The Man Who Loved His Critics

There are many features of one of the greatest lives of Christian history—that of George Whitefield (1714–1770)—which posterity has largely overlooked. That he was a matchless orator and soul-winner is known to all, but such matters as his leadership of the vast international revival movement, his twelve years in evangelism in America, the degree of his learning, the lasting effect of his work on all the great denominations, and most especially, the consideration that the American Revolution and Constitution were mainly moulded in the fires of “The Great Awakening”—these significant achievements have received but scant attention. But important as are these aspects of a colossal career, still more valuable to us will be to make acquaintance with him as a man of God and see him afresh as, in an age of cruelty and religious bitterness, he maintained unflinchingly his own strong convictions, yet lived among men always in gracious kindness. He was ever the peacemaker among the controversialists and the Mr. Great Heart with tender care for all; a reacquaintance with this Whitefield, the Apostle of Love, will serve us well.

Humble Amid Popularity

If ever a man triumphed over temptations that attend popularity, it was Whitefield. When a youth of only twenty-two he preached every day, and often twice a day, in the largest churches of London to crowds no church could hold. When a year later he launched out into the open air he could draw thousands any hour of the day, any day in the week, anywhere in England! In the London parks he needed but to take his stand on a table or a stone wall, and people flocked around—ten thousand, twenty thousand, and sometimes even forty, sixty or eighty thousand. There were times when he lost all attempt at estimating their number and simply noticed how many acres they covered. Possessed with what was probably the greatest voice any human ever had, he moved these vast audiences at will and, impossible as it seems, made them all hear, except when the sound of their weeping drowned out his voice. The poor and ignorant were there and they understood him as he talked in simple, tender tones about the sinner’s Saviour. The mob was there and he beat down their cries and made them listen. The rich and learned were there and many a titled personage laid a coronet at the Master’s feet.

Whitefield was idolized above all measure. People pressed upon him as he walked the streets, or ran simply to touch his garment. They thronged his lodgings as he ate and came seeking him through the hours of the night. People everywhere talked of him, newspapers were full of him and on two continents they called him, “Ye Wonder of Ye Age.”

The Siren Call Of Fame

Deep, dark danger lurks in popularity and many a lesser man has been ruined by but a fraction of the adulation Whitefield received. He too heard the subtle siren call of fame as it offered him everything but the one thing he wanted most—the approval of his God. With characteristic greatness of soul he turned a deaf ear to all proffered gain and good will of earth. His own words tell it well:

Had it not been for my compassionate High Priest, popularity might have destroyed me. I used to plead with him to take me by the hand and lead me through this fiery furnace. He heard my request and gave me to see the vanity of all commendations but his own!

“The vanity of all commendations but his own!” In these youthful words of triumph over all concern for earthly acclaim, we see the real George Whitefield. Here is a man at twenty-three, dead to the opinions of humankind—their praise or blame, their applause or censure—and alive, gloriously alive to a higher approbation. He sought then, already early in his career, as he continued unswervingly throughout life’s hurried day, to show himself approved only unto God.

Meek Beneath Opposition

Yet along with admiration of his multitude of friends he was faced with hatred of an equal multitude of foes. As soon as Whitefield burst forth in his mighty evangelism evil men and the principalities and powers of darkness seemed suddenly to turn all their forces upon him. Hating the revival, its message, its methods and its results, they looked for a focal point on which to concentrate their rage. They found it, not so much in the astute and professorial Wesley, but in the colorful, irrepressible, magnetic Whitefield. In ways that we can hardly credit today every lying scheme that malice could devise to blacken his character and weaken his testimony was employed against him. Isaac Taylor sums it up saying,

Among those who by their flagitious crimes have most deeply sinned against society, it would be difficult to find a wretch upon whose guilty pate has been showered so much rancorous abuse as, year by year, was heaped upon the head of the love-fraught, self-denying and gentle-natured Whitefield.

It was very early in his ministry that he first saw himself villified in print. He was doubtless wounded by the cruel attack, but essayed no retaliation and made no reply. Instead he simply stood with bowed head and uttered the words, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” This became his fixed practice and times without number, as the storm of malice beat unrelentingly upon him throughout his life, he uttered the same phrase, often aloud, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” How beautifully his friend Cowper wrote of him:

He loved the world that hated him; the tear

That fell upon his Bible was sincere;

Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife,

His only answer was—a blameless life.

And he who forged, and he who threw the dart,

Had each a brother’s interest in his heart.

