The reader can easily imagine the scene in the Church of St. Mary de Crypt, where the usual congregations, as in most other churches at that period, were far from overflowing. Now there was a crowd--of whom? old men, who, in years long since past, had been boon companions of Whitefield's father; aged women, who remembered him when he was a tiny infant in his mother's arms; topers, not a few, whom, as a blue-aproned tapster, he had served in the neighbouring public-house; schoolfellows with whom he had been associated in many a merry spree; and a mingled multitude who knew him only as a Gloucester boy, who, by his own exertions, had made himself an honour to his native town. And what about the preacher? There he stands, in a position which he had never occupied before, in diaconal gown and bands, somewhat awed by the multitude before him, and by a conviction of the responsibility of the office which he was now assuming; but, at the same time, nerved with fidelity to his Master, and comforted by a consciousness that God was with him; his stature above the middle height--slender, and yet well-proportioned; his manner graceful; his features regular; his complexion fair; his eyes small, lively, and of a dark-blue colour, one of them with a squint, occasioned by the measles in his childhood days; his voice unusual, both in melody and strength, and its fine modulations accompanied by the exquisite action of an accomplished orator. No wonder that one of his uneducated hearers said "he preached like a lion." The comparison was far from perfect. It expressed the force and vehemence of that oratory which awed his hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before Paul; but it failed to convey an idea of the fervent and melting charity, the earnestness of persuasion, and the outpouring of redundant love, which characterised the preaching of this youthful evangelist for the next four and thirty years.[58] [58] See "Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon," vol. ii. p. 355. The subject of his first sermon was, "The Necessity and Benefit of Religious Society;"[59] probably the same sermon he afterwards preached before the Religious Societies, at one of their quarterly meetings, in Bow Church, London, and which was immediately published. "I shall displease some," said Whitefield in a letter already quoted, "for I am determined to speak against their _assemblies_." How he fulfilled his determination will be seen by the following extract from his sermon:--