Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/510

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
478
WHITEFIELD
WHITEHEAD

He preached also in Bristol and elsewhere, affecting great audiences to tears and repentance. Already certain of the clergy began to close their pulpits to him on account of his teachings of the new birth and his religious enthusiasm and association with dissenters, while his admirers offered him profitable charges in London or Bristol. At the summons of John and Charles Wesley, who were in this country, he sailed on 10 Jan., 1738, for Georgia, arriving in Savannah on 18 May. He saw the need of the colony for material aid, and especially for an or- phan house, as many settlers had died from the effects of the climate, leaving destitute families, and to raise a fund for this purpose, as well as to receive priest's orders, on 8 Sept. he left Savannah for England. The doctrines of regeneration and justification by faith and the ecstatic sentiments in his recently published " Journals " caused the clergy who had formerly been friendly to White- field to withhold their countenance. Only four pulpits in London were still open to him. His powers of eloquence drew large assemblages, and in the Countess of Huntingdon and her aristocratic friends he found influential patrons. He was or- dained priest in January, 1739. The trustees of Georgia presented him with the living of Savan- nah and granted him 500 acres of land as a site for the orphan house. Going to Bristol, he preached in the prison, when the churches were re- fused to him, and on 28 Feb. began to address con- gregations of colliers (which sometimes numbered 20,000 persons) in the open air, at Kingswood, where Wesley followed him and founded the first Methodist church and school. From that time most of Whitefield's sermons were delivered to out-door meetings. Every newspaper reviled him, ministers denounced him from their pulpits, and no fewer than fifty pamphlets were published in condemnation or defence of his teachings in the year 1739. Wherever he preached in England or Wales he made a collection for his orphan school. On 25 Aug., 1739, he took passage for Philadel- phia. Instead of going to Georgia, he remained in that city, preaching in the churches and from the court-house steps in a way that wonderfully re- vived the religious life of that place. Thence he went to New York city, where the Episcopal pul- pits were denied him, but other denominations welcomed him, and for the first time he held ser- vices in dissenting meeting-houses. In a few weeks he returned to Philadelphia and set out for his parish in Georgia, preaching in every village on the way, and reaching Savannah on 20 Jan., 1740. His collections for the orphan house amounted to £2,530, besides many gifts in kind. He gathered about forty children in a hired house, and in March began the building of the orphanage, which he named Bethesda. He returned to Phila- delphia in April, and in August, complying with a request from Benjamin Colman, William Cooper, and other Boston ministers, he made a tour into New England, where he met with a cordial recep- tion, except from the conservative part of the clergy, who condemned his emotional methods, and began the long controversy with the Revival- ists or New Lights. Churches were not large enough to hold his auditors, and he therefore spoke on the common. He preached in other towns, made large collections, returned to Savannah in De- cember, and early in 1741 sailed for England. On 25 Nov., 1741, he married in Wales a widow named Elizabeth James, who proved an uncongenial wife. His influence in England was less than when he worked in harmony with the other Methodists, and was further impaired by his writings, espe- cially an assault on the theological principles of Archbishop John Tillotson. He gathered a con- gregation in opposition to Charles Wesley's at Bristol, and in London preached in a large edifice that his friends built, called the Tabernacle. In August, 1744, he embarked for this country, landed in Maine, and on reaching Boston opened a series of services at 6 a. m., with 2,000 or more hearers. Afterward he went to Savannah, but finding his health failing, visited the Bermuda islands in March, 1748. Thence, in July, he went back to England, where he became chaplain to Lady Hunt- ingdon, and preached in her chapel to the nobility and others. He revisited Scotland in 1750, spent the winter of 1750-'l in London, made a short visit to Ireland, where he was badly used, and went to Savannah in October, 1751. He returned to England in 1752, made his fifth voyage to this country by way of Lisbon in 1754, and labored energetically, with astonishing results. He re- turned to England again in 1755, success attend- ing his labors everywhere during 1755-'60. His health was much impaired for two years. White- field embarked for the sixth time for America in 1 763, returned to England in -1765, where he spent the next four years, laboring according to his abil- ity and state of health, in consecrating new chapels provided by Lady Huntingdon, and striv- ing to promote peace and concord in the Method- ist body. He made his seventh and last visit to this country in September, 1769, and for a time preached with his accustomed energy in Georgia and New England ; but death, from an attack of asthma, came suddenly at the last. Whitefield's coffin may still be seen

" Under the church on Federal street."

He was, with the aid of Lady Huntingdon, the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists. He preached about 18,000 times, yet only eighty-one of his sermons have been printed, and these are for the greater part the productions of his immature years. His voice was so clear that congregations of 25,000 people could distinctly hear his ser- mons in the open air, and his elocution and gest- ures formed the model of orators and actors in his day. His two journals of his Voyage from Lon- don to Savannah," extending from 28 Dec, 1737, till 7 May, 1738, were printed without his leave by friends (London, 1738). Subsequently he pub- lished the "Journal from his Arrival at Savannah to his Return to London," and the " Journal from his Arrival at London to his Departure from thence on his Way to Georgia," which was supple- mented by a "Continuation of the Journal during the Time he was detained by the Embargo " (1739). The " First Two Parts of his Life, with his Jour- nals," appeared in a revised and abridged form (1756). His "Letters, Sermons, Controversies, and Tracts" were published (6 vols., 1771-'2). Chief among his many biographies are " Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. George Whitefield," by his friend the Rev. Dr. John Gillies (1772); "Sermons," with memoir by Samuel Drew (1833) ; " Life and Times of Whitefield," by the Rev. Robert Philip (1838) ; and a " Life," by the Rev. Luke Tverman (2 vols., 1876). See also "The History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Meth- odism." by the Rev. Dr. Abel Stevens (1861).


WHITEHEAD, Cortlnndt, P. E. bishop, b. in New York city, 30 Oct., 1842. He was graduated at Yale in 1863, ordered deacon at the close of a three years' theological course in the Philadelphia divinity-school, on 21 June, 1867, in Trinity church, Newark, N. J., by Bishop Odenheimer, and ordained priest in St. Mark s chapel, Black Hawk,