USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Sketches about Salem people > Part 21
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
To the people of Edwards' day the coming of this assur- ance of salvation was identified with conversion. Con- version was a mystical and inexplicable experience, a free gift of God.
Edwards, who was one of the first to study religious psychology, outlines the process in his "Treatise on the Religious Affections." This process became so stereo- typed in Evangelical groups that one of the officials of a church I knew some years ago objected to a young stu- dent leading a devotional meeting in the church, on the ground that he had gone only part way through the process. The stages are as follows :
First, conviction-a realizing sense of one's lost con- dition, of one's danger of hell. Second, a struggle by works and exercises to propitiate God and win His fa- vour. Third, a sense of resignation to God's will, a will- ingness "to lie at God's feet and wait His time." This was sometimes expressed as a willingness to be damned for the glory of God. Fourth, to those who are of the elect, there comes a sense of peace and joy, of assurance, such as is expressed in Wesley's hymn
My God is reconciled His pardoning voice I hear, He owns me for His child I can no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh And Father, Abba, Father, cry.
We can illustrate the process by a document, later than the revival, but revealing the same state of mind, that is among Rev. John Cleaveland's papers in the Essex In- stitute.
"THE RELATION OF EUNICE ANDREWS.
After God had first begun to pour out his Spirit in this our Day and I came to hear the enlivened Ministers preach, I was put under some serious consideration about my soul, and was convinced in some measure of my need of a Saviour to save me from Hell and Damnation; and for two years before I was married, I was under considerable concern and at Length thought I received comfort, but have been con-
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
vinced since that it was only counterfeit; for ye comfort yt I then received did not humble me, as I find what I have received since does, even the least degree of it, and after this at Times I was under considerable concern and it would wear off again 'till the time of my first Lying in; and then I was in my own apprehension brought to the very brink of eternity; and that night I received comfort. I thought, I should be in eternity before morning and expected to go to Hell which gave me a great since of my miserable and Lost State and condition and I had a great since, not only of my actual sins but also of ye sins of my nature, I saw the opposition of my Heart to God-and saw I could not help myself-I saw I stood in need of mercy and was made to cry to God for mercy and Tho't if I had an Interest in Christ I should not be afraid to die but I could not see that there was any mercy for me; then Christ was manifested very plainly to my soul as a Saviour to save me from my sins and as an Interceding with God for me-he appeared also very Lovely to my soul which drew my soul out to him and filled me with comfort and made me willing to live or die and made me exceeding desirous that all and especially such as were around me might have an Interest in Christ and feel yt joy & comfort that I then felt, and then I seemed to be astonished at my living so long in a course of sinning against so many calls from God, and was astonished at the long suffering of God towards me; and I then found my Heart to hate sins and indeed was so turned against sin I thought I would never sin any more; but I have found it true otherwise to my Grief; and all the Time of my sick- ness I seemed to be very comfortable and sometimes I had so much comfort that I could not sleep; but after I got well again, (although at times I enjoyed some comfort) yet I got into the world and worldly cares carried my Mind off too much from the main Thing: and when the elders of this Church were at our House, one of them asked me what my experiences were when I was sick. I felt a disposition to putt it off being very low and Dull and therefore told them I feared it was only a sick-bed Repentance but my heart soon struck me for saying so, and afterwards what they said to me I trust was in some measure blessed to me. It putt me to more strict search and examination and calling to mind that it was about two years then from the time of my sickness when I mett with that experience and to con-
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
sider that God had been waiting on me two years to see if I bear Fruit; but I seemed to have a great sinse of my Unfruitfulness and Unfaithfulness to God; I was made sin- sible that ye Lord appeared for me in ye time of my sick- ness; but to think of my barrenness filled me with shame before God; and a little while after this I heard a sermon on these words, yt their hearts being knit together in Love, wherein it was shewed that all Believers did find their Hearts knit to those that appeared to have the Image of God on them which I then and since do find to ye children of God here and although for some Time before I had a Desire to join with this Church, yet I could not see my way clear as I have since but I am not now without some staggerings for I find myself to be very weak; and after I related my Experiences to the Elders in order to join with the Church I was seized with fear lest I had said more than I had really experienced, but then I was brought to see again I had not one half so much as I ought to have done. I hope this Church will pray for me and my Desire is with your Consent to be taken under your watch and to be admitted as a member of your communion; I have no more at present but to wish Grace, etc. to be multiplied, etc.
