9 Women and Marriage

9 Women and Marriage

In December 1738 a rested and ambitious Whitefield returned to London ready to implement his preaching vision. The voyage had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm - or his sense of apostolic destiny. Readers of his journal learned this when he described a reunion with his methodist friends outside London, a meeting that "put me in the Mind of St. Paul's Friends, meeting him at the three Taverns, and I like him, was not a little comforted."

By 1738, one might have thought Whitefield had enacted all the characters and scenes there were to be seen. But there remained one more major creation that would complete his redefinition of the eighteenth-century pulpit: field preacher. The part of field preacher was not, strictly speaking, invented by Whitefield. But as we shall see, he so revised and redefined "fields" as to carry field preaching or field "conventicles" from a rural to an urban setting. In the process, he redefined the meaning and significance of the concept itself, and by so doing bequeathed a new, more modern sense to the term evangelical. His field preaching competed not only with the "velvetmouthed" preachers of his church but also with the vendors, sportsmen, and entertainers of the marketplace.

Whitefield's road to the fields was, in part, inadvertent. Upon returning to London he found that his journals had generated great controversy in his absence. Friends had found ample evidence in them for rejoicing; enemies had found more than enough for offense. While Whitefield had expected rejection and opposition, the depth of clerical antagonism surprised him. But it also compelled him to give serious consideration to other outlets for ministry - among them, outdoor preaching.

As early as 1737 Whitefield was told of the Welsh field preacher Howell Harris, who had been traveling the "fields and valleys" of Wales since 1735. Harris supplied a contemporary model and precedent, but his ministry was limited largely to the outdwellers and unchurched. Could outdoor preaching also work in the heavily churched urban fields of London? Was Whitefield the man who could make it work? Such questions involved not only issues of access and legality but also questions of calling. In short, was his instinct to begin outdoor preaching in fact a call from God?

Before answering these questions, Whitefield needed to legitimate his pretext for itinerant preaching by becoming a fully licensed minister in the Church of England. This legitimation, by definition, required a "living." On January 14, 1739, in the familiar environs of Oxford, he was ordained a priest in the Church of England - a vow he would neither rescind nor renounce throughout his lifetime. Once ordained, he met with the Georgia trustees and the bishop of London and requested assignment to Georgia with responsibility for the orphan house and the surrounding parish. Although no friend to Whitefield or the methodists, the bishop complied, perhaps in part hoping to rid himself of the methodist nuisance. But here he miscalculated. With living in hand, Whitefield was free to seek entry into all the London churches for his orphan-house charity. What was more, if they refused him, he had a pretext to preach out of doors to any and all who would hear.

Having settled the problem of pretext, Whitefield turned to the question of calling. The dramatist within him recognized immediately how well suited his ministry would be to the out of doors. Lacking any sacred consecration, an open-air urban setting would provide the perfect "stage" for his highly dramatic, sensational weekday preaching performances. By separating himself from the confines of the pulpit, he would free himself to pursue embodied preaching without restraint. What more perfect backdrop for his novel brand of improvised evangelism and extemporaneous response than the secular setting? With no walls to hinder, the audiences would certainly grow, possibly limited only by how far his voice could carry. Individuals uninterested in the church could be sought in the profane spaces of the marketplace and, mixing together with methodist believers, could create "religious" assemblies that represented something entirely new: neither church nor sect, neither sabbath nor festival, neither sacred nor profane, but all, wrapped up in one hybrid event.

An outdoor Whitefield would no longer be competing with the churches so much as with the merchants, hawkers, and stage players of the world. The market centers and fairs would attract thousands whom Whitefield could divert through his powerful ministry. In economic terms, religion would compete in the marketplace for its own market share. In religious terms, it would be going out to the hedges and highways to convict sinners. Everything about the idea seemed both right and irresistible. But it was also potentially illegal. Churchmen would undoubtedly balk at a preacher appearing in their own back yards.

Before Whitefield would pursue such a ministry, he felt the need for a clear call to do so. He would not move alone on so innovative an idea. To this end he initiated a correspondence with Howell Harris that soon grew into a strong, mutually supportive friendship. As early as December 20, 1738, on the eve of his ordination, he wrote to Harris introducing himself as one "unknown to you in person, yet I have long been united to you in Spirit." After praising Harris's ministry and seeking a personal meeting, he closed, "my dear brother, I love you in the bowels of Jesus Christ, and wish you may be the spiritual father of thousands, and shine, as the sun in the firmament."

Predictably, Harris replied in kind: "I should blush to think the name of such an ignorant, negligent, unprofitable servant should reach your ears." Harris did not know of Whitefield's interest in the fields, but he had already heard of his successes in London, which led him to exclaim, "0, how ravishing is it to hear of such demonstration of the divine love and favour to London." With that interchange, the two itinerants forged a relationship for mutual counsel and support. Whitefield later confessed that "a divine and strong sympathy seemed to appear between us, and I was resolved to promote his interest with all my might."

In presence and personality the two differed greatly. Unlike Whitefield, who was slight, of moderate height, affected, and easily frightened, Harris was large, aggressive, and fearless - known to back down mobs through the sheer force of his will. He was, in eighteenth-century terms, a man's man. One account of his preaching in the streets at St. Davids in Pembrokeshire noted that "every particle of his speech flashed and gleamed so vividly, as lightning, on the consciences of the hearers, that they were terrified, and feared that the day of judgment had overtaken them: yea so powerful were the effects accompanying his words, that bold and hardy men, being seized with fainting fits through fear and terror, fell as corpses in the street." In contrast to his fearsome presence, Harris adopted a pattern of intimate speech that was almost sensual in its appeal to the believer's "union" with Christ. He converted the language of love, courtship, and even romance from earthly connotations to heavenly metaphor in ways that anticipated the erotic revivalism of the Nova Scotian itinerant Henry Alline in the 1770s.

But for all the differences in style, personality, and presentation between Whitefield and Harris, there were important similarities that bonded the two together and ultimately provided Whitefield with the support he sought in his call. Both were born in 1714 and had attended Oxford, where each had given evidence of more concern for his soul than his books. Whitefield barely graduated, and Harris dropped out shortly after matriculation. Both traveled widely and envisioned their ministries more in terms of planting the seeds of grace than of watering what others had already sown. Both had strained relations with the Church of England, Whitefield remaining at its margins, Harris leaving it altogether. In the course of their travels, both were drawn to the methodist style of extemporaneous prayer and preaching even though their theology remained strictly Calvinist. And both ratified their unique ministries with appeals to experience and spiritual impressions. Whitefield spoke often of dreams and leadings in his journal, while Harris became known as "the man from South Wales who had seen a vision." Harris's calling to field preaching came in scriptural terms. While agonizing over his call to the fields, Harris recalled, "these words forcibly came into my mind - 'Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.' And by the effect produced on my soul, I am persuaded that the passage was applied to me by the Holy Ghost." Whitefield later adopted these terms for himself as well.

If internal experience confirmed that Whitefield had an "open door" to the fields, however, he still required the pretext of closed pulpits to "compel" his outdoor ministry. Such a pretext soon materialized in the "St. Margaret's Affair." According to Whitefield's ingenuous account, he preached in St. Martin's parish in London on February 4, only after being invited by unnamed "friends" who, he had assumed, had the permission of the local rector. According to the equally innocent but contrary account in the Weekly Miscellany, however, these friends turned out to be "several lusty fellows" who led Whitefield to the pulpit "while the proper Preacher was lock'd into his pew." Outraged by this illicit "intrusion" into one of their pulpits, the rectors at St. Martin's and other London churches proceeded to close their doors to Whitefield's ministry.

News of the St. Margaret's incident soon spread in the press, launching an intensive war of print between the friends and enemies of the Whitefield forces. But instead of working to ease the tensions so that closed doors would be opened, Whitefield proceeded to inflame the issue by attacking his "persecutors." In a printed "Letter to the Religious Societies," he let fly the accusation that "it is most certain, that the Generality of our modern Prophets or Preachers, even the most zealous of them, are no better than the Pharisees of Old, or the Papists of the present time." Elsewhere, he averred that instead of letting good gospel ministers preach, "the clergy subscribing to the Articles of the Church of England was the key to Ecclesiastical Preferments; and when they got them, they then put the key in their pockets."

Words like these not only pitted clergy against people but class against class. They had the calculated effect of ensuring that closed doors would remain closed. This, in turn, provided the pretext for which Whitefield had been waiting. With church doors locked, he could now pursue his new living in the only way that remained - in open-air services. Instead of retreating, he could boldly inform his readers that such rejection was the "certain sign that a more effectual door will be opened, since there are so many adversaries."

Within days of the St. Margaret's affair, Whitefield began planning in earnest for his outdoor campaign. It would require careful practice and preparation outside London, much as a touring company might perfect its performance in smaller outlying theaters before playing Drury Lane or Covent Garden. There were many unanswered questions that had to be addressed before London. Would a dramatic, extemporaneous style work in the fields? Who would attend the performances? Would his listeners be attentive or disruptive? Could his voice project? Did he have the courage? Contained in the market place environment was an arena of free speech. But free speech and open space could be brutal. The same Weekly Miscellany that carried the news of Whitefield's controversy also carried the story of a recent tragedy in Soho, where a mob "seiz'd an Informer in Dean-Street and after dragging him thr' the channels, they threw him into a Horse-pond, after which they pelted him in so cruel a Manner that he died on Sunday morning." Only time and experience would reveal the fate of a field preacher.

Beginning on February 17, 1739, Whitefield embarked on a six-week voyage of discovery, a journey that answered his fears and uncertainties with such resounding success that even he was surprised. His experimental preaching began with a trial by fire in the rough Kingswood coal-mining district near Bristol in southwest England. The area was familiar to him and ideally suited to what lay in store in London. The men, women, and children of Kingswood labored long hours in the 150 coal pits that pocked the countryside. They were a violent, shorthved people who were regarded as some of eighteenth-century England's most desperate inhabitants. The area itself was forbidding, and not apt to attract attention from churchmen, who had shown an inclination to stay away. It was the perfect testing ground.

To provide encouragement and support, Whitefield persuaded another friend, William Seward, to accompany him. Seward, scion of a wealthy English family and recent convert to methodism, proved a most fortunate choice. He had both the accouterments of aristocracy and a methodist's humility and desire to serve the cause of the gospel. Together Whitefield and Seward traveled to Bristol, where they requested the use of the local pulpit, knowing full well that it would be denied them.

Immediately following news of the closed pulpits, the two drove through Kingswood in Seward's carriage announcing a service later that night. The sight they created was intriguing, to say the least: two low-life methodists riding in a gentleman's carriage and announcing a sermon in the fields. That night, following dinner, they went outdoors to preach to whoever would come. The chosen spot was Hanham Mount, site of earlier sermons by a methodist sympathizer named Richard Morgan. Ever sensitive to his surroundings, Whitefield used the location as an opportunity to preach on Christ's Sermon on the Mount. By Whitefield's standards, the audience was small. But the enthusiasm of their response and his own of freedom in expression promised far greater successes in the future.

Despite the small numbers, Whitefield recorded the event with all the excitement of a smashing success: "There were upwards of two hundred. Blessed be God that I have now broken the ice!" Once begun, the Kingswood campaign generated a clear momentum, fueled largely by word of mouth among the working-class population. From Hanham Mount, Whitefield traveled locally and preached everywhere but in the churches, exploiting ladders, roofs, and market spaces. He was particularly effective at the "Glass House" - an open space located in the yard of each glass factory. The working classes proved so eager for his ministry that he concluded that "this field preaching is particularly comfortable to the poor; whenever field preaching is stopped, farewell to the power of religion."

On Wednesday, February 21, Whitefield returned "amongst the miners," and this time he found nearly two thousand patient colliers waiting outdoors to hear him preach. A new world was opening before him. On February 25, he noted with unconcealed excitement that "at a moderate computation, there were about ten thousand people to hear me. The trees and hedges were full. All was a hush when I began; the sun shone bright, and God enabled me to preach for an hour with great power, and so loudly, that all, I was told, could hear me."

For some time the fields had maintained a mysterious hold on Whitefield's imagination much as the sea had; now he was learning why. Where the sea had calmed his spirit, the fields inflamed him and produced unprecedented preaching performances. With the unconcealed delight of life-defining discoveries, he confessed that "the fire is kindled in the country; and I know, all the devils in hell shall not be able to quench it." As in the past, the themes of power, majesty, and comfort dominated his vocabulary. Whatever feelings of might had overtaken Whitefield in the pulpit were multiplied out of doors where the excitement of uncertainty and the unprecedented crowds brought forth his ultimate efforts.

While preaching to the miners, Whitefield stepped up his attacks on the established clergy, further ensuring both popular acclaim and closed pulpits. He also continued to work on his journal entries and had them printed regularly. If churches would not open their pulpits to his appeals for the orphan house, then he would take those appeals to the fields. When Bristol's Bishop Baxter repeatedly refused requests to let him preach, Whitefield described their meetings in condescending words certain to further incense the clergy. Upon meeting the bishop, Whitefield "confided" in his journal that he dismissed the cleric before he himself could be dismissed. Then, "to shew how little I regarded such threatenings, after I joined in prayer for the Chancellor, I immediately went and expounded at Newgate as usual." Despite clerical resistance, Whitefield reported that "thousands went to hear me." The bishop's disapproval "rejoiced me greatly. Lord, why dost Thou thus honor me?"

The lessons Whitefield had learned in the churches found even better application in the fields. The louder he jousted with the bishop, the larger his audiences grew. At length the bishop relented and allowed Whitefield the use of Bristol pulpits to appeal for his orphan house. But by then the outdoor campaign had utterly taken over. By Whitefield's estimate, the audiences had grown from four to fourteen thousand, and eventually to twenty-three thousand. Allowing for exuberant exaggeration by a factor of two, it is still reasonable to suppose that he attracted crowds of ten thousand or more.

Size was the confirmation he needed. Throughout his travels, Whitefield legitimized his novel and challenging ministry with numbers. His ubiquitous audience estimates-recorded even when Scripture texts were not - constituted not only evidence of hubris but a badge of legitimacy. If his ministry was unlawful, would God bless it with such numbers and changed lives?

Whitefield settled other questions as well in these early days. Clearly the extemporaneous style worked well. Indeed, it worked better out of doors than it did in churches. With no notes and no pulpit, he could move freely, encumbered only by the gown that remained his last visible tie to the established church. The outdoor setting elevated his novel techniques to near perfection. Equally important was the discovery of his vocal range and ability outside. Whitefield was surprised to learn that "those who stood farthest off could hear me very plainly." An unsurpassed sense of power accompanied the realization that voice and body were released to their utmost in the field. Whitefield the timid soul on the street became Whitefield the powerhouse without rival in the outdoor pulpit. And with power came assurance: "my preaching in the fields may displease some timorous, bigoted men, but I am thoroughly persuaded it pleases God, and why should I fear anything else?"

In fact, Whitefield's fears were always greater than he let on in his journal. Mass preaching inevitably elicited feelings of anxiety and illness, but he managed to make these feelings work for him. Unlike the tropical maladies he had contracted in Georgia, the illnesses in England were more nervous and reminiscent of the Oxford odd fellow. Invariably before preaching, he would feel weak or sick. Sometimes he would feel hoarse, certain that his voice was going to fail him. At other times he would be unable to catch a breath - all classic signs of the anxiety attacks faced by many great performers. And, as with all great performers, Whitefield's symptoms disappeared as soon as he made his appearance on the boards.

For inner strength Whitefield relied on prayer and spiritual meditation, and he interpreted freedom in speaking as a divine "deliverance." Such exercises served not only the needs of his spirit but also the needs of his nervous disposition. Time in prayer -usually right up to the moment of preaching - allowed him essential repose and self-collection before he exploded into speech. On one such occasion, he noted that before speaking at St. Helen's, all "on a sudden I was deserted and my strength went from me. But I thought it was the Devil's doing.... Accordingly, though I was exceedingly sick in reading the prayers, and almost unable to speak when I entered the pulpit, yet God gave me courage to begin, and before I had done, I waxed warm and strong."

In addition to stage fright, Whitefield experienced the fears of an extemporaneous speaker. With no written text before him, he could never be certain what - if anything - would come next in the discourse. Whitefield confided to his Scottish friend and biographer John Gillies that his extemporaneous preaching "often occasioned many inward conflicts. Sometimes, when twenty thousand people were before me, I had not, in my apprehension, a word to say either to God or them." But this fear too helped to produce great performances. Despite crippling fears, he continued, "I was never totally deserted."

As long as he lived, Whitefield suffered the dilemma of his anxiety-filled and anxiety-releasing preaching. Even as he feared performance, he craved it. The only deliverance he could imagine was death. Death - the greatest fear of all - became in Whitefield's thinking a great friend that would end his illness and anxiety and reunite him with his Savior. In the end this would be his undoing, because he disregarded all illness as a result. But such a perspective also steeled him to adversity and invariably produced the words and passions that enlivened his listeners and transformed the way they thought and felt about life, death, and eternity. And through it all, Whitefield learned never to allow fears or sickness of any kind to silence him.

