st multitude burst into tears. It remained for
the present generation to do justice to his memory by giving a place in
our Christian Walhalla among the great dead to one who was certainly
among the greatest of his day.[746]

The next great leader of the early Evangelical movement who claims our
attention is _George Whitefield_ (1714-1770). Whitefield, like Wesley,
appears from first to last to have been actuated by one pure and
disinterested motive--the desire to do as much good as he could in the
world, and to bring as many souls as possible into the Redeemer's
kingdom. But, except in this one grand point of resemblance, before
which all points of difference sink into insignificance, it would be
difficult to conceive two men whose characters and training were more
different than those of Wesley and Whitefield.[747] Instead of the calm
and cultured retirement of Epworth Rectory, Whitefield was brought up
amidst the vulgar bustle of a country town inn. His position was not
very much improved when he exchanged the drawer's apron at the 'Bell
Inn,' Gloucester, for the degrading badge of a servitor at Pembroke
College, Oxford. After two or three years' experience in this scarcely
less menial capacity than that which he had filled at home, he was at
once launched into the sea of life, and found himself, at the age of
twenty-two, with hardly any intellectual or moral discipline, without
having acquired any taste for study, without having ever had the benefit
of associating on anything like terms of equality with men of intellect
or refinement, suddenly elevated to a degree of notoriety which few have
attained. Scarcely one man in a thousand could have passed through such
a transformation without being spoiled. But Whitefield's was too noble a
spirit to be easily spoiled. Nature had given him a loving, generous,
unselfish disposition, and Divine grace had sanctified and elevated his
naturally amiable qualities and given him others which nature can never
bestow. He went forth into the world filled with one burning desire--the
desire of doing good to his fellow-men and of extending the kingdom of
his Divine Master.

It is needless here to repeat the story of the marvellous effects
produced by his preaching. Nothing like it had ever been seen in England
before. Ten thousand--twenty thousand--hearers hung breathless upon the
preacher's words. Rough colliers, who had been a terror to their
neighbourhood, wept until the tears made