CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - [ CHAPTER 4 ] - { PT. 7 }


 { PT.  7 } - He won the admiration of high as well as low, of rich as well as poor, of learned as well as unlearned. If his preaching had been popular with none but the uneducated and the poor, we might have thought it possible that there was little in it but rhetoric and noise. However, so far from this being the case, he seems to have been acceptable to many members of the nobility and upper class. Lothian, the Earl of Leven, the Earl of Buchan, Lord Rae, Lord Dartmouth, and Lord James  A.  Gordon can be named among his warmest admirers, in addition to Lady Huntingdon and a host of other ladies. It is a fact that eminent critics and literary men, like Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Chesterfield, were frequently his delighted hearers. Even the cold, artificial Lord Chesterfield was known to warm under Whitefield's eloquence. Lord Bolingbroke said, He is the most extraordinary man in our times. He has the most commanding eloquence I ever heard in any person. The philosopher Benjamin Franklin spoke in no measured terms of his preaching powers. The historian David Hume declared that it was worth going twenty miles to hear him. Facts like these can never be explained away. They completely upset the theory that Whitefield's preaching was nothing but noise and rant. Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Hume, and Franklin were not men who were easily deceived.They were no poor judges of eloquence. They were probably among the best qualifield critics of their day.

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