istry who were found to possess the "gracious qualifications" for it; all which were too much sanctioned by the New Side, and resisted by the Old Side, with a vehemence and bitterness which resulted in the excision of the Presbytery of New Brunswick and those adhering to it by the Old Side. This, however, afterward dwindled, while the exscinded party increased in numbers, until both sides becoming sensible of, and acknowledging, their respective faults and the evils of outward division, healed the schism and became one body in 1758, and so continued till the second disruption on different grounds in 1837. There can be no doubt, however, that while both parties held to the Confession of Faith and preached its doctrines, the New Side party preached its distinctive and most Calvinistic doctrines with most clearness and intensity; that they relied on these doctrines for the promotion of the work of grace; and that, whatever their faults or irregularities, they were the great instruments of promoting the revival in the Presbyterian Church. They were in perfect accord and coöperation with the promoters of the revival in New England. Some of them, particularly Gilbert Tennent, preached there with such wonderful power and success, that his course was attended with one continuous series of great revivals. Whitefield had been the great preacher of the revival, both among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, North and South. The work, however, did not stop among the Presbyterians as suddenly or completely as in New England. Revivals appeared in many congregations onward to and after 1750. They arose in Virginia from the reading of works on experimental religion where the people were without ministers, and produced the germ of churches, which were afterward enlarged and organized under the labors of the great President Davies and his coadjutors. Thus were the foundations of much of the excellent Presbyterianism of Virginia laid. The fact that Edwards was called from New England, and, after his death, Davies from Virginia, to the presidency of Princeton College, which was born of the revival and founded to promote it, shows the intimate relation between the revival leaders in New England and out of it.

Another attempt at inter-communion between the revival element in New England and Princeton is less pleasant to re

late. It illustrates the danger of a union of church and state, no matter what may be the denomination of Christians placed in this relation. Until a long time after the great awakening, the parishes of New England were separated from each other by geographical, and generally. by town boundaries, legalized by the State, which taxed the inhabitants within them for the support of the gospel--i.e. of the churches of the standing, legalized, or Congregational order. When the fanatics and separatists, at last thrown to the surface in this great excitement, had thoroughly aroused the leading ministers and laymen of Connecticut to organize against them, these invoked the strong arm of the legislature to aid in putting down these disturbersby this persecution doubtless giving them a strength and vitality they would not otherwise have had. In pursuance of this end the Legislature passed laws ordering that all strangers, or persons unlicensed to preach by regular ecclesiastical authorities of the State, who should presume to preach within the geographical boundaries of any parish without consent of the minister of the same, should be arrested as vagrants and transported out of the colony. This was doubtless specially intended for Davenport and his like, his home being out of the State, in Southold, L. I. But in the height of their indignation at these intruders, they actually applied this monstrous law thrice to the Rev. Samuel Finley, the successor of Davies and predecessor of Witherspoon, as President of Princeton College, and once with special harshness and indignity, for preaching to a Presbyterian congregation in Milford, and a congregation in New Haven which had separated from the First Church, while the New Haven County Association forbade any member of the Presbytery of New Brunswick to preach within their bounds! Surely the world moves. And whatever may have been forty years ago, our New England friends will scarcely claim as against Princeton, or the Presbyterian Church. Old or New School, in view of the past or the present, a monopoly of revivals!-Great Awakening, pp. 237-8,

The contemporaneous awakening in Great Britain, under Whitefield and the Wesleys, which ultimately crystallized into organic Methodism, with its prodigious development in the Old World and the New, had many characteristics in common with that already sketched in this country. It had a like re

