The Life and Times of George Whitefield (Robert Philip)

The Life and Times of George Whitefield

The best account of Whitefield’s life and ministry in a single volume.

Drawing on the testimonies of those who had a personal knowledge of the man, and from Whitefield’s own journals, letters and sermons, the author has grasped the great lesson of the evangelist’s life, namely: that it is the Holy Spirit who makes preachers.

Robert Philip is not an uncritical biographer, but is ready to note weaknesses and failures that admirers of Whitefield have sometimes passed over. But the outstanding feature of his work is the way in which he allows his subject to speak for himself. He seems to have absorbed all that Whitefield ever said and wrote, and his selection brings us into direct contact with the man. Thus Philip can truthfully write: “This work is chiefly from Whitefield’s own pen. So far as it is mine, it is in his own spirit.”

For those who want a work of quiet scholarship, Philip is not their man. But where there is a desire for the evangelical flame – for words that burn, and reach heart and soul? This volume will clearly show why the gospel can turn the world upside down.

Endorsement

“Philip’s Life and Times of George Whitefield was one of the first biographies I read as a young Christian and I never return to it without being stirred afresh by its enduring message.”
— Iain H. Murray, Banner of Truth

Contents

1. Early Life, Education, and Ordination
2. Introduction to London
3. First Voyage and Visit to Georgia
4. First Great Measures in London
5. His First Visits to the Country
6. In Wales
7. In America
8. His Breach with Wesley
9. In Scotland
10. Whitefield and the Dissenters
11. Domestic Life
12. At Cambuslang
13. Itinerating
14. In America
15. In Bermudea
16. Ranging
17. In Ireland
18. Characteristic Sayings
19. Revisiting
20. In Lisbon, 1754
21. With the London Moravians
22. Influence in America
23. His Public Spirit
24. Influence in America, Part 2
25. Whitefield and the Bishops
26. Last Labours at Home
27. Edmund-Hall
28. Last Voyage
29. Whitefield and the Nobility
30. His Last Itinerancy
31. Funeral
32. Characteristics
33. Preaching

About the Author

Robert Philip (1791-1858) was born in the village of Huntly, Aberdeenshire. His father was an elder in the church of the Rev. G. Cowie, who was the founder and first promoter of Independency in the north of Scotland.  Robert was admitted at age 19 as a student of the Congregational denomination’s Hoxton Academy in London, in the year 1811.

After four years’ laborious and successful study in that institution, he commenced his ministerial life at Newington Chapel, Liverpool, where he was for eleven years pastor of the church over which the youthful but fervent Thomas Spencer (1791-1811) had previously presided. During his pastorate, much of his time and energies were devoted, and with much success, to the spiritual improvement of the sailors frequenting the port.  In 1826, he came to London to take the pastorate of a church which had been formed under his superintendence at Maberly Chapel, Kingsland, and here the remainder of his life was spent. During thirty-one years he carried on his labours here with unremitting vigour and constancy. He was seldom away from his own pulpit, rarely leaving it for any other purpose than to advocate the claims of the London Missionary Society.