Introduction

Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. JOHN 3:7

George Whitefield was the most famous preacher of the eighteenth century, and perhaps the most heard man of his age. He preached in the parish churches of England until they closed their doors to him, and then in the fields, the market squares, the courthouse steps and the colliers’ commons of two continents. He crossed the Atlantic thirteen times. Crowds of many thousands stood in the open air to hear him, in Bristol and London, in Glasgow and at Cambuslang, in Philadelphia and Boston, and the scattered stirrings of revival in the American colonies fused behind him into what is now called the Great Awakening. When he died, in 1770, there were few people in the English-speaking world who had not heard his name.

And yet he left no great treatise, no system of theology, no shelf of books to rival those of Jonathan Edwards or John Wesley. What he left was sermons, and a memory of the voice that preached them.

One conviction beneath all the others

The reason he mattered is that he had grasped one thing and would not let it go. The thing is this: true religion is a work of God in the heart.

Whitefield lived in a church that was, on the whole, content with outward things. A man was a Christian if he had been baptised, attended his parish church, received the sacrament at Easter, paid his debts and did no open harm. Whitefield had tried that religion, and more than that religion, and it had nearly killed him. When at last he found peace, it came not from anything he had done but from something that had been done in him. He never got over it. From that day he preached one message in a thousand places: that the outward forms, good as they are, cannot save; that a sinner must be changed within by the Spirit of God, joined to Christ by faith and clothed in Christ’s righteousness; that, in the words Christ spoke to a teacher of Israel, you must be born again.

In his sermon On Regeneration he calls the new birth “the very hinge on which the salvation of each of us turns.” Everything else in this book hangs on that hinge. The method of grace is the way God brings a sinner to it. Christ our righteousness is its ground. The indwelling Spirit is its life. The almost Christian is the man who has everything but it. The unconverted minister is the preacher who does not know it. The open field is where Whitefield took it when the churches would not have it. Prayer, Scripture and family worship are the means by which the life it begins is kept and fed.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

That is the thread running through every chapter, and it is the question to keep asking as you read: has God done a work in my heart, or have I only the outward form?

Why he still matters

Whitefield is worth reading for at least three reasons.

The first is that he would not let religion be a matter of reputation. He preached to respectable congregations as if they were in danger, because he believed many of them were, and he preached to colliers and servants and slaves as if heaven were open to them, because he believed it was.

The second is his joy. For all the thunder in his sermons, the man himself was glad. He preached Christ as a friend, a husband, a physician, a rest for the weary, and he could hardly speak of Him without tears. It is hard to read him for long and remain cold.

The third is his catholic spirit. He was a convinced Calvinist and a lifelong clergyman of the Church of England, and he preached in the meeting-houses of Presbyterians, Baptists and Congregationalists, embraced Quakers and Moravians, and loved a man, John Wesley, with whom he disagreed publicly and to the end. He cared much more whether a person loved Christ than which party he belonged to.

How this book is arranged

After a chapter on his life, fourteen short chapters set out his teaching. They begin with the new birth, the method of grace, Christ our righteousness and the indwelling of the Spirit; move through the almost Christian, the unconverted ministry, the open field and the offer of Christ to all; turn to the ordinary means of the Christian life — walking with God, searching the Scriptures, intercession and family religion; and end with two chapters on his life among others: his friendship with Wesley, and the orphan house at Bethesda and its shadow.

Each chapter ends with application points and a prayer. Whitefield would have wanted that. Every one of his sermons ends in what the Puritans called the application, the moment when the preacher stops explaining and turns to his hearers and says, Now, what of you? Read a chapter a day, or one a week. Stop at the application points. Pray the prayer, or better, pray your own.

Where he must be read with care

This is not a book of hero-worship, and it is better to say plainly at the start where Whitefield must be weighed rather than simply received.

First, and gravest: Whitefield campaigned for the introduction of slavery into Georgia, where its founders had forbidden it, and he owned enslaved men, women and children to support his orphan house at Bethesda. He did this knowing the trade to be wrong, and he held them until his death. There is no softening this, and chapter sixteen does not try. It is the darkest thing in his life, and it must be named as such.

Second, in his early years he censured other ministers harshly and in print, judging whole bodies of clergy to be unconverted on slender acquaintance. There was truth in his alarm, but there was pride and rashness in the way he voiced it, and he later admitted as much. Chapter eight treats this.

Third, he was a man of the theatre by gift and by temperament. His preaching was dramatic, his emotions near the surface, and his hearers were sometimes carried away by the performance as much as by the message. He knew the danger himself. But readers today should not mistake intensity for holiness, nor tears for the new birth.

Why read him, then? Because on the central matter he was right. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power (1 Corinthians 4:20). The counsel of this book is the counsel of Scripture: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Where Whitefield is faithful — on the new birth, on the righteousness of Christ, on the free offer of the gospel — receive it gladly and act on it. Where he failed, let his failure warn you, for the same heart is in us all.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before going further, ask honestly whether your religion is chiefly outward — attendance, habits, reputation — or whether God has done a work in your heart.

2. Choose a pace for this book, a chapter a day or a chapter a week, and decide now when you will read it.

3. Read one of Whitefield’s own sermons alongside this book, perhaps The Method of Grace or On Regeneration, and notice how he ends it.

4. Resolve to test everything in these pages against Scripture, keeping what is true and setting aside what is not.

5. Ask God to use this book to send you not to Whitefield but to Christ.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You told a teacher of Israel that he must be born again, and You say the same to me. Do not let me rest in the outward form of religion.

Teach me what Your servant George Whitefield learned: that true religion is Your work in the heart, and that Your righteousness alone can clothe a sinner.

Keep me from admiring a preacher and missing his Master. Where he was faithful, let me receive it; where he sinned, let me be warned and humbled.

And let every page I read bring me nearer to You. Amen.