It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience… . I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-suppressed sob."

These were the words of Sarah Edwards, in October 1740, describing British evangelist George Whitefield.

When, on February 12, 1740, Jonathan Edwards wrote to offer his pulpit to Whitefield, he no doubt hoped the British evangelist's visit would spark another revival like the one of 1734-35. But in a series of sermons Edwards preached during and after Whitefield's visit, we find that Jonathan's awe of the Grand Itinerant was more reserved than Sarah's.

Edwards's "sower" series, preached on Matthew 13:3-8 during November 1740, expresses the Northampton pastor's concern that, like many of those swept up in the excitement of the earlier revival, Whitefield's hearers might become "stony-ground hearers." Those who, in 1734-35, had been subject to the strongest emotions and told the most dramatic ...

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