George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America. R Belcher
from the inn, and went to spend a month with his eldest brother at Bristol. Returning from that city to Gloucester, he resided for a short season with his mother. While thus living unemployed, without any definite object before him, and waiting the openings of providence, his mother was visited by an Oxford student, a servitor of Pembroke college in that university. In the course of their conversation, he told her, that after all his expenses at college for the quarter were discharged, he had one penny remaining. She immediately exclaimed, "This will do for my son!" and turning to him, said, "Will you go to Oxford, George?" He replied, "With all my heart." Application was immediately made to several friends who had influence at the college, and they pledged themselves to serve her. In this confidence, her favorite son returned to the grammar-school, where he not only resumed his studies with greater diligence, but endeavored, and not altogether in vain, to promote religion and virtue among his associates.
Having fully secured his literary preparation for the university, Whitefield removed to Oxford in his eighteenth year, and was immediately admitted, as a servitor, into Pembroke college. He soon found that the seat of learning was also a scene of danger. From the period of 1662, when the two thousand Non-conformists had been expelled from the church, the universities had been sinking into a moral lethargy, preferring uniformity to vital religion. Our young servitor was shocked with the impiety of the students in general, and dreading their influence on himself, he as much as possible abstained from their society, and shut himself up in his study.
Before he went to Oxford, Whitefield had heard of a class of young men in the university who "lived by rule and method," and were therefore called Methodists. They were much talked of, and generally despised. Of this party, John Wesley, a Fellow of Lincoln college, and already in holy orders, was the leader, his brother Charles being also as warmly attached to it. They avowed that the great object of their lives was to save their souls, and to live wholly to the glory of God; and rarely have men subjected themselves to greater self-denials and austerities. Drawn towards them by kindred feelings, Whitefield strenuously defended them whenever he heard them reviled, and when he saw them going, through a crowd manifesting their ridicule, every Sunday to receive the sacrament at St. Mary's or Christ church, he was strongly inclined to follow their example.
For more than a year he intensely desired to be acquainted with them, but a sense of his pecuniary inferiority to them prevented his advances. At length, learning that a pauper had attempted suicide, Whitefield sent a poor woman to inform Charles Wesley, that so he might visit her, and administer religious instruction. He charged the woman not to tell Mr. Wesley who sent her, but, contrary to this injunction, she told his name; and Charles Wesley, who had frequently seen Whitefield walking by himself, on the next morning invited him to breakfast. An introduction to the little brotherhood soon followed, and he also, like them, "began to live by rule, and pick up the very fragments of his time, that not a moment might be lost."
It is painful to read Whitefield's own account of the mortifications of body to which he now submitted; and we are not surprised that, as the result, his health was so reduced as to place even his life in danger. All this time he had no clear view of the way of salvation, and was "seeking to work out a righteousness of his own." In this state he lay on his bed, his tongue parched with fever, and the words of the dying Saviour, "I thirst," were impressed on his mind. Remembering that this thirst occurred near the end of the Saviour's sufferings, the thought arose in his mind, "Why may it not be so with me? Why may I not now receive deliverance and comfort? Why may I not now dare to trust and rejoice in the pardoning mercy of God?" There was, as Tracy has said, no reason why he might not – why he ought not. He saw nothing to forbid him. He prayed in hope, borrowing language from the fact which suggested the train of thought – "I thirst, I thirst for faith in pardoning love. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." His prayer was heard. He dared to trust in the mercy of God, as revealed in the death of Jesus Christ for sinners. Conscience and his Bible bore witness that he did right. The load that had so heavily oppressed him, the load of guilt and terror and anxiety, that weighed down his spirit while he sinfully and ungratefully hesitated to trust in divine mercy, was gone. He saw the trustworthiness of the mercy of God in Christ, and his heart rejoiced.
"Though," as Tracy has well said, "the English universities were established mainly for the purpose of educating men for the ministry, Whitefield was not likely to gain a good knowledge of theology there. He took another, and a characteristic course. Some time after his conversion, when he was at Gloucester, he says, 'I began to read the holy Scriptures upon my knees; laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light, and power from above. I thus got more true knowledge in reading the book of God in one month, than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men.'"
Every hour of Whitefield's time, especially after he had been "filled with peace and joy in believing," was sacredly devoted to preparation for the great work to which he had now solemnly devoted himself. He visited the prisoners in the jail, and the poor in their cottages, and gave as much time as he could to communion with God in his closet. His friends now earnestly importuned him to apply for ordination; but from this his deep sense of unworthiness made him shrink. Besides, he intended to have a hundred and fifty sermons carefully written before he began to preach. He had as yet but one, and he lent that to a neighboring clergyman, to convince him that he was not yet fit to be ordained. The clergyman kept it for two weeks, divided it into two, preached it to his own people, and then returned it to Whitefield, with a guinea for the use of it.
Still, however, the work of preparation for the ministry was rapidly going on. The state of his health compelled him to retire for a season from Oxford, and he returned home to increase the depth of his piety, and to be led, little as he thought of it, at once to the pulpit. He writes, "O what sweet communion had I daily vouchsafed with God in prayer, after my coming to Gloucester. How often have I been carried out beyond myself, when meditating in the fields. How assuredly I felt that Christ dwelt in me, and I in him; and how daily did I walk in the comforts of the Holy Ghost, and was edified and refreshed in the multitude of peace. I always observed that as my inward strength increased, so my outward sphere of action increased proportionably."
Thus, happy in himself, and thankful to the gracious God who made him so, the affectionate soul of George Whitefield ardently desired that others might participate in his sacred joys. In order to advance this object, he mixed in the society of young people, and endeavored to awaken them to a just sense of the nature of true religion. Some were convinced of the truth, and united with him in religious exercises; and these were some of the first-fruits of his pious labors. His discovery of the necessity of regeneration, like Melancthon's great discovery of the truth, led him to imagine that no one could resist the evidence which convinced his own mind. He writes, "Upon this, like the woman of Samaria, when Christ revealed himself to her at the well, I had no rest in my soul till I wrote letters to my relations, telling them there was such a thing as the new birth. I imagined they would have gladly received it; but, alas, my words seemed to them as idle tales. They thought I was going beside myself." He visited the jail every day, and read and prayed with the prisoners; attended public worship very frequently, and read twice or three times a week to some poor people in the city. In addition to all this, he tells us, "During my stay here, God enabled me to give a public testimony of my repentance as to seeing and acting plays; for hearing the strollers had come to town, and knowing what an egregious offender I had been, I was stirred up to extract Mr. Law's excellent treatise, entitled, "The absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment." The printer, at my request, put a little of it in the newspaper for six weeks successively; and God was pleased to give it his blessing."
In this manner Whitefield employed himself during nine months; and one effect of so doing was, that the partition wall of bigotry was soon broken down in his heart. He says, "I loved all, of whatever denomination, who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." This statement in his diary is connected with an account of the benefit he derived from studying the works of the Non-conformists. "Baxter's Call," and "Alleine's Alarm," so accorded with his own ideas of fidelity and unction, that wherever he recognized their spirit he acknowledged "a brother beloved." On this portion of his history we dwell with unspeakable delight; the only drawback is an undue importance he appears to have attached to dreams; and even those, considered as an index to his waking hours, are interesting, revealing as