Читать книгу: «George Whitefield: A Biography, with special reference to his labors in America», страница 26

CHAPTER XVIII.
CHARACTER OF WHITEFIELD AS A PREACHER – CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATIONS

In suggesting a few of the characteristics of Whitefield's preaching, we are very greatly indebted to an excellent anonymous writer in the London Evangelical Magazine for 1853. We consider as among the reasons of his success, and as worthy of our imitation,

First, the prominence given to the leading truths of salvation, and the constant exaltation of Christ in them. There needs no minute inquiry, or great analytical care, to ascertain what was the pervading theme of this popular minister: it was "Christ, and him crucified," and the glorious truths that hover around the cross, and derive from it their being and lustre. There was no other subject, in Whitefield's estimation, that was worthy of preëminence, and to unfold, elucidate, and apply it, was the great design of his labors. He saw in it such a wonderful adaptation to the necessities and condition of fallen humanity, that he stood in the midst of its wants and woes with all the confidence of a good physician who had a sovereign and sufficient remedy to propose. He knew that there was no case which it could not meet, no moral disease from which it would not recover, no spiritual need which it would not supply; and therefore, however far gone men might be from original righteousness, however hardened in sin, sunk in iniquity, or however elevated by the delusions of a false morality and fancied self-righteousness, he propounded this as the only and all-sufficient antidote, at once to destroy and heal, to kill and to make alive. As to the spurious production of a rationalistic theory on the one hand, or the prescriptions of ceremonial virtue and sacramental grace on the other, he knew them not. He saw at once their hollowness and insufficiency, and would not mock the necessities of our fallen nature, or aggravate the wounds which sin had made by a proposal of them. His acquaintance with the human heart was deep, and his knowledge of the different modifications of the original disease was so great, that he despaired of relief from any expedients save that which infinite Wisdom had devised, and which "the gospel of the grace of God" revealed. Philosophy with all its discoveries, and reason with all its powers, the law with all its authority, and virtue with all its rewards, he knew could only, like the priests and the Levites, have passed the patient by, and left him to despair, till a greater than they should arrive, and say, "I will come and heal you." On that adorable Personage, therefore, and the wonders of his skill and love, he delighted to dwell. Every sermon was full of Christ; every discourse was odorous of him. From whatever part of revealed truth he derived his text, and with whatever peculiar development of man's moral physiology he had to do, there was something to suggest, to demonstrate the need, or the suitableness, or the all-sufficiency of the Saviour of the world. To set him forth, in the glories of his wonderful person, the variety of his offices, the perfection of his righteousness, the completeness of his atonement, and the plenitude of his grace, was his perpetual aim. To these he gave continual prominence, at all times, and in every place. There was no reserve, no equivocation, no partial statement on such themes. It was a full, clear, consistent gospel. From his lips the gospel gave no "uncertain sound." This made him a welcome messenger of glad tidings to all. This gave him a key to the hearts of many, who, as they stood around him, and wondered at him, like those five thousand whom the Redeemer fed with "five loaves and two small fishes," found all their appetites suited, and all their necessities supplied. It was the magic power which arrested them; the centre of gravitation which attracted them; the bread of life which fed them. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness," so now was the Son of man lifted up by the ministry of this his devoted herald; and far as the camp extended, and wide as the circumference of poison and death was spread, the wounded looked thereon and lived. A restorative virtue issued from it. The hardest heart was softened. The most obstinate in rebellion was overcome. The blindest saw. The moral lepers were cleansed. The broken in heart were made whole, and the spiritually dead were raised to life. "This was the Lord's doing, and it was marvellous in their eyes." They beheld the man. They heard him preach. They felt the power. It was because He was exalted among them who had said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."