Having seen and conquered Kingswood, Whitefield began thinking in earnest of London. But first he had to talk to Harris. On March 7 the two friends met at Cardiff, sharing experiences and preaching together, Whitefield in English and Harris in Welsh. To Whitefield's eye the meeting was providential, and "my heart was still drawn out towards him more and more." Whitefield then preached with Harris at the Cardiff town hall and again on April 4 in Monmouthshire. At Usk, Whitefield noted, "the pulpit being denied, I preached upon a table under a large tree to some hundreds." The opposition of a local clergyman simply fueled the martyr's rhetoric: "Poor man! He put me in mind of Tertullus in the Acts; but my hour is not yet come. I have scarce begun my testimony." The following day Whitefield and Harris traveled to Abergavenny accompanied by thirty enthusiasts, reminding Whitefield of Joshua and his small band of conquering horsemen.

Besides visiting Harris twice in Wales, Whitefield continued practicing outside London. Faced with another closed pulpit in Bath, he invoked his self-proclaimed right to the fields and preached in heavy snow "to a much larger audience than could reasonably be expected." Wherever Whitefield found closed pulpits, he rejoiced and took to open spaces in markets, open windows in courtyards, public halls, and the fields. On March 18, while preaching in Bristol, he "was taken ill for about two hours, but, notwithstanding, was enabled to go and preach." Again at Elberton the pulpit was closed, "so I preached on a little ascent on which the Maypole was fixed."

By mid-April, Whitefield and Seward were ready for London. From Gloucester he confided to his Welsh friend, "Oh dear Mr. Harris, My heart is drawn towards London most strangely." His arrival on April 25 was announced in advance, and he quickly elicited the clerical rejection he needed to move outdoors. At St. Mary's in Islington, the church warden forbade him the use of his pulpit. In a peacemaking guise that concealed his evident satisfaction at the rebuff, Whitefield assured the warden that he would no longer trouble services within the church. Outdoors, however, was another story. Immediately following the communion service, Whitefield adjourned to the courtyard adjacent to the church and began to preach, "being assured my Master now called me out here, as well as in Bristol." Then, with a perfect blend of persecuted resignation and righteous indignation, he announced his decision to enter the fields of London: "let not the adversaries say, I have thrust myself out of their synagogues. No; they have thrust me out. And since the self-righteous men of this generation count themselves unworthy, I go out into the highways and hedges, and compel harlots, publicans, and sinners to come in, that my Master's house may be filled." If the boy preacher and Georgia missionary had invoked Pauline language, the field itinerant brought forth language that verged on the messianic.

Whitefield's London campaign left nothing to doubt. For his first performances he settled on the location at Moorfields, a public park frequented by crowds seeking entertaining diversions. He deliberately set the time for his self-confessed "mad trick" in the early morning, when he knew he would be at his best. Because the time preceded the scheduled morning prayers, he could not be accused of competing with the churches.

The first sermon was a small but immensely significant success. Neither church nor mob moved to silence him. Immediately following the sermon, Whitefield attended matins at Christ Church, where, he later gleefully recorded, he heard the rector "preach most virulently against me and my friends." The blast had the desired effect of arousing popular curiosity and expanding audience size.

That evening Whitefield traveled to his second major target at Kennington Common, a twenty-acre urban park that was the site of frequent executions. As in his first outdoor sermon on the mount at Bristol, Whitefield employed his outdoor setting to reinforce his message. There, standing beside a permanent scaffold, he preached a starthng sermon on the inevitability of death and the eternity of hell's torments. Although he lacked Harris's physical strength, Whitefield's dramatic instinct placed him in a category by himself. With an actor's sense of informed improvisation, he drew on the physical landscape to enliven his message. Mounts, scaffolds, snow, or thunder - he used them all instinctively as props and background for whatever words came to his mind.

Before long Whitefield had the staging of his outdoor performances down to a science. From the start, he relied heavily on his methodist friends to supply the inner core around which the event could grow. In a typical performance, friends and curious onlookers would gather through advance word of mouth, forming a circle around a predetermined spot convenient for assembly and projection. Soon Whitefield would arrive in Seward's handsome coach and join the circle in prayer and song. A crowd would swell around this center without attention to "seating" or social rank. Unlike the churches, where careful attention was paid to rank and deference, the field assemblies were socially unstructured. Traditional rules did not apply here. It was first come, first served.

While the crowd swelled and enthusiasm rose, Whitefield would wait for the right moment to begin, generally signaled by the singing of a psalm or a spiritual hymn written by Isaac Watts or the Wesleys or a sacred tune adapted from one of the tavern folk songs. Whitefield used the music to mobilize his audience, to transform them from passive viewers to participants. Indeed, it is here that the theater analogy finally breaks down, because these listeners became actors as well as audience. At the effective moment, Whitefield would turn the focus on them, describing them as actors in a divine drama and challenging them to play their roles.

Following a period of song, Whitefield would launch into a spontaneous prayer, which would set the context for his extemporaneous sermon. In fact, of course, many of Whitefield's sermons were extemporaneous only in the sense that he had no notes. Where other preachers recorded their notes and repeated favorite sermons three or four times in a pulpit career, the itinerant Whitefield repeated some favorite sermons thirty times or more, adapting the details and improvising on a core character or theme to suit immediate settings and circumstances.

In opening his sermons, Whitefield displayed the servitor's genius for ingratiation to establish a bond with his audience. As often as not this meant passing over his Oxford connections to emphasize his identification with the working classes. In his sermon "What Think Ye of Christ?" he observed that Jesus was ignored by the "governors and teachers" of the Jews while "the generality heard him gladly." By drawing this link between the early Christians and the people he was addressing, all the while speaking of "us" and "them," he established the emotional bond he needed.

Whitefield relied heavily on characters and experiences from his varied past in crafting the field sermons. He also met with prisoners, and read the papers for news of executions. Executions were intensely popular affairs, and by making use of them, Whitefield combined poignancy with a shrewd nose for what drew huge crowds. In one sermon he portrayed a prisoner awaiting execution, using words that may have been quoted from the Kennington scaffold as a "midnight call" to hard-hearted sinners to repent:

I have heard that the present ordinary sits up with them all the night before their execution.... If they find any of them asleep, or no sign of being awake, they knock and call, and the keepers cry, awake! and God help thee to take care thou dost not sleep in an unconverted state to-night.

Having set the context, Whitefield went on to press his application:

The prisoners tomorrow will have their hands tied behind them, their thumbstrings must be put on, and their fetters knocked off; they must be tied fast to the cart, the cap put over their faces, and the dreadful signal given: if you were their relations would not you weep? don't be angry then with a poor minister for weeping over them that will not weep for themselves.

At this point, Whitefield himself was undoubtedly in tears that were both genuine and contrived, releasing innate feelings that in public he could acceptably shed only in the pulpit. Few had seen such a compelling spectacle of pathos before. And few could stay away.

Word spread in short order both about the clerical opposition to Whitefield and his dramatic outdoor meetings. Soon, by Whitefield's estimate "no less than thirty thousand people" gathered in hushed silence to hear his message of the New Birth. With a director's eye to detail, he situated himself so that the wind would carry his voice to the outermost circle of listeners, and noted with satisfaction that the people remained silent and attentive. They, like him, had never been part of such an event; "all agreed it was never seen on this wise before."

In bringing his dramatic preaching to the marketplace, Whitefield recognized that he was opening a pandora's box. Sensitive to the potential of evil in what he was doing, he felt that he needed further confirmation of the basic rightness of his way. It came on May 1 when word of his preaching at a private house drew such a crowd that it was impossible, without considerable danger, to contain the people indoors. "Now know I more and more that the Lord calls me into the fields," he wrote, "for no house or street is able to contain half the people who come to hear the word." He had made a brilliant - if circular - progress to the fields. He used adversity to create his outdoor crowd, then used that crowd to justify the necessity of his outdoor preaching. He confided almost apologetically that "I find myself more and more under a necessity of going out into the fields."

Just as closed pulpits worked to increase Whitefield's popular appeal, so the opposition press swelled his audience. The harsher the condemnation, the greater the public curiosity. Leading the way was the Anglican Weekly Miscellany. On May 5 the paper reported the ominous news of an "extraordinary Itinerant, who lately made a Progress into the Western Parts of England, and some parts of Wales, where, from Tomb-stones, and Market crosses, on Commons and mountains, he preached to vast numbers of ignorant People, and, since his Return, in a wide Place near a Building which would suit him better. This is a method quite as new with us, as it is irregular and illegal."

Alongside the Miscellany came a barrage of anti-Whitefield tracts that soon numbered in the hundreds. In one particularly influential pamphlet entitled "The Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger of Being Righteous Over-much," the bishop, classicist, and playwright Joseph Trapp challenged the legitimacy of Whitefield's field preaching:

we have heard of Field-Conventicles in Scotland among the Enthusiasts of that Country.... But for a Clergyman of the Church of England to pray and preach in the Fields, in the Country, or in the streets of the City, is perfectly new, never heard of before; afresh Honour to the blessed Age in which We have the happiness to live.... To pray, preach, and sing Psalms, in the Streets and Fields, is worse, if possible, than intruding into Pulpits by downright violence and Breach of the Peace; and then denying the plain Facts with the most infamous prevarication.

The "irregularity" and "illegality" of Whitefield's preaching stemmed, it was maintained, from his "antinomian" claims to an "inspiration and assistance from the Holy Spirit." The Miscellany argued that if Whitefield could have demonstrated a true supernatural, apostolic gift, such as the ability to perform miracles, then his claim to preach without a license could be validated. But Whitefield produced no miracles. In fact he was no different in terms of supernatural gifts than any simple country priest. And for that reason, his critics insisted, he had no right to invade other preachers' precincts or compete for their congregations.

The clergy's case against Whitefield made sense in theory. As long as he did not renounce his ordination, he was, in effect, competing with his own church - at least according to the old parish rules. But traditional arguments were crumbling in the face of Whitefield's novel methods and in the context of the new marketplace mentality. It was a changing world, and among a people already accustomed to the impersonal, mass setting of the marketplace, his "revivals" were not only acceptable but obviously successful.

Besides condemning the illegality of preaching where he had no license to go, the Weekly Miscellany censured Whitefield's style, which was dangerously "enthusiastic" and apt to arouse the "illiterate Vulgar" into a methodist "mob." In its May 12 issue, the Miscellany complained, in reference to St. Margaret's, that Whitefield's followers had "threatened to pull down Churches because their Master and his Brethren were not suffer'd to preach in them." If not stopped, the insurrection would simply grow. "If they are permitted to hold their Conventicles at pleasure, and to ramble up and down, singing Psalms, and preaching in the open streets, or in more open Fields, wanton Curiosity will carry thousands to see and hear such new Things."

Central to the offense of Whitefield's enthusiasm was his theatricality. Unlike the dissenters, Anglicans did not object to theater per se, but they did object to theatricality in the pulpit. If methodists like Whitefield criticized the actor for being a hypocrite who "acts that part he is not," Anglicans criticized Whitefield for portraying saints and biblical characters he most emphatically was not. The whole thing was a sacred ruse. Most offensive was Whitefield's willingness to impersonate Christ or God the Father judging errant sinners. An outraged essay in the Miscellany complained that "the Gentleman that on Sunday morning succeeded the Montebank in MoorFields ... exhibits himself to publick view every day (but Sundays) from the Wall; instead of a Stage, harangued his Congregations and by the Choice of his Text most blasphemously compared himself, after his usual Custom, to our Blessed Saviour." A later issue reiterated the charge of theatricality: "The next Winter the town may promise themselves a new Entertainment on the Stage, of Harlequin turned Methodist, by way of Reprisals, since the Methodist has certainly this summer turned Harlequin."

Unlike other vulgar entertainers, Whitefield drew even his enemies and detractors to his performances. No one could stay away. By July an increasing number of carriages could be seen at Moorfields, indicating a rising curiosity among the upper classes. The more his enemies roared, the more his popularity soared. He drew an estimated eighty thousand people to a sermon at Hyde Park. Even discounting that number substantially leaves a staggering total, a crowd the size of which had not been seen in all England since the great battles of the Civil War. Whitefield himself marveled that it was "by far, the largest I ever preached to yet." The "yet" is instructive for revealing how in the first flush of unprecedented success, neither Whitefield, his friends, nor his enemies had any clear sense of where it would all end.

More evidence of his effectiveness showed in the offerings he collected for the Georgia orphan house. Indeed, this was the most tangible intersection of pulpit and marketplace. While personal income never ranked high on Whitefield's list of priorities, fund raising for charitable missions was paramount. Whitefield himself did not hesitate personally to urge contributions with shameless pathos, and he often stood by exiting crowds with hands outstretched. He did not collect offerings at every sermon, but when he did, he routinely reported collections of forty or fifty pounds, much of it from commoners who contributed their half-pence in such volume that it took "more than one man [to] carry [it] home." Though hardly wealthy, working-class people did enjoy a level of discretionary income that was unknown a century earlier. Over the summer, Whitefield received over £1,000 - a figure equal to a city priest's annual income. All of the offerings were fully accounted for and disbursed in Georgia.

Before long, other enterprises appeared on the fringes of the Whitefield scene. If competitors could not beat him, they determined to join him. Ambitious vendors of one sort or another plied their trades on the outskirts of the crowd. Locals rented out scaffolds, wagons, and seats to eager viewers, and of course pickpockets had a heyday. By the same token, Whitefield often selected preaching locations near merchant stalls, theaters, and other events to catch the overflow. At Hackney Marsh, he timed his preaching to coincide with the horse races there, convinced that "the common people go to these diversions for want of knowing better." His forte was making use of profane time, not sacred time. He selected moments outside of traditional religious meeting times, and spaces that drew crowds, exploiting both to the full.

With a genius for self-promotion and the energy of youth, Whitefield preached relentlessly, seizing every moment to build on the momentum. He shuttled back and forth between Moorfields, Kennington Common, Hyde Park, and outlying towns such as Hampton Heath, Hertford, and Northampton, preaching from table tops, open windows, courtyards, hills, wagons, and marketplaces. In a six-week span he delivered at least forty field sermons to audiences numbering in the tens of thousands. In all, outdoor summer audiences numbered somewhere between eight hundred thousand and one million - a figure without precedent in the annals of English preaching. When not preaching, he worked at preparing over twenty sermons for print and writing hundreds of letters to correspondents throughout Scotland and America describing the wondrous events of his itinerant ministry. Never again would he experience quite the sensation that came with his first exposure to the "fields." Nor would the thousands who saw him and participated with him in what was being labeled a great "revival."

For one so attuned to the power of self-promotion, Whitefield remained remarkably unselfconscious about his spectacular pulpit innovations. In fact, his identification with Paul made it clear that he viewed his ministry more in terms of the early church than as some entirely new and modern phenomenon. How else was one to explain the stupendous results? If, to modern eyes, marketing techniques and dramatic pathos were critical to Whitefield's success, they went largely unrecognized in the press and in Whitefield's journals and letters. It was all too new. Intuition and experience outpaced theory and selfconsciousness. Whitefield was so caught up in his Pauline part that he could not possibly see that his brilliant - if instinctive - promotion could in itself be accelerating this miraculous work of the Spirit.

The summer of 1739 belonged to Whitefield. In a remarkably short period of time his questions were answered and his destiny revealed. Besides preaching to thousands, he received a grant of five hundred acres from the Georgia trustees for his orphan house. In addition, he received invitations from both England and America, which he intended to honor. On August 14 he embarked for America on board the Elizabeth to test his calling and destiny in other settings in America and Scotland. Soon Americans would get their first exposure to the "field phenomenon," and their churches would never be the same again.

Whitefield arrived in Lewes, Delaware, on October 30, 1739, almost exactly a year after his last departure. As the Georgia missionary, he had been little known to colonial audiences outside the South. But a year later, as the author of the Georgia journals, Calvinist critic of Anglicans, and tireless letter writer, he had achieved a certain fame. Moreover, the most exciting news - of the London outdoor revivals - was just reaching American newspapers when he arrived. The timing was perfect. At virtually the same moment Americans learned that Whitefield had taken London by storm, they learned he was about to preach in Philadelphia.

On the voyage over, Whitefield had developed a clearly defined plan of action for his American tour that was novel and audacious. The orphan house was only a small - if necessary - part. More ambitious was his plan to build on the techniques and momentum of the London preaching and transform his Calvinist revival into an international event with himself at the center. Such an event would have been unthinkable in the localistic, traditional culture of seventeenth-century Anglo-America. But not in 1739. All of the pieces for an international, interconnected revival were uniquely in place. In looking at the changing relationships between England and her colonies, eighteenth-century historians have described a process of "Anglicization" in which the empire was becoming increasingly more unified under British influence. The explosion of goods and trade under the comprehensive umbrella of the Navigation Acts integrated the English empire as never before. In the American colonies this economic integration was reinforced by new charters and royal governments designed to establish a political integration as well. And at the same time, American colonists were increasingly exposed to British culture and learning: intellectually and culturally they were growing more rather than less "English," as they were in matters political and economic.

In the midst of this cultural anglicization, Whitefield's plan was brilliantly simple. He would promote a religious anglicization - an integration of common religious experience around the new revivals. Just as he had adapted the marketplace to religious ends in England, so he would adapt new international linkages of transportation, trade, and communications to a self-conscious, intercolonial "Calvinist connection" built around the revival. Similar to the integrating power of Georgian politics, the East India Company, or Wedgwood pottery, Whitefield's revivals would forge a new, potentially powerful religious market around the key trading centers of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, and Bristol. And from there the revivals could move inland.

