furtherance of this scheme, and to obtain priest's orders, he returned to England, and in 1739 was ordained by the same friendly prelate. Dr. Benson. His return was hailed by thousands who had before thronged to him wherever he had preached, in London and at Bristol especially. At Bristol the customary blindness of the ecclesiastical officials forbade him their churches, the chancellor of the diocese giving him notice that he should "stop his proceedings"—a sage resolve, which in fact opened the door of salvation to countless thousands of those over whose heathenism the church had long kept watch. This man, sent of God, burst through the prohibition, took his stand upon a rising ground, 17th February, 1739, within range of the Kingswood collieries, "his first field pulpit." There, from Sunday to Sunday, he gathered about him, always increasing, congregations of these savage people, of whom multitudes soon accepted the blessings, temporal and spiritual, of Christianity—"the people standing in such awful manner round the mount in the profoundest silence, filled me with a holy admiration." Twenty thousand people listened to, and heard distinctly that voice of power; floods of tears made channels adown blackened cheeks; thousands wept, multitudes repented, and forsook forever their vicious course of life In these exercises Whitefield made proof of, and perfected his wonderful gifts as an orator, as a preacher, and as a speaker abroad. He acquired also a perfect self-possession, and learned how by natural tact and a ready wit also, to baffle often the brutality of the leaders of the mobs. His beginnings at Kingswood were a sample of a life of evangelical labour in England and America. A characteristic of Whitefield's course was, the foremost place he always gave to schemes of benevolence. He had crossed the Atlantic to gather funds for the orphan-house in Georgia; and now finding that he had won the hearts of the Kingswood colliers, he set on foot a plan for a charity school for their children. He laid the first stone of a building for this purpose before he returned to London. In London, Whitefield, who had been shut out from the churches, went on to "attack Satan in his strongholds"—in Moorfields, Kennington Common, and Blackheath. In these places he was often rudely assailed, and sometimes hardly escaped with his life. It deserves notice, that while Wesley looked with favour upon those bodily agitations which so often occurred in methodistic congregations. Whitefield's good sense, and his better christian instincts, induced him to regard these outward manifestations very suspiciously, or at best to attach little importance to them, and to hold them in doubt, as if they might be proper accompaniments of a genuine conversion. Differences of a deeper meaning did not fail at an early time in the ministry of the two men to create disagreement; and at length, although not to sever the bonds of christian love, to put the two men upon divergent courses of action. This divergence was inevitable, nor was it undesirable. Even now the time is not come when those two aspects of christian belief, to which the human mind vainly labours to give unity of expression in formal propositions, shall be embraced and accepted as equally true, although verbally discordant. A wisdom of this order, humble, humbling, and given from above, was not to be looked for in either Wesley or Whitefield. Each took his side; Wesley, with syllogistic vivacity, the fervour of intense feeling thrown in upon the rigidity of superficial demonstrations; Whitefield, with the unction and warmth of evangelic instincts: —the one preacher insisted upon works and grace, the other upon grace and works. They parted company, and their adherents on each side fiercely quarreled, not able to apprehend on either side the simple truth, that if three and four make seven, four and three are also seven. Whitefield would gladly have abstained from strife. "For Christ's sake," he says, "desire, dear brother Wesley, to avoid disputing with me. I think I had rather die than see a division between us; and yet how can we walk together if we oppose each other." On his return from America where his ministrations had taken great effect, Whitefield preached in Wales, in Scotland, and in Ireland—in each country listened to in a manner which, while it was characteristic of the diverse temperament and the religious training of the three races, gave evidence at once of the preacher's power as related to the same human nature, and of the force of evangelic truth vividly set forth. It was while preaching and travelling in Scotland that Whitefield made acquaintance with persons of rank, among them especially Selina, countess of Huntingdon (see Huntingdon), his after intercourse with whom was the means, principally, of establishing Calvinistic methodism as a communion with its body of ministers and its many chapels, some of these being of the largest dimensions. Whitefield, like Wesley, married in mid-life, and with nearly the same result, not an increase of his happiness. Listened to, not only by the common people in myriads, but by such hearers as Hume, Lord Chesterfield, Bolingbroke, and others of that class, his spirit turned toward America; and again, when popularity and flatteries might have induced him to stay in England, he once again gave proof of his regard to the highest motives. During his last visit to England an affectionate intercourse between the two leaders took place, and this was continued until Whitefield's departure for Georgia in 1769. Worn out at an early age in the service of Christ, he yet held on travelling and preaching daily. A severe seizure of asthma brought him to his end at Newbury Port in New England, September 30, 1770, in his fifty-sixth year. Conscious of his want of ability to govern a community, he had wisely abstained from the attempt to found a church. One object ruled his course of life from the first day of his ministry to the last—this was to gather souls, and to lead them forward to the life eternal. Few if any preachers of the gospel have reaped so large a harvest in this way as he. The sources of information as to the life of Whitefield are the volumes of his journals published by himself, and a collection of his letters, sermons, and tracts, in 6 vols., published in London, 1771. Several compilations, drawn from these sources principally, have more lately appeared, among which may be named Gillies' Life of Whitefield, published in 1813, and Philips' in 1838.—I. T.
WHITEFOORD, Caleb, a distinguished wit and satirical poet, was the grandson of Sir Adam Whitefoord, the head of an old Ayrshire family, and was born in 1734. His father. Colonel Whitefoord, intended him for the church; but he had an insuperable aversion to the clerical profession, and was in consequence placed in the counting-house of a London wine merchant, where he continued four years. On the death of his father he removed to France, where he continued to reside until he came of age. On his return to London he commenced business in the wine trade, and having formed an acquaintance with Woodfall the printer, he became a frequent contributor to the Public Advertiser. He was the originator of those whimsical pleasantries once so much in vogue, entitled "Cross Readings, Ship News, and Mistakes of the Press." He was a member of the Literary Club, and was a great favourite with Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, and the other eminent men who composed that famous society. Johnson's celebrated pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting the Falkland Islands, was written at his suggestion. Mr. Whitefoord was appointed in 1782 secretary to the British commissioners sent to Paris to treat of a general peace with America, and three of the treaties are in his handwriting. He was a member of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, the Society of Antiquaries, &c. He died in 1809 at the age of seventy-five, leaving a family of four children. Mr. Whitefoord's character is faithfully and wittily delineated by Goldsmith in the Retaliation, where he is described as a—
" Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun,
Who relished a joke and rejoiced in a pun;
Whose temper was generous, open, sincere;
A stranger to flattery, a stranger to fear—
The best-humour'd man with the worst-humour'd muse."
He was so notorious a punster, that Goldsmith used to say it was impossible to keep him company without being infected with the itch of punning.—J. T.
WHITEHEAD, Paul, a satirical poet, born in London on St. Paul's day, 1710, from which circumstance he derived his christian name. He was originally intended for business, and was apprenticed to a mercer; but somehow or other he contrived to escape from this position, and entered himself as a student of law at one of the inns of court. It does not appear that he was ever called to the bar, but he was able to live without a profession in consequence of his marriage with the daughter of Sir Swinnerton Dyer, Bart., who brought him a fortune of £10,000. By unfortunately joining with Fleetwood the actor in a bond for £3000 he brought misery on himself, and languished for some years in the Fleet prison. He afterwards maintained himself by his writings, which include—"State Dunces," "Manners," "Honour," "Satires," and the "Gymnasiad," a mock heroic poem in ridicule of boxing. He died in 1774.—W. J. P.
WHITEHEAD, William, a poet, born in 1715 at Cambridge, where his father was a baker. By the interest of Mr. Bromley,