Secondly, the glow of feeling, the melting compassion, which pervaded his own soul. Oh, it is supremely delightful and deeply affecting to observe the tender affection and melting pathos with which Whitefield propounded and proclaimed the precious truths and everlasting verities of the gospel to his fellow-men. He stood among them as one of their race, one of their number, conscious of the common misery into which all had fallen, and weeping over the miseries and ruin in which by nature they were alike involved. As he opened up the treasures of infinite mercy, and the riches of redeeming love to their view, he wept to think how long they had been unknown or despised by many, and with what base ingratitude thousands would probably still turn away from them. As one who saw their immortal being in jeopardy, and their souls standing on the verge of irretrievable ruin, he hastened, with joy in his countenance and tenderness in his heart, to tell them of One who was "mighty to save," and that "now was the accepted time, and now the day of salvation." Not as one who had a cold lecture on ethics to deliver, or a dissertation on philosophy to expound, or a problem in mathematics to solve, did he proceed to such a work; but as one who felt the weight of his great commission, and knew the worth of never-dying souls. The evil of sin, the danger of impenitence, the powers of the world to come, the glories of heaven, and the unutterable miseries of the regions of woe, were visibly present to his own mind; and of these, "out of the abundance of his heart," he spoke to others. He could not be calm, he could not be apathetic on such themes as these.

"Passion was reason, transport temper, here."

And with much of the melting tenderness of Him who wept over Jerusalem, he spoke of these things to all that resorted to him. What moving words did he utter on Blackheath hill, in the Tabernacle pulpit, and on Kingswood mount! His vivid eye beamed with the glow of tenderness, and his tears, as he spoke, oft-times moistened his little Bible or bedewed the ground. In his printed sermons, which doubtless are but feeble specimens of his free and fervent manner, there are strains of tender pathos and impassioned oratory, which it is almost impossible to read even now without being moved to share in his feelings and in the emotions which they must have enkindled around; and in the perusal of which we wonder not that, in all the circumstances, the place in which he stood was a Bochim – a place of weeping. Oh, the melting power, the exquisite pathos, the tender expostulation of this preëminent man, and unrivalled preacher of the gospel of our salvation! We wish we could catch them now – that all preachers possessed them; that the rising ministry especially would emulate him in these things. Whitefield showed his intense feeling, not from the mere power of ratiocination, or from the poetic memento, or for the sake of producing effect by the tears that were unfelt, or which only flowed from the surface; but from the meltings of a tender heart, influenced by a Saviour's love, and overflowing with the commiseration of a benign compassion for dying multitudes around. Doddridge's beautiful hymn,

"Arise, my tenderest thoughts, arise,"

one might almost think was written at Whitefield's side. The tenderness of John, and the "weeping" of Paul, were blended in him with the boldness of Peter. The love that agonized in the garden of Gethsemane, and bled on the cross of Calvary, was largely diffused through all his powers.

Thirdly, the direct address of his ministry. The characteristic mode of his preaching, and the style of his public ministrations, was, to direct his appeal to the hearts and consciences of his hearers, and to "preach to the people all the words of this life." It was not an harangue before them. It was not an oration beautifully prepared, read, or delivered in their hearing, and presented simply for their acceptance and admiration; but a direct address, an affectionate appeal, a solemn and earnest communication of the message he had received from God to them. Oh, we have sometimes thought, what a marked difference there ought to be between the ministrations of a servant of Christ to his fellow-immortals, on things of eternal importance in which they are personally and deeply concerned, and the delivery of a lecture from the philosopher's desk, or even of a dissertation on theology from the professorial chair. So thought the apostles. So thought the prophets and public teachers of sacred mysteries of old. They had the "burden of the Lord" to deliver, and it was unto the people. They had an embassy to execute, and it was by negotiating directly with, and in the consciences of their hearers. Whitefield caught their spirit, proceeded in their way, and did such mighty execution, not by the mere symmetrical illustration of divine truth, but by the direct presentation of it to their minds. They had not to ask, "For whom is all this intended?" and, "Is it designed for us?" They felt that it was. It came home to their consciences, and to their very hearts. They could not transfer it to others, nor avoid the application of it to themselves. Had the preacher called them by name, which in his skilful delineation of character, he sometimes virtually did, they could not have been more certain that he intended it for them, and that it was at their peril to neglect or pass it by. "I have a message from God unto thee," he substantially said in every discourse he uttered, and the people were compelled to believe it. "Go, and tell this people," said the divine voice to Isaiah, "Ye hear indeed, but do not understand; ye see indeed, but do not perceive." "Therefore," said Peter, "let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." "Now then," said Paul, "we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." Such was the tenor of the apostolic ministry. Such the secret of its mighty power and success. And such also was the characteristic of the faithful and seraphic Whitefield, by which he knocked at the door of many hearts, and those hearts were opened to him, to his message, and to his Lord. His plan was that of heavenly wisdom; his appeal was the same. "Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men." In him were verified the poet's graphic lines:

