CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY - ( CHAPTER 3 ) - { PT. 9 }


 { PT.  9 } - This, it will be observed, made thirteen sermons a week! And all this time he was carrying on a large correspondence with people in almost every part of the world. It indeed seems astonishing that any human frame could so long endure the labors that Whitefield went through. It is no less amazing that his life was not cut short by violence, to which he was frequently exposed. However, he was immortal until his work was done. He died at last very suddenly at Newburyport,Massachusetts, on Sunday, September 29, 1770, at the comparatively early age of fifty-six. He was once married to a widow named Elizabeth James, of Abergavenny, Wales, who died before him. If we can judge from the little mention made of his wife in his letters, his marriage does not seem to have contributed much to his happiness. He left no children, but he left a name far better than that of sons and daughters. Never, perhaps, was there a man of whom it could be so truly said that he spent and was spent for Christ ( 2  CORINTHIANS  12:15 ) than George Whitefield. The circumstances and specific details of this great evangelist's end are so deeply interesting that I will not make any excuse for dwelling on them. It was an end in remarkable harmony with the tone of his life. He died as he had lived for more than thirty years--preaching to the very last. He literally almost died in harness. Sudden death, he had often said, is sudden glory! Whether right or not, I cannot help wishing that I may go off in the same manner. To me it would be worse than death to live to be nursed and to see friends weeping about me. He had the desire of his heart granted. He was cut down in a single night by a fit of spasmodic asthma, almost before his friends knew that he was ill. 

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