17. Face to Face
“The Reverend Mr. Whitefield preached to about 10,000 people, at Kensington Common. This day he is to preach at Wapping Chapel for the benefit of the Orphan House in Georgia.”1
So wrote Ben Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette a year before he met this preacher. Clearly he was aware, at least vaguely, of Whitefield’s ministry and his growing fame. Ben scanned the London papers for news from the old country and printed what seemed interesting to his readers. Like any good newsman, he would have kept an eye out for “Man Bites Dog” stories—tales of the unexpected and twists on familiar themes. Ben might have been bemused by the thought of a preacher drawing crowds not in churches, but in open fields. Or maybe he just needed to fill three lines on page one.
On November 8, 1739, Ben printed this news item: “Last week the Rev. Mr. Whitefield landed from London at Lewes-Town in Sussex County, where he preached, and arrived in this city on Friday night, on Sunday, and every day since he has preached in the church. And on Monday he designs (God willing) to set out for New York, and return hither the week after, and then proceed by land through Maryland, Virginia and Carolina to Georgia.”2
Ben’s dates agreed with George’s journal. He arrived in Philadelphia on Friday, November 3, and quickly rented a room downtown, within a block or two of Ben Franklin’s printing office. He had in fact preached at Christ Church, as Ben reported, in the days since his arrival. It was the evening of Thursday, November 8 (the day the paper came out), when he began preaching from the Courthouse steps, drawing larger crowds than ever. This continued on Friday and Saturday nights.
That same November 8 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette carried a for-sale ad:
To be sold, at the house of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, in Second-Street (the same in which Capt. Blair, lately dwelt) the following goods: being the benefactions of charitable people In England, towards building an orphan-house in Georgia:
Brass Candlesticks, Snuffers and snuff-Dishes, four, six, eight, ten and twenty-penny Nails, Pidgeon, Duck and Goose Shot, bar Lead, Pistol Powder in quarter and half Barrels, English Duck Numb. 1, 2, 3, and 4, English Cordage, Rathng, Worming, Marline and Spun-yarn, Ruggs and Blankets, Duffills strip’d, Drills for Bed-sacking, seven eighths and three quarter Garlix, white Roles, white Hessins, Russia Hempen Ditto; narrow Lawns, Scotch Cloth, cotton Romalls, Seirsuckers, white Dimities, Carradaries, Cherconees, long Romalls, colour’d Ginghams with Trimings, Gorgoroons black, black Persian Taffities, strip’d Linseys, Swanskin Bays, broad Cloth, Shalloons, long Ells, Buttons, Buckrams, and sewing-Silk.3
Ingeniously, George was mixing charity and commerce. Using money donated for the orphanage, he had bought these goods in England and transported them to Philadelphia for the express purpose of selling them at a profit. In this way he leveraged the donations, creating even more of a bankroll for the Savannah orphan house. We can only imagine what his rented room must have looked like, or what the landlord thought as he saw the merchandise carted in. But we might guess that Ben Franklin admired the business acumen George displayed.
As planned, George set off on Monday for parts north—Burlington and Trenton in New Jersey and eventually New York City. The following week’s Gazette reported more on George’s whirlwind trip to Philadelphia:
On Thursday last, the Rev. Mr. Whitefield began to preach from the Court-House-Gallery in this city, about six at night, to near 6000 People before him in the street, who stood in an awful silence to hear him; and this continued every night, till Sunday. On Monday he set out for New York, and was to preach at Burlington in his waygoing, and in Bucks County coming back. Before he returns to England he designs (God willing) to preach the Gospel in every province in America, belonging to the English. On Monday the 26th he intends to set out for Annapolis.4
Whitefield returned to Philadelphia in two weeks, but then just to settle some business matters and say some goodbyes. Apparently his garage sale worked well; he wrote that he gained “considerably by the goods that were sold for the poor.”5 Among the other matters he attended to in these days was the publishing of his sermons and journals. And that would require a meeting with the printer Benjamin Franklin.
We have no definite record of the first encounter between Ben and George. This is surprising, since both of them wrote so fully and freely about their lives. George kept a journal that listed numerous personal meetings. For instance, he described a visit on November 10 from William Tennent, a leading Presbyterian minister in the Philadelphia area. Why wouldn’t he make a note of an interview with the city’s leading publisher—especially if they were talking about publishing this very journal?
