We lead a moving life, but I trust we move heavenward. Eternity! Eternity! The very writing or hearing of this word is enough to make one dead to the world and alive to God. CHAPTER IX RANGING AND HUNTING IN WHITEFIELD's first visit to America, in the summer of 1738, was very brief. After a few weeks in Savannah he returned to England, partly to complete his ordination to the priesthood and partly to obtain money for the proposed orphanage. The following summer he sailed again for these Western shores, landing near Cape Henlopen, on the Delaware coast, and riding through the forest to Philadelphia. This time he remained in America more than a year, becoming fairly introduced to the people on whom he was to make so deep and lasting an impression. When he left England it was supposed he would quietly settle in Savannah as minister of the parish church. Impossible for such a man! He went down to Georgia but was too restless to stay there. True, he needed help for the orphanage from the wealthy colonies in the North; but, far more, he was a prophet, with a divine message as a burning fire shut up in his bones, a message not for an obscure corner but for the entire land. And soon we find him entering on that long series of journeys, North and South, which continued at intervals till his death in 1770. AMERICA IN WHITEFIELD'S TIME The America that Whitefield knew was not only quite unlike the America of to-day, but in many ways it differed from the mother country. The population was sparse and there were only three cities of any size-Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. For many years Boston led, but before the Revolution Philadelphia had leaped forward and proudly boasted of 32,000 inhabitants; New York followed with 23,000, and Boston dropped into third place with only 16,000. Transportation was tedious, and so far as possible waterways were used. Roads may have been none too good in England, but they were boulevards compared with those in America. Outside of the cities wheeled vehicles were unknown till the middle of the eighteenth century; people traveled on horseback. The first stagecoach between New York and Philadelphia was put on in 1756. In fair weather the distance of ninety miles was covered in three days. No wonder that Whitefield shunned winter travel. It was conducive neither to good spirits nor good health, to arrive at an inn at ten o'clock at night, worn, famished, and half frozen; swallow a bit of cold supper, climb into a cold bed, and at three in the morning climb out again, dress by the feeble light of a farthing candle, and amid snow and ice start off on another eighteen-hour journey. In 1769, shortly before White |