vere, but not in vain, for it saved him from any future extravagancies of that kind. His marriage was not* a happy one; and the death of his wife is said, by one of his friends, to have "set his mind much at liberty." It is asserted that she did not behave in all respects as she ought; but it is admitted, that their disagreement was increased by some persons who made pretensions to more holiness than they possessed. Whitefield was irritable, and impatient of contradiction; and, even if his temper had been as happily constituted as Wesley's, his habits of life must have made him, like Wesley, a most uncomfortable husband. His popularity, however, was greatly on the increase. So great, indeed, was his confidence in his powers over the rudest of mankind, that he ventured upon preaching to the rabble in Moorfields during the Whitsun holydays, when, as he said, Satan's children kept up their annual rendezvous there. This was a sort of pitched battle with Satan, and Whitefield displayed some generalship upon the occasion. He took the field betimes, with a large congregation of "praying people" to attend him, and began at six in the morning, before the enemy had mustered in strength. Not above ten thousand persons were assembled waiting for the sports; and, having nothing else to do, they, for mere pastime, presently flocked round his field-pulpit. "Glad was I to find," says he, "that I had, for once, as it were, got the start of the devil." Encouraged by the success of his morning preaching, he ventured there again at noon, when, in his own words, "the fields, the whole fields, seemed, in a bad sense of the word, all white, ready, not for the Redeemer's, but Beelzebub's harvest. All his agents were in full motion; drummers, trumpeters, merry-andrews, masters of puppet-shows, exhibiters of wild beasts, players, &c. &c. all busy in entertaining their respective auditories." He estima *It was not likely to be so, as may be judged from what he says to one of his married friends: "I hope you are not nimis urorius. Take heed, my dear B., take heed! Time is short. It remains that those who have wives, be as though they had none. Let nothing intercept or interrupt your communion with the bridegroom of the Church." - ted the crowd to consist of from twenty to thirty thousand persons; and thinking that, like St. Paul, he should now, in a metaphorical sense, be called to fight with wild beasts, he took for his text, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."-" You may easily guess," says he, "that there was some noise among the craftsmen, and that I was honoured with having a few stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me, while engaged in calling them from their favourite but lying vanities. My soul was, indeed, among lions; but far the greatest part of my congregation, which was very large, seemed for a while to be turned into lambs." He then gave notice that he would preach again at six in the evening. "I came," he says, "I saw, but what?-thousands and thousands more than before, if possible, still more deeply engaged in their unhappy diversions, but some thousands amongst them waiting as earnestly to hear the Gospel. This Satan could not brook. One of his choicest servants was exhibiting, trumpeting on a large stage; but, as soon as the people saw me in my black robes, and my pulpit, I think all, to a man, left him and ran to me. For a while I was enabled to lift up my voice like a trumpet, and many heard the joyful sound. God's people kept praying, and the enemy's agents made a kind of roaring at some distance from our camp. At length they approached nearer, and the merry-andrew (attended by others, who complained that they had taken many pounds less that day, on account of my preaching) got upon a man's shoulders, and advancing near the pulpit, attempted to slash me with a long heavy whip several times, but always, with the violence of his motion, tumbled down." Soon afterwards, they got a recruiting sergeant, with his drums, fifes, and followers, to pass through the congregation. But Whitefield, by his tactics, baffled this manoeuvre: he ordered them to make way for the king's officers; the ranks opened, and when the party had marched through, closed again. When the uproar became, as it sometimes did, such as to overpower his single voice, he called the voices of all his people to his aid, and began singing; and thus, what with singing, praying, and preaching, he continued, by his own account, three hours upon the ground, till the darkness made it time to break up. So great was the impression which this wonderful man produced in this extraordinary scene, that more than a thousand notes were handed up to him, from persons who, as the phrase is, were brought under concern by his preaching that day, and three hundred and fifty persons joined his congregation. On the Tuesday he removed to Mary-le-bone fields, a place of similar resort. Here a Quaker had prepared a very high pulpit for him, but not having fixed the supports well in the ground, the preacher found himself in some jeopardy, especially when the mob endeavoured to push the circle of his friends against it, and so to throw it down. But he had a narrower escape after he had descended; "for as I was passing," says he, "from the pulpit to the coach, I felt my wig and hat to be almost off: I turned