VI

THE GREAT AWAKENING

One of the effects of the witchcraft epidemic at Salem was to cast discredit upon the clergy, who still represented the old theocratic ideal which had founded the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is true, that with regard to the prosecutions of witches, the more eminent among the clergy had behaved with much wisdom and discretion; nevertheless, the new public opinion, receiving its tone far more from laymen than formerly, was inclined to charge this whole business of diabolism to the account of the men who represented an old and discredited state of things. With regard to the reality of witchcraft, Cotton Mather had been foremost among the defenders of the belief, and now that there came a sudden and violent reaction against the superstition, it made little difference to people that he had been remarkably discreet and temperate in his handling of the matter; it was enough that he had been a believer and prominent advocate. To some extent Cotton Mather was made the chief butt of popular resentment because

he and his father especially typified the old theocratic state of things.

Now the old Puritan theocracy in the early days when Winthrop and Cotton led it had framed for itself an ideal of society that was at least lofty and noble, although from the first there were settlers who dissented from it. The defensive wall behind which the theocracy sought to shelter itself from all hostile attack was the restriction of the rights to vote and hold office to members of the Congregational churches in full communion. One of the first effects of this policy was to drive away from Massachusetts the men who founded Connecticut¹ and some of those who founded Rhode Island; but after such depletions there was a considerable number left in Massachusetts who were disfranchised, and who would have been glad in many respects to secularize the government. In the second period of the theocracy, with Endicott, Bellingham, and Norton at the head, the opposition had become very strong; indeed, it numbered a majority of the population. When the Quakers arrived upon the scene, determined to stay in the Commonwealth at all hazards and thus destroy its character as a united body of believers, there is little doubt that a majority

of the people sympathized with them.¹ The violent policy pursued by magistrates and ministers soon failed because the force of a new and growing public opinion was arrayed against it. During the reign of Charles II. the course of the theocracy, in spite of its narrowness and arrogance, commands our admiration for the boldness with which it resisted all attempts of the British government to interfere with the local administration of the colony. There can be no doubt that the Massachusetts theocracy then made a splendid fight for the principles of political freedom, so far as they concerned the relation between a colonial and imperial government. At the same time, the theocracy at home was felt as more and more oppressive. By the time of the death of Charles II. it was reckoned that four fifths of the adult males in Massachusetts were disfranchised because of inability to participate in the Lord’s Supper. It is not strange, therefore, that between the one fifth who ruled, and the four fifths who had no voice in ruling, there should have been marked differences of policy accompanied with a good deal of ill-feeling.

In view of such difficulties which began to be foreseen soon after 1650, an opinion grew up that all baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord’s Supper. This theory, according to which a person might be a halfway member of the church,—member enough for political purposes, but not for religious,—was known at the time as the “Halfway Covenant.”¹ It formed the occasion for prolonged and bitter controversy, in which prominent clergymen took opposite sides. It was contended by some that its natural tendency would be toward the spiritual demoralization of the church, while others denied that such would be its practical effect, and pointed to the lamentable severance between ecclesiastics and laymen as a much greater evil. In the

First Church of Boston, the Halfway Covenant was decisively condemned, and the Rev. John Davenport, a theocrat of extreme type, was called from New Haven to be its pastor. Then the minority in the church, who approved of the Halfway Covenant, seceded in 1669 and formed themselves into a new society known as the South Church, further defined in later days as the “Old South.” The wooden meeting-house of this society, which occupied the spot of land upon which its brick successor still stands to-day, was a favourite place for meetings which dealt with political questions, and in a certain sense its founding may be regarded as a kind of political safety valve for the agitation in Massachusetts.¹

In spite of such palliatives, however, the opposition grew, and it was apt to take the form of political Toryism, or a disposition to uphold the British government in its contests with the theocracy. From this point of view, we may regard Joseph Dudley and his friends as the founders of New England Toryism. Boston was becoming a place of some commercial note, sustaining business relations with various parts of the world. Among its residents were

members of the Church of England, who desired a place of worship for themselves, and naturally felt indignant that nothing of the sort was allowed to be provided.

