Introduction: Whitefield as a Preacher

It is usual to say of George Whitefi eld’s printed sermons that they do not explain his unparalleled influence as a preacher. The criticism marks the high expectation of the reader, and warns us to look beyond the preacher’s words for the secret of his power. Other men have outshone Whitefield in force of reasoning, in charm of diction, in all the literary qualities of the sermon-writer. Other men have been as sincere in their faith, as eager in their ministry, as clear in their statement of the Gospel message; but they were not used, as Whitefield was, to change the lives of thousands in Great Britain and America. Remembering with reverence the power which alone can make preaching effective, it may still be worth our while to see what circumstances and qualities offer, on viii INTRODUCTION

the human side, an explanation of Whitefield’s success.

The times were favourable to a ministry delivering such a message as that of Whitefield and in such a manner. The eighteenth century is often blamed beyond its deserts. Whitefield’s contemporaries, both amongst Churchmen and Nonconformists, included men of piety and zeal as well as of learning and orthodoxy. The Church of Butler, of Seeker, of Gibson, of Sherlock and of Waterland could not lack worthy leaders; nor were the ranks of the clergy at large without men of real devotion. But the period was one of moral depravity and decaying faith. Arianism, developing into Socinianism, infected Church and Nonconformity alike. Theological learning was of little repute. The Universities had sunk into intellectual obscurity. The observance of the Lord’s Day and the practices of religion had decayed. The type of preaching most common was that of the written sermon composed of cold and polished phrases which left the hearer untouched.

The preaching of the men who began the

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Evangelical Revival came with the freshness of a new message, and the very message which the times so sorely needed. If they reasoned, in terms that were sometimes lurid, of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, they declared with no less conviction the love of God and the forgiveness of sins through the finished work of Jesus Christ. If Whitefield’s sermons are read in the light of the times in which they were delivered, their influence will seem less surprising than the absence of some qualities that make for greatness may suggest.

Regard must be had also to the circumstances under which Whitefield often preached. He began his ministry at Gloucester in the church which still stands in the same street with the inn (now the Bell Hotel) at which he was born. His early fame in London, won as a young deacon ordained below the canonical age, came from sermons preached in churches. But when pulpits were closed against him, and when churches were all too small for the congregations which gathered to hear him, he began to preach in the open air. Vast crowds gathered around him at Moorfields, even when violence and ribaldry did their worst to drown his voice.^ At Kingswood, near Bristol, an audience of 200 colliers grew day by day till 20,000 hearers were assembled. Once, in America, he accompanied a repentant criminal to the gallows, and preached, standing upon the coffin in the execution cart. Amidst the acute terror produced by the earthquake of 1775 he preached at midnight to a vast assembly in Hyde Park. His last address was delivered at night on the staircase of the house in which he died, whilst the bedroom candle burned to the socket in his hand. Whitefield has told us, in the preface to his edition of a sermon by Foxe, the martyrologist, on what authority he acted. ‘Our Lord has given us a universal commission: “Go ye, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” When thrust out of the synagogues, a mountain, a ship were His pulpit, and the heavens were His sounding-board. Thus Latimer, Cranmer, Ridley, and Mr John Foxe, the famous

See Tyerman’s Lt/e of Whitefield, i. 554-57, for WTiitefield’s account of his Moorfields experiences in 1742.

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martyrologist, preached. And who needs to be ashamed of such unexceptionable examples? ’ Gpen-sJft” preaching has long been too familiar to excite the interest it did in the days of Whitefield and John Wesley; but never since their days has it been so powerful an evangelistic agent.

But we shall find a further explanation of Whitefield’s success, on the human side, in the manner and method of the preacher. His voice was an organ of singular power and beauty. Franklin, by experiment, reached the conclusion that Whitefield could be heard in the open air by 30,000 persons. A born orator, Whitefield had even at school been chosen for his ’ good elocution and memory ’ to speak before the Corporation at their annual inspection. He recalls, as a young preacher, the advantage he derived from this early training; he commended the study of oratory to others; and he deplored the absence of any such training amongst candidates for the ministry of the Church. His own oratory was dramatic to the last degree. Unsupported

Quoted by Tyerman, ii. 418.

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by transparent sincerity and a passionate love of souls, it would have been intolerable. Employed by Whitefield, it appeared beyond criticism. Some of his sermons were, in substance, delivered again and again, revised with scrupulous care as the test of delivery disclosed weaknesses or new opportunities, and, apparently, gaining rather than losing in power from their repetition. Franklin says that such sermons gave * a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music’ But, after all, far more than justness of emphasis, and musical cadences, and appropriate modulations of the voice, there appealed to hearers the zeal of the man. There was conviction in every sentence. Whitefield preached not to charm the ear, but to win souls. His hearers knew it, and felt the urgency of his appeal. Mr Lecky with justice observes that ’ of no other preacher could it be more truly said that he preached as a dying man to dying men.’

