and futurity a delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded infidelity, and brought numbers beyond calculation under serious impressions."

Similar testimonies were given by a committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church appointed to investigate the character of the revival.

The Rev. Dr. Heman Humphrey, whose "Revival Sketches" were quoted in the preceding chapter, says: "Looking back fifty years and more, the great revival of that period strikes me in its thoroughness, in its depth, in its freedom from animal and unhealthy excitement, and in its far-reaching influence on subsequent revivals, as having been decidedly in advance of any that had preceded it. It was the opening of a new revival epoch, which has lasted now more than half a century, with but short and partial interruptions; and, blessed be God, the end is not yet. The glorious cause of religion and philanthropy has advanced until it would require space that cannot be afforded in this sketch, so much as to name the Christian and humane societies which have sprung up all over the land within the last forty years. How much we at home and the world abroad are indebted for these organizations, so rich in blessing, to the revival of 1800 it is impossible to say, though much every way, more than enough to magnify the grace of God in the instruments employed, in the immediate fruits of their labors, and the subsequent harvests sprung from the good seed which was sown by the men whom God delighted thus to honor. It cannot be denied that modern missions sprang out of these revivals. The immediate connection between them, as cause and effect, was remarkably clear in the organization of the first societies which have since accomplished so much, and the impulse which they gave to the churches to extend the blessings which they were diffusing by forming the later

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affiliated societies of like aims and character is scarcely less obvious."

The great evangelizing agencies with which we are today so familiar came as a result of this mighty spiritual revolution, as Dr. Humphrey claims. Note the following

facts:

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was organized in 1810. The American Bible Society was organized in 1816. The New England Tract Society was organized in 1814, and changed its name in 1823 to American Tract Society. The New York Methodist Tract Society, now the Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was organized in 1817. While the American Baptist Missionary Union did not receive its present name until 1846, it was established as early as 1814. In 1819 the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized. The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church organized the Protestant Episcopal Board of Missions in 1820. The Baptist Religious Tract Society, now the American Baptist Publication Society, was organized in 1824.

To this period belongs also the introduction of the reform in the use of intoxicating liquors.

In 1802 a total abstinence society was organized in Saratoga, N. Y. It was in the same year that Lyman Beecher delivered his first temperance discourse. Seventeen years later he delivered his famous six sermons on temperance. In 1812 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church urged the ministers of that denomination to preach on the subject, warning their hearers not only against actual intemperance, but against all those habits and indulgences which have a tendency to produce intemperance. The same year the General Association of the Congregational churches in Connecticut recommended entire abstinence

from the use of distilled liquors as beverages. The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance was formed in 1813. In 1810 the father of ex-United States Senator William M. Evarts, of New York, directed public attention to the great evils of intemperance by printed arguments. In 1811 the Rev. Nathaniel S. Prime, father of the late Irenæus Prime, D.D., of the "New York Observer," delivered a pungent discourse against intemperance before the Presbytery of Long Island. It is clear from almost countless facts that the consciences of Christian men were aroused to see clearly and to feel keenly the evils of the drinking customs of the people.

The national conscience also began to be quickened to the enormous evils of human slavery. The antislavery crusade was a religious enterprise. The moral sense of the people, having been aroused, was offended by the presence of human slavery. B. W. Stone, whose connection with the great revival in Kentucky has been mentioned, emancipated his slaves. When William Lloyd Garrison was moved to begin his life-work in behalf of freedom, he was a devout worshiper in Lyman Beecher's church in Boston. During the exciting days in the experience of Wendell Phillips, he met a company of believers in a private house in Boston, where on every Lord's day they read the Scriptures, sang and prayed, uttered words of exhortation, and partook of the Lord's Supper. Mr. Phillips testifies that the strength gained in these meetings gave him ability to go on with his work. The antislavery crusade, in the beginning, was inspired by the spirit of Christ.

The increase in the membership of the churches was large.

From the year 1800 to 1803 the communicants of the Methodist Episcopal Church increased from 64,870 to

INCREASE IN CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

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104,070. This, however, was only the period of beginning. From 1800 to 1830 the increase in the membership of the Presbyterian Church was from 40,000 to 173,229, or more than fourfold. The number of communicants in the Congregational churches increased during the same period from 75,000 to 140,000, or almost twofold. The membership of the Baptist churches grew during these thirty years from 100,000 to 313,138, or a little more than threefold. At the same time the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church increased more than sevenfold, or from 64,000 to 476,153.

It will be seen from this condensed statement of visible and known results that the revival of 1800 was no local nor temporary excitement. The entire country was almost simultaneously wrought upon by a mighty spiritual force, reforming, regenerating, and lifting such multitudes into a life of faith as to change the moral and religious character of the American people.

CHAPTER III.

CONTENTION AND DIVISION.

LET us return to Kentucky and see the progress of the work in that particular region.

As might have been predicted without a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this new and profound interest in spiritual things encountered bitter opposition from the unbelieving, the profane, the immoral.

The work, as we have seen, was good. By it men were made better. It would, therefore, have been surpassingly strange had Satan permitted it to proceed without hindrance. But opposition was met from characters altogether unlike those here named.

The general character of the preaching in the revival in Tennessee and Kentucky has been shown by a quotation from the Rev. E. B. Crisman, D.D., author of " Origin and Doctrines of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church." A quotation from the "Autobiography of B. W. Stone" is here given:

"The distinguishing doctrine preached by us was that God loved the world-the whole world-and sent his Son to save men, on condition that they would believe in him; that the gospel was the means of salvation; that this means would never be effectual to this end until believed and obeyed; that God required us to believe in his Son, and had given sufficient evidence in his Word to produce faith, if attended to by us; that sinners are capable of understanding and believing this testimony, and of acting