The revival, in fact, is not so much directed against irreligion as against somnolent indifference, stubborn willfulness or repressed spiritual energy. It would awaken, overcome and inspire, giving voice to the inarticulate, guidance to the derelict and a feeling of personal participation to all.

Moreover, the evangelist comes to sweep away all sense of security among churchmen relying upon the mere performance of good works and the usual observance of ordained rites to get them into their Heaven. Indeed the first concern of the pioneer savers of souls was to make every living human being supremely aware of the imminent danger of a literal Hell!

This was the theme of Jonathan Edwards when at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734 he heralded the "Great Awakening" that was to spread the smell of brimstone from backslidden Puritan New England to the comfortably-cushioned consciences of the Colonists of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the South.

"Justification by faith alone" was what Edwards preached, Edwards the forerunner who prepared the way for George Whitefield in the wilderness, Edwards the original turnkey of the Gates of Hell in the New World.

"God has laid Himself under no obligation, by any promise, to keep any natural man out of hell one moment," he thundered. "The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow is made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being drunk with your blood."

Then the excruciation:

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked.

"You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder, and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment!"

Even so was the consciousness of guilt of original sin that no man could exculpate by his own works laid upon the third and fourth generations, who had banked the fires of the faith brought to the shores of New England by their Puritan forefathers.

For Edwards was of the Puritan tradition that never suffered either the godly or the ungodly to rest but made all life an unending Sabbath in which the righteous by self-examination and supplication yearned for saintliness and the unrighteous perforce had to listen and be taxed to support the preaching that damned them eternally. And Edwards was in revolt against the consequences of the softening of the ancient rigorous code through the promulgation of the so-called "Half-Way Covenant," adopted by the Boston Synod in 1660 and upheld by Solomon Stoddard, his venerable grandfather and colleague in the Northampton pulpit.

Stoddard favored admitting the unconverted to participation in the Lord's Supper, even regarding Holy Communion as a converting ordinance, and urged granting to the unregenerate the right to have their children baptized. His liberalizing influence survived and spread in spite of the reaffirming in 1679 of the original Cam

bridge Platform that laid down the rights, duties and practices for the governance of the united Puritan Church and State, drawing the line of the saved and the unsaved in according the privileges of church membership and civil suffrage but compelling all to attend meeting, be taxed to support both parson and magistrate and be subject to their discipline.

This reinvoking of the Cambridge Platform by what was known as the Reforming Synod, at Boston, in the main called for strict accountability by profession of faith, but most of those added to the rolls of the churches at this time were Half-Way Covenanters who merely renewed their conditional vows and remained content with the privileges thus secured without pressing onward toward "full salvation."

And so it came about that the very evils that the Reforming Synod set itself to check sprang up anew to choke out the "Vine planted in the Wilderness." The listed sins included the decadence of the Sabbath, profanity and irreverent behavior; backbitings, censures and litigations among professing Christians whose godliness declined; pride, extravagance and lustfulness in dress, intemperance and tavern haunting; mixed dancings, gaming and idleness; dishonesty and covetousness; neglect of baptism, church fellowship and means of grace, and, above all, refusal to repent.

Accentuating all this were economic unsettlement with the accumulation of debt, political disruption in such events as the loss of the old charter of Massachusetts, and religious dissension as evidenced by the seizure of the Old South Meeting House in Boston for Episcopal services and the tumult over the witchcraft delusion in Salem. Unquestionably there was a general lapse in public morals and