Chapter 5: A Passion That Consumed
The plain truth is, that the Church of England of that day was not ready for a man like Whitefield. The Church was too much asleep to understand him, and was vexed at a man who would not keep still and let the devil alone.1
—J. C. Ryle
On the morning of October 23, 1740, in a field of Kensington Parish, near what is today Berlin, Connecticut, a colonial farmer named Nathan Cole received the news that the great evangelist George Whitefield would be preaching in the nearby city of Middletown. Immediately, he dropped his tools and ran to his house, hastily grabbing his wife and saddling his horse, and rushed to the announced site of Whitefield’s meeting twelve miles away. Cole and his wife alternated between riding and running to Middletown, for he simply must be present to hear this celebrated preacher.
Still quite a distance from the city, Cole and his wife observed the hillsides covered in what seemed to be a swelling, mist-like fog.2 As they traveled closer, they discovered the low cloud was dust from the road as a flood of people descended upon Middletown by horse and carriage. Eager to hear Whitefield preach, some four thousand people had already assembled at the town square. Cole stood amid the crowd and watched the evangelist make his appearance. He later admitted, “When I saw Mr. Whitefield come upon the scaffold, he looked almost angelic.”3 He described Whitefield as “a young, slim, slender youth before thousands of people, and with bold undaunted countenance.”4 The talk circulating among the great crowd was, “God was with him everywhere.”
As Whitefield began to preach, Cole sensed a great fear gripping his soul. The preaching came with much power upon this farmer’s unconverted heart. Cole said the young preacher “looked as if he was clothed with authority from the Great God, and a sweet solemnity sat upon his brow.” He further testified, “My hearing him preach gave me a heart wound. By God’s blessing, my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me.”5 The full force of Whitefield’s preaching proved to be irresistible. Cole would look back to this day in Middletown as the time when God laid the hammer to his hardened heart and began to convict him of his sin and draw him to Himself.
Such was the case for many who heard Whitefield preach. They not only heard him, but felt the pathos of the man. Even Jonathan Edwards, a towering intellectual figure, wept on the front pew as Whitefield preached in Northampton. Such an account reveals much about the force of Whitefield’s preaching. In a day when pulpit delivery had degenerated into dry ritual, involving nothing more than a monotone reading of a sermon manuscript, Whitefield burst onto the scene with intense preaching. That is to say, this celebrated evangelist came exhorting, pleading, wooing, calling, begging, even weeping before his listeners. With deep emotions, his heart bled as he declared the gospel. He spoke with demonstrative body language and commanding gestures that loomed larger than life. Whitefield was aglow with the glory of God as he proclaimed the gospel of Christ.
What marked the intense fervency of Whitefield’s preaching? What were the elements of the warm emotion with which he spoke? In this chapter, we want to consider the distinguishing features of the consuming fire that brightly burned within his heart and spread to others, namely, his deep convictions, blood earnestness, fiery zeal, fervent love, and crusading intensity.
Deep Convictions
Whitefield’s passion arose from the depth of his biblical convictions. Strong beliefs were first ignited in his heart at the moment of his conversion. These firmly held truths were cultivated over the years through intense prayer and diligent study of the Word. Many preachers have weak convictions and therefore have little passion. However, George Whitefield possessed a deep persuasion about the truth, which in turn fueled his passion in preaching. His beliefs in the gospel of sovereign grace stoked the flames of his heart into a blazing furnace.
J. C. Ryle rightly stated, “[Whitefield] succeeded in showing people that he believed all he was saying, and that his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, were bent on making them believe it too.”6 Even under the flurry of rotten tomatoes thrown while he preached, dead cats being tossed onto the platform, and the obnoxious noises of disruption, Whitefield was nevertheless propelled forward throughout his ministry by his rock-solid conviction in the truth. Whether in an open field, a house, or a ship, Whitefield believed that he preached by divine appointment. The reputation of his boldness and conviction went before him, and revival followed in his wake.
