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EVANGELIZING AGENCIES.

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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

DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSY.

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upon it by coming to the Saviour and obeying him; that from him may be obtained salvation and the Holy Spirit. We urged upon sinners to believe now and receive salvation; that in vain they looked for the Spirit to be given them while they remained in unbelief; that they must believe before the Spirit or salvation would be given; that God was as willing to save them now as he ever was or ever would be; that no previous qualification was required, or necessary, in order to believe in Jesus and come to him; that if they were sinners this was their divine warrant to believe in him and to come to him for salvation; that Jesus died for all, and that all things were now ready. When we began first to preach these things the people appeared as just awakening from a sleep of ages. They seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings, and that a refusal to use the means appointed was a damning sin."

Such preaching at the present time would not excite opposition in any evangelical church.

Good men, however, in Kentucky and other places, then thought that such sermons were calculated to seriously injure the church. They loved the church, and the truth as they understood it. Loyalty to Christ's holy church and fidelity to the gospel, as they saw it, required them to enter an earnest protest against the course of the revival preachers in their treatment of some doctrines usually regarded as orthodox.

There were five ministers in the Presbyterian Church, living in Ohio and Kentucky, who were active in the promotion of what they believed to be the work of God in the great meeting held at Cane Ridge in August, 1801. Their names were Richard McNemar, John Thompson, John Dunlavy, Robert Marshall, and Barton Warren Stone. McNemar, Thompson, and Dunlavy lived in Ohio; Mar

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