Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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In 1733 George Whitefield arrived at Oxford, then in his nineteenth year. Like most of this band, Whitefield was, if not really, comparatively poor, and dependent upon help to enable him to pursue his studies; not so poor, perhaps, as an illustrious predecessor in the same college (Pembroke), who had left only the year before, one Samuel Johnson, the state of whose shoes excited so much commiseration in some benevolent heart, that a pair of new ones was placed outside his rooms, only, however, creating surprise in the morning, when he was seen indignantly kicking them up and down the passage. Whitefield was not troubled by such over-sensitive and delicate feelings; men are made differently. Johnson’s rugged independence did its work; and the easy facility and amiable disposition, which could receive favours without a sense of degradation, were very essential to what Whitefield was to be. He, however, when he came to Oxford, was caught in the same glamour of mysticism as John Wesley. But in this case it was Thomas à-Kempis who had besieged the soul of the young enthusiast; he was miserable, his life, his heart and mind were crushed beneath this altogether inhuman and unattainable standard for salvation. He was a Quietist—what a paradox!—Whitefield a Quietist! He was seeking salvation by works of righteousness which he could do. He was practising the severest austerities and renouncing the claims of an external world; he was living an internal life which God did not intend should bring to him either rest or calm; for, in that case, how could he ever have stirred the deep foundations of universal sympathy?