Under these circumstances, the ministers of Christ preached almost incessantly, and many were awakened to a sense of their awful condition before God, and to rest their hopes of eternal salvation on the Rock of ages. Mr. Whitefield, animated with that burning charity which shone so conspicuously in him, ventured out at midnight to Hyde Park, where he proclaimed to the affrighted and astonished multitudes that there is a Saviour, Christ the Lord. The darkness of the night, and the awful apprehensions of an approaching earthquake, added much to the solemnity of the scene. The sermon was truly sublime, and to the ungodly sinner, the self-righteous pharisee, and the artful hypocrite, strikingly terrific. With a pathos which showed the fervor of his soul, and with a grand majestic voice that commanded attention, he took occasion from the circumstances of the assembly, to call their attention to that most important event in which every one will be interested, the final consummation of all things, the universal wreck of nature, the dissolution of earth, and the eternal sentence of every son and daughter of Adam. The whole scene was one of a most memorable character. Mr. Charles Wesley, Mr. Romaine, and others preached in a similar manner, and with like happy results. At this period, Whitefield and his female friends especially, were the subjects of royal attention at the court of George the Second. It is said that on one occasion Lady Chesterfield appeared in a dress "with a brown ground and silver flowers," of foreign manufacture. The king, smiling significantly, said to her aloud, "I know who chose that gown for you--Mr. Whitefield; I hear you have attended on him for a year and a half." Her ladyship acknowledged she had done so, and professed her approbation of his character and ministry; and afterwards deeply regretted that she had not said more when she had so good an opportunity. Whitefield had occasion to wait on the secretary of state, in company with Dr. Gifford, a Baptist pastor in London, to ask relief for some persecuted Christians in Ireland, and was assured that "no hurt was designed by the state to the Methodists." He also renewed his friendship with the Messrs. Wesley, and several times exchanged pulpits with them. He writes, "I have now preached thrice in Mr. Wesley's chapel, and God was with us of a truth."