 
"There stands the messenger of truth; there stands
The legate of the skies: his theme divine,
His office sacred, his credentials clear.
By him the violated law speaks out
Its thunders; and by him, in strains as sweet
As angels use, the gospel whispers peace.
He stablishes the strong, restores the weak,
Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart,
And sues the sinner to return to God."
 

Fourthly, his habitual dependence on the Spirit of God, and his earnest aspirations for the manifestation of his power. That he was conscious of his own superior talents as an orator, and knew how to employ them on sacred themes; that he skilfully wielded all the weapons of a well-studied eloquence to gain access to the human mind, and knew both how to alarm and how to persuade, and could attempt both with as much success probably as any speaker, either of ancient or modern times; that he had a large and minute acquaintance with the powers and passions of the human soul, and knew well when and how to touch the hidden springs of its energies and actions; that he had a good amount of common and sacred learning at his command, and like that Apollos whom among the early teachers of Christianity he most resembled, was "mighty in the Scriptures;" and that he delighted to expatiate on the wonders and glories of redemption as a restorative scheme preëminently adapted to interest and attract, to impress and rule our common nature – are facts open to all who inspect his writings and accompany him in his labors, and will be denied by none. But with all these, and amid all, in every sermon he composed and delivered, and in his most impassioned addresses to his hearers, there is manifested an underlying and all-pervading dependence on the power and grace of the Spirit of God, which was in character, if not in degree, meek, humble, genuine, entire, like that of the most eminent apostle or adoring saint at the foot of the divine throne. With him it was not merely a sentiment, but a feeling; and that feeling constant and habitual, as it was in him who in the review of his labors said, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." He knew that none but the almighty Spirit could gain effectual access to the spirit of man; and that not even a Melancthon, a Luther, or a Whitefield, could make old Adam yield, unless constrained by a superior power. He seemed to stand in the valley of vision among the dry bones, as the prophet did, and while he addressed them with something like a prophet's power, he had no expectation or hope of success until the wind of heaven came down and blew upon them. Therefore he prophesied to it as well as to them. "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon the slain, that they may live," was often the mighty cry of his soul, before preaching, while preaching, and after preaching. It seemed to be his joy, his only, his all-sustaining confidence, that he lived under "the dispensation of the Spirit," and wrought in a day, and preached upon a theme, in connection with which "the ministration of the Spirit" was to be "glorious," by his wonderful works of conviction, conversion, and sanctification, among the children of men. To that Spirit, as the glorifier of Christ, he often devoutly and earnestly appealed. Sometimes, in the midst of an unusual flow of tender and eloquent address to his hearers on his favorite theme of the glories and grace of his divine Master, he would pause in solemn silence, and lifting up his hands and his voice to heaven, and carrying the hearts of his audience with him, invoke aloud the descending and all-consuming fire. The present God was acknowledged and felt. The word came "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." And while the habitual aim of his preaching was to exalt "Christ Jesus the Lord," and while he reasoned, and opened the Scriptures, and taught and alarmed or invited his hearers, in the most touching strains of urgent remonstrance and tender entreaty, to accept now "the great salvation," the inward state of his soul was that of entire reliance on the presence and coöperation of the Holy Spirit of God. To him were sent up his most intense aspirations. In all the records of his success, to that Spirit the honor is always ascribed. "Not I, but the grace of God which was with me," is the grateful acknowledgment he makes in the review of every field occupied and every triumph won. And thus it was that the fabric of his ministry, and of all his ministrations, in the multitudinous labors which he directed against the kingdom of darkness and of Satan in his day, was like the mystic vision which Ezekiel saw, instinct with life. The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. "When this went, those went; when this stood, those stood; when this was lifted up from the earth, those were lifted up." It was all life. A living preacher; a living theme; a living power, giving life, and spreading it all around. Therefore it was that life followed in the region of death, and at his coming the desert rejoiced, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.

