George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

AN OLD MAN AT FIFTY 323
Work and sickness had wrought a striking change in his
appearance when he ended his twelfth voyage. That his
health must have been grievously broken is evident from his
touching appeal to his friends Keen and Hardy :
' Stand, my
friends,' he said, ' and insist upon my not being brought into
action too soon. The poor old shattered barque hath not
been in dock one week, for a long while. I scarce know what
I write. Tender love to all.' Asthma had now firmly seated
itself in his constitution, and he felt sure that he should never
breathe as he would, till he breathed in yonder heaven.
Wesley was painfully struck when he met him towards the
close of the year in London. 'I breakfasted,' he says in his
journal, ' with Mr. Whitefield, who seemed to be an old, old
man, being fairly worn out in his Master's service, though he
has hardly seen fifty years ; and yet it pleases God that I, who
am now in my sixty-third year, find no disorder, no weakness,
no decay, no difference from what I was at five-and-twenty,
only that I have fewer teeth and more grey hairs.' A month
later Wesley again wrote in his journal :
' Mr. Whitefield called
upon me. He breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry
cannot stand before him, but hides its head wherever he
comes.'
The silver cord was not even yet to be loosed, although the
body appeared to be ready for the grave, and the soul for
heaven. Lady Huntingdon was increasing the number of her
chapels. She had one at Brighton, which was partly due to
Whitefield's preaching under a tree behind the White Lion
Inn ; she had another at Norwich ; and a third at Tunbridge
Wells ;
and when she had got one finished at Bath, Whitefield
must needs open it. He went and preached one of the sermons
on October 6, 1765. It was a chapel in which many of the
witty and the learned were to hear his expositions of truth. It
had also a strange corner, called ' Nicodemus's Corner,' into