachers to come into these parts, I should charge myself with a criminal neglect if I refused to publish the marvelous work of the Lord among us. I hope I may observe without the umbrage of calumny what is but too evident to serious people of all denominations among us, that religion has been, and in most parts of the colony, still is, in a very low state. A surprising negligence in attending public worship, and an equally surprising levity and unconcernedness in those that attend. Family religion a rarity, and a solemn concern about eternal things a greater. Vices of various kinds triumphant, and even a form of godliness not common. But universal fame makes it needless for me to enlarge on this disagreeable subject. Before the revival in 1743, there were a few who were awakened, as they have told me, either by their own serious reflections, suggested and enforced by Divine energy, or on reading some authors of the last century, particularly Boston, Baxter, Flavel, and Bunyan. There was one Mr Samuel Morris, who had for some time been very anxious about his own salvation, who after obtaining blessed relief in Christ became zealous for the salvation of his neighbours, and very earnest to use means to awaken them. This was the tendency of his conversation, and he also read to them such authors as had been most useful to himself, particularly Luther on the Galatians, and his table discourses, and several pieces of honest Bunyan’s. By these means some of his neighbours were made more thoughtful about their souls, but the concern was not very extensive. I have prevailed on my good friend just now named, who was the principal private instrument of promoting the late work, and therefore well acquainted with it, to write me a narrative of its rise and progress, and this, together with that he and others have told me, I shall present to you, without any material alterations. “In the year 1740 Mr Whitefield had preached at Williamsburg at the invitation of Mr Blair, our late commissary. But we being sixty miles distant from Williamsburg, he left the colony before we had an opportunity of hearing him. But in the year 1743 a young gentleman from Scotland had got a book of his sermons, preached in Glasgow, and taken from his mouth in short hand, which, after I had read with great benefit, I invited my neighbours to come and hear them; and the plainness and fervency of these discourses being attended with the power of the Lord, many were convinced of their undone condition, and constrained to seek deliverance with the greatest solicitude. A considerable number met to hear these sermons every Sabbath, and frequently on week days. The concern of some was so passionate and violent, that they could not avoid crying out, weeping bitterly, & c. And that when such indications of religious concern were so strange and ridiculous, that they could not be occasioned by example or sympathy, and the affectation of them would be so unprofitable an instance of hypocrisy, that none could be tempted to it. My dwelling-house at length was too small to contain the people, whereupon we determined to build a meeting-house, merely for reading. And having never been used to social extempore prayer, none of us durst attempt it. By this single means several were awakened, and by their conduct ever since is a proof of the continuance and happy issue of their impressions. When the report was spread abroad, I was invited to several places to read these sermons, at a considerable distance, and by this means the concern was propagated.

The Rev. Mr. Whitefield arrived at the City of N. York on Wednesday the 14th Inst. A little before Night. The next Morning he waited on the Rev. Mr. Vesey, and desired leave to preach in the English Church, but was refus’d: The Reason assigned for such Refusal was, because Mr. Whitefield had no Licence to Preach in any Parish but that for which he was ordained; and an old Canon was read. To this Mr. Whitefield reply’d, That that Canon was Obsolete, and had not been in Use for above 100 Years, That the whole Body of the Clergy, frequently preach out of the Bounds of their Parishes, without such Licence. These Arguments not prevailing, some Application was made to the Rev. Mr. Boel, for the Use of the New Dutch Church, but this also was refus’d. Then Mr. Whitefield had the offer of the Presbyterian Church, but did not care at first to accept it, not being willing to give any Offence to his Brethren of the Church of England; but said, He chose rather to go without the Camp, bearing his Reproach, and Preach in the Fields. At length being informed, that in some Parts of this Country, the Meeting Houses had been alternately us’d by the Ministers of the several Communions, and very often borrowed by the Church of the Dissenters, he consented to accept the Offer for the Evening. However, in the Afternoon he preached in the Fields to many Hundreds of People.

