A Reader’s Guide to George Whitefield

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. ACTS 17:11

Whitefield is easy to read and hard to capture. He was a preacher, not an author, and print could never hold what hearers described. Some of his later sermons were taken down in shorthand as he spoke, and they keep the rush and repetition of speech. Read them aloud if you can. What he left is chiefly sermons, journals and letters, and the guide below is arranged to help the reader find the best of them.

Begin here

The Method of Grace. The best single sermon to start with: the way to true peace with God, and the difference between it and false peace. In the Ochorus library, both on its own and in the Selected Sermons.

The Lord Our Righteousness. His fullest statement of imputed righteousness and the gospel of free grace. In the Ochorus library.

Walking with God. The gentlest and most practical of his sermons, on the means of keeping up communion with God. In the Ochorus library.

The Selected Sermons

The Ochorus library holds fifty-nine of Whitefield’s sermons in one volume, Selected Sermons of George Whitefield. Among those used in this book are On Regeneration and Marks of a True Conversion on the new birth; The Almost Christian; The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers and Marks of Having Received the Holy Ghost; Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy-Laden and Christ the Best Husband on the offer of Christ; The Duty of Searching the Scriptures; Directions How to Hear Sermons; Intercession Every Christian’s Duty; The Great Duty of Family Religion; The Great Duty of Charity Recommended; the sermon preached at Bethesda before the governor and assembly of Georgia in 1770; and his last London sermon, The Good Shepherd. Several of these, including Marks of a True Conversion, Intercession Every Christian’s Duty and Christ the Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption, are also in the Ochorus library as separate sermons.

His own story

A Short Account of God’s Dealings with the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield (1740) tells the story of his early life and conversion, and a Further Account continues it. His Journals, published in parts from 1738 onward, record his early voyages and preaching tours. They are vivid and immediate, and they contain the rash judgements of other ministers discussed in chapter eight; read them with that in mind. Neither is yet in the Ochorus library.

His letters, gathered after his death in the collected Works edited by John Gillies, show him at his warmest and most human. They also contain his correspondence about Bethesda and slavery, which should be read by anyone who wants the whole man.

About Whitefield

John Gillies, Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (1772), is the first biography, by a Scottish minister who knew him. Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield (two volumes, 1876–77), is a detailed Victorian life drawing heavily on letters and newspapers. Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival (two volumes, 1970 and 1980), is the fullest modern life, warm and admiring. Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist (1991), is a critical study of Whitefield as a performer and a pioneer of publicity; it is sharper than many evangelicals find comfortable, and it is worth reading for that reason. Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (2014), is a balanced recent biography that treats his faith seriously and his slaveholding honestly. J. C. Ryle’s chapter on him in The Christian Leaders of the Last Century (1869), later reissued as Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century, is a short and affectionate introduction. The Ochorus author page carries a shorter biography.

Approach with care

His writings on Georgia and slavery, in his letters and published appeals, should be read as a warning and not a model. His early Journals should be read alongside his later admission that he had judged too hastily. And his polemical passages against Arminians and Roman Catholics belong to the controversies of his age; take the gospel and leave the heat.

Three counsels for reading him

Read him with the Bible open. Whitefield’s sermons are threaded with Scripture, often quoted from memory; check the texts, and let them lead you further than he does.

Read him for the heart rather than the style. The rhetoric of the eighteenth century can seem overblown today. Look past it to the man who could not bear that anyone should go away without Christ.

And read him honestly. Do not make him a saint without shadow, nor a villain without grace. He was a sinner who preached a Saviour, and the Saviour is the point.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21