Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 57

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‘With what divine pathos did he persuade the impenitent sinner to embrace
the practice of piety and virtue! ... From the pulpit he was unrivalled in the
command of an ever-crowded auditory.’1 So, according to John Wesley, the
Boston Gazette praised George Whitefield who, at his death in 1770, was quite
simply the most popular preacher of his age on both sides of the Atlantic.

T

he printed sermons that we have
from Whitefield cannot do justice
to what his hearers experienced.2
Apparently he preached as a rule
without notes and the sermons that
we have were taken down verbatim,
though possibly edited by him. But the
accounts that survive from those who
heard Whitefield make it clear that he
was renowned as much for the way
in which he spoke as for what he said.
There was so