GuineaField

Click to buy from Amazon Whitefield has taken over Spurgeon as my favorite historical figure to read. "He who walks with wise men will be wise" (Proverbs 13:20). We all would be wiser if we walked with Whitefield for at least one biography. I read Dallimore's one volume summary of Whitefield's life and had to read the two volume account. I just finished the first volume and am now going through the second volume. Dallimore does a wonderful job painting Whitfield's life as well as the times and figures surrounding the great awakening. In first volume, in addition to telling the story of Whitefield, Dallimore gives short bio sketches of the Wesleys, Howell Harris, John Cennick, and many others in shorter sketches. He also details the rise of the Wesleys on the achievements/ministry of Whitefield and the disagreements between them (which is a fascinating side story). I'll give an extremely brief summary of the first volume and then highlight a couple character tr...

I like Benjamin Franklin's description of Whitefield's appeal for money to build an orphanage in Georgia . . . Whitefield waited many months before he took the first offering in the states for an orphanage even though it was for the orphans within the states. "Mr. Whitefield . . . preached up this charity . . . I refused to contribute [because of a disagreement on the location] . . . I happened, soon after, to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all." George Whitefield, by Arnold Dallimor...