Dr. Armitage says that the Sator church started with a keen zest against the Roman Catholic communion in what she called her "Solemn League and Covenant." The members of this church bound themselves to abhor and oppose Rome, the pope, and popery, with all their antichristian ways. This, adds the historian, was all well enough, but it would have been much better to have set up a strong defense against the antinomian and anti-mission pope who crippled so seriously the early Baptists in Maryland.

An excellent way in which to obtain a reasonably accurate and full view of the condition of the Church of God and of the community at large in the United States when the present century came in, is to eliminate from the church and society, as we now know them, the spiritual organizations and forces known to be at work in this present time.

The Sunday-school was not. More than a decade of the nineteenth century had passed when the American Bible Society began its beneficent career. Antislavery societies had not been organized. The crusade in behalf of total abstinence from the use of intoxicating beverages had not been inaugurated. The great missionary and other benevolent agencies, so full of blessing to the people, came into existence subsequent to the period of time here described. Eliminate these factors of human progress and blessing, and behold the moral and spiritual desert.

The material and spiritual in man are intimately associated. Extreme poverty is not favorable to a high degree of spiritual development-nor is extreme wealth. Man's physical surroundings and condition determine, to a degree, his moral and spiritual state. A description of the religious or, more correctly, irreligious-lives of our ancestors is incomplete without a statement of their financial,

MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.

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social, and physical condition; but in this place there is no room for the proper presentation of this subject.

It is a fact that at the conclusion of our War of Independence the houses of the people were meaner, their food was coarser, their clothing was scantier, and their wages were lower than at the present time. The man who did unskilled labor was peculiarly fortunate if at the close of a week he could carry to his home four dollars. In this home there were no carpets; there was no glass on the table, no china in the cupboard, no pictures, not even cheap chromos, on the walls. His clothing was a pair of leather breeches, a flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat, shoes of neat's-skin, and a leather apron. The treatment of debtors shows beyond reasonable doubt that the generation that witnessed the War of the Revolution was less merciful than the generation that witnessed the War of 1861-65.

But from the revolting scenes in the prisons in which men and women were incarcerated for no other crime than debt it is a relief to turn.

The theme treated so briefly and so very imperfectly is capable of indefinite expansion. But a better day approaches. Let us behold its dawning.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT REVIVAL.

IT must not be thought, from the statement of facts on the preceding pages, that the people of the United States were, without exception, destitute alike of saving faith and genuine piety during the period described. Some there were who had successfully resisted the tide of unbelief and immorality. In some of the institutions of learning where infidelity had reigned it is encouraging that there were indications of a practical interest in the spiritual verities of the Christian religion.

Dartmouth College, as an illustration, enjoyed a season of spiritual refreshing in 1781 and in 1788. There was a revival in Yale in 1783. The membership of the college church, as a result, became larger than at any previous period. A season, however, of spiritual declension followed. In 1795, as has already been related, twelve years after this revival, not more than four or five students in Yale College professed to be Christians. For three years during the Revolutionary War Princeton College was closed. For a period of forty years, or from 1770 to 1810, there was no such interest in the gospel as could properly be called a revival. There were but two professors of religion among the students in 1782. As the eighteenth century came to a close there were a few religious revivals in different parts of the country. There are in existence accounts of spiritual awakenings in portions of the State of New Jersey, in parts of Pennsylvania, in

ΙΟ

ORIGIN OF REVIVAL.

I I

western New York, in Georgia, in the Carolinas, and in portions of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

During these seasons of special interest in these widely separated localities, some young men who were destined to exert a great influence for good in coming years turned to the Lord.

Barton Warren Stone (born in 1772, died in 1844) was such a person. In 1790 he entered an academy in GuilHere he found ford, N. C., then in the midst of a revival.

the peace that passeth understanding.

But almost the whole of New England was exempt from special religious interest from the year 1745, the close of the revival under Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, which began in 1743, until long after the beginning of the present century. The same conditions, in general, existed in the churches located in eastern New York and in the Middle States.

It becomes now my pleasant task to give some account of the radical moral and spiritual change which came over many thousands of our people.

The Rev. Dr. Heman Humphrey, in a volume written by himself, entitled "Revival Sketches," expresses the opinion that “the revival period at the close of the last century and the beginning of the present furnishes ample material for a long and glorious chapter in the history of redemption."

This revival had its origin in the northern part of Tennessee and the southern portion of Kentucky.

The first indications of a quickened spiritual interest were manifested in settlements on what was then the frontier, where the greatest hardships were experienced, and where the people of God realized more fully the spiritual desolation, and where also they called on him with the most intense faith and fervor.

As a beginning, Christians entered into a solemn covenant with one another and the Lord to spend specified portions of time in prayer for a revival. In some places the time designated was a half-hour at sunset every Saturday and a half-hour at sunrise every Lord's day.

The Christian population in this spiritually desolate frontier region belonged generally to the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches. The people had been attracted from Virginia and the Carolinas to what was then familiarly known as "the Cumberland country," by the great beauty of the scenery and the extraordinary fertility of the soil.

In the latter part of 1799 two brothers named McGeebrothers in the flesh and in the Lord-William, & Presbyterian minister, and John, a minister of the Methodist Church, preached in special meetings in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky-in some communities with remarkable results. As they proceeded on their evangelizing tour, their reputation spread, and the great good that the Lord was doing through them was told. They so preached the Word that many believed and turned to the Lord. Many families came to their meetings from great distances, and encamped in the woods for days. These meetings were conducted in the open air. the origin of camp-meetings. meeting of the kind was held in July, 1800, in Logan County, Ky. The Rev. James McGready of the Presbyterian Church was the preacher.

This seems to have been
It is probable that the first

People came to this meeting from a radius of sixty miles. Young men, young women, aged persons of both sexes, white and black, dissolute and moral, were alike stirred by the preaching of the gospel. The Rev. E. B. Crisman, in his "History of the Cumberland Church," says that, as to the character of the preaching, "the minis