34 RRMGIOUS PROGRESS AND CHRISTAIN Cl'LTURK, 



diverse theories draw near to a crisis of common danger, as our Colonies 

 did towards the close of their first century, the}- begin to grow charitable 

 and mutually lenient. 



In 1764 Whitefield passed through Suffolk County on his way through- 

 the provinces, awakening generally a degree of enthusiasm such as had 

 never been experienced before in America, and such as, perhaps, under the 

 changed conditions, would be impossible now. He preached in Southold, 

 Bridge-Hampton and East-Hampton, but for some reason, but little is 

 known of these labors or of their results. From the silence with which in 

 some narratives of the time his work is passed over, and from a few well- 

 ascertained facts, the great proto-evangelist of America seems not to have 

 been received with any great favor. Dr. Buell's " Narrative of the remark- 

 able revival in East-Hampton in the year 1764," a book which holds in the 

 religious literature of Long Island a place like Jonathan -Edward's " Narra- 

 tive of the surprising work of God in Northampton in 1735," in the reli- 

 gious history of New England, does not deign to notice the fact of White- 

 field's visit to that church in the very year of which it treats. Mr. White 01 

 Southampton, positively refused to recognize him as the messenger of God 

 and closed his pulpit door against him. His action has seemed to some 

 invidious and unchristian. But in view of the spirit that was abroad in the 

 air at the time, I am not ready to take a place with those who charge the 

 cautious minister of Southampton with any lack of charity or of fidelity. 

 For twenty years previous to this there had been abroad a spirit of discord 

 and of disorganization in the churches both upon the Island and on the 

 main-land of New England. And this had been in no small degree ow^ng 

 to Whitefield's own injudicious conduct and unwarrantable inuendoes con- 

 cerning the ministry of our churches. Coming from a country in which 

 the clergy were proverbially perfunctory in the discharge of their office and 

 lacking in the spiritual graces to be looked for in their profession; where 

 the shepherd's principal business seemed in many cases to be only to shear 

 the fliock and eat the mutton; it was natural, perhaps, for Whitefield to take 

 it for granted that the same conditions existed in America. In entire sin- 

 cerity doubtless, but ignorant of facts, he started the cry of wolf where no 

 wolf was, and caused a panic of apprehension and suspicion in many a 

 hitherto peaceful flock. He raised the charge of an unconverted ministry 

 in a somewhat indefinite way, and without intending it, caused wide-spread 

 and measureless disaster. Suffolk County had no small share in spreading 

 and intensifying the pest. The Rev. James Davenport, of Southold, was a 

 good man doubtless in the ground of his character, but he lacked the good 

 sense and intellectual balance so characteristic of his earliest predecessor 

 and of his latest successor in that pastorate. Carried away by an enthusi- 

 astic impulse he aspired to be an imitator if not a rival of Whitefield. He 

 succeeded in imitating what was objectionable in his pattern without at- 

 taining to its excellencies. He became an itinerant and went up and down 

 among the churches like a baleful, flaming torch. He claimed to know 

 the secret things of God. He could discriminate .as by intuition between 

 true and false professors. He dared to be precise in his charges where 

 Whitefield had only been indefinite. He called upon churches to boycott 

 the ministers who had been their spiritual leaders for a generation, and as 

 they valued their soul's salvation, to no longer attend upon their ministra- 

 tions. And as all this was mixed up with some doctrinal truth which was 

 like the weight -of the axe-head to drive home the divisive edge of error, he 



