I. Ebbing Spirituality Precedes Revival

According to Bacon, “the closing years of the eighteenth century show the lowest low-water mark of the lowest ebb-tide of spiritual life in the history of the American church.” ^{2L. W. Bacon, op. cit., p. 230.} After the Revolution, skepticism rolled in like an engulfing tide from France, the more easily because of America’s affection for the land of Lafayette; and emancipation from religious tyranny was regarded as the rightful sequel to political emancipation. Men were charmed with the subtle French wit of the Encyclopedists, who contended that religion was a trick of priestcraft, revelation was without authority, and moral obligation a needless incumbrance; that matter was eternal, and thought was merely the result of elective affinities; therefore animal pleasures were actually the only happiness, Such was the contemporary picture as painted by Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, and by other competent witnesses. ^{3Arthur B. Strickland, The Great American Revival, pp. 25-29; D. Dorchester, op. cit., pp. 287, 288, 313-324; F. G. Beardsley, Religious Progress, pp. 27, 28.}PFF4 36.2

Many American colleges became “hotbeds of infidelity” instead of training schools for Christian leadership. Thus it was with William and Mary in Virginia, Harvard in New England, the University of Pennsylvania, and others. When Timothy Dwight came to the presidency of Yale, in 1795, he-found it honeycombed with “atheistical clubs,” where the students cynically dubbed each other “Voltaire,” “Rousseau,” “D’Alembert,” and the like. Princeton had apparently only two students who professed Christianity. Conspicuous civic leaders had aligned themselves with Liberalism, and some with French Deism. “Cold Unitarianism and frigid ethical theories” made heavy inroads. ^{4A.‘B. Strickland, op. cit.,’pp. 28-34; F. G.‘Beardsley, Religious Progress, p. 29;W. A. Candler, op. cit., pp. 151, 152.} Infidelity was particularly noticeable on the Western frontiers, where great sections were isolated, without a preacher or a church, and where Paine’s Age of Reason had, for many, virtually supplanted the revealed Word. Various towns were named after Frenchmen, such as Rousseau. ^{5F. G. Beardsley, Religious Progress, p. 30.}PFF4 37.1

Voltaire, who is said to have boasted that soon the Bible would be a forgotten book, fascinated men with his brilliant skeptical wit, and infidel clubs flourished everywhere. Thoughtful men feared that mankind was heading toward some grave unseen crisis or revolution. Paralleling this growing infidelity, dueling increased, drunkenness became prevalent, family ties weakened, and many churches lost ground. ^{6D. Dorchester, op. cit., pp. 341, 342, 347; A. B. Strickland, op. cit., p. 36; L. W. Bacon, op. cit., pp. 231, 232.}PFF4 37.2

At the close of the Revolution, great streams of emigrants moved westward toward the headwaters of the Ohio and southward through the valleys of Pennsylvania and Virginia, into the Piedmont sections of North and South Carolina, and Georgia, or down the Ohio and Holston rivers into Kentucky and Tennessee. ^{7Lacy, op. cit., pp. 63, 64.} Wrenched away from former social and religious ties and restraints, the settlers spent all their energies in wresting a livelihood and security from the raw wilderness. So lawlessness and intemperance were common. The desperate moral conditions of Logan County, Kentucky, ^{8Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, pp. 24, 25.} described by Peter Cartwright, celebrated Methodist pioneer preacher, prevailed, in varying degrees, in all the pioneer country. Only a saving tide of religion, similar to the Wesleyan revival and the Great Awakening, could reclaim this frontier territory.PFF4 38.1