THE KING’S BUSINESS
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hand her a letter which he enclosed. Whether the young lady, ever heard of the matter is not known, but some information he received about her later, led him to believe she was not out-and-out enough to' fit into the work, and the matter was dropped. A year or two afterwards he married a widow nearly ten years his senior— a Mrs. James. A little son was born to them, from whom Whitefield hoped great things as a preacher of the Gospel, but the little fellow only lived a few months. Though White- field’s married life was not unhappy in the sense in which John Wesley’s was, yet Mrs. Whitefield seems not to have been able to keep up with his never-ceasing itinerating. With the heavy financial responsi bility of the Bethesda Orphanage ana the academy resting Upon him, White- field was obliged to take up offerings for them. He would not take advan tage of anyone, however, as the fol lowing incident, related by Gillies, his Scotch biographer, proves: ■ “One Miss Hunter, a young lady of considerable fortune, made a full offer to him of her estate, both money and lands, amounting to about seven thousand pounds ($35,000), which 'he generously refused; and upon his re fusing it for himself she offered it to him for the benefit of the Orphan House in Georgia, which he also ab solutely refused:” FRANKLIN’S OFFERING. • Ben Franklin, who was a warm friend of Whitefield’s, tells a good story on himself. He went to hear him preach one day when he knew Whitefield was going to take up an offering for the orphanage, and.deter mined not to let Whitefield get a penny out of him. “I had in my pocket,” says Frank lin, “a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began ha
(the Seceders)' were the Lord’s peo-_ pie. He assured them that if they were the Lord’s people then all the others must be the Devil’s, and there fore had more need to be preached ta, and that if the Pope himself would lend him his pulpit, he would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Christ from it. In spite of all this, the Ers- kines gave, him the use of their pul pits, but others of the brethren pro claimed a day Qf humiliation and prayer that God would deliver them from him. In Glasgow he preached to great crowds and with evidences of deep conviction. At one time he ad dressed an audience of 20,000 chil dren. CAMBUSLANG. Cambuslang was a small village near Glasgow. The pastor, the Rev. William MacCulloch, was “a man of considerable parts and of great piety.” The' Holy Spirit was working might ily among the people before White- field arrived, and the pastor had been constrained to hold meetings every evening. Whitefield preached here three times a day. The last service lasted from 9 until 11 o’clock in the evening; the people would not go home, and Mr. MacCulloch had to preach again until 1 o’clock in the morning. Thousands were brought under conviction, and over 20,000 per sons partook of the Lord’s Supper which was- celebrated on the hillside, though it was the month of February. HIS MARRIAGE. When Whitefield was twenty-five or, twenty-six years old he felt that he ought to marry “in order to have a helpmeet for me in the work where- unto our dear Lord Jesus hath called me.” Accordingly he wrote to the parents of a yopng lady in London, laid the case before them, and asked them that if they thought their daitgh- ter - “a proper person to engage in such an undertaking,” they should
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