about, and observed a sword just touching my temples. A young rake, as I afterwards found, was determined to stab me; but a gentleman, seeing the sword thrusting near me, struck it up with his cane, and so the destined victim providentially escaped." The man who made this atrocious attempt, probably in a fit of drunken fury, was seized by the people, and would have been handled as severely as he deserved, if one of Whitefield's friends had not sheltered him. The following day Whitefield returned to the attack in Moorfields; and here he gave a striking example of that ready talent which turns every thing to its purpose. A merry-andrew, finding that no common acts of buffoonery were of any avail, got into a tree near the pulpit, and, as much, perhaps, in despite, as in insult, exposed his bare posteriors to the preacher, in the sight of all the people. The more brutal mob applauded him with loud laughter, while decent persons were abashed; and Whitefield himself was, for a moment, confounded; but instantly recovering himself, he appealed to all, since now they had such a spectacle before them, whether he had wronged human nature in saying, with Bishop Hall, that man, when left to himself, is half a fiend and half a brute; or, in calling him, with William Law, a motley mixture of the beast and devil! The appeal was not lost upon the crowd, whatever it might be upon the wretch by whom it was occasioned. A circumstance at these adventurous preachings is mentioned, which affected Whitefield himself, and must have produced considerable effect upon others:-several children, of both sexes, used to sit round him, on the pulpit, while he preached, for the purpose of handing to him the notes, which were delivered by persons upon whom his exhortations had acted as he desired.These poor children were exposed to all the missiles with which he was assailed: however much they were terrified or hurt, they never shrunk, “but, on the contrary," says he, "every time I was struck, they turned up their little weeping eyes, and seemed to wish they could receive the blows for me.' Shortly after his separation from Wesley, some Calvinistic dissenters built a large shed for him, near the Foundry, upon a piece of ground which was lent for the purpose, till he should return to America.From the temporary nature of the structure, they called it a Tabernacle, in allusion to the moveable place of worship of the Israelites during their journey in the wilderness; and the name being in puritanical taste, became the designation of all the chapels of the Calvinistic Methodists. In this place Whitefield was assisted by Cennick, and others, who sided with him at the division; and he employed laypreachers with less reluctance than Wesley had done, because the liking which he had acquired in America for the old puritans had, in some degree, alienated his feelings from the church, and his predestinarian opinions brought him in contact with the dissenters. But Whitefield had neither the ambition of founding a separate community, nor the talent for it; he would have contented himself with being the founder of the Orphan-house at Savannah, and with the effect which he produced as a roving preacher; and Calvinistic Methodism, perhaps, might never have been embo died into a separate sect, if it had not found a patroness in Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. This "noble and elect lady," as her followers bave called her, was daughter of Washington Earl of Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Earl of Huntingdon. There was a decided insanity in her family. Her sisters-in-law, Lady Betty and Lady Margaret Hastings, were of a religious temper; the former had been the patroness of the first Methodists at Oxford; the latter had become a disciple, and at length married Wesley's old pupil and fellow-missionary Ingham. Lady Margaret communicated her opinions to the Countess; the Wesleys were called in to her, after a dangerous illness, which had been terminated by the new birth; and her husband's tutor, Bishop Benson, who was sent for afterwards, in hopes that he might restore her to a saner sense of devotion, found all his arguments ineffectual: instead of receiving instructions from him, she was disposed to be the teacher, quoted the homilies against him, insisted upon her own interpretation of the articles, and attacked him upon the awful responsibility of his station. All this is said to have irritated him; the emotion which he must needs have felt, might have been more truly, as well as more charitably, interpreted; and when he left her, he lamented that he had ever laid his hands upon George Whitefield. 66 My lord," she replied, " mark my words! when you come upon your dying bed, that will be one of the few ordinations you will reflect upon with complacence." During the Earl's life she restrained herself, in deference to his wishes; but, becoming mistress of herself, and of a liberal income, at his death, she took a more decided and public part, and, had means permitted, would have done as much for Methodism as the Countess Matilda did for the Papacy. Upon Whitefield's return from America, in 1748, he was invited to her house at Chelsea as soon as he landed. And after he had officiated there twice, she wrote to him, inviting him again, that some of the nobility might hear him. "Blessed be God," |