Along with colonial-style imitation of English ways, Whitefield would add a wrinkle of his own to the emerging Anglo-American network. Economic and political anglicization originated in London and migrated exclusively one way. London was the core and all else the dependent periphery. Whitefield's revivals, on the other hand, could in time reverse the cultural exchange. Scotland and America could become centers of religious piety that would reverse the direction of anglicization. This was a heady enterprise that Scottish and American Calvinists were prepared to embrace and one that would endear Whitefield to his "periphery" audiences. It would reinstitute America's "Puritan errand" to a wayward Europe in the modern guise of mass revival and transdenominational, openair appeal. To be sure, not all of this was fully clear to Whitefield in 1739. But the outhne was fixed and the plan set in motion from the moment he stepped on American shores.

Whitefield selected Philadelphia as his first American stop. It was a wise choice. Although founded later than other northern cities, Philadelphia had already grown to be a major port city with a thriving market economy. The Quaker-dominated, pacifistic government was relatively untouched by the latest colonial war with France, so it was able to concentrate its energies on economic growth and the cultivation of ever-expanding markets. Its expansive mood comported well with Whitefield's energies and ambition.

Besides its geography and economic advantages, Pennsylvania also evidenced a unique cultural climate that fit Whitefield's ecumenical appeal. In its ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity, Pennsylvania was in many ways the most American of all colonies, and Philadelphia the most cosmopolitan city. Its rich farmlands and its policy of religious toleration together attracted a heterogeneous population of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants, all of whom were tolerated and none of whom were powerful enough or, in the case of the Quaker founders, intolerant enough to stifle the others. By the same token, most of these groups had established separate islands of identity. Whitefield would strive to bring them together under the banner of revival.

If Whitefield's plan was simple in conception, it nevertheless called for tremendous human resources and intense labor. Here again, friends became important. Just as Habersham had assisted with the orphan-house ministry, so William Seward joined Whitefield on the second American trip to provide fulltime assistance with travel, funding, and above all publicity. In the early years, Whitefield relied heavily on letter writing as a crude public relations medium to spread the word of his revivals in personalized ways that both built anticipation and enlisted local helpers sympathetic to the cause of international Calvinist revival. Here Seward was essential. His job was to stay one step ahead of Whitefield. Some days he never left his lodgings, "sometimes writing a hundred letters a day." Other days he traveled by horse, spreading the word by mouth that Whitefield was coming.

Before Whitefield began in William Penn's model city of brotherly love, his way had been carefully prepared by Seward's announcements and his own meetings with local clergy of all denominations. In discussions with them he outhned his orphan house ministry and shared his vision for revival. To his great surprise, all were enthusiastic, including Philadelphia's Anglican commissary Cummings. Indeed, Cummings was so appreciative that he turned the church over to his young colleague.

On November 6, 1739, Whitefield began his Philadelphia ministry by reading prayers and preaching at Christ Church to a "numerous congregation." Following the service, hundreds urged him "to preach in another place" that could accommodate larger crowds. With that incentive he moved out of doors, and the revival was on. On November 8, Philadelphians saw the real Whitefield preaching extemporaneously from the courtyard steps to an estimated audience of six thousand curious onlookers - nearly half of Philadelphia's urban population. The results were spectacular and ensured successes in America that would equal or exceed anything he had seen in England. Benjamin Franklin was in the audience that day, and he marveled at how far Whitefield's voice carried. No less impressive was his charismatic power. It was, Franklin later confessed, a "matter of speculation to me who was one of the Number, to observe the extraordinary Influence of his Oratory on his hearers."

Though Whitefield could not have predicted it, he and his American audiences were a perfect match. In Whitefield, American colonists found a speaker who embodied their own uncertain and highly ambitious status as English provincials. In time preacher and audience would discover many commonalities: both coveted English praise and legitimacy at the same time they chafed against authority and arbitrary powers; both were at their righteous best when challenging authority in the name of the popular audience; both craved recognition from the very authorities they loved to challenge; and, most important, both leaned toward creative, extrainstitutional solutions to entrenched problems of liberty and order - solutions that by-passed traditional authority and sought new principles of association, exchange, and order.

Pennsylvanians, like Londoners earlier, discovered that the out-of-doors location was the perfect environment for Whitefield's popularly oriented, extrainstitutional message. Indeed, in Philadelphia, where the social chasm separating rich from poor was less dramatic (there really were no rich on the level of England's aristocracy), Whitefield's appeal was even more inclusive. Outdoor preaching both expressed and encompassed social reality for Americans in a more comprehensive way than it ever could in the more stratified, hierarchical environs of England.

Whitefield's revival was peculiarly American in other ways as well. At base, his outdoor appeal and legitimacy rested on public opinion. While depending on all the local support he could get, he spoke in the name of no denomination and enjoyed no state support. His movement - if it was to become a movement - transcended traditional institutions and depended solely on the voluntary goodwill of the people. And yet the authority of public opinion was not recognized by English law. True legitimacy was conferred from above; legitimate power traveled from the top down. By the sheer location and circumstances of his ministry, Whitefield challenged these time-honored axioms of social order and hierarchy.

Before Whitefield, no one had fully tested the ability of public opinion to build a movement that was intercolonial and even international in scope. Or, to put it differently, no one before Whitefield had sufficient popularity to found an intercolonial movement. In a circular logic that would in time come to define modern America, appeals to public opinion required public access, and public access depended on popularity. As the first intercolonial religious celebrity, Whitefield paved the way for extrainstitutional movements that would reverse traditional order and travel from the bottom up.

Such movements were virtually irresistible in the "free aire" of the New World. In fact, Americans' connections to traditional authority were always tenuous. For a century they were virtually self-regulating. If theorists had not yet emerged to tell them that this was the way society ought to be organized, experience had taught them that this was in fact the way American society was organized. And it worked. Whitefield's contribution was to take this logic one step further, to move from America's already tenuous institutional ties to a situation with no institutional underpinning at all save public opinion. Shared religious experience was both spiritually regenerating and a form of power that, once experienced, was never forgotten.

Every stop along Whitefield's trip from Philadelphia to New York and back was marked by record audiences, often exceeding the population of the towns in which he preached. From eight thousand in Philadelphia to three thousand in the village of Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, he won over an everincreasing constituency. Chief among his friends and allies was the influential Tennent family, especially the elder William and his charismatic son Gilbert. They had recently begun a "New Side" Presbyterian "Log College" -over the objections of other "Old Side" Presbyterians - intended to train ministers for evangelical ministry. Soon after meeting the elder William Tennent, "an old grey-headed disciple and soldier of Jesus Christ," Whitefield identified him with the Presbyterian Erskine brothers in Scotland as part of a new Anglo-American united front of piety. Gilbert Tennent, something of an American Howell Harris, was so enamored of Whitefield's ministry that he and another admirer, James Davenport, followed him to New York and Philadelphia, observing his manner and hoping to imitate his successes in travels of their own.

In fact, a coterie of prorevivalist dissenters was already active in Pennsylvania, so Whitefield's efforts there were as much reinforcing as pioneering. Ever since the preaching of the Dutch Reformed pastor Theodore Frelinghuysen in the 1720s, Pennsylvania had experienced religious revivals. The Tennents had built on these in the 1730s and been joined by such others as the Presbyterian minister at Elizabethtown, Jonathan Dickinson, and John Rowland of New Brunswick. Whitefield became the catalyst who drew together many of these voices for "heart religion."

In America news traveled rapidly, and Whitefield was often surprised to discover how crowds "so scattered abroad, can be gathered at so short a warning." The advance work of Seward and the cooperation of local enthusiasts served him well. Not only were the crowds unprecedented in size, they were unusually quiet -virtually spellbound. "Even in London," Whitefield remarked, "I never observed so profound a silence."

As in England, Whitefield's field preaching relied heavily on imagination and dramatization. In one particularly favorite New World sermon, "Abraham Offering His Son," he created a series of scenes. The first scene opened with "the good old man walking with his dear child ... now and then looking upon him, loving him, and then turning aside to weep." At this point in the narrative Whitefield himself may well have wept and momentarily halted the discourse, allowing the pathos to sink in. Then followed a second scene at the altar where Abraham was barely prevented from taking his beloved son's life in a profound moment of faith and obedience. By now the audience would be locked into Whitefield's performance and they would see with Abraham's eyes what Whitefield wanted them to see: "Fancy that you saw the aged parent standing by weeping.... Methinks I see the tears trickle down the patriarch Abraham's cheeks ... adieu, my Isaac, my only Son, whom I love as my own soul; adieu, adieu." Here, as elsewhere, Whitefield's sermon in print appears melodramatic. But when performed live, with all the body language and pathos of a great actor, the lines receded into the passion and the hearer was locked into a dramatic world from which there was no easy exit. Doctrines, uses, proofs, and applications all receded into the background as the passions took over.

In the third and climactic scene, Whitefield bridged the gap separating Abraham from Christ through the passions:

Did you weep just now when I bid you fancy that you saw the altar? Look up by faith, behold the blessed Jesus, our all-glorious Immanuel, not bound, but nailed on an accursed tree: see how he hangs crowned with thorns, and had in derision of all that are round about him: see how the thorns pierce him, and how the blood in purple streams trickles down his sacred temples! Hark! And now where are all your tears? Shall I refrain your voice from weeping? No, rather let me exhort you to look to him whom you have pierced, and mourn, as a woman mourneth for her first born.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Whitefield's dramatic mode of preaching had an even greater impact on American audiences than it did in London or Bristol for a very simple reason. Theater was a familiar - if controversial - institution in eighteenth-century England, but it had not yet reached American shores. Apart from occasional plays in Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Williamsburg, Americans had no organized drama. There were no professional companies or permanent stages until late in the eighteenth century. In seeing Whitefield preach, many Americans were for the first time in their lives seeing a form of theater. Until then, public performance - whether civic or religious - had been governed by classical canons of speech established by Cicero and Quintillian. Magistrates gathered on Courthouse Day in Virginia and ministers proclaiming election sermons in New England all followed models of "gravity" and "decorum" that precluded body and passion. Even New Side revivalists in the middle colonies found much to learn in the impassioned oratory of Whitefield.

Invariably audience responses were both delighted and confused. Here was someone impersonating characters, but he did not seem to be indulging in the "hypocrisy" of the stage: his characters were not fictional but real and familiar. It was biblical history in a theatrical key. After hearing Whitefield preach, New York Presbyterian minister Ebenezer Pemberton confessed, "I never saw or heard the like." In describing what he saw, Pemberton instinctively drew on dramatic terminology. Noteworthy was Whitefield's "clear and musical voice." Even more striking was his use of body: "he uses much gestures," such that "every accent of his voice, and every motion of his body, speaks, and both are natural and unaffected." All of this, moreover, was conducted in so "natural" a way that if it was the "product of art," it was "entirely concealed."

The more successful Whitefield was, the more he antagonized Anglican colleagues who shared his affiliation but invariably found themselves the butt of his biting sarcasm. If Whitefield's ministry was ecumenical, it was an all-inclusive ecumenicity that was explicitly "Calvinist" in theology and opposed to all forms of "Arminianism." In fact, Whitefield's Calvinism and anti-Arminianism became more and more strident as he traveled through Calvinist America and Scotland and met with the eagerly supportive descendants of the "old Puritans." American Anglicans were willing to meet him halfway - even South Carolina's Commissary Garden welcomed the Georgia missionary on his first visit. But Whitefield showed an obvious lack of interest. Confrontation, as Whitefield knew, aroused curiosity, and his own Anglican Church was his favorite target. Soon Anglican churchmen throughout the American colonies joined their London brethren in opposing Whitefield. And, as in England, their opposition simply fueled popular enthusiasm for the young critic who fearlessly denounced clerical "formality" and Arminian preaching.

As he traveled from Philadelphia to New York, Whitefield attracted the majority of inhabitants even as he lost Anglican support. This was the one denomination to which he was formally tied, and the one from which he had to distance himself in order to maintain his interdenominational appeal. On hearing of "a disturbance in Philadelphia," New York's Commissary Vesey closed all Anglican pulpits to Whitefield and urged his congregations to boycott the sermons. With the battle thus joined, Whitefield had the opposition that he needed to establish "persecution" and plead for popular sympathy. Wherever he traveled, he checked the newspapers for criticism, recognizing "the advantage of the things my adversaries have inserted in the public papers: they do but excite people's curiosity, and serve to raise their attention." With characteristic bluster he excited his readers with accounts of standing the commissary off. When told his field preaching was illegal, Whitefield replied that so too was the commissary's time spent frequenting "public houses." There were times when Whitefield could be utterly enamored of authority figures, but when dealing with commissaries and bishops, he would confidently proclaim that "I was no respector of persons; if a bishop committed a fault, I would tell him of it" - though always, he added, "with a spirit of meekness."

With his own denomination closed, friends multiplied from the dissenters. In fact and spirit, most Americans were dissenters, at odds with traditional, hierarchical ways. This, combined with their historic Calvinism, elicited strong bonds of sympathy and support in response to the news of Whitefield's persecution. At each stop he found strong allies whom he integrated into his ever-expanding network of pro-revival sympathizers. Ebenezer Pemberton quickly got over his confusion and eagerly opened his meetinghouse to Whitefield's indoor preaching. A wealthy merchant, Thomas Noble of New York, agreed to work with Seward in promoting Whitefield's tours and serving as a conduit for the ever-expanding letter-writing network. These, together with the Pennsylvania New Siders, formed the nucleus of a transatlantic evangelical alliance.

When not mesmerizing audiences with his "heavenly cadence" and biblical characterizations, Whitefield was outraging Anglican clergy with his denunciations of an "unconverted ministry." In an oft-repeated sermon entitled "The Lord Our Righteousness," he launched into an attack on all clerical enemies of revival. Invariably, he used the rhetoric of the "jeremiad" - a ritual lament for lost piety, familiar to all Americans - but instead of directing it against the people, he turned it on the clerical opposition to his revival. To startled audiences he would proclaim the new orthodoxy that

many ministers are so sadly degenerated from their pious ancestors, that the doctrines of grace, especially the personal, all-sufficient righteousness of Jesus is but too seldom, too slightly mentioned. Hence the love of many waxeth cold; and I have often thought, was it possible, that this single consideration would be sufficient to raise our venerable forefathers again from their graves; who would thunder in their ears their fatal error.

The adversarial voice, so familiar to colonial preachers, sounded quite different when directed at them.

In America, the inverted jeremiad was perfectly matched to Whitefield's novel delivery in outdoor settings. Just as the setting upset traditional social rankings and seating, so the rhetoric reversed accusations and assured the people that spiritual declension was not their fault. Through setting and rhetoric he forged a potent message capable of uniting ordinary people in a transatlantic array. Together, Whitefield and his new audiences would challenge the seats of ecclesiastical authority wherever they appeared in churches, colleges, and the press. At the same time, however, that challenge stopped short of civil authority and the "gentlemen" who embodied it. By inclination and temperament, Whitefield remained the proud Oxonian. His confrontational rhetoric was more anticlerical than antihierarchical, though popular audiences (and critics) heard both emphases in it.

On November 28, Whitefield delivered his farewell sermon to the people of Philadelphia. The meeting was to be held at Christ Church, but the audience was so large that he adjourned "to the fields," where he preached for one and a half hours from a balcony overlooking the crowd. Assembled in the audience were listeners of all classes, including local magistrates at the top and a growing cadre of slaves at the bottom. Included also was the printer-entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin, who was to become an advisor and friend of the young evangelist. Then followed a farewell dinner with the governor and proprietor Thomas Penn. Dinners like these not only boosted Whitefield's popularity and satisfied his craving for recognition among the elite but insulated him from the charge of being an incendiary bent on overturning the social order.

With the first leg of his tour a resounding success, Whitefield moved south to attend to the orphan house project that had ostensibly brought him to the New World. He had much to celebrate. He had attracted audiences that no preacher before him enjoyed. In addition, he had created a nucleus of influential contacts in Philadelphia and New York pledged to promote the cause of revival in its new outdoor setting. A new AngloAmerican movement had begun to take shape. All that remained was to complete the tour and then perpetuate it with follow-up ministries and native imitators gifted with a charismatic flair for drama and spiritual sensation. Through his travels, Whitefield became the voice and symbol of a movement that transcended local boundaries and denominations and appeared poised for massive growth.

In America as in England, "revival" itself took on a new meaning as a staged, translocal event, held outdoors on weekdays in open competition with more secular entertainments and diversions. In the past, revivals were local, mysterious events that occurred once or twice in any generation and that remained within local communities. With the New Birth as his product and the promise of a transatlantic market, Whitefield introduced religion to a dawning consumer age. Wherever he encountered a "thriving place for trade," he would set up shop and market his revival.

On January 10, 1740, Whitefield arrived in Savannah, completing a forty-three-day journey of some 1,200 miles by horse, foot, and canoe. He had preached often, and he recorded the stops along the way in his journal. Few men had undertaken such a journey, and his reports were filled with all the adventure and excitement of his earlier ocean-crossing experience. He recorded days spent traveling through "uninhabited woods" in the perpetually reborn and unsettled American wilderness. Letter and journal readers thrilled to stories of converts and confrontations with authority. They also marveled at New World sights seen through the itinerant's eyes: "We observed a variety of birds; and in the evening, heard the wolves howhng like a kennel of hounds." Ever the devotionalist, he went on to note that the sound of wolves "made me reflect on what the Psalmist says, 'The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God."'

