George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

86 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
city. At seven, Whitefield went to take his leave of one of the
societies, and found the room and the way to it so crowded
that he had to mount a ladder, and come at the door by climb-
ing over the tiling of an adjoining house.
The morning of the following day was spent in talking with
those who came to take their leave, and tears were freely shed
on both sides. Crowds were hanging about the door when he
left, and a company of twenty friends accompanied him out of
the city on horseback ; and if he was leaving no small gifts
behind, he also was carrying away a substantial gift of two
hundred pounds for his orphan-house. He travelled by way
of Kingswood, where the colliers, unknown to him, had, he
says, 'prepared an hospitable entertainment, and were very
forward for me to lay the first stone of their school. At length
I complied, and a man giving me a piece of ground, in case
Mr. C should refuse to grant them any, I laid a stone,
and then kneeled down, and prayed God that the gates of hell
might not prevail against our design.' This became the famous
Kingswood School, the original of the institution in which the
sons of successive generations of Wesleyan Methodist ministers
have been educated.
Whitefield had not been gone three hours from Bristol, when
his friend Wesley submitted, as he says, to make himself more
vile than he had on the preceding day, when he preached to
one of the societies, by proclaiming in the highways the glad
tidings of salvation to about three thousand people ; and on
the following Sunday he stepped fearlessly into the severe
path that Whitefield had shown him a week before. Within
three weeks of Wesley's assuming the lead of the Methodist
movement, scenes such as Whitefield's preaching had not yet
created became common :
some
of the hearers were seized
with fearful agony and cried out ; then they as suddenly
shouted for joy.