HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND.

BOOK V.

PROGRESS UNDER THE FIRST TWO HANOVERIAN

KINGS.

CHAPTER VIII.

THOUGH, when religion was no longer the occasion for experience or apprehension of oppressive treatment on the part of the parent realm, it ceased to be the animating spirit of political action in New England, it by no means failed to be a subject of permanent and intimate concern. Numbers of the people of that country of the fourth native generation deplored the departure of what they had been educated to regard as a sort of golden age. Thoughtful and devout men looked back to the time when sublime exploits and sacrifices had attested the religious earnestness of their fathers, and, comparing it with their own day of absorption Alleged in secular interests, of relaxation in ecclesias- decay of tical discipline, and of imputed laxness of man- in New ners, they mourned that the ancient glory had England. been dimmed.' The contrast made a standing topic of the election sermons preached before the government from year to year, from the time of John Norton down.

Thomas Prince, Christian History, I. 76, 94-104. — In his "Life and Times of the Reverend George Whitefield," pp. 144, 145, Robert Philip, to make manifest that a dig

religion

nus vindice nodus existed, collects testimonies to the decline of relig ious fervor in New England since the middle of the seventeenth century.

When military movements miscarried, when harvests failed, when epidemic sickness brought alarm and sorrow, when an earthquake spread consternation, the anxious people interpreted the calamity or the portent as a sign of God's displeasure against their backsliding, and appointed fasts to deprecate his wrath, or resorted to the more solemn expedient of convoking synods to inquire into the conditions of reconciliation to the offended Majesty of Heaven.

That religion, so sickly, might be reinvigorated was the constant hope and aim of numbers of reflecting persons. From time to time there would be reports of remarkable success attending the labors of one or another devoted minister. Among such Mr. Solomon Stoddard religion. was distinguished. In his ministry of nearly sixty years at Northampton, "he had five har

Revivals of

1680

1684.

1697.

1713.

2

vests, as he called them;" that is, there were 1719. five different times at which a large number of persons professed religious convictions, and attached themselves to his church. The earthquake which, in LieutenantGovernor Dummer's time, traversed a considerable part of inhabited New England, was interpreted as a providential warning, and the ministers of various places, of Boston especially, availed themselves of the terror which it inspired as an instrument of religious impression. The shock was felt just before midnight. "On the next morning a very full assembly met at the North Oct 29. Church [Cotton Mather's] for the proper exercises on so extraordinary an occasion. At five in the evening a crowded concourse assembled at the Old Church [Dr. Chauncy's], and multitudes, unable to get in, immediately flowed to the South [Mr. Prince's], and in a few minutes filled that also. . . At Lieutenant-Governor Dum

1727.

1 Edwards, Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, &c., p. 4.

2 The visitation of the small-pox in 1721 disappointed the ministers as

to the religious impression produced by it. "It pleased the holy God to humble us, and sparingly to give the blessing." (Prince, Christian History, II. 375.)

mer's motion, . . . . . a day of extraordinary fasting and prayer was kept in all the churches in Boston. . . . . . The ministers endeavored to set in with this extraordinary and awakening work of God in nature, and to preach his word in the most awakening manner;" and "in all the congregations many seemed to be awakened and reformed." 1

Ministry of

Edwards.

But it was not till after the time of the political lull in Governor Belcher's administration, that in any quarter a religious movement took place of sufficient importance to attract wide attention. Stoddard had now been succeeded as minister of Northampton by Jonathan Edwards, his grandson. In Edwards's judgment the people were suffering from want of a sufficiently distinct Jonathan and vivid presentation of Calvinistic doctrine. He preached vehemently on "Justification by Faith" and "God's Absolute Sovereignty." Some of his friends were displeased, not by his doctrine, but by his exciting inferences from it, and would have discouraged him. But with an unimpassioned obstinacy he went on, and soon saw cause to rejoice in the fruit of his labors. "The spirit of God," he writes, "began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work among us; and December. there were very suddenly, one after another, five or six persons who were to all appearance savingly converted, and some of them wrought upon in a very remarkable

'Prince, Christian History, II. 377, 378; comp. Ibid., I. 114; Hutch. Hist., II. 326. Reverend James Allin, of Brookline, wrote a particular account of the earthquake, from which portions are published in the Proceedings of the Historical Society for 1872, p. 249. Colman, Prince, and not a few others, published sermons on the occasion. (Comp. Mass. Hist. Coll., XXXII. 175; N. H. Hist. Coll., IV. 92.)

1734.

The Christian History was issued in weekly numbers from March 5, 1743, to Feb. 23, 1745. Writing to his kinsman, Nathaniel Chauncy, of Durham, Connecticut, March 16, 1743, Dr. Chauncy said: "Few among us like it. Many of Mr. Prince's parishioners are much troubled at it. I believe 't is not much encouraged, and will drop off of itself." (Fowler, Memorials of the Chauncys, &c., 65.)

manner.

A great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and all ages; the noise among the dry bones. waxed louder and louder; all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by. . . . Other discourse than of the things of religion would scarcely be tolerated in any company. .. There was scarcely a

Religious excitement

in western Massachu

single person in the town, either old or young, that was left unconcerned; so that, in the spring and summer following, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it never was so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then."

setts.

1735.

March.

"1

The people of the towns about "seemed not to know what to make of it; and there were many that scoffed at and ridiculed it, and some compared what was called conversion to certain distempers." But a session of the Superior Court at Northampton brought numbers of people together there, and "those that came from the neighborhood were for the most part remarkably affected. Many. ... went home with wounded hearts, and with those impressions that never wore off till they had hopefully a saving issue. . . . The same work began evidently to appear and prevail in several other towns in the county." South Hadley, Hadley, Suffield, Sunderland, Deerfield, Hatfield, Springfield, West Springfield, Longmeadow, Northfield, besides many towns in Connecticut, caught the sympathy, and made their large contributions of converts, -as large, Edwards thought, in proportion to their population, as Northampton. Of his own town he wrote: "I hope that more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to Christ in the space of half a year; how many more I don't guess, and

1 Edwards, Faithful Narrative, &c., 10-14.

I

about the same number of males as females. . . .. hope that by far the greater part of persons in the town above sixteen years of age were such as had the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and so, by what I heard, I suppose it is in some other places. So far as I, by looking back, can judge from the particular acquaintance I have had with souls in this work, it appears to me probable to have been at the rate, at least, of four persons in a day, or near thirty in a week, take one with another, for five or six weeks together." About six hundred and twenty came to his communion-table, being nearly the whole number of adults in his congregation. At one communion service a hundred new participants presented themselves; at another, eighty. Among his converts, ten were above sixty years of age, and two above seventy; "near thirty were to appearance so wrought upon, between ten and fourteen years of age; and two between nine and ten, and one of about four years of age."1

Report of it

1737

Nov. 26.

The excitement, which in Massachusetts had been confined to towns on or near Connecticut River, ceased after about six months. Dr. Colman, of Boston, sent an account of it to England, and, in pursuance of a request from his correspondents there, obtained from Edwards a detailed description in a long letter, in England which was published in London by Dr. Watts and Dr. Guise, and from which the facts related above have been taken. The ministers of Boston kept the subject before the public mind. They circulated an edition of Dr. Edwards's letter, and several sermons, which were considered to have been serviceable in the recent movement. Dr. Colman did more. He sent an invitation to George Whitefield to visit New England; and, in conjunction with his colleague, William Cooper, prepared a reception for the English

1 Edwards, Faithful Narrative, &c., 17-29.

1738.

1740.