diate appointment would be seasonable.1 His letter was dated the First of September, 1774; the precise day when General Gage seized the powder of the Massachusetts militia, and when the freeholders of the province marched into Cambridge many thousand strong in order to show the Royal Governor that he had better not try their patience again, as there was a very scanty supply of it remaining. And then, after no long interval, the fateful moment arrived when "The war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, Shakes all the pillared State with shock of men." An historian of rare philosophical insight, and unsurpassed range of reading over all the period which he treats, has analysed the nature of the moral convulsion which was produced in the national mind of America by the outbreak of hostilities between King George's troops and the minute-men. As the news, (so the passage runs,) travelled from man to man, on white lips, up and down the country, all at once on each group of listeners there seemed to come a spiritual revolution; an instantaneous conviction that henceforward all questions of stamps, and paints, and glass, and tea, — all fine-drawn constitutional arguments about the Right of Representation and the Right of Petition, were already things of a dead past. Americans found themselves confronted of a sudden by terribly grave, and in no sense metaphysical, problems relating to their necks and fortunes, the inviolability of their homes, and the security of their families. Every one, from that moment onward, would have to fight for whatever, as a private man, he held dearest; and the 1 Before the end of the year Doctor Vardill embarked for England, "wrote some poetical satires on the Whigs," and eventually closed his career in a Lincolnshire Rectory. That was a normal biography for an Episcopalian clergyman of the American Revolution. 2 Professor Tyler's Literary History; Vol. I., chapter xviii., section iii. clergy of the great Evangelical Churches throughout the continent believed that something was at stake which they valued more highly than all their material possessions together. There was not a single instance in history, (said one of them,) in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire; so that, if the colonists accepted political subjugation, they would at the same time deliver their conscience into bondage. Such was the view of Doctor John Witherspoon, the President of Princeton College, whose library the Hessians ransacked; and that persuasion was almost universally entertained by Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational ministers. At the first call to arms. they flung themselves into the cause of the Revolution, zealously, uncompromisingly, and with most visible, and even decisive, consequences. In America, (according to one Loyalist writer,) as in the Great Rebellion of England, much execution was done by sermons. "What effect," said another, "must it have had upon the audience to hear the same sentiments and principles, which they had before read in a newspaper, delivered on Sundays from the sacred desk, with a religious awe, and the most solemn appeals to heaven, from lips which they had been taught from their cradles to believe could utter nothing but eternal truths!" So long as the war endured there was no lack of stated and special occasions for bringing clerical influence to bear. Full advantage was taken of Fast-days, Thanksgiving-days, Election-days, and the anniversaries of battles and of other momentous events which had occurred during the progress of the struggle. In perilous emergencies prayers were ordered throughout the Confederacy for deliverance from the hand of the enemy; for a plentiful harvest which would enable those, who gathered in the crops at home, to supply the needs of their brethren in the army; and, always and above all, for genuine and heart-felt repentance of those sins that had brought down God's wrath upon the commu1 Tyler's History; Vol. II., chapter xxxv., section i. - PT. II.-VOL. II. X nity. From time to time some Church Synod would address to its congregations a Pastoral Letter setting forth, and enforcing, the whole duty of man in time of war and civil dissension. The Societies were admonished and adjured to maintain the union between the colonies; to respect Congress, and those delegates who had been freely chosen by the people; to observe a spirit of candour, charity, and mutual esteem towards members of other religious denominations; to discourage profligacy and extravagance; to defend public order, and, (as in many places legal proceedings had been unavoidably suspended,) to see that just debts were promptly and honestly paid. Whatever other advice the letter might contain, it began and ended with a reminder that no man could be a true servant of the nation, whose private conduct was not regulated by the Divine law; or a good soldier, unless he fought and conquered what was evil in himself.1 The sincerity of these exhortations was attested by a general movement for the reformation of manners, even where they had not been very bad before. In the Southern and Central colonies theatrical entertainments had long enjoyed a popularity which scandalised the Pennsylvanian Quakers, whom