part and spoke in the open air; and on Boston Common twenty thousand people thrilled at his strange eloquence. Coming to Williamsburg (1740), he preached to multitudes there, and a great excitement followed. The people were weary of the deadness in the Church of England, but as yet there was no organized dissent. Early in the century some Baptists, holding to the doctrine of immersion, had come to southeastern Virginia, and gotten into trouble with the authorities for repudiating baptism by sprinkling or pouring; but in the great movement now at hand the Presbyterians took the initiative. A number of respectable persous, opposed to the English Church, assembled in Hanover at the house of John Morris, a citizen of that county; adopted the Westminster Confession, the embodiment of the Calvinistic theology; and soon an ardent congregation collected and was persecuted by the authorities for non-compliance with the Act enjoining attendance at "church." Opposition only stimulated the efforts of the friends of the movement, as it always does. William Robinson, an English Presbyterian, came and preached in Hanover, the cradle of tidewater Presbyterianism; then others followed him, "denouncing the delinquency of the parish ministers with unsparing invective; " and a witness swore that one of the New Light preachers "uttered blasphemous expressions in his sermons." The result was sudden denunciation and persecution by the civil authorities. They declared that "certain false teachers had lately crept into this government who, professing themselves ministers under the pretended influence of new light, extraordinary impulse and such like satirical [sic] and enthusiastic knowledge, lead the innocent and ignorant people into all kinds of delusion." The relig

"the results

ious professions of these New Lights are of Jesuitical policy" only; John Roan is presented for "reflecting upon and vilifying the established relig ion;" and Thomas Watkins suffers the same harassment for the outrageous fling at the clergy: "Your churches and chapels are no better than the Synagogues of Satan."

So far had sounded the wonderful eloquence of Whitefield. It had shaken and awakened. Under that thuuder the dry bones stirred; and the stir was going to be followed once more by a good wholesome persecution of people who presumed to think for themselves in religion, as before in the old times under Sir William Berkeley. A sudden commotion is the result of the New Light preaching. The irruption of Methodism, which is vir tual dissent, arouses all the denominations. The Baptists and Presbyterians make their protest and excite the masses. The preachers of the former faith will be characterized as "illiterate, with an impassioned manner, vehement gesticulation, and a singular tone of voice," at which their hearers "give way to tears, trembling, screams, and acclamations." They will "sing hymns while on the way to prison, and address crowds congregated before the windows of the jails;" and they and the Presbyterians will lay the foundations of religious freedom.

The great awakening of the time is rending asunder even dissenting communions. Whitefield's coming splits the Presbyterian Church into the "New Side" and the "Old Side," the Pennsylvanian Presbytery adhering to the Old, and the New York Presbytery to the New. It is the New Side which is going to establish itself in Virginia; and the Old Side, Philadelphia Synod, dis

owns the uncharitable and unchristian conduct" of those of their communion in Virginia who talk about the churches and chapels of the English Church as "synagogues of Satan." But the New Side Presbyterians persist in spite of proclamations and persecutions, and soon they find a tower of strength in the great and pure apostle Samuel Davies.

If Francis Makemie was the first licensed minister of the Presbyterian faith (1699), Samuel Davies was the founder of the Church, in Virginia. He was not inimical to the Methodist movement, and afterwards said that the English and Scottish Methodists were the most pious of all the people in those countries. From the time of his coming, when, as he declared, there were "not ten avowed dissenters within one hundred miles of him," this great and good man was the head and front of dissent in Virginia. Born in the State of Delaware, then a part of Pennsylvania, he had studied divinity until his frame grew enfeebled; but there was nothing feeble in the acute and burning brain which inhabited this frail tenement. Patrick Henry said of him that he was "the greatest orator he had ever heard;" and he met and nearly overthrew Attorney-General Randolph in a great discussion of the construction of the act of toleration. He was a man to preach the faith before princes, and preached it everywhere. He succeeded in procuring from the Attorney-General in England a decision that the Act of Toleration was the law of Virginia; and the consequent licensing of the dissenting churches, after an oath of allegiance, and a subscription to certain of the articles. When he came to Virginia at twenty-three the Presbyterian Church did not exist. In three years there were churches in Caroline, Louisa, and Gooch

land, as well as in Hanover, "the birthplace," numbering three hundred communicants. He was not at all

bitter against the English Church; that was not his nature. The objections of the Dissenters, he said, were "not against the peculiar rites and ceremonies of that Church; much less against their excellent Articles, but against the general strain of the doctrines delivered from the pulpit, in which their Articles were opposed, or not

mentioned at all."

Such was the liberal and evangelical Christianity of this eminent young man, all whose instincts were expanded. Afterwards he went to England to obtain money for Princeton College; made a great name as a preacher, especially in Scotland; and returning to Virginia established (1755) the first Presbytery there. It was during the next year, after Braddock's defeat, that he spoke of "that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence hath hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country." The young preacher was thirty-three when he said this of the young soldier of twenty-four; and soon afterwards he went away to succeed the famous Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards, as President of Princeton, where he died, still young; but not before he had made a great and lasting name.

This outline will indicate the condition of religious affairs in Virginia at the middle of the century. The Church of England is in the ascendant, with nothing to check it but a variously construed Act of Toleration. In Hanover and elsewhere the Presbyterians and Baptists are clamoring for religious freedom. Beyond the mountains German Lutherans and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians demand the "free enjoyment of their civil and

religious liberties." The fossilized crust of dry-bones and old-world prejudices is slowly cracking under the pressure, and the new time is coming. After all the years, religious freedom, long writhing with the knee on its breast and the hand at its throat, is going to stand erect and bid defiance to whatever attempts to overthrow it.

XXV.

66

FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN THE GREAT WOODS."

JUST as the half century expired, Virginia was called on to protect her frontier beyond the Ohio. What followed was the "French War," which proved a passionate episode in the history of the colony, as well as a decisive trial of strength between France and England in America.

The issue to be decided was the ownership of the territory extending from the Great Lakes to Louisiana. France urged her claim to it on the ground that a French subject, Padre Marquette, had in 1673 sailed down the Mississippi and taken possession of it in the name of France; and the English claimed it on the ground that it was part of Virginia, and had also been conveyed to them by the Iroquois. Either title might be plausibly maintained, but the real question was which could be supported by arms; to which issue affairs had drifted at the middle of the century. Both powers moved in the matter. The English organized the “Ohio Company" to form settlements in the region; and the French, burying a lead plate inscribed with an assertion of their claim, on the banks of La Belle Rivière, the Ohio, proceeded to occupy the country with troops and