But the roughs of London seem to have been worse than the roughs of Kingswood; and we cannot wonder that men like Walpole, and even polite and refined religious men, thought that a man who could go right into St. Bartholomew’s Fair, in Moorfields, and Finsbury, take his station among drummers, trumpeters, merry-andrews, harlequins, and all kinds of wild beasts, must be “mad”; it must have seemed the height of fanaticism, like preaching to a real Gadarene swinery. All the historians of the movement—Sir James Stephen, Dr. Abel Stevens, Dr. Southey, Isaac Taylor, and others, recite with admiration the story of the way in which he wrestled successfully with the merry-andrews. He began to preach at six o’clock in the morning; stones, dirt, rotten eggs were hurled at him. “My soul was among lions,” he says; but the marvellous voice overcame, and he went on speaking, and we know how tenderly he would speak to them, of their own miseries, and the dangers of their own sins; the great multitude—it was between twenty and thirty thousand—“became like lambs;” he finished, went away, and, in the wilder time—in the afternoon—he came again. In the meantime there had been organisations to put him down: here was a man with a long heavy whip to strike the preacher; there was a recruiting sergeant who had been engaged with drum and fife to interrupt him. As he appeared on the outskirts of the crowd, Whitefield, who well knew how to catch the humour of the people too, exclaimed, “Make way for the king’s officer!” and the mob divided, while, to his surprise, the recruiting officer, with his drum, found himself immediately beneath Whitefield; it was easy to manage him now. The crowd around roared like wild beasts; it must have been a tremendous scene. Will it be believed—it seems incredible—that he continued there, preaching, praying, singing, until the night fell? He won a decided victory, and the next day received no fewer than a thousand notes from persons, “brands plucked from the burning,” who spoke of the convictions through which they had passed, and implored the preacher to remember them in his prayers. This was in Moorfields, in which neighbourhood since, the followers both of Wesley and of Whitefield have found their tabernacles and most eminent fields of usefulness. Many have attempted fair-preaching since Whitefield’s day, but not, we believe, with much success; it needs a remarkable combination of powers to make such efforts successful. Whitefield was able to attempt to outbid the showmen, merry-andrews, and harlequins, and he succeeded. No wonder they called him a fanatic; he might have said, “If we be beside ourselves, it is for God, that by all means we may save some!”