‘O God, do it again!’

Sherwood Wirt, the editor of Decision, the magazine of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called it ‘one of the great monumental literary achievements of the 20th century’.

The book in question? Arnold A. Dallimore’s two-volume Life of George Whitefield (1714- 1770). This work literally made Dallimore’s name a beloved one throughout English-speaking Evangelical and Reformed circles.

Dallimore, a native of Ontario, Canada, had sensed a distinct call to pastoral ministry in 1931 when he was 20 years of age. He spent the next four years studying at Toronto Baptist Seminary, preparing for pastoral ministry. Among his professors was a W. W. Fleischer, who taught church history. Fleischer gave him a rich love for the great Christian men and women of the past, even though Fleischer himself was not the best of historians. It was in one of Fleischer’s classes, when he was lecturing on the Great Awakening in the 18th century and the ministry of George Whitefield, that Dallimore asked him if there were any biographies of Whitefield he could recommend. Fleischer’s comment, that there was nothing then available, lodged in Dallimore’s mind and made him determined to write something.