Once in Georgia, Whitefield immediately took steps to construct a new orphan house. To that point, the small band of orphans and their schoolmaster James Habersham had lived in a rented house. The land for an orphan house had already been allocated and funds had been raised in England (though not yet in America) for the purpose. Whitefield had had architectural plans drawn up in London. The plans were ambitious and costly, yet with his offerings and the support of his friend Seward, Whitefield believed the feat to be possible.

Possible or not, it constituted a formidable challenge. In view of that, Whitefield abandoned his parish responsibilities in Georgia and lived in the orphan house. Despite a scarcity of labor and materials, he began work on a dock, a highway connecting the orphan house to Savannah, an extended fence, housing for the children and Whitefield, and a meeting room. On January 24, he named the cleared lot and foundation "Bethesda" - a "house of mercy." A month later, the first brick of the "great house" at Bethesda was laid, and twenty acres of land were cleared for planting. The number of orphans grew to forty and, together with local laborers and staff, represented "nearly a hundred mouths" to feed and clothe. All were dependent on Whitefield.

Besides the construction of the physical plant, Whitefield devoted considerable attention to the actual operation of the orphan house. As he envisioned it, James Habersham would preside over an institution that would inculcate methodist piety among the children and at the same time prepare them for manual trades. The boys would learn farming and other manual skills, while the girls would learn to spin cotton and maintain a household. In time, Whitefield hoped to include a Latin master who could identify promising males and prepare them for college and a career in the ministry. Each day would include regular work hours together with worship services and devotional readings in morning and evening. In theory, the worship was to be Anglican, though in practice Whitefield adopted the extemporaneous mode preferred by methodist exhorters.

Although he rejected permanent residence in the South as a colonial missionary, Whitefield retained a lifelong concern with its inhabitants, especially the slaves. He had early endorsed slavery in Georgia - and throughout his ministry he never repudiated it - but in time he did condemn the planters' refusal to reach the slaves with the gospel of the New Birth. This, he asserted, was worse than irresponsible. It reflected a mentality that denied the slaves a soul - a pernicious assumption that Whitefield meant to undo with his preaching. Already he had attracted considerable interest among the slaves in his Philadelphia audiences, and he intended to do more, even if that meant facing the "whip" of the southern planter. Ever on the lookout for "acts of mercy," he began to think of a residence for slaves that would complement the orphan house. While in North Carolina he noted,

I went, as my usual custom . . . among the negroes belonging to the house. One man was sick in bed, and two of his children said their prayers after me very well. This more and more convinces me that negro children, if early brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, would make as great proficiency as any among white people's children. I do not despair, if God spares my life, of seeing a school of young negroes singing the praises of Him Who made them, in a psalm of thanksgiving. Lord, Thou has put into my heart a good design to educate them; I doubt not but Thou wilt enable me to bring it to good effect.

Whitefield and Habersham eventually went so far as to own slaves themselves. Yet, paradoxically, they did more as southern planters to bring Christianity to the slave community than any of their contemporaries in Georgia or Charleston.

Throughout the winter sojourn at Bethesda, Whitefield continued his torrent of letter writing and followed events closely both in England and in Philadelphia. In February, he published a series of letters in the Charleston press that escalated his newspaper war with the Anglican hierarchy and southern slave owners. In one, especially noxious to Anglican authorities, he accused the highly popular and respected John Tillotson, a revered Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the seventeenth century, of having never experienced the New Birth and of knowing no more of saving grace than "Mohamet." In another, equally abhorrent to American slave holders, he attacked the insensitivity of slave owners to their slaves and upbraided them for refusing to look to their spiritual and physical needs. Such behavior, he warned, would not go unnoticed. Indeed, he contended that "God has a quarrel with you" for treating slaves "as though they were Brutes." If these slaves were to rise up in rebellion, "all good Men must acknowledge the judgment would be just." Immediately other newspapers and journals picked up on these articles and, in the case of the slave letter, discussed the souls of slaves in print for the first time.

On other fronts, Whitefield worked closely with publishers and printers publicizing his two favorite subjects: the New Birth and himself. In Philadelphia, he contracted with Benjamin Franklin to print his journals. But Franklin would not have the field to himself. Alongside his Pennsylvania Gazette was Andrew and William Bradford's American Weekly Mercury, which devoted front-page coverage to Whitefield from his first visit in November 1739 throughout the next year. For the fledgling American newspapers, whose primary subjects had been largely limited to political and economic commentary, Whitefield represented a new avenue of inquiry. For the first time, religion become part of the exchange of information in the secular press. It became, in effect, news. The press was so generous in praising Whitefield that Commissary Cummings complained openly - and correctly - that the printers conspired with Whitefield to trumpet his name at the expense of established religious and economic institutions.

In the meantime, Whitefield watched with particular interest events in Philadelphia following his tour. Since his departure in November, the forces for revival grew steadily stronger, and with them instances of confrontation and controversy. Unlike past "seasons" of renewal or "harvests" of young members, this new revival seemed to work against the churches as much as for them. Even as it threatened competing entertainments, it also threatened established churches based on traditional authority and communal norms. And in the more work-centered American context, where laborers were many and the unemployed few, it also threatened to draw workers away from their weekday labors. In the new revival, religion was becoming less a matter of family birthright or communal habit than an arena of choice based on personal preference and individual experience. Along with the intense piety of the New Birth was a rival vision of religious association and meaning that could not help but provoke confrontation.

On March 8, 1740, an incendiary sermon by Gilbert Tennent entitled "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry" helped the Presbyterian pro-Whitefield New Siders challenge the traditional order. Tennent urged followers to leave their churches if they were not organized around the experience of the New Birth. The theme was a familiar one in Whitefield's preaching, but such rhetoric had institutional consequences. In the aftermath of Whitefield's and Tennent's blasts against an unconverted ministry, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans found themselves bitterly dividing over the centrality of the New Birth. A movement that had begun innocently enough outside of institutions now threatened to turn back on them and rip them apart.

Whitefield's return to Philadelphia in April coincided with the furor set in motion by Tennent's New Side manifesto. To arouse things all the more, Franklin reprinted Whitefield's blast against Tillotson in the Pennsylvania Gazette. Publicity and Whitefield's own charismatic and controversial presence soon made him a cause celebre. Even Whitefield could scarce describe "the joy many felt when they saw my face again." Clearly he was well on his way to becoming an American hero, and he reveled in all the attention attending his return. He played the role of pious celebrity to perfection, careful never to offend civil authority, and invariably recording lunches and meetings with governors, proprietors, and other local dignitaries. Only the Church of England felt the sting of his criticism, and it returned the favor by closing its pulpits. Such was the case with the commissary, in contrast to their first amicable meeting. Seward explained that the change was the result "of Mr. Whitefield's writing against Archbishop Tillotson." The refusal was predictable, leading a triumphant Whitefield to gloat, "little do my enemies think what service they do me. If they did one would think, out of spite they would even desist from opposing me."

The day following his meeting with the commissary, Whitefield preached out of doors. In the morning he spoke from a scaffold built on Society Hill to an audience of five thousand. That afternoon Seward reported a sermon "from the Balcony on Society-Hill to the largest Congregation we have yet had in America, computed at Ten or Twelve thousand." The next day he traveled to Abington and preached from a horse block to three thousand. Similar crowds appeared among the Germans in Germantown and in Whitemarsh. When the commissary preached against him from James 2:8, Whitefield preached on the same text to ten times the audience. As he reported, "Religion is all the talk; and, I think I can say, the Lord Jesus hath gotten Himself the victory in many hearts."

For the most part Whitefield's outdoor sermons were ones he had perfected in England. Benjamin Franklin was in attendance at most of the Philadelphia sermons and soon learned to distinguish new creations from repeat performances:

By hearing him often I came to distinguish easily between sermons newly composed and those which he had often preached in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improved by frequent repetition, that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned, and well placed, that without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse: a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music.

Besides the sermon on Abraham, another favorite in these months was a sermon on Zaccheus, which Seward recorded several times in his journal. The story of Zaccheus was no doubt familiar to most Philadelphians, and Whitefield's popular retelling gave it a peculiarly American flavor. Because Zaccheus was short of stature, he climbed a tree to see Jesus better. Like every insignificant person who is suddenly taken seriously, Zaccheus rejoiced when Jesus spotted him in the tree and called him by name, saying, "make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house."

With this story as his centerpiece, Whitefield delivered a sermon he turned both to social commentary and evangelical exhortation. To the wealthy of the world he warned, "let not therefore the rich glory in the multitude of their riches." For the most part, he continued, it was "the common people [who] heard our Lord gladly, and the poor [who] received the gospel." In words certain to please ordinary hearers, he pointed out not only that the rich were often insensitive to the gospel message but that sometimes they were openly hostile. For "true" gospel preachers such as himself and the Pennsylvania New Siders he warned, "let not the ministers of Christ marvel, if they meet with the [persecution] from the rich men of this wicked and adulterous generation. I should think it no scandal ... to hear it affirmed, that none but the poor attended my ministry."

Having assured his hearers that "the poor are dear to my soul," Whitefield returned to Zaccheus, this time for evangelistic purposes. First he enacted a frantic Zaccheus running to hear Jesus, and then climbing the sycamore tree. Where Scripture did not record Zaccheus's thoughts, Whitefield filled in the lines with an imaginary monologue: "Surely, thinks Zaccheus, I dream: it cannot be; how should he know me? I never saw him before." Then followed the imaginative rejection: "besides I shall undergo much contempt, if I receive him under my roof." More polite "scoffers" would never demean themselves by running after Jesus; they no doubt thought he was just another "enthusiastic preacher." But Zaccheus would not be denied, and for his efforts he was rewarded with salvation. In closing, Whitefield took on the personality of Christ, urging his hearers to "come, haste away, and hide yourselves in the clefts of my wounds; for I am wounded for your transgressions; I am dying that you may live for evermore."

So caught up was Whitefield in his daily sermons, each with multiple sermonic roles, that he confessed, "I have scarce had time to eat bread from morning to evening." In Philadelphia, as in London, he was becoming lost to all but his public self in the pulpit. Once again, his experience appears more analogous to the actor on tour than to the settled preacher. Unlike ministers who preached only once or twice a week and could more easily separate their "roles" as pastor, father, husband, and community pillar, Whitefield lived in his own self-embracing world of dramatic reenactment. Just as the public self dominates his journals, so it dominated his day-to-day life in ways that were not common to other preachers.

In characterizing the nether world of the actor, JeanChristophe Agnew observes that "he certainly never claimed to represent himself on the stage.... Nor, finally, did he represent his 'character.' He was the character as long as the action of the play went forward, and he could expect to be taken as such by his audience." In very similar ways, Whitefield was the biblical characters he portrayed. These characters were more than historical renditions or readings from Scripture. Through his interpretation, they took on lives of their own and became a form of revelation unique to him. In fact, in the time of the sermon he was neither Whitefield nor Zaccheus nor Herod nor Christ: he was all of them brought together in one cathartic vortex of experience and passion common to all great drama.

And so Americans discovered the Whitefield who had earlier taken London by storm. At the same time, Whitefield discovered through his preaching the passions within him and gave them true expression. He was not "acting" as he preached so much as he was exhibiting a one-to-one correspondence between his inner passions and the biblical saints he embodied. He was most complete in the pulpit, where his private and public self came together in body, voice, and gesture to be an open window into his own deepest personal response to the gospel accounts. Such performance required courage to let the self within be seen fully from without. And, like all displays of courage, it brought power and attention.

Along with many "hopeful" conversions, Whitefield col lected overwhelming offerings on his return engagement to Philadelphia. In one meeting he received £100 sterling, a figure that Seward accounted "more than ever we had at once" in England and more than many colonial ministers received in a year.

Franklin attended these sermons and recorded a classic account of Whitefield's power over the purses of his listeners. Franklin had come to the sermon "resolved he should get nothing from me." But then, "as he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me asham'd of that, and determin'd me to give the Silver; and he finish'd so admirably, that I emptied my Pocket wholly into the Collector's Dish, Gold and all." Whitefield himself rejoiced at the outpouring of money, even greater than "what God had done for me at Moorsfields and Kennington Common." In all, he collected over £500 in his spring tour, virtually all of which was returned to the inexhaustible needs of the orphan house.

Whitefield now turned to give increasing attention to the needs of the slave community. Despite his outspoken plea for the legalization of slavery in Georgia, he increasingly sought out audiences of slaves and wrote on their behalf. Gary B. Nash, in his study of the Philadelphia slave community, dates "the advent of black Christianity" in Philadelphia to Whitefield's first preaching tour. Nash estimates that perhaps a thousand slaves heard Whitefield's sermons in Philadelphia, both at Christ Church and out of doors. They heard from him that they had as surely souls as the white folk who had enslaved them and that their master owed them the freedom of religious conscience.

William Seward recorded frequent meetings with slaves in Whitefield's quarters, a sight Seward interpreted "as a good omen that God intends the Salvation for the Negroes, while he passes by their despisers, and worse than Egyptian TaskMasters." All the while, Whitefield's vision of white cruelty to slaves grew, so that finally he determined to supplement preaching and conversion with more tangible assistance. Until this time, Whitefield's every dream seemed to materialize. Now he added one more. Along with his preaching, Whitefield announced his intention to create a school for blacks in Pennsylvania that would both train them in crafts and nurture them in spirit. On April 22, Seward paid £2,200 for five thousand acres of land outside Philadelphia and named it "Nazareth." It is not clear whether Whitefield intended that the blacks at Nazareth be slaves or free (or both), but he certainly intended that in Nazareth the blacks would meet with "the best usage."

So effective was Whitefield's plea for the slaves that Philadelphia's most prominent dancing master, Robert Bolton, renounced his old vocation and turned his school over to blacks. By summer's end, over fifty "black Scholars" had arrived at the school. Tragically, the progress stopped there. Financial setbacks and the lack of personal supervision prevented Whitefield from establishing the momentum necessary to entice others. His noble experiment failed. In time, the land was given over to a Moravian community. Yet despite his failures (institutional and personal), his voice of compassion for the slaves continued to ring out and win their enduring adoration.

While Whitefield and Seward worked in the middle colonies, they were also planning ahead to the South, New England, and Scotland. Seward's journal provides a glimpse of religious publicity in the making. On April 22 he received news of a sloop going to Georgia. Immediately he sat down and "wrote letters to Savannah, Charlestown, Frederica, Virginia, CapeFear, New Brunswick, and New York." In that day alone he sent out over a hundred letters containing news of the tour. In many letters, he "Inclosed our Brother's Letters against Archbishop Tillotson, and about the Negroes, and also sundry News-papers [accounts]." Along with reports on Whitefield's successes in Philadelphia, Seward "wrote paragraphs for the News, where our Brother was to preach and had preached." A widening network of correspondents was being created even as Whitefield traveled from place to place.

Following a farewell sermon to twenty thousand at Philadelphia, Whitefield returned again to the orphan house. There he fought two battles that would keep his name in the news. The first was with the Georgia trustees over the question of ownership and control of the orphan house. His antiAnglican bursts had not endeared him to the trustees, and many began to suspect he intended to transform the school into a methodist seminary. In response they moved to tighten controls.

Whitefield, buoyed by his hero's welcome in the middle colonies as well as by the financial security of large offerings and Seward's wealth, dismissed the trustees' offer of financial support. He serenely declared that he and his wealthy friend William Seward would see to all the financing of the orphan house. In that way, he would have total ownership and direction. He added that trustee support was minimal, and everywhere he mentioned them "it ... met with contempt."

Stung by Whitefield's arrogance - recorded in the ubiquitous journal and published for the English-speaking world to read - the trustees and the secretary of the colony responded by holding Whitefield to public account for all moneys disbursed at the orphan house. They also insisted that ownership of the deeded lands belonged ultimately to them and that Whitefield could not bequeath them in his will. As a further slap, they insisted on the rights of regular visitation and inspection, along with payment of a quitrent for the five hundred acres earlier ceded.

The gauntlet was thrown down, and Whitefield eagerly entered the fray. In a widely reprinted letter to the trustees, he challenged their right of ownership in terms that left little doubt about his contempt for their authority. As for accountability, he owed them no explanation. There would be an accounting to be sure - but to his public - the poor and dissenting "fools for Christ," not the trustees. Secretary Stevens's claims were preposterous, Whitefield went on, especially when everyone knew that virtually all of the fund raising, planning, and staffing was "owing chiefly to my own particular interest, and therefore I have a right to the sole disposal of it." Whitefield's bombast succeeded in eliminating the quitrent and leaving open the question of inheritability (eventually resolved in his favor). At the same time, it made him the darling of American colonists who also chafed at authority and relished confrontation. This would be reinforced when he fought his second battle with Commissary Alexander Garden.

As clerics throughout America had before him, Garden played perfectly into Whitefield's hand. He denied his pulpits to the outspoken itinerant and sought to censure him. Central to Garden's grievance was Whitefield's "railing Accusation against the clergy of the Church of England in general, and the present Bishop of London in particular." Equally offensive was Whitefield's theatricality, which especially infected the common and the ignorant. To bewitched American listeners Garden offered stern counsel:

[Whitefield's sermons] were preached midst the Sound of that Gentleman's Voice in your ears; - that enchanting Sound! The natural and alone Cause, which produced all the Passion and Prejudice, that prevailed 'mong some (the weaker some indeed) of you, in his Favour, against them and every thing else that opposed him; and which would equally have produced the same Effects, whether he had acted his Part in the Pulpit or on the Stage.... It was not the Matter but the Manner, not the Doctrines he delivered, but the Agreeableness of the Delivery, [that] had all the Effect upon you.... Take away this Cause, no more Multitude after the Preacher!