"Dry bones were raised, and clothed afresh,

And hearts of stone were turned to flesh."

By preaching such as we have now attempted to describe, thousands and tens of thousands were gathered to Christ. "An exceeding great army" stood up. Slumbering churches were awakened, religion was revived, and "righteousness and praise" were caused to "spring forth before all the nations." And as this apostolic man surveyed the amazing scene, and glanced at the wide circumference of his labors, in the British Isles and in the New World, he might have exclaimed, as one before him had done, "Now thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his name by us in every place." "Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Who, in the remembrance of Whitefield and his times, will not long for their return, and exclaim, "Awake, awake; put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days." "O that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!" Spirit of the living God, descend and replenish with thy power all our souls, our ministry, our temples, our land.

In estimating the character of Whitefield, it should be observed that he dealt with his hearers, individually and collectively, as immortal beings. To use the language of Isaac Taylor, "he held MAN as if in the abstract, or as if whatever is not common to all men were forgotten. The most extreme diversities, intellectual and moral, differences of rank, culture, national modes of thought, all gave way and ceased to be thought of; distinctions were swept from the ground where he took his position. At the first opening of his lips, and as the rich harmony of his voice spread its undulations over the expanse of human faces, and at the instant when the sparkle of his bright eye caught every other eye, human nature, in a manner, dropped its individuality, and presented itself in its very elements to be moulded anew. Whitefield, although singularly gifted with a perception of the varieties of character, yet spoke as if he could know nothing of the thousands before him but their immortality and their misery; and so it was that these thousands listened to him.

"No preacher whose history is on record, has trod so wide a field as did Whitefield, or has retrod it so often, or has repeated himself so much, or has carried so far the experiment of exhausting himself, and of spending his popularity, if it could have been spent, but it never was spent. Within the compass of a few weeks he might have been heard addressing the negroes of the Bermuda islands, adapting himself to their infantile understandings, and to their debauched hearts; and then at Chelsea, with the aristocracy of rank and wit before him, approving himself to listeners such as the lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield. Whitefield might as easily have produced a Hamlet or a Paradise Lost, as have excogitated a sermon which, as a composition, a product of thought, would have tempted men like these to hear him a second time; and as to his faculty and graces as a speaker, his elocution and action, a second performance would have contented them. But in fact Bolingbroke, and many of his class, thought not the hour long, time after time, while, with much sameness of material and of language, he spoke of eternity and of salvation in Christ… Floods of tears moistened cheeks rough and smooth; and sighs, suppressed or loudly uttered, gave evidence that human nature is one and the same when it comes in presence of truths which bear upon the guilty and the immortal without distinction."

