NEW BIRTH

of an insatiable liberality in the support of the gospel; the numerous chapels built, and preachers supported by her own means, in different parts of the country; a prosperous college established and supported for the training of godly ministers; her prompt secession from the Church of England, when forced to choose between this painful step and the silencing of certain of her chaplains, who then preached in no less than sixty-seven chapels of "Lady Huntington's connection;" these and many other works of which we can give no impression here, prolonged to the very end of nature in her eighty-fourth year, and crowned with humble renunciation of herself and all her works, are among the deathless traits of her ever-glorious and solitary example.

The rising work of grace was early signalized by the conversion of desperate reprobates who were seized in the very van of the audacious ungodliness of the day, and carried over in triumph by the mighty power of God, to a stand of like prominence on the side of holiness and the gospel. Of such was the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, whose astonishing conversion and reformation, from ten to fifteen years before the date of those just recounted, will be found in another part of this volume. Like wonders fitly accompanied this work of omnipotence in its progress through an age chiefly distinguished by gross impiety. The scoffing Walpole wrote truly, "the Methodists love your great sinners, and truly they make an abundant harvest." The regenerating power of a living faith in Christ, wrought by the Holy Spirit, appropriately came out in a glorious prominence in such an age, both in the miracles of the Spirit and in the preaching of His witnesses. Whitefield says

of his preaching: "the doctrine of the new birth made its way like lightning into the hearers' consciences." This doctrine had become very generally lost to the Christian consciousness itself, both in Old and New England, and was now commonly treated by the religious classes as a wild and dangerous vagary of enthusiasm. Even in New England, it was scarcely recognized as a condition of church membership. The work of the time was therefore to give it a practical demonstration, and a root in the heart of the church, which could never be shaken.

At the very moment when these mighty instruments of the Spirit

were being forged in the fires of conviction and tempered by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, in England, a "surprising work of God" was witnessed in the then colony of Massachusetts, under the leading instrumentality of President Edwards. "The Great Awakening," as it has been commonly designated, doubtless the most important event in American history, both in its spiritual and temporal consequences, first appeared in power at Northampton, about 1735. Upwards of a year of growing seriousness, heightened by a succession of solemn events in the little community, had passed; "and then it was," continues President Edwards, "in the latter part of December (1734), that the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in, and wonderfully to work among us; and 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 manner.

Presently upon this 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; all the conversation in all companies, and upon all occasions, was upon these things only, unless so much as was necessary for people carrying on their ordinary secular business. Other discourse than of the things of religion would scarcely be tolerated in any company. Religion was with all classes the great concern, and the world was a thing only by the by. The only thing in their view was to get the kingdom of heaven, and every one appeared pressing into it: the engagedness of their hearts in this great concern could not be hid; it appeared in their very countenances. There was scarcely a single person in the town, either old or young, that was left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those that were wont to be the vainest and loosest, and those that had been most disposed to think and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion, were now generally subject to great awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner, and increased more and more; souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ.

"This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; SO that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, 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. There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. In all companies, on whatever occasions persons met together, Christ was to be heard of and seen in the midst of them. And even at weddings, which formerly were occasions of mirth and jollity, there was now no discourse of anything but the things of religion, and no appearance of any but spiritual mirth.

"So far as I, by looking back, can judge, this work appears to me 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. If I may be allowed to declare anything that appears to me probable in a thing of this nature, I hope that more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to Christ in this town, in the space of half a year (how many more I don't guess), and about the same number of males as females.

