George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America

But the intense anxiety of multitudes to hear his preaching, prevented Whitefield from leaving America for several months longer. He had, indeed, as early as the middle of February, determined not to visit New England till his return from Europe; but arriving at Charleston, he was compelled to devote to labors there the whole month of March, and then set out for Philadelphia, preaching at many places on his way. He says, "All the way from Charleston to this place the cry is, 'For Christ's sake, stay and preach to us.' Oh for a thousand lives to spend for Jesus."

The heat of the weather made it indispensable for his health that he should go to sea, and July 5th he once more arrived in England, on his last return voyage from America. He says, "We have had but a twenty-eight days' passage. The transition has been so sudden, that I can scarcely believe that I am in England. I hope, ere long, to have a more sudden transition into a better country." When he arrived in his native land, he was ill of a nervous fever, which left him extremely weak in body, and unable to exert himself as formerly. Yet, still intent on his work, he did what he could, in expectation of soon entering into his eternal rest. "Oh, to end life well!" he writes; "methinks I have now but one river to pass over. And we know of One who can carry us over without being ankle deep."

On Whitefield's arrival in England, he found that his excellent friend the Countess of Huntingdon was erecting a large and beautiful church edifice in the fashionable city of Bath, and to that place he at once repaired. There he found several of his clerical brethren preaching in the private chapel at Bretby Hall, belonging to the Earl of Chesterfield, who had placed it for the time being at the disposal of Lady Huntingdon. On Whitefield's arrival, this place was of necessity exchanged for the Park, where the concourse of people was as vast as ever.

October 6, he preached the dedicatory sermon of Lady Huntingdon's church at Bath, to an immense crowd. To his friend Robert Keen, Esq., one of the managers of his London houses, he wrote, "Could you have come, and have been present at the opening of the chapel, you would have been much pleased. The building is extremely plain, and yet equally grand. A most beautiful original! All was conducted with great solemnity. Though a wet day, the place was very full, and assuredly the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls consecrated and made it holy ground by his presence."

He made but a short stay at Bath, and returned to London, still feeble and tottering, but still compelled to labor. He had an interview with his old friend John Wesley, who says of him, "He seemed to be an old man, being fairly worn out in his Master's service, though he has hardly seen fifty years; and yet it pleases God that I, who am now in my sixty-third year, find no disorder, no weakness, no decay, no difference from what I was at five and twenty, only that I have fewer teeth, and more gray hairs." Writing to a friend at Sheerness, in Kent, Jan. 18, 1766, Whitefield says, "I am sorry to acquaint you that it is not in my power to comply with your request, for want of more assistance. I am confined in town with the care of two important posts, when I am only fit to be put into some garrison among invalids." By some means, however, he obtained a release, for in March we find him at Bath and Bristol. Writing, March 17, he says, "The uncertainty of my motions has made me slow in writing; and a desire to be a while free from London cares, has made me indifferent about frequent hearing from thence. Last Friday evening, and twice yesterday, I preached at Bath, to very thronged and brilliant auditories."

Whitefield's interest in America was not lessened by his absence from it. He ardently loved it, and wished for the return of its peace and prosperity. He hoped, with many others, that the repeal of the Stamp Act would lead to this result; hence, we find in his Letter-book this entry: "March 16, 1766, Stamp Act repealed. Gloria Deo."

Among the remarkable men of his day was Samson Occam. He was descended, on his mother's side, from Uncas, chief of the Mohegans. He was born in 1723, of parents who led a wandering life, depending on hunting and fishing for subsistence. None cultivated their lands, all dwelt in wigwams, and Samson was one of the very first of the tribe who learned to read. About the year 1740, at the age of seventeen, he was converted by the labors of Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, and their companions. In a year or two he had learned to read his Bible with ease, and to his great advantage. He was a pupil at the school originally founded by Dr. Wheelock, at Lebanon, Conn., for the benefit exclusively of Indians, four years, and was then a teacher for eleven years. In 1759, he was ordained by the Suffolk Presbytery, and became an eminently zealous preacher to the scattered Mohegans. In 1766, in company with the Rev. Mr. Whitaker of Norwich, he went to England to advocate the cause of Dr. Wheelock's Indian school, which school was afterwards merged in Dartmouth college, of which Mr. Wheelock was also founder and first president. Occum preached in the churches of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon, as well as in some others of different denominations. We remember half a century ago hearing an old lady at Kidderminster, the town of Richard Baxter, describe a scene which occurred in Fawcett's church in that town. Occum had preached, and a handsome collection had been taken for his object; with tears of gratitude and joy the good man thanked them, and in tones which neither the weeping nor the mimetic talent of the old lady would allow her fully to imitate, assured them that the blessing of many ready to perish would come upon them. The place was a Bochim, and nothing could prevent the people from having the plates again carried round, that they might add to the liberal contributions they had already made.

