"These men came out from amid great awakenings; and after
the first plantations, every arrival from the old country brought them
news of the revivals which took place under the Bunyans and Baxters of
England."--Henry C. Fish, D. D.
"The period of the settlement of this country was singularly
identical with that of the breaking up of the old religious life of Europe.
Indeed, since the Crusaders the Old World had passed through no such convulsions
as shook her whole religious, political, intellectual, and social framework
at a time when every nation was sending forth her sons--albeit many exiles
in the number--to establish themselves on the Atlantic coast of this continent.
It was not from any stagnant nations that immigrants came to our wooded
shores, but from stirred and aroused peoples . . Europe's best blood was
hot with aspirations--we might better call them inspirations--at the very
moment when this new field was opened for the greatest fulfillment in
modern history."--Bishop John F. Hurst.
"When the Colonies in America were planted, both from England
and the Continent, the people who constituted them arrived at the moment
of Europe's awakening. They brought the best aspirations of the Old World,
and determined to realize them in the New. The hour of American Colonization
was the fittest one in all modem times for the New World to receive the
best which the Old World had to give." --Ibid.
WHENCE came these founders to the shores of North America?
With reference to their former residence, and speaking geographically, the
most of them. came from the British Isles,--in the main from England. So
predominant were these English elements that as late as 1775, four-fifths
of the people were of British origin and spoke the English language. In
the earlier days the proportion of English to the whole population was even
larger.
Having reference to their ecclesiastical antecedents and their religious
position, they were cast on these shores by the expulsive forces of the
Reformation and the religious convulsions in Europe consequent upon that
mighty movement. It had set all Europe in a ferment, especially the nations
of Northern Europe. Since religion had everywhere been connected with the
state before it began, it naturally aroused the political energies of the
people whom it touched, while it quickened their moral life; and thus it
gave rise to the most fervent agitations and fierce persecutions of modern
times. It was not an era of tepid religious convictions, when men account
religion as of such little value as not to be worth fighting for; but it
was an epoch of controversy, when men everywhere earnestly contended for
the faith once delivered to the saints. From these contests in the Old World
came these founders to the New.
Grandsires of the men who composed the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements
were contemporaries of Ridley, and Latimer, and Cranmer. The hearts of these
settlers in the New World had been stirred by stories of those stormy times,
and perhaps from eye-witnesses of those martyrdoms some of the first Colonists
had heard of how "without Bocardo Gate," opposite Baliol College,
on a day in October 1555, the dauntless and saintly Latimer had died, exclaiming
to his companion in suffering and glory, "Be of good comfort, Master
Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's
grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." From the lips
of saintly sires mayhap others had heard the story of lowland Taylor, the
good Vicar of Hadleigh, who went to his death, by burning, amid the lamentations
of his parishioners, who burst out crying, 'Ah, good Lord! there goeth our
good shepherd from us! God save thee, good Dr Taylor; God strengthen thee
and help thee; the Holy Ghost comfort thee! '
They themselves, as well as their immediate ancestors, were directly affected
by the great revival which the reading of the Bible had produced in England
during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Of that period Green in
his "Short History of the English People," says, 'No greater moral
change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years
which parted the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the Long Parliament.
England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was
as yet the one English book which was familiar to every Englishman; it was
read at churches and read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell
on ears which custom had not deadened, kindled a startling enthusiasm. .
. The whole moral effect which is produced nowadays by the religious newspaper,
the tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary report, the sermon, was
then produced by the Bible alone; and its effect in this way, however dispassionately
we may examine it, was simply amazing. One dominant influence told on human
action; and all the activities that had been called into life by the age
that was passing away were seized, concentrated, and steadied to a definite
aim by the spirit of religion. The whole temper of the nation felt the change.
A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and
religious impulse spread through every class."
