Note 235 — COMMENCEMENT OF OUTDOOR PREACHING. (continued 3)

Whitefield estimated his last Sunday's congregation at "about twenty thousand." It is only fair to say, that Whitefield's estimates might be too high. In the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1739, there appeared a letter, signed "Thoninonca," stating that the writer was present when Whitefield preached in Moorfields on July 29, and that, before the audience was dismissed, he "made several marks where the outermost of them stood; and, the next morning, he found the distance of the farthest mark from the rostrum to be thirty-two yards, and that of the nearest to it twenty-eight." He then calculates "the space taken up by the standing congregation to be 2827 yards;" and adds, "in a square yard, nine persons may easily stand, and therefore 2827 square yards must contain 25,443 people." To this the editor appended a note: "Soldiers, in close order, stand but four in a square yard, at which rule, the circle will contain but 11,338."