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Revivals under Whitefield
(Continued)

At the age of seventeen he went to Oxford. His progress here was rapid. His decision, prompt action and hard working ambition, displayed pluck not unworthy of the man who in later years braved brutal mobs with heroic boldness, and who, when the present comforts of ocean traveling were things un-thought of, again and again crossed the turbulent Atlantic; and, constrained by the love of Christ his Savior, tramped American woods and swamps, seeking sinners and trying to save them. The moral tone of Oxford at this time was at its worst, "a learned den of infidelity and dissipation." He resisted, however, from the first the temptation to carousals with which he was surrounded.

Studying his Bible and other good books, he had determined to strive for a better life than that he saw around him. But how to attain it he knew not. The three following years were years of religious darkness and struggle. There were two others in the University destined to like conspicuous places in the church who were in a similar state of mind, John and Chas. Wesley. These three, beating around in the dark, put themselves upon severe ascetic regimen to find the way of life. They knew not Christ and were trying to save themselves. In this path Whitefield hesitated at no sacrifice.

The worst of food, the meanest apparel, prolonged fasting, midnight vigils and other forms of crucifixion of the flesh so wrought upon his brain and nerves that he was haunted with a constant fear of seeing the devil. His condition, physical and mental, had become alarming. His friends, the Wesley's, knew not what to do for him; they had not found the light themselves. Happily his bodily constitution broke down, and by prostrating him upon a bed of sickness for six or seven weeks, gave him aim-enforced rest from his bodily crucifixion and the torturing thought with which his mind was afflicted. His mind became clearer as it became calmer.

He spent much of the time in reading the Greek Testament and in prayer. Gradually the hopelessness of his own efforts at salvation dawned upon his mind, and for the first time in his life he knew he was lost. The decisive point in his experience we give in his own words: "One day, perceiving an uncommon drought and a disagreeable clamminess in my mouth, and using things to allay my thirst, but in vain, it was suggested to me that when Jesus Christ cried out, 'I thirst,' his sufferings were nearly at an end. Upon which I cast myself down on the bed crying out ' I thirst, I thirst.

'Soon after this I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden, which had so heavily oppressed me, the spirit of mourning was taken from me and I knew what it was to rejoice in God my Savior, and for some time could not avoid singing psalms wherever I was. But my joy gradually became more settled and, blessed be God, has abode and increased in my soul, saving a few casual intermissions ever since. Thus were the days of my mourning ended. After a long night of desertion and temptation, the stand, which I had seen at a distance before began to appear again, and the daystar arose in my heart. Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption."

Sixteen years afterward, reviewing this experience, he writes more fully of his feelings at the time: "My crying 'I thirst, I thirst,' was not to put myself on a level with Jesus Christ. But when I said those words, my soul was in an agony. I thirsted for God's salvation and a sense of divine love; I thirsted for a clear discovery of my pardon through Jesus Christ, and the seal of the Spirit. I was at the same time enabled to look up to, and act faith upon the glorious Lord Jesus as dying for sinners, and felt the blessed effects of it."

From this time his spiritual life rapidly deepened. Henceforth his hungering and thirsting after righteousness were boundless. The Bible became almost his one book. He found his theology not in the University course or library, but in prayerful study of God's Word. Some time after his conversion, writing from Gloucester, he says: "I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books and praying, if possible, over every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light and power from above. I got more true knowledge from reading the book of God in one month, than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men."

This outline of his early religious exercises gives an insight into his future life and work. Whitefield, the servitor at Oxford, brought at last to the utter end of human endeavor, and made to surrender wholly to the sovereign grace of God in Christ, interprets Whitefleld, the preacher, casting himself never on his own resources, or on human plans, but singly and always upon the power of God. He never retraced the steps of the lesson of those early days of spiritual gloom and struggle. He accepted as the pole star of all future aims the truth of Scripture. "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord."

The reader can hardly fail to notice the points of similarity between Whitefield's religious experience and that of the father of the Reformation. Luther's struggles in the chains of his youthful sins were matched by the groans that came from Pembroke College in such complaints as this: "If I trace myself from my cradle to my manhood, I can see nothing in it but a fitness to be damned." The self-righteous attempts at salvation by the great German Reformer, even to climbing the stairs at St. Peter's on his knees, find a parallel in the self-lacerations of the English student, who pressed on his way of mortifying the flesh till the bones well nigh burst through the skin, and the mind staggered away from the ordeal.

And the perfect peace, the sweet surrender at the feet of Christ, the completeness of righteousness, and the un-shaded acceptance with God through Christ, are the same at Erfurth and Oxford. The parallel might be carried further. In each case it was the keynote of life. As they had received Christ in the fullness of his atoning sacrifice, so they walked in Him. In each case the instrument was nothing, and God was all in all.

Whitefield's experience also interprets his theology. Those nights alone with the Bible taught him in rare measure the secrets of men's hearts and the hidings of his power in dealing with them. If we would understand his method for winning men, we must recall how the Lord won him. To that lesson he was always loyal. The spirit had burned human helplessness, and ruin, and divine grace too deeply into his own experience to allow him ever to forget it in his preaching.

These truths had been in his own heart too consuming a fire ever to allow him to wander beyond them. The impressions of his life were struck from that early type with singular fidelity. He became a preacher of the way in which God had revealed His Son in him. Hence he preached profoundly rather than broadly. Hence he did nothing but preach. He had less culture than his noble friend, Chas. Wesley, less breadth of plan, less executive power, less worldly wisdom, in measures for extending the gospel, than John Wesley.

But no preacher since Paul more grandly lived under the light of the Apostle's single purpose: "This one thing I do." Our sketch, therefore, of the revivals under Whitefield in this country will be a sketch of the effect of the gospel of Christ, preached by a man whose soul burned with Apostolic consecration. It is a history, not of measures, plans, or systems, but simply, purely an account of the wisdom of God making foolish the wisdom of man, the strength of God, conspicuous most in the weakness of man.

Whitefleld's first published sermon was on the nature and necessity of a new birth. The doctrine, so common now, was at that time new and startling. In his own words: "It was so seldom considered and so little experimentally understood by the generality of professors that, when told they must be born again, they were ready to cry out: 'How can these things be?' " The effect of this sermon was electric. Multitudes were pricked to the heart and led to Christ, but some mocked and scoffed. As the preacher went on ringing the fundamental truths of spiritual religion in the ears of the people, the opposition to him grew apace. Bishops and priests united in assailing him. He was forbidden many of the pulpits of his own church. Then he went to the streets and commons, and preached to the thousands who gladly flocked to his words.

"His mighty deeds in the pulpit were blazoned in the newspapers he preached nine times a week, and the people listened as for eternity.

And now a few of the clergy began to turn against him. Some called him a "spiritual pick-pocket," others thought he used a charm to get the people's money. Some were offended because he was on good terms with the dissenters, and some forbade him the use of their pulpits, unless he would retract a wish expressed in the preface of the sermon on regeneration, that his brethren would preach more frequently on the new birth."

Continued