"In the month of March the people in South Hadley began to be seized with deep concern about the things of religion, which very soon became universal; and the work of God has been very wonderful there, not much, if anything, short of what it has been here, in proportion to the size of the place. About the same time it began to break forth in the west part of Suffield (where it has also been very great), and it soon spread into all parts of the town. It next appeared at Sunderland, and soon overspread the town; and I believe was for a season not less remarkable than it was here. About the same time it began to appear in a part of Deerfield, called Green River, and afterwards filled the town, and there has been a glorious work there it began also to be manifest in the south part of Hatfield, in a place called the Hill, and after that the whole town, in the second week in April, seemed to be seized, as it were at once, with concern about the things of religion; and the work of God has been great there. There has been also a very general awakening at

West Springfield and Long Meadow; the same in Enfield, Springfield, Westfield, Hadley, Northfield, and a large number of the towns of Connecticut.

"But this shower of Divine blessing has been yet more extensive : there was no small degree of it in some parts of New Jersey; especially the Rev. Mr. William Tennent, a minister, who seemed to have such things much at heart, told me of a very great awakening of many in a place called the Mountains, under the ministry of one Mr. Cross; and of a very considerable revival of religion in another place, under the ministry of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Gilbert Tennent; and also at another place, under the ministry of a very pious young gentleman, a Reformed Dutch minister, whose name was Frelinghuysen."

We have already seen that while the Awakening was breaking out in Northampton, Whitefield was entering on his wonderful career in the mother country. He preached his first sermon in 1736, and drove fifteen of his hearers mad, according to the account reported to the bishops, by the scandalized and astonished observers. "In preaching that men of all ages and conditions must be 'born again' or never see the kingdom of heaven,' though there were some in the land who believed it, he found himself practically alone, going forth as the herald of a doctrine which the public agreed to consider as new." Critics of a later day have discovered, to their astonishment, that the sermons which then turned the world upside down, were composed of but common thoughts, simply expressed, even to tameness. But it has been well retorted, What has made those thoughts common? They were not common when he began to utter them, but astonishing, especially in England, and to a considerable extent in this country also. The effect which God wrought by them, through the consecrated genius of this wonderful orator, was certainly tremendous, both immediately and remotely. Whitefield was an organ for the truth, expressly fitted to this day and to his own country, where his great work was performed. The means and circumstances of the revival differed noticeably and not unaccountably, in the old country, with its dissolute Establishment, its gay and voluptuous aristocracy, and its ignorant common people, from those of the same work among the sober, educated, and selfgoverning people of New England. For the former, popular

eloquence seemed an indispensable means of grace, which in the latter have been much less in request, and have been attended with much less beneficial results. The same difference is observable in a remarkable instance at the present day.

Whitefield's first sermon was preached in his native parish at Gloucester, in his twenty-second year. He then went to London, where the success of the "boy preacher," as he was called, was instantaneous, and unprecedented among persons of all ranks. In many of the city churches he proclaimed the glad tidings of great joy to multitudes, who were powerfully affected. Lord and Lady Huntington constantly attended wherever he preached, and Lady Anne Frankland became one of the first fruits of his ministry, among the nobility of the metropolis. While at London, such multitudes assembled that it was necessary to place constables at the doors, both within and without, and on Sunday mornings in the latter months of the year, long before day, you might have seen the streets filled with people going to hear him, with lanterns in their hands.

Leaving London in about two months, he went down to labor for a friend, among a poor and illiterate people in Hampshire, where he was reached by a missionary call from the Wesleys, in Georgia, which he enthusiastically accepted. While preparing for his departure, and taking leave of his friends in Bristol, Bath, and other places, he continued to preach with increasing power and fame.

In Bristol, where he preached five times a week, "It was wonderful," he says, "to see how the people hung upon the rails of the organ loft, climbed upon the leads of the church, and made the church itself so hot with their breath, that the steam would fall from the pillars like drops of rain. Sometimes almost as many would go away for want of room as came in, and it was with great difficulty I got into the desk to read prayers or preach. Persons of all ranks gave me private invitations to their houses, and many made me large offers if I would not go abroad." When he came to London, those who had heard him before compelled him to preach almost incessantly. He preached nine times a week, and thousands went away from the largest churches, unable to gain admittance.

Whitefield had undoubtedly a dramatic genius of the most extraor