George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

24
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
changes which most of us must have if we are to keep out of the
grave and out of the asylum. He was utterly consecrated to
Christ from the beginning. His change was in the unsearch-
ableness of one Person. From the first effort he put forth to
the last (and he laboured without respite for thirty-four years),
he never flagged in his ardent attachment to the same truth,
expressed in the same words, looked at from the same stand-
point. His latest letters contain the self-same phrases as his
earliest ; and they are given with as much feeling as if they
were quite new. They were newer every day. ' Grace '—the
word that comes ,to him when his soul is comforted and
strengthened, when sinners are converted, when marvellous
deliverances are wrought out for him—was sweeter, richer,
fuller, more glorious the more he contemplated it. The truth
was the same, but it was inexhaustible, and its power over
him immeasurable. His perpetual, never withering freshness
of soul will often strike us as we follow him to the. end. He
was like 'a tree planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf
never withered, and whatsoever he did prospered.'