Excerpt from Sketches of the Life and Labours of the Rev. George Whitefield: To Which Are Added Two Discourses, Preached in the Year 1729

But is it not desirable that these symbols should now be reduced to intelligible words, so that the multitude at large may read and understand? The Life of White field, the common benefactor, should be accessible to the common capacity. His own earnest wish, indeed, was, Let the name'of Whitefield perish, if the name of God be but exalted - and it was in this spirit that he lived, laboured, and died, neither seeking to advance his own reputation, nor to form a party that should be called by his name, but only earnest that the Redeemer might be all in all. But these are the very men whom God most highly honours, and whose history the world ought chiefly to study. And the time, we trust, is at hand, when Whitefield will be the revered and honoured of men, as well as the approved servant of his heavenly Master. Every succeeding generation since his own day has more sensibly felt and more distinctly appre ciated the blessing which his mission has conferred; and soon, we trust, the desire will be universal, of having before our eyes the movements and the example of that bright evangelist of modern Christendom, by whose labours our fathers were so highly blessed, and the fruits of which we have so happily inherited.

To write such a work as we desire, and which would be truly worthy of the title of a life of Whitefield, would require talent of no ordinary character, combined with the study and research of years. For only think of the districts and lands he traversed, the sermons he preached, the impressions he produced. Within the short space of thirty years, the toils and events of three ages of common life seem to be comprised. Eng land should furnish one Life of him, in which a long detail would be given of his apostolic range through all her diversified classes, from the glittering ornaments of the court of George II., to the mob of Moorfields, and the colliers of Kingswood. The principali of Wales would have another, in which she would tell of his wel come visits among her mountains, and the awakenings his sermons occasioned upon her benighted, but suscep tible, population. Scotland could furnish the entire of a third Life, and not the least remarkable or interesting, telling of effects he had wrought upon her strong hard intellect and iron nerves, such as no Englishman had produced since the days of Edward I. And America - the land of his last labours and his tomb - how much he toiled for her, and how much these toils were blessed, before she boldly plunged into her perilous conflict for independence, and raised aloft her star-spangled banner! So many lands to be consulted; so many narratives to be woven into one whole; so many effects to be traced in the subsequent history, not only of the Church, but the sects of every country to which his energies were successively devoted - in all this, there 18 work for the whole life-time of some future able and laborious biographer; and 0, that he may address himself to the task in the Spirit of him whom he seeks to com memorate, and write as Whitefield preached!

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