WHITEFIELD, GEORGE , English religious leader, was born on Dec. 16, 1714, at the Bell Inn, Gloucester, of which his father was landlord. At fifteen he was taken from school to assist his mother in the public-house, and for a year and a half was a common drawer. He then again returned to school to prepare for the university, and in 1733 entered as a servitor at Pembroke College, Oxford, graduating in 1736. There he came under the influence of the Methodists (see WESLEY).
In 1736 he was invited by Wesley to go out as missionary to Georgia, and went to London to wait on the trustees. Before setting sail he preached in some of the principal London churches, and in order to hear him, crowds assembled at the church doors long before daybreak. On Dec. 28, 1737, he embarked for Georgia, which he reached on May 7, 1738. After three months' residence there he returned to England to receive priest's orders, and to raise contributions for the establishment of an orphanage. As the clergy did not welcome him to their pulpits, he began to preach in the open air. At Kingswood Hill, Bristol, his addresses to the colliers soon attracted crowds, and his voice was so clear and powerful that it could reach 20,000 folk. His fervour and dra matic action held them spell-bound, and his homely pathos soon broke down all barriers of resistance. "The first discovery of their being affected," he says, "was by seeing the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks." He again embarked for America in August 1739, and remained there two years, preaching in all the principal towns. He left his incumbency of Savannah to a lay delegate, and was suspended for ceremonial irregularities.
During his absence from England Whitefield found that a divergence of doctrine from Calvinism had been introduced by Wesley; and notwithstanding Wesley's exhortations to brotherly kindness and forbearance he withdrew from the Wesleyan Con nexion. Thereupon his friends built for him near Wesley's church a wooden structure, which was named the Moorfields Tabernacle. A reconciliation between the two great evangelists was soon effected, but each thenceforth went his own way. In 1741, on the invitation of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, he paid a visit to Scotland, commencing his labours in the Secession meeting-house, Dunfermline. But, as he refused to limit his ministrations to one sect, the Seceders and he parted company, and without their countenance he made a tour through the principal towns of Scot land, and was everywhere received with enthusiasm. From Scot
land he went to Wales, where on Nov. 14, he married a widow named James. The marriage was not a happy one. On his return to London in 1742 he preached to the crowds in Moorfields during the Whitsun holidays. After a second visit to Scotland, June— October 1742, and a tour through England and Wales, 1742- 1744, he embarked in August 1744 for America, where he re mained till June 1748. On returning to London he found his congregation at the Tabernacle dispersed ; and his circumstances were so depressed that he was obliged to sell his household furni ture to pay his orphan-house debts. Relief soon came through his acquaintance with Selina, countess of Huntingdon (q.v.), who appointed him one of her chaplains.
The remainder of Whitefield's life was spent chiefly in evangel izing tours in Great Britain, Ireland and America. It has been stated that "in the compass of a single week, and that for years, he spoke in general forty hours, and in very many sixty, and that to thousands." In 1748 the synods of Glasgow, Perth and Lothian passed vain resolutions intended to exclude him from churches; in 1753 he compiled his hymn-book, and in 1756 opened the chapel which bears his name in Tottenham Court Road, London.
On his return from America to England for the last time the change in his appearance forcibly impressed Wesley, who wrote in his Journal: "He seemed to be an old man, being fairly worn out in his Master's service, though he had hardly seen fifty years." When health was failing him he placed himself on what he called "short allowance," preaching only once every week-day and thrice on Sunday. In 1769 he returned to America for the seventh and last time, and arranged for the conversion of his orphanage into Bethesda College, which was burned down in 1773. He died on Sept. 3o, 177o, at Newburyport, Mass. He was buried before the pulpit in the Presbyterian church of the town where he died.
Whitefield's printed works convey a totally inadequate idea of his oratorical powers, and are all in fact below mediocrity. They appeared in a collected form in 1771-72 in seven volumes, the last containing Memoirs of his Life, by Dr. John Gillies. His Letters (1734-7o) were comprised in vols. i., ii. and iii. of his Works and were also published separately. His Select Works, with a memoir by J. Smith, appeared in 185o. See Lives by Robert Philip (1837), L. Tyerman (2 vols., 1876-77), J. P. Gledstone (1871, new ed. 'goo), and W. H. Lecky's History of England, vol. ii.