TESTIMONY OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

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church in Boston remained loyal to the old faith. When the Rev. Dr. E. D. Griffin became pastor of the Park Street Church, in 1811, the current of thought and feeling against orthodoxy was so decided and intense that men went to hear him in disguise. They could not endure the ridicule that they would certainly receive from their acquaintances if the fact became known that they had given attention to a sermon delivered by an evangelical minister.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1798 issued a general letter in which the following language was employed:

"Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with similar concomitants. We perceive with pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and practice among our fellow-citizens; a visible and prevailing impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery and loose indulgence greatly abound."

Unbelief and immoral living were joined hand to hand. Intemperance prevailed to an alarming extent. To become stupidly drunk did not seriously injure a man's reputation. The decanter was in every home. Total abstinence had hardly been thought of. Temperance sermons were not preached; the pulpit was dumb on this evil. Members of Christian churches in regular standing drank to intoxication. The highest church officials often in

dulged immoderately in drink. When the physician visited a patient he was offered a stimulant. At marriages, at births, and at the burial of the dead, drinking was indulged in. A pastor in New York City, as late as 1820, has left on record the statement that it was difficult to make pastoral visits for a day without becoming, in a measure, intoxicated. Lyman Beecher has given an account of an ordination in which the participating ministers drank until they were in a state bordering on intoxication. The Rev. Daniel Dorchester, D.D., quotes a minister of this period as saying that he could reckon up among his acquaintances forty ministers who were either drunkards or so far addicted to the use of strong drink that their usefulness was impaired. This man says that he was present at an ordination at which two aged ministers of the gospel were literally drunk.

The Rev. Peter Cartwright, in his autobiography, gives a dark picture of the moral condition of the portion of Kentucky in which his youth was spent. He was born in 1785. He testifies that the state of society in southern Kentucky was desperate. Lawlessness prevailed. Such was the disregard for religion in this commonwealth at one time that the services of a chaplain in the State legislature were dispensed with.

As the movement of which I am in the following pages to give an account began in Kentucky and Tennessee, it may not be improper to say, in perfect harmony with wellattested facts, that in that portion of our country the moral tone of the people generally was exceptionally low. There was a general disregard of religion, and a contempt for religious institutions. In many places having a considerable population there was not a place of public worship. The Lord's day was distinguished from other days only by greater noise, more amusement, more profanity,

EFFECT OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

5

and a more shameless dissipation. The predominating influence in Lexington, the capital of the far-famed Blue Grass region, was infidel.

How are we to account for this moral and spiritual desolation?

The people had but recently passed through a war of seven years' duration. Moral and spiritual deterioration is almost unavoidably the accompaniment and consequence of great wars. The Revolution in North America. does not furnish an exception to the usual tendencies of war. The year 1783 marked the conclusion, in a sense, of this long and bloody conflict. The people had secured the liberty for which they had struggled with a heroism unsurpassed in the annals of the race. They were free from the rule of Great Britain, but were in a condition bordering on lawlessness. It is recorded in our Bible, in the Book of Judges, that at a certain period "there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." This is a pretty accurate description of the disorderly life of our people during the period intervening between the close of the Revolutionary War, the adoption of the present Constitution, and the formal inauguration of the system of government under which we so happily live. This time has been felicitously described by Mr. John Fiske as "the critical period in American history." So much had been spoken and written on the subject of liberty that multitudes were unwilling to be directed in their dealings with their fellow-men by the reasonable requirements of law.

The people, also, during this period of time were compelled to give much attention to political questions. A government of some kind must be established. The liberty which had been secured by an appeal to arms must be organized and transmitted. This required much anxious

Intense

thought on the part of men who were leaders. political thought and discussion are, as we all well know, not favorable to a high degree of moral and spiritual life.

Almost as soon as the new form of government had, with almost incredible difficulty, been settled, questions between the infant republic and the British monarchy came to the front, resulting in the War of 1812.

But most to be lamented, there was a famine of the Word of God. Before the War of Independence the mother-country would not permit the publication of the Bible within the limits of her dependencies on this side of the Atlantic. One of the first acts of Congress after the war was an act ordering the purchase of a quantity of Bibles to be distributed freely among the people.

Dr. Dorchester, in "Christianity in the United States," says that "the most pious people in the beginning of the present century, in the United States, entertained a faith so unlike the present belief of evangelical Christians as to almost create the impression on our minds that their religion was not the same as the religion which we now have, and in which we believe."

President Wayland, in "Notes on the Principles and Practices of the Baptists," says that in the early part of his ministry he was settled in an intelligent community in the goodly commonwealth of Massachusetts. In his church was a gentleman reputed to be intelligent in the doctrines of the denomination, the son of a Baptist minister, who had an interesting family, but devoted to worldliness. Dr. Wayland expressed to the father a desire to speak to the young people on the subject of personal religion. To this the father objected! He assured his pastor that he wished no one to speak to his sons and daughters on the subject of personal piety: if they were of the elect, God would convert them in his own good time; and if they were of

TESTIMONY OF DR. ARMITAGE.

7

the non-elect, such conversation as Dr. Wayland suggested would probably make them hypocrites!

Regeneration, as usually presented, from the pulpit and in current theological literature, by the accredited teachers in the orthodox denominations, was regarded as a miracle. Every case of moral quickening was as much a miracle as was the resurrection of Lazarus. As the ministers taught, so the people believed.

The word of God in the Bible was popularly regarded as a dead letter. There was supposed to be no power in the preached gospel to produce saving faith. The faith by which men are saved was understood to be a direct gift from God. It was assumed that the gospel was impotent to produce spiritual life. The seed was thought to be dead.

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Armitage, in his "History of the Baptists," gives an illustration of the condition of affairs among the Baptists.

The Baltimore Association met at a place called Black Rock, in the State of Maryland. Those who opposed missions, Sunday-schools, and Bible societies under the pretense that they conflicted with the sovereignty of God in the kingdom of Christ were in a majority. They denounced these institutions as corruptions which were flowing in like a flood. It was accordingly resolved that the Baltimore Association would not hold fellowship with such churches as united with these and other societies of a benevolent, religious, and philanthropic character. The names of congregations coöperating in mission work, in Sunday-school work, and in the distribution of the Word of God through the agency of Bible societies, etc., were erased from the minutes of this association. This was as late as 1836. What must have been the attitude of these churches before the new light began to spread !