“Now it pleased God to send Mr. Whitefield into this land and my hearing of his preaching at Philadelphia, like one of the old apostles, and many thousands flocking after him to hear the gospel and great numbers converted to Christ…it was said to be 3 or 4000 people assembled together.”

This is a passage I read about 35 years ago, and I have never forgotten it. It is thrilling to imagine, and I pray we live to see such a scene once again (perhaps without the horses). At the very least, we should all pray that the Lord would move our own hearts with such enthusiasm, not so much for the preacher, but for the gospel. Perhaps we will all make hast to the church this week.

Sarah Edwards wrote to her brother in New Haven, the Rev. James Pierrepont, to tell him of George Whitefield’s visit and to encourage him to welcome the preacher:

It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible. I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-suppressed sob. He impresses the ignorant, and not less the educated and refined. It is reported that while the miners of England listened to him, the tears made white furrows down their smutty cheeks. So here, our mechanics shut up their shops, and the day-laborers throw down their tools, to go and hear him preach, and few return unaffected…. He speaks from a heart all aglow with love and pours out a torrent of eloquence which is almost irresistible. Many, very many, persons in Northampton date the beginning of new thoughts, new desires, new purposes, and a new life, from the day on which they heard him preach of Christ and this salvation. Perhaps I ought to tell you that Mr. Edwards and some others think him in error on a few practical points; but his influence on the whole is so good we ought to bear with little mistakes. [Quoted from Hours at Home, August, 1867, p. 295, by J. B. Wakeley in Anecdotes of George Whitefield, 1879, p. 278.]

Sarah Edwards’ words were confirmed again many times even before her brother read the letter. Whitefield’s sermon at East Windsor on the Tuesday night had been the sixth since he left Northampton forty-eight hours before. On Wednesday he preached at Hartford and Wethersfield. On Thursday the record of a farmer, Nathan Cole, gives some idea both of the interest now kindled in spiritual things and of the way great congregations could be gathered at brief notice:

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