While Garden had clearly pinpointed a partial explanation for Whitefield's success, he utterly missed how completely his criticism played into Whitefield's hands. Few Americans cared about the Church of England or its bishop, let alone theatricality, except to the extent that they enjoyed Whitefield's blasts against the former and his indulgence in the latter.

When Garden threatened to suspend Whitefield from the ministry, Whitefield replied contemptuously (and publicly) that he would regard such a suspension "as much as I would a Pope's bull." In response Garden summoned the young itinerant to an ecclesiastical court, hoping to silence him. But this move served only to further the "persecuted" Whitefield's popularity.

Whitefield continued to criticize Anglican authorities and demand that slave owners acknowledge that their slaves had souls. With the case of Nazareth fresh in his mind, he prevailed on a recent convert and well-to-do Charleston planter named Hugh Blair to "erect a Negro school in South Carolina" to teach the slaves basic Christianity. Blair and his brother Jonathan hired another Whitefield convert, William Hutson, a former "stage player," as the first master of their school. Eventually Hugh Blair's emotional instability unraveled the whole enterprise, but for a time it stood as another tangible and widely publicized token of Whitefield's concern for the souls of black folk.

Throughout June, Whitefield preached to record audiences in Charleston and attracted newspaper coverage in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. His account of his "trial" before Garden's "court" read like Stephen before an unconverted Paul and the Jewish Sanhedrin. As Garden railed against Whitefield, the young itinerant invoked the martyr's identity: "I pitied, I prayed for him; and wished, from my soul, that the Lord would convert him, as He once did the persecutor Saul, and let him know it is Jesus whom he persecutes." On August 14 the Charleston Mercury described Garden's trial and Whitefield's response in terms that left no doubt where the paper's loyalties lay. It described a badly put upon Whitefield who

recommended submission to authority, and love to enemies, in such a manner that he allay'd the resentment of the People against his Prosecutors, acquired the love and esteem of some who before were his opposers, and remov'd strong prejudices conceived against him by many who never before heard him.

Words like these were too much for Garden to bear. Too late he realized he had been taken in. The more he tried to expose Whitefield's theatricality and hubris, the more Whitefield turned accusations into a "persecution" he would willingly endure for the sake of the gospel and the multitudes who should hear it. Whitefield had the press in the palm of his hand, and no authority would ever win a confrontation in that medium.

The triumphs continued, and so did the coverage in northern newspapers. Reports of a fall tour in New England raised great expectations. Despite fears that his daily preaching had dealt an "irrecoverable stroke to the health of my body," Whitefield rejoiced to see how "many seemed to sympathise with me." He would take that assurance with him to New England, where the heart and soul of his beloved Puritanism still lived.

On September 14, 1740, Whitefield arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, en route to Boston. His New England tour would not last as long as the two visits to the middle colonies, but the advance notice and built-up anticipation released a wave of popular enthusiasm that equaled or exceeded anything he had seen.

Whitefield was no scholar, and revivalism, as a field of inquiry, could not be found in the colleges. Yet Whitefield understood the history of modem revivals as well as anyone - and New England's central place in the emerging mythology. Revivalism enjoyed a popular history, partly written and mostly oral, carried through newspapers, letters, and word of mouth. In spirit and constituency, it functioned as a popular alternative to the Enlightenment rationalism of Locke and Newton, and, like the growing international community of scholars linked into a "Republic of Letters," it transcended local institutions and hierarchies. In George Whitefield the movement had its catalyst and floating center, and in New England it had its chief intellectual proponents.

These proponents of the eighteenth century's "New Religious History" (all found on the margins of the more intellectually respectable Enlightenment) made a formidable list: Lady Selina, Countess of Huntington; Howell Harris in Wales; the Erskine brothers in Scotland; Theodore Frelinghuysen and the Tennents in Pennsylvania; Josiah Smith in Charleston; and Solomon Stoddard in Massachusetts. Above all the rest, however, stood Stoddard's grandson Jonathan Edwards. The Northampton of Stoddard and Edwards was not the first town to be revived, but it was certainly the most important, for out of a convulsive revival there in 1734, Edwards produced a classic literary account of revivals entitled A Narrative of Surprising Conversions. This treatise stood as the textus receptus for the New Religious History promulgated by Whitefield and his allies. Edwards's Narrative began as an extended letter to Boston's venerable Benjamin Colman. Colman immediately recognized its value and recommended its publication. Without delay, the work became a best-seller that was widely reprinted in America, England, and Scotland. And as more and more communities experienced revivals, they looked to that account as the benchmark and point of comparison for self-understanding. Through Edwards's history, the revivals were made intelligible as a "work of God" according to the most current knowledge of the age.

Already in Philadelphia, Whitefield had been reading Edwards's account, as well as Stoddard's revival manual, A Guide to Christ, published twenty years earlier. New England would be the last stop on his tour, yet in symbolic ways it would be the most important, for it would link him to the birthplace of the modern revival. The science of revival was already in place. With the arrival of Whitefield, letters and newspapers would be joined with local clerical support to ensure success. A little controversy and some advance news were all that was required to whet the public appetite.

Newspapers and ministers were Whitefield's best advance sources, and New England had both in abundance. Bos ton alone boasted four newspapers, and other chief cities from Hartford to New London had papers of their own. As before, the papers rallied behind Whitefield and built on the growing myth of his powers. Long before scholars and historians had time to do their work, the New England press chronicled the New Religious History. Even more effective as Whitefield's advance agents were the New England ministers. Through the agency of Harvard and Yale, the region included over six hundred classically educated Congregational clergymen, placed in virtually every town throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. The ratio of minister to population was the lowest in the Western world, and as public voices the clergy had few competitors. Indeed, the ministers controlled public communications so effectively that in most communities they simply were the voice of authority and corporate meaning. For generations they had spoken of, prayed for, and experienced "revival," always in a local communal setting, as a reaffirmation of local institutions and authorities. These revivals continued to appear in 1739 and 1740. Yet they were destined to be redefined in the wake of Whitefield's mass meetings.

Throughout the summer, Whitefield's triumphs and confrontations in the south and middle colonies continued to receive full coverage in New England's newspapers. In an age that had not yet established copyright laws, accounts were borrowed verbatim from Philadelphia and New York newspapers and from letters that Whitefield and Seward had sent to prime the media pump. As early as April, the New England Weekly journal carried front-page coverage of Whitefield's attacks on Tillotson and southern slave owners and applauded both. New England readers already anticipated seeing "a man of middle stature, of a slender body, of a fair complexion, and of a comely appearance." He was "sprightly" and "cheerful" in temperament, and they understood that he moved "with great agility and life." The Boston Gazette described a Whitefield sermon at the Philadelphia courthouse in which "the pulpit seem'd almost to be the Tribunal, if the comparison may be pardon'd, of the great judge, clothed in Flames, and adjudging a guilty world to penal Fire."

Soon the Boston printers got into the act. Samuel Kneeland and Thomas Green printed Whitefield's Account of orphan house management and disbursements, which he had written to allay public suspicion concerning his offerings. The major Boston publishers Draper, Rogers, and Fowle picked up Whitefield sermons, while booksellers such as Daniel Henchman imported Franklin's edition of the journals to meet widespread public demand.

As always, controversy was Whitefield's best friend, and New England accommodated with at least one outspoken skeptic, the conservative and thoroughly anglicized publisher Thomas Fleet. Fleet's audience aspired to gentility, so he chose as his journalistic model those fashionable London magazines that heaped abuse on the "field preacher," identifying him with methodism and mayhem. Fleet maintained a staunch antagonism in his Boston Evening Post throughout Whitefield's early tours of New England. But, like other opposition, he simply fueled public curiosity. After reading Fleet's reprinting of Commissary Garden's harsh strictures against Whitefield, audiences became all the more intent on seeing the field preacher for themselves.

New England's clergy expressed as much excitement about Whitefield's arrival as the newspapers. As he had with the press, Whitefield prepared them carefully. Already in February, while working at the orphan house, he had received an invitation from Edwards to preach in Northampton. Edwards had begun the letter by reminding Whitefield how his Northampton pulpit had once been "distinguished with Light." Recently, however, the town had fallen on "more hardened" times. Could Whitefield visit and fan the embers of a waning piety? The results, Edwards dared to think, could be stupendous and involve more than Northampton. A mighty reformation could be kindled that would signal "the dawning of a day of God's mighty Power and glorious grace to the world of mankind." With so irresistible a proposition, Whitefield immediately accepted the invitation - and challenge.

While Edwards's international reputation was important, his help was not as central to Whitefield's New England designs as that of Benjamin Colman. If Edwards was America's greatest theologian, Colman personified America's genteel but still orthodox Congregational establishment. His English ordination and cosmopolitan manners fitted him perfectly to serve Boston's most anglicized elite at the wealthy and innovative Brattle Street Church. At the same time, Colman remained staunchly Calvinist in theology and a friend to the new evangelical revivals.

Colman first learned of Whitefield through reading the Journals and newspaper accounts. In July he received a letter from Whitefield expressing hopes for revival in New England. Borrowing his image from Edwards, Whitefield announced that "surely our Lord intends to put the whole world in a Flame." He indicated that he planned to visit Colman and New England "some time next month" and hoped that he would lend him support by opening his pulpit and allowing him to preach. In closing, Whitefield mentioned the ongoing needs of the orphan house at Bethesda and his hope of raising support in New England for its ministry: "Leave it to God. He hath the hearts of all men in his hands, and I am fully persuaded will provide for [the orphans] some way or another. Oh the blessedness of living by faith!" Colman was happy to comply with Whitefield's request, and he forwarded copies of the letter to other ministers, including Jonathan Edwards, to be read from their pulpits.

Whitefield's careful preparations and advance publicity paid handsome dividends. By the time word spread that he had arrived in Newport and would soon be in Boston, the country was in a turmoil. In Newport, the Anglican rector James Honeyman resolved not to allow "the noisie Mr Whitefield" to preach in his parish, but the "chief" people in his church overruled him and opened their pulpit. Whitefield promptly preached his signature sermon "The Nature and Necessity of Our Regeneration," and with that the New England revival was on.

In Boston, Colman, together with William Cooper, eagerly shared the news of Whitefield's arrival with the New England press and offered their pulpits. This in turn set up a flurry of invitations throughout Boston and into the countryside. Before setting foot in Boston, Whitefield had a full-blown itinerary from which to choose. His only rejection came from Commissary Timothy Cutler, which gave him the opportunity to declare that the Anglicans "should not have an opportunity of denying me the use of their pulpits." Instead, he proclaimed, he would take his message into the much larger Congregational meetinghouses and into the fields.

Whitefield's inaugural sermon from Colman's pulpit attracted an overflow crowd estimated at four thousand. By all accounts, it moved the audience as though they were hearing the message of regeneration for the first time. According to one excited account, "he uses much gesture, but with great propriety: every accent of his voice, every motion of his Body, speaks, and both are natural and unaffected. If his delivery is the product of art, 'tis certainly the perfection of it, for it is entirely unconcealed." By the following day at Joseph Sewall's South Church, the crowd had grown to an estimated six thousand. From there Whitefield traveled in the afternoon to his beloved fields and, in his first sermon on Boston Common, attracted a rapt audience estimated by the Weekly Mercury at five thousand.

The next day was Sunday, and, in keeping with his policy, he refused to speak in the morning, instead attending Brattle Street church to hear Colman preach. Colman was at his evangelical best, prompting an enthusiastic Whitefield to praise his preaching for its warmth and zeal. He also had good things to say about New England preaching generally, though in fact he attended only one other sermon during this trip through New England.

That Sunday afternoon, Whitefield preached at Thomas Foxcroft's Old Brick Church. So vast was the gathering that the audience had to adjourn to the common. There, in the outdoor market center, Whitefield held eight thousand listeners spellbound with his full-bodied enactment of the horrors of sin and the raptures of undeserved grace. Freed from the restrictions of walls, he roamed around his portable field pulpit at will, amazing his audience with the sheer pathos and passion of his delivery. For his own part, Whitefield experienced the typical performer's anxiety, feeling weak and hoarse at the start, but he was soon "enabled to speak, and could have spoken, I believe, till midnight."

Despite a population of only seventeen thousand, Boston was producing crowds that rivaled Whitefield's field preaching in London. Unlike London, however, many of these crowds gathered in meetinghouses never intended for such volume. A tragedy was virtually inevitable. Word had spread that Whitefield would preach at Mr. Checkley's meetinghouse the next day, and predictably the crowd poured in, filling the building beyond capacity. As Whitefield was still making his preparations, someone in the gallery broke a board to make a seat. The sound triggered a panic. As described later by the Mercury,

the word was soon given by some ignorant and disordered Persons, that the galleries gave way; upon which the whole Congregation was immediately thrown into the utmost confusion and Disorder, and each one being desirous to save themselves some jump'd from the galleries into the pews and allies below, others threw themselves out at the windows, and those below pressing hard to get out at the porch Doors, many (especially women) were thrown down and trod upon by those that were crowding out, no regard being had to the sensible screeches and outcries of those in danger of their lives, or others.

Before the panic subsided and the building cleared, five people had died. Such a tragedy accompanying a preaching event was unprecedented in the annals of colonial preaching and testified in a particularly powerful, if gruesome, way to Whitefield's popularity. Whitefield himself remained bent on preaching. To the amazement of all, he did not cancel his sermon but instead removed to the common, where he drew from the event powerful applications. Death was the primary consequence of sin, and with so powerful and immediate a reminder, Whitefield preached through a driving rainstorm. No one in the audience left. Later Whitefield made no reference to the tragedy, except to say that "Satan had a hand in this."

As long as Whitefield confined himself to the theme of the New Birth, his message met with almost universal acceptance. But there was another, more polemical strain to his preaching that would soon arouse familiar controversy. As in Pennsylvania and the South, he stepped up his clergy-baiting with inflammatory accusations against established ministers. They were, Whitefield claimed, caught up in the "formality" of their office and, quite possibly, "unconverted." In fact, he could not possibly have known more than a handful of ministers - most of whom were friendly to his visit, and he had attended only two services in New England. But his pulpit rhetoric required antagonists. If religious apathy was not the fault of the people, as Whitefield insisted it was not, then it must be laid at the feet of their spiritual leaders. This inverted jeremiad had worked well in England and the middle colonies, and it would work in New England.

But Whitefield did not stop with criticism of the New England clergy. At Cambridge, after speaking before Harvard students and faculty, he made a powerful enemy by recording in his journal for all to see that the college "is scarce as big as one of our least colleges at Oxford; and as far as I could gather from some who knew the state of it, not far superior to our Universities in piety." He went on to complain that spiritual discipline was neglected and "bad books" such as Tillotson's and Samuel Clarke's deistical volumes were being read instead of the Puritan Thomas Shepard, Stoddard, and "such-like evangelical writers." If this was any indication of a lack of grace - and Whitefield claimed it was - one could reasonably assume that many of the Harvard graduates in New England pulpits were unconverted. Predictably, Whitefield's words enraged the Harvard tutors even while they fanned the fires of his popularity. Attacks on the more secular Enlightenment learning would not win friends in academia, but they would confirm enduring popular resistance to anglicized intellectual pretensions and at the same time feed a sense of popular superiority.

On September 26 Whitefield took a short trip to Roxbury, where he preached to "many thousands" from a "little ascent" in the center of town. In the afternoon he returned to Boston. By then the tragic lessons of overcrowded buildings had been learned, and the preaching site was relocated from Mather Byles's meetinghouse pulpit to a large scaffold erected in the town common. There, before fifteen thousand people, Whitefield preached on the New Birth and marveled in his journal, "Oh, how the word did run!" For their part, New Englanders were equally spellbound. Neither clergy nor laity had ever seen such pulpit performances as these, and they certainly did run to hear the young itinerant. The Rev. Nathan Bucknam of Medway interrupted the standard entries in his private diary to record an extraordinary trip to Boston to hear Whitefield. From October 6 to 9 he attended every Whitefield sermon, dutifully recording both the text and the excitement it generated. In these first halcyon days, no one was immune to the contagion of enthusiasm. No one could believe - or wanted to believe - that Whitefield's performance was the product of art. Even Whitefield refused to believe it was art. Like Paul and the apostles, he believed he simply preached the ancient gospel and that God did the rest: "Wherever I go people will follow me," he wrote, "and I now, almost hourly, receive letters from persons under convictions." The results were purely and sublimely the work of the Holy Spirit working as in apostolic times.

Unlike Philadelphia, where Whitefield had taken no offer ings until his second visit, in New England he planned immediate collections. By now his integrity was established, and the needs of the orphan house were pressing. Seward had returned to England to preach, leaving Whitefield solely responsible for the orphan house. The acute need for money committed him to a fund-raising mission - one that would last the rest of his life. On September 23, he reprinted his orphan house account in the Boston Weekly Journal along with a letter outhning the needs. The letter went on to praise New England's reputation for generosity and the "liberal" offerings already received from the friends of piety and charity in Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston. The letter closed, "if God should incline you or your Friends to promote this good work, I shall be thankful, and the blessings bestow'd on my lambs thro' your means, I hope, will much rebound to the glory of God. I have given myself to this work; and if I die in endeavoring to advance its welfare, it will be a matter of rejoycing to George Whitefield."