Among the Hearers, the Person who gives this Account, was one. I fear Curiosity was the Motive that led me and many others into that Assembly. I had read two or three of Mr. Whitefield’s Sermons and part of his Journal, and from thence had obtained a settled Opinion, that he was a Good Man. Thus far was I prejudiced in his Favour. But then having heard of much Opposition, and many Clamours against him, I tho’t it possible that he might have carried Matters too far—That some Enthusiasm might have mix’d itself with his Piety, and that his Zeal might have exceeded his Knowledge. With these Prepossessions I went into the Fields; when I came there, I saw a great Number of People consisting of Christians of all Denominations, some Jews, and a few, I believe, that had no Religion at all. When Mr. Whitefield came to the Place before designed, which was a little Eminence on the side of a Hill, he stood still, and beckoned with his Hand, and dispos’d the Multitude upon the Descent, before, and on each side of him. He then prayed most excellently, in the same manner (I guess) that the first Ministers of the Christian Church prayed, before they were shackled with Forms. The Assembly soon appeared to be divided into two Companies, the one of which I considered under the Name of GOD’s Church, and the other the Devil’s Chappel. The first were collected round the Minister, and were very serious and attentive. The last had placed themselves in the skirts of the Assembly, and spent most of their Time in Giggling, Scoffing, Talking and Laughing. I believe the Minister saw them, for in his Sermon, observing the Cowardice and Shamefacedness of Christians in Christ’s Cause, he pointed towards this Assembly, and reproached the former with the boldness and Zeal with which the Devil’s Vassals serve him. Towards the last Prayer, the whole Assembly appeared more united, and all became hush’d and still; a solemn Awe and Reverence appeared in the Faces of most, a mighty Energy attended the Word. I heard and felt something astonishing and surprizing, but I confess; I was not at that Time fully rid of my Scruples. But as I tho’t I saw a visible Presence of GOD with Mr. Whitefield, I kept my Doubts to my self.

Under this Frame of Mind, I went to hear him in the Evening at the Presbyterian Church, where he Expounded to above 2000 People within and without Doors. I never in my Life saw so attentive an Audience: Mr. Whitefield spake as one having Authority: All he said was Demonstration, Life and Power! The Peoples Eyes and Ears hung on his Lips. They greedily devour’d every Word. I came Home astonished! Every Scruple vanished. I never saw nor heard the like, and I said within my self, Surely God is with this Man of a Truth. He preach’d and expounded in this manner twice every Day for four Days, and this Evening Assemblies were continually increasing. On Sunday Morning at 8 o’Clock, this Congregation consisted of about 1500 people: But at Night several Thousands came together to hear him, and the Place being too strait for them, many were forced to go away, and some (tis said) with Tears lamented their Disappointment.

And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner propos'd, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon receiv'd to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.

Mr. Whitefield, in leaving us, went preaching all the way thro' the colonies to Georgia. The settlement of that province had lately been begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen, accustomed to labor, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was with families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors, many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the jails, who, being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for. The sight of their miserable situation inspir'd the benevolent heart of Mr. Whitefield with the idea of building an Orphan House there, in which they might be supported and educated. Returning northward, he preach'd up this charity, and made large collections, for his eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.

I did not disapprove of the design, but, as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, and it was proposed to send them from Philadelphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been better to have built the house here, and brought the children to it. This I advis'd; but he was resolute in his first project, rejected my counsel, and I therefore refus'd to contribute. I happened soon after to attend one of his 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, 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 asham'd of that, and determin'd me to give the silver; and he finish'd so admirably, that I empty'd my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. At this sermon there was also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments respecting the building in Georgia, and suspecting a collection might be intended, had, by precaution, emptied his pockets before he came from home. Towards the conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong desire to give, and apply'd to a neighbour, who stood near him, to borrow some money for the purpose. The application was unfortunately [made] to perhaps the only man in the company who had the firmness not to be affected by the preacher. His answer was, "At any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now, for thee seems to be out of thy right senses."

Some of Mr. Whitefield's enemies affected to suppose that he would apply these collections to his own private emolument; but I who was intimately acquainted with him (being employed in printing his Sermons and Journals, etc.), never had the least suspicion of his integrity, but am to this day decidedly of opinion that he was in all his conduct a perfectly honest man; and methinks my testimony in his favour ought to have the more weight, as we had no religious connection. He us'd, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard. Ours was a mere civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and lasted to his death.

The following instance will show something of the terms on which we stood. Upon one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could lodge when there, as he understood his old friend and host, Mr. Benezet, was removed to Germantown. My answer was, "You know my house; if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome." He reply'd, that if I made that kind offer for Christ's sake, I should not miss of a reward. And I returned, "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake." One of our common acquaintance jocosely remark'd, that, knowing it to be the custom of the saints, when they received any favour, to shift the burden of the obligation from off their own shoulders, and place it in heaven, I had contriv'd to fix it on earth.

The last time I saw Mr. Whitefield was in London, when he consulted me about his Orphan House concern, and his purpose of appropriating it to the establishment of a college.

