[Illustration: BIRMINGHAM MEETING-HOUSE (ANCIENT).]
Speaking of the earlier days of the century, Chancellor Kent, in one of his published works, declared that in his younger days the men of his acquaintance in professional life who did not avow infidelity were comparatively few. Bishop Meade, of Virginia, in his autobiography, states that “scarcely a young man of culture could be found who believed in Christianity.”
The colleges and universities were so filled with youthful skeptics that when, in 1795, Timothy Dwight assumed the presidency of Yale, he found but four or five willing to admit that they were members of churches. So far did they go in their devotion to the French infidelity prevalent at the time, that the seniors of the college were commonly known among themselves by the names of Diderot, D’Alembert, Robespierre, Rousseau, Danton, and the like. Harvard, Princeton, William and Mary, the University of Virginia,—all the colleges indeed,—were as thoroughly hotbeds of skepticism as nurseries of learning.
The period, too, was one of internecine strife among the feeble churches themselves. Divisions on doctrinal lines were incessant; departures from the faith as numerous as they were disastrous. Of the missionary spirit so gloriously characteristic of the nineteenth century there was not even a trace. Up to 1793, not a missionary society was in existence on either side of the ocean. The same was true of hospitals, asylums, of every form of organized effort for the reclamation of the masses or the amelioration of human ill.
In Boston, as late as 1811, men of literary or political distinction, eager to listen to the marvelous revival preaching of the celebrated Dr. Griffin, attended his services surreptitiously, or in disguise, fearful lest knowledge of attendance upon religious services of such vulgar character should detract from the dignity of their social standing.
If, however, the times were bad, the outlook for Christianity dark, the period, nevertheless, was not wholly without gleams of light. The spiritual leaven imparted by Whitefield in his mighty preaching tours, by Edwards, Dwight, Asbury, Griffin, and others of equally heroic stamp, gradually began to work,—slowly at first, but with ever accelerating movement,—until at last the triumphant successes of the present century began their stately march. By degrees a new life appeared among the churches, heralding the dawn of a new and brighter day. Revivals of religion, many of them powerful and sweeping, broke out in many parts of the country. Massachusetts, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, were in succession the theatres of movements which, before they had spent their force, had completely revolutionized the conditions of unfaith, immorality, and spiritual apathy so long prevailing. These upheavals of spiritual power, continuing during the first twenty-five years of the century, laid broad and deep the foundations of the mighty achievements of the church which we are now to consider. How extensive, how wonderful, have been these achievements can perhaps best be understood by a consideration of the changed conditions marking the close of the century.