Occum preached in Great Britain from three to four hundred sermons; and as no North American Indian had ever preached in England before, public curiosity was great, and his pecuniary success considerable. He brought to this country, with his companion, as the produce of their labors, more than forty-five thousand dollars. In 1772 he published an interesting sermon which he preached to an Indian at his execution. An excellent portrait of him was published in England.

Dr. Timothy Dwight writes, "I heard Mr. Occum twice. His discourses, though not proofs of superior talents, were decent; and his utterance in some degree eloquent. His character at one time labored under some imputations; yet there is good reason to believe that most, if not all of them were unfounded; and there is satisfactory evidence that he was a man of piety." An account of the Montauk Indians, written by Occum, is preserved in the "Historical Collections." He died at New Stockbridge, N. Y., July, 1792. It has been said that the first Sunday-school in these United States was founded in the house of his sister, a few months after his death.

Occum was somewhat of a wit, and could well apply his talent in his conflict with the enemies of divine truth. He once ended a long controversial conversation with a Universalist, by saying, "Well, well, remember, if you are correct, I am safe; if you are not correct, I am safe. I have two strings to my bow; you have but one."

In June, 1766, we again find Whitefield in the neighborhood of Bristol, whence he writes, "As my feverish heat continues, and the weather is too wet to travel, I have complied with the advice of friends, and have commenced a Hot-wells water drinker twice a day. However, twice this week, at six o'clock in the morning, I have been enabled to call thirsty souls to come and 'drink of the water of life freely.' Tomorrow evening, God willing, the call is to be repeated, and again on Sunday." On his return to London, he writes, under date of September 25, "Many in this metropolis seem to be on the wing for God; the shout of a king is yet heard in the Methodist camp. Had I wings, I would gladly fly from pole to pole; but they are clipped by thirty years' feeble labors. Twice or thrice a week I am permitted to ascend my gospel throne. The love of Christ, I am persuaded, will constrain you to pray that the last glimmering of an expiring taper may be blessed to the guiding of many, wandering souls to the Lamb of God."

The good providence of God now gave Whitefield a colleague in the ministry at the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court-road chapel, the Rev. Torial Joss. This gentleman had spent many years as captain at sea; converted by divine grace, and filled with holy zeal, he devoted his popular talents to the welfare of his fellow-men, preaching both on sea and land. In a remarkable manner, Mr. Whitefield became acquainted with him, and, without his knowledge, published that he would preach in his houses of worship, which, though with extreme reluctance, Joss did. These services were often renewed, and Whitefield gave him no rest till he abandoned the sea, and devoted himself to the ministry. Everywhere he was popular, and everywhere useful. He continued minister of the two places in London – spending four or five months in each year travelling and preaching – for twenty-seven years after the death of his friend, and then departed from earth, in 1797, in holy triumph, in the 66th year of his age.

