George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

160 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
exhausting labours and the generous gifts of his friends. He
now appointed Mr. Barber to take care of the spiritual affairs
of the institution, and intrusted to James Habersham the
charge of its temporal affairs. The institution anticipated,
in its cheerful tone and wise management, those well-ordered
schools which in later times have brightened childhood's years
in thousands of instances. Religion was the great concern
but due weight was laid upon the connection between its
emotional and its practical parts. Praying might not exempt
from working in the fields or at some trade, and spiritual
delights might not supersede method in labour and humility
of heart. The orphans often sang a hymn for their bene-
factors ; daily they sang to the praise of their Redeemer
and always before going to work they joined in a hymn
intended to teach them that they must work for their own
living.
Whitefield had carried about with him, and shown to several
New England ministers, the draft of a letter which he had
written in reply to Wesley's sermon on ' Free-Grace,' and on
Christmas Eve, 1740, he sat down at the orphan-house to
finish the letter, and send it to his friend. The sermon was
a noble specimen of eloquence ; its thrilling denunciations of
Calvinistic doctrines almost produce the persuasion that they
are as horrible and blasphemous as Wesley believed them to
be. The headlong zeal of the preacher allows no time,
permits no disposition, to reason. You must go with him ; you
must check your questions, and listen to him. At the end
it seemsas if the hated doctrines were for ever consumed in
a flame of argument and indignation. The letter in reply
can boast no such qualities ; it never rises above the level of
commonplace. It was headed by a short preface touching the
probable effect of its publication and expressing the persuasion
that the advocates of universal redemption would be offended