New York - The Novel

has a way of describing scenes so that you feel you see them directly before your eyes. It is very affecting. He spoke in the open to a crowd of thousands. Many were quite overcome.”
    “Was Mr. Franklin overcome?”
    “Before we set off, he said to me: ‘Whitefield is a good fellow, but I shall not allow myself to be led by the nose. So you see, I have taken all the money out of my pocket. Then I cannot be tempted to give him anything until my head is cool.’”
    “Franklin gave him nothing, then?”
    “Quite the contrary. Mr. Whitefield was collecting for the orphans in Georgia, and by the end of the preaching, Mr. Franklin was so excited he made me lend him money to put in the collection. He paid me back, of course,” she added.
    Whitefield had come to New York twice. The Anglicans and the Dutch Reform dominies would not let him speak in their churches. But a Presbyterian minister welcomed him. He also preached out of doors. Not everyone cared for his message. When he spoke of the need to minister to the slaves, some thought he was stirring up trouble. Then, last November, he had come to the city again.
    “Won’t you come to hear him?” Mercy asked.
    “I don’t think I care to,” John replied.
    “I should like to see him preach out of doors again,” she said. “But Ican’t go out in that crowd all alone. It would be kind if you would accompany me,” she added, a little reproachfully.
    John could hardly refuse after that.

    It was a chilly autumn day as they walked up Broadway. They passed Trinity Church and the Presbyterian Meeting House. A few streets more, and they went by the Quakers’ Meeting House. Some way further, where the old Indian road forked away to the right, the big, triangular space of the Common began. And it was out onto the Common, despite the cold, that streams of people were flowing. By the time John and Mercy arrived, they found a huge crowd already assembled.
    A high wooden platform had been set up in the middle of the Common. There were all kinds of folk there: respectable merchants and their families, craftsmen, apprentices, sailors, laborers, slaves. Looking about, John reckoned over five thousand had already gathered, with more arriving all the time.
    Though they waited more than half an hour, the crowd was well behaved and remarkably quiet. The sense of anticipation was keen. Then at last, a group of half a dozen men was seen walking toward the platform; and when they reached it, one of them mounted the steps and faced the crowd. John had expected some sort of introduction, but there was nothing. No hymns, no prayers. In a loud voice, proclaiming a passage from the scripture, the preacher went straight to his work.
    George Whitefield was dressed in a simple black robe with white clerical tabs. He wore a long wig. Yet even from where they stood, John could see that the preacher was still in his twenties.
    But with what confidence he preached the word. He told them of the story of Lazarus, who was raised from the dead. He cited the scripture and other authorities at some length, but in a manner that was easy to follow. The crowd listened intently, respectful of his learning. Then he painted the scene, graphically. He did not hold back. Imagine the body, he told them, not only dead in the tomb, but stinking. Imagine that they were there. Again, he went over the scene, so vividly that it seemed to John Master that he, too, could smell that rotting body.
    Yet consider the spiritual message of the episode, Whitefield urged them—not only that a miracle was wrought. For was not Lazarus like every one of them? Stinking in sin, and dead to God, unless they letChrist raise them up again. And John, despite himself, could not help thinking of his own, dissolute past, and sensing the deep emotional truth in what the preacher said.
    Next, Whitefield chided them—for their sin, and for their sloth, in failing to turn from evil. He raised every objection that could be thought of, as to why a man might not come to God, and answered them, every one. And then, having left his audience moved, shamed and with nowhere to hide, he began his exhortation.
    “Come,” his voice started to rise, “haste ye away and walk with God. Stop,” he boomed in a mighty voice, full of emotion, “stop, oh sinner. Turn ye, turn ye, oh ye unconverted man. Make no longer tarrying, I say, step not one step further in your present walk.” The crowd was with him now. He had them in his hand. “Farewell,