The Voice
If your souls were not immortal, and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you; but the love of your souls constrains me to speak: methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever.
George Whitefield, “Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy Laden”
He didn’t look like a commanding orator: medium height, round face, and a few qualities some considered effeminate. Appearing in his Anglican minister’s dress with its lace clerical collar, this Englishman faced skeptical expressions on both sides of the Atlantic. When he began to speak, however, raucous crowds fell silent, and every eye was on the pudgy man as he moved and delivered message after message with such power. Men wept. Women sang. Children sat in rapt attention, taking in every word.
George Whitefield was an enigma who set in motion the Great Awakening in America, introducing the concept of mass evangelism. Some consider him the greatest preacher to have taken the pulpit. Jonathan Edwards delivered his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” from a stationary position behind the pulpit, but Whitefield pranced about, gestured, and projected so forcefully he could be heard a mile away.
He was the founder of Methodism, although he would turn leadership of the fledgling denomination over to John Wesley. He brought the need for a personal “rebirth” for salvation to the forefront. He pleaded with his audience, speaking directly and pulling no punches, but did so with such loving conviction the people left feeling blessed, not blasted.
He was a workhorse of the gospel. Before he died in 1770, he had preached eighteen thousand times, made seven trips to the American colonies, preached in several countries in Europe, and had tremendous results in Scotland. Estimates for the number of people who heard him preach reach as high as ten million.
A Rocky Start
Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England, to innkeeper parents. His father died when he was two, cause unknown. In school, he found an interest in the theater and enjoyed performing. What he didn’t know at the time was that his theatrical talents would propel him to the forefront of preaching history.
Coming from humble means, Whitefield worked his way through Pembroke College, Oxford, as a servant to wealthier students. While there he joined a group called the Holy Club, largely led by John and Charles Wesley. He had an interest in the Bible as a child, but he had no religious conviction. Before settling in with the Holy Club, he was led astray by other students. “In short, I soon made a great proficiency in the school of the Devil.”1
His salvation experience came over time. It was more process than immediate decision. The influence of the Wesley brothers and the other “methodists” helped him along his way. He felt unworthy of salvation and struggled to adjust his life through discipline to be acceptable to God. He fasted for days and deprived himself of everything that gave him pleasure, yet this made him feel all the more unworthy.
As part of the “method” of the Holy Club, members would visit prisons. Whitefield did this dutifully, and became known to the prisoners and their families. One day a woman came to him seeking help. Her husband was in prison and caring for her hungry children was pushing her to a nervous breakdown. Watching them dying from hunger pressed her to the brink of suicide. She was close to leaping to her doom from a bridge when a passerby intervened. She sought out Whitefield, who gave her some immediate help then asked her to meet with him and her husband at the prison. During that meeting the husband and wife had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. They received what Whitefield longed for but had yet to experience.
It was during a seven-week battle with illness that he received his heart’s desire. He had been denying himself food and fighting an internal spiritual battle so long that he could no longer climb stairs. Someone reminded him that Jesus on the cross, when close to the end of his suffering, had cried, “I thirst!” From his bed, Whitefield did the same.
Soon after this, I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden that has so heavily oppressed me. The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was truly to rejoice in God my Savior; and, for some time, could not avoid singing psalms wherever I was.2
Whitefield began referring to such changes as “the new birth.” The need for others to come to Christ thus became the center of his life.
Love and Hate in England
He was ordained in 1736 at Glouchester and soon began preaching the new birth message. He was young, and few felt a twenty-one-year-old could bring much of a sermon. They were soon proven wrong. The people loved him. Many of the clergy did not. Some were jealous; others didn’t like his direct, simple style. The preaching pattern of the day was to focus on some aspect of doctrine and deliver a scholarly message on the topic. Whitefield called on people to make a decision for Christ. Doctrine was important to him, but his preaching focused on the need of individuals to accept the offer of salvation in Christ. Soon, church doors began to close to him.
Whitefield had a global vision, and like the Wesleys wished to take his message to the colonies in America. The Wesleys’ experience had nearly broken them. They came back feeling every bit the failure. Whitefield’s experience would be different.
