The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield Quotes

“Language like this, no doubt, seems foolishness and affectation to the world; but the well-instructed Bible reader will see in it the heartfelt experience of all the brightest saints. It is the language of men like Baxter, and Brainerd, and M’Cheyne. It is the same mind that was in the inspired Apostle Paul. Those that have most light and grace are always the humblest men.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“If you say you are the chief of sinners, I answer that will be no hindrance to your salvation. Indeed it will not, if you lay hold on Christ by faith. Read the Evangelists, and see how kindly he behaved to his disciples, who had fled from and denied him. ‘Go, tell my brethren,’ says he. He did not say, ‘Go, tell those traitors,’ but, ‘Go, tell my brethren and Peter.’ It is as though he had said, ‘Go, tell my brethren in general, and Peter in particular, that I am risen. Oh, comfort his poor drooping heart. Tell him I am reconciled to him. Bid him weep no more so bitterly. For though with oaths and curses he thrice denied me, yet I have died for his sins; I have risen again for his justification: I freely forgive him all.” Thus slow to anger and of great kindness, was our all-merciful High Priest. And do you think he has changed his nature and forgets poor sinners, now he is exalted to the right hand of God? No; he is the same yesterday, today, and forever; and sitteth there only to make intercession for”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“Simple Bible statements, apt illustrations, and pertinent anecdotes,”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“Once become satisfied that a man loves you, and you will listen gladly to anything he has to say.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“He felt intensely for the souls before him, and his feelings found an outlet in tears. Of all the ingredients of his success in preaching, none, I suspect, were so powerful as this. It awakened affections and touched secret springs in men, which no amount of reasoning and demonstration could have moved. It smoothed down the prejudices which many had conceived against him. They could not hate the man who wept so much over their souls. “I came to hear you,” said one to him, “with my pocket full of stones, intending to break your head; but your sermon got the better of me, and broke my heart.” Once become satisfied that a man loves you, and you will listen gladly to anything he has to say.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“Simple Bible statements, apt illustrations, and pertinent anecdotes, were the more common weapons that he used. The consequence was that his hearers always understood him. He never shot above their heads. Here again is one grand element of a preacher’s success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, “To make easy things seem hard is every man’s work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“The cause of pure religion was advanced, and souls were plucked from the hand of Satan, like brands from the burning. But it was going much too fast for the Church of those days. The clergy, with a few honourable exceptions, refused entirely to countenance this strange preacher. In the true spirit of the dog in the manger, they neither liked to go after the semi-heathen masses of population themselves, nor liked any one else to do the work for them. The consequence was that the ministrations of Whitefield in the pulpits of the Church of England from this time almost entirely ceased. He loved the Church in which he had been ordained; he gloried in her Articles; he used her Prayer book with pleasure. But the Church did not love him, and so lost the use of his services. The plain truth is that the Church of England of that day was not ready for a man like Whitefield. The Church was too much asleep to understand him, and was vexed at a man who would not keep still and let the devil alone.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield

“The number of hearers rapidly increased, till the congregation amounted to many thousands. His own account of the behaviour of these neglected colliers, who had never been in a church in their lives, is deeply affecting:—“Having,” he writes to a friend, “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 the sight of the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks as they came out of their coal-pits.”
― George Whitefield, The Collected Sermons of George Whitefield