them delivered in a moment." It is almost
needless now to say that bursts of irrepressible laughter are among the
commonest forms of hysterical excitement.

[Sidenote: 1738--Whitefield's oratory]

The cooler common-sense of Charles Wesley, however, {139} saw these
manifestations with different eyes. He felt sure that there was
sometimes a good deal of affectation in them, and he publicly
remonstrated with some women who, as it appeared to him, were
needlessly making themselves ridiculous. He was probably right in
these instances: the instinct of imitation is so strong among men and
women that every genuine outburst of maniacal excitement is sure to be
followed by some purely mimetic efforts of a similar demonstration.
The novelty of the whole movement was enough to account for the genuine
and the sham hysterics. It was an entirely new experience then for
English men and women of the humblest class, and of that generation, to
be addressed in great open-air masses by renowned and powerful
preachers. Whitefield's first great effort at field-preaching was made
for the benefit of the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol. Before
many weeks had gone by, he could gather round him some twenty thousand
of these men. Whitefield had a marvellous fervor and force of oratory.
His voice, his gestures, his sudden and startling appeals, his solemn
pauses, the dramatic and even theatric energy which he threw into his
attitudes and his action, his flights of lofty and sustained
declamation, contrasting with sentences of homely colloquialism, were
overwhelming in their effect on such an audience. "The first
discovery," he says himself, "of their being affected was to see the
white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their
cheeks, black as they came out of the coal-pits." It was not only
miners and other illiterate men whom Whitefield impressed by the fervor
and passion of his eloquence. Hume, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole,
and other men as well qualified to judge, and as little likely to fall
under the spell of religions or sentimental enthusiasm, have borne
willing testimony to the irresistible power of a sermon from Whitefield.

Wesley and Whitefield did not remain long in spiritual companionship.
They could not agree as to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination.
Wesley was opposed to {140} the doctrine; Whitefield willing to accept
it. They discussed and discussed the question, but without drawin