With such memories, influences, and dispositions in their hearts came the
first Colonists to Jamestown in 1607 and to Plymouth in 1620. In the years
that followed they drew after them men of like mind and mould. From the
moment of their establishment in the New World the eyes of the pious and
persecuted Protestants in every part of Northern Europe, and especially
the eyes of their kindred fellow-christians in England, were fixed upon
them. Drawn by the bonds of a common faith and natural affection, multitudes
of congenial spirits soon hastened to join them in their Western home. Besides
their friends and kinsmen from England, there flocked after them Huguenots
from France, pious Swedes, saintly Swiss, and devout Dutch, together with
sturdy Scotch, and ardent spirits from the north of Ireland.
It thus appears that the founding of the Colonies at the first, and their
subsequent growth during the first century of their existence, was the result
of great revivals of religion. The Reformation itself was strictly speaking
a revival, and gave rise to a series of movements from which has been developed
the evangelical type of life and the evangelistic methods of propagating
Christianity which are today the hope of the world. It is a great mistake
to consider that mighty revolution to have been only a change of speculative
tenets, or a secular struggle, under the pretense of religion, for freedom
of thought only. True, purification of doctrine and liberty of conscience
were involved, but only because of the deep spiritual struggles which underlay
them. It was the personal interests of souls, hungering and thirsting after
righteousness until Christ was revealed in them the hope of glory, which
raised the great issues between the Romanists and the Reformers. Not since
the days of the Apostles were so many souls anxiously inquiring, "What
must we do to be saved?" and never were there before so many genuine
conversions. The correspondence of the Reformers, especially that of Luther
and Calvin, shows that much of their time was spent giving counsel to inquiring
souls and leading such souls to Christ. The subjects uppermost in their
discussions were just those themes that to this day are considered of paramount
importance in a revival season.
The Reformation in Scotland bore the same marks. Kirkton says of it "The
whole nation was converted by lump. Lo! here a nation born in one day; yea,
moulded into one congregation, and sealed as a fountain with a solemn oath
and covenant." Fleming, in his "Fulfilling of Scripture,"
says, "It is astonishing, and should be matter of wonder and praise
for after ages, to consider that solemn time of the Reformation (in Scotland)
when the Lord began to visit his church. What a swift course the spreading
of the kingdom of Christ had; and how professors of the truth thronged in
amidst the greatest threatenings of those on whose side authority and power
then was." In Holland, France, and Switzerland a similar spirit prevailed
among the Reformers. We may be sure that it was not for mere speculative
dogmas, or for motives of faction, that men endured torture and gave themselves
to death. Nothing less than the experience of that "loving kindness
of God" in personal salvation, which "is better than life,"
could have nerved them for the mighty struggles through which they passed
on behalf of the freedom of the faith. If dogma was dear to them it was
because it was the symbol of loyalty to the Lord of Life and Salvation.
In the British Isles, whence most of the early Colonists came, the contest
between evangelical Christianity and its enemies was longest and fiercest.
There also were the triumphs of a pure faith most signal and fruitful. In
the century in which the first Colonies were founded there were many revival
centres from which the ranks of the Colonists were constantly recruited.
Men like Richard Baxter, John Owen, John Bunyan, John Howe and John Flavel
called sinners to repentance and edified the churches of England in ministries
of great power. Their writings, which remain, reveal how evangelical were
their teachings, how fervent was their spirit, how abundant were their labours.
The various acts of Parliament leveled against such pious endeavors show
how great was their influence. The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, and
strenuously enforced for twenty-five years, the Conventicle Act passed in
1664, and the Five Mile Act passed in 1665, all show how persistent and
how ineffectual was the persecution of those mighty men who stood for a
pure faith in a corrupt age. This proscriptive legislation did also send
to the American Colonies some of the choicest spirits that the world ever
saw. They had been fused and fashioned in revival fires, and they came to
the New World in the spirit of the evangelism by which they had been encompassed
from birth, and for which they and their fathers had suffered so much.
Of how nearly the revivals of this period of British history resemble the
revivals of our day we may judge by reading the accounts of a revival which
prevailed in the north of Ireland in 1625. It was from the labours of a
company of faithful men who went over from Scotland--Brice, Glendenning,
Ridge, Blair and others. They began in Ulster and endeavored with apostolic
zeal to evangelize the whole island. The work continued for a considerable
time, and of it Stewart says, "The ministers were indefatigable in
improving the favourable opportunity thus offered for extending the knowledge
and influence of the gospel. The people, awakened and inquiring, many of
them both desponding and alarmed, both desired and needed guidance and instruction.
