and solid judgment. He has a most ready memory, and I think speaks entirely without notes. He has a clear and musical voice, and a wonderful command of it. He uses much gesture, but with great propriety. Every accent of his voice, every motion. of his body speaks; and both are natural and unaffected."

The same person thus summarizes the substance of his preaching:

"He loudly proclaims all men by nature to be under sin, and obnoxious to the wrath and curse of God. He maintains the absolute necessity of supernatural grace to bring men out of this state. He asserts the righteousness of Christ to be the alone cause of the justification of a sinner; that this is received by faith; that faith is the gift of God; that where faith is wrought it brings the sinner, under the deepest sense of his guilt and unworthiness, to the footstool of sovereign grace to accept of mercy as the free gift of God only for Christ's sake. He asserts the absolute necessity of the new birth; that this new production. is solely the work of God's blessed Spirit; that wherever it is wrought it is a permanent, abiding principle, and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it."

A brief description of the effect of Whitefield's preaching on an audience will prepare us to understand in some degree the impression of his first visit to New England:

"I never in my life saw so attentive an audience. Mr. Whitefield spake as one having authority. All he said was demonstration, life, and power. The people's eyes and ears hung on his lips. They greedily devoured

every word. I came home astonished. Every scruple vanished; and I said within myself, surely God is with this man." In his prayers, which were extemporaneous, as in his speech, an intense fervor kindled the devotions of those whom he led to the throne of grace.

But this young man, twenty-six years old, with all his gifts and graces, could never have stirred New England as he did, had not the Holy Spirit prepared the hearts of the people to hear his message, and accompanied it with divine power. The first Sunday after his arrival in Boston he preached to a crowded audience in Brattle Street meeting-house, and later to a great throng on the common. The next day at the New South meeting-house a panic occurred during the service, and so great was the crowd that in attempting to escape from the building five persons were killed. He preached at Harvard College, and he made excursions to the neighboring towns. Inquirers everywhere pressed on him for personal conversation concerning their salvation. He collected generous sums for his orphanage in Georgia. He preached his farewell sermon on Boston Common, October 12, to an audience which he estimated at thirty thousand. Governor Belcher bade him farewell, with tears entreating him to pray for him. Whitefield, preaching at prominent points on the way, arrived at Northampton on the following Friday, and spent Sunday with Jonathan Edwards, preaching for him with profound effect. Thence he made his way through Connecticut, preaching to thousands at Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, and other places, arriving at New York October 30. In that city, and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, he spent

three weeks preaching daily, and then returned to Georgia. He recorded in his diary that in the seventyfour days since he had landed at Newport, R. I., he had preached one hundred and seventy-five times, besides exhorting frequently in private. The effects of his visit among the Congregational churches of New England will be described in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GREAT AWAKENING (continued).

HE visit of George Whitefield to New England

ment which attended it and its profound impression on the people, it can hardly be regarded as more than the most prominent incident occurring in that revival which characterized the history of Congregationalism in the eighteenth century. It has even been suggested that the revival was delayed by the expectation of his coming; many, in whose hearts a gracious work had begun, waiting with the feeling that they would be called to declare it when he should arrive.

Thomas Prince, then the junior pastor of the Old South Church, aided his son to collect and publish, in 1743 and 1744, extended accounts of the revival, including events occurring both in this country and in England and Scotland. In Boston, after Whitefield's departure, the attendance on the regular services of the churches was greatly increased. A special Tuesday evening lecture was established at Brattle Street meeting-house, which attracted large audiences for many months. The governor, at the request of the House of Representatives, appointed December 3 as a day of fasting and prayer. December 13 Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey, arrived in Boston. His father and his three brothers were ministers, and the whole family were so prominent in the revival then

in progress in the region where they labored that it was known as the "Tennent revival."

Gilbert Tennent was one of the most powerful revival preachers ever known in this country. But his manner was quite in contrast with that of Whitefield. Mr. Prince says of him: "He seemed to have no regard to please the eyes of his hearers with agreeable gesture, nor their ears with delivery, nor their fancy with language; but to aim directly at their hearts and consciences, to lay open their ruinous delusions, show them their numerous secret, hypocritical shifts in religion, and drive them out of every deceitful refuge wherein they made themselves easy with the form of godliness without the power." He preached the terrors of the law to sinners, "the awful danger they were every moment in of being struck down to hell, and being damned forever, with the amazing miseries of that place of torment." But he was most effective in "laying open their many vain and secret shifts and refuges, counterfeit resemblances of grace, delusive and damning hopes, their utter impotence, and impending danger of destruction."

utter

Mr. Tennent preached in and about Boston for two months and a half. His audiences everywhere were large, the people earnest and solemn. Many were brought under deep conviction of sin, though without any demonstrations of crying out or fainting, such as had occurred in other places. He preached his farewell sermon March 2, 1841, in the Brattle Street meeting-house, and the parting between him and his hearers was affectionate and sad. The religious interest, which was deep and general through the winter, still further increased after his departure. Within three months