The response to Whitefield's plea exceeded even his own expectations. In the outlying towns, Whitefield averaged about £70 Massachusetts currency per offering. In Boston, however, the figures were staggering: £555 (Massachusetts currency) in Joseph Sewall's meetinghouse; £470 in Colman's Brattle Street; and £440 in Joseph Webb's. In all, the Weekly Journal reported collections in excess of £3,000 local currency, or £600 sterling - a figure far above any reported in Philadelphia, Charleston, or London.

Whitefield's astounding offerings are significant less for any personal gain they gave him (there was little) than for the way in which they confirmed that religion could be marketed in open-air settings and generate revenue like any other service. In a single afternoon, Whitefield had raised far more money than New England's clergy earned in a year. No one in New England had ever seen such offerings before. The Rev. Moses Parsons of Byfield was so staggered by reports of Whitefield's offerings in the Weekly Journal that he copied the totals into his diary - a unique entry in an otherwise conventional diary filled with entries on weather, preaching texts, and local events. The lesson was clear. Religion need not rely on tax support and established institutions. It could survive - and survive very well - in outdoor settings if it was presented in terms that would attract eighteenth-century crowds.

Of course, as the recent history of American television evangelists has shown, the rich potential for offerings can easily be abused. But in Whitefield's case, money and possessions held minimal allure. His peripatetic lifestyle discouraged acquisitions, and his ascetic personal appetites, fixed at Oxford, had never changed. Apart from a taste for Madiera wine, which his friend James Habersham supplied from Savannah, he had no extravagances. Fame was far more compelling a temptation than money. And the more money he raised - and gave away - the more famous he became.

Clearly, on his first tour of New England Whitefield reached "the people" as no one before him ever had. And the people he reached included slaves. As in Philadelphia, he specifically sought out their attendance at his meetings and addressed them directly. At Benjamin Colman's meetinghouse there were so many slaves present that after the service he "went and preached to a great number of negroes at their request." His text was on the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, and, as before, it centered on the doctrine that slaves had souls. Whitefield's letters on the slaves had already won widespread attention in New England and prompted novel debates on the souls of black folk. In fact, the letters represented the first journalistic statement on the subject of slavery. As such, they marked a precedent of awesome implications, beyond anything Whitefield could have imagined.

From Boston, Whitefield took his message to outlying settlements. He traveled the familiar pattern of concentric circles begun in London and Philadelphia, stopping at "central places" along the way. There was not a wasted motion. Virtually every day he delivered two sermons along with private meetings and "exhortations" at his lodgings. Attracted by printed itineraries in the newspapers and by word of mouth, audiences of unprecedented size gathered at each stop, many of them exceeding the population of the host community. At seaport towns such as Marblehead and Salem, and in suburbs such as Charlestown and Roxbury, he generated an enthusiasm verging on panic as crowds "elbowed, shoved, and trampled over themselves to hear of 'divine things' from the famed Whitefield."

Most of the time he preached on the common or "in a broad place in the middle of the town." At each stop he recorded the event for others in an expanding network to read. As in earlier journal entries, he paid little attention to exactness in date or travel details. Nor did he bother to mention either preaching text or doctrine - common fare for virtually all other ministerial diaries. His purposes were less historical than promotional and mythological. He was in the business of making a new religious history, replete with its own marvels and divine triumphs, in which audience size and offering totals became supremely noteworthy. He rarely omitted mention of either, for both legitimated God's pleasure in the new religious movement. The Whitefield that emerges in these pages is wholly emptied of self and worldly concerns and utterly absorbed in his Pauline character. In fact, anything else would have detracted from his central purpose of marvel and mythmaking.

Predictably, Whitefield was often ill with "exhaustion" or "vomiting" before performing, only to find that once in the pulpit, "the power of the Word" took over and empowered him to preach for hours. The piety here was no doubt sincere. Equally clear, however, was a pattern of anxiety that most performers experience. And Whitefield knew it. Preaching, he recognized, "is a constant remedy against all indispositions." In an eight-day period he traveled 178 miles outside Boston and preached sixteen times. Yet, he rejoiced, "I was not in the least wearied."

Whitefield returned briefly to Boston, where popular en thusiasm had actually increased. The crowd so thronged Joseph Sewall's meetinghouse that he had to climb in through one of the windows. Then, once again, he prepared for his farewell sermon. Like "revival," "farewell sermon" was a familiar term that had taken on new meanings in Whitefield's itinerant world. What was reserved by other preachers for once or twice in a lifetime became in Whitefield's itinerancy a staged event at every significant stop. In this case, the audience at his farewell sermon on Boston common - estimated at twenty thousand -was all-inclusive. Magistrates and Harvard students, almshouse residents and slaves, friends and enemies all attended. None could stay away. By Whitefield's own account, "numbers, great numbers, melted into tears when I talked of leaving them." All in all, it was a great sight, "perhaps never seen before in America." In fact, there had never been a larger crowd in America to that date.

With Boston behind him, Whitefield moved into the second phase of his New England tour, traveling the rugged ground of the region's hinterland with all the enthusiasm of a pioneer. As always, he carefully selected central places that would attract the largest audiences. Chief of these was Northampton, where, on October 17, he had his long-awaited meeting with Jonathan Edwards. For all of their shared importance to the eighteenth-century revival (and perhaps because of it), the two had little in common. Edwards's interests were philosophical theology and the mind, whereas Whitefield's were preaching and the passions. When Edwards spoke of the centrality of the "heart" and the "affections," he did so in highly technical, epistemological ways that Whitefield found personally distracting, if necessary. And so the two came together around the cause of revival, but in such different ways and with such different gifts that they never established the sort of personal chemistry that Whitefield enjoyed with Harris, Tennent, or Franklin.

Still, Edwards was an international figure in the emerging Calvinist network, and Northampton was on the tip of every revivalist's tongue. The meeting carried significance for both Edwards and Whitefield, and each spoke warmly of it. Whitefield later confessed, "I have not seen [Edwards's] fellow in all New England." In all, Whitefield preached four sermons from Edwards's pulpit. The text for the opening sermon does not survive, but the theme dealt with "the consolations and privileges of saints, and the plentiful effusion of the Spirit upon believers." Throughout, he reminded his hearers of their long association with revivals and Northampton's pivotal place in the emerging Calvinist evangelical order. Both speaker and listeners frequently "wept much."

The following afternoon he again preached with great success and confessed,

I began with fear and trembling, but God assisted me. Few eyes were dry in the assembly. I had an affecting prospect of the glories of the upper world, and was enabled to speak with some degree of pathos. It seemed as if a time of refreshing was come from the presence of the Lord.

In the audience, Edwards felt "weak in body" and was visibly affected by the preaching. Such was Whitefield's power that by the third sermon he could report that "good Mr Edwards wept during the whole time of exercise." Just as exciting, "the people were equally affected, and in the afternoon [sermon] the power increased yet more."

It was important that Whitefield exhibit "power" in Edwards's pulpit, both for the revival of Northampton and for his own position in the international movement. In fact, he met with complete success. Edwards himself reported that as a result of Whitefield's preaching, Northampton was again revived, and "in about a month there was a great alteration in the town."

Five days after Whitefield's visit, Sarah Edwards wrote her brother a remarkably insightful letter describing Whitefield and the recent events. In terms of method, she wrote, "he makes less of the doctrines than our American preachers generally do and aims more at affecting the heart. He is a born orator." The effects were spectacular:

It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible. I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-suppressed sob.... A prejudiced person, I know, might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display; but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him.

For his part, Whitefield was much taken with Sarah Edwards, whom he found "adorned with a meek and quiet spirit." He would subsequently look upon her as a model for the type of wife he hoped to find.

Throughout western Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley, Whitefield kept up his grueling pace of twicedaily preaching, discoursing often on grace, election, and the dangers of an unconverted ministry. Along the way he encountered clerical admirers and would-be imitators such as Eleazar Wheelock, Benjamin Pomeroy, Andrew Croswell, and James Davenport (whom he had met in Philadelphia, and who shared his suspicions about unconverted elders). All of these young men found in Whitefield's stirring denunciations the rhetoric they needed to challenge authority and encourage lay separations.

Inevitably, these young imitators threatened established authority and strained relations between congregations and their local pastors, and suddenly the potential for conflict in these revivals became vividly apparent. Whitefield's dramatic characterizations were one thing, but his confrontational, us-againstthem rhetoric contained the seeds of trouble that even he would live to regret in the deranged ministry of James Davenport.

For the moment, however, all remained relatively calm as churches focused their enthusiasm and zeal on Whitefield's preaching. In Hartford, the pastor Daniel Wadsworth looked forward to Whitefield's visit with great anticipation. Already in February he had received a copy of Whitefield's sermons with prefatory letters by Benjamin Colman and Josiah Smith. The advance publicity had whetted his appetite and that of his congregation, who heard Whitefield at Hartford in the morning and at Wethersfield in the afternoon. Whitefield's afternoon sermon was a favorite from 2 Corinthians 5:17 on regeneration in which he enacted the birthing of a "new creature" transformed by saving grace. Wadsworth had never witnessed such a performance. The truth of the doctrine of the New Birth could not be doubted, but the manner of presentation was a different story: "What to think of the man ... I scarcely know." Two months later, Wadsworth was still struggling, this time over the journal: "met with the famous Mr. Whitefield's life and read it. But what is it?"

If the clergy were both moved and uncertain, there were no such reservations on the part of ordinary men and women. In Middletown, Connecticut, as Whitefield addressed a moderately large crowd (for him) of four thousand, a local farmer named Nathan Cole described the event in his private diary. His words would be discovered years after his death and widely reprinted in the twentieth century. Scholars find in his account a perfect description of the popular enthusiasm and frenzy that accompanied a Whitefield sermon.

Reports from Philadelphia that Whitefield preached "like one of the apostles" had raised Cole's interest, and he eagerly followed the course of Whitefield's itinerancy, "hoping soon to see him." Word of Whitefield's preaching in Hartford and Wethersfield raised hopes that he would also appear in Middletown. Sure enough, on the morning of October 23, a "messenger" raced through Middletown with news that Whitefield would preach out-of-doors that morning at ten o'clock. Cole's response was frantic:

I was in my field at work. I dropped my tool ... and ran home to my wife, telling her to make ready quickly to go on and hear Mr. Whitefield preach at Middletown, then ran to my horse with all my might, fearing that I should be too late. Having my horse, I with my wife soon mounted.... We improved every moment to get along as if we were fleeing for our lives, all the while fearing we should be too late to hear the sermon, for we had twelve miles to ride.

After a furious ride, the Coles made it to the Connecticut River by Middletown. Cole struggled later to describe the novel scene before him:

I saw before me a cloud of fog arising. I first thought it came from the great river, but as I came nearer the road I heard a noise of horses' feet coming down the road, and this cloud was a cloud of dust made by the horses' feet.... When I came within about 20 rods of the road, I could see men and horses slipping along in the cloud like shadows, and as I drew nearer it seemed like a steady stream of horses and their riders, scarcely a horse more than his length behind another, all of a lather and foam with sweat, their breath rolling out of their nostrils every jump. Every horse seemed to go with all his might for the saving of souls. It made me tremble to see the sight.

Once Cole had stationed himself and his wife in the crowd, he turned back to the river where he saw "the ferry boats running swift backward and forward bringing over loads of people, and the oars rowed nimble and quick. Everything, men, horses, and boats seemed to be struggling for life."

The sermon that followed did not disappoint an expectant Cole. When Whitefield climbed the scaffolding assembled for his visit "he looked almost angelical: a young, slim, slender youth, before some thousands of people with a bold undaunted countenance." Soon Cole was caught up in the moment by a master of gesture and presence who "looked as if he was clothed with authority from the Great God." So powerful was the sermon, Cole concluded, that it "gave me a heart wound.... I saw that my righteousness would not save me."

It is easy to see why Cole's description is so widely reprinted. It captures, as no ministerial diary could do, the popular impact that Whitefield exerted on ordinary listeners. There was no pretext of analysis or critical description but rather a language that strained to reproduce a novel experience in powerful, image-filled words. The references to shadowy figures, thunderous noise, and clouds of dust all point as no official account could to the powerful emotions evoked by Whitefield's preaching.

In two short months, Whitefield had become the darling of New England. Such was the inherited piety of ordinary New Englanders that his preaching was like "putting fire to tinder." Their long tradition of local revivals fed into a mass event of nearly universal proportions. And for once, Whitefield learned as much as he gave. Never before had he seen such uniformly high levels of popular piety and Calvinist knowledge. Family worship, he observed, "is generally kept up," and "the negroes are better used than in any province I have yet seen." "On many accounts," he concluded, New England "certainly excels all other provinces in America; and, for the establishment of religion, perhaps all other parts of the world."

Yet if all was promising with the people, the same could not be said for their pastors and the colleges that trained them. Even as young admirers followed Whitefield and sought to extend the revival, others grew increasingly cautious. Between his first arrival in New England and late October, word surfaced that ministers such as Wadsworth and Boston's Charles Chauncy were having second thoughts about the character of his ministry. Added to these critics was the Boston Evening Post, which began openly to question the effects of Whitefield's preaching. In a series of printed letters, the Post praised "the great Archbishop Tillotson" and criticized Whitefield's theatrical methods. Too often, the Post complained, Whitefield "captivated by sounds and gestures only." Beyond that, he was making solid, local preachers seem boring and detached by comparison. More "sober-minded citizens" who sought "to attend the ministrations of their own pious and laborious pastors, in quiet peace and orderly Manner" were "stigmatiz'd as atheists, profligates, or very irreligious Persons." Finally, Whitefield threatened to divert scarce resources to his orphanage when "we have much more Need of one among ourselves."

Predictably, Whitefield responded to the accusations in kind. So certain was he of the rightness of his words that he viewed any attack on his ministry as prima facie evidence that it had come from an enemy of the gospel. The ominous warning against an unconverted ministry continued to sound in his oratory. And just as this rhetoric had worked in England against the Anglicans, it was effective in New England when used against Anglicans and critical Congregationalists. Judging from private conversations with younger ministers such as Pomeroy and Davenport, he concluded that many clergymen "rest in a head-knowledge, [and] are close [to] Pharisees, and have only a name to live."

Upon his return to Boston on October 7, a highly confident and combative Whitefield prepared to close out his New England tour on a note of challenge. On October 9, he entered the pulpit at Joseph Sewall's meetinghouse with no text in mind; but, seeing many ministers in attendance, he turned to the account of Nicodemus and Jesus' stern injunction to the wise Pharisee that he must be "born again." Following the sermon, Whitefield wrote: "I am persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ. The reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they have dead men preaching to them.... How can dead men beget living children?"

The lesson to be drawn from Whitefield's chilling accusations against clerical piety was obvious. If New England was to be revived, the people would have to take the lead. The people would have to be the central characters in the new religious history. This note had been sounded before in England and the southern colonies. Now it was applied, with equal success (and unanticipated consequences), to New England Congregationalists.

Whitefield was not in New England long enough to see the divisive consequences of his rhetoric, but they came nonetheless. Along with new births came wrenching divisions, pitting clergy against clergy and the people against their ministers. This "awakening" was as much an awakening against the established churches as it was for them. Communal revivals became translocal events orchestrated by traveling strangers who appealed to individual experience rather than corporate responsibility. Though Whitefield's intent was not social upheaval, that would be the inevitable result of his adversarial rhetoric.

But with the divisions also would come positive lessons. The same power that Whitefield felt in the outdoor revival was felt by his audiences as well. In his brief but unforgettable New England tour he had delivered 175 sermons "besides exhorting very frequently in private." Although he was only an individual, the sheer frequency of his address had left an unforgettable imprint on both the clergy and the people. As elsewhere, New England audiences would learn that their voluntary assemblies could be orderly and constructive.

Whitefield could now survey his New World experience as a whole with the knowledge that the more he traveled in America, the more popular he became. His electrifying manner struck resonant chords with a colonial people that nothing in England could match. As he returned south in preparation for his return to England, Whitefield found himself strangely warmed to the New World and confessed that "all things concur to convince me that America is to be my chief scene for action."

Whitefield's American tour convinced him that a truly transatlantic revival was possible and that he could be its symbolic center. Upon returning to England, he set about building a preaching "Tabernacle" at Moorfields. But he soon learned that standing-room-only crowds depended upon his presence. To succeed there, he would have to give it full-time attention and abandon his vocation as the traveling spark for an international revival. This he refused to do. Not only would a permanent "home" weaken the revivals, it would also lessen his effectiveness. If he were to stay in one place week in and week out, his "art" would be discovered in repetition and his unique impact would fade.

Besides, the competition with Arminian Anglicans on the one hand and Arminian Methodists on the other was too stiff. Already the Wesleys had moved in perfectionist directions and warned their hearers not to follow Whitefield. Whitefield responded by publishing an open letter to John Wesley condemning his denial of predestination in favor of "universal redemp tion" even as he confessed his ongoing "love and honour" to his Oxford friend. Whitefield could preach in London to be sure, but a permanent base would require him to found a rival movement, which he refused to do. Clearly a transatlantic movement could not be centered in England.

The future, Whitefield was convinced, lay in the provinces and colonies. Revivals there could create a pincer movement capable of closing back on England itself. While politics, economics, and learning were spreading fast from the metropolitan core to the provincial periphery, Whitefield envisioned the Calvinist revivals creating an opposite pattern, from the periphery inward. The principal cities of the periphery - Philadelphia, Boston, and Edinburgh - would be the enlightened nodal points from which true revival would spread through England and, from there, throughout Europe and the world. The groundwork had already been done in Philadelphia and Boston. That left Edinburgh and Scotland.