Whenever he stood behind an open Bible, Whitefield was thoroughly convinced that he was delivering divine truth. He firmly believed he was feeding the bread of life to starving beggars. This inner conviction created flaming passion in his preaching. Like a tree rooted in rich soil, Whitefield could not be moved. He remained firm in the cardinal doctrines he believed are essential for salvation. When he spoke, he used plain words to address every rank and condition among his listeners. He did so with the certainty that he was a divinely appointed spokesman for God, bringing His truth on His behalf:
I thank God, I am so far from changing my principles, which I am sure I was taught by God’s word and
Spirit, that I am more and more confirmed, that if I
was to die this moment, I hope I should have strength
and courage given me to say, I am more convinced
of the efficacy and the power of those truths which
I preached when I was twenty years old, than when I
first preached them.7
These convictions caused Whitefield to speak with the authority of God Himself. He believed he had been sent by God to bring the divine message recorded in the infallible Scriptures. This belief deepened his passion when he spoke. He preached not his own opinions, but the very wisdom of God, which shook his hearers from their doldrums:
“If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you
might rest your elbows upon your knees, and your
heads upon your hands, and sleep; and once in a
while look up and say, ‘What does this babbler talk
of?’ But I have not come to you in my own name.
No, I have come to you in the name of the Lord God
of Hosts, and”—here he brought down his hand and
foot at once, so as to make the whole house
ring—“and
I must and will be heard.” Everyone in the
house started, the old father, who always slept, among
the rest. “Aye, aye,” continued the preacher, looking at
him, “I have waked you up, have I? I meant to do it. I
am not come here to preach to stocks and stones; I am
come to you in the name of the Lord God of Hosts,
and I must and will have an audience.”8
Such immovable convictions in Whitefield held sway over his listeners’ hearts. Even unbelievers were drawn to the force of his firm belief in the truth. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and skeptic, was even challenged as he was seen going to hear George Whitefield preach: “I thought you do not believe in the gospel,” someone said to him. Hume replied, “I don’t, but he does.”9 It was this overwhelming conviction in the truth of God’s Word that attracted large multitudes like a magnet to listen to him preach.
Blood Earnestness
Whitefield preached with a deep sobriety, or what could be called blood earnestness. Each time he mounted the pulpit, he was gripped in his soul that the eternal destinies of men were hanging in the balance. He knew the message he brought was the most important truth his listeners would ever hear. He preached the weighty message of a crucified Savior who secured eternal salvation for hell-bound sinners. Such preaching must be marked by gravity, not levity, and solemnity, not apathy.
The seriousness with which Whitefield approached preaching was apparent to all. He proclaimed the gospel, Gillies noted, with “a solemnity of manner” that conveyed “a sense of the importance of what he was about to say.”10 J. C. Ryle concurred, noting the “tremendous earnestness”11 in Whitefield’s preaching. Ian Paisley added, “Whitefield was in deadly earnest. He preached as one who ‘had measured eternity and taken the dimensions of a soul.’”12 Such gravitas was the burden of the Lord upon his soul and brought soberness to his pulpit delivery.
With intense passion, Whitefield believed his time to preach God’s Word was short. On one occasion, he noted, “I found about a thousand souls waiting till eight in the evening to hear the Word. Though nature said, ‘Spare thyself,’ I thought faith and duty said, ‘Venture upon the Lord’s strength, and speak to them.’ I did, from these words of our dear Lord’s: ‘I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work.’”13 Whitefield preached every sermon as if it were his last message. He poured himself into every truth that proceeded from his mouth.
Though he often preached under the threat of his own life, danger only increased Whitefield’s earnestness. Recounting one particular occasion, Whitefield remarked:
I narrowly escaped with my life; for as I was passing from the pulpit to the coach, I felt my wig and
hat to be almost off. I turned about, and observed
a sword just touching my temples. A young rake, as
I afterwards found, was determined to stab me, but
a gentleman, seeing the sword thrusting near me,
struck it up with his cane, and so the destined victim
providentially escaped.14
From the beginning of his ministry, Whitefield determined in his heart that he would preach the gospel no matter the peril. Not only were the lives of his listeners in God’s hands, but so was his own.
The grim reality of death caused him to preach as though his listeners stood on the brink of eternity, ready to step into either heaven or hell. So earnest was Whitefield, Ian Paisley explained, that “the congregation saw only a prophet beholding the very throne of God, and on terms of familiarity with celestial beings. He preached with such earnestness in describing the soul as a ship-wrecked vessel with masts gone, on her beam ends, that when he asked, ‘What?’ The sailors in his congregation frantically responded ‘Take to the long boat!’”15 At the close of one sermon in Edinburgh, Whitefield thrust upon his congregation the reality of their own imminent deaths and immediate appearance before God:
“The attendant angel is just about to leave this threshold and ascend to heaven; and shall he ascend and
not bear with him the news of one sinner, among all
this multitude reclaimed from the error of his ways?”
