ll the towers thereof."

CHAPTER VI.

Passion.

There is a page in Tyerman's monumental "Life of George Whitefield,"
which illustrates, as few pages do, the quality of that essential of
true and effective preaching in regard of which we are now to speak.
It is that page in which are described the last hours of the great
evangelist.

On Saturday morning, September 29th, 1770, being exceedingly weak and
ill, but bent upon the continuance of his preaching work, Whitefield
set out from Portsmouth (U.S.A.) to ride to Boston. Fifteen miles from
Portsmouth, at Exeter, he was stopped and persuaded to preach. A
friend said to him, "Sir, you are more fit to go to bed than to
preach." "True, sir," replied Whitefield, and then, clasping his hands
and looking up to heaven, he added, "Lord Jesus, I am weary in Thy work
but not of it. If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and
speak for Thee once more in the fields, seal Thy truth, and come home
and die." At the commencement of his discourse he was unable for some
time to speak, but recovering himself he preached for two hours.

At Exeter, to pursue the story, the Rev. Jonathan Parsons, who, for
twenty-four years, had been Presbyterian minister at Newbury Port, met
the preacher. The two friends dined together at Captain Oilman's, and
then started for Newbury Port, a few miles further on. "On arrival
there," says the biographer, "Whitefield was so exhausted that he was
unable to leave the boat without assistance, but in the course of the
evening he recovered his spirits."

Let us give the rest of the story in the words of Mr. Tyerman:--"While
Whitefield partook of an early supper, the people assembled at the
front of the parsonage, and even crowded into its hall, impatient to
hear a few words from the man they so greatly loved. 'I am tired,'
said Whitefield, 'and must go to bed.' He took a candle and was
hastening to his chamber. The sight of the people moved him; and,
pausing on the staircase, he began to speak to them. He had preached
his last sermon, this was to be his last exhortation. There he stood,
the crowd in the hall gazing up at him with tearful eyes, as Elisha at
the ascending prophet. His voice flowed on until the candle which he
held in his hand burned away and _went out in its socket_! The next
morning he was not, for God had taken him."

Now, surely, here is a picture worth the painting, if only one could
catch the true spiritual si