Such was the state of affairs when the old charter was rescinded, and Sir Edmund Andros was sent by James II. to govern New England according to his own sweet will, without any constitutional checks or limitations. The rule of Andros produced for the moment something approaching to unanimity of opposition, for there were few men in Massachusetts ready to surrender the charter of their liberties, although there were many who would be glad to see it modified. After the well-planned and fortunate insurrection which expelled Andros, the representatives of the theocracy, and in particular Increase Mather, made every effort to obtain from William III. a charter essentially similar to the old one. In this they were completely defeated. The new charter, with its substitution of a royal governor for a governor elected by church members, dealt a serious blow at the independence of the Commonwealth. At the same time the wide extension of the suffrage, and its limitation only by a property qualification, was equivalent to the death-blow of the old theocracy. It was a revolution, the severity of which for the clergy was but slightly disguised by the appointment of

Mather’s candidate, Sir William Phips, to be the first royal governor.¹

Five years after the new charter had gone into operation, an event occurred which illustrated most strikingly the decline in the power of the clergy. Increase Mather had been for many years minister of the North Church in Boston, and in 1685 was appointed president of Harvard, but continued to live in Boston. During the Andros interval he was occupied in protecting the interests of the colony in London. Thus the management of affairs at Harvard was left chiefly in the hands of William Brattle and John Leverett, who both belonged to the extreme liberal wing of the clergy; for the influences which were raising up a crop of freethinkers for the eighteenth century in England were not entirely without effect in the English colonies. Under the influence of Brattle and Leverett, grew up Benjamin Colman, who took his master’s degree at Harvard in 1695, and then went to England, where he was settled over a congregation at Bath. The group of liberals in Boston was steadily increasing in number, and one of their leaders was Thomas Brattle, treasurer of Harvard, a wealthy merchant whose leisure hours were more or less devoted to astronomy and physics. He was the author of several papers on lunar eclipses and of an able

criticism of the witchcraft delusion. In 1698 Thomas Brattle conveyed to a body of trustees the land upon which a new meetinghouse was to be built, and in the following year an invitation was sent to Benjamin Colman to become the pastor of the new Brattle Church. Upon Colman’s arrival in Boston, his church issued a manifesto in which two startling novelties were announced. It had been the custom to require from all candidates for admission to the Lord’s Supper not only a general subscription to the Westminster creed, but also a relation of personal experiences, which in order to insure their admission must be satisfactory to the presiding clergy. The new church announced that it would dispense with such personal experiences, requiring merely a formal subscription to the Westminster creed. It had also been customary to confine the choice of a minister to the male communicants alone; the new church proposed to allow all members of the congregation who contributed money toward the support of the church to have votes in the election of ministers. It is hardly necessary to point out the far-reaching character of these provisions in allowing a wholesome opportunity for variations in individual opinion to creep into the church. A body of ministers elected only by communicants, and able to exclude all communicants save

such as could satisfy them in a relation of personal experiences, was naturally able to exert a very powerful influence in repressing individual divergences. The Mathers were quite right in thinking that the Brattles and their friends aimed a blow at the vitals of the church. On the 5th of January, 1699/1700, Cotton Mather writes in his diary: “I see Satan beginning a terrible shake in the churches of New England, and the innovators that have set up a new church in Boston (a new one, indeed!) have made a day of temptation among us. The men are ignorant, arrogant, obstinate, and full of malice and slander, and they fill the land with lies. . . . Wherefore I set apart this day again for prayer in my study, to cry mightily unto God.”¹

It was indeed probable that should the new Brattle Church succeed in obtaining recognition as a Congregational church in good standing, it would create a precedent for latitudinarianism which might be pushed to almost any extent, and yet there was no available method of preventing it. Under the old theocracy, that clause of the Cambridge Platform would have been sufficient which enjoined it upon the magistrates to suppress heresy. Had the old state of things continued in 1699, there can be little doubt that Leverett, Colman, and the two Brattles

would either have been expelled from the Commonwealth or heavily fined, as had been the case with William Vassall, Robert Child, and their companions. But the Cambridge Platform had fallen with the fall of the old charter; and although Increase Mather had endeavoured to obtain a provision substantially replacing it, King William, who was no friend to theocracies, would not hear of such a thing. The Mathers were therefore reduced to the expedient of declining to exchange pulpits with the new pastor; this refusal of ecclesiastical courtesies was all that was left for them, and from the theocratic point of view one cannot wonder if they thought that in some essential respects the world was coming to an end. In the course of the following year a kind of peace was patched up between the party of the Brattles and that of the Mathers, and blessings were interchanged; but as we look back upon the affair we can see that the theocracy had received a fatal blow.

