I will endeavor to show you,

First, what it is not to be converted; Secondly, what it is to be truly converted, thirdly, offer some motives why you should repent and be converted; and fourthly, answer some objections that have been made against persons repenting and being converted . . . 13

In a defense against charges that he was not an orthodox Anglican, he once summarized his homiletical theory: "My constant way of preaching is first to prove my propositions by scripture, and then to illustrate them by the articles and collects of the Church of England." 14

Whitefield was an orator without equal in the pulpit. His delivery was not the classical oratory with finely-ornamented style, soaring flights of fancy and elegance of taste. His preaching was marked by biblical content, doctrinal emphasis and rhetorical simplicity. His delivery, however, was dramatic. Indeed, Harry S. Stout's biography calls him The Divine Dramatist and interprets his whole life and ministry through the lens of an early schoolboy's fascination with the stage. Among the admirers of his oratory were Gerrick the actor, Hume the skeptic, and worldly Lord Chesterfield. This last gentleman was not known for loss of control, but once was overcome by Whitefield's dramatic power with narrative illustrations. A gathering of London's elite at the estate of Lady Huntingdon heard the evangelist dramatize a blind man with his cane groping after his little dog ever nearer a precipice. Lord Chesterfield suddenly shouted aloud: "By heaven, he's gone!" 15

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In the fall of 1770, Whitefield was on an exhausting New England preaching tour, Boston, Portsmouth, Exeter. When he reached Newbury Port, he was too tired to get out of the boat. With help, he made it to the parsonage of Old South Church. As evening came he regained a measure of strength and took supper with his host family. A crowd began to gather at the door. Some of them pushed on into the house in hope of hearing his voice again.

"I am too tired," Whitefield said "and must go to bed." He took a lighted candle and started climbing the stairs. But the sight of the patient people crowding into the hall and the street was too much to refuse. He paused on the staircase to say a few words. Soon he was preaching or "exhorting" as he called these impromptu addresses. He urged them to trust the savior, growing stronger, then weaker, then stronger again. He preached until the candle burned down to the socket and flickered out. Then one of the greatest of all preachers and evangelists went up to bed and died.

Whitefield preached eighteen thousand times not counting such "exhortations" as this. J. I. Packer thought these informal addresses would total eighteen thousand more. 16 Year after year he preached an average of five hundred sermons. These were not twenty-minute messages but an hour or two each. He often preached forty hours in a week, sometimes sixty. And this was besides all else he did in travel and correspondence, in building and promoting an orphanage, raising funds and supervising the mission work. He made a preaching tour of England almost every year. He traveled to Scotland fourteen times, to Ireland three times, and often to Wales. He crossed the Atlantic thirteen times to and from the colonies. One estimates that he preached to ten million souls in the three decades of his ministry. Probably no mortal was more used of God in bringing the Great Awakening to England and America than George Whitefield.