I know that this is a dreadful picture. I marvel God did not sweep away the Church altogether. But I believe that the picture is not one whit too highly colored. It is painful to expose such a state of things. But, for Whitefield's sake, the truth ought to be known. Justice has not been done to him, because the condition of the times he lived in is not considered. The times he lived in were extraordinary times, and required extraordinary means to be used. And whatever quiet men, sitting by their fireside in our day, may say to the contrary, I am satisfied that Whitefield was just the man for his times. * * * * * 2. The story of Whitefield's life, which forms the next part of our subject, is one that is soon told. The facts and incidents of that life are few and simple, and I shall not dwell upon them at any length. Whitefield was born in 1714. Like many other great men, he was of very humble origin. His father and mother kept the Bell Inn, in the city of Gloucester. Whether there is such an inn now, I do not know. But, judging from Whitefield's account of his circumstances, it must formerly have been a very small concern. Whitefield's early life seems to have been any thing but religious, though he had occasional fits of devout feeling. He speaks of himself as having been addicted to lying, filthy talking, and foolish jesting. He confesses that he was a Sabbath-breaker, a theatre-goer, a card-player, and a romance-reader. All this went on till he was twelve or fifteen years old. At the age of twelve he was placed at a grammar-school in Gloucester. Little is known of his progress there, excepting the curious fact that even then he was remarkable for his good elocution and memory, and was selected to make speeches before the corporation, at their annual visitations. At the age of fifteen he appears to have become tired of Latin and Greek, and to have given up all hopes of ever becoming more than a tradesman. He ceased to take lessons in any thing but writing. He began to assist his mother in the public-house that she kept. "At length," he says, "I put on my blue apron, washed mops, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, became a professed common drawer for nigh a year and a half." But God, who ordereth all things in heaven and earth, and called David from keeping sheep to be a king, had provided some better thing for Whitefield than the office of a pot-boy. Family disagreements interfered with his prospects at the Bell Inn. An old schoolfellow stirred up again within him the desire of going to the University. And at length, after several providential circumstances had smoothed the way, he was launched, at the age of eighteen, at Oxford, in a position at that time much more humbling than it is now, as a servitor at Pembroke College.