RELIGIOUS PROGRESS AND CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 35 



succeeded in doing damage which was never repaired from that da}' to 

 this. Added to the per.sonal virulence of his tirades he made use of a 

 noisy declamation, of sensuous appeals, of shoutings and groanings and 

 stampings, of picturesque descriptions of the joys of heaven and the tor- 

 ments of hell, which tended to wound the sense of true religion in the 

 house of its friends, and to bring it into contempt with its foes. And as 

 he affected to be an imitator of Whitefield, so he also had his satellites, and 

 the baleful contagion spread. There is extant a letter addressed to this 

 disturber of the peace and purity of the churches, written by the Rev. 

 Theophilus Pickering of Ipswich, Mass., which after reciting the facts that 

 Davenport had been expelled- from the colony of Connecticut, and that the 

 associated pastors of Boston and Charlestown had closed their pulpits 

 against him, closes with this incisive language: 



"I add no more but mv earnest prayer that your heart may be kept 

 from secret workings of spiritual pride, and your head from illusive imagi- 

 nations; and that (if the Lord will) you may have a safe and speedy re- 

 turn to your pastoral charge at Southold, on Long Island." 



It is no wonder then that after he had kindled this fire brand, however 

 unintentionally, Whitetield himself should have been received with cold- 

 ness in some places, and in others not received at all. I think, without 

 doubt, Minister White had the piety and the prudence of his people on his 

 side. I do not think his conduct, under the circumstances, is open to the 

 charge of uncharitableness or a mere self-protecting timidity. And all the 

 more when I find that a few years later, in those same commencement 

 theses at Harvard, it was affirmed (1769), that "enthusiasm brings more 

 injury to the cause of Christ than open impiety;" and, (1770), that "the 

 Christian Religion has received more injury from its friends than from its 

 enemies. " 



Nevertheless that spiritual movement known as the " Great Awaken- 

 ing, " which was felt in both hemispheres, and which was a blessed renova- 

 tion of society, accomplished for the East end of Long Island as great 

 things, perhaps, as for any other part of the land. The churches were 

 puritied and strengthened. The old half-way covenant system which had 

 long been in very general use, and which had introduced into the churches 

 a great number of quasi members who made no pretensions to anything 

 more than a formal piety, weakened and finally came to an end. Multi- 

 tudes were brought out of a religion of formalism into a religion of realitv. 

 The facts are so abundantly recorded in the pages of Buell and Beecheraiid 

 Prime, as to need no recapitulation here. The " Great Awakening " came 

 none too soon to fortify the graces of courage and of faith against the ex- 

 traordinary demands which were soon to be made upon them. The lono- 

 and trying years of the Revolution were drawing on. One measure after 

 another was being attempted for the entire subjugation of the colonies to 

 the Crown or to the Parliament. The time was just upon our fathers, when 

 the forcible seizure of their homes, the spoliation of their farms, the rapac- 

 ity of their enemies, the treachery of their neighbors, their long isolation 

 from their fellow countrymen on the- mainland, the compulsory mainte- 

 nance of an invading army, and the remorseless brutality of an inhuman 

 soldiery for seven weary years, would make the peaceful farms of Suff'olk 

 the most unenviable abodes in the land. Let lis thank God that he sent 

 them the baptism of faith and hope and heaven-born courage, and gave 

 them the bright visions of a better country, even an heavenh-, before the 



