from Whitefield, closing with the words, "Your most affectionate, sympathizing, and afflicted younger brother." Knowing that the two men disagreed on certain points of doctrine, a zealous partisan of Whitefield asked him one day, "Do you think we shall see John Wesley in heaven?"

"No, sir!" was the prompt reply. "He will be so near the throne and we at such a distance that we shall hardly get a sight of him."

When Whitefield began his ministry, to all intents he was an Arminian, but a year or two later he announced he was a Calvinist. Contact with Presbyterianism in Scotland and America led to the change, and in one way it was a practical help, for on both sides of the sea it gave him a ready hearing in a multitude of circles where Wesley would have been looked upon as a heretic. And yet all through life he preached universal salvation with an abandon that, in those days, must have startled the strict disciples of the great Genevan.

The fact is, as we have seen, Whitefield was not a theologian, and it is unlikely that he ever thought through a system of theology. But with all his soul he believed in the glory of God, and Calvinism's special emphasis on this point appealed to him. He was ready, eager, to sink to any depth of abasement and carry humanity with him, in the effort to magnify Deity. He wrote to a friend: "I hope we shall catch fire from each other and that there may be an holy emulation amongst us, who

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shall most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus." As Franklin observed, one of his frequent expressions was, "Man is half a beast and half a devil." Over and over again he described himself as "a worm and no man," "a dead dog," "a vile, worth

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less, ungrateful wretch,” “a sink of sin and corruption." His bitterest foes never hurled at him more opprobrious epithets than he applied to himself. Evidently, he believed that the surest way to honor the Creator was to dishonor the creature.

But whatever Whitefield's ideas on these points, or however closely held, be it said to his credit that he rarely if ever preached them in a controversial spirit. His theology was not of the militant kind, and as the years passed he increasingly abhorred disputing for disputing's sake. "We do not dispute," he said, "but love. I find more and more that truth is great, and however seemingly crushed for a while, will in the end prevail”; and as he wrote in one of his beautiful letters to Benjamin Franklin, "Though we cannot agree in principles, yet we agree in love.”

Whitefield was remarkably broad and tolerant in his church sympathies. To the close of his life he was a regular priest of the Anglican communion, and had he been permitted, no doubt the great bulk of his work would have been done in that body. In reality it was a Divine Hand that thrust him out. Like the founder of Methodism, he was too big for any single branch; he belonged to the Church Uni

versal. The oft-quoted expression, "I look upon all the world as my parish," was used for the first time by both Wesley and Whitefield in letters written in the same year, 1739.

When Whitefield was refused admission to Episcopal pulpits he turned to the Dissenters, who, as a rule, welcomed him with open arms. This change was especially easy in America, with its freer spirit and its strong nonconforming bodies. Without surrendering in any measure his place and standing in the church of his ordination, through most of his life he was virtually a Dissenting minister; and yet, as we have seen, he belonged to the whole church. He used to exclaim: "Oh, for a mind divested of all sects, and names, and parties! I care not if the name of George Whitefield be banished out of the world so that Jesus be exalted in it." He made it his life aim "to strengthen the hands of all, of every denomination that preaches Jesus Christ in sincerity." He never uttered nobler words than when he said, in one of his sermons, "The Spirit of God is the center of unity, and wherever I see the image of my Master I never inquire of them their opinions. I love all that love the Lord Jesus Christ."

Such catholicity of soul may be common in these days, but it was undreamed of before the Evangelical Revival. Whitefield was far in advance of the times. Even Wesley, with all his breadth of sympathy, scarcely kept pace with him at this point.

Whitefield felt at home anywhere. Among churchmen he was a churchman; among the Presbyterians and the other Dissenters of Scotland and America, he was a Dissenter. The holy communion was as sacred to him with one group as with another. He disagreed with the Quakers in some things, but he tells of his gleeful accord with the Friend who grasped his hand at the close of a sermon, saying: "Friend George, I am as thou art. I am for bringing all to the life and power of the ever-living God. And therefore, if thou wilt not quarrel with me about my hat, I will not quarrel with thee about thy gown." One Sunday he invited a Baptist minister to preach in his stead, joyfully commenting to himself, "O bigotry, thou art tumbling down apace!" The story is still told in Philadelphia of how, on a certain occasion, when Whitefield was preaching from the balcony of the old Courthouse, he lifted his eyes and exclaimed: "Father Abraham, who have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? 'No.' Any Presbyterians? 'No.' Any Baptists? 'No.' Any Methodists, Seceders, or Independents? 'No, no!' Why, who have you there? 'We don't know those names here. All who are here are Christians.' Oh, is that the case? Then, God help me! And God help us all to forget party names, and to become Christians in deed and truth.”

The hardest struggle Whitefield had, all through life, but especially as a young man, was to hold his balance amid the tide of adulation that swept