The New England Revival, 1734

During the last quarter of the 17th century, the church in New England was characterized by a laxity of doctrine and conduct that belied its earlier profession. Whereas only a few years earlier, in 1648, the Congregational Platform had insisted upon a public profession and evidence of conversion as conditions essential for participation in the Lord’s Supper, this requirement no longer prevailed. By 1662, the adoption of what was called a “Half-Way Covenant” repudiated this reasonable requirement and wrought havoc among New England Congregational churches. That covenant permitted children of unregenerate parents to be admitted to baptism and church membership without admission to the Lord’s Supper and without participation in church elections. They were therefore members not in “full communion” but under a Half-Way Covenant (Newman, A Manual of Church History, II, pp. 668–678; Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, p. 106; and Walker, The Congregationalists, p. 172).

As that Covenant gained acceptance, the number of church members not in full communion, making no profession of faith nor satisfactory evidence of conversion, increased. In general, churches became more and more lax until baptism was extended to children of notoriously irreligious and immoral persons. Some churches went so far as to admit to full membership and the Lord’s Supper all parents who were willing to have their children baptised.

From this position, the distance to heresy was short. About 1700, Solomon Stoddard, pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, expressed the view that “the Lord’s Supper was instituted to be a means of regeneration” and therefore urged all, without discrimination, to partake of it. In time, any distinction between saint and sinner, the church and the world, almost disappeared (Newman, op. cit., p. 670).

Long before the end of the 17th century, however, the secularization of most Congregational churches was nearly complete. By the 18th century, immorality and irreligion was prevalent, so much so that Increase Mather asserted gloomily, “Prayer is necessary on this account that conversions have come to a stand … clear, sound conversions are not frequent in our congregation.… Many are profane, drunkards, lascivious, scoffers at the power of godliness, and disobedient.” Later he exclaimed, “Ah, degenerate New England! What art thou come to at this day? How are those sins become common that were once not even heard of?” Deep, personal religious experiences were not only scarce, but regarded as evidences of fanaticism. Preaching had become dull and lifeless, and church members lived in a state of “carnal security.” By 1733 Socinianized Arminianism and deistic thought, imported from England, had invaded the colonies (Belcher, George Whitefield, pp. 148–149, and Newman, op. cit., p. 643).

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While Freylinghuysen and his Presbyterian associates were busy promoting the revival in central New Jersey, stirrings were beginning elsewhere. In 1727, a year after Gilbert Tennent became pastor at New Brunswick, 24-year-old Jonathan Edwards was ordained and installed as assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at Northampton. For 60 years Stoddard had preached there, and during that time, the little community of 200 families was blest with five awakenings.

“The time,” said Morgan Edwards, “was one of extraordinary dullness in religion. Licentiousness prevailed among the young people, who were addicted to night-walking, the frequenting of taverns, lewd practices, and frolics which continued almost all night.” Such a state of affairs was an opportunity to any young theologian, and Edwards seized it. He instructed the young people of his church to meet in various parts of the town on the evenings of lecture days and spend time in prayer and other duties of social religion. His success in guiding them proved so remarkable that the adults were soon following their examples (Sweet, op. cit., p. 283).

Stirring Of Spirit

Taking advantage of the awakened religious interest among the people of his town, Jonathan Edwards, in December of 1734, inaugurated a series of sermons on justification by faith. He denied the efficacy of good works on the part of the unconverted for any claim upon God’s grace or hope of salvation. Before many weeks had passed, “the minds of the people,” he wrote, “were wonderfully taken off from the world; the noise among the dry bones waxed louder and louder; and all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by.” By the summer of 1735, “the town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it was never so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress as it was then” (Newman, op. cit., p. 674, and Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 130).

Sinners Flee God’S Wrath

The preaching of Jonathan Edwards to the unconverted was without parallel. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” one of the most celebrated sermons ever preached in America, he said, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as anyone holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath toward you burns like fire.” From Northampton the rivival spread to other communities with Edwards frequently doing the preaching. Other ministers, some previously unconverted, joined in the work of evangelism.

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As Frelinghuysen and the Log College Presbyterians prepared the way for George Whitefield in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, so Jonathan Edwards and the Northampton revival also opened up his way in New England. In September of 1740, Whitefield arrived at Newport, Rhode Island and went on to Boston, preaching at various places on the way. Churches were crowded, and on the Boston Common he preached to crowds of as many as 15,000. Thereafter, preaching sometimes twice a day, he traveled on to Salem, Ipswich, Newbury, Portsmouth, and York, Maine. Returning to Boston he preached his farewell sermon, delivered on the Common and was heard by a throng estimated at 20,000 to 30,000.

Whitefield next visited Northampton and after meeting Jonathan Edwards there, pronounced him to be “a solid, excellent Christian.… I think I may say I have not seen his fellow in all New England” (Belcher, op. cit., pp. 180–181).

