CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

{ PT.  11 } - How brief--comparatively brief--has been my life compared to the vast labors that I see before me yet to be accomplished. But if I leave now, while so few care about heavenly things, the God of peace will surely visit you. After the sermon was over, Whitefield ate with a friend and then rode on to Newburyport, though greatly fatigued. Upon arriving there, he ate supper early and then went to bed. Tradition says that as he went upstairs with a lighted candle in his hand, he could not resist the inclination to turn around at the top of the stairs and speak to the friends who were assembled to meet him. As he spoke, the fire kindled within him, and before he could conclude, the candle that he held in has hand had actually burned down to the socket. He went to his bedroom, to come out no more alive. A violent fit of spasmodic asthma seized him soon after he got into bed, and before six o'clock the next morning, the great preacher was dead. If ever anyone was ready for his...