The territorial distribution of the colonists was not less providential. The acquisitions of the Spanish knights and Jesuit fathers who accompa nied them were confined to a doubtful settlement in Florida, to the great province of New Spain (Mexico), and to a strip of the Pacific coast. The French Roman Catholic explorers and the Jesuit fathers were limited to Indian evangelization and an uncertain territory along the St. Lawrence, the northern chain of lakes, and the Mississippi val ley. The great field of English colonization lay between these two. It is the temperate belt of North America—the region which nature had fit ted for the most aggressive mission in Western civilization.
Spain now holds no foot of land on the North American continent. Louisiana passed from her hands into French possession. and in 18°3 the French sold it to the United States. The French bade fair to own all Canada. The ownership was at last reduced to the fortunes of one battle— that of Quebec. The pivotal hour of all American Church history was that in which the brave Mont calm met his fate at the hands of the victorious but dying Wolfe, on the plains of Abraham, Sep tember 13, 1759.
This culmination of a long and bitter series of wars between France and England made the Eng lish the possessors of that immense tract lying be tween the United States and the polar seas and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The war with Mexico, closing in t84S, gave the Unit ed States the great State of Texas, with its vast area of two hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles.
The fifth decade of the eighteenth century was marked by the "Great Awakening" which be gan under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, and swept through all the colonies. A general spiritual decline marked the religious life of the Colonial Church from about 1765 until the end of the century. The absorbing topic was the struggle for national independence. All spir itual interests languished. At no time in the his tory of the American Church was the condition so serious. It was a question, How would Chris tian people act with the boon of a nation in their hands? Until the beginning of the nineteenth century it was doubtful whether the national in dependence would prove a spiritual blessing or a curse.
(12) The American Church—National Pe riod. (1783-1898.) The Church had been a part of the colonial system. The citizen had been taxed for the support of the Church. When the Revolution severed the civil bonds with England, a strong tendency at once set in towards the sepa ration of the Church from all political govern ment. The people began to insist on placing the support of the Church. in all its departments, upon the voluntary judgment of its adherents. This assertion of the voluntary principle in ecclesiasti cal support and government was one of the most original of all the great phenomena of this initial stage of our national life.
Virginia was the scene of the first great move ment to carry into practical effect the voluntary principle. To the Baptists belongs the honor of being the herald. Thomas Jefferson, who in re ligious matters was to all intents and purposes a Frenchman, has the honor of being one of the earliest and most consistent advocates of religious freedom.
The close connection of the colonies with France during the Revolutionary V ar favored the im portation of the infidelity then rampant in that country. The churches were demoralized and
could offer no sufficient opposition. The new in fidelity spread like wildfire. Edition after edi tion of the infidel publications of the old world were sold in America. French thought became fashionable. Many public men were smitten by the contagion.
The young men of the colleges were peculiarly susceptible to the baleful influences of the ris ing star of unbelief. The man who did more than any other, perhaps, to stay this tide and bring the people back to saner thoughts was Timothy Dwight, president of Vale College from 1795 to his death, in 1817. From the day that the young president faced his students, infidelity has been a vanishing force in the history of the American people. This overthrow was mightily helped by the great revival which visited the country at that critical time.
This revival of 1797-18o3 had several important centers of operation. The movement began al most simultaneously in widely separated regions and spread until the intervening spaces were cov ered by its The colleges shared largely in its benefits. The reclaiming of the colleges from infidelity to Chris tianity had an immense significance. Never since has religion been at so low an ebb in these cen ters of intellectual life; and from these college revivals have come some of the most earnest and successful Christian workers the Church has ever known.
This revival also imparted a great impulse to wards evangelization, especially in the \Vest, where the results arc still appearing to the pres ent time. Other advantages to the Church grew out of that wonderful work of grace. The rem nants of the Half-way Covenant were swept away. Missions among the neglected at ho.ne.the Indians and negroes, were revived and organized anew. The founding of Sunday-school unions, Bible and Tract societies, and other benevolent institu tions, sprang out of the warm inspiration of this great spiritual ingatoering.
The Roman Catholic preoccupation of the West and South gave abundant promise of a permanent population of adherents to that communion. From the headwaters of the Mississippi down to the Gulf, and along the tributary rivers, there had been settlements of the Jesuits, which preserved the Roman Catholic spirit after the most of the missions had been broken up. The population was in large part French, with a Spanish ad mixture, and the Roman Catholic faith predom inated everywhere.
The Protestant current westward did not take the shape of a religious movement. It was simply the expansion of the solid and permanent poula tion east of the Alleghenies. The great religious currents moved along the parallels of latitude westward with a steadiness and persistency which belong to the rarer spiritual phenomena of mod ern times.
The moral significance of the Western and Southwestern occupation by the Protestants of the United States is vast. We are too near the scene, and the time is too recent, to comprehend the grandeur of the achievement. Centuries must elapse before the transformation can be seen in all its meaning and proportions. Our religious liter ature, the pulpit, our denominational treasuries, have all been enriched beyond calculation by the contributions which the \Vest has made with lib eral hand and sublime faith. J. F. H.