One of the most extraordinary men in modern times was the late Rev. Rowland Hill, who erected Surrey chapel, London, and continued to preach in it till his death, in his eighty-ninth year, in 1833. He was eminently dignified in person, possessed extraordinary zeal, and was honored by his great Master with probably more success in the direct work of saving souls than any other minister of his day. He was a man of considerable rank, his father being a gentleman of title, one of his brothers a member of Parliament for many years, representing his native county, and the late eminent statesman and soldier Lord Hill was his nephew. Mr. Hill himself in early life became a Christian, and was educated for the ministry in the established church, but violated its rules, and preached wherever he could; for many years he was greatly persecuted by his own family, some of whom, however, in the end sustained the yoke of Christ. When Rowland began his somewhat erratic career, the opposition from his father was so great, that he was reduced sometimes to extreme poverty; and he was exactly the man to be encouraged by such men as Whitefield and Berridge. We give a few extracts from letters addressed to him by Whitefield, which certainly show no small degree of ardor, though we cannot see in them what Hill's clerical biographer, Mr. Sidney, professed to find, "an aspiration after the honors, when he had no prospect of the sufferings of martyrdom." The fact was, that Mr. Sidney was offended with Whitefield, as he was with his venerable uncle, Mr. Hill, for having deviated from the rigid laws of the establishment. It is only needful to introduce the first letter by saying that it was dated, London, December 27, 1766, and was sent in answer to one in which Mr. Hill had asked his counsel.

"About thirty-four years ago, the master of Pembroke college, where I was educated, took me to task for visiting the sick and going to the prisons. In my haste I said, 'Sir, if it displeaseth you I will go no more.' My heart smote me immediately; I repented, and went again; he heard of it – threatened – but for fear he should be looked on as a persecutor, let me alone. The hearts of all are in the Redeemer's hands. I would not have you give way; no, not for a moment. The storm is too great to hold long. Visiting the sick and imprisoned, and instructing the ignorant, are the very vitals of true and undefiled religion. If threatened, denied degree, or expelled for this, it will be the best degree you can take – a glorious preparative for, and a blessed presage of future usefulness. I have seen the dreadful consequences of giving way and looking back. How many by this wretched cowardice, and fear of the cross, have been turned into pillars, not of useful, but of useless salt. Now is your time to prove the strength of Jesus yours. If opposition did not so much abound, your consolations would not so abound. Blind as he is, Satan sees some great good coming on. We never prospered so much at Oxford as when we were hissed at and reproached as we walked along the streets, as being counted the dung and offscouring of all things. That is a poor building which a little stinking breath of Satan's vassals can throw down. Your house, I trust, is better founded. Is it not built upon a rock? Is not that rock the blessed Jesus? The gates of hell, therefore, shall not be able to prevail against it. Go on, therefore, my dear man, go on. Old Berridge, I believe, would give you the same advice; you are honored in sharing his reproach and name. God be praised that you are enabled to bless when others blaspheme. God bless and direct and support you. He will, he will. Good Lady Huntingdon is in town; she will rejoice to hear that you are under the cross. You will not want her prayers, or the poor prayers of, my dear honest young friend, yours, in an all-conquering Jesus."

The opposition Mr. Hill met with from his parents increased, and the threat of his degree being withheld, was, on the part of the university authorities, more determined; still, however, he persevered in his preaching and his visits, in violation of the laws of discipline. In June, 1767, Mr. Whitefield wrote him: "I wish you joy of the late high dignity conferred upon you – higher than if you were made the greatest professor in the university of Cambridge. The honorable degrees you intend giving to your promising candidates, [allowing some of his fellow-students to preach in the various places which he had visited,] I trust will excite a holy ambition, and a holy emulation; let me know who is first honored. As I have been admitted to the degree of doctor for near these thirty years, I assure you I like my field preferment, my airy pluralities, exceedingly well. For these three weeks last past I have been beating up for fresh recruits in Gloucestershire and South Wales. Thousands and thousands attended, and good Lady Huntingdon was present at one of our reviews. Her ladyship's aid-de-camp preached in Brecknock-street, and Captain Scott, that glorious field-officer, lately fixed up his standard upon dear Mr. Fletcher's horseblock at Madeley. Being invited thither, I have a great inclination to lift up the Redeemer's ensign next week in the same place; with what success, you and your dearly beloved candidates for good old methodistical contempt shall know hereafter. God willing, I intend fighting my way up to town. Soon after my arrival there, I hope thousands and thousands of volleys of prayers, energetic, effectual, fervent, heaven-besieging, heaven-opening, heaven-taking prayers, shall be poured forth for you all. Oh, my dearly beloved and longed-for in the Lord, my bowels yearn towards you. Fear not to go without the camp; keep open the correspondence between the two universities. Remember the praying legions – they were never known to yield. God bless those that are gone to their respective cures– I say not livings, a term of too modern date. Christ is our life; Christ is the Levite's inheritance, and Christ will be the true disinterested Levite's lot and portion and all. Greet your dear young companions whom I saw; they are welcome to write when they please. God be your physician under your bodily malady. A thorn, a thorn! but Christ's grace will be sufficient for you. To his tender, never-failing mercy I commit you."