The increasing power of the liberals was displayed about the same time in what went on at Harvard College. The charter of 1650, by which the Company of Massachusetts Bay had incorporated that institution, was generally regarded as having lost its validity when the charter of the company was repealed; and although things went on about as usual at the college, it

was felt that things stood upon a precarious footing. But to obtain a new charter which would be satisfactory to the theocrats was no easy matter, for any such charter must either exclude or allow the exclusion from the teaching body of all persons not in communion with the Congregational church, and King William would never consent to the exclusion of Episcopalians. It will be remembered that one of the chief sources of contention between Charles II. and the government of Boston had been the repressive policy pursued by the latter toward members of the Church of England. King William felt, both as an advocate of liberalism and as the representative of imperial authority, that no concessions could be allowed to the theocracy on this point. In 1699 the party of the Mathers introduced a bill into the General Court, providing for a religious test in Harvard College, the substance of which was, “that in the charter for the college, our holy religion may be secured to us and unto our posterity, by a provision that no person shall be chosen president or fellow of the college, but such as declare their adherence unto the principles of reformation which were espoused and intended by those who first settled the country . . . and have hitherto been the general professions of New England.” This bill passed both houses, but, fortunately, was

vetoed by the royal governor, Lord Bellomont. Meanwhile, the discontent in Cambridge arising from President Mother’s non-residence had been increasing. That worthy divine seems to have felt more attachment to his church in Boston than toward the college.¹ After a while the Rev. Samuel Willard of the Old South was appointed vice-president of the college, but he, too, seems to have preferred the duties of pastor to those of administering a college, and his absenteeism attracted comment as well as Mather’s. I think, however, that the true explanation of Mather’s difficulty with the college lies deeper. There can be no doubt that between 1685 and 1700 the intellectual atmosphere of the college was rapidly becoming more and more liberal. Leverett and the Brattles were the ruling spirits, and the events of each passing year made Mather more and more uncongenial to them; whereas, Willard was both in character and in turn of thought more to their mind. It is not strange, therefore, that we find Mather’s non-residence complained of, while the same fault in Willard is but lightly noticed. After a while Mather signified that if the General Court were not satisfied with his conduct, it might perhaps be well for them to choose another president. To his

intense chagrin, he was taken at his word, and in September, 1701, the dignity and duties of the president were transferred to Willard, who, however, retained the title of vice-president, thus somewhat softening the blow. A couple of entries in Judge Sewall’s diary are rather amusing in this connection. Sewall was a member of the court which had just wrought this change in the presidency. The first entry is: “Mr. Cotton Mather came to Mr. Wilkins’s shop, and there talked very sharply against me as if I had used his father worse than a neger; spake so loud that people in the street might hear him. . . . I had read in the morning Mr. Dod’s saying: Sanctified afflictions are good promotions. I found it now a cordial.” Then follows a memorandum: “Oct^r 9. I sent Mr. Increase Mather a hanch of very good venison; I hope in that I did not treat him as a negro.”¹ As for Cotton Mather, he hoped to be chosen president of Harvard when Willard should die or resign, but he did not read correctly the signs of the times, nor did he play his part with skill; for he chose the part of sulking, and went so long without attending the meetings of the corporation, of which he was a member, that people spoke of his having abdicated his office.²

In 1702 Joseph Dudley, who had been in England ever since the Andros days and had just been appointed to succeed Lord Bellomont as governor of Massachusetts, arrived in Boston. The enmity between Dudley and the Mathers was of long standing, and may be said to have had its origin in the very roots of things. Between the representatives of the old theocracy and the subtle founder of Toryism there could be no love lost at any time; on the other hand, by that very law of selection which was apt to bring together revolters against the theocracy, whether for religious or political reasons, a strong alliance grew up between Dudley and Leverett. When Willard died, in September, 1707, the corporation at once chose Leverett as his successor. At his instigation a resolution was introduced into the General Court declaring that the charter of 16 50 was still in force; or rather, enacting a charter which in its essential provisions was identical with the old one. This charter was at once signed by Governor Dudley. The English Privy Council might still have overturned it, but they never did, so after the vicissitudes of the great revolution through which Massachusetts had passed, Harvard College started quietly upon a new chapter in her career, with her hands tied

as little as possible by hampering statutes or traditions.