He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great distance, especially as his auditories, however numerous, observ'd the most exact silence. He preach'd one evening from the top of the Court-house steps, which are in the middle of Market-street, and on the west side of Second-street, which crosses it at right angles. Both streets were fill'd with his hearers to a considerable distance. Being among the hindmost in Market-street, I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards the river; and I found his voice distinct till I came near Front-street, when some noise in that street obscur'd it. Imagining then a semi-circle, of which my distance should be the radius, and that it were fill'd with auditors, to each of whom I allow'd two square feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconcil'd me to the newspaper accounts of his having preach'd to twenty-five thousand people in the fields, and to the ancient histories of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.

By hearing him often, I came to distinguish easily between sermons newly compos'd, and those which he had often preach'd in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improv'd by frequent repetitions that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turn'd and well plac'd, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleas'd with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that receiv'd from an excellent piece of musick. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.

His writing and printing from time to time gave great advantage to his enemies; unguarded expressions, and even erroneous opinions, delivered in preaching, might have been afterwards explain'd or qualifi'd by supposing others that might have accompani'd them, or they might have been deny'd; but litera scripta monet. Critics attack'd his writings violently, and with so much appearance of reason as to diminish the number of his votaries and prevent their encrease; so that I am of opinion if he had never written any thing, he would have left behind him a much more numerous and important sect, and his reputation might in that case have been still growing, even after his death, as there being nothing of his writing on which to found a censure and give him a lower character, his proselytes would be left at liberty to feign for him as great a variety of excellence as their enthusiastic admiration might wish him to have possessed.

Did I come to preach myself, and not Christ Jesus my Lord, I would come to you, not in this Plainness of Speech, but with the enticing Words of Man’s Wisdom. Did I desire to please natural Men, I need not preach here in the Wilderness. I hope my Heart aims at nothing else than what our Lord’s great Fore-runner aim’d at, and which ought to be the Business of every Gospel Minister, that is, to point out to you the God-Man Christ-Jesus.—Behold then, by Faith behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the Sins of the World.—Look unto him, and be saved. You have heard how he has manifested, and will yet manifest his Glory to be true Believers; and why then, O Sinners, will you not believe in him? I say, O Sinners, for now I have spoken to the Saints; I have many Things to speak to you. And Oh! May God give you all an hearing Ear, and an obedient Heart!