A few weeks after this, Mr. Hill was much depressed in spirits, partly from bodily illness, partly because he was about to leave Cambridge and its surrounding villages, where he had latterly so frequently preached, but chiefly from the fact that he was going home, where he would again meet the frowns of his honored parents, for what they deemed his overrighteousness. In the midst of all this, however, he knew that he would meet at Hawkstone, his father's residence, the cordial welcome of his sister and elder brother, Richard Hill, afterwards a baronet. This gentleman had lately become a village preacher and a visitor of prisons, like his brother. Under these circumstances he was addressed by Whitefield, in his own peculiar and energetic style: "What said our Lord to Martha? 'Did I not say unto thee, If thou wouldest believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?' Blessed, for ever blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for what he hath done for your dear brother. A preaching, prison-preaching, field-preaching esquire, strikes more than all the black gowns and lawn sleeves in the world. And if I am not mistaken, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls will let the world, and his own children too, know that he will not be prescribed to in respect to men, or garbs, or places; much less will he be confined to any order or set of men under heaven. I wish you both much, very much prosperity. You will have it —you will have it. This is the way, walk ye in it. Both Tabernacle and [Tottenham Court-road] chapel pulpits shall be open to a captain or an esquire sent of God. The good news from Oxford is encouraging. Say what they will, preaching should be one part of the education of a student in divinity. I pray for you night and day."

On the arrival of Mr. Hill at his father's beautiful seat, it was his happiness to find that his brother Brian, afterwards useful as a clergyman, was added to the number of believers in Christ; he learned also, that one of his college friends had been threatened to have an exhibition, or yearly gift towards his university expenses, withdrawn, unless he renounced his evangelical doctrines and practices. The reader will now understand Mr. Whitefield's letter: "I have been sadly hindered from answering your last letter, delivered to me by your brother. I gave it him to read, and we had, I trust, a profitable conference. God be praised if another of your brothers is gained. What grace is this! Four or five out of one family – it is scarcely to be paralleled. Who knows but the root, as well as the branches, may be taken by and by? Abba, Father, all things are possible with thee! Steadiness and perseverance in the children will be one of the best means, under God, of convincing the parents. This present opposition I think cannot last very long; if it does, to obey God rather than man, when forbidden to do what is undoubted duty, is the invariable rule. Our dear Penty [afterwards the Rev. Thomas Pentycross] is under the cross at Cambridge. But

"'Satan thwarts, and men object,Yet the thing they thwart effect.'

I should be glad if any one's exhibition was taken from him for visiting the sick, etc. It would vastly tend to the furtherance of the gospel; but Satan sees too far, I imagine, to play such a game now. Let him do his work; he is only a mastiff chained. Continue to inform me how he barks, and how far he is permitted to go in your parts; and God's people shall be more stirred up to pray for you all."

The close of Mr. Hill's life was truly interesting and instructive. As has been intimated, he preached with scarcely diminished power until within a few weeks of his death. During the last two or three years of his life he very frequently repeated the following lines of an old poet:

"And when I'm to die,Receive me, I'll cry,For Jesus has loved me, I cannot tell why;But this I can find,We two are so joined,That he'll not be in glory, and leave me behind."

"The last time he occupied my pulpit," writes his neighbor, the Rev. George Clayton, "when he preached excellently for an hour, in behalf of a charitable institution, he retired to the vestry after service under feelings of great and manifest exhaustion. Here he remained until every individual except the pew-openers, his servant, and myself had left the place. At length he seemed with some reluctance to summon energy enough to take his departure, intimating that it was in all probability the last time he should preach in Walworth. His servant went before to open the carriage-door, the pew-openers remaining in the vestry. I offered my arm, which he declined, and then followed him as he passed down the aisle of the chapel. The lights were nearly extinguished, the silence was profound, nothing indeed was heard but the slow majestic tread of his own footsteps, when, in an undertone, he thus soliloquized:

"'And when I'm to die,' etc

To my heart this was a scene of unequalled solemnity, nor can I ever recur to it without a revival of that hallowed, sacred, shuddering sympathy which it originally awakened."