While these things were going on in Massachusetts, affairs were taking a somewhat different turn in Connecticut. The confederacy of river towns which gave birth to the state of Connecticut had represented a more liberal principle than that upon which Massachusetts was founded. The wholesale migration which carried the people of Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown to the Connecticut River was a migration of people for whom Massachusetts was too theocratic. In Connecticut there was no restriction of civil rights to church members; the relative power of the representatives as compared with the Council of Assistants was much greater, and the local independence of the several towns was more complete. Connecticut was originally more democratic and more liberal in complexion than Massachusetts.

On the other hand, the federal republic of New Haven closely resembled the commonwealth of Massachusetts, but was even more theocratic and aristocratic.¹ But the union of

New Haven with Connecticut did not by a mixture of plus and minus make a commonwealth quite like Massachusetts. The most theocratic elements in New Haven either migrated in large bodies to New Jersey, or came as individuals one by one back to Massachusetts. Of those who remained on the shores of Long Island Sound, the greater part were those who had protested against the New Haven theocracy with its exclusiveness. On the whole, the Connecticut of 1670 to 1690 seems to have been a more liberal-minded community than Massachusetts.

But if we come forward into the nineteenth century, it can hardly be denied that while both states have maintained a high intellectual level, Massachusetts has been the more liberal-minded community. Or, if a different phrase be preferred, Massachusetts has been somewhat more prompt in adopting new ideas or in following out new vistas of thought, especially in all matters where theology is concerned. Or, to put the case in yet another way, Massachusetts has shown less hesitation in departing from ancient standards. The history of Unitarianism is of itself a sufficient illustration of this. To some minds the rise of Unitarianism seems like a great step in advance;

to other minds it seems like a deplorable forsaking of the highroad for byways that lead to Doubting Castle; but all will agree that the great development of Unitarianism in Massachusetts, as compared with its small development in Connecticut, shows in the former state less hesitation in deviating from old standards. Something of the same contrast in regard to deviation is shown in the history of Yale College as contrasted with Harvard; no one will deny that the temper of the former has been more conservative. It becomes interesting, then, to inquire what has produced this change. In what respects have circumstances operated to render the career of Connecticut more conservative than that of the sister commonwealth? Such questions are always difficult to answer with confidence, but certain facts may be pointed out which have a bearing upon the question.

It is a general tendency of organizations to grow more rigid through increase of rules and definitions, and to interfere more and more with the free play of individuality; so that often in the pursuit of a given end, the organization will so far hamper itself as to decrease its fitness for attaining the ends desired; in other words, the ends become a matter of secondary importance, while the machinery of the organization

absorbs the entire attention. Especially has this been true in the case of ecclesiastical organizations. The members of a priesthood are apt to acquire an exaggerated idea of the importance of the body to which they belong and which is invested by public opinion with a peculiar sanctity, and they are apt to feel justified in making laws and regulations tending to coerce all their members into conformity with some prescribed set of rules. In Massachusetts an early and baneful source of rigidity was the Cambridge Platform of 1648, which enjoined it upon magistrates to punish any infractions of ecclesiastical doctrine or observance. Among the fruits of this Cambridge Platform were the odious proceedings against Baptists and Quakers, which have left such a stain upon the annals of Boston. But it is worthy of note that owing to the very restrictions which confined the civil liberties of Massachusetts to communing church members, a large body of citizens grew up in opposition, so that the Commonwealth was never deprived of the healthful stimulus of competition and struggle between opposing views in interest. To such a point had this conflict come that when, in 1699, an attempt was made to fasten a religious test upon Harvard, it fell to the ground, and that critical period of the history of the Commonwealth saw Harvard falling more

and more completely under the guidance of the party opposed to the old theocracy. On the other hand, Connecticut pursued the even tenor of her way from the first beginnings into the nineteenth century with comparatively little severe internal commotion. She had for a moment, of course, resented the arrogance of Andros, but her constitution was never wrenched out of shape by such violent changes as those which Massachusetts witnessed after 1685. I think we must attribute it to this very fact of the slightness and gentleness of the opposition,—to the comparative mildness of ecclesiastical life in Connecticut,—that at the beginning of the eighteenth century her clergymen and people should have yielded so easily to the natural impulse to improve, or, rather, to define and limit their ecclesiastical organizations. By that time it had come to seem to many worthy people that the work of the church might be greatly facilitated if its organization were made a little more thorough in its working. The result was the synod held at the town of Saybrook in May, 1708, which adopted the famous constitution known as the Saybrook Platform.

