heath on the fringe of London whose multitudes poured out to hear him. The preparation was completed. Given to view the promised land on his first voyage to America, consecrated and reconsecrated at Fetter Lane, tried by fire at Kingswood, brought to the fulness of spiritual puissance under the firmament in the shadow of London, this "Luther of the Great Awakening" was ready for his life. Across the Atlantic this time he would go knowing what to do and how to do it. With upwards of one thousand pounds amassed for his Orphan House, Whitefield and his friend, William Seward, with a company of eight men, a youth and two children, set sail on August 14, 1739. But he did not land in Georgia to take up the task of an almoner. Instead the ship bore him to Philadelphia where the miracle of Moorfields was to be multiplied a hundredfold. Another Boanerges went ashore to claim the New World for his God. A CHAPTER V THE GREAT AWAKENING There is a fountain filled with blood And sinners plunged beneath that flood WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800 MERICA'S evangelist had come. Philadelphia was the threshhold and the gates were flung open wide. No meeting house could contain the people or circumscribe the spirit that responded to the man and the message he was to spread from the craggy coast of Maine to the sandy shores of Carolina for thirty years till death should ride with him the last march on the Gospel trail. Night after night, while the chill winds of November blew over them, the thousands massed in Market Street where the Court House steps became the pulpit of George Whitefield. His voice could be heard on the distant Jersey shore. His every word could be clearly understood aboard craft at the river wharves. And under the spell of his eloquence penitents knelt in windrows upon the cobble stones crying out what they should do to be saved. The impress upon Philadelphia made by Whitefield on this and subsequent visits was both deep and lasting. All denominations were quickened. Mrs. Hannah Hodges, inher memoirs published at Philadelphia in 1806, tells of public worship continuing twice daily and thrice and more on the Sabbath for a year afterward. The effect of Whitefield's eloquence upon Benjamin Franklin, the calm rationalist philosopher, is a striking indication of what must have been borne in upon the minds of others. It seems that interspersed with rebirth through saving grace Whitefield from the very outset put his Orphan House to the fore. "I did not approve of the design," said Franklin, "but aş Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen and it was proposed to send them from Philadelphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been better to have built the house at Philadelphia and brought the children to it. This I advised, but he was resolute in his first project, rejected my counsel and I, therefore, refused to contribute. "I happened, soon after, to attend one of his sermons in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften and concluded to give the copper; another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that and determined me to give the silver, and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket into the collector's dish, gold and all." At this same sermon Franklin tells of a member of his club who, aware of possible susceptibility, had taken the precaution to attend with empty pockets. Overwhelmed at the climax, he applied to a neighbor, a placid Quaker, evidently the only one present not caught with the tide, to lend him some money for a gift. "At any other time, friend Hopkins, I would lend to thee freely," was the reply, "but not now, for thee seems to me to be out of thy right senses." |