Burn the Book, throw it down, or search it?
Burn the Book,
throw it down,
or search it?
The Master of the college looked grim as he said, “Whitefield, all this visiting the sick and the poor has to stop. I will not tolerate such goings on from any of our students, and that includes servitors such as you. You are here at Oxford to study and learn in a dignified manner.” The Master’s face and voice left no doubt that he was truly angry.
George felt his face redden, and quickly said, “I understand, Sir.”
“See that you do. That will be all, Whitefield.”
Dismissed, George quietly left the room. He hadn’t said he agreed with the Master, only that he understood. How could he stop doing what the Bible so clearly commanded, like visiting the sick? The buildings they lived in were old, dirty, foul places, many with windows patched with black paper or rags. People there were often sick with fevers. He felt the small bag of money he’d saved from his food money. Some poor family would benefit from it. However, it would not go far.
As he hurried down the street someone called his name. It was Charles Wesley. “George, I’ve been looking for you.” Charles held out a book. “I haven’t read this yet, but I thought you might like to borrow it while I’m away this week.”
George glanced at the title before he tucked the book into his robe, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal. What in the world does that mean? George wondered. “This one should make me think. Thanks, Charles.”
It was late when George started to read the book. The title puzzled him. He had no idea what it meant. His first candle burned down, and then another as he went on reading. “If this book belonged to me, I would burn it or at least throw it away,” he told himself as he finished. It is a dreadful thing to read that anyone may go to church, say his prayers, and receive the sacrament, but not be a Christian. George closed the book and began arguing with himself. It’s true some like Marcus do these things because they are supposed to do them, not because they care about them. But I believe we must do them all to please God and as many good works as we can. How can this book say you may do them all earnestly and not be a Christian? What does it mean that a Christian must have God’s life inside him? He could not help opening the book again.
This time as he finished a long shudder went through him. “Lord, God, if I am not a Christian, or if I am not a real one, for Jesus’ sake show me what Christianity is so that I won’t end my life lost forever.” For a long while he sat thinking what the writer of the book meant by saying “Christ must be formed in us.” How could he, George Whitefield, make that happen? He’d read of saints who tried to commune with God by giving up all worldly things for a life of prayer and strict discipline. Was that the way? At the sounds of loud laughter in the hall, he snuffed out the candle and hurried to his bed. With his face to the wall he pretended sleep. The room was soon filled with his room-mates back from the alehouse. The smell of gin hung in the air, along with curses as they stumbled to their beds. George lay awake. Tomorrow he would fast, and pray.
Days turned into weeks and George could think of nothing but the words of the little book. How could he find such closeness to God? He must follow the example of those saints he’d read about. He would deny himself all but the poorest foods, the poorest clothes, even friends. He stopped going to meetings of the Holy Club. He did not attend his tutor’s lectures, and burst into tears when his kindly tutor came to see him. “I cannot come, cannot think or do the lessons at this time,” he tried to explain.
His tutor shook his head. “Yes, I can see that you can’t. But this must stop or you will be expelled and there is little I can do for you.”
More weeks passed and George did not return to the Holy Club. Charles had come to see him. “Look at yourself, George. This is not like you.” His face was gentle. “You need to rest, and let us care for you,” he said.
“You mean well, “George said, “but I am not mad as you seem to think. When I have come to the end of my search you will see. The way may be hard, but it’s the only way for me. I must go on. You will see.” Charles finally left, and George went back to the latest devotional book he was reading.
He no longer read any other books. If a devotional book said one should speak but little, he decided not to speak at all unless truly necessary, not even in prayer. During the six weeks of Lent he ate only a little coarse bread and drank sage tea for his meals. He was eating his small meal in his room when Marcus came in, and threw his books on the floor near his bed. “You look sick. You don’t eat enough to keep going. All this fasting just makes you paler than death.” Marcus shook his head and left, banging the door closed behind him.
George felt both weary and dizzy. He looked down at his hands and wrists. He had grown thin. He could barely pray and he no longer felt able to think about what he read and had stopped trying. Slowly he pushed away from the table. “I can’t give up now.” Maybe the end was near and God would accept his suffering as enough, and draw him close to himself. He would know when it came, some mystical feeling that would come to him from God’s presence. That had to be what the little book meant.