This constitution provided that “the particular pastors and churches, within the respective counties in this government,” should “be one consociation, or more if they should judge meet, for mutual affording to each other such

assistance as may be requisite, upon all occasions ecclesiastical.” Hitherto ecclesiastical authority had been exercised by councils formed by voluntary election by individuals or by single churches. Such authority was henceforth to be vested in permanent councils appointed by the consociation of churches. Disobedience to the decree of one of these permanent councils was punished by excommunication of the too independent pastor or church. The council of one consociation might invite councils from one or more neighbouring consociations to take part in its proceedings, and it was further provided that a general association consisting of representatives from all the churches in the commonwealth should be held every year at the time of the election of governor and legislature.

This platform was adopted by the General Court of Connecticut, with the proviso that a church which conducted itself discreetly and soberly might be allowed to carry on worship and exercise discipline according to its own conscience, even though it should not be able to enter into the consociation of churches. This was a prudent and liberal provision, and was intended to prevent injustice and persecution. The general effect of the platform was to assimilate Congregationalism in Connecticut to Presbyterianism, and there can be little doubt that

this was an important change in the direction of conservatism. Manifestly, the power of any ecclesiastical organization in checking individual variations depends upon the coercive power which the whole can bring to bear upon any one of its parts. Manifestly, the conservative power of a Mussulman caliph, being absolutely unchecked, was greater than that of the mediæval Pope, who might be limited by a council or thwarted by an emperor. Still less coercive power could be exercised by a sovereign head of a church, like Elizabeth or Charles II. Still less could be exercised by a Presbyterian synod, and from this again down to an independent congregation the step in diminution of coercive power was a long one. It is therefore interesting and significant that just at the moment when Massachusetts by the founding of Brattle Church took a long step in the direction of further independency, Connecticut should have taken a decided conservative step in the direction of Presbyterianism. The effect exerted by the mere possession of coercive power does not always need to be exhibited by overt actions; it is a subtle effect consisting largely in the colouring which it gives to that indefinable thing known as public opinion, but I suspect that in the circumstances here narrated we have at least a partial explanation

of the fact that a century later, when so many churches in Massachusetts adopted Unitarian theology while still remaining Congregational churches, on the other hand, in Connecticut a step so extreme was very difficult to take, and that while there were churches in which dissent from time-honoured doctrines was rife, nevertheless it was seldom that Unitarian doctrines were avowed.

One effect of the Saybrook Platform was to make it easy in later times for the Congregational churches in Connecticut to fraternize with the Presbyterian churches. To such an extent has this fraternization been carried in modern times, that persons in Connecticut and states to the west of it are very apt to use the word “Presbyterian” in a loose sense when they really mean “Congregational,”—a use of language which would have made the hair of one of Cromwell’s Ironsides stand on end with horror.

The beginning of the eighteenth century in Connecticut was also memorable for the founding of Yale College. The journey from the Connecticut towns to Cambridge was much longer than it is now, and it was felt that there ought to be a college nearer home. The movement was begun by a meeting at Branford of ten ministers, nine of whom were graduates of Harvard. These gentlemen contributed

from their libraries about forty gigantic folios for the founding of a college library. Other gifts began to come in, and an act of incorporation in 1701 created a body of trustees, all of whom were to be clergymen and not less than forty years of age. The college was at first situated in Saybrook, though in the first years the classes were taught at Killingworth, where the first rector of the college, Abraham Pierson, was pastor. At length the college was settled in New Haven in 1716, and two years later it received the name of Yale College in recognition of a donation from Elihu Yale, a merchant of London, whose father had been one of the original settlers of New Haven. Now this founding of Yale College exerted a conservative effect upon the mind of Connecticut. While on the one hand it brought a classical education within the reach of many persons who would not have gone to Cambridge to get it, on the other hand it tended to cut off the clergy of Connecticut from the liberalizing influences which were so plainly beginning to be powerful at Harvard. From the outset something like a segregation began. Many persons in Massachusetts who were disinclined to the liberalism of Leverett and the Brattles transferred their affections to Yale College, making gifts to it and sending their sons there, and in this way the

conservatism of the university that was controlled entirely by ministers holding under the Saybrook Platform was increased. When to all these circumstances we add that the royal governor in Boston, although an abiding cause of irritation, nevertheless kept bringing in ideas and fashions from Europe, we can see how the stormier life of Massachusetts Bay was more favourable to change than the delicious quiet of the land of steady habits.

