The Minister's Mimic
George Whitefield
"My beloved brethren and sisters. Give ear to the words of my mouth. I speak the message of the Almighty."
The crowd at the bar roared with laughter. "Bravo, lad! Bravo," a stocky man shouted as he lifted his glass of brew.
"If I couldn't see you, boy, I'd be scared out of my wits," another customer said. "To think of old Preacher Cole thundering forth in your mother's tavern."
Young George Whitefield, barely fifteen, was up to his favorite trick of mimicking Mr. Cole, the pastor of Southgate Chapel in Gloucester, England. Mimicking the neighborhood minister had become a nightly amusement for him while he tended the bar for his mother and step-father.
George Whitefield's talent for mimicking and dramatic acting was well known in the neighborhood. At school he was always called upon to bring the speech when the mayor paid his annual visit. Sometimes he was truant from school for days at a time to practice parts in dramatic plays.
When he reached fifteen, his schooling ended. His mother said he was needed to help out in the family
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tavern. So the youth who would one day become a world-famous evangelist spent the afternoons and evenings mopping the floor, serving brew, and mimicking Mr. Cole, the minister.
One night, George and his cronies even broke in on a service conducted by the minister. Shouting "Old Cole! Old Cole!" the boys almost turned the meeting into pandemonium.
What George's friends and the tavern customers did not know was that underneath George was really interested in Mr. Cole's sermons. Often after the tavern had closed, the youth sat up late reading the Bible.
One day a friend came by the tavern to suggest that George consider going to Oxford. "You can work your way through," the friend said.
George consulted with his mother, and it was agreed that he should return to grammar school and finish his studies to qualify for the university.
When the young bartender finally reached Oxford, he met John and Charles Wesley. The brothers had formed the "Holy Club," called by mocking students "The Godly Club," "Bible Moths," "Bible Bigots," and most frequently, "Methodists" because of the regular routine of worship which they followed.
But George was attracted by the strict religious and devotional habits which the Wesley brothers observed. In his second year at Oxford he joined the club, vowing to live by the rule.
He fasted and prayed as religiously as the other Holy Club members. But to his disappointment, he found no soul peace.
Charles Wesley lent him a book called The Life of God in the Soul of Man. The teachings of the book
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shone into young Whitefield's heart like rays of light. "God showed me," Whitefield wrote later, "that true religion was union of the soul with God, and Christ proved within us."
Seeking this true religion, George Whitefield gave himself to incessant prayer. Night after night he groaned and agonized on his bed, bidding Satan to depart from him. He tried living on a starvation diet and giving almost all of his money to the poor. He wore coarse woolen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes. Finally, his feverish seeking for union with God made him ill.
Then one day he remembered that Jesus' declaration of His thirst had come when He hung on the cross. His sufferings were almost finished. Young Whitefield suddenly threw himself down on his bed. "I thirst! I thirst!" he cried.
Later he testified of what happened. "Soon after this, I felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden. The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was to truly rejoice in God my Saviour."
Barely a year later, Whitefield was preaching his "new birth" doctrine in London's largest churches. All England soon became excited over the boy preacher with the golden voice.
At the invitation of the Wesley brothers, Whitefield went to America. He led a dramatic spiritual awakening in Georgia. Returning to England, he found he was more popular than ever. When the embarrassed state church locked its doors to him, Whitefield took to the fields and preached to crowds of thirty thousand and more. Large numbers of his hearers professed experiencing the new birth.
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Back to America he went. His ministry was so fruitful that even skeptical Benjamin Franklin declared, "It seems as if all the world is growing religious." George Whitefield was then only twenty-six years old.
For thirty more years Whitefield preached to large crowds, shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic. He died in 1770, still praying for those who would not heed the call of Christ. Lord Bolingbroke, the skeptic, called him "the most extraordinary man in our times."