When the good old saint lay literally dying, and when apparently unconscious, a friend put his mouth close to his ear, and repeated slowly his favorite lines:

"And when I'm to die," etc

The light came back to his fast-fading eye, a smile overspread his face, and his lips moved in the ineffectual attempt to articulate the words. This was the last sign of consciousness which he gave.

We could almost wish that every disciple of Christ would commit these lines, quaint as they are, to memory, and weave them into the web of his Christian experience. Confidence in Christ, and undeviating adherence to him, can alone enable us to triumph in life and death.

In November, 1766, Whitefield again visited Bath and Bristol, and then passed on to Gloucestershire and Oxford. Never did so many of the nobility attend his ministry as he now saw at Bath, and the results of his whole journey were such as to fill him with the most devout gratitude. He saw too the number of his clerical friends largely increasing, and especially rejoiced in the fact that the excellent Fletcher, of Madeley, preached in his pulpits in London. He writes of this event, "Dear Mr. Fletcher has become a scandalous Tottenham Court preacher… Were we more scandalous, more good would be done… Still, 'the shout of a king is yet heard' in the Methodist camp."

In January, 1767, Whitefield wrote a recommendatory preface to the works of John Bunyan, whom he pleasantly designated, "Bishop Bunyan;" and as soon as the weather would permit, we find him at Norwich, and then at Rodborough, Woodstock, Gloucester, and Haverfordwest, from which last place he wrote, "Thousands and thousands attend by eight in the morning. Life and light seem to fly all around." On a second visit to Gloucester on this tour, he wrote, "Blessed be God, I have got on this side the Welsh mountains. Blessed be God, I have been on the other side. What a scene last Sunday! What a cry for more of the bread of life! But I was quite worn down."

In September following, he again visited the north of England, writing from day to day in high spirits. September 28, he says, "My body feels much fatigued in travelling; comforts in the soul overbalance;" and from Leeds, October 3, he writes, "Field and street preaching have rather bettered than hurt my bodily health."

Whitefield now returned to London, to sustain a heavy disappointment. The negotiations relative to the college at Bethesda were this winter brought to an issue. A memorial addressed to his Majesty was put into the hands of the clerk of the Privy Council, setting forth the great utility of a college in that place to the southern provinces; and praying that a charter might be granted upon the plan of the college in New Jersey. This memorial was transmitted by the clerk of the Privy Council to the lord president, and by his lordship referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom also a draft of an intended charter was presented by the Earl of Dartmouth. A correspondence followed all this between the archbishop and Whitefield; the consequence of which was, that his grace gave the draft of the college to the lord president, who promised he would consider of it; and gave it as his opinion that "the head of the college ought to be a member of the church of England; that this was a qualification not to be dispensed with; and also, that the public prayers should not be extempore ones, but the liturgy of the church, or some other settled and established form." Whitefield replied that these restrictions he could by no means agree to, because the greatest part of the contributions for the orphan-house came from Protestant dissenters; and because he had constantly declared that the intended college should be founded upon a broad foundation, and no other.

"This," said he, "I judged I was sufficiently warranted to do, from the known, long-established, mild, and uncoercive genius of the British government; also from your grace's moderation towards Protestant dissenters; from the unconquerable attachment of the Americans to toleration principles, as well as from the avowed habitual feelings of my own heart. This being the case, and as your grace, by your silence, seems to be like-minded with the lord president; and as your grace's and his lordship's influence will undoubtedly extend itself to others, I would beg leave, after returning all due acknowledgments, to inform your grace that I intend troubling your grace and his lordship no more about this so long depending concern. As it hath pleased the great Head of the church in some degree to renew my bodily strength, I propose now to renew my feeble efforts, and to turn the charity into a more generous, and consequently into a more useful channel. I have no ambition to be looked upon as the founder of a college; but I would fain act the part of an honest man, a disinterested minister of Jesus Christ, and a true, catholic, moderate presbyter of the church of England."