Among the provinces, Whitefield was always interested in Wales and Ireland and occasionally visited them. But his central interest was Scotland, for obvious reasons. Scotland in many ways resembled America, particularly the middle and New England colonies. Like America, Scotland emerged from the English Reformation with a strong dislike of episcopal government, Anglican ritual, and Arminian theology. Doctrinally the Scots continued to adhere to the Westminster Confession. Institutionally they organized themselves into a national Scottish Kirk following the Presbyterian blueprint of John Knox. As with American Puritans, so with Scottish Presbyterians - Calvin's Geneva had established forms of faith that created a perfect environment for Whitefield's novel presentation. In addition, Calvin's frequent usage of theatrical images and metaphors in his writings fit perfectly with Whitefield's own instincts.

The Scottish Kirk permeated all levels of society, creating a people who were highly literate and theologically sophisticated. Though respectful of a learned and settled ministry, they could and did do battle with their ministers on the clergy's own terms. Surviving lay confessions and testimonies confirm a literate population that regularly read the Bible and devotional manuals. In fact, Scottish lay religiosity was probably more informed and systematic than that in New England. While American Puritans paid lip service to the Westminster Confession, they never accorded it the centrality in their culture that it enjoyed in Scotland. Scottish Presbyterians internalized the larger catechism and could quote entire passages by memory. Total depravity, imputation, original sin, predestination, and effectual calling were common tokens of their everyday discourse and the terms they used for self-examination and understanding in private spiritual exercises and prayer.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revivals struck the Scottish Kirk with a cyclical regularity not unlike that of the New England town. Most of these were local and communal affairs that reinforced local authority and the church. They differed from those in England or America, however, in that some were led by "stranger preachers" or itinerant "field" preachers who toured the "mountains and valleys" sowing the seeds for local revival. Where American revivals were most dramatically registered in suddenly expanded church membership rates, Scottish revivals were even more immediately registered in on-the-scene "action sermons" that brought long lines of newly awakened to the communion table - and subsequently into church membership. The greater emphasis on the communion service in Scottish piety fit well with the comfort Whitefield derived from sacraments and rituals.

Along with revival, Scotland had its share of divisions. Often as not, these came less from deists or Arminians than from purists whose call for reformation sometimes led to schism and separation. As Whitefield contemplated his Scottish tour, he was aware of two major schismatics, the Erskine brothers, Ralph and Ebenezer. Both had been ordained ministers in the Scottish Kirk but had come to renounce the established church in favor of a new "Associate Presbytery" or "United Secession." Like their "Separatist" counterparts in America who were steadily gaining in numbers in Whitefield's absence, the Scottish Seceders were militantly Calvinist in theology and jealously protective of their lay prerogatives. They opposed the "tyranny" of presbyteries and synods and insisted that each congregation be free to choose and ordain its own pastor. They also required conversion narratives of all members and encouraged separation from local churches if spiritual needs were not being met.

While Whitefield was certain that his future lay with Calvinist revivals, he was not sure which strain of Calvinism he would endorse. Should it be the Calvinism of the established Congregational and Presbyterian churches or the radical separatism of a James Davenport or the Associate Presbytery? Initially his sympathies seemed to lie with the more radical dissenters. They, after all, best embodied the anti-institutional rhetoric he employed so effectively against the Anglicans. But did he want to extend that rhetoric against the Calvinists? Did he want, in other words, to become a social as well as religious radical? Scotland would prove to be decisive in altering his first instincts and drawing him closer to "moderate" Calvinist establishments.

Initially, the Seceders had Whitefield's loyalty. Already in March 1739, he had initiated a correspondence with Ralph Erskine. At this point, the Erskines had still not heard of Whitefield, and Ralph waited to reply "till I heard more about him." After reading the journal, Erskine responded, setting in motion a series of mixed signals between the two that nearly destroyed Whitefield's ministry before it began.

Whitefield assumed that the Erskines would introduce him to their churches and, from there, to audiences of all denominations, as others had in America. The Erskines' assumption was quite different. Given Whitefield's initiation of the correspondence, they mistakenly assumed he understood their polity and sided with their secessionist doctrines, including an uncompromising insistence that separatistic Presbyterianism was the only true polity and that all other orders and ordinations must be renounced.

Whitefield and Seward meanwhile confidently continued correspondence, expecting to find in the Erskines the same base of support they had enjoyed in Tennent, Edwards, and Colman. Ever the promoter, Whitefield mixed news of his revivals with advertisements of his sermons. In February 1741, he wrote from on board the Minerva,

thanks be to rich and sovereign grace, I have experienced much of the Spirit's influences in making nine Sermons, which I intend to print by subscription towards carrying on a Negro school, I am going to settle in Pennsylvania. The price of them will be four shillings. If you or your friends would take few, it might be for the glory of God. My Journal, which I bring over, will acquaint you how the work of God goes on abroad.

He requested information as well: "my ignorance of the constitution of the Scotch church, is the cause of my writing.... I should be obliged to you, if you would be pleased to recommend to me some useful books." The Erskines interpreted this as a sign of cooperation among friends. They decided to educate Whitefield further on the full extent of their separatism and rejection of all other churches.

In April 1741, on the eve of Whitefield's first visit to Scotland, Ralph Erskine wrote inviting him to join the Associate Presbytery. Such a move, he explained, would be exclusive. No Seceder could retain Anglican ordination, nor could he appear in nonsecessionist pulpits. At this point, almost too late, Whitefield realized what he had encountered in the Erskines. For the first time, he glimpsed the logical culmination of separatist leanings. Full alliance with the secessionists could only mean alienation from all other audiences. In a hastily composed reply to Ebenezer Erskine, he politely but firmly refused the offer: "This I cannot altogether come into. I come only as an occasional preacher, to preach the simple Gospel to all that are willing to hear me, of whatever denomination." With that he assumed he had ended the debate and that he would be welcomed on those terms.

On this assumption of goodwill, Whitefield arrived in Scotland in August to inaugurate his Scottish campaign. In keeping with his promise to the Erskines, he began his tour at Ralph Erskine's Dunfermline meetinghouse, where overflow audiences thrilled to his signature sermon on the nature and necessity of a New Birth. But trouble ensued. Immediately following his sermon, Whitefield was summoned to a formal meeting with ministers of the Associate Presbytery. They asked him to justify his Anglican ordination and habit of preaching in all pulpits. Dissatisfied with his explanation, the presbyters enjoined him to renounce his ordination and identify solely with them. This Whitefield would not do.

Soon the dialogue moved from ordination to questions of Scottish polity - an area Whitefield neither understood nor cared about. When asked how his views conformed to the Solemn League and Covenant - Scotland's ecclesiastical constitution - Whitefield replied contemptuously that he had no view at all, "being too busy about matters of ... greater importance." As for preaching only in secessionist pulpits, the demand was unreasonable and counter to the whole transdenominational thrust of his message. Indeed, Whitefield continued, "if the Pope himself would lend me his pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Jesus Christ therein."

The meeting came to an impasse. The Erskines were willing to let well enough alone, but other Seceders were not so accommodating. Their purity would brook no compromise with those outside of their fold. In a widely circulated pamphlet entitled "A Warning against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield," the secessionist minister Adam Gib likened Whitefield to a "false Christ" whose great end in life "is to publish and celebrate himself." By refusing to renounce his Anglican ordination, Gib complained, Whitefield "has yet vomited that spiritual poison" of episcopacy on unsuspecting audiences. Whitefield had heard words like these before, but not from fellow Calvinists - and purists at that. Good theology did not guarantee Christian forbearance.

Whitefield wisely chose not to respond to Gib's pamphlet, instead promising a tolerant and ongoing "love and honour" for the Associate Presbytery as he had for the Wesleyan Methodists earlier. But he would attach himself to neither of them. With that declaration, a drift toward separatism was suddenly reversed. For the first time in his career, Whitefield had carried his barbs and rejection to the purists. Henceforth he would align with Calvinist moderates who held to tolerant Reformed theology and an educated ministry but did not require denominational identification. Neither Whitefield's ecumenical theology nor his actor's instinct for center stage would allow him to be preempted by local concerns and interests, whether Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, or New World Separatist.

The irony of the secessionist attack was not lost on Whitefield. In fact, it altered the shape of his ministry in profound ways. Suddenly, his closest allies were the moderate established Presbyterian clergy, such as William Macculloch of Cambuslang, James Robe of Kilsyth, Alexander Webster of Edinburgh, Thomas Gillespie of Carnock, John Willison of Dundee, James Ogilvie of Aberdeen, John Erskine of Edinburgh (no relation to Ralph), and John Gillies of Glasgow. They offered him their pulpits, and he in turn offered them a reinforcing revival that helped to stem a substantial secessionist drift before it ever really began. The Scottish revivals were not revivals against the churches. For the rest of his career Whitefield spoke against separatism and sought to inspire evangelical revivals within local established churches. No longer a fiery outsider condemning unconverted ministers, Whitefield became, instead, a sympathetic "stranger preacher" sent to reinforce Calvinist revival wherever he saw it.

Throughout the summer of 1741, and again in the spring of 1742, he traveled widely through West Scotland and Edinburgh, realizing successes as large as, if not larger than, any he enjoyed in Philadelphia or Boston. He began in Edinburgh, a busthng port city that boasted a population of seventy thousand. Although it did not compare with London, it was far larger than any American urban center and geographically central to many communities in southern Scotland. As in America, overflow audiences soon pushed Whitefield to the open fields. In his customary fashion, he preached daily outside of regular worship hours and collected badly needed offerings for the Georgian orphans, already over £1,000 in debt since the American tour.

One young admirer in the crowd was the moderate Scottish preacher John Gillies. In time Gillies and Whitefield became close friends (Gillies later prepared Whitefield's earliest biography), but on this visit they were strangers. As Gillies recalled, he could not help but notice Whitefield's "theatrical talent" and his "perfect self-command." Above all, Gillies was struck by the face. Whenever Whitefield spoke, he would preface his discourse "with a solemnity of manner, and an anxious expression of countenance." Once begun, his "actions" captivated hearers: "every accent of his voice spoke to the ear, every feature of his face, every motion of his hands, and every gesture spoke to the eye; so that the most dissipated and thoughtless found their attention involuntarily fixed." Throughout, Gillies continued, his "elocution was perfect." Even apparent losses of self-control, such as faltering speech or cascading tears, proved to be artistic and served to reinforce the delivery.

Whitefield's oft-repeated adaptation of a condemning English judge pronouncing final sentence on a capital offender was a particular favorite with Gillies. A solemn Whitefield would turn to his audience, eyes brimming with tears, voice shaking, and say, "I am now going to put on my condemning cap. Sinner I must do it: I must pronounce sentence upon you!" And then, repeating the words of Christ, he would declare: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

Gillies noted how the itinerant Whitefield moved with "such vehemence upon his bodily frame" that his audience actually shared his exhaustion and "felt a momentary apprehension even for his life." Where other congregations would leave uplifted or convicted, Whitefield's congregations left drained and emptied of all emotional resources. There was energy left for neither audience nor speaker.

From Edinburgh, Whitefield carried his message to outlying areas and rejoiced to find that the work of revival had already begun there among the local pastors. In the towns and villages of Perth, Dundee, Fintray, and especially in Glasgow and Aberdeen, he encountered enthusiastic audiences, which, he observed, were "much like that in New-England."

The parallel to New England is revealing, for in both places Whitefield was dealing with theologically informed popular audiences, and he adjusted his preaching accordingly. The drama remained, to be sure, but alongside it he injected a theological vocabulary and doctrinal emphasis that presupposed a knowing - and sympathetic - audience. In Glasgow, his inaugural sermon was the heavily doctrinal "The Lord Our Righteousness," in which he inveighed against all deniers of total depravity and imputation: "Come then, ye Arians, kiss the Son of God, bow down before him.... And as for you Socinians, who say Christ was a mere man ... you are accursed."

Having established his doctrinal credentials, Whitefield proceeded in familiar fashion to address the passions. A divine Christ who is "an unapplied Christ, is no Christ at all." Then followed a set of questions framed in technical theological language but directed to personal experience: "Were you never made to abhor yourselves for your actual and original sins, and to loathe your own righteousness? Is Christ your sanctification, as well as your outward righteousness?" From fear of condemnation he turned abruptly to hope and the experience of regeneration: "Were you never made to see and admire the all sufficiency of Christ's righteousness, and excited by the spirit of God to hunger and thirst after it? Could you ever say ... nothing but Christ! nothing but Christ! Give me Christ, 0 God, and I am satisfied! Was this, I say, ever the language of your hearts?"

The questions over, he turned to the application. In a voice choked with sobs, he openly reflected on the state of his hearers' souls:

Alas, my heart almost bleeds! What a multitude of precious souls are now before me! How shortly must all be ushered into eternity: and yet, 0 cutting thought! was God now to require all your souls, how few, comparatively speaking, could really say, The Lord our righteousness.

Finally, in the persona of Christ, he pleaded, "Come then, poor, guilty prodigals, come home. Indeed, I will not, like the elder brother, be angry. No, I will rejoice with the angels in heaven." As always, comfort, and not terror, proved to be the final word in Whitefield's preaching. Part of the explanation for this is clearly his own personality, but part may also be found in the strong influence his mother exerted in childhood. The same comfort his mother had provided him in youth, he would dispense to his sin-sick audience. He was, after all, enacting her destiny for him as well as his own.

Clearly Whitefield knew his audience's needs and delivered the appropriate remedy. In a subsequent testimony taken by William Macculloch, it appears that women were especially receptive to his ministry. One "young woman about nineteen years" saw Whitefield preach in the Glasgow courtyard. She declared his message was so powerful that "when that minister spoke of the Prodigals going into a far country, I thought that he was exactly describing me." Following the sermon, the young woman proceeded to the communion table and into active church membership.

Another young woman, Mary Scot, wrote Macculloch about her experience of Whitefield at Glasgow. The letter re veals both Whitefield's power and the way in which he used print and speech to reinforce one another:

Before Mr. Whitefield came to Glasgow my time was spent in nothing but madness and Vanity.... When I went to church it was only to se and be seen. . . . In reading Mr. Whitefield's two leters to Bishop Tillotson I was much afected with the last, so I had a strong inclination to hear him as he came. The first text I heard him preach on was The Lord our Righteousness, and according to his viserall freedom he said he could say, that the Lord was his Reighteousnes, which I was strangly afected with, and stayed so Gloss with me that I durst not be what I had bene before. Prayer then was a pleasure to me. I stayd no more on dresing my self as formerly. I heard nine sermons of him in Glasgow and fouer in Paisly and could no more take up with carnall mirth I was so impressed with Spiritual things and the medetation of what I had heard or read.

Yet another "young woman of 20 years" described a similar experience. She first became attracted to the idea of revival when "about five or six years ago, I heard Mr. Edwards Narrative of the Surprising Work of God at Northampton read; I was very glad to hear that there was such a work of conversion in these far and grand places." Later, "when I read Mr. Whitefield's Journals before he came to Scotland, I was glad that God had raised up so remarkable an Instrument of good to many ... and I thought that if I might hear him, I might get good also." Upon news of Whitefield's arrival in Glasgow, she rushed to the courtyard and heard "him preach his first Sermon on these words - the Lord our Righteousness and was made sensible of the vanity and insufficiency of all righteousness of my own.... I continued to hear him from day to day ... and thought every Sermon I heard greater than another."

As Whitefield continued to issue his stirring calls to repentance and regeneration, he collected a steady stream of much-needed offerings for Bethesda. General offerings totaled £500 for the orphan house. Most of these came from ordinary men and women attracted to the evangelical revivals. But the nobility also took part, led by the Marquis of Lothian and Lord Ray. Again, older women proved especially helpful. Lady Mary Hamilton, Lady Frances Gardiner, Lady Jane Nimms, and Lady Dirleton all contributed substantial sums to his ministry. Together these provided Whitefield with a horse for his travels in Scotland and additional offerings for the orphan house.

The unprecedented enthusiasm and support of Scottish audiences convinced Whitefield that the transatlantic revival had become a reality. He returned to London and the Moorfields Tabernacle brimming with enthusiasm and planning for an imminent return engagement to Scotland. In the few intervening months, he labored in London to shore up his Tabernacle ministry and coordinate transatlantic communications.

Earlier than most, Whitefield recognized that any effective transatlantic movement required sophisticated communications and publicity. Letter-writing networks were important, but the movement had already grown too large to be effectively canvassed by circulating letters. Other means would have to be devised.

Of all the possibilities, Whitefield was most taken with the idea of a religious magazine. His Journals taught him the value of popular print. A magazine could do all his Journals had done and more. Already in April 1741, on the eve of his departure for Scotland, he had taken over a magazine entitled The Weekly History; or, An Account of the Most Remarkable Particulars Relating to the Present Progress of the Gospel.

The first issue appeared on April 11, 1741. It bore the name of Whitefield's printer friend John Lewis on the masthead. But in reality it was a Whitefield production, filled with news of his revivals and charitable enterprises. And, as in his itinerancy, it anticipated trends that would become commonplace in subsequent generations. In format, the paper appealed to a popular audience with anticipated features geared to popu lar interest. Unlike more elite magazines sold by annual subscription, The Weekly History was sold on a cheap-for-cash format not unlike that of the nineteenth-century penny press. Distribution came through local societies and Whitefield's preexistent letter-writing network. For those unable to afford even the low cost of an issue, Whitefield provided a lending service where interested readers could "repair to the Printer's House to read 'em gratis."