My Lord, even the Lord Jesus, who shewed forth his Glory above 1700 Years ago, has made a Marriage Feast, and offers to espouse all Sinners to himself, and to make them Flesh of his Flesh, and Bone of his Bone. He is willing to be united to you by one Spirit. In every Age, at sundry Times, and after divers Manners, he hath sent forth his Servants, and they have bid many, but yet, my Brethren, there is Room.—The Lord therefore now has given a Commission in these last Days to other of his Servants even to compel poor Sinners by the Cords of Love to come in.—For our Master’s House must and shall be filled.—He will not shed his precious Blood in vain.—Come then, my Brethren, come to the Marriage.—Do not play the Harlot any longer.—Let this be the Day of your Espousals with Jesus Christ,—he only is your lawful Husband,—he is willing to receive you, tho’ other Lords have had Dominion over you, Come to the Marriage.—Behold the Oxen and Fatlings are killed, and all the Things are ready, let me hear you say, as Rebecca did, when they asked her, whether she would go and be a Wife to Isaac; Oh let me hear you say, We will come. Indeed you will not repent it. The Lord shall turn your Water into Wine. He shall fill your Souls with Marrow and Fatness, and cause you to praise him with joyful Lips. Do not say, you are miserable, and poor, and blind and naked, and therefore ashamed to come, for it is to such that this Invitation is now sent. The Polite, the Rich, the Busy, Self-righteous Pharisees of this Generation have been bidden already, but they have rejected the Counsel of God against themselves. They are too deeply engaged in going, one to his Country House, another to his Merchandize. They are so deeply wedded to the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World, that they, as it were with one Consent, have made Excuse. And tho’ they have been often called in their own Synagogues, yet all the Return they make is to thrust us out, and thereby in Effect say, they will not come. But God forbid, my Brethren, that you should learn of them; no, since our Lord condescends to call first, (because if left to yourselves you would never call after him) let me beseech you to answer him, as he answered for you, when called upon by infinite offended Justice to die for your Sins, that is, Lo! I come to do thy Will, O God! What if you are miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, that is no Excuse;—Faith is the only wedding Garment Christ requires; he does not call you because you are already, but because he intends to make you Saints. No, it pities him to see you naked. He wants to cover you with this Righteousness. In short, he desires to shew forth his Glory, that is, his free Love thro’ your Faith in him. Not but that he will be glorified, whether you believe in him or not; for the infinitely free Love of Jesus Christ will be ever the same, whether you believe it, and so receive it, or not. But our Lord will not send out his Servants in vain, to call you always. The Time will come when he will say, None of those which were bidden, and would not come, shall taste of my Supper.—Our Lord is a God of Justice, as well as a God of Love; and if Sinners will not take hold of his Golden Sceptre, verily he will bruise them with his Iron Rod. It is for your Sakes, O Sinners, and not his own, that he thus condescends to invite you. Oh suffer him then to shew forth his Glory, even the Glory of the exceeding Riches of his free Grace, by believing on him. For we are saved by Grace thro’ Faith. It was Grace, free Grace, that moved the Father so to love the World, as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting Life! It was Grace that made the Son come down and dye. It was Grace, free Grace, that moved the Holy Ghost to undertake to sanctify the Elect People of God; and it was Grace, free Grace that moved our Lord Jesus Christ to send forth his Ministers to call all poor Sinners this Day. Let me not then, my Brethren, go without my Errand. Why will you not believe in him? will the Devil do such great and good Things for you as Christ will? No indeed, he will not. Perhaps he may give you to drink at first of a little brutish Pleasure, But what will he give you to drink at last? a Cup of Fury, and of trembling; a never dying Worm, a self condemning Conscience, and the bitter Pains of eternal Death. But as for the Servants of Jesus Christ, it is not so with them. No he keeps his best Wine till the last. And tho’ he may cause you to drink of the Brook in the Way to Heaven, and of the Cup of Affliction, yet he sweetens that with a Sense of his Goodness, and makes it pleasant Drink, such as their Souls do love. I appeal to the Experience of any Saint here present, (as I doubt not but there are many such in this Place) whether Christ has not proved faithful to his, ever since you have been espoused to him? Has he not shew’d forth his Glory every since you have believed on him? And now, Sinners , what have you to object? I see you are all silent, and well you may.—For if you will not be drawn by the Cords of Infinite and everlasting Love, what will draw you? I could urge many Terrors of the Lord to perswade you; but if the Love of Jesus Christ will not constrain you, your Case is desparate. Remember then this Day I have invited all, even the worst of Sinners, the most abandon’d Adulterers and Adulteresses to the Lord Jesus. If you perish remember you do not perish for lack of Invitation—You yourselves shall stand forth at the last Day, and I here give you a Summons to meet me at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and to clear both my Master and me.—Would weeping, would Tears prevail on you, I could wish my Head Waters, and my Eyes Fountains of Tears, that I might weep our every Argument, and melt you into Love.—Would any Thing I could do or suffer influence your Hearts, I think I could bear to pluck out my Eyes, or even to lay down my Life for your Sakes. Or was I sure to prevail on you by Importunity, I could continue my Discourse till Midnight, I would wrestle with you even till the Morning Watch, as Jacob did with the Angel, and would not go away till I had overcome.—But such Power only belongeth unto the Lord,—I can only invite; it is He only can work in you both to Will and to Do after his good Pleasure; It is his Property to take away the Heart of Stone, and give you a Heart of Flesh; It is his Spirit that must convince you of unbelief, and of the everlasting Righteousness of his dear Son.—'Tis he alone must give Faith to apply his Righteousness to your Hearts, It is He alone can give you a wedding Garment, and cause you to sit down and drink New Wine in his Kingdom.—Whatever others may boast of Man’s Free-will, I know of no Free-will any one hath, except a Free-will to do Evil continually—As to Spirituals we are quite dead, and have no more Power to turn to God of ourselves than Lazarus had to raise him self, after he had lain stinking in the Grave four Days.—If thou canst go, Oh Man, and breathe upon all the dry Bones that lye in the Graves, and bid them live, if thou canst take thy Mantle and divide yonder River as Elijah did the River Jordan [then] will we believe thou hast a Po[wer] to turn to God of thyself: But [as] thou must despair of the one, so thou must despair of the other, without Christ’s preventing and quickning Grace; In him is thy only Help; —Fly to him then by Faith; Say unto him, as the poor Leper did, Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make us willing; and he will stretch forth the Right-Hand of his Power to afflict and relieve you: He will sweetly guide you by his Wis[do]m on Earth, and afterwards take you up to partake of his Glory in Heaven.