Eunice Andrews.
The church being stayed after Divine Service, Sabb. Au- gust 26, 1756, the above Relation was read to them and after considering ye same they voted That they were so far satis- fied as yt she shall stand propounded which accordingly she does pr John Cleaveland, Pastor.
Sept. 16, 1756. Eunice Andrews was admitted unto ye Church and signed ye Articles and Covenant. Attest. John Cleaveland, Pastor."
This document needs no comment. Its sincerity, the struggle to be honest, the terror and pain it so simply lays bare, grip our hearts. Eunice is not always sure what her experience was but she knows what it should be. She thinks that a genuine experience of conversion would manifest the stages outlined in Edwards' treatise. The theory he sets forth determined emotional religious ex- perience for the Evangelical churches.
It was in a mental and moral atmosphere such as this relation reveals that Jonathan Edwards began his work. The people he served were past the pioneer stage of liv-
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
ing. They were people of intelligence and for their day of more than the average information. Edwards was a man of remarkable intellectual and moral power. He was terribly convinced of the truth of what he was preach- ing, the reality of hell, the eternal doom of the uncon- verted, and the necessity of assurance to salvation. He was a man of intense but controlled emotion and of vivid imagination. He preached to people who had absorbed his belief in the very air they breathed. It is not to be wondered at that emotion burst out uncontrollably and that it spread like a fire throughout the colonies. The classic expression of Edwards' faith is the sermon which he preached at Enfield on July 8th, 1741, from the text in Deut. 32: 35, "Their foot shall slide in due time." The title of the sermon was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I do not need to repeat here the ten headings under which Edwards arranged this vivid pic- ture of helpless humanity slipping to eternal torment, to "the kind of hell an infinite God would arrange who was infinitely enraged against a human being who had infinitely sinned in rejecting God's infinite love." Dr. Watts, the hymnologist of England, read the sermon and in a letter to Prince of Boston says: "I think Mr. Ed- wards' sermon on the Danger of the Unconverted is one of the most terrible representations I ever read." It is an index of the state of mind of the time that Watts' letter is quoted as a recommendation in an advertisement of the published sermon. Such sermons played the same part in the reading of the day as tales of mystery and murder do in our own.
The movement spread with great rapidity after 1740, due not only to the influence of Mr. Edwards, but to the visits and inspiration of Whitefield and to the rise of a whole group of itinerant evangelists. Ministers left their parishes and following the example of Whitefield and of Wesley went on long tours, everywhere meeting with the same response. "Men of no learning and of small capac- ity took up the work of exhorters; babes in age as well as in understanding; chiefly young persons, sometimes lads or boys, women and girls, even negroes." In spite
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
of the conviction that man of himself could do nothing, and that assurance could come only by the free gift of God, people were urged to press into the Kingdom.
You can and you can't, You shall and you shan't You will and you won't, You'll be damned, if you don't.4
This is the way in which an enemy of the movement described what has come to be known as the Edwardean paradox.
Under the preaching of such doctrines, there were startling physical manifestations. One of the ministers says, "The bodies of some of the awakened are seized with trembling, fainting, histerisms, in some few women, and with convulsive motions in some others, arising from that apprehension and fear of the wrath of God they are convinced they are under and liable to because of their sins. They have a quick apprehension of the greatness and dreadfulness of this wrath before they are affected.5 A minister named Parks, pastor of the church at Wes- terley, R. I., describes the preaching of the Rev. James Davenport at Stonington and says: "There was an out- cry all over, caused by a deep conviction of sin." The Rev. Joseph Park preached to an Indian congregation. "I attempted," he said, "to preach from second Corin- thians 6: 2, but was unable to continue my discourse by reason of the outcry." Tennent, one of the most enthusi- astic of the evangelists, writes in a letter to Whitefield of his own experience in a letter dated from New York, April 25, 1741. "The shock was rather more general at Charlestown. Multitudes were awakened and several received great consolation, especially among the young people, children and negroes. At Cambridge, in the col- lege and town, the shaking among the dry bones was general and several of the students received consolation. . There were also several awakened in Portsmouth, in Greenland, in Ipswick Hamlet, Marble Head, Chel- sea, Malden, New Town, Rosebury, Plimouth, etc. (Note
4 Charles G. Finney, "The Tradition of the Elders," p. 557. 5 J. Robe in "The Christian History" for 1743, p. 6.
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
that there is no mention of Salem). . . . In and about Mr. Davenport's place there is a great commotion. Mul- titudes are under soul concern and I hear that he is very warm. From Horse Neck to York beyond Boston there is in most places a greater or less degree of soul concern."