Then with uplifted hands and eyes to heaven he cried,
“Stop, Gabriel! Stop, Gabriel! Stop ere you enter the
sacred portals, and yet carry with you the news of one
sinner converted to God!”16
Whitefield so elevated the importance of preaching that he stated, “May I die preaching.”17 Again, “I hope yet to die in the pulpit, or soon after I come out of it.”18 In God’s providence, Whitefield realized this very desire. On a balcony not far from his deathbed, he preached his last sermon to a large crowd that had filled the street in front of the parsonage. He died within hours of extending the invitation for all to embrace Christ.
Fiery Zeal
Whitefield’s soul was ignited with fiery zeal in his preaching. His zealous preaching cannot be explained, as some have attempted, by his youthful days on the theatrical stage or by his higher education at Oxford. To the contrary, Whitefield was full of fire and fervor in his preaching because he was so full of God. John Carrick wrote, “As he preached his whole person became alive in a powerful…movement of body, the expression of his countenance, and modulations of his voice.”19 J. I. Packer added that Whitefield possessed an “arms-lifted, foot-stamping passion…with an overflow of compassionate affection.”20 Amos Stevens Billingsley succinctly stated, “Whitefield was a flame of fire”21 who burned brightly for the glory of God.
John Gillies noted that Whitefield’s preaching possessed “an extraordinary degree of earnestness and zeal.”22 That is, his passion far exceeded any normal measure of soul intensity. “Whitefield preached like a lion,” Gillies asserted. “The force and vehemence and passion of that oratory awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.”23 Consequently, Whitefield’s listeners did not merely hear him preach—they felt him: “Many, I trust, have felt, and will long feel the impressions of his zeal and fire, the passion and flame of his expressions.”24
No one better describes Whitefield’s passionate sermon delivery than his gospel co-laborer John Wesley. This former classmate noted that Whitefield spoke with “divine pathos,” meaning God-aroused emotions that provoked feelings in others. Moreover, Wesley said his friend preached with “fervency of zeal, that was unequalled since the days of the apostles.”25 The power of Whitefield’s preaching, Wesley maintained, “was not the force of education; no, nor the advice of his friends. It was no other than faith in a bleeding Lord.”26 Whitefield spoke with “eloquence” and an “astonishing force of persuasion, which the most hardened sinners could not resist.”27
Others who heard Whitefield preach described his delivery as “passionate, intense, fiery, and zealous.” “Whitefield tended to speak with his hands as much as with his lips and mouth,”28 Martyn Lloyd-Jones remarked. In fact, Whitefield often preached with a flood of tears as he cried for sinners to embrace Christ. Such affection could hardly be resisted by his listeners. One observer noted:
I could hardly bear such unreserved use of tears, and
the scope he gave to his feelings; for sometimes he
exceedingly wept, stamped loudly and passionately,
and was frequently so overcome, that for a few seconds, you would suspect he never could recover;
and when he did, nature required some little time to
compose herself. I hardly ever knew him go through
a sermon without weeping more or less, and I truly
believe his were tears of sincerity.29
Impassioned, fiery, and dramatic, Whitefield’s preaching came with depth of passion that welled up within his soul. When criticized for his display of emotions, he responded, “You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and for aught you know, you are hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ offered to you?”30 Deep within, Whitefield felt the impact of the truth he preached. He proclaimed grace, faith, hell, heaven, and eternity because he believed them to be divine realities.
In every sermon, Whitefield threw a lifeline to those who were drowning in the ocean of their own sin, imploring them to take hold and be saved from perishing. This demanded a note of urgency on his part. To the very end, Whitefield preached with “a frequency and a fervor, that seemed to exceed the natural strength of the most robust.”31 He never mellowed, but remained marked “by fervent zeal, and by a formidable and most persuasive delivery.”32
On November 11, 1770, John Newton, author of the timeless hymn “Amazing Grace,” preached a sermon commemorating the death of Whitefield. Newton likened Whitefield’s preaching to a burning light that brought warmth to those who sat under him. “Whether we consider the warmth of his zeal, the greatness of his ministerial talents, or the extensive usefulness with which the Lord honored him…,” Newton said, “he was raised up to shine in a dark place.”33
Whitefield’s zealous preaching stood in stark contrast to the lethargic practice of his day. The pulpits of the eighteenth century were severely lacking in passion, zeal, and virtually any force of conviction. Preachers had been cooled by the humanistic philosophies of the hour, which lulled their once-zealous proclamations into a lifeless stupor. Stephen Mansfield noted, “The sermon had been entombed as a religious art form.…When Whitefield arrived on the scene, he rescued it. He made it what it ought to have been all along: a desperate plea to a perishing people, a confrontation with the word of the living God.”34
Anglican ministers of the day were calm, controlled, dignified, sophisticated, and stuffy in their preaching. However, Whitefield was starkly different. He burst onto the scene with a new style of heartfelt fervency not witnessed since the grand age of the Puritans. With glowing affections, Whitefield raised and restored the preaching standard for future generations of Protestant pulpits to this present day.
