THE colliers of Kingswood, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, were notorious for their wicked and brutal manners, and were a terror to their neighbourhood. It was in the midst of these English savages that Mr. Whitefield erected his first field pulpit. On the afternoon of Saturday, February 17, 1739, two hundred of them gathered around him on Rose Green, attracted probably by the novelty of the scene. Every time he went to Kingswood, the number of his hearers increased. Thousands of all ranks flocked from Bristol and the neighbourhood, and the congregation was sometimes computed at twenty thousand. Many of the outcast colliers, who had never been in a place of worship in their lives, received the word with eagerness and gladness. “Having,” as Mr. Whitefield writes, “no righteousness of their own to renounce, they were glad to hear of a Jesus who was a friend to publicans, and came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The first discovery of their being affected was to see the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks, as they came out of their coal pits. Hundreds and hundreds of them were soon brought under deep convictions which, as the event proved, happily ended in a sound and thorough conversion. The change was visible to all, though numbers chose to impute it to anything rather than the finger of God.” “Many an evil life was fashioned anew, and many a wretched home lighted up with the charities and the joys of pure religion.”
What, in this case, was the true means of conversion? What was it that reached the hearts of the colliers of Kingswood, and made them men by making them Christians? There was much in the manner of the preacher to interest and move them, it is true; and perhaps something in the circumstances to awe them. “The open firmament above me,” he writes himself, “the prospect of the adjacent fields, with the sight of thousands and thousands, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some on the trees, and at times all affected and drenched in tears together, to which sometimes was added the solemnity of the approaching evening, was almost too much for, and quite overcame me.” All very natural—but neither in the eloquence of the preacher, nor in the circumstantial accompaniments of his preaching, do we find the secret of the power which reached his hearers’ hearts and turned them to God. We must look for it in the truth preached.
And what was that truth? The orator “spoke of an infinite sin,” says one writer; “he spoke of an infinite love: he spoke of that which was true then, whatever might be true hereafter. He said, Thou art in a wrong state: hell is about thee. God would bring thee into a right state; he would save thee out of that state.” This statement is ambiguous and defective. “What the orator really talked of,” says another writer, “was the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men; and the mercy of God also revealed from heaven in the gospel of his grace. He told collier, formalist, self-righteous boaster—all alike—that they were guilty and needed pardon, that they were corrupt and needed renovation—that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, to give himself a ransom for them. He exhorted them to flee from the wrath to come, and lay hold on eternal life . . . The orator spoke to men as criminals; guilty, condemned, depraved. Their own hearts confessed the charge to be true. The Holy Spirit convinced them. They were told that God in love had given his Son to die in their stead and was giving his Spirit to make them new creatures in his Son. They believed that there was a righteous pardon for their deep guilt, and a complete renewal for their impure and unholy nature, in Christ, presented to them in the gospel. And this faith was their victory.”