George Whitefield

In 1735, at Oxford, a young man of twenty lay collapsed on his bed. Too weak to get up, he asked the college scout to tell his tutor that he was ill. The local surgeon-barber was sent to bleed him, but the scholar’s sickness continued.

He had fallen ill through fasting and rigorous religious observances. He had given up his favorite foods (he stopped eating fruit), ceased to have his clothes mended, and prayed outside his college at night even when his hands turned blue from cold. He shirked his studies and abandoned laughter in his pursuit of holiness. He visited prisoners and read prayers with them. He strove ceaselessly to subdue his passions.

His name was George Whitefield. His college knew him as one of a holy crowd, a group of seriously religious men known as “Methodists” for their rigorous discipline. Yet he was tormented, feeling far from God and sensing that his sins were unforgiven.

But during his sickness, Whitefield picked up a book by Joseph Hall, one-time Bishop of Norwich. He read from it for several days. Where Whitefield was restless, Hall was calm and full of assurance.

One day, alone and feeling feverish, Whitefield looked for something to quench a raging thirst that had come upon him. He drank water, but still felt dry. He drank the last of the ale that had come with his lunch, without relief.

Then his thirst reminded him that Christ on the cross had said “I thirst” when his sufferings were almost over. Turning to Hall’s book, he read this about Jesus on the cross: “Thou, that not long since proclaimed in the Temple: `If any man thirst let him come to me and drink: he that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters’ now thyself thirstest.”