In James Oglethorpe’s Georgia, the mission lasted four months and every day more and more people came to hear Whitefield. When he returned to England, his fame had grown and so had the distrust of the clergy, who refused to relinquish their pulpits to him. With only a few churches who would let him speak, Whitefield made a decision that would forever change his approach: if he could not preach in the churches, then he’d preach outside them.
On a hill near Bristol, Whitefield gathered the families of coal miners. About two hundred attended. A few weeks later, the crowd had grown to twenty thousand. “I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields,” he wrote.3
Preaching outdoors was suspect to many in the church at that time, but Whitefield didn’t care. Neither did the thousands who came to hear him.
Back in America
In 1739, the evangelist returned to America. Wherever he set up to preach, the people came. This would be the story of his ministry. As he traveled, preaching from colony to colony, folk would hear of his arrival and come from miles away by horse, by buggy, or on foot. No building in the New World could hold the crowds. While in England he preached outdoors because the churches were closed to him, in America he did the same because the crowds were too large for the churches.
So popular were his meetings that store owners closed up shop while he preached. At times, the congregation would exceed the population of the town he was preaching in. He was described by many at that time as the best English-speaking orator the world had ever seen. Some said he could bring listeners to tears merely by the way he said “Mesopotamia.” The famous actor David Garrick is often quoted as saying, “I would give a hundred guineas, if I could say ‘Oh’ like Mr. Whitefield.”
The crowds kept coming and Whitefield kept preaching.
The Ben Franklin Connection
One observer wrote:
The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous and it was a 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 admired and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils.4
This observer was Benjamin Franklin. He had joined the throngs in Philadelphia. Franklin and Whitefield, although very different people, became friends and exchanged letters until Whitefield’s death. Franklin, a deist, had different views of God than Whitefield, yet he still respected the man.
He recounted a little experiment he conducted while Whitefield preached. Whitefield stood at the top of the steps at the Philadelphia courthouse on Market Street:
[Whitefield] 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 audiences, however numerous, observ’d the most exact silence. He preached 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.5
Franklin calculated how many people could hear Whitefield, and his math lead him to theorize the number as thirty thousand. The newspapers had been reporting crowds of twenty-five thousand, which Franklin had originally doubted until his own experiment confirmed the newspaper’s numbers.
Franklin also told of attending one sermon in which Whitefield was going to take up a collection. He said he had a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles (a European coin) in gold. He determined that he would leave with the same amount of money he arrived with, but the sermon wore Franklin down. In the end, he emptied his pockets.6
Franklin was impressed enough by the man (although not moved to accept his teaching) that he arranged to publish Whitefield’s sermons and journals. Certainly he saw the potential profit in such a partnership. The demand for Whitefield’s content in ink and paper indeed proved tremendously popular, as evidenced by the multiple print runs that were required.7
Trials
Whitefield’s ministerial success came at a price. As with any great endeavor, problems and resistance arose. While thousands hung on his every word, a few pelted him with stones, dirt clods, vegetables, and even small dead animals. Despite this unpleasantness, he considered it an honor. Similar things had also happened to John Wesley. Success is always met with opposition.
There was also a physical toll. Whitefield was often ill, and traveling across the ocean and through the American colonies and British and Scottish cities taxed his body. He struggled with asthmalike “colds.” Health was an ongoing problem, and he would die while just in his midfifties.
There also came a break with the Wesleys. Whitefield was a Calvinist, and although he believed in predestination, he preached like a “whosoever” Arminian. Still, John Wesley could not abide the doctrine of Calvin. The rift between them grew, endangering the growing Methodist movement. For a time, Whitefield led a Calvinist branch of the group but ultimately released control to John Wesley. He did this over the objection of friends, but he could not tolerate the discord. He cared nothing about who was the head of what or whose name would live on longer. He wished to be a slave to Christ and master over no one.
George Whitefield died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on Sunday, September 30, 1770, the morning after an evening of preaching. He was fifty-five, working to his dying day as if he were still a young man. He once said that he’d rather wear out than rust out. Others would continue to stoke the fires of the Great Awakening, but none could do it with the same fervor or captivating voice of George Whitefield.