Fervent Love
Whitefield’s intense passion was kindled by his own deepening love for God and Jesus Christ, which in turn ignited his compassion for lost sinners. Biographer Joseph Belcher described Whitefield as being “fired with love, from being in habitual contact with the cross.”35 Whitefield’s affection for God was stoked by reflection upon the greatness of His character. Moreover, his heart of love was fueled by his personal communion with Jesus Christ. This intimate knowledge of Christ was the consistent theme that filled his soul and increased his affections. Belcher added that Whitefield was consumed with “a heart burning with love and zeal for his Lord and Master.”36
Fervent love lay at the very center of Whitefield’s effectiveness as an evangelist. As he preached, his love for sinners seemed to overpower them. “In all his discourses,” John Gillies observes, “there was a fervent and melting charity, and earnestness of persuasion, an outpouring of redundant love.”37
Whitefield often wept as he preached. Marcus Loane wrote, “Few could withstand the sight. It woke up affections and touched the hidden strings of the heart as nothing else could ever do; men could not hate one who loved and wept for their souls.”38 He was so compelled by the love of Christ that he found it quite difficult to stop pleading for his listeners’ souls.
A deep compassion for unbelievers moved Whitefield in his preaching. He once declared, “The love of Jesus Christ constrains me to lift up my voice like a trumpet. My heart is now full; out of the abundance of the love which I have for your precious and immortal souls, my mouth now speaks; and I could now not only continue my discourse until midnight, but I could speak until I could speak no more.”39 He expended himself wholeheartedly in the pursuit of the lost, and they knew it, and were drawn to his sincere pleas.
The ruling principle of Whitefield’s heart was the love of Christ demonstrated at the cross. “The love of Jesus…is unfathomable,” he declared. “O the height, the depth, the length, and breadth, of this love, that brought the King of Glory from His throne, to die for such rebels as we are, when we had acted so unkindly against Him, and deserved nothing but eternal damnation.”40 This contagious affection for sinners flowed out of Whitefield’s conviction that Christ loves indiscriminately all those who come to Him in faith.
No matter the severity of sinners’ moral pollution, Whitefield proclaimed the love of Christ to pardon even the most vile and filthy of transgressors. Despite their wickedness, he extended passionate appeals to come to Christ for cleansing from sins. “Why fear ye that the Lord Jesus Christ will not accept you?”41 he asked. Whitefield desired to remove all hesitation in the unconverted that would prevent them from coming to Christ:
Your sins will be no hindrance, your unworthiness no
hindrance; if your own corrupt hearts do not keep
you back nothing will hinder Christ from receiving
of you. He loves to see poor sinners coming to Him,
He is pleased to see them lie at His feet pleading His
promises; and if you thus come to Christ, He will not
send you away without His Spirit; no, but will receive
and bless you.42
The unconditional love of Christ for sinners was a strong catalyst in Whitefield’s preaching: “My friends, I trust I feel somewhat of a sense of God’s distinguishing love upon my heart! Therefore I must…invite poor Christless sinners to come to Him, and accept of His righteousness, that they may have life.”43
Such divine love drove him to preach to those in need of Christ. His ardent preaching became the conduit through which his love for people flowed. Perhaps it was this very element that caused his ministry to flourish on the world stage. He extended himself indiscriminately to the rich and poor, to duchess and pauper alike. There can be no real understanding of Whitefield’s evangelistic preaching without grasping this foundational reality of his love of God ruling in his soul.
