By his exhortations in the Spring of 1745, Whitefield helped Colonel Pepperell recruit the successful expedition against Louisburg. Then he preached his way southward after declining the offer of a great permanent tabernacle in New England. Brief excerpts from his letters reveal his work and strength of purpose:

The door for usefulness opens

my

"Aug. 26, 1746 wider and wider. I love to range in the American woods and sometimes think I shall never return to England any more."

“June 4, 1747 . . . I have omitted preaching one night to oblige my friends that they may not charge me with murdering myself, but I hope yet to die in the pulpit or soon after I come out of it."

"June 23 ... Since my last I have been several times on the verge of eternity. At present I am so weak that I cannot preach. It is hard work to be silent, but I must be tried in every way."

"Sept. II We saw great things in New England. The flocking and power that attended the Word was like unto that seven years ago. Weak as I was and have been, I was enabled to travel ELEVEN HUNDRED MILES and preach daily."

In the Spring of 1748 he spent close to three months in Bermuda for his health, but kept at work, preaching daily once from a boat to throngs that fringed the shores of St. George's Bay. He raised one hundred pounds and this time admits that all did not go to his orphans but some "enabled me to make such a remittance to my dear fellow yoke as may keep her from being too much beholden in my absence." This is also one of his very few references to his wife, whom he soon rejoined.

Whitefield spent the winter of 1751-52 in America

and returned a fifth time for a year's stay in 1754 with twenty destitute little recruits for the Orphan House. On a two thousand mile circuit, he preached in Carolina, Georgia, Philadelphia, New York and New England.

In one of his sermons he made use of an electrical storm that was terrifying his auditors, calling the lightning "a glance from the angry eye of Jehova" and the crashing thunder "the voice of the Almighty" and finally, with the clearing, pointing to the rainbow as witnessing the love of Him that bended it.

The sixth missionary voyage was in 1763 and he doubled on the old trails for two years. Then came the last crossing. In a touching farewell sermon in England he preached upon Jacob's Ladder, likening God's care of Jacob, pillowed upon stones in a strange land, to the divine watchfulness over the evangelist far from home. Sailing in September, 1769, he went to Savannah and his beloved Bethesda, there to cry hallelujahs over the success of the orphan house. The Georgia Assembly praised him for what he had done, but he exclaimed: "Let the name of George Whitefield perish if God be glorified!"

Again he turned to "gospel ranging" during the Summer of 1770, averaging about one hundred miles a week as he swung over the old route northward through Philadelphia and New York to New England, the scene of his last labors. The following chronology of his preaching in the last two months of his life discloses the final measure of his devotion:

One of the great concourse of people who heard the last sermon in the open fields at Exeter reported that Whitefield was so weak that he had to pause to get strength to lift up his voice and after a few minutes said: "I will wait for the gracious assistance of God, for, I am certain, He will assist me once more to speak in His Name."

And towards the end of two hours of preaching the evangelist seemed aware that this was the last time as he said:

"I go to rest prepared. My sun has risen and by aid from Heaven has given light to many. It is now about to setbut no, it is about to rise to the zenith of immortal glory. I have outlived many on earth, but they cannot outlive me in heaven. Oh! thought divine! I shall soon be in a world where time, age, pain and sorrow are unknown. How willingly would I live forever to preach Christ, but I die to be with Him!"

As he concluded, the candle which he was holding in his

hand burned away and went out. Even so was his life to pass before the sun should rise again. He rode to Newburyport to the home of the Rev. Mr. Parsons, the Presbyterian pastor. He felt his asthma coming on again and was able to eat but a little gruel for supper. He went to his chamber and for a while read the Bible and Dr. Watts's Psalms. Then he sat up in bed and prayed-prayed for a blessing on Bethesda and its orphans, prayed for all to whom he had preached on both sides of the Atlantic.

Till three o'clock in the morning he slept fitfully with anxious friends sitting by. The asthma began to choke him. He got out of bed and went to an open window for air. Twice he said "I am dying!" Seated in a chair with his cloak wrapped round him he breathed his last. It was six o'clock on the morning of September 30, 1770.

Amid the weeping of ministers and people, the frail form was laid in the vault of the Old South Presbyterian Church of Newburyport. In November when the news reached England, John Wesley preached the memorial sermon.

Not quite fifty-six, George Whitefield had dedicated himself to his ministry for thirty-four years, travelling thousands of miles over sea and land, bringing a new light into thousands of lives, awakening the English-speaking world to a consciousness of the divine in its first great revival of religion. His voice was stilled. But it was not the end. Whatever of truth, whatever of power, whatever of good to man lay in him became his legacy to the succeeding generations.

W

CHAPTER VI

SATELLITES OF WHITEFIELD

Am I a soldier of the cross,

A follower of the Lamb,

And shall I fear to own His cause

Or blush to speak His name?

CHARLES Wesley.

HILE Whitefield like a meteor was flashing across the American horizon, lesser luminaries, reproachfully called the "New Lights," glimmered with reflected radiance. They presumed to borrow from him things incidental to his thought and action, to adopt and capitalize the very errors he later regretted and retracted, and to magnify all to their own glory and justification. And though he drew upon himself some opposition, these satellites were responsible for most of the bitter detraction consequent upon the course of the Great Awakening.

Whitefield's partiality to divine "impulses" within the human frame they construed to their own advantage by proclaiming an indwelling of the Holy Ghost, calling them to preach, filling their mouths, and guiding their steps and providing signs in proof of their inspiration. They took his words "God seems to show me it is my duty to evangelize and not to fix any particular place”—as authority to invade and disrupt churches far and wide.

A horde of exhorters, many of them uneducated, some