1 of 4

Arnold Dallimore, well-known biographer of George Whitefield, had agreed to contribute to this issue of Christian History, but regrettably, a recent turn in his health prevented that. In place of that article we offer a chapter, condensed, from his monumental biography, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th-Century Revival. In this abridged excerpt, Dallimore shows us a single year in Whitefield’s life—1750.

—The Editors

Seventeen-fifty opened with Whitefield in London. There his chief duty was the pastoral care of the Tabernacle [his congregation]. This called for preaching at 6 o’clock each morning and again at 6:00 each evening (every day except Saturday), three or four times each Sunday, and several other times throughout the week. During these months Whitefield also preached twice a week at Lady Huntingdon’s—a work he found very taxing. He also sometimes conducted funerals and performed weddings, often counseled inquirers, and took the oversight of the several Tabernacle enterprises.

Together with these tasks Whitefield maintained a large correspondence. There were letters relating to Orphan House affairs and letters in relation to his itinerant ministry—arrangements as to place and time of his preaching. And above all there were letters to spiritual inquirers and to persons whom he knew to be in need of exhortation even if they did not write and ask for it, and this correspondence was conducted with people in various parts of Britain and in virtually all the colonies of America.

Whitefield’s letter writing was squeezed in at all possible moments between his other labors. Yet it was never finished, and there were always letters he wanted to write but for which there was no time.

Whitefield said of his life in London, “While there I am continually hurried and scarce have time to eat bread.” He also spoke of his longing for more time “to read, meditate, and write,” yet recognized that it would not be available till he should again take an ocean voyage.

Thus passed January, but by the first of February, weary of what he called “winter quarters,” he set out on a two-month campaign of open-air itinerant evangelism.

His journey took him first to Gloucester, then on to Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, and at each place he paused for two or three days of preaching. He also reported that his health improved as soon as he left London. March was spent in Devon and Cornwall, in travels that took him nearly to Land’s End and that saw great numbers assembled everywhere.

Thereupon he returned to London, resumed his labors there for two weeks, and then set out again—this time for Portsmouth and other places along the Channel coast.

Something of the spirit which motivated him is manifest in a letter he wrote at this time to James Hervey, who had mentioned to him the physical weakness he frequently suffered. Whitefield replied: “Fear not your weak body; we are immortal till our work is done. Christ’s laborers must live by miracle; if not, I must not live at all; for God only knows what I daily endure. My continual vomitings almost kill me, and yet the pulpit is my cure, so that my friends begin to pity me less, and to leave off that ungrateful caution, ‘Spare thyself!’ ”

Then again he returned to London. After a week in the capital he was on his way once more, on a journey that was to take him, preaching as he went, to Scotland. He preached at Olney, and then came to Northampton where, the next morning, he preached at the home of Dr. Philip Doddridge and “in the afternoon and evening at Kettering to many thousands.”

next page... |  1 of 4

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help