with deepest gratitude, how, more than in any other country, He
preserved in our own country both individual and congregational
life, with orthodox standards of faith. Still, taken as a whole, the
Protestant Church was in a dead state throughout the world; while,
during the same period, infidelity was never more rampant, and never
more allied with philosophy, politics, science, and literature. It was
the age of the acute Hume and learned Gibbon; of the ribald Paine, and
of the master of Europe, Voltaire; with a host of _literati_ who were
beginning to make merry, in the hope that God's prophets were at last
to be destroyed from the earth. Rationalism triumphed in all the
Continental Churches. Puritanism in England became deeply tainted with
Unitarianism. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers had, to a large
extent, embraced the same creed in America. The Established Churches
in England and Scotland, though preserving their Confessions, and
having very many living men in the ministry, suffered, nevertheless,
from that wintry cold which had frozen the waves of the great
Reformation sea, and which was adding chill to chill. The French
Revolution marked the darkest hour of this time; yet it was the
hour which preceded the dawn. It was the culminating point of the
infidelity of kings, priests, and people; the visible expression
and embodiment of the mind of France, long tutored by falsehood and
impiety; the letting loose of Satan on earth, that all might see and
wonder at the Beast! That Revolution inscribed lessons in letters
of blood for the Church and for the nations of the world to learn.
Christians accordingly clung nearer to their Saviour amidst the
dreadful storm which shook and destroyed every other resting-place,
and were drawn to the throne of mercy and grace, thereby becoming
stronger in faith and more zealous in life. The indifferent were
roused to earnest thought by the solemn events which were taking
place around them. Speculative infidels even, became alarmed at the