The character and genius of the preacher to whom this most important
development of Methodism was due demand a more extended notice than I
have yet given them. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was
always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on
all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was
chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical
skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing
of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing
of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At
the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly
amiable, a more purely unselfish man it would be difficult to conceive.
He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save
souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labors it is sufficient
to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his
active career he preached eighteen thousand times, or on an average ten
times a week; that these sermons were delivered with the utmost
vehemence of voice and gesture, often in the open air, and to
congregations of many thousands; and that he continued his exertions to
the last, when his constitution was hopelessly shattered by disease.
During long periods he preached forty hours, and sometimes as much as
sixty hours, a week. In the prosecution of his missionary labors he
visited almost every important district in England and Wales. At least
twelve times he traversed Scotland, three times he preached in Ireland,
thirteen times he crossed the Atlantic.
Very few men placed by circumstances at the head of a great religious
movement have been so absolutely free from the spirit of sect. Very few
men have passed through so much obloquy with a heart so entirely
unsoured, and have retained amid so much adulation so large a measure of
deep and genuine humility. There was indeed not a trace of jealousy,
ambition, or rancor in his nature. There is something singularly
touching in the zeal with which he endeavored to compose the differences
between himself and Wesley, when so many of the followers of each leader
were endeavoring to envenom them; in the profound respect he continually
expressed for his colleague at the time of their separation; in the
exuberant gratitude he always showed for the smallest act of kindness to
himself; in the tenderness with which he guarded the interests of the
inmates of that orphanage at Georgia around which his strongest earthly
affections were entwined; in the almost childish simplicity with which
he was always ready to make a public confession of his faults.
CONQUESTS OF NADIR SHAH
CAPTURE OF DELHI
A.D. 1739
SIR JOHN MALCOLM
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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