Crusading Intensity
An understanding of Whitefield’s ministry must recognize his relentless pursuit of the lost. The eighteenth-century world had never witnessed a preacher like this who would not be confined within the walls of a church building, but instead launched out into the world. In describing this bold initiative, J. C. Ryle noted:
He was the first to see that Christ’s ministers must
do the work of fishermen. They must not wait for
souls to come to them, but must go after souls, and
“compel them to come in.” He did not sit tamely by
his fireside.…He dived into holes and corners after
sinners. He hunted out ignorance and vice wherever
they could be found. In short, he set on foot a system
of action which, up to his time, had been comparatively unknown.44
Like Jesus and His Apostles, Whitefield set out onto the open seas of humanity to become a fisher of men. “The whole world is now my parish,” he exclaimed. “Wheresoever my Master calls me I am ready to go and preach the everlasting Gospel.”45
Unwavering in his resolve, Whitefield would not be deterred by any difficulty or opposition from preaching everywhere his foot landed. Of Whitefield’s travels, John Newton said, “This messenger of good tidings preached the everlasting gospel in almost every considerable place in England, Scotland, Ireland, and throughout the British empire in America, which is an extent of more than one thousand miles.”46 Even during the time of horse and carriage rides, demanding sea voyages, and arduous travel conditions, Whitefield allowed nothing to prevent him from spreading the good news of Christ to all around him.
Whitefield is remembered as one of the first to preach to African slaves in the colonies. Historian Thomas Kidd commented, “Whitefield expressed growing awareness and concern for the plight of African Americans in both the North and South.”47 Whitefield had, Kidd wrote, “lofty hopes” of educating African slaves with spiritual instruction.48 Erskine Clarke, in his epic work Our Southern Zion, noted the perilous climate into which Whitefield stepped: “Whitefield arrived in Charlestown in January 1740, less than four months after the Stono slave rebellion had been crushed. Fugitive rebels were still at large and another slave conspiracy, brewing in Berkeley County, would break out in a few months.”49 In these dangerous and tumultuous times, as “the fires of the Great Awakening swept across the [South Carolina] low country,”50 Whitefield went to the slaves and preached Christ.
The first published African American woman, Phillis Wheatley, composed a vivid poem about George Whitefield after his death. Lady Huntingdon, whose personal chaplain Whitefield had become, was a family friend of the Wheatleys and later financed the publication of Phillis’s volume of poems. The poem paid tribute to Whitefield as an instrument used by God to bring a message of hope to a people in the midst of distress. In memorial of this man who extended the love of God to the American slaves, seventeen-year-old Wheatley recognized the compassion he showed to the enslaved by presenting to them the message of eternal life:
Take HIM, “my dear AMERICANS,” he said,
Be your complaints in His kind bosom laid:
Take HIM ye Africans, He longs for you;
Impartial SAVIOUR, is His title due;
If you will chose to walk in grace’s road,
You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to GOD.51
Without distinction or prejudice, whether free or slave, Whitefield saw all men as enslaved to sin, and he pursued them with indiscriminate determination in order to show the way to what Wheatley called “grace’s road.” He elevated those who were enslaved and recognized them as precious souls whom God calls to be His children. In Whitefield’s preaching, “whosoever will” remained an continual note that he struck.
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In this chapter, we have noted Whitefield’s intense passion in preaching. His deep convictions, blood earnestness, fiery zeal, fervent love, and crusading intensity show him to be a man sanctioned by God to proclaim the unsearchable riches of divine truth. Such a mandate should make any man intense. This was its undeniable effect upon Whitefield’s soul. He tells the following story that best demonstrates this point:
The Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1675 was
acquainted with Mr. Butterton the [actor]. One day
the Archbishop…said to Butterton…“pray inform
me Mr. Butterton, what is the reason you actors on
stage can affect your congregations with speaking
of things imaginary, as if they were real, while we in
church speak of things real, which our congregations
only receive as if they were imaginary?” “Why my
Lord,” says Butterton, “the reason is very plain. We
actors on stage speak of things imaginary, as if they
were real and you in the pulpit speak of things real as
if they were imaginary.52
Whitefield then made the application to his own life, saying: “Therefore, I will bawl [shout loudly], I will not be a velvet-mouthed preacher.”53
Preaching with his whole heart, Whitefield was fully engaged in all that he said. That is why on one occasion he told his listeners, “I shall return home with a heavy heart, unless some of you will arise and come to my Jesus; I desire to preach Him and not myself; rest not in hearing and following me.”54 With that, he begged and pleaded with his listeners to believe upon Christ and be saved.
It is this kind of passionate preaching that we need again in this present hour. We could certainly do with fewer stale, exegetical lectures in the pulpit. Save these for the classroom. We could do with fewer frivolous, lighthearted personalities in the pulpit. Instead, what is desperately needed in this day are more intensely urgent pleas and pressing appeals as exemplified by this gifted evangelist, George Whitefield.