Dare to be singularly good. Why should we be dwarfs in holiness? There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people. I expect to see you once more in this land of the dying. If not, ere long I shall meet you in the land of the living. CHAPTER XI WHITEFIELD THE MAN WHITEFIELD was a most lovable man, warmhearted, generous, frank; with no trace of a revengeful spirit. If he made some enemies, he won ten times as many friends; and what is more, he clung to his friends and they clung to him; he would have perished without them; he feasted on human love. He was fond of America, and at the call of duty he never hesitated to turn his face westward; and yet one of the keenest trials of his life was the parting from dear ones in the homeland. On an early voyage, as the shores of England faded from his view, he wrote these words: "Parting seasons of late have been to me dying seasons. Surely they have broken my very heart." He said to a friend, "In parting from you, I feel that I am being executed again and again." Once when he was about to sail, several intimate companions sent word they would be at the ship to see him off. But he begged them not to do so: "I dare not meet you now. I cannot bear your coming to me to part from me. It cuts me to the heart.' He was impulsive, and he had quarrels, many of them, but, like his faults in general, they involved the head rather than the heart. If in the wrong, he was prompt to seek forgiveness, and he was ready to go almost any length to heal a breach. Longcontinued enmity was a grief of soul to him, and he did his best to avoid it. No doubt he was thinking of what he himself had often done in the counsel which he urged on an English gentleman: "My very dear Sir, do forgive and forget; and if you are conscious you have been too hasty in any respect, pray send to Mr. B- a few lines of love. We never lose anything by stooping." Those were disputatious times, and Whitefield was embroiled in all manner of theological controversies, especially in his early ministry. In the single year 1739, more than forty pamphlets were published against him. Partisan meddlers egged him on to more than one needless tilt. Nothing seemed to gratify them more than to cause trouble between Whitefield and some intimate friend. There was no person in the world to whom he owed so much in the way of spiritual leadership as to John Wesley, a man eleven years his senior and of mature Christian experience. And yet, when a young fellow of only twenty-six, because of certain doctrinal differences, he broke off all relations with Wesley, refusing even to give him his hand. However, these were mere outbursts of youthful folly. The breach was soon healed, and the friendship was never again disturbed. Some years later, when Wesley lay very sick and it was feared he might not live, one of the tenderest letters he received was |