ed to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous
for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken
in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was thus deprived of
the chief normal means of exercising his talents his attention was
called to the condition of the colliers of Kingswood. He was filled with
horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country,
and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many
thousands sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely
excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he
resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was
a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and
it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it
must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the centre of a
half-savage population.

Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his
powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first
words of the Sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed
with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men.
The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions
five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February,
but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with
the carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn
from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners,
and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The face of the preacher
paled with a thrilling power to the very outskirts of that mighty
throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the
contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the
condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he
was taking, gave an additional solemnity. His rude auditors were
electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention.
Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened
from the coal-mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were
melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of
Kingswood, which burned long and fiercely, and was destined in a few
years to overspread the land.

It was only with great difficulty that Whitefield could persuade the
Wesleys to join him in this new phase of missiona