with a divine fire; yet the most remarkable thing about him, when we consider the natural constitution of his mind, is the perfect good sense with which he prosecuted a career so long, so fervid, and so novel. When he started at Bristol on his ministerial course, or took the open field at Kingswood, a severe prudence would have predicted some signal folly or failure. in his life; some perilous extravagance of opinion or conduct. But what one can be recorded against him; what more than the common and petty defects of the best of men? 15 Without apparent sagacity, or even usual caution, the simplicity and entire purity of his conscience supplied him with protections which the most consummate wisdom seldom so well affords, and no extravagance can be imputed to him, except a boundless charity and a zeal which enabled him to reach the maximum capacity of his life for labor and travel.

He had not only the soul of eloquence, but also the art. Elocution is not eloquence; a speaker may be eloquent without it; he may have it in perfection, and not be eloquent. But Whitefield, while possessing the moral and intellectual elements of the orator, neglected not the practical principles of the art. It is said that he studied and privately practiced the prescribed rules of public speaking. His gestures are reported to have been remarkably appropriate; Franklin, who heard him often, says that each repetition of the same sermon showed a studied improvement, and that

15 In even his controversy with Wesley his faults are excusable, if not admirable, for the generosity and tenderness which they called forth from his noble heart. When he was departing on his first American voyage, Wesley admonished him not to go, because of a warning which Wesley himself had received by sortilege. In the Calvinistic controversy Whitefield published the confidential fact; but perhaps no event in his life occasioned more magnanimous and affecting expressions of regret and self-condemnation. He says of it, in his reply to Lavington : For this I have asked both God and him pardon years ago, and although I believe both have forgiven me, yet I believe I shall never be able to forgive myself." Sortilege was not an uncommon folly of that day. See a ludicrous example of it on the part of Berridge, in the Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, chap. 22.

several repetitions were necessary to perfect it; Foote and Garrick said that his eloquence advanced up to the for tieth repetition before it reached its full height.16 His voice was laboriously cultivated, and became astonishingly effective. Garrick, who delighted to hear him, said that he could make his audience weep or treinble merely by varying his pronunciation of the word Mesopotamia. His style, both of language and gesture, was natural, and it perfectly comported with his strong natural feeling; for though he studied the art of eloquence, he was not artificial. The ornate, the florid style, so commonly received from the pulpit as eloquence, was never used by him. No one studying his genius can conceive for a moment that it was possible for him to use it; he was too much in earnest, too intent on the design before him. His language is always simple and colloquial, not fitted for books, but, therefore, the better fitted for speech; abounding in abrupt transitions, and strongly idiomatic; such language, in fine, as a sincere man would use in earnestly entreating his neighbor to escape. some impending disaster. Though he did not like his reported sermons, they are evidently fac-similes of his style; direct, abrupt, full of local allusions, and presenting scarcely a single ornamented passage, the very speech of the common people. It would appear homely, even meager, did not the reader supply, in his imagination, the conversational manner, the tears, and the entreating voice of the speaker. It would be folly to say that a more refined style is not appropriate to the pulpit, popular as should be its address; but, let its refinement be what it may, it should have these character istics of simplicity, point, and colloquial directness. This is the style of true eloquence; ornament pertains to imagination, and imagination belongs to poetry; but poetry and oratory are distinct. Genuine oratory is too earnest to admit of much ornament. Its figures are few and always brief. Its language is the language of the passions, not of the fancy, and the passions never utter themselves in embel

16 Philip's Life, etc., chap. 22.

lished phrases, but always directly, pungently. It is the great mistake of modern oratory, especially in the pulpit, that it confounds eloquence with poetry, but it was never the mistake of this greatest of preachers.

