pel.' When he is ill, he trusts that
preaching will soon cure him again. 'This,' he says, 'is my grand
Catholicon. O that I may drop and die in my blessed Master's work.' His
wish was almost literally fulfilled. When his strength was failing him,
when he was worn out before his time in his Master's work, he lamented
that he was 'reduced to the short allowance of one sermon a day, and
three on Sundays.'[751] He preached when he was literally a dying man.
His other work scarcely claims a passing notice in a short sketch like
the present, especially as his peculiar opinions and his relationship
with the Wesleys and others will again come under our notice in
connection with the Calvinistic controversy. With the exception of
letters to his friends and followers, and the inevitable journal (almost
every member of the Evangelical school in the last century kept a
journal), he wrote comparatively little; and what he did write,
certainly need not cause us to regret that he wrote no more. On one of
his voyages from America, Whitefield employed his leisure in abridging
and gospelising Law's 'Serious Call.' Happily the work does not appear
to have been finished; at any rate, it was not given to the world. Law's
great work would certainly bear 'gospelising,' but Whitefield was not
the man to do it. William Law improved by George Whitefield would be
something like William Shakspeare improved by Colley Gibber. But the
incident suggests the very different qualities which are required for
the preacher and the writer. What was the character of Law's preaching
we do not know, except from one sermon preached in his youth; but we may
safely assume that he could never have produced the effects which
Whitefield did.[752] On the other hand, one trembles at the very thought
of Whitefield meddling with Law's masterpiece, for he certainly could
not have touched it without spoiling it.

Whitefield's Orphan House in Georgia was his hobby; it was only one out
of a thousand instances of his benevolence; but his enthusiastic efforts
in behalf of it hardly form a part of the Evangelical revival, and
therefore need not be dwelt upon.

The individuality of _Charles Wesley_ (1708-1788), the sweet psalmist of
Methodism, is perhaps in some danger of being merged in that of his more
distinguished brother. And yet he had a very decided character of his
own; he would have been singularly unlike the Wesley family if he had
not. Charles Wesley was by no means t