It is not much wonder that, with manifestations such as these, the movement aroused questioning in the minds of many people. The ministers seem to have resented the visits to their parishes of itinerant evangelists, who came uninvited and seriously disrupted church after church they visited. I can find nowhere except in White- field's Journals and in brief notices of his visits any account of the movement in Salem, and I am inclined to attribute this to the probable attitude of the ministers of the day. Many ministers did not like Mr. Whitefield or his methods and were suspicious of the whole move- ment. Dr. Chauncey, minister of The First Church in Boston, and President of Harvard College, published in 1743 his criticism of the whole movement called "Sea- sonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New Eng- land." The errors of the revivalists, according to Chaun- cey, are first an appeal to the emotions. He was particu- larly disgusted with the behavior of Mr. Davenport. He tells how on one occasion during his preaching Daven- port "stripped off his upper garments, jumped up into the seats and leaped up and down some times and clapped his hands together and cried out in these words, 'The fight goes on; the devil goes down, the devil goes down' and then betook himself to stamping and screaming most dreadfully and what is it more than might be expected to see people so affrighted as to fall into shrieks and fits at such methods as these."6 Davenport was brought be- fore the General Assembly in Connecticut on the follow- ing charge: "That he endeavored by unwarrantable means to terrify and affect his hearers. 1st. By pretending some extraordinary discovery and assurance of the very near approach of the end of the world. 2nd. By the indecent and affected imitation of the agony and passion of our Blessed Saviour, and also by voice and gesture of the 6 Hayes, "American Journal of Psychology," Vol. 13, p. 561.
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
surprise, horror, and amazement of persons supposed to be sentenced to eternal misery. 3rd. By a too peremptory and unconditional denouncing damnation against such of his auditory as he looked upon as opposers, vehemently crying out that he saw hell's flames flashing in their faces and that they were "Now! Now! Now! dropping down to Hell."7
The effect of his preaching was what one might expect. Often the distress of his hearers, "their trembling, faint- ing and falling down grew tempestuous and dreadful un- til most of his hearers were affected." Those seized with such manifestations were brought together often in such meetings to the front of the church, while the preachers, in the words of an observer, "stamp, smite and cry out loudly and in a terrible manner and language while the poor creatures screech, faint and cry bitterly." "Some- times," Chauncey says, describing Davenport, "he put a mighty emphasis upon rather unmeaning words and de- livered a sentence of no importance with a mighty ener- gy." The effect was as great as if the most awful truth was brought to view.8
Chauncey's second charge was that of censoriousness. He blames Whitefield for beginning this, but it spread with great rapidity. Ministers or other persons who did not favor the movement and support it were unsparingly condemned. Dr. Chauncey collects out of one sermon by Tennent, "notwithstanding his character by Mr. White- field as a mighty charitable man," a list of the slanderous names freely bestowed upon the body of the clergy of this generation. "Hirelings; Caterpillars; Pharisees: Men that have the Craft of Foxes and the Cruelty of Wolves; Plaistered Hypocrites ; Varlets ; The Seed of the Serpent ; Foolish Builders whom the Devil Drives into the Minis- try ; Dry Nurses; Dead Dogs that cannot Bark; Blind Men ; Dead Men; Men possessed with the Devil; Rebels and Enemies to God; Guides that are Stone Blind and Stone Dead; Children of Satan that like their father may do good to Men's Souls by Chance Medley; Daubers with
7 Hayes, "American Journal of Psychology," Vol. 13, p. 561f. 9 Hayes, "American Journal of Psychology," Vol. 13, p. 564.
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
Untempered Mortar; moral Negroes; Salt without savor that stink in the nostrils of God and Man; Judases whose chief desire is to Finger the Penny and Carry the Bag"; etc., etc., etc. Davenport was accused in Boston of such censoriousness and one of his prayers delivered on Copp's Hill was quoted in Court: "O, Lord, I will not mince the matter any longer with Thee. Thou knowest that I know that most of the ministers of Boston and of the country are unconverted and are leading their people blindfold to Hell." He was not at all the only person so censorious. In 1744 Whitefield was refused access to Harvard College, and a resolution of the faculty described him as an "uncharitable, censorious and slanderous man."
