George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

go GEORGE WHITEFIELD
well satisfied with being driven to adopt his country practices,
or he would not have announced his intention to preach in
Moorfields on the second day after his expulsion, or with-
drawal, whichever it may be called, from Islington Church.
The news of his going to Moorfields soon spread through
the city ; and many, on hearing it, said that if he ventured into
that domain of the rabble he would never come out alive.
Moorfields, which had been the first brickyard of London,
next the exercise ground of the city archers, then the site of
Bedlam, and afterwards the City Mall, where fashion took its
daily stroll, had fallen into possession of the roughest part of
the population, simply by this part's presenting itself in the
presence of fashion, and desiring to share, in its peculiar way,
the shade of the trees and the smoothness of the paths. The
partnership was quietly declined. To this place and to this
people Whitefield felt himself called to take his message of love
and peace. On Sunday morning, April 29th, an ' exceeding
great multitude ' assembled in the fields to hear him ; but to
while away the time before his arrival there was a little pre-
liminary sport in breaking to pieces a table which had been
placed for his pulpit. In due time he drove up in a coach,
accompanied by some friends, and with one of them on either
side, attempted to force his way to the place where the table
ought to have been found. His body-guard was soon detached
from him, and he was left at the mercy of the congregation,
which at once parted and made an open way for him to the
middle of the fields, and thence—for there was no pulpit there
—to the wall which divided the upper and lower fields, upon
which he took his stand. It was a novel sight to the preacher
—that mass of London rabble—as his eye ranged over it ; it
was a more novel sight to the people—that young clergyman
of twenty-four, in gown, bands, and cassock, as he lifted him-
self up before them. His tall, graceful figure ; his manly and