(Leuconomos)

In the course of his wide travels Whitefield became associated with hundreds of other ministers. In all his dealings with these brethren there was no thought or hint of his own importance, but rather of that of the other man. Utterly careless as to what denomination anyone belonged, or whether he was a big city preacher or little country pastor, as long as he was born-again, Whitefield saw in him a challenge. With gracious words of encouragement, and sometimes a deserved rebuke, he sought to inspire and move him to become as earnest for souls as he was himself. Scores of preachers all over Britain and America lighted their torch at the Whitefield flame and herein lay the basic secret of the continuation and spread of the revival. In turn, it goes without saying that the evangelist who, so powerful and so famous, walked thus in simplicity and humility among his brethren was the object of their boundless affection and undying love.

Ill Treated By Good Men

But alas! it was not invariably so, and some of the crudest blows he bore were from ministers—good, earnest Bible-believing ministers. Many examples might be cited but one especially will illustrate the point:

He was only twenty-six when he went to Scotland, burdened with cares, terribly in debt for his orphanage and broken in health. In face of the great campaign in Edinburgh he needed and merited united assistance of all God’s people there. Instead he was confronted with a church rent by bitter quarrels. A group known as the Seceeders had long protested against the growing laxity in doctrine and practice within the Kirk. They had finally withdrawn and formed the Associate Presbytery, a rival organization from which they maintained a continuous warfare with their former brethren. Within the church were two other groups: the Moderates (much akin to the Modernists of today), and the Evangelicals who could not go along with the Seceeders because of their bitterness of spirit and so remained in the church to live and pray and work for revival.

Target Of Misguided Wrath

Both Seceeders and Evangelicals saw in the flaming young evangelist the answer to their problems and both entreated him to come to Scotland. His intention was to work among both groups, but the Seceeders, while they welcomed him as an angel of light as long as they thought he would remain with them, demanded that he have no fellowship with any of the men in the Kirk, “their enemies.” He sat down with the nine venerable gentlemen of the Associate Presbytery at their headquarters, as they attempted to shackle him with their particular brand of “contending for the faith” in blind, selfish partisanship and as they laid down the law that he must preach for them and them only. But he shocked the dour Scotsmen as he sternly replied that he would not now or at any time be limited by anyone as to where and with whom he preached. He told them plainly, “If a Jew, or a Mohammedan, or the Pope himself would lend me his pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Jesus Christ therein!”

Thereafter he preached among the Evangelicals, and with what vast results! Teeming congregations heard him twice a day in Edinburgh’s largest park. Prayer meetings sprung up spontaneously throughout the city and in many places throughout Scotland. Untold numbers were brought to a saving knowledge of Christ; the tides of unbelief that had sorely threatened the Kirk rolled back. It was the commencement of a whole new age of evangelicalism that ushered Scotland into the greatest century of spiritual power she has ever known, with boundless results that only the eternal morning will make known—all this stemmed from the Whitefield campaign in Scotland!

But what of the Seceeders, while this manifest blessing of God was upon his labors among the people of the Kirk? Stung with bitter realization that God had owned his ministry among their foes, they turned in wrath upon the man they had so lately extolled. They vented their rage in a 75-page booklet with the enormous title,

A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield, Wherein is shown that he is no Minister of Jesus Christ; that his call and coining to Scotland are Scandalous; that his practice is disorderly; that his whole doctrine is and his success must be diabolical, so that people ought to avoid him from duty to God, to the church, to themselves, to Posterity and to him!

When few paid heed to their bitter fulminations, they found it necessary to call a nationwide public fast in which “they solemnly engaged to strengthen one another’s hands to entirpate Popery, Arminianism, Tritheism, Sabeianism, and George Whitefieldism,” and when this ponderous attempt extirpated nothing, they again resorted to the press and produced another fiery booklet:

The Declaration, Protestantion and Testimony of the Suffering Remnant of the anti-Popish, anti-Lutheran, anti-Prelatic, anti-Whitefieldian, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian true Church of Scotland.

A lesser man than Whitefield would have ignored these wrathful men in haughty silence and let the evident blessing of God on his labors serve as sufficient rebuke. But let it be remembered that the Seceeders were not a band of ignorant fanatics; they were men of ability and learning, and some of their number were among the ablest pulpiteers of the land. Above all, they were earnest for their God in their mistaken way. Whitefield felt a kinship with them in their defense of the faith and longed to see them joined in cooperation with the Evangelicals within the church. Thus he arranged two or three interviews with them, in which he bluntly told them they were but building a Babel which soon would fall about their ears. He begged them to cease their strife with all such of their brethren who were true to God’s Book and to work together in the positive prosecution of the great work. But all his entreaties went unheeded and, choosing to continue in their bitterness, they soon turned from fighting Whitefield and the Kirk to fighting one another.

