but work in this sphere was not yet to be. He alternated Oxford labours with short spells of pastoral work, as locum tenens, at the Tower Chapel, and in the Hampshire parish of Dummer. In the latter place he had to conquer his aversion from intercourse with illiterate and ignorant folk; and here again William Law came to his help with his sketch of Ouranius, the country priest who learnt to love his rustic people through his practice of continual intercession for them. Here we find him carrying out his Methodist principles in parish work, reading the two offices daily, before and after people went to their work, catechising children daily, and visiting from house to house. He followed the division of time so often recommended in our days to young priests, allotting eight hours of each day to study and retirement, eight to meals and sleep, and eight to pastoral work.

Early in 1737 the Wesleys appealed to Whitefield to take over their work in Georgia; and the young deacon was quick to answer a call which he had already inwardly heard. During a year of waiting to sail (it was not so easy to start a long voyage then as now, unfavourable winds alone often causing tedious delays), he filled up his time with arduous preaching engagements at Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford and London. His heart was afire with love for Christ and with love for souls; and wherever he went, he stirred men's hearts to their depths. Speaking of his work in a Gloucestershire parish, he says:

Early in the morning, at noonday, evening, and midnight, nay, all the day long, did the blessed Jesus visit and refresh my heart. Could the trees

of a certain wood near Stonehouse speak, they would tell what sweet communion I and some dear souls enjoyed with the ever-blessed God there. Sometimes, as I have been walking, my soul would make such sallies that I thought it would go out of the body. At other times I would be so overpowered with a sense of God's infinite majesty, that I would be constrained to throw myself prostrate on the ground, and offer my soul as a blank in His hands, to write on it what He pleased. One night was a night never to be forgotten. It happened to lighten exceedingly. I had been expounding to many people, and some being afraid to go home, I thought it my duty to accompany them, and improve the occasion, to stir them up to prepare for the second coming of the Son of man; but oh! what did my soul feel? On my return to the parsonage-house, whilst others were rising from their beds, and frightened almost to death, to see the lightning run upon the ground, and shine from one part of the heaven to another, I and another, a poor but pious countryman, were in the field praising, praying to, and exulting in our God, and longing for that time when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in a flame of fire! O that my soul may be in a like frame when He shall actually come to call me !

In the cities he attracted huge congregations; and when he reached London, the various religious societies and charity schools, finding his preaching powers reflected in the church collections, besought his aid. Nothing loth, he would at this time preach nine times a week; on Sundays he would rise, whilst yet dark,

for an early Communion before beginning a tour of the day's preaching in neighbouring churches. 'At Cripplegate, St. Anne's, and Foster Lane," he records, "O how often we have seen Jesus Christ crucified, and evidently set forth before us! On Sunday mornings, long before day, you might see streets filled with people going to church, with their lanthorns in their hands, and hear them conversing about the things of God."

At last, on January 30th, 1738, his ship sailed, and Whitefield had a three months' voyage, in which his fervour impressed the crew as much as it had influenced his hearers at home. He took with him £300 which he had collected in England for the poor of Georgia. He had also by his preaching earned £1000 for the charity schools; and money was then worth three times as much as at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Georgia was a very different sphere of work from the scenes of his English labours. It was the last American colony founded by England, and its first settlers were English debtors and gaolbirds, and convicts from Jamaica, who were joined later by a higher type of colonists, a strong Moravian element amongst them. The government was in the hands of twenty-one trustees, largely Presbyterians. Both John and Charles Wesley-one at Savannah, the other at Frederica-had failed to commend their religion to this flock; and after rousing much opposition, and even ill-feeling, they had been glad to return to England.

Whitefield, as eager as they but far less stern and uncompromising in his methods, found at first a chilly reception, but his great charity and sincerity soon won their way with the colonists. Finding little scope for

his energies in preaching to the small and scattered congregations, he began to organise the building of a home for some of the destitute and neglected orphans. Of these, owing to the high rate of mortality in the colonies, there was a great number. From this time to his death, thirty-two years later-though, like Wesley he treated the world as his parish and seldom stayed in any one place for more than a few weeks at a time he was minister of Savannah, and the orphans were never out of his thoughts and labours.

That August he sailed again to take priest's orders in England (America, of course, in those days possessed no bishops of her own), and after a dangerous voyage found himself in December once more the centre of religious revival in London. On Christmas Eve he preached twice, held forth to two religious societies, and continued with many Methodist friends in prayer, singing, and thanksgiving until nearly four in the morning. At four he preached, and again at six, then received the Blessed Sacrament, and preached yet thrice more—no mean way of spending Christmas Day!

A fortnight later Bishop Benson ordained him priest.

Already his methods and their results were causing some heart-burning among his brother clergy. If there was one thing which the English Church of the eighteenth century dreaded and hated it was what was termed "enthusiasm," any pretence to an outpouring of the Spirit or of God's grace in any other way than the very orderly and somnolent Church ministrations of those sleepy days. But wherever Whitefield went all sleepiness and most conventionalities vanished like smoke; and the wind, blowing

where it listed, fanned latent sparks of spiritual energy into strange and unwonted fires. Speaking, for instance, of one of these Christmas meetings, John Wesley, who attended some of them with Whitefield, says:—

About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out with one voice, "We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!

Little by little opposition to the new preacher spread, until all the London churches were closed to him. But Whitefield was not to be denied. If he could not awaken souls in churches, he would do it elsewhere; and opposition now launched him upon that field-preaching which was to become his real life-work.

Refused permission to preach in Bristol churches, he preached out of doors for the first time on February 17th, 1739, on a hill near Bristol to the colliers of Kingswood. An enemy wrote, "I believe the devil in hell is in you all; Whitefield has set the town on fire, and now he is gone to kindle a flame in the country"; whilst the preacher's own view is seen in his journal—“ Blessed be God that the ice is now broke, and I have now taken the field! Some may censure me, but is there not a cause? Pulpits are denied, and the poor colliers ready to perish for lack of knowledge."

Soon his congregation grew from two hundred to