George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

A FOREST CONGREGATION 239
Many a lonely forest path and highway, striped with shadows
of tall trees and bands of sunshine, was enlivened by groups of
horsemen and solitary riders—some of them men of staunch
piety, who longed after religious stimulus and instruction, and
were going to the open glade as devoutly as ever David went
up to Mount Zion ; others of them men of heavy heart and
sad countenance, who were getting their first insight into them-
selves and the mysteries of religion, and were uneasy as they
saw the vision ;
and others again men of thoughtless spirit and
easy life, who supposed that religion might very well be left to a
more serious time than joyous days of health and vigour, when
the blood is warm, but who had a fancy to hear the far-famed
preacher. Nor were wives and daughters absent from the
bands of travellers. As they tied their neighing horses to the
trees and hedges, and formed themselves into a great congre
gation, few sights could be either more picturesque or more
impressive. All hearts were more or less accessible to the
glowing eloquence of the evangelist, who pleaded before them,
with tears and earnest words, the claims of his gracious and
exalted Master on the trust and love of every soul of man.
Holy thoughts were carried back home by many of the
worldly, as well as by many of the devout ; and the plantation
and farm began to give signs that a God-fearing man lived in
the pvincipal house on it.
But the evangelist's health soon began to suffer when the
cool spring changed to sultry summer. American summers
always exhausted him, and that of 1747 formed no exception.
By the middle of May the heat was trying his ' wasting taber-
nacle,' but, he says, ' through Christ strengthening me, I
intend persisting till I drop.' The condition of the southern
colonies was so destitute, and his sense of the love of our Lord
so vivid, that he carried out his purpose, and in five weeks
made a circuit of five hundred miles ; but by that time fever