George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

274 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
should fire all the district through which he passed. Glouces-
ter, Bristol, Plymouth, and Cornwall right to the Land's End,
were all ablaze with religious fervour. He seemed to travel in
the strength of the Holy Ghost, and to be independent of that
crazy body which had oppressed him in London. Friends
were jubilant at his coming ; and when he was speaking at
Bideford, where there was one of the best little flocks in
all England, the bold vicar of St. Gennis almost fell under
the mighty power of God which came down upon the
\ people.
Such exertions as he put forth could not fail to do him
physical mischief. That pain which he felt as he came last
from Scotland was not inactive ; it now and again pierced
him, and stayed his headlong pace. It had plagued him in
London when he was preaching four times a day ;
and when
he was over the first burst of effort in the west, and thought
himself so much better for the change, it returned upon him
with increased power. He had continued vomitings which
.'almost killed him,' he says; and yet the pulpit was his only
cure, so that his friends began to pity him less, and to leave
off ' that ungrateful caution, " Spare thyself !
He does not appear to have permitted one day's rest to his
body when he returned to London from the west. Early in
May, 1750, he started for Ashby, where Lady Huntingdon
was lying ill, whom he hoped God's people would keep out of
heaven as long as possible by their prayers. He had some
pleasant interviews with Doddridge, with Stonehouse (now a
clergyman, and not afraid to attend Whitefield's preaching in
the fields, nor to take the evangelist's arm down the street),
with Hervey and Hartley. At Ashby there began the first of
a series of little incidents in this town which well illustrate
what kind of a life his was. ' The
"
kind people of Ashby,' he
says, 'stirred up some of the baser sort to riot before her