The judicious exhibition of evangelical doctrines and promises by these
faithful men, was in due time productive of those happy and tranquillizing
effects which were early predicted as the characteristic of gospel times.
Adopting the beautiful imagery of the prophets, the broken-hearted were
bound up and comforted, the spirit of bondage and of fear gave way to a
spirit of freedom and of love, the oil of joy was poured forth instead of
mourning, and the spirit of heaviness exchanged for the garments of praise
and thankfulness."
In the same year there was a great work of grace in Scotland which from
the place of its beginning--Stewarton--was nicknamed by the godless as the
"Stewarton Sickness."' Of this movement Fleming says, "Truly
this great spring tide, as I may call it, of the gospel, was not of a short
time, but of some years continuance; yea, thus, like a spreading moor-burn,
the power of godliness did advance from one place to another, which put
a marvellous lustre on those parts of the country, the savor whereof brought
many from other parts of the land to see its truth."
Of the same sort was Baxter's work at Kidderminster. He himself gives us
a glimpse of it in these words: "The congregation was usually full,
so that we were led to build five galleries after my corning hither, the
church itself being very capacious, the most commodious and convenient that
ever I was in. Our private meetings were also full. On the Lord's day, there
was no disorder to be seen in the streets, but you might hear a hundred
families singing psalms and repeating sermons as you passed through the
streets." Of the extent of his influence we may draw some inference
from the fact that in a time when the population of England was not nearly
so dense as now, nor reading nearly so general, his great work entitled
"A Call to the Unconverted" attained a circulation of 20,000 copies
within the first twelvemonth after its publication. What must have been
the popular interest in the subject to secure so great and so speedy a circulation
for a work of that kind? How powerfully must his call have affected the
nation?
These facts all go to show how true is the statement that the first Colonists,
who gave to the rising commonwealths in the New World their initial type
of life, which type has dominated and assimilated to itself all subsequent
immigration, "came out of great awakenings."
The Colonists were not unaccustomed to revivals when they came, nor were
they startled when similar works of grace appeared among them in the New
World. The "Venerable Stoddard," grandfather of Jonathan Edwards
and the pastor of the Church at Northampton (where the Great Awakening of
1740 began) from 1672 to 1728 had, during the nearly sixty years of his
ministry, "five harvests as he called them." In his "Narrative
of the Surprising Work of God," Jonathan Edwards thus alludes to these
seasons of grace in the ministry of his grandfather: "As he was eminent
and renowned for his gifts and graces, so he was blessed from the beginning
with extraordinary success in his ministry, in the conversion of many souls.
He had five harvests as he called them: the first was about fifty-seven
years ago; the second about fifty-three years; the third about forty; the
fourth about twenty-four; the fifth and last about eighteen years ago. Some
of these times were much more remarkable than others, and the ingathering
of souls more plentiful. Those that were about fifty-three, and forty, and
twenty-four years ago were much greater than either the first or the last;
but in each of them, I have heard my grandfather say, the greater part of
the young people in the town seemed to be mainly concerned for their eternal
salvation." Reckoning, therefore, from the date of the "narrative"
by Edwards, we find there were harvest times at Northampton in 1679, 1683,
1696, 1712 and 1718.
These revivals gave no surprise to men who had come out from the religious
scenes of England; they were fruits of the religious awakenings in the Old
World and forerunners of "The Great Awakening" which presently
came to the New. They sprang up amid tender memories and holy ancestral
traditions, and they renewed in the hearts of the Colonists the fervent
experiences of their forefathers. This renewed spiritual life was the basis
of a nobler social life, and the foundation of a higher political endeavour.
With the revivals of Colonial times the evangelical faith that was hungering
and thirsting in the wilderness was refreshed when it was famishing and
ready to die. Without them the religious purposes of former generations
would have failed, and the hopes of their posterity would never have been
born. They are links in that apostolical succession of revivals which stretches
from the Reformation to the great awakenings of the eighteenth century.
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