PREFACE.

SIR JAMES STEPHEN has placed WHITEFIELD at the head of what he calls the Evangelical Succession.' The position. is correctly assigned; Whitefield is the Peter of the Evangelicals, so far as they are a distinct portion of the Church of England. It was he who, in modern days, first preached, with zeal and unexampled success, those doctrines which they regard with religious veneration; it was he who gave them much of the phraseology to which they still cling with steadfast loyalty. But it cannot be allowed that they, and only they, have the right to claim an inheritance in him. The wealth of a good heart is for the enriching of the world; and the triumphs of genius are a study for scholars of every school. I have therefore placed Whitefield in the loftier position of a brother of all who, in every place and under any denomination, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have striven to put the man, rather than his creed, upon the pages of this book, or rather to put the man first, and his creed second. I have endeavoured to find out, and lay bare, the real fountain of his never-failing and exultant joy; of his fiery but gentle zeal; of his universal

charity, which, however, was associated with some forbidding and chilling beliefs. Whitefield's love to God and love to man-one love-constitute the explanation of his personal character and of his life's labours. It is true that, for a time at least, he held the dark and terrible doctrine of reprobation; and some may think that he must therefore have been a bigot, and a harsh one too; but the truth is, that he was altogether without bigotry. He believed in the infinite love of God more firmly than in anything else; and this belief tinctured the whole of his religion.

I have not looked at him as a theologian, for such he cannot be called, but as a Christian; and in the following pages there will not be found any narrative of severe mental struggles with hard questions concerning God and 'His ways to men.' They attempt to reveal a great heart, stirred with the purest emotion, ever desiring absolute perfection in goodness and unintermittingly seeking it, resolved to leave nothing undone by which others might become partakers with itself of the great salvation, and impatient of all impediments, whether ecclesiastical or social, that threatened the consummation of its hopes.

Where Whitefield was in conflict with others, I have tried to do justice to both sides; and though some things may seem to bear hardly upon the clergy of his day, I believe that in no instance have I wronged them to screen him. His excellences were too great to need adornment, and his faults too obvious to admit of misapprehension.

It may be felt, in the course of the narrative, that too much time has been spent in recounting his preaching labours, in telling how large were his congregations, how great the difficulties which he overcame, and how far he travelled; but I could not see how otherwise to give the same conception of the man and his work which is gained by perusing his journals and letters page by page. The frequent mention of thousands of hearers, though apparently savouring of the ostentatious, was necessary, as a simple statement of the truth.

The last twenty years of Whitefield's life have received but slight notice, as compared with that which has been given to his earlier years; and the reason is, that they were almost entirely without new features of interest. They saw no fresh work attempted; they brought to light no fresh qualities of mind or heart; they simply witnessed the steady growth of enterprises previously begun, and of personal qualities previously displayed.

J. P. GLEDSTONE.