“MY VERY DEAR FAITHFUL FRIEND AND BROTHER,――After watching and praying and striving some days for direction, I now sit down to write you a letter, though I know not well what to say or do. The concern I have felt for you and my dear family has had an effect on my body, and has increased the weakness, which the season of the year, my constant labours, and continual cares have brought upon me. I fear I have been sinfully impatient to come to you. I think I could be sold as a slave to serve at the galleys, rather than you and my dear orphan family should want. You may well expect me; but I must not mention it, lest my impatient heart should say, ‘Lord, why wilt Thou not let me go?’ “After I have fought the Lord’s battles in Moorfields, these holidays, I think to take a tour into Cornwall and Wales, and, perhaps, to Ireland.” Whitefield here laments that he has not, before now, returned to Georgia; and yet, strangely enough, he assigns no _definite_ reason why his intentions and promises to return were not fulfilled. There is the same obscurity in the letter addressed to his Orphan-house chaplain:―― “LONDON, _May 21, 1743_. “MY VERY DEAR BROTHER BARBER,――Little did I think, when I parted from you at Bethesda, that I should be writing to you at this time in London. But God’s ways are in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. I have essayed to come to you more than once, or twice; but, I believe I can say, ‘The Spirit suffered me not.’ In thought, I am with you daily; when I shall come, in person, our Saviour only knows. I long to be with you, to open our hearts freely, and to tell one another what God has done for our souls.” All this sounds well enough; but it does not assign the reason or reasons why he was not in Georgia. Was he kept in England by his new relationship to the Calvinistic Methodists? Or did his wife, for a sufficient cause, object to his return to America? Because Whitefield himself is silent on the subject, these are questions which it is impossible to answer. All the debts due in England, on account of his Orphan House, were now defrayed; and, with the foregoing letters, he sent £25 towards the expenses in America; but the debts there required a considerably larger sum than this.[55] Whitefield remained in London until June 13, when he again set out on another of his evangelistic tours. Preaching all the way, he arrived at Gloucester, “shouting, Grace! Grace!” He preached at Gloucester, Fairford, Burford, Bengeworth, Stroud, Hampton, Bristol, and Kingswood. On Saturday, June 25, he rode to John Cennick’s circuit, Wiltshire. He writes:――