There was a species of humor, or rather popular aptness, in his discourse, which could not fail to interest the common people; for nowhere else can be found more mother wit, or readier repartee, than in large popular assemblies. Pulpit buffoons, however, can never claim sanction from his example; it is doubtful whether he ever made a con gregation laugh; but the oddity of his illustrations, the appositeness of his local or casual allusions, the colloquial familiarity of his address, the hearty "human nature" of his habitual tone of mind, and his abundant anecdotes, kept the compact thousands in an attitude of eager interest and charmed attention. They felt that though he had come down to them from the Mount of Transfiguration, and was shining with its glory, yet he had gone up to it from among themselves, and was still one of them. Through all his unusual forms of expression and surprising illustrations, was heard distinctly the undertone of his pathos and solemn earnestness. Vulgarity was, with him, next impossible to profanity itself. Cornelius Winter, who accompanied him in his last voyage to America, says that sometimes he wept exceedingly, stamped loudly and passionately, and he was frequently so overcome that for a few seconds it seemed he never could recover; and when he did, nature required some time to compose herself. He hardly ever ended a sermon without weeping more or less. Winter adds that he has known him avail himself of the formality of the judge putting on his black cap to pronounce sentence. With eyes full of tears, and his heart almost too big to admit of speech, he would say, after a momentary pause, “I am now going to put on my condemning cap. Sinner, I must do it! I must pronounce sentence !" Then, in a strain of tremendous eloquence, he would repeat our Lord's words, Depart, ye cursed," and not without a powerful descrip

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tion of the nature of that curse. But it was only by hearing him, and by beholding his attitude and tears, continues this writer, that any person could conceive of the effect.17

This dramatic power was another of his extraordinary talents. Not only every accent of his voice, remarks Gillies, spoke to the ear, but every feature of his face, every motion of his hands, every gesture spoke to the eye, so that the most thoughtless found their attention involuntarily fixed. Hume reports that once, after a solemn pause, he exclaimed: "The attendant angel is just about to leave the threshold of this sanctuary and ascend to heaven. And shall he ascend and not bear, with him the news of one sinner among all this multitude reclaimed from the error of his ways?" To give the greater effect to this exclamation, he stamped with his foot, lifted up his hands and eyes to heaven, and cried aloud, "Stop, Gabriel, stop, ere you enter the sacred portals, and yet carry with you the news of one sinner converted to God." "This address," says Hume, "was accompanied with such animated yet natural action, that it surpassed anything I ever saw or heard in any other preacher."

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At Lady Huntingdon's he was once illustrating the perils of the sinner who is led on by inadequate views of religion; he drew the picture of a blind beggar, guided along the brink of a deep precipice by a string around the neck of his dog; the dog escapes; the blind man lifts his foot over the precipice Heavens! he is gone!" shouted Chesterfield, leaping up before the assembly.18 As though it were no dif

17 Memoirs of Winter, by William Jay.

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18 The effect of his eloquence on polished or shrewd minds seems to have been as irresistible as on the common people. Franklin's exampla is well known, but deserves requoting. He went to hear him in Philadelphia: "At this sermon," he says, "there was also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments respecting the building in Georgia, and suspecting a collection might be intended, had, by precaution, emptied his pockets before he came from home; toward the conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong inclination to give, and applied to a neighbor, who stood near him, to lend him some money for the purpose. The request was fortunately made to, perhaps, the only man in the company

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ficult matter, remarks Winter, "to catch the sound of the Saviour praying, he would exclaim: Hark! hark! do not you hear him? You may suppose that as this occurred frequently, the efficacy of it was destroyed; but, no; though we often knew what was coming, it was as new to us as though we had never heard it before. That beautiful apos trophe, used by the prophet Jeremiah, 'O earth, earth, earth, hear the words of the Lord,' was very subservient to him, and never used impertinently."

Newton, of Olney, said: "As a preacher, if any man were to ask me who was the second I ever had heard, I should be at some loss; but in regard to the first, Mr. Whitefield exceeded so far every other man of my time that I should be at none. He was the original of popular preaching, and all our popular ministers are only his copies." 19

Such was the man; the results of his influence on his age and ours it would be impossible to estimate, not only because he did not give them any aggregate form by the general organization of societies, but because of their great extent. It has been shown that he led the Methodistic movement over the first barriers in its way, and by field and itinerant preaching, broke open for it an unrestricted career. While in England he was almost as ubiquitous as Wesley, and in scarcely any part of the island did he fail to give impulse and energy to that evangelical reanimation which continues to our day. Writers who are not Methodists admit that Methodism saved the Nonconformity of England;20 20 Whitefield was its chief representative and promoter among the Nonconformists. The whole evangelical Dissent of England feels his power to-day.

In Scotland, where his fellow-laborers in the revival had but slight agency, and where the Established Kirk was spiritually dead, and the zeal of the Seceders was more the who had the firmness not to be affected by the preacher. His answer was, 'At any other time, friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely, but not now; for thee seems to me to be out of thy right senses.'” 19 See his letter in Lady Huntingdon's Life and Times, chap. 7. 20 See page 30.