The Rev. Dr. James Hamilton of London has admirably delineated Whitefield, in a passage which must be admired by all who read it: "Whitefield was the prince of English preachers. Many have surpassed him as sermon-makers, but none have approached him as a pulpit orator. Many have outshone him in the clearness of their logic, the grandeur of their conceptions, and the sparkling beauty of single sentences; but in the power of darting the gospel direct into the conscience, he eclipsed them all. With a full and beaming countenance, and the frank and easy port which the English people love – for it is the symbol of honest purpose and friendly assurance – he combined a voice of rich compass, which could easily thrill over Moorfields in musical thunder, or whisper its terrible secret in every private ear; and to this gainly aspect and tuneful voice he added a most expressive and eloquent action. Improved by conscientious practice, and instinct with his earnest nature, this elocution was the acted sermon, and by its pantomimic portrait enabled the eye to anticipate each rapid utterance, and helped the memory to treasure up the palatable ideas. None ever used so boldly, nor with more success, the highest styles of impersonation: as when he described to his sailor-auditors a storm at sea, and compelled them to shout, 'Take to the longboat, sir!' His 'hark, hark!' could conjure up Gethsemane with its faltering moon, and awake again the cry of horror-stricken innocence; and an apostrophe to Peter on the holy mount would light up another Tabor, and drown it in glory from the opening heaven. His thoughts were possessions, and his feelings were transformations; and he spoke because he felt, his hearers understood because they saw. They were not only enthusiastic amateurs, like Garrick, who ran to weep and tremble at his bursts of passion, but even the colder critics of the Walpole school were surprised into momentary sympathy and reluctant wonder. Lord Chesterfield was listening in Lady Huntingdon's pew when Whitefield was comparing the benighted sinner to a blind beggar on a dangerous road. His little dog gets away from him when skirting the edge of a precipice, and he is left to explore the path with his iron-shod staff. On the very verge of the cliff this blind guide slips through his fingers and skims away down the abyss. All unconscious, the owner stoops down to regain it, and stumbling forward – 'Good God, he is gone!' shouted Chesterfield, who had been watching with breathless alarm the blind man's movements, and who jumped from his feet to save the catastrophe.

"But the glory of Whitefield's preaching was his heart-kindled and heart-melting gospel. But for this, all his bold strokes and brilliant surprises might have been no better than the rhetorical triumphs of Kirwan and other pulpit dramatists. He was an orator, but he only sought to be an evangelist. Like a volcano where gold and gems may be darted forth as well as common things, but where gold and molten granite flow all alike in fiery fusion, bright thoughts and splendid images might be projected from his pulpit, but all were merged in the stream which bore along the gospel and himself in blended fervor. Indeed, so simple was his nature, that glory to God and good will to man had filled it; there was room for little more. Having no church to found, no family to enrich, and no memory to immortalize, he was simply the ambassador of God; and inspired with its genial piteous spirit – so full of heaven reconciled and humanity restored – he soon himself became a living gospel. Radiant with its benignity, and trembling with its tenderness, by a sort of spiritual induction a vast audience would speedily be brought into a frame of mind – the transfusing of his own; and the white furrows on their sooty faces told that Kingswood colliers were weeping, or the quivering of an ostrich plume bespoke its elegant wearer's deep emotion. And coming to his pulpit direct from communion with his Master, and in the strength of accepted prayer, there was an elevation in his mien which often paralyzed hostility, and a self-possession which made him amid uproar and confusion the more sublime. With an electric bolt he would bring the jester in his fool's cap from his perch on the tree, or galvanize the brickbat from the skulking miscreant's grasp, or sweep down in crouching submission and shamefaced silence the whole of Bartholomew fair; while a revealing flash of sententious doctrine, of vivified Scripture, would disclose to awe-struck hundreds the forgotten verities of another world, or the unsuspected arcana of their inner man. 'I came to break your head, but, through you, God has broken my heart,' was a sort of confession with which he was familiar; and to see the deaf old gentlewoman who used to mutter imprecations at him as he passed along the streets, clambering up the pulpit stairs to catch his angelic words, was a sort of spectacle which the triumphant gospel often witnessed in his day. And when it is known that his voice could be heard by twenty thousand, and that ranging all the empire, as well as America, he would often preach thrice on a working-day, and that he has received in one week as many as a thousand letters from persons awakened by his sermons, if no estimate can be formed of the results of his ministry, some idea may be suggested of its vast extent and singular effectiveness."

