Upper Marlborough, December 8, 1739

DEAR SIR,—I cannot defer writing to dear Mr. Noble any longer. This afternoon God brought us hither. Some are solicitous for my staying here to-morrow. As it seems to be a call from Providence, I have complied with their request. Oh that I may be enabled to lift up my voice like a trumpet, and to speak with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power! These parts are in a dead sleep. At Annapolis, I preached twice, and spoke home to some ladies concerning the vanity of their false politeness. But, alas! they are wedded to their quadrille and ombre. The minister of the place was under convictions. He wept twice, and earnestly begged my prayers. He will not frighten people, I believe, with harsh doctrine. He loves to prophesy smooth things. God blessed the word wonderfully at Philadelphia. I have great reason to think many are brought home to God. Oh, help me, help me, dearest Mr. Noble, help me to be thankful; and accept my thanks, though late, for all favours received when at New York. Salute your dear wife, my kind hostess. Exhort her to be severely kind to her little boy. I am your weak, but affectionate friend, brother, and servant in Christ,

George Whitefield

Beloved Brethren, You have often heard your Danger describ’d, you have had many a Call, by the Word, and Providence of God, as well as by your own Consciences, and are you not awaken’d yet? O strange! O mournful! Others have been (through Grace) convinc’d and chang’d effectually by the Means you enjoy, and won’t these be a Witness against you at the Tribunal of Christ? What will you be able to say in your own Vindication? Then won’t Blushing and Confusion cover you, and guilty Silence be your Answer? What, does the Word prove a Savour of Life until Life to others, and of Death unto Death to you? O dreadful! What do you intend to do dear Brethren? Will you sleep for ever? Will you sleep till Death and Hell awake you? Or do you think that you may go to Heaven in this Slumber of carnal Security? If you do you shall find your selves miserably mistaken! as is fully prov’d in the following Tract. Be not deceiv’d Brethren, The Kingdom of Heaven suffers Violence, and the violent (and they only) take by it Force, Matth. 11. 12. Let me address you as the Prophet Elijah did the People of Israel, I Kings 18. 21. How long halt ye between two Opinions? If the Lord be God follow him: but if Baal then follow him. Or as the Shipmaster to Jonah, who was fast asleep in the midst of a great Tempest, Jonah 1. 5. What meanest thou, O Sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be he will think upon us that we perish not, Verse 6. [——] just and pertinent Note of Mr. Henry, upon this Passage of Scripture, “That those who sleep in a Storm may well be ask’d what they mean?" Brethren, You sleep in a greater Storm than Jonah did; that only concern’d the Body, but this the precious Soul; that a temporal, but this an eternal Death. You are (whether you know it or not sensibly) every Moment ready to be swallow’d up by the boisterous Billow of God’s justly incensed Ire, and the Vessel of your Souls like to be broken by a dreadful Inundation of his vindictive Fury and Revenge: Deut. 32. 41, 35. Rom. 12. 19. “And yet will you sleep, what Metal are you made of? What God do you fear? Or are you deaf to all the Menaces of Heaven?” Will not the Terrors of an eternal God, and an eternal Hell make you afraid? What mean you? Are you yet wholly lost to Sense, to Reason, and to Consicence? Are you degenerated into Beasts? Or petrified unto Stones? Are you cover’d with the Leviathan’s Scales that no Arrow from the Bow of God will pierce you! Mayn’t the Example of Jonas’s Fellow Mariners make you asham’d? Jonah 1. 5. Then the Mariners were afraid, and cry’d every Man to his God, and cast forth the Wares that were in the Ship, into the Sea, to lighten it of them. But perhaps you mock at Fear, and are not affrighted, though the Heavens look black, and God’s Lightings and Thunders, from blazing, trembling Sinai, flash and groan, and rore hideously! Tho! God’s Law condemn you, and your own Consciences tell you, that you shall surely perish, if ye die in the same State you are now in, yet you boldy, or rather shall I say impudently, or stupidly brave it out in the Face of an angry Heaven! And run upon the thick Bosses of God’s Bucklers, and are not afraid when God’s great Ordnance is level’d at your naked Bosom. You won’t be perswaded by any Importunity to cast these Goods out of the Ship, (as the Mariners did) which will if retain’d sink it in Death. I mean your darling Lusts which you must forsake or perish. Mat. 5. 29. Again, the affrighted Mariners cry’d every one to his God, Ver. 5. Why don’t you awake poor Souls, and cry every one of you to God, with the utmost Vehemence, as the Disciples of Christ did in a Storm, when the Waves were like to overwhelm the Vessel, Lord, save us we perish! Mat. 8. 25. Or as Peter’s Hearers, Acts 2. 37. Men and Brethren, What shall we do to be saved? Sirs, Suffer me to accost you in the Language of Paul to the Ephesians, Chap. 5. 14. Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the Dead, and Christ shall give thee Light; for the Time past of our Life may suffice us, to have wrought the Will of the Gentiles. 1 Pet. 4. 3. Awake to Righteousness and sin not: for some have not the Knowledge of God: I speak this to your Shame. I Cor. 15. 34. And especially knowing the Time, that now it is high Time to awake out of Sleep. But I can’t in Regard of you add the Apostle’s Reason, Rom. 13. 11. For now is your Salvation nearer than when ye believed. No brethren! I am oblig’d in Faithfulness to God, and Love to you, to tell that inasmuch as you did not, and now do not believe, that your Damnation is nearer than when ye first heard the Gospel of Christ, and Salvation by his Blood; because of your unbelieving Obstinacy and presumptuous Security.

