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Updated: June 17, 2025
Such a baptism may, perhaps, be too great a thing to pray for; such a sacrifice as it would involve, may possibly be too much to ask and some sermons are worth preaching over and over again, even long after Whitefield's maximum has been exceeded. Still there is a dangerous temptation in the possession of hoarded sermons from which we will do well to pray to be delivered.
Scarcely one man in a thousand could have passed through such a transformation without being spoiled. But Whitefield's was too noble a spirit to be easily spoiled. Nature had given him a loving, generous, unselfish disposition, and Divine grace had sanctified and elevated his naturally amiable qualities and given him others which nature can never bestow.
The example of Francke incited to faith in prayer and to a work whose sole dependence was on God. Newton's witness to grace led to a testimony to the same sovereign love and mercy as seen in his own case. Whitefield's experience inspired to greater fidelity and earnestness in preaching the Word, and to greater confidence in the power of the anointing Spirit.
Possibly there has never been, in all the years of the Church, a greater preacher than this same Whitefield, and Whitefield's greatness has, to a large extent, its explanation in this, the last scene of his ministry. How many he led to God eternity alone can reveal. His spiritual descendants are numbered by multitudes as the sand on the sea-shore, the stars in the firmament, for number.
It was an entirely new experience then for English men and women of the humblest class, and of that generation, to be addressed in great open-air masses by renowned and powerful preachers. Whitefield's first great effort at field-preaching was made for the benefit of the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol. Before many weeks had gone by, he could gather round him some twenty thousand of these men.
When Selina Countess of Huntingdon asked the Duchess of Buckingham to accompany her to a sermon of Whitefield's, the Duchess replied: "I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions.
In this I am carried as on eagle's wings. God makes way for me everywhere. In dwelling upon these secondary causes of Whitefield's success as a preacher it is by no means intended to lose sight of the great First Cause. God, who can make the weak things of this world to confound the mighty, could and did work for the revival of religion by this weak instrument.
Particularly was this impression deeply made on Mr. Muller's mind and heart: that Whitefield's unparalleled success in evangelistic labours was plainly traceable to two causes and could not be separated from them as direct effects; namely, his unusual prayerfulness, and his habit of reading the Bible on his knees.
If gracious Anne were alive she would make an admirable defendress of the new faith, and would build fifty more churches for female proselytes. It is fair to add, however, that some of the ablest among the hearers were the most impressed. David Hume's opinion of Whitefield's preaching has already been noticed. David Garrick was certainly not disposed to ridicule it.
The physical phenomena which manifested themselves under the influence of Wesley's and Whitefield's preaching were in all points exactly the same as those of which the annals of imaginative and excited religious feeling have in every age been full.
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