The general state of the church in New England in the first decades of the eighteenth century was one which may be best characterized by saying that spirituality was at a low ebb. Pretty much the same might be said of the church in England, and if we were to extend the observation to France, we should have to make it still more emphatic. The causes of this state of things were complicated. Among other things, the scientific reaction against supernaturalism, which was so rapidly destroying the belief in witchcraft, was leading the great mass of superficial thinkers in the direction of materialism. In France the church had discredited itself through an alliance with despotism, until nearly all the best minds had turned against it. In England the epoch of intense mental exaltation which characterized the seventeenth century had provoked a reaction in which worldly-mindedness

prevailed and sanctity was derided. There can be little doubt, I think, that the political uses to which religion had been put during the terrible struggle of the counter-reformation had done much to loosen its spiritual hold upon men’s minds. Something may be said, too, of the rapidly expanding effects of commerce. Men’s interests were multiplying so that something must suffer for a time, and religion, for the causes already mentioned, was the weak spot in the social fabric.

But whatever the explanation may be, the fact is generally accepted that the early years of the eighteenth century were a period of coldness in religious matters. This coldness was quite generally perceived and lamented by clergymen and laymen throughout New England, and speculations were rife as to the probable cause and the best cure. It is not unlikely that among other things the Halfway Covenant may have exerted a baneful influence. If there could be anything serious and solemn in life it would seem to be the ascertainment of the state of mind which would qualify a person for participation in the Lord’s Supper, yet the Halfway Covenant practically admitted to this sacrament all persons of decorous lives who had been baptized in infancy. One effect of this was to endow infant baptism with the character of a

magical ceremony and to make of the communion a mere lifeless form. At first, indeed, the supporters of the Halfway Covenant simply allowed baptized members of the congregation to vote and hold office, without allowing them to participate in the communion until they could make some statement of their internal experience which proved them qualified for such participation; but a crisis seemed to be reached when the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton admitted people to communion without any other credentials than proof of baptism in infancy.¹

This work was to be undone and this whole state of things put an end to by the writings and the preaching of Solomon Stoddard’s grandson, a man who was one of the wonders of the world, probably the greatest intelligence that the western hemisphere has yet seen. Jonathan Edwards was born at East Windsor, Conn., in 1703, inheriting extraordinary abilities both from his father, Rev. Timothy Edwards, and from his mother, Esther Stoddard. From early childhood Edwards was a personage manifestly set apart for some high calling. His “Notes on Nature,” written at the

age of sixteen, show a precocity as remarkable as that of Pascal; his Treatise on the Will and other works of his maturity show a metaphysical power comparable with that of Kant or Berkeley; while in many of his speculations his mind moves through the loftiest regions of thought with a sustained strength of flight that comes near reminding one of the mighty Spinoza. There can be no doubt that the more one considers Edwards, the more colossal and astonishing he seems. Among writers of Christian theology his place is by the side of Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin. At the same time, there was more in Edwards than sheer power of intellect. His character was as great as his genius. The highest attributes of manliness were united in him. He was a man of deep affection, abounding in sympathy, so that without resorting to the ordinary devices of rhetoric he became a preacher of the first order. Now in the mind of Jonathan Edwards there was a vein of mysticism as unmistakable as that in the mind of William Penn. Such mysticism may be found in minds of medium capacity, but in minds of the highest type I believe it is rarely absent. A mind which has plunged deeply into the secrets of nature without exhibiting such a vein of mysticism is, I believe, a mind sterilized and cut off in one direction from access to the truth. Along with