A Peacemaker Among Controversialists

Posterity has remembered much of the controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians of early Methodism, but it has failed to notice Whitefield’s passionate and unselfish attempts as peacemaker in the long dispute. John Wesley began the controversy with his sermon on free grace. It was a scathing denunciation of what he supposed was Calvinism and he called into use every talent of his brilliant mind—sarcasm, ridicule, exaggeration and plain abuse are there in high style. It was an explosive utterance that could not fail to inflame men’s passions and divide God’s work. To make matters worse, Wesley intended to carry the controversy far and wide by putting the sermon in print.

Ever since his conversion Whitefield had held strongly to Calvinistic views and found these confirmed in his wide reading of the Reformers and Puritans. He could not and would not compromise his deep convictions one iota. Yet he dreaded the results of Wesley’s sermon if it should be published, and wrote him:

Dear Honoured Sir: If you have any regard for the peace of the church, keep in your sermon on predestination. Oh! my heart in the midst of my body is melted like wax! The Lord direct us all! Honoured Sir, indeed I desire you all the success you could wish for! May you increase, though I decrease! Oh! wresde, wrestle in prayer that not the least alienation of affection may be between you and me.

This gracious attempt kept the wild dogs of controversy in check for but a short while, and as soon as Whitefield left for America, John Wesley published the sermon. He sought moreover to dispute the matter with Whitefield and wrote him a number of letters, to which Whitefield replied over and over again by entreating his friend to be at peace. The following is an excerpt from one of his replies, a beautiful example of his loving and humble spirit that may well serve as a model in many present-day discords:

My honoured friend and brother; for once hearken to a child who is willing to wash your feet. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, if you would have my love confirmed toward you, write no more to me about the misrepresentations wherein we differ.

The doctrine of election and final perseverance of those who are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, than when I saw you last. You think otherwise—then why should we dispute? Will it not in the end destroy brotherly love, and take from us that cordial union and sweetness of soul which I pray God may always subsist between us? How glad would the enemies of the Lord be to see us divided! How many would rejoice should I join and make a party against you! And in one word, how would the cause of our common Master suffer every way by our railing disputes!… provoke me to it as much as you wish, I hope never to enter the lists of controversy with you.

Even these earnest endeavors at maintaining peace were fruitless. Controversy soon separated Arminian from Calvinist throughout England as cruel charges and countercharges were hurled by many men, all to the hindrance and disgrace of the revival. Whitefield exerted all his influence to keep the strife in check and largely succeeded throughout the remaining thirty years of his life. But immediately following his death it burst forth in renewed and shameful fury as men on both sides forgot his gracious example and brought the revival to a close by their godless strife.

And so lived the apostle of love, in sickness and poverty almost all his days, but in burning zeal for his God and quenchless love for men. He wept for souls as he prayed in private and wept for them again as he preached in public. It mattered not to him that Wesley should receive the earthly glory with regard to the great revival while he was discredited and forgotten. Nor would he have cared that his tomb on American soil should be overlooked and neglected by a people who ought to have cherished his memory. (Whitefield is buried beneath the pulpit of the Presbyterian church of Newburyport, Mass.) He lived above all such temporal concerns and only for his Master’s glory and his own accounting on the judgment morning. Well did Sir James Stephens, the renowned Cambridge professor, say:

If ever philanthropy burned in the human heart with pure and intense flame, it was in the heart of George Whitefield.… He had no preferences but in favor of the ignorant, the miserable and the poor. In their cause he shrank from no privation and declined neither insult nor hostility. To such wrongs he opposed the weapons of an all-enduring meekness and a love that would not be repulsed. The springs of his benevolence were inexhaustible and could not choose but flow.

END

The Rev. A. Dallimore, B.Th., is pastor of the Cottam Baptist Church, Cottam, Ontario, Canada. He was for some years editor of The Union Baptist and writes a monthly column for its successor, The Fellowship Baptist. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Seminary of Toronto, and for some years has been doing research on the life of Whitefield in preparation for a new biography to be called, George Whitefield and the Eighteenth Century Revival.

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