TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Famous Old Time Preacher
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, the colleague of JOHN WESLEY, was born in the Bell Inn, Gloucester, in 1714. According to his own account, “the story of the sins and offences of my younger days would be endless.” At the age of 16 he says: “I began to fast twice in the week for nearly 36 hours together, prayed many times a day, received the sacrament every Lord’s Day, fasting myself almost to death all the forty days of Lent, during which I did not go less than three times a day to public worship, besides seven times to private prayers, yet I knew no more that I needed to be born again, born a new creature in Christ Jesus, than if I never was born at all. Mr. Charles Wesley put a book in my hand whereby God showed me that I must be ‘born again,’ or be lost for ever.” He went to Pembroke College at the age of 18, when the great change took place.
At Pembroke his soul conflict, the severe austerity of his life, and the fasting with which he was endeavouring to gain salvation, brought him to a very low state of health, but in the time of his sickness he found that glorious truth, “By grace are ye saved” (Eph 2:6), not by works. He put aside all devotional books, and he says: “I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees. I daily received fresh life, light and power from above. I got more true knowledge from reading the Book of God in one month than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men. About the end of the seventh week, after having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan and many months of inexpressible trials by night and day, under the spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold of His dear Son by a living faith, and by giving me the Spirit of adoption to seal me, as I humbly hope, even unto the day of everlasting redemption.”