Very admirably has a writer in the North British Review compared and contrasted Whitefield and Wesley. He says, "Few characters could be more completely the converse, and in the church's exigencies, more happily the supplement of one another, than were those of George Whitefield and John Wesley; and had their views been identical, and their labors all along coincident, their large services to the gospel might have repeated Paul and Barnabas. Whitefield was soul, and Wesley was system. Whitefield was a summer cloud which burst at morning or noon a fragrant exhalation over an ample track, and took the rest of the day to gather again; Wesley was the polished conduit in the midst of the garden, through which the living water glided in pearly brightness and perennial music, the same vivid stream from day to day. After a preaching paroxysm, Whitefield lay panting on his couch, spent, breathless, and deathlike; after his morning sermon in the foundry, Wesley would mount his pony, and trot and chat, and gather simples, till he reached some country hamlet, where he would bait his charger, and talk through a little sermon with the villagers, and remount his pony and trot away again. In his aërial poise, Whitefield's eagle eye drank lustre from the source of light, and loved to look down on men in assembled myriads; Wesley's falcon glance did not sweep so far, but it searched more keenly and marked more minutely where it pierced. A master of assemblies, Whitefield was no match for the isolated man. Seldom coping with the multitude, but strong in astute sagacity and personal ascendency, Wesley could conquer any number one by one. All force and impetus, Whitefield was the powder-blast in the quarry, and by one explosive sermon would shake a district, and detach materials for other men's long work – deft, neat, and painstaking, Wesley loved to split and trim each fragment into uniform plinths and polished stones. Or, taken otherwise, Whitefield was the bargeman or the wagoner who brought the timber of the house, and Wesley was the architect who set it up. Whitefield had no patience for ecclesiastical polity, no aptitude for pastoral details – with a beaver-like propensity for building, Wesley was always constructing societies, and with a king-like craft of ruling, was most at home when presiding over a class or a conference. It was their infelicity that they did not always work together – it was the happiness of the age, and the furtherance of the gospel, that they lived alongside of one another."

CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATIONS

When a century had elapsed from the commencement of Whitefield's public labors, it was deemed desirable by many in England to hold public services of a devotional and practical character, in celebration of the event. Especially was it designed that such celebrations should have a reference, as far as possible, to advance open-air preaching. The first services of this character were very properly held in the Tabernacle, London, on May 21, 1839, and well do we remember with what intense interest, in common with thousands, we attended them. Ministers and laymen of at least four religious denominations assisted in them, and eloquently discoursed on subjects illustrating the grace of God in connection with Whitefield, but still more intent were they on benefiting the present and future generations of men. Dr. Campbell delivered a sermon on the character and labors of Apollos, illustrated by those of Whitefield; the late Dr. Cox discoursed on the genius and labors of Whitefield; the late Rev. John Blackburn described the past and present state of religion in England; and the Rev. John Young, LL. D., urged the propriety, duty, and necessity of open-air preaching. In addition to these sermons, several admirable speeches were made, and every thing was marked by a spirit of earnest devotion. A small volume, containing the sermons and speeches, was printed, and put into extensive circulation.

About the same time, a number of ministers of the Congregational order met in a central town of Gloucestershire, when one of them suggested, that "as the present year was the centenary of the Rev. George Whitefield's labors in reviving the apostolic practice of open-air preaching, it might be desirable to commemorate them by a special religious open-air celebration. It was further remarked, that Whitefield was a native of Gloucester; that as many ministers present presided over churches instituted by his ministry; that as Stinchcombe hill, in the very centre of the county, presented a most beautiful and eligible spot for a public meeting; and as upon its summit, a century ago, Whitefield himself had preached and showed the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, it seemed a duty to improve the opportunity it offered of addressing, on the gracious persuasives of the cross, a large concourse of persons, many of whom might never hear the gospel, and of promoting in the county the revival of evangelical religion, which God so highly honored his devoted servant in commencing in our land."