The world is still sleeping its “sleep of death.” It has been a slumber of many generations;—sometimes deeper, sometimes lighter,—yet still a slumber like that of the tomb, as if destined to continue till the last trumpet sound; and then there shall be no more sleep.

Yet God has not left it to sleep on unwarned. He has spoken in a voice that might reach the dullest ears and quicken the coldest heart. Ten thousand times has He thus spoken and still He speaks. But the world refuses to hear. Its myriads slumber on, as if this sleep of death were the very blessedness of its being.

Yet in one sense the world’s sleep has never been universal. Never has there been an age when it could be said there is not one awake. The multitude has always slept, but there has always been a little flock awake. Even in the world’s deepest midnight there have been always children of the light and of the day. In the midst of a slumbering world some have been in every age awake. God’s voice had reached them, and His mighty power had raised them, and they walked the earth, awake among sleepers, the living among the dead.

The volume before us contains not the history of the sleeping many, but of the waking few. Its object is to trace out their story and record it for a memorial to all generations. The world has written at large the history of its sleeping multitudes, it becomes the Church of Christ to record the simpler, briefer annals of its awakened ones. Doubtless, their record is on high, written more imperishably than the world can ever accomplish for its sons, yet still it is well for earth to have a record of those of whom the world was not worthy.

Their story is as full of interest as it is of importance. The waking up of each soul would be matter enough for a history,—its various shakingd and startings up, ere it was fully aroused; the word or the stroke that effected the work; the time, the way in which it became awake for eternity and for God, as well as its new course of light after it awoke,—all these are fraught with an interest to which nothing of time or earth can ever once be compared. And then, when the voice of God awakes not one, but thousands, it may be in a day; when whole villages and districts seems as if arising and putting on new life,—how intensely, how unutterably interesting! At such a crisis it seems as if the world itself were actually beginning to awake,—as if the shock that had broken the slumbers of so many were about to shake the whole world together. Yet alas! the tokens of life soon vanish. The half-awakened sleepers sink back into deeper slumber, and the startled world lies down in still more sad and desperate security.

It hath been a frequent observation, that if one Generation begins to decline, the next that followeth usually grows worse, and so on; till God poureth out his Spirit again upon them; and for the most part some desolating Judgments intervene. Thus it was with Israel soon after they came into Canaan, Judg. 2. 10 there arose another Generation, which knew not the Lord; and then, verse 14. the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, &c.The decayes which we do already languish under, are sad, and what tokens are there on our Children that it is like to be better hereafter? we are going off, and they are coming apace on the Stage, and the management of the great concerns of Religion will in a little time be devolved upon them; and what aspect hath this upon it in the observation of serious Souls? God be thanked, that there are so many among them that promise well, and the Lord add to, and greatly encrease their number; But alas, how doth vanity, and a fondness after new things abound among them? how do young persons grow weary of the strict profession of their fathers, and become strong disputants for those things which their Progenitors forsook a pleasant Land for the avoidance of, and that not only for themselves, but that their posterity might be removed from the temptations of? Besides, it is almost a general complaint of Family Governours, that their Children and Servants are weary of the yoke, and are not willing to be under their Command, or observe the good order in the Family which they require them to attend: that they are in combination one with another, and do joyn hand in hand in refusing of that subjection on which they owe to their Superiors, and debauching of themselves with their night revels, and meetings in bad houses, so drink and game: they force the reins into their necks, and will be no way curbed in from their exorbitances; and these also the Children of Godly Parents, and such as have been carefully and religiously Educated, and many a time solemnly charged with tears and earnest adjurations, to Serve the God of their Fathers with a perfect heart, and a willing mind, and warned of his fearful departure from them if they do not. How far this decay is to be imputed to the neglect of Family Governours, either in a prudent managing of their authority, or in a careful setting of a good and holy example before their Families, is a matter of awful consideration; for certainly they are sorely afflicted in this matter, and ought to judge themselves upon the account: however, this plainly discovereth that the life of Religion is panting and gasping among us.