Edwards’s abstruse reasoning there was a spiritual consciousness as deep as that of Spinoza or Novalis. From his mystic point of view, the change whereby a worldly, unregenerate man or woman became fitted for divine life was a conversion of the soul, an alteration of its innermost purposes, a change of heart from evil to goodness. Perhaps this way of conceiving the case was not new with Edwards. From the earliest ages of Christianity a turning of the soul from the things of this world to Christ has been the essential, but the importance of what has since come to be known as conversion, or change of heart, assumed dimensions never known before. As Calvinism enhanced the value of the individual soul by representing it as the subject of a mighty struggle between the powers of heaven and those of hell, so Edwards, while setting forth this notion in all its grimness, gave it a touch of infinite tragedy and pathos through the power with which he conceived the situation of the soul whose salvation trembled in the balance. The distinction between the converted and the unconverted became in his hands more vitally important than the older distinction between the elect and the non-elect. There was great difficulty in working the two distinctions together, and a large portion of the eighteenth century was consumed by New England theologians in grappling with

this difficulty. It was due to Edwards that the prime question with every anxious mind was not so much, Am I one of the elect? as this other question, Have I surrendered my heart to Christ? It is obvious that this new point of view in itself, and even more in the mood in which it was set forth, soon worked a vivifying change in the religious consciousness of New England. The effect was presently shown in those so-called revivals which are in the strict sense a product of the New England mind. Phenomena of religious excitement, sometimes reaching epidemic proportions, are of course to be found among heathen savages, but religious emotion of an intense sort, coupled with a high general level of education, such as we see it in modern revivals, is something that had its beginnings in New England. The essential features of a revival are the aroused consciousness of sin, overwhelming fears associated therewith, and a condition of doubt as to whether one has really satisfied the conditions of salvation. One can see that when such a state of things has been generally reached in a community, there is no longer any room for such mechanical devices as the Halfway Covenant. Before such a state of things can be reached, the ecclesiastical atmosphere must be spiritualized. To this end the whole tenor of Edwards’s preaching contributed,

for he insisted, with as much emphasis as William Penn, upon the insignificance of the form as compared with the spirit.

Sometimes the religious revival seemed a mere survival of barbaric superstition,—as when the earthquake of 1727 brought people in crowds into the Boston churches. But in 1734 there began at Northampton, where Edwards, who had succeeded his grandfather, had been preaching for eight years, a revival of a much higher kind. This wave of religious excitement spread through the whole Connecticut valley and lasted for six months. It attracted some notice in England, and presently George Whitefield accepted an invitation from Dr. Benjamin Colman to come to New England and preach. Whitefield was twenty-six years of age, and had just been ordained as a minister of the Church of England. He was a man of mediocre intelligence, without distinction either as a scholar or as a thinker, but his gifts as an orator were very extraordinary. In 1740 Whitefield preached in various parts of New England, sometimes in churches, sometimes in the open air, to audiences which on occasion reached 15,000 in number. He made a pilgrimage to Northampton in order to visit the preacher of the late revival there, and thought he had never seen such a man as Edwards, while, on the other

hand, under the influence of Whitefield’s musical voice, Edwards sat weeping during the entire sermon.

The example set by Whitefield was followed after his departure by a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey named Gilbert Tennent. This preacher came to Boston and spent some three months in the neighbourhood, preaching to enormous audiences with most startling effect. Tennent was followed by James Davenport of Southold, Long Island, a great-grandson of the famous Davenport of the old New Haven colony. This James Davenport was highly esteemed by Whitefield and other revivalist preachers, but his ill-balanced enthusiasm led him to very strange lengths. On one occasion he is said to have preached a sermon nearly twenty-four hours in length, with such violence of intonation and gesture that he brought on a brain fever. He was constitutionally intemperate in speech, eccentric in action, and inspired by that peculiar self-conceit which is one of the marks of mental derangement. If he came to a town where little excitement was manifested on the subject of religion he would revile the ministers of the town, accusing them of being unconverted, blind leaders of the blind, and he warned the people that by listening to such preaching they were imperilling their souls. At

Boston he grew so abusive that the ministers held a conference and decided that they would not allow him the use of their pulpits. Nothing daunted, however, this Boanerges hurled forth his thunderbolts on such places as Copp’s Hill and Boston Common, where he spoke his mind with great freedom to thousands of listeners. For example, in one of his prayers, he said, “Good Lord, I will not mince the matter any longer with Thee, for Thou knowest that I know that most of the ministers of Boston and of the country are unconverted, and are leading their people blindfold to hell.” For these words Davenport was indicted for slander, but was acquitted on the ground of insanity.

