Introduction ix
Introduction
Iam thankful for the reception accorded my two-volume work, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival. Although each volume of this work amounts to six hundred pages, it has had several printings and has been widely read. Readers in various countries have expressed their gratitude for the information and fascination these books provided. For instance, Dr. Cornelius Van Til of Princeton and Westminster Seminaries in reviewing Volume One stated,
Read this book. You may forget to talk to your wife (or husband); you may forget to go to work; but it's worth a few sacrifices.
Why do I go to such extremes? To talk like that is surely abnormal. Yes, it is. But I did get into an unusually abnormal state of mind when I read the book. Besides, I am even now, weeks later, still abnormal.
Notwithstanding the large circulation these books have received, many potential readers, lacking a realization of the interest they would find in them, have told themselves, "Two such large volumes would be too much for me." Accordingly I have condensed the two volumes into one of less than three hundred pages. This book, though brief and simple, reports many of the memorable and exciting matters of Whitefield's life, and I have endeavored to write in a style that I hope will prove abundantly interesting, even to many who are not in the habit of reading.
I trust, however, that readers of this one-volume work, gaining instruction and blessing from its pages, will be influenced to read the two-volume record of the life and times of George Whitefield, the greatest evangelist since the Apostle Paul.
Arnold A. Dallimore
Cottam, Ontario,
Canada, NOR 1B0