Narratives of Conversion in English Calvinistic Methodism

In May 1741, an anonymous Yorkshire Methodist sent George Whitefield a long letter in which he recorded the details of his nine-year-old daughter’s evangelical conversion. Within a fortnight the letter was printed in The Weekly History , the magazine which had become the official mouthpiece of the Calvinistic wing of the Evangelical Revival by this point. Here is how Whitefield began his account: We have a little daughter about nine years old; one Lord's Day in the last winter, when she staid at home, she read one of your journals, and afterwards some sermons of yours we had got from London. It pleased God by his Holy Spirit so to impress her mind as is very remarkable. She desires me to tell Mr Whitefield (that sweet minister of Jesus Christ) what she has met with in reading his book, she says, such a change of Heart, that she can now pray to God, and converse with his people in such a manner as she could never do before that day. She is of a sprightly brisk temper, yet if she be never so much engaged in work or play, if she hears any body talk of you, or things relating to religion, she will come and hear, and put in her word about it.