Dear Mr. Franklin, – I find that you grow more and more famous in the learned world. As you have made a pretty considerable progress in the mysteries of electricity, I would now humbly recommend to you your diligent unprejudiced pursuit and study the mystery of the new birth. It is a most important, interesting study, and when mastered, will richly repay you for all your pains. One, at whose bar we are shortly to appear, hath solemnly declared, that, without it, "we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." You will excuse this freedom. I must have aliquid Christi in all my letters . . . George Whitefield. 9

Whitefield was blessed with a tremendous voice for preaching. He had marvelous volume with vocal penetration and pleasing resonation. One witness said he had "a clear and musical voice and a wonderful command of it." 10 Once when the evangelist preached in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin decided to see if it were possible that newspaper accounts could be accurate in saying twenty-five thousand heard him in one gathering. Whitefield was preaching from the top of the courthouse steps in the middle of Market Street. Franklin paced down the street and determined that the preacher's voice was distinct until near Front street where street noises made hearing difficult. Then he calculated the area of a semicircle with that distance as the radius, allowed two square feet for each person in the crowd. He determined that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. 11

That Whitefield was a persuasive preacher is abundantly demonstrated by the thousands who responded to his preaching. Wesley, at the death of his evangelist friend, said tens of thousands were converted under his preaching. Whitefield could also be persuasive when making an appeal for his orphanage in Georgia. If I may quote once more the autobiography of his famous-for-thrift friend Franklin describing a sermon in Philadelphia —

I perceived he intended to finish with a collection; and I silently resolved he would get nothing from me. I had, in my pocket, a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pockets wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. 12

His sermon style was marked by unity and order. Probably his early decision to preach without notes influenced his move away from the complex, scholastic structure that was standard for his peers. Sermons that are simple enough for the preacher to remember without paper are more likely to be plain enough for the congregation to follow without taking notes. He often stated his main points in the introduction. For example, a sermon on Acts 3:19 "Repent ye therefore and be converted . . ."