George Whitefield was born December 16, 1714 in the Bell Inn, a saloon his father owned and operated in Gloucester, England. His father died, however, when George was two years old. The widow tried to keep the business going with the help of George's older brothers. When he was fifteen, George, too, pulled out of school to help draw the brew.

He did manage to get a foundation for education, however, and a door opened for him to take a working scholarship at Oxford's Pembroke College. There he met upperclassmen John and Charles Wesley, and joined their Holy Club. All of them were fanatically devout in their discipline and deeds of charity, yet all alike were strangers to salvation by grace. George had his awakening while still at Oxford, but the Wesleys indeed made their mission tour to Georgia and returned to England before finding saving faith.

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After college George took holy orders in the Church of England. He wore the gown and cassock all his days though he was much too ecumenical and too radical for most of the clergy in the established church. There was also a lot of jealousy toward this boy wonder who attracted such crowds when he preached. When they refused their pulpits he began to preach in the fields. Horrors! Who ever heard of such a thing? Actually, Whitefield had heard that Howell Harris, an unordained Welch preacher was drawing great crowds in the open air of his native Wales. Whitefield started a correspondence with him and then went to Wales to visit him. They toured together; Harris would preach in Welch and then Whitefield in English. Nevertheless, field preaching was unheard of in England.

Whitefield's first venture into the fields was to the Kingswood coal miners, where men, women and children toiled in the dark tunnels. On a cold Saturday in February he and his friends William Sewell and Howell Harris went door to door among the shacks and invited the rough, ostracized colliers to join them in the field. The text for this sermon, appropriately enough, was the Lord's sermon on the mount. Soon tears were washing courses down the coal-blackened grime of many faces.

Whitefield recorded in his diary, "Blessed be God that the ice is now broke, and I have taken to the field! Some may censure me, but is there not a cause? Pulpits are denied, and the poor colliers ready to perish for lack of knowledge." 2 He preached to about two hundred that day. Next time it was two thousand, then five thousand. Eventually he would preach to ten and twenty thousand people and more in open-air gatherings all over England and the American colonies.

What distinguished Whitefield as a preacher? First of all, he cared for people and they knew it. He felt strong empathy for those who gathered to hear him. Once he was preaching to ten thousand drawn mostly from their amusement at a fair. The showmen were not at all happy to have their customers stolen away by a preacher. They began to throw rocks, dirt clods, rotten eggs and even a dead cat at the preacher. He took some hits and kept preaching with a bloody forehead. He noticed a young boy close to him wounded by a stone meant for the evangelist. He felt for the youngster, and the lad could tell it. After the three-hour sermon, Whitefield was visiting with a friend when the young fellow sought him out. Sensitive to the preacher's concern for his injury, the youngster testified: "Sir, the man gave me a wound but Jesus healed me; I never had my bonds broke 'til I had my head broke." 3