A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield
1854
A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield
1854
George Whitefield could hold a crowd of twenty thousand in an open field with nothing but his voice. He went from a drunken tavern boy in Gloucester to the most powerful preacher the English-speaking world had ever heard, and J.C. Ryle, one of Victorian England's most fiery evangelical voices, set out in 1854 to make sure history never forgot him. This biography fights for Whitefield's legacy against those who had dismissed him as an eccentric or a fanatic, tracing his transformation from a reluctant, tongue-tied young minister into the evangelist who crossed the Atlantic seven times, who preached to more people in person than anyone before him, and who helped ignite a spiritual revolution that reshaped Britain and America. Ryle gives us Whitefield in all his contradictions: the theatrical performer who wept on stage, the Calvinist who befriended Arminians, the man expelled from churches who filled fields. This is not neutral history. It is a 19th-century evangelical's passionate defense of his spiritual ancestor, written with the conviction that Whitefield's story matters because the gospel it proclaimed still matters. For anyone who wants to understand where evangelicalism came from, or who simply loves a life lived at full intensity, this is the place to start.
Editions
X-Ray
“Whitefield was the very first who seems thoroughly to have understood what Chalmers has called the aggressive system. He did not wait for souls to come to him, but he went after souls. He did not sit tamely by his fireside, mourning over the wickedness of the land. He went forth to beard the Devil in his high places. He attacked sin and wickedness face to face, and gave them no peace. He dived into holes and corners after sinners. He hunted up ignorance and vice, wherever it could be found. He showed that he thoroughly realized the nature of the ministerial office. Like a fisherman, he did not wait for the fish to come to him. Like a fisherman, he used every kind of means to catch souls.””
— J. C. Ryle
“Whitefield, again, was among the first to show the right way to meet infidels and skeptics. He saw clearly that the most powerful weapon against such men is not metaphysical reasoning and critical disquisition; but preaching the whole gospel, living the whole gospel, and spreading the whole gospel.””
— J. C. Ryle
“As to the substance of Whitefield's theological teaching, the simplest account I can give of it is, that it was purely evangelical. There were four main things that he never lost sight of in his sermons. These four were: man's complete ruin by sin, and consequent natural corruption of heart; man's complete redemption by Christ, and complete justification before God by faith in Christ; man's need of regeneration by the Spirit, and entire renewal of heart and life; and man's utter want of any title to be considered a living Christian, unless he is dead to sin and lives a holy life.””
— J. C. Ryle