This combination of oratorical power, with a passionate yearning for souls, would of itself

England in the Eighteenth Century II. ix. 569.

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explaf!! the immediate impression created by Whitefield’s ministry. Before he had been many months ordained London crowded to hear him. * One might, as it were, walk upon the people’s heads. Thousands went away from the largest churches for want of room.... The people were all attentive, as hearing for eternity.’ So he wrote himself, and without exaggeration. This early interest was sustained throughout Whitefield’s career. The * common people heard him,’ as they had heard his Master, ’ gladly ‘; but more fastidious judges also bore witness to his power. At the Countess of Huntingdon’s house at Chelsea Bolingbroke was amongst his hearers, and ’ was much moved at the discourse.’ David Garrick is reported to have exclaimed, ‘I would give a hundred guineas if I could say “Oh!” like Mr Whitefield.’ 2 David Hume bore even more striking testimony ^: — ‘Towards the close of one of Whitefield’s sermons at Edinburgh, after a solemn pause, the preacher broke the silence with this appeal

Sou they ’s Life of Wesley, chap. xxv. Tyerman, ii. 355.

‘Quoted in J. P. Gledstone’s Life of Whitefield, pp. 378-9.

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to his audience: “The attendant angel is just about to leave this threshold, and ascend to heaven; and shall he ascend and not bear with him the news of one sinner, among all this multitude reclaimed from the error of his ways?” To give the greater effect to this appeal, the preacher stamped with his foot, lifted up his hands and eyes to heaven, and cried aloud, “Stop, Gabriel! stop, Gabriel! stop ere you enter the sacred portals, and yet carry with you the news of one sinner converted to God!” Hume said that this burst of oratory was accompanied with such animated, yet natural, action, that it surpassed anything he ever saw or heard in any other preacher.’

Not less decisive is the evidence of Benjamin Franklin. He disapproved of Whitefield’s design to build an orphan home in Georgia. But — to take up his own narrative — ‘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

INTRODUCTION xv

pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all! 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 inclination to give, and applied to a neighbour who stood near him to lend him some money for the purpose. The request was made to perhaps the only man in the company who was not affected by the preacher. His answer was, “At any other time, friend Hopkinson, I would lend thee freely; but not now, for thee seems to me to be out of thy right senses.” ’

Perhaps no one was ever more dramatic in the pulpit than Whitefield. ‘In some such manner,’ said the Rev. Joseph Smith, in a

Gillies’ Life of Whitefield, p. 302.

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sermon preached at Charlestown in 1740, ‘I have been tempted to conceive of a seraph, were he sent down to preach among us, and to tell us what things he had seen and heard above.’ He described the Last Judgment in the terms of an actor in it. His picture of a ship overtaken by a tempest at sea worked up to this climax: ‘Our masts are gone! The ship is on her beam-ends! What next?” The long-boat! Take to the long-boat! ’ shouted his audience of sailors. He illustrated the perils of sinners by the picture of a blind man, deserted by his dog, stumbling feebly over a desolate moor, and at last hovering upon the very edge of a precipice. * Good God! He is gone! ’ exclaimed Lord Chesterfield.

Chesterfield, Hume, Bolingbroke, Garrick — these are strange witnesses to a preacher’s power. Let us end by quoting one of another order, John Newton: ‘I bless God that I have lived in his time. Many were the winter mornings I have got up at four, to attend his Tabernacle services at five. I have seen Moorfields as full of lanterns at these times as I

Sermons on Important Subjects (Ed. 1828), p. 796.

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suppose the Haymarket is full of flambeaux on an opera night. As a preacher, if any man were to ask me who was the second I ever had heard, I should be at some loss; but in regard to the first, Mr Whitefield exceeds so far every other of my time, that I should be at none.’

* Whitefield,’ says Canon Overton,^ ’ was a preacher and nothing more.’ Mr Lecky puts the case with a greater fairness when he says that ’ the position of a roving evangelist was of all others that for which both the genius and the disposition of Whitefield were most suited.’ To be such a preacher ’ and nothing more ’ might satisfy the ambition of any man.

The text of the following sermons is, with some slight omissions and the correction of one or two obvious errors, that of the Sermons on Important Subjects, published by Henry Fisher, Son, & P. Jackson in 1828.

A. R. BUCKLAND.

The Evangelical Revival, p. 32.

2 England in the Eighteenth Century, II. ix. 567.