I am now in the eighty-third year of my age; and having had an opportunity to converse with the first planters of this country, and having been for sixty-five years a preacher of the Gospel; I cannot but be in a disposition of those ancient men who had seen the foundation of the first house, and wept with a loud voice to see what a change the work of the temple had upon it. I wish it were no other than the weakness of Horace’s old man, the Laudator Temporis Acti, when I complain there is a grievous decay of piety in the land, and a leaving the first love, and that the beauties of holiness are not to be seen as once they were; and the very interest of New England seems to be changed from a religious to a worldly one. Oh! that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears.” And in a sermon in the aforementioned book, on Early Piety, he further writes, “The children of New England are or once were for the most part the children of godly men. What did our forefathers come into this wilderness for? not to gain estates, as men do now, but for religion, and that they might leave their children in a hopeful way of being truly religious. There was a famous man that preached before one of the greatest assemblies that ever was preached unto, seventy years ago; and he told them, I have lived in a county seven years, and all that time I never heard one profane oath, and all that time I never did see a man drunk in that land. Where was that country? It was New England! But ah degenerate New England, what art thou come to at this day? how are those sins become common in thee, that once were not so much as heard of in this land!”

Whether we have not in a great measure forgotten our Errand into the Wilderness. You have solemnly professed before God, Angels and Men, that the Cause of your leaving your Country, Kindred and Fathers houses and transporting your selves with your Wives, Little Ones and Substance over the vast Ocean into this waste and howling Wilderness, was your Liberty to walk in the Faith of the Gospel with all good Conscience according to the order of the Gospel, and your enjoyment of the pure Worship of God according to his Institution, without humane Mixtures and Impositions. Now let us sadly consider whether our ancient and primitive affections to the Lord Jesus, his glorious Gospel, his pure and Spiritual Worship and the Order of his House, remain, abide and continue firm, constant, entire and inviolate. Our Saviour’s reiteration of this Question, What went ye out into the Wilderness to see? is no idle repetition, but a sad conviction of our dullness and backwardness to this great duty, and a clear demonstration of the weight and necessity thereof. It may be a grief to us to be put upon such an Inquisition; as it is said of Peter, Job.21.17. Peter was grieved, because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? but the Lord knoweth that a strict and rigid examination of our hearts in this point, is no more then necessary. Wherefore let us call to remembrance the former dayes, and consider whether it was not then better with us, than it is now.

But who is there left among you, that saw these Churches in their first glory, and how do you see them now? Are they not in your eyes in comparison thereof, as nothing? How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! Is not the Temper, Complexion and Countenance of the Churches strangely altered? Doth not a careless, remiss, flat, dry, cold, dead frame of Spirit, grow in upon us secretly, strongly, prodigiously? They that have Ordinances, are as though they had none; and they that hear the Word, as though they heard it not; and they that pray, as though they prayed not; and they that receive Sacraments, as though they received them not; and they that are exercised in the holy things, using them by the by, as matters of custom and ceremony, so as not to hinder their eager prosecution of other things which their hearts are set upon. Yea and in some particular Congregations amongst us, is there not in stead of a sweet smell, a stink? And in stead of a girdle, a rent? And in stead of a stomacher, a girding with sackcloth? and burning in stead of beauty? yea the Vineyard is all overgrown with thorns, and nettles cover the face thereof, and the stone-wall thereof is broken down, Prov. 24 31. yea, and that which is the most sad and certain sign of calamity approaching, Iniquity aboundeth, and the love of many waxeth cold, Mat. 24 12. Pride, Contention, Worldliness, Covetousness, Luxury, Drunkenness and Uncleanness break in a like a flood upon us, and good men grow cold in their love to God and to one another.