THE KING’S BUSINESS
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encouraging progress in his classical studies—St. Mary’s de Crypt. He helped his mother for about a year. Then business grew so bad that it was turned over to the eldest son. After the change George found it so hard to get along with his sister-in-law that soon he seized the opportunity to visit another brother living in Bristol. This was the end of his career in the inn. He describes this part of his life as follows: “At length I put on my blue apron, washed cups, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, became a professed common drawer for nigh a year and a half.” This occupation and environment told on the boy’s moral and spiritual life. He says he was “addicted to lying, filthy talking and foolish jesting,” and that he was a “Sabbath breaker, a theater-goer, a card-player, and a romance-reader.” His visit to Bristol is memorable for this, that to a sermon which he heard in St. John’s church Mr. Whitefield afterwards attributed his first serious religious impressions. Perhaps there was not very much depth to them, but at any rate when he returned to his mother’s house he no longer wasted time in writing plays, but began to compose sermons. When' seventeen years of age he received, for the first time, the sacrament of the Lord’s Sup per. He now spent much time in fasting and prayer, and in reading books of devotion. His old way of living became distasteful to him and he longed to become a clergyman. A college education was necessary, if his longing were to be fulfilled, and that was not so easily obtained in England by a poor boy, as it is now in our own favored land. But , God was working for the boy whom He had chosen to be a polished shaft in His quiver. A schoolmate of Whitefield’s had obtained an appointment as a “servitor” at one of the Oxford col leges, and on hearing of it Mrs
Whitefield made up her mind that she would try to get a similar appointment for George. To fit himself for college he resumed his studies at St. Mary’s de Crypt. In connection with the Gloucester grammar school there were two exhibitions at Pembroke College, and with the help of his friends and of the head master of the grammar school, Whitefield obtained the coveted appointment. His mother borrowed the funds necessary to get him started, about fifty dollars. He was then eighteen years old. A servitor at Oxford was an under graduate who received a grant of funds from the college and earned the remainder of his expenses by waiting on the table of fellows and gentleman commoners. It was not an enviable position, and it is said that the Master of Pembroke was harsh to Whitefield and that some of the students showed their contempt for him by throwing dirt at him while walking on the streets. There were several men at Oxford during Whitefield’s residence who were, like himself, destined to make their mark in the world. Dr. Samuel Johnson was in Pembroke, and after wards claimed to have known White- field “before Whitefield began to be better than other people.” Sir Will iam Blackstone, the great jurist, was also a contemporary. Shenstone and Graves, the poets, were then under graduates. Graves and Whitefield received together their degrees of B. A. in 1736. But it was in other colleges rather than in his own, that Whitefield was to find the kind 01 friends for whom he longed. John Wesley was a junior fellow in Lin coln; Charles Wesley and Mr. Mor gan were in Christ Church, Mr, Kirkman was in Merton, and these four, in the year 1729, formed a sen ciety to meet once a week to study the Greek New Testament, and to
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