enterprising managers vainly essayed to conciliate by advertising their comedies and tragedies as a series of Moral Dialogues in five parts. The Northern provinces, as a rule, kept the drama rigidly outside their confines; but New England had her own dissipations. The company at a funeral was served with meat and drink; though with a great deal less of the latter than in Virginia and the Carolinas. Seven hundred, a thousand, and so many as three 1 The American Archives give a fine specimen of such a document in a Pastoral Letter from the Synod of New York and Philadelphia to the Congregations under their care, to be delivered from the Pulpit on the 20th of July, 1775. The outbreak of a war, (it is there said,) should be regarded as "the proper time for pressing all of every rank to consider the things that belong to their eternal peace. There is nothing more awful to think of than that those, whose trade is war, should be despisers of the name of the Lord of Hosts." thousand, pairs of gloves had been distributed on such occasions; and the worth of the mourning-rings and silken scarves, which fell to the share of a leading Boston clergyman, constituted a valuable augmentation of his yearly income. Volleys were fired over the graves of distinguished citizens, to the consumption, in one case, of a barrel and a half of powder. But, on and after the nineteenth of April, 1775, all the procurable saltpetre was husbanded for a more urgent purpose; and before that date the First Continental Congress had already pledged every patriot to refrain from expensive articles of adornment at burials, and to shun and discountenance horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays, and other diversions. If the prohibition of theatrical performances had been enacted by law, (it has been acutely said,) a loophole might have been discovered in the Statute; "but the manager, who should have disregarded the expressed wish of Congress at this time, would have looked the lightning in the face. The actors sailed for the West Indies; to return Northward, like migratory birds of song, when storms should have blown over." The corporate and collective action of the American clergy was a mighty force in politics; but the influence of the individual minister must be accounted as more important still. That influence, though dependent on the esteem and personal regard felt towards him by his neighbours, was almost absolute in spiritual matters, and not seldom extended over every department of daily life. In the farmhouses which lay within a long walk, or leisurely drive, of his residence, the pastor was a welcome guest whenever the shadow of his great hat 1 Article on Social Life in the Colonies, by the Rev. Edward Eggleston; 1884. During the outburst of feeling against the Stamp Act in 1765, the New York mob, ascetic beyond its wont, pulled down a theatre. The New England Puritans felt and acted like their forefathers when in much the same stress of peril. In 1642, three weeks before Edgehill, the Houses voted that public sports did not agree well with public calamities; and that while sad causes, and set times of humiliation, continued, stage-plays should cease and be forborne. darkened the threshold. There he would sit, sipping the decoction of sassafras which did duty for tea in a strict patriotic household; asking affectionately after the son who was serving with his regiment; smiling gravely at the portrait of King George as it hung head downwards on the wall; reading out, with vigorous comments, the latest news from Congress, and from the Canadian border; and dropping some uncomplimentary epithet with reference to any Cabinet minister whose name came up in the conversation, save and except the good Lord Dartmouth. His more remote parishioners lived in the light of his countenance at least on one day in every week, and all that day long. When the Sunday came, they flocked into the chief settlement of the Township from forest-clearings and upland hamlets, and spent the interval between the Services before the great fire-place in the minister's kitchen, or in the Sabbath-houses and noon-houses which dotted the vil lage green. These humble caravanseries provided a stable at the back of the building, and a roughly furnished parlour where the families from a distance ate their cold viands, and in quieter times talked over the sermon, or listened to the reading aloud of an edifying book; but during the Revolution there was, in one notable respect, no restraint upon their talk; inasmuch as it was clearly understood, by all concerned, that the war ranked as a Sunday topic. Inside the church, fervent, and perpetually varied, prayers for the temporal welfare of the nation, and for the protection of those friends and kinsmen who were under arms in the fore-front of peril, excited warmer emotions than are ordinarily evoked by the weekly repetition of the words set down in the Episcopalian Liturgy for use in time of War and Tumults. Allusions to those public hopes and fears, that filled every heart, kept the sermon alive from the giving out of the text to the valedictory sentence, which was often very long in 1 Article on Church and Meeting-house before the Revolution by the Rev. Edward Eggleston, D.D.; April 1887. |