1739 · Story · Zeal
Whitefield and the Fields
Two journals of 1739 record how George Whitefield, and after him John Wesley, began to preach out of doors near Bristol.
Forty days after Whitefield first preached to them in the open air, the colliers of Kingswood gave money toward a charity school of their own.
Do not let your zeal subside; keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
- Where
- Kingswood, near Bristol, Rose Green, Hannam Mount
- Who
- George Whitefield, John Wesley, The colliers of Kingswood
- When
- 17 February to 2 April 1739, by the two journals
Summary
On 17 February 1739 Whitefield spoke from a mount at Kingswood, near Bristol, to the coal miners there. Through February and March he preached in the fields at Kingswood, Rose Green and Hannam. John Wesley reached Bristol on 31 March and met him there, though at first Wesley could hardly accept preaching out of doors.
- The crowds of 1739 are known only by the numbers Whitefield and Wesley reported in their own journals.
- Wesley's first sermon in the fields came on 2 April 1739, the day after Whitefield's farewell sermons.
- Wesley taught in his sermon On Zeal that true zeal is love and has no place for persecution.
The Colliers of Kingswood
Whitefield went out to Kingswood with two companions in the afternoon of 17 February 1739.
Whitefield and the Fields follows the gospel out of the churches and into the open fields in the first months of 1739. It belongs to the value of zeal, as a dated account of zeal for the gospel carried outside the walls of the church.
This study asks what happened when Whitefield first preached in the fields and how John Wesley came to follow him there. It gives Whitefield's own account of February and March 1739 from his Journal, with the crowds as he reported them. It also gives Wesley's start in the open air and his sermon On Zeal.
Whitefield's Journal for 17 February 1739, in the fourth edition printed in London by James Hutton that year, gives his reason for going to Kingswood. He wrote that he had long yearned toward the colliers, who were many and yet without a shepherd.
When He saw the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.Whitefield's entry for the day describes the colliers in the words of this verse, so the compassion the Gospel records in Jesus was his reason for going.
After dinner that day he went up on a mount at Kingswood and preached to as many as came, and he put their number at upwards of two hundred.
Six Weeks near Bristol
Whitefield's Journal dates every row of the timeline but the last, which Wesley's Journal dates.
Within a week of his first field sermon Whitefield reported thousands at Kingswood, and on 18 March he reported no less than twenty thousand at Rose Green.
- 17 FebruaryA mount at KingswoodWhitefield's first sermon in the open air; upwards of two hundred, his count
- 23 FebruaryKingswoodNear four or five thousand, his count
- 1 MarchKingswoodAbout fifteen hundred colliers and country people, his count
- 4 MarchThe mount on Rose GreenAbove fourteen thousand, his count
- 18 MarchRose GreenNo less than twenty thousand, his count
- 29 MarchNear Two Mile Hill, KingswoodThe colliers' gifts for a school
- 31 MarchBristolWesley arrives and meets Whitefield
- 1 AprilThe Bowling Green, Hannam and Rose GreenWhitefield's farewell sermons
- 2 AprilNear the city of BristolWesley's first sermon in the open air; about three thousand, his count
A timeline of nine dated rows from 17 February to 2 April 1739, with every crowd marked as its writer's own count.
31 March, 1 April, 2 April
The Crowds He Reported
Whitefield gave a number for many of the crowds he preached to in February and March.
His Journal names the fields as a Mount in Kingswood, the Mount on Rose Green and Hannam Mount.
Each number is his own estimate, set in a journal that also records the collections he took for his orphan house, and each stands as his report alone.
Wesley Follows into the Fields
Wesley's Journal records his doubts about preaching out of doors and then his own first sermon in the fields.
On 29 March Whitefield wrote that he hoped Wesley would bring the colliers' school to good effect. He recorded Wesley's arrival in Bristol on 31 March and his own farewell the next day at the Bowling Green, Hannam and Rose Green.
Wesley wrote in his Journal for 31 March, as Percy Livingstone Parker edited it, "I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields".
He had been, he wrote, so careful of "decency and order" that he "should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church".
Of the afternoon of 2 April he wrote that he "submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation". He spoke "from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city" to a crowd he put at about three thousand.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed,Wesley's text that afternoon was Isaiah 61:1, which Luke records Jesus reading aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth.
Zeal as the Flame of Love
Wesley's sermon On Zeal measures zeal by love.
In his sermon On Zeal, Sermon 92 in the 1872 edition of his works, Wesley wrote, "True Christian zeal is no other than the flame of love."
He drew the consequence in the same sermon: "Then bigotry of every sort, and, above all, the spirit of persecution, are totally inconsistent with it."
The Ice Broken
Whitefield's Journal gives thanks for the first field sermon in the entry that records it.
Of that afternoon at Kingswood, in the same entry of the 1739 edition, Whitefield wrote, "Blessed be God that I have now broke the Ice".
He judged the new work in the same entry: "I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those Hearers in the open Fields".
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- George Whitefield, A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield's Journal, from his Arrival at London, to his Departure from thence on his Way to Georgia, fourth edition (London: James Hutton, 1739)
- The Journal of John Wesley, edited by Percy Livingstone Parker (Chicago: Moody Press, 1951), the CCEL text.
- John Wesley, Sermon 92, On Zeal, in The Works of John Wesley (1872 edition)
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