lation to the prevailing formalism of the Anglican church, but accomplished its reformatory effects, not so much within that church, as by an exodus and new organism without it. Hence it retained, as a part of its recognized and permanent method some of those bodily manifestations as implicated with true Christian experience and emotion, along with some other things which were ranked prominent among the disorders coming in the wake of the great American revival that brought the latter to a close. Falling under the efficient lead of John Wesley, who broke with his co-laborer, Whitefield, on account of the Calvinism of the latter, it was also organized and developed upon the basis of Arminian theology. In regard to all this, however, we refer our readers to the first article in this number on Methodism. But what we wish to signalize now and here is the fact, susceptible of conclusive proof from a cloud of witnesses which we do not quote solely for want of room, but which may easily be found in Tracy's volume, that the revival of 1740, in this country, was carried forward under the emphatic preaching of the sternest Calvinism according to the ipsissima verba of our Confession of Faith, without the slightest softening dilution, or mitigation of what are esteemed its sterner features; and that its disorders and errors were mostly in the line, or in consequence of, the exaggeration or distortion of those principles.

Art. VII.-REVIVALS OF THE CENTURY.*

BY LYMAN H. ATWATER.

AMONG the phenomena of the century just closed which deserve distinct commemoration and discriminating review, none rank higher than those known as revivals of religion. It is quite certain that our Christianity has infused into our national life its highest powers of endurance and safe development, and beyond all else fortified it against that multitude of hostile and destructive forces which, without this counteracting agency, would have left us utterly to perish at the hands of those who, "while they promise liberty, are themselves the servants of corruption." No two maxims are more trite or indisputable than that virtue in the people is indispensable to sustain a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and that religion is the only true spring and support of national virtue. To this we may safely add, that Christianity, as the only God-sent, is the only adequate religion for this purpose the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, not only from the curse, but from the pollution and immorality of sin. This may safely be said without danger of sinking Christianity to the low function of being a mere "aid extraordinary to the police."

But if this be so, it is none the less true that the Christian

* Lectures on Revivals of Religion, by W. B. Sprague, D.D., with an Introductory Essay by Leonard Woods, D.D.; also an Appendix, consisting of Letters from various Clergymen. Albany, 1832.

Memoir of the Life and Character of the Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D.D. By Bennet Tyler, D.D. Hartford, 1844.

Remains of Asahel Nettleton, D.D. Edited by Bennet Tyler, D.D. Hartford 1845.

Life and Labors of Daniel Baker, D.D., Pastor and Evangelist, edited by his son Rev. Wm. M. Baker, 1859.

Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D.D. Edited by Chas. Beecher, in two volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865.

Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney. Written by Himself. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1876.

Gospel Sermons. By D. L. Moody.

piety of the country has been chiefly preserved and increased through the last two centuries, especially that now ending, by the agency of revivals of religion. Adopt whatever theory we may as to the ideal state of the church, and assuming that only a steady and continuous growth, which excludes alternations of intense excitement and persistent languor, is compatible with its highest thrift; were we to admit even, as we do not, what some maintain, that, had there been no revivals, there would have been a better average religious condition on the whole than now, yet it cannot be denied that, in point of fact, the strongest and most influential religious life of the country has been largely due to these revivals. This is surely so of those Christian denominations that are at once most aggressive and progressive in character; whose members reach the highest grade of holy living and Christian morality; which are most felt.in antagonism to prevailing immorality and vice; and become in every way the "salt of the earth." Even those Christian communions whose theory and practice are adverse to revivals, or are even ostentatious in denouncing them, often owe much of their growth to the direct or indirect influence of revivals. Their members catch the heavenly gales which, during these scenes, are sweeping through and renovating society. Then, too, is the time of their golden harvest. Many have been the confirmations this year in ritualistic churches whose ministers would take no part in a powerful revival going forward around them, of persons who found Christ, along with their associates, in that revival. More than one Episcopal bishop can trace to such scenes the first upspring of his Christian life. Is it strange that in these celestial visitations, when they became all-pervasive, some most prejudiced against them should "breathe the heavenly air," and catch something of their inspirations?

We propose to consider the revivals of the century now closed, not in any way of minute historical details. This would fill more volumes than we have pages for this work. We can

only aim at a general review, which shall deal with the successive revival epochs and the distinctive characteristics of each, bringing to view important lessons and inferences, theoretical and practical, deductive and inductive, to which they fairly lead.