He had made the climb down from the garret and managed to go as far as the gardens where he kneeled on the cold ground to pray. Nothing happened, not even when he lay flat, face down. He bore the cold as long as he could, and with the little strength left in him made his way back to the bottom of the stairs to his attic room. It was as far as he got. He collapsed on the second step too ill to move.
“Whitefield, are you sick?” The servitor who stood over him shook his shoulder, and George tried to speak but it was too much effort. “It’s me, Hugh, and I think you need help.” Hugh had often fallen down from too much ale, but not in the daytime like this. Besides, his room-mate looked utterly pale. Was he dying? “Help, I need help over here, help,” he shouted. Soon others came and together they carried George up to his bed. Someone ran to fetch his tutor, and soon both the tutor and a doctor were bending over a half-conscious George.
The portly doctor finished examining George and shook his head. “This young man must stay put in that bed for the next six weeks. Good food and rest, sir, and we may have you up on your feet.” He turned to the tutor. “I believe he will need far longer than six weeks in bed to truly recover, more like months back in his home to rest and let his mind and body grow stronger. Such foolish mistreatment of the body! I’ve seen this kind of thing turn into complete madness and death. It’s well we’ve caught him in time.”
George lay in his bed totally exhausted and sick. He closed his eyes. He could not get up if he tried. The days spent in bed went by slowly. Marcus kindly brought him his New Testament and a devotional book to read, but George was often too weak to read long. Occasionally Marcus brought him fruit. Today he handed George an apple. “You better eat this,” he said. “You’re thin as a rail. Why don’t you forget all this religion? Once you get back on your feet and graduate, you’ll get a church living and you won’t need any of this.” George thanked him for his kindness and waited for Marcus to leave before he began reading again.
By the end of his weeks in bed George had improved some, but inside he felt empty and defeated. Marcus was right. He had made himself deathly sick, and all for nothing. He’d tried as hard as he could to be worthy of God, but he felt no closer to him. Alone in the room and miserable, he bowed his head. “Lord God, it’s no use, I can only throw myself on your mercy. Save me, Lord.” His throat was dry and he longed for water.
As if light had come to fill a dark room, he remembered Jesus saying, “I thirst,” when he was dying on the cross for our sins, and then Jesus had said, “It is finished!” George felt like a blind man who has just been healed and can suddenly see! On the cross the Lord Jesus had done the work of saving him, and it was finished! He thought of the Bible verse: “To all who received him, who believed in his name, Jesus gave the right to become children of God.”
“I see it,” George cried. “I tried so hard to save myself, but all my good deeds and rule keeping didn’t save me, you did, Lord! God makes us his children when we receive you and believe in your name.” George bowed his head. “I never understood what it meant when you told Nicodemus in the Bible that he must be born again, but I see it, Lord. No one can work their way into your family, we must be born into it. It’s a new birth into God’s family when we receive you, and believe in your name.” When Marcus entered the room George threw his arms around his shoulders and cried, “Marcus, dear friend, there’s hope for us, for all of England, the whole Church of England, and it’s all in the new birth.” George practically danced with joy, and Marcus had no choice but to listen to this strange thing George called “the new birth.”
At first Marcus’s round face had a puzzled look mixed with a bit of fear. It seemed like a new George standing before him talking about what God had done for him. It was certainly not the old George. How long they talked Marcus didn’t know, or when he began to feel as though a heavy burden rolled off his back.
“I haven’t told anyone this,” Marcus said, “but living for a good time and planning to take a church job for the honor that comes with it, and the money, didn’t make me feel good inside. Now I know what’s been missing all along.” Marcus put his head in his hands. “God is who I need. Will you pray for me, George?”
With tears running down his face, George put his arm about Marcus’s shoulder. “With all my heart,” he said. George prayed, and then Marcus. “The Lord will never let go of us, Marcus. Welcome to the family of God! This calls for a celebration,” George said, “and I know just the small shop where we can find good wholesome food, and I am truly hungry!” For the first time in months George’s appetite was back.
Happy as he felt George had not fully recovered from his close brush with death, and quickly tired even after so many weeks in bed. When his tutor said, “You must go home for a good rest away from studies for awhile,” George agreed.
He wrote to the family that he was coming, and told them the good news of what God had done for him. An answering note came back quickly from his brother Richard. “Are you mad? Too much religion and too much pious talk isn’t good for you,” he wrote. “What you need is a good rest and a heavy dose of fresh old English countryside.”
George smiled as he read Richard’s note. At least he was right about the rest and the fresh old English countryside.