Evidences Of Revival

From Northampton he toured through Connecticut. Throughout New England he preached the doctrines of salvation by grace through faith and the inner, personal experience of a man’s heart with Christ. His audiences, deeply stirred by his impassioned eloquence, were often moved to tears, many crying aloud for God’s mercy, hundreds being converted, and multitudes of church members being revived.

Whitefield’s preaching stimulated revivalist ministers to vigorous activity. Jonathan Edwards, Eleazor Wheelock, Joseph Bellamy, and others became itinerant evangelists and made tours similar to those of Whitefield. Under all of their preaching, falling exercises, fainting, hysteria, and weeping were common. In July, 1741, at Enfield, Connecticut, Edwards chose as his text, “Their Foot Shall Slide in Due Time” (Deut. 32:35). When he reached the climax of his sermon, “there was such a breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence that he might be heard.” Some unconsciously seized the sides of the pews and pillars as though they felt themselves slipping into hell.

Regenerate Church Additions

From 1740 to 1742 the people that were added to the churches of New England numbered between 25,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of 300,000. Concerning the effect of the revival, Jonathan Edwards said in 1743, “I suppose the town (Northampton) has never been in no measure so free from vice—for any long time together—for these 60 years, as it has this nine years past.” It must be recorded, however, that within four years interest in the revival, even in Northampton, had waned, and Edwards could not but admit that the church, with no new members in that length of time, was dead (Sweet, op. cit., p. 135).

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Yet despite this decline, much good came of the movement. It reached into the middle colonies where conversions equaled in number those in New England About 150 new Congregational churches were formed, along with scores of Presbyterian churches in Delaware and New Jersey, and a redoubling of the number of Presbyterian ministers. Baptist churches multiplied, and their work was revitalized. Conversions once again became a requirement for church membership, and vital personal godliness was emphasized as never before. In its final results, ministerial education moved forward, as well as missionary work among the Indians, and the “Half-Way Covenant” was finally and thoroughly discredited.

WE QUOTE:

NATHAN M. PUSEY

President, Harvard University

Your college hopes that among all the untrammelled study you have done here, from your activity outside the classroom, in association with your friends, perhaps in part from experience in this or some other church—that in one way or another Harvard has helped you to find a meaning and a center for your life. If you have found this outside religion, so long as you have found it for yourself, there can be no fault in that. Agnosticism can be an honest and, at least in the face of false gods, an entirely healthy state of mind. But the experience of many seems to indicate that it is not one in which one can long dwell, for trust we must in someone or something, surely, for our spiritual and mental health, not merely in ourselves. The final answer must, we hope, be God.

At the end of your four years in college we come together in a service of thanksgiving as graduating classes have been doing at Harvard for more than three centuries. Secularization, like cultural variety, has had the effect of making worship increasingly difficult for us. But it has not in my judgment made it irrelevant. Indeed, it would seem to me to be a very superficial intellectual credo which would imply that the questions of religion can be ignored in or out of college. For this reason it is my very sincere wish, and my prayer, that with all the other goods which it is to be hoped Harvard has given you she will not have failed you at this most crucial point.—In an address to the senior class of Harvard University, June 8, 1958.

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Donald M. C. Englert

Professor of Old Testament, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Barth is now 72, and would have retired at the usual age except for the fact that his name draws foreign theological students to Basel.… When a difference of opinion arises, the student is invited to his home for tea, where the class time will not be taken by the arguments back and forth.… There … we got on the question of a Christian’s relationship to those who differed from him: to Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and Jews. I told him that in Lancaster we have an active chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, that a rabbi has spoken in our classrooms and Chapel on several occasions, that several ministers in town (myself included) preached in the Conservative synagogue, that several Seminary professors have preached in the Unitarian Church and that on each Thanksgiving Day a union service is held, shared by the congregations of St. Peter’s (United Church of Christ), the Unitarian Church, and the Reform synagogue. The great theologian was horrified by all this; he was extremely upset and called us “religious indifferentists”; he felt that because of our “outgoing” lines of communication to other faiths and cultures we must be especially careful not to dilute thereby the full flavor of the Christian witness.”—In an article, “Theologians I Met in Switzerland,” in Theology and Life, Vol. I, No. 2 (May, 1958), pp. 103 f.

Preacher In The Red

A WHALE OF A SLIP

Last year I preached on Old Testament texts. One Sunday I took for my subject the story of Jonah. My sermon topic read: “The Lord’s Call To Service.” In the first part of the sermon I pointed out how Jonah defied God’s call to go to Nineveh, and in the second part I showed how Jonah obeyed the call.

Going back to the first part of the sermon, I tried to become somewhat dramatic. I was heard to say: “There was Jonah in the welly of the bale.” I just felt that I had said something wrong so in the split second one has at his disposal in such situations, I quickly decided to correct myself. Only this time I made it worse. I said: “There was Jonah in a whale of a belly.”—REV. WALTER LUEBKEMAN, Hayward, Calif.

This is the second of two articles on Colonial awakenings in America by Raymond W. Settle, a student of frontier religion.

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