A Brief Account of the Life, Experience, Travels, and Gospel Labours of George White, An African

A Brief Account of the Life was published in 1810 and focuses on White's struggle to win ordination as a Methodist preacher. Shortly after White's conversion in 1805, he dreams vividly of hell and "the torments of the damned; out of whose mouths and nostrils issued flames of fire" (pp. 9-10). In his dream, the guide who shows White the various features of hell tells him to "Go, and declare what you have seen"; instructions that make him believe he should become a preacher (p. 10). White applies to become an exhorter but is initially rejected because of his "inability and ignorance," lacking "even the knowledge of the English alphabet," and because he speaks in a "broken way . . . of Christ, and his love to sinners" (p. 11). In July 1805, three months after his initial application, White is given a "license to exhort" and begins his work as an itinerant preacher on Long Island, in New York City and in upper New Jersey (p. 12). White converts many with his preaching, and he also believes that his preaching sanctifies him. During a meeting in his own house, White falls "prostrate upon the floor, like one dead" and obtains "a spiritual view of the heavenly hosts surrounding the eternal throne, giving glory to God and the Lamb; with whom, all my ransomed powers seemed to unite, in symponious strains of divine adoration" (p. 14). This powerful spiritual experience creates in White a desire to read the scriptures himself, and he employs his sixteen-year-old daughter as a teacher. White makes great progress but can only learn to read from the Bible. His daughter can "learn me nothing from the common spelling book; no, not so much as the alphabet; for my mind was so perfectly taken up with the notion of reading the bible, that I could think of nothing else" (p. 15). After learning to read, White receives another spiritual prompting that instructs him to become a preacher, and he applies for a license. Despite White's success in converting large crowds, he is denied a license five times before he is finally accepted. When White asks the elders who review his application "if they were dissatisfied with the discourse I had delivered" and "if there was anything exceptionable in my character," they reply in the negative; White is never given reasons for his rejections, but scholarship shows that even in the relatively democratic Methodist Church, African Americans were rarely given leadership positions in the early nineteenth century (p. 24). White eventually obtains his preaching license and a congregation, where his ministry fuels dynamic religious growth. The Account concludes with a sermon he preached at the funeral of a woman named Mary Henery-who may have been a relative of his wife of the same name. Zachary Hutchins