Besides using the press to record the new history of revival, Whitefield used it for advance publicity. Already in the spring The Weekly History published accounts of his upcoming visit to Scotland. In addition, it reprinted letters Whitefield received from other ministers in the transatlantic network, including Josiah Smith in Charleston, Thomas Noble in New York, the Tennents in Pennsylvania, and Benjamin Colman and William Cooper in Boston. News from the orphan house also figured prominently. Regular reports from superintendent Habersham described the building projects and the inhabitants. Alongside these accounts, the paper included conversion narratives penned by the ten- and eleven-year-old residents of the orphan house. To lend authenticity and poignancy, their testimonies were "spell'd precisely as they wrote them."

Whether through letters, reports, or sermons, the magazine's subject matter was taken up exclusively with the cause of worldwide revival. Having already led the way with field preaching and fund raising, Whitefield now pioneered with religious journalism. All articles were of a piece and made perfect promotional sense. With everything so new and exciting, a sense of great happenings and imminent glories grew apace. Whenever reports or correspondence trickled in, the magazine picked up the stories and disseminated them to hundreds of readers simultaneously.

Besides learning of the triumphs of the revival, readers learned of its trials. As persecutions gathered strength, the revival's friends were urged to speak out against them. John Cennick reported an attack at Wiltshire during Whitefield's Scotland preaching tour, when thirty ruffians fell on the outdoor audience:

[all] on a sudden came a Company, with weapons, clubs, and staves, into the orchard, crying out, knock him down! knock him down! I broke out of my sermon, and began to exhort the dear Flock to steadfastness, and constancy. 0 what shrieks and cries were heard among them! They soon got round me, and thrust at me.... Others of both Sexes, but chiefly Women, they dragged away by their Hair, and having thrown them down, trampled on them.

Sensational stories like Cennick's filled the spaces between accounts of mass revivals, keeping the readers' energies vitally focused on the life-and-death struggles of the new revivals.

Whitefield recognized a good idea when he saw one, and he urged his Scottish and American co-laborers to begin journalistic endeavors of their own. Almost immediately, widely distributed imitators appeared. The first was the Glasgow Weekly History, begun by William Macculloch in December 1741. Most of Macculloch's stories were lifted directly from The Weekly History, with special emphasis on items of interest to Scottish readers. James Robe established a similar imitator in Edinburgh with the Christian Monthly History. In America, Thomas Prince's Christian History began publication in Boston in 1743, through the publishing offices of Kneeland and Green.

Although short-lived, all of these creations served the indispensable function of recording a new history in the making. At the same time, they reinforced a popular sense of international significance. For the first time, ordinary men and women were taking actions that placed them at the forefront of news. Like Whitefield and his clerical associates, they were all "somebodies" in a glorious cause. Their first halting steps in the direction of a religious journalism transcended their immediate impact, however, for they represented the foundation of an evangelical publishing empire destined to dominate Anglo-American print culture in the next century.

Throughout the winter of 1741-42, Macculloch's Glasgow Weekly History and Whitefield's Weekly History printed endless letters recording the happy results of Whitefield's first Scottish tour. Not only were communities revived, it was reported; they were also driven to reform. Whitefield described with particular satisfaction the disastrous effects of his preaching on the Edinburgh theater. He reproduced one letter reporting that "the first Night a Play was acted here this Season there were but about six ladies at it; the second two: and the third and last none at all."

By early spring 1742, Macculloch had strange and exciting news of his own from the small village of Cambuslang. Through letters and press, an international audience began following the progress of a "great awakening" that sounded like another Northampton in the making. That winter Macculloch had been preaching regularly on the necessity of regeneration. He had followed his sermons with informal meetings at which magazine accounts of current revivals were read and prayed about. His parishioners had shown special interest in stories of mass conversions that had taken place in New England under "Mr. Whitefield's ministry."

Already in February lay leaders observed that the prayers and readings had produced a greater-than-normal interest in religion among the town's two hundred families. Macculloch began holding evening services during the week with recurrent accounts of dramatic conversions. Soon neighbors began to flock to the sermons. On Thursday, February 18, Macculloch preached a sermon on the famous Whitefield theme "The Lord Our Righteousness." The sermon text does not survive, though it undoubtedly followed the conversionist theme of justification by faith alone that Whitefield had preached earlier. The effects were similar as well. Many burst into tears and became so agitated they could not sit still. Others followed Macculloch into his dining room after the sermon to inquire what must they do to be saved. In all, fifty inquirers remained, and fifteen embraced Christ and got "relief from their soul distress."

Throughout the spring of 1742, news of "The Cam'slang Wark" spread throughout southern Scotland, attracting people from other towns and villages. On March 4, Whitefield heard of the "great awakening" in progress and wrote Macculloch a letter of encouragement, urging him to continue daily preaching. By April the awakening showed no sign of abating, and Macculloch wrote Whitefield that "in less than three Months past, about 300 Souls have been awakened.... Some have computed the Hearers, these two last Lord's-days, to have been Nine or Ten-thousand." He closed the letter by saying, "I long much to see you here. Let me know by the first opportunity when you think to be with us."

Words like these had the desired effect. In no time Whitefield determined to return and be a part of the great event. In late spring he turned the Tabernacle over to his English associate John Cennick. This time there would be no preliminary meeting with the Seceders. Nor did Whitefield welcome their obstructionism. To head off trouble, he reprinted a letter on toleration, urging the Scots to "let not Bigotry or Party-Zeal be so much as once named among you." He went on to encourage all to participate in revival: "uniting in Heart and Spirit with all that is holy and good in all Churches, we enter into the true Communion of Saints, and become real Members of the holy Catholick Church."

Whitefield arrived in Scotland on June 3, just in time to catch the revivals at their peak. En route to Cambuslang, he stopped at Glasgow and preached to an enthusiastic audience of twenty thousand. Many of his listeners had been dividing their time between Glasgow and Cambuslang, and now they carried the exciting news of Whitefield's arrival to Macculloch. Again, Whitefield proved to be less the creator than a powerful catalyst and symbol of success, bringing a sense of international significance and culmination to the local work.

By June 6, Whitefield was at Cambuslang. He began immediately to preach that morning and evening. His evening service attracted thousands and continued until 2:00 A.M. The excitement was unforgettable: "there were scenes of uncontrollable distress, like a field of battle.... All night in the fields, might be heard the voice of prayer and praise." Such was the excitement that he concluded, "it far out-did all that I ever saw in America." Once begun, events gathered ever-increasing momentum. On Saturday, Whitefield preached to an estimated twenty thousand people in services that stretched well into the night. On Sunday, at a special communion service celebrated in the fields, over 1,700 communicants streamed alongside long communion tables set up in preaching tents. Following the sacrament, Whitefield preached again in the evening on Isaiah 54:5, a sermon entitled "Thy Maker Is Thy Husband." By many accounts, this was the most powerful sermon of the revival. Later he recalled that wherever he walked "you might have heard persons praying to, and praising God. The children of God came from all quarters."

An examination of this sermon reveals its power. He enjoined his hearers, in passionate terms generally reserved for husbands and wives, to be "married to Jesus Christ." The timing for such a whimsical, almost romantic sermon was perfect. Many in his audience had heard protracted sermons on sin and condemnation that left them emotionally distraught; they were ready for a message of love and divine passion. Often Whitefield invoked maternal images of comfort to assuage punished souls. This time he turned to romantic love.

To set the mood, Whitefield began in the persona of a divine messenger sent on a mission "to take a wife for his Master's son, asking if there was any there that wanted to take Christ for their husband, and bidding them come and he would marry them to Christ." Instead of donning the cap of the condemning Judge, he impersonated the marriage agent for Christ. One convert recorded the sermon's effect, describing how "after ... he laid out the terms [of marriage to Christ] I found my heart made Sweetly to agree."

Printed accounts of the Cambuslang awakening quickly appeared in the journals, magazines, and newspapers. Other more elaborate accounts were prepared by clerical friends of this and other revivals who sought to confirm their lasting impact. In style, their accounts were modeled directly on Edwards's Narrative of Surprising Conversions. First the writers provided a physical description of the town and a general summary of manners and morals before the revivals. These they followed with accounts of the revivals and descriptions of lasting changes in piety and morals. Ecstatic behavior alone, they knew, could not legitimate Cambuslang. As in Northampton, it had to be followed with a reformation of manners and morals.

In James Robe's Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God at Kilsyth, readers learned how an entire town had been transformed almost overnight. They read of audience enthusiasm that bordered on uncontrollable passion: "the Bodies of some of the Awakened are seized with Trembling, Fainting, Histerisms in some few Women, and with Convulsive-Motions in some others." They learned as well that all of these manifestations had already been seen "in our American colonies . . . that hath occasioned the Rev. and Judicious Mr. Edwards ... to preach and publish a sermon upon the distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God."

The moderate Presbyterian minister Alexander Webster confessed his initial skepticism about the revivals but reported that after having visited the meetings at Cambuslang he had changed his mind:

a solemn profound Reverence o'erspreads every Countenance; - They hear as Creatures made for Eternity, who don't know but next Moment they must account to their great Judge. Thousands are melted down into Tears; - Many cry out in the Bitterness of their Soul.... Talk of a precious Christ, ALL seem to breathe after him. - Describe his Glory, how ravished do many appear! - How captivate with his Loveliness! - Open the Wonders of his Grace, and the silent Tears drop almost from every eye.... These, Dear Sir, are the visible Effects of this extraordinary Work.

Webster conceded that some conversions might be "transient." But in the main, he believed, the converts were "sincere" and their feelings were no mere "passing conviction." Rather, there ensued a permanent alteration in character that confirmed the occasion of it as a work of God.

William Macculloch also prepared an elaborate handwritten collection of conversion narratives, gathered over a period of several years, with the intention of publishing them. In all, it included the accounts of 106 converts, filling two volumes and over 1,300 pages of closely written manuscript. The chronicle of conversions was never published, but it is preserved in Edinburgh's New College and stands as one of the most remarkable testimonies of eighteenth-century lay piety ever compiled. In many respects it represents a microcosm of the people most strongly attracted to the revivals. The majority of converts were young, between the ages of 16 and 25. Females outnumbered males by a ratio of two to one. And most were ordinary people without connections or major political office; only one "gentleman" appears in the accounts. For the most part, the revivals were an ordinary affair, attracting those on the margins of respectability and social status: tenant farmers, craftsmen, colliers, and, throughout, women.

Many of Macculloch's transcriptions were taken down years after the Cambuslang revival, yet the subjects remembered the events with an immediacy that confirmed a lifetransforming experience. Throughout, the influence of local ministers is clear, as well as Whitefield's role as inner accelerator. One unmarried woman, "aged 32," heard Whitefield's sermons on "Elisha multiplying the widow's oil" (1 Kings 17:10-16) and confessed that the imagery was so sharp "that I could almost repeat the whole of these two discourses, and that I repeated the most of the first of these, applying it to my self, and saying that I was the empty soul the Lord was filling and pouring the oil of his grace into."

Other accounts confirm Whitefield's power to evoke vivid images. After hearing the marriage sermon, an unmarried woman recalled parts of Whitefield's dialogue: when he said, "'I'll tell you one thing that hinders your marriage with Christ, and that is your unbelief' this came with power and melted me down, and I was made to see, that this was just the thing that had kept me from Christ." Hearing the same sermon, a young unmarried man confessed,

I felt love to Christ in my Soul, and so much joy that the sweet offers of Christ as a husband to my Soul that the joy of my heart had almost made me to cry out among the people, that I was ready to strike hands on the Bargain. And after sermon meeting with a Lad of my acquaintance, who I knew had been under Exercize, I just flew with my Arms about him, and said, such a minister has marrieed my Soul to Christ. And I lay down on the Brae, and I was so filled with the Love of Christ and contempt of the World, that I even wished, if it were the Lords will, that I might die on the spot.

Another unmarried man, "aged 28," confessed that, at first, he was indifferent to the revival, "and thus I continued till hearing a minister [Whitefield] concerning the woman with the Bloody issue, that came behind Christ for a touch of the hem of his garment; I thought I would have given all the world, if I had had it, for one touch of Christ by faith."

With the joy came tears. Whitefield did not hesitate to pronounce sin and guilt in Calvinist terms that enacted graphically what all knew doctrinally to be true. One particularly articulate and doctrinally informed young woman recalled how quotations from the Larger Catechism frequently crossed her mind, "particularly the answer to that Q. 75 wherin consists the sinfulness of that Estate wherein man fell? The sinfulness of that Estate ... is the guilt of Adam's fall ... whereby he is wholly disabled.... This account of original Sin I felt ... to agree exactly to what I was by nature, when I looked back on my former ways."

By enacting sin and guilt, Whitefield placed almost un bearable strains on his hearers. A woman "about 30 years of age" recalled how Whitefield said, "ye wonder what makes these people cry so: but if the Lord would be pleased to open your Eyes, as he has done theirs, ye would see your hearts all crawhng with Toads of Corruptions, and surrounded with Legions of Devils." This image, she continued, "did not affect me much at the time, yet when I came home I took on a Strong apprehension that it was so, and imagined that I felt them within me crawhng up my Throat to my mouth, and turned away my eyes that I might not see them coming out of my mouth."

Often Whitefield's graphic imagery incited images or visions in Scottish audiences that had few immediate parallels in Northampton's experience. Behind the images, one almost senses the tortured imagination of the long-abandoned Oxford Odd Fellow. One forty-year-old man confessed how, while hearing Whitefield at Cambuslang,

I fell under great Terror, and thought I would certainly perish for ever: and while I was hearing in this condition, with my hand over my Eyes, Hell was represented to my mind, as a Pit at the foot of a Hill, and a great drove of people marching into it, and I along with them, and when I was got very near it, I thought I looked over my shoulder, and saw a very beautiful man, who smiled on me and made a motion to me with his hand to come back at which I was very glad.

Whitefield's preaching in Scotland encouraged these powerful visions to a far greater extent than it had in America. Following one of Whitefield's evening sermons on the preaching brae, a young man recalled,

I fell into a swoon, (tho I did not cry any) a horror of great darkness coming over me.... And in the middle of this Swoon, my bodily eyes being shut, I thought I saw a clear light all at once shining about me as when the Sunshines bright at Noon, and apprehended that I was in a very large room. There was represented to my mind a very large scroll of papers, let down as from the roof above filling the breadth of the room ... and it appeared to be all printed over in large distinct lines and letters. But when I thought I essayed to read I found I could not read.... Only it was impressed on my mind that was a scroll containing all my Sins that were all marked and recorded before God. And after a little the Scroll was drawn up again, and I recovered out of my swoon.

Such was the envisioning power of Whitefield's sermons that many ministers were led to thoughts of apocalypse. The incidence of mass conversions, dreams, and visions put one and all in an eschatological mind. While Jonathan Edwards was actively speculating on an American millennium, his Scottish colleagues were doing the same in Scotland. The young John Erskine was so convinced not only of the permanent effects but of their significance that he went on to predict the millennium. In a widely circulated sermon entitled "The Signs of the Times Considered," he pointed to the evidences of the last days. One prophecy of the end days was preaching of unprecedented power: "And have we not seen the Rev. Mr. Whitefield preaching the Word, instant in Season and out of Season, and willing to spend and be spent for the Gospel?" Clearly, even greater things were in store.

Perceived similarities between Scotland and Northampton had their significance too. In a letter to Benjamin Colman published in the Boston press, the Rev. John Willison of Dundee compared "the work" there to Northampton and noted how "the Lord hath been pleased to begin a work much like that in New England." Besides supplying news, letters like this had the effect of cementing the Scottish-American evangelical connection that would thrive throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century and beyond.

Along with great audiences and enthusiasm came stupendous offerings, rivaling any Whitefield had seen in London or New England. In his study of revival offerings, Arthur Faw cett found that offerings that averaged £3-12 per service swelled to an unequaled £194 at Whitefield's second communion service. All told, annual giving for Bethesda jumped from a respectable £146 in the 1741 tour to an astounding £1,445 in 1742 - a tenfold increase. Through their gifts as well as their prayers, magazines, and correspondence, Scots and Americans were being drawn together into a transatlantic evangelical fellowship that had also become a big business.

Whitefield's "great awakening" in Scotland convinced him that his strategy of reaching England by working from the periphery inward was correct. As social and political elites looked increasingly to England for models of polite literature and taste, Whitefield inverted the process of "Anglicization" and made England a religious province of Scottish-America. Through his preaching and publications, he helped to create a strong sense of continuity binding America (especially Boston and Philadelphia) to Scotland (especially Edinburgh and Glasgow). Youthful American leaders such as Tennent, Davenport, Edwards, and Wheelock, together with their Scottish counterparts John Erskine, John Witherspoon, John Gillies, John Willison, and Thomas Gillespie, would, together with Whitefield, work to establish a Calvinist consensus in the eighteenth century capable of challenging Anglican Arminianism, deism, and Wesleyan Methodism. If the consensus could not transform England, it could and did define the cultural mainstream of Scotland and America in ways that defied their status as "cultural provinces." The future was bright, and no one, including the twenty-eight-year-old Whitefield, knew where it would end.

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