George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

172 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
forward, therefore, I hope you will enter into your studies,
not to get a parish, nor to be polite preachers, but to be great
saints.'
The Mary and Ann, after a pleasant passage, landed White-
field at Leith on July 30, 1741, ten years before Wesley first
visited Scotland. He was come to a generation which Ebenezer
Erskine described as ' being generally lifeless, lukewarm, and
upsitten.' Yet there was no little warmth about the stranger
whom the Associate Presbytery and the Kirk both struggled
for. Persons of distinction welcomed him, and urged him
to preach in Edinburgh on the day of his arrival. But he
stayed in the city only an hour, and went thence, as Ralph
Erskine phrases it,
' over the belly of vast opposition,' and
came to Ralph's house at Dunfermline at ten o'clock at night.
Next morning guest and host conferred together alone on
Church matters, when Whitefield admitted that he had changed
his views of ordination ; at the time of his ordination he
knew no better way, but now, ' he would not have it again
in that way for a thousand worlds.' As to preaching, he was
firm in his resolution to go wherever he was asked, into the
Kirk or into the meeting-house. Were a Jesuit priest or a
Mohammedan to give him an invitation he would gladly
comply, and go and testify against them !
Whitefield wrote
to Cennick, telling him that Erskine had received him 'very
lovingly.' He says :
' I preached to his and the townspeople '—this was in the afternoon of
the day after his arrival, and in the meeting-house—' a very thronged
assembly. After I had done prayer and named my text, the rustling made
by opening the Bibles all at once surprised me ; a scene I never was
witness to before. Our conversation after sermon, in the house, was such
as became the gospel of Christ. . . . They urged a longer stay, in order
to converse more closely, and to set me right about Church government and
the Solemn League and Covenant. I informed them that I had given
notice of preaching at Edinburgh this evening, but, as they desired it,