A situation had now arisen in some respects not unlike that when Mrs. Hutchinson and her Antinomian friends had been preaching in Boston a century earlier. One of the chief objections to the Antinomians was that they professed to have their minds illumined by a divine light which enabled them to see truths hidden from the generality of Christians, and in this belief they confidently assailed even the highest of the clergy as creatures acting under a covenant of works. It was now held by many clergymen that the conduct of Tennent and Davenport and other followers of Whitefield resembled that of the Antinomians, and tended to introduce

dissensions into the churches. There can be no doubt that such was its immediate effect. Emotional extravagances on the part of revivalists were so marked as to lead many persons to question whether, in view of this and of the intemperate criticism that had been indulged in, the revival had not really been productive of more harm than good. Such questions were agitated until in almost every church there came to be a party who approved of the revival and a party which condemned it. Under these circumstances it is not strange that the power of the revival should have declined, or that we should find the Rev. Thomas Prince writing in 1744 that “The Sovereign Spirit, in His awakening influence, has seemed these two last years in a gradual and awful manner to withdraw. For a twelvemonth I have rarely heard the cry of any new ones, What shall 1 do to be saved? But few are now added to our churches and the heavenly shower in Boston seems to be over.” About the time that Prince expressed himself so despondingly Whitefield returned to New England, but he was not so much a novelty as before and made less sensation. The Brattle Church showed its liberality by inviting him, an Episcopal priest, to administer its Communion. On the other hand, President Holyoke and the Faculty of Harvard passed a resolution condemning his

itinerant methods, and the clergymen of Cambridge refused to allow him in their pulpits; so that his preaching was done to a large audience on Cambridge Common.

In Massachusetts the opposition to the revivalists showed itself only in such protests by professors and clergymen, but in Connecticut the matter went further. Whitefield, Tennent, and Davenport travelled about in that commonwealth, making converts by hundreds, and Davenport, at least, made no scruple of attacking the settled ministers. These proceedings called forth interference from the government. At Stratford Davenport was arrested for disturbing the peace by gathering great crowds of people, filling their heads with pernicious doctrines, and inciting them to a noisy and disorderly demeanour. During their examination a mob of their converts undertook to rescue them from the sheriff’s custody, and in order to quiet the disturbance it proved necessary to call out the militia. For revivalist practices similar to Davenport’s the Rev. Benjamin Pomeroy was turned out of office and deprived of his salary.

It thus appears that one result of the Great Awakening was to stir up dissension in the churches between the more aristocratic ministry of the old type and the more democratic preachers like Whitefield and his friends. Our account

would be far from complete if we were to omit the conclusion of the story at Northampton, the home of Jonathan Edwards, from whose preaching this Great Awakening had emanated. We have seen that the Edwards doctrine of conversion was flatly opposed to the Halfway Covenant to which Edwards’s grandfather in Northampton had given its most extreme form. In 1749, after Edwards had been settled twenty-two years over that parish and regarded with extreme reverence by his parishioners, he suddenly lost favour with them by insisting upon more rigorous requirements in admitting communicants to the church. This gave rise to a quarrel of such bitterness that Edwards’s parish not only dismissed him, but obtained a vote in town meeting to the effect that he should not be allowed any more to enter a pulpit in that town. The result was the removal of Edwards to Berkshire for missionary work among the Stockbridge Indians, and thence after six years to the presidency of Princeton College. He died in Princeton at the early age of fifty-five.

One result of the breaking down of the Halfway Covenant was to discredit infant baptism, so that the majority of the revivalists of the more democratic type went over to the Baptist church and greatly swelled its numbers in New England. With regard to the general effect of the

Awakening, in spite of the extravagances with which it was here and there attended, it certainly did much to heighten and deepen the religious life in New England. As compared with the old days of the Halfway Covenant, the new doctrine of conversion was like an uplifting of the soul to better things. The religious thought of the seventeenth century was in danger of losing its life among dry logical formulas. It needed to be touched with emotion, and that was what the Great Awakening accomplished. It may be said to have exerted a stimulating influence similar to that which attended the preaching of the Wesleys in England, and it should not be forgotten that John Wesley in the early part of his career received a powerful stimulus from news which reached him from New England. If we were able thoroughly to sift all relevant facts I think we should conclude that in producing the tenderness of soul in which the nineteenth century so far surpassed the eighteenth, a considerable share must be assigned to the preaching and self-searchings, the prayers and tears, the jubilation and praise, of the Great Awakening.