him.  The evangelist bore his honors meekly, and hospitality did not weaken the vials of wrath which he poured upon the unfaithful.  He found, as he said, in New England ‘a darkness which might be felt.’  At Cambridge, he thundered at the deadness of Harvard and its faculty, and electrified the land by striking at its glory.  The hearers alternately wept and shivered, and the professors, headed by old Dr. Holyoke (who afterwards lived to celebrate his hundredth birthday), levelled a defensive and aggressive pamphlet at their castigator; but Governor Belcher kissed the dauntless preacher, and bade him ’cry aloud and spare not, but show the people their sins.’

The second century, like the first, opened with fierce ecclesiastical tumult.  Whitefield’s itineracy, like the blazing cross in the Lady of the Lake, was the signal for an uprising.  Fired by his passionate oratory, the masses revolted from the chill formalism of a dead ministry.  The effect of the excitement which pervaded New England, when considered merely as an appetizer of the intellect, can not be over-estimated, and the vigor which the colonial mind thus acquired astonished in an after day the dullards of the British Parliament.  The chief throb was felt in Connecticut, where strolling preachers of a new order held forth in barns and school-houses.  Among these imitators of Whitefield were some men of high character, such as Tennant and Finley (afterwards president of Nassau Hall, Princeton), while others were frenzied enthusiasts.  Davenport, the chief of these, was ’a heavenly-minded youth,’ whose usefulness was wrecked by fanaticism.  In his journey he was attended by one whom he called his armor-bearer, and their entrance into each village was signaled by a loud hymn sung by the excited pair.  The very tone in which Davenport preached has been perpetuated by his admirers; it was a nasal twang, which had great effect.  A law was passed against those irregularities, and Davenport was thrown into Hartford jail, where he sang hymns all night, to the great admiration of his friends.  On being released he went to Lyme, where, after sermon, a bonfire of idols was made, to which the women contributed their ornaments and fine dresses, and the men their vain books.  This religious movement was marred by much evil; yet its fruits, as we have stated, were found in that mental strength which subsequently bore the brunt of the Revolution.  Its excited scenes are hit off by such reports as these,—­’Sally Sparhawk fell and was carried out of meeting;’ this statement being frequently repeated.  The style of preaching in vogue may be imagined when we read of Tennant’s appearance in the pulpit, with long locks flowing down his back, his gaunt form encased in a coarse garment, girt about the loins with a leathern girdle, in imitation of the prophet Elijah.  His discourses were ‘awful and solemn,’ and the houses were crowded, though the cold was so intense as to sheet Long Island Sound with ice.