On the evening of July 6, 1748, Whitefield again found himself in London, after an absence of nearly four years. Here he was welcomed with joy by many thousands. The large church of St. Bartholomew was at once thrown open to him, where multitudes flocked to hear, and where on the first Sabbath he had a thousand communicants. But in his own more immediate circle many things were in an unhappy condition. His congregation at the Tabernacle had been much scattered during his absence; Antinomianism had made sad havoc among the people; and one of this party threatened to rival him in Moorfields. Whitefield sent him word, "The fields are no doubt as free to you as to another. God send you a clear head and a _clean_ heart. I intend preaching there on Sunday evening." He did so; and found "Moorfields as white to harvest as ever." Our evangelist was again called to mourn the evils of poverty. He found himself compelled to sell his household furniture, to pay, in part, the debts of his orphan-house, which were yet far from being cancelled; his aged mother, for whom he always retained the highest regard, also needed his aid. These and other trials pressed him sorely; but on the other hand, he felt happy in his work, and his congregation were soon reunited, and happy in his labors. We have seen that as early as 1738, Lady Huntingdon, with his lordship her husband, as frequently as they could, heard Whitefield preach; since that period his lordship had died, leaving her ladyship a widow, in the thirty-ninth year of her age. At what period she became more openly and intimately Whitefield's friend does not appear; but when he landed at Deal from his third visit to America, she sent Howel Harris to bring him to her house at Chelsea, where he preached to large circles of the gay world, who thronged this then fashionable watering-place. For the benefit of this class of hearers, she soon after removed to London, at that time some three miles distant from Chelsea, appointed Whitefield her chaplain, and during the winter of 1748 and '49, opened her splendid mansion in Park-street for the preaching of the gospel. "Good Lady Huntingdon," he writes, "has come to town, and I am to preach twice a week at her house to the great and noble. O that some of them might be effectually called to taste the riches of redeeming love." On the first day appointed, Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, both of them well-known for their gayety and infidelity, and a circle of the nobility, attended; and having heard him once, they desired to come again. "Lord Chesterfield thanked me," he says. "Lord Bolingbroke was moved, and asked me to come and see him the next morning. My hands have been full of work, and I have been among great company. All accepted my sermons. Thus the world turns round. '_In all time of my wealth, good Lord, deliver me._'"