He Reckoned It a Great Success

In light of tomorrow’s church gatherings and the subsequent measurements of various kinds of success therein, I feel the nudge to share this passage from Thomas Kidd’s incredible book George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father:

On the appointed evening, Whitefield preached with little incident other than a few boys calling him “strange names.” But Whitefield decided that he has to confront the revelers, so he went to the “stage, erected for the wrestlers, and began to show them the error of their ways.” Some youths shouted him down with cries of “huzza,” and one of the brawlers accosted him and hit him with a cudgel. Whitefield, fearing for his life, left the stage, pushed through the shouting crowd, and escaped on his horse. It was a frightening experience, but in his published journal, he reckoned it a great success.

– Kidd (Yale, p.82)

Of course, this is same man who once said, “I was honored with having stones, dirt, rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats thrown at me.”