Ben wrote his autobiography years later, and he devoted several pages to his remembrances of George Whitefield. You might expect him to describe his first impressions of the man who stopped into the print shop between prayer meetings—or something like that. But we get nothing of the kind.
Of course the news that Ben printed about Whitefield’s preaching schedule and the sale of goods had to come from Whitefield’s camp, but it’s likely that George’s business manager, William Seward, provided this information, as he had previously done in London. It’s possible that George was too busy to meet personally with Ben during his first sweep through Philadelphia, November 3–11. He was preaching once or twice a day, receiving visitors, and counseling spiritual seekers. Seward could certainly deal with the printer.
For his part, it’s hard to imagine Ben staying away from the biggest event his town had experienced for some time. He probably attended several of Whitefield’s sermons that week, maybe all of them. (This is probably when Ben paced out the distance and made his estimate of how many people could be reached by George’s voice.) And he might have ambled down to George’s rented room to check on the estate sale. Maybe he met George face to face on an occasion like that. But Ben had enough outward humility (or inward pride) to avoid barging in on a busy man. He saw George thronged by people begging for a bit of his spiritual power. Maybe Ben decided to do his haggling with Seward and leave the preacher alone.
The craze had subsided slightly by the time George returned from his New York jaunt on November 23. He preached at Christ Church again, but he got embroiled in a theological debate. He spoke at a Quaker meeting and traveled to suburban Germantown, where he preached from a balcony. But he was also planning the future of his ministry and making necessary arrangements.
In his journal entry for November 28, he included a helpful detail. “One of the printers has told me he has taken above two hundred subscriptions for printing my sermons and journals. Another printer told me he might have sold a thousand sermons if he had them; I therefore gave two extempore discourses to be published. Lord, give them Thy blessing.”6
The first printer he referred to was certainly Benjamin Franklin, who had perfected subscription sales as a way of funding his publishing ventures. The second printer is probably Andrew Bradford, Ben’s main competitor. George was giving them both material to print. This note tells us that there had been a face-to-face meeting between George and Ben at some point on or before November 28—and apparently it was all business. Ben’s name wasn’t important enough to jot down. This also tells us that, in 1739, George was far more famous than Ben was. Poor Richard’s Almanac may have been a hit in the colonies, but this British preacher had no clue that Ben was a best-selling author. He was just “one of the printers.”
A likely date of the first meeting between these two titans, then, would be the morning of November 28. Whitefield’s journal indicated his schedule eased up a bit on that day—he finally had time to write some letters. He was heading out of town on the twenty-ninth, so this would have been a good time to finalize the printing arrangements. It also makes sense that he would have recorded the meeting in his journal while it was still fresh in his mind. Franklin’s news—two hundred presold subscriptions!—was a great encouragement to Whitefield, who sorely needed it now that he was beginning to see the same sort of opposition in Philadelphia that he had faced in England. “An opposer told me I had unhinged many good sort of people,” he wrote on November 28 (italics his).7 Complaints like this would plague him for years to come. Rebirth was fine for the “sinners” of society, but the good, churchgoing sort of people resented Whitefield’s call to conversion. The idea that hundreds of people, and ultimately thousands, would continue to read this message, even after George had left town, was quite welcome.
The meeting likely occurred in the house George had rented on Second Street. It was much-needed downtime for George, and Ben wouldn’t have minded walking the few blocks. It’s likely that Seward was also present, since he had certainly been negotiating the deals with Franklin and Bradford before then.
What did Ben think of George at that time? This powerful orator was certainly a curiosity. Ben saw George’s effect on the city, especially his positive impact on the behavior of Philadelphians. As a man of science, Ben was intrigued by this social phenomenon—not only the physics of a voice being heard by a huge crowd, but the psychology of people who flocked to hear a preacher tell them what terrible sinners they were. Ben recognized the opposition rising from the church establishment, and this would make him appreciate George all the more. All of these reactions would develop over the course of their friendship, but in 1739 this was still just a business connection. Ben was “one of the printers” helping to get George’s story out. George was the celebrity who would make Ben a boatload of money.
Whitefield left Philadelphia on November 29, heading for Georgia, preaching often along the way—Wilmington, Annapolis, Williamsburg, Charleston, and many stops in between. He traveled with seven others, a group he often called his “family.” (He was not yet married, so this was a metaphorical term.) Thousands would flock to hear him. Journaling about one Maryland appearance, he acknowledged that there was little advance notice, and so there were “not above fifteen hundred people” in attendance.8 Besides the congregations, there were often local preachers and town dignitaries seeking private meetings with him. And, as always, he was staying with an assortment of gracious hosts along the way. Everywhere he talked with people about his favorite subject: being born again.
The entourage reached Savannah on January 10, 1740, and immediately visited a property that would become the site of the orphan house. Two weeks later it was purchased, and before month’s end, three orphans were welcomed in. Soon there would be twenty more, then another twenty. George also met with a builder to go over plans for a new structure on that land. He named it Bethesda, a biblical name meaning “house of mercy.”
James Habersham, who had accompanied Whitefield on his 1738 trip to Georgia, was still there, running schools they had set up. He would manage operations for the orphanage, but George would be a very hands-on executive whenever he was in the area.
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, local churches were coping with the fallout of Whitefield’s ministry. Thousands had heard his sermons, and hundreds had experienced the new birth. A few preachers, such as Gilbert Tennent, tried to carry on a Whitefield-like ministry, with moderate success. Yet leaders of some established churches had to deal with a sudden discontent on the part of their parishioners. Why haven’t you taught us about the new birth? In an effort to calm everyone down, to return the religious climate to normal, some opponents published pamphlets and wrote letters against Whitefield.
One of George’s strongest defenders in this time was Benjamin Franklin. In the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Ben published a few negative letters, but he regularly responded with glowing praise for Whitefield. And, using one of his favorite tactics, Ben published letters he wrote himself, using fake names, to answer the criticisms. His support was so strong that critics accused him of conspiring with Whitefield to create good publicity.
They might have been right. As publisher of some of George’s sermons and journals, Ben had good reason to uphold George’s reputation while also stirring the controversy. It was good for business. But the content of Franklin’s defense shows that he might not have been entirely mercenary here. Ben noticed that this religious experience George was hawking had a highly beneficial effect on society. As he wrote later, “It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manner of our inhabitants.”9 This was close to Ben’s heart. He always wanted Philadelphians to become better citizens. So as he monitored the human results of George’s preaching—the improved courtesy, charity, and self-discipline of the responders—he saw that his own agenda wasn’t all that different from George’s.
Whitefield returned to Philadelphia on April 14, “and my soul was much rejoiced, in hearing how mightily the Word of God had prevailed since I was at Pennsylvania last.”10 He picked up where he left off, holding meetings in the city and suburbs. Balconies became his pulpits as he adapted field preaching to an urban setting.
During this time, he probably met with Ben Franklin again, filling him in on the orphanage project—the acquisition of land, the start of construction. This was important information for the newspaper editor to have and to transmit, but Ben had a problem with it. “I did not disapprove of the design,” he wrote later, “but as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, . . . I thought it would be better to have built the house here [in Philadelphia] and brought the children to it. This I advised, but he was resolute in his first project, and rejected my counsel, and I thereupon refused to contribute.”11
This, then, was the occasion when the tightfisted Franklin was moved by Whitefield’s persuasive preaching to give not only his copper coins, but his silver and gold as well. After telling that story in his autobiography, he added another about his good friend Thomas Hopkinson, a fellow Junto member, who was listening to the same sermon. Hopkinson agreed with Franklin about the orphanage, and he was similarly determined not to give, so he intentionally emptied his pockets before attending Whitefield’s service. Well, the preacher got to him, too, and when he saw a neighbor standing nearby, he asked to borrow some money to put in the collection plate. The neighbor, who was apparently a Quaker, replied, “At any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now; for thee seems to be out of thy right senses.”12
After holding meetings in and around Philadelphia for about a week, George headed northeast, through New Jersey to New York, and back again, preaching at several stops along the way. This hectic travel schedule occasionally affected his health. In his journal, George exulted whenever he could get a good night’s sleep, which was rare. Still he was grateful for the hospitality he found. “How differently am I treated from my Master! He taught the people by day, and abode all night upon the Mount of Olives. He had not where to lay his head; but go where I will, I find people receiving me into their houses with great gladness.”13
In early May, he was preaching in Ben Franklin’s city once more. “I believe God has much people in the city of Philadelphia,” he wrote. “The congregations are very large and serious, and I have scarce preached this time amongst them without seeing a stirring amongst the dry bones.”14
There’s one brief section of his journal, dated May 7–8, 1740, that reveals an important aspect of Whitefield’s work. First he commended a Baptist minister, “who preached the truth as it is in Jesus,” going on to observe that “the poor people are much refreshed by him.” The next day’s entry began with an account of a trader who had “just come from the Indian nation, where he has been praying with and exhorting all he met.” Then another encounter: “I conversed also with a poor negro woman, who has been visited in a very remarkable manner. God was pleased to convert her by my Preaching last autumn.” Though her public outbursts of praise to God caused some to call her mad, George wrote, “the account she gave me was rational and solid.”15
The poor, the Indians, a “negro woman”—Whitefield was actively reaching out to the outcasts of society and encouraging others to do the same. As he had preached to coal miners in English fields, now he was connecting with all classes of society in American cities. And this was part of the controversy he sparked. Established churches, most notably the Church of England, but also some of the more comfortable Quakers and Presbyterians, had crafted a Christianity of privilege. Discipleship had given way to manners. Propriety took the place of devotion. As a result, the church was now dominated by the “better sort” of people—gentlemen, the wealthy, the landed.
Whitefield’s revival threatened all that. Not only did he dare to suggest that good manners might not be enough to win entry into the kingdom of heaven, he was actively inviting those of the lower classes to respond to God. It was “the Pharisee and the publican” all over again. Prostitutes and swindlers—and miners and tradesmen and Indians and slaves—were entering the kingdom of heaven before the “better sort.” The common folk knew they needed a new birth, and they were grabbing it. Uppity church folk resisted.
Ben Franklin knew all about social classes. He had been dealing with uppity gentlemen his whole life. A tradesman himself, he had worked his way up to a position of leadership and respectability. He was almost a gentleman, but occasionally he still ran into stark prejudice on the part of those who were higher born than he. Surely this played a part in Ben’s early support of George’s ministry. This revival was not only challenging the religious power of the elites, but it was also inspiring the oft-undisciplined lower classes to live better. For Franklin, that was win-win.
We see some of this in a series of letters Ben wrote and printed that May. As he had often done before, he adopted alter egos. “Obadiah Plainman,” a plain man of the working class, rose to Whitefield’s defense after critics posted “incoherent stories” and “invectives” against the preacher and his associates. This was Franklin, of course, stirring the pot, but he included a rather telling observation. “We take notice, that you have ranked yourself under the denomination of the BETTER SORT of People, which is an expression always made use of in contradistinction to the meaner sort, i.e. the mob, or the rabble. Though we are not displeased with such appellations when bestowed on us by our friends, yet we have ever regarded them as terms of outrageous reproach, when applied to us by our enemies.” In the fake outrage of a commoner, Ben was taking issue with the snobbery of the upper class.16
The next week there was a reply from “Tom Trueman,” to which Plainman replied the next week. They were “arguing” over Whitefield, but Franklin was addressing other social issues in the process. By printing a mock debate between high-class and working-class correspondents, he was modeling democracy. Long before there was any thought—even in Franklin’s mind—of breaking away from England, Ben understood that a successful American society would need meaningful involvement from all classes. His newspaper informed and motivated a broad swath of Philadelphia’s citizens. And he saw Whitefield’s message giving commoners the spiritual confidence to own their own destinies.
Reasonableness
After little more than a weekend back in Philadelphia, George was off again May 12. He headed south again to Savannah, this time by boat. That September he sailed north to Rhode Island and took a grand tour of New England, working his way south to New York and then Philadelphia again along a now-familiar route. It’s likely that he met with Ben during that stay (November 8–17, 1740), at least to discuss their publishing ventures. We have no specific record of this meeting, but a follow-up letter gives us some clues—and they must have talked about more than just business.
Whitefield was still splitting his print work between Franklin and Bradford, but Ben would get more and more of it as time went on. George (and business manager Seward) possibly saw Ben as a superior businessman, and perhaps the subscription approach worked out better for everyone. Maybe Ben was selling far more of Whitefield’s work than Bradford was. Ben had proven himself with a year’s worth of positive treatment in the Gazette. Without compromising his editorial integrity, Franklin had stood up for Whitefield in print. Surely George appreciated this, and he might have rewarded Ben with more business.
Yet it’s also possible that Ben just charmed George, as he did with many others throughout his life. The old Franklin wit, combined with his basic humility, made people like him. Remember also that George was just twenty-five years old for most of 1740, and Ben was thirty-four. Perhaps there was a “big brother” quality in the wise Ben Franklin that made George want to work with him. But there’s one other possibility we shouldn’t overlook. Maybe the preacher saw a spiritual need in this printer, and he wanted every chance he could get to address it.
On November 26, 1740, a week and a half after he left Philadelphia, George sent Ben a letter. He was on Reedy Island in the Delaware Bay, waiting for a fair wind to carry his sloop south to Savannah. He paused to catalog this latest leg of his American tour. “I think I have been on shore 73 days”—he was just counting from his September arrival in Rhode Island—“and have been enabled to travel upwards of 800 miles, and to preach 170 times, besides very frequent exhortations at private houses. I have collected, in goods and money, upwards of £700 sterling, for the Orphan-house; blessed be God!” It was the kind of detail that a newspaperman would love.
The letter was mostly business, but for the first time we see a concern for Ben’s soul. After granting permission to publish his autobiography and promising to edit two batches of sermons that Ben could publish, George wrote, “I shall embark for England, God willing, about February. I desire I may hear from you there also, as often as possible.” Then more business. And then: “Dear Sir, Adieu. I do not despair of your seeing the reasonableness of Christianity. Apply to God; be willing to do the divine will, and you shall know it.”17
This appears to be in reference to a prior conversation. It’s clear to George that Ben did not “see the reasonableness of Christianity” at this time. One might assume that this didn’t come up at their initial meeting in 1739 when Ben was drumming up business and George was confirming a deal Seward had arranged. If they’d gone through Franklin’s résumé, they would have seen he was a member of Christ Church (Anglican) and a supporter of First Presbyterian, raised Congregationalist, and a personal friend of Cotton Mather. Ben could quote Scripture readily, so George likely assumed initially that Ben was a convinced Christian.
Until November 1740.
Somehow the friendship went to a deeper level. Perhaps George pressed the point about the new birth. As an Anglican, Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, Ben would still need to be born again. George frequently had such conversations with people he met on his travels. Regardless of Ben’s connection to respected Puritans, he needed to be a personal friend of Jesus.
Ben would balk at this, though to his credit, he was always honest with George about his misgivings. He must have realized he could lose George’s business, but he still confessed his doubts about George’s gospel. He believed in God, in an afterlife, and in virtue. He just had trouble believing that Jesus was divine or that Jesus’ blood was some sort of payment for human sin.
As George saw it, those were essential truths of Christianity. Someone as smart as Ben Franklin would surely see that eventually—especially when these truths were being played out every day in the lives of converts.
We might also guess that, in their conversation of November 1740, Ben displayed his characteristic humility. Perhaps he said something like, “Who can really know the truth about God? I don’t want to be presumptuous about the fine points of any particular theology.” This was his beef with the Puritans. He loved their self-discipline, but he opposed the rigidity of their theology. It violated his sense of intellectual freedom to boot someone out of the community for honestly believing something different. The Puritans had a history of that, and Ben saw it again in the Hemphill affair. Ironically, he was seeing it yet again as church leaders opposed Whitefield’s theology of rebirth, and that made him stand up for George’s right to express his views. He just didn’t want to get locked into that theology.
So it might be in answer to this that George wrote, “Apply to God; be willing to do the divine will, and you shall know it.” He trusted that, if Ben came to God as a sincere seeker of truth, God would show it to him.