66

the tears of sincerity. His voice was often interrupted by his affection, and I have heard him say in the pulpit, 'You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and, for aught you know, you are hearing your last sermon.' God always makes use of strong passions," he was accustomed to say, “for a great work," and it was his object to rouse such passions by his eloquence to the highest point. Hume describes almost the whole assembly as weeping, and, though himself one of the most delicate of critics, and one of the coldest and most skeptical of men, he pronounced Whitefield the most ingenious preacher he had ever heard, and declared that it was worth going twenty miles to hear him.

The account which Franklin has given of the effects of the eloquence of Whitefield, though well known, is too characteristic to be omitted. Franklin, strongly disapproving of the scheme of building an orphanage in Georgia, which was but thinly populated, and where workmen and materials were scarce, instead of at Philadelphia, determined not to support it. "I happened soon after," he tells us, "to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver, and he finished so a 1mirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. At this sermon there was also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments respecting the building in Georgia, and suspecting a collection might be intended, had, by precaution, emptied his pockets before he came from home. Toward the conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong inclination to give, and applied to a

neighbor, who stood near him, to lend him some money for the purpose. The request was made to, perhaps, the only man in the company who had the firmness not to be affected by the preacher. His answer was, 'At any other time, friend Hopkinson, I would lend thee freely, but not now, for thee seems to me to be out of thy right senses.''

The effect of this style of preaching was greatly enhanced by an extreme variety of gesture, intonation, and manner. Considering the very small number of his ideas, it is a remarkable proof of the oratorical talents of Whitefield that his sermons were never charged with monotony. He frequently interspersed the more serious passages with anecdotes or illustrations. He sometimes even relieved them by a jest. Often, when the audience had been strung to the highest pitch of excitement, he would suddenly make a long, solemn, and dramatic pause. He painted scenes as if they were visibly present to the eye, with all the fire and the animation of the most perfect actor. On one occasion, when illustrating the peril of sinners, he described, with such admirable power, an old blind man, deserted by his dog, tottering feebly over the desolate moor, endeavoring in vain to feel his way with his staff, and gradually drawing nearer and nearer to the verge of a dizzy precipice, that when he arrived at the final catastrophe, no less a person than Lord Chesterfield lost all self-possession, and was heard audibly exclaiming, "Good God! he is gone." On another occasion, preaching before. seamen at New York, he adopted a nautical tone. "Well, my boys, we have a clear sky, and are making fine headway over a smooth sea before a light breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land. But what means this sudden lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud arising from beneath the western horizon? Hark! Don't you hear distant thunder? Don't you see those flashes of lightning? There is a storm gathering! Every man to his duty! How the waves arise and dash against the ship! The air is dark! The tempest rages! Our masts

are gone! The ship is on her beam-ends! What next?" "The long boat, take to the long boat!" shouted his excited hearers.

A very great part of his influence depended, no doubt, upon the matter of his discourses. He avoided all abstract reflections, all trains of reasoning, every thing that could fatigue the attention, or rouse the intellect to question or oppose. His preaching was based upon the most confident assertions, and it dealt almost exclusively with topics which, if firmly believed, could hardly fail to have a deep influence upon men. The utter depravity of human nature-the eternal tortures which are the doom of every unconverted man-the free salvation by Christ-the imminence of death-the necessity to salvation of a complete, supernatural change of character and emotions, were the subjects upon which he continually dilated. It is easy to understand that such topics, urged by a great orator, at a time when some of them were by no means familiar, should have exercised a far deeper influence than any dissertation upon the duties of man, or the authority of revelation. Besides this, Whitefield was perpetually changing his audience. His style was never suffered to pall upon his hearers. The same sermon was again and again repeated, and at every repetition, passages which appeared ineffective were retrenched, and a greater perfection of emphasis and intonation was acquired. Garrick and Foote declared that he never reached his highest perfection till the fortieth repetition. The picturesque scenes and the striking contrasts which out-of-door preaching furnished, added to the effect, and the great multitude who were attracted by his eloquence gave in turn to that eloquence an additional power. A contagion of excitement was aroused, and an irresistible wave of sympathetic feeling rolled through the mighty host.

I have dwelt at some length upon the preaching of Whitefield, for it was of vital importance to the religious revival of the eighteenth century. But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great statesman, Methodism would

probably have smoldered, and at last perished, like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century. Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching by Whitefield, in the February of 1739, carried the impulse through the great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of the same year, of the first Methodist chapel, was the beginning of an organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had been achieved.

LI.

AFTER CULLODEN.-STANHOPE.

[While the Church of England was being stirred to its depths by the preaching of Whitefield and his associates, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the young pretender, as he was called, made an attempt to recover his ancestral throne. Landing in Scotland, in 1745, with only six companions, he rallied many of the Highland clans around him, and gained brilliant successes at Preston Pans and at Falkirk, but was disastrously defeated at Culloden. After wandering for five months as a fugitive in the Highlands, he succeeded in making his escape to France.]

BUT where was he, the young and princely chief of this ill-fated enterprise, the new Charles of this second Worcester? His followers dismissed to seek safety as they could for themselves, he sometimes alone, sometimes with a single Highlander as his guide and companion, sometimes begirt with strange faces, of whose fidelity he had no assurance, a price set upon his head, hunted from mountain to island, and from island to mountain, pinched with famine, tossed by

storms, and unsheltered from the rains--such was now the object of so many long-cherished and lately towering hopes! In the five months of his weary wanderings-from April to November—almost every day might afford its own tale of hardship, danger, and alarm, and a mere outline must suffice for the general historian. It is much to Charles's honor, that, as one of his chance attendants declares, “ he used to say that the fatigues and distresses he underwent signified nothing at all, because he was only a single person, but when he reflected upon the many brave fellows who suffered in his cause, that, he behoved to own, did strike him to the heart, and did sink very deep within him." But most of all entitled to praise appear the common Highlanders around him.

Though in the course of these five months the secrets of his concealment became intrusted to several hundred persons, most of them poor and lowly, not one of them was ever tempted by the prize of £30,000 to break faith, and betray the suppliant fugitive, and, when destitute of other help and nearly, as it seemed, run to bay, he was saved by the generous self-devotion of a woman.

In the hope of finding a French ship to convey him, Charles had embarked, only eight days after Culloden, for that remote cluster of isles, to which the common name of Long Island is applied. Driven from place to place by contrary winds and storms, and having sometimes no other food than oatmeal and water, he at length gained South Uist, where his wants were in some degree relieved by the elder Clanranald. But his course being tracked or suspected, a large body of militia and regular troops, to the number of two thousand men, landed on the island, and commenced an eager search, while the shores were surrounded by small vessels of war. Concealment or escape seemed alike impossible, and so they must have proved, but for Miss Flora Macdonald, a name, says Dr. Johnson, which will forever live in history. This young lady was then on a visit to Clanranald's family, and was step