is entombed, he found an aged woman who vividly remembered the great preacher. She used to tell in particular of a Sunday morning when, the gallery being full of children, he suddenly paused in his sermon, and spreading out his hands, beckoned to the boys and girls, and called the "dear little birds to come and fly to the arms of their Saviour." The manner of the appeal, of which only a Whitefield was master, so thrilled his young hearers that they could not forget it to their dying day.

Some of his most beautiful letters were written to children. One of his youthful correspondents lived in Boston, a certain "John D.," and in 1741 Whitefield wrote him from Scotland: "My dear Child, I thank you for your letter. I neither forgot you nor my promise. O that God may effectually work upon your heart betimes, for you cannot be good too soon, or too good. The little orphans at Georgia are crying out, 'What shall we do to be saved?' And I am glad to hear that this is the language of some little ones in New England. If you know any of them, pray give my love to them, and tell them that I pray that Jesus Christ may be revealed in their dear hearts. How did he love the little children, how did he take them up in his sacred arms and bless them! Let this encourage you to come unto him. What comfort will you enjoy! You will then have a heaven upon earth."

Instinctively children were drawn to Whitefield. They soon came to love and to trust him, and noth

ing could be more touching than their sympathetic devotion. Very often in his open-air meetings in England, especially in the earlier years, the rabble treated him roughly. At the close of a letter to a friend, describing some experiences through which he had just passed while preaching in Moorfields, London, he adds this: "Several little boys and girls who were fond of sitting round me on the pulpit, while I preached, though they were often pelted with eggs, dirt, etc., thrown at me, never once gave way, but, on the contrary, every time I was struck, turned up their little weeping eyes, and seemed to wish they could receive the blows for me.”

We cannot help thinking how different in many ways Whitefield's career might have been but for the apparently simple fact that he was so deeply interested in children. When he crossed the ocean the first time and landed at the village of Savannah, Georgia was not quite six years old. It was the youngest as well as the southernmost of the American colonies. Florida belonged to Spain. When the British government chartered the new colony, the primary thought was to provide a home for unfortunate debtors who had been languishing in English prisons, and who needed a place where they could begin life over again. General Oglethorpe, one of the noblest leaders of his time, accepted the governorship. The first shipload of emigrants arrived in the winter of 1733, and three years later

John and Charles Wesley landed with the members of the fifth company. John was to be pastor of the little flock and missionary among the neighboring Indians, and Charles was secretary to the governor. Charles remained only eight months, but this was long enough to convince him that something must be done to provide for orphaned children. Already several parents had died, and the number of orphans was sure to increase, while the condition of the homeless waifs was pitiful in the extreme.

When he returned to England late in the year, and described the situation to Whitefield, the heart of that lover of children was deeply stirred, and he resolved that if he ever got to America, one of his first concerns should be to start an orphanage. As we have already seen, he was delayed in sailing, and did not reach Savannah on his first voyage till May 7, 1738. It was a hurried trip; in four months he was on his way back to England, being anxious to receive his final ordination to the priesthood. But what he saw during those few weeks gave a mighty impetus to his plans.

From this time to the end of his life no enterprise appealed to him as did his orphan work in Georgia. He dreamed of it by night and toiled for it by day. His journals and letters are crowded with references to it. Wherever he went, in England and Scotland, and along the Atlantic seaboard in America, he was constantly presenting the claims of his little wards and soliciting gifts to provide for

their needs. His frequent visits to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston were in part prompted by his desire for help, and he was rarely disappointed. More than one voyage across the Atlantic was made largely for the sake of the orphans. Indeed, it is not too much to say that his ministry, especially as it was related to America, was in considerable measure shaped by his absorbed interest in the homeless boys and girls whom he gathered under his protecting care in the Georgia colony.

No sooner did he reach England after his first visit to America than he began appealing in public and private for the project so near his heart. By the middle of the summer of 1739 he had collected more than a thousand pounds, and he was eager to get back to Savannah and start the new enterprise. So widespread was the interest awakened that, as he tells us, "Multitudes offered to go with me," but he took only a few selected helpers.

In forming his plans he was strongly influenced by the accounts he received of the great orphanage which Professor Francke had founded at Halle, in Germany, where two thousand children were cared for, and whose fame as a model institution was world wide. To plant something of this kind on American soil, however modest the beginning, was the ambition of his heart. Five hundred acres were granted him a few miles out of Savannah, and there on a March day, in the spring of 1740, while the workmen knelt around him in prayer, he laid the

first bricks of the new building. "I called it Bethesda, because I hoped it would be a house of mercy to many souls."

The rules which he laid down for the management of the place are interesting, not only because they were prepared by Whitefield, but as showing the ideas that most good people used to hold as to the proper way to bring up children. The orphans were wakened every morning at five o'clock. As soon as they slipped on their clothes, each one spent a quarter of an hour in private prayer. Then they all gathered in the chapel and sang a psalm and listened to an exposition of the Scriptures. At seven Ken's morning hymn was sung and a prayer offered. After that the hungry children sat down to breakfast, but the meal was interrupted at various stages for the singing of more hymns. From eight to ten, while the girls were busy with spinning and sewing, the boys drew water and chopped wood, and some of the more promising ones were "placed under tailors, shoemakers, or carpenters." At ten school began, when they were taught to read and write. Dinner was at noon, "and between that and two o'clock, everyone was employed in something useful, but no time was allowed for idleness or play, which are Satan's darling hours to tempt children to all manner of wickedness, as lying, cursing, swearing, and uncleanness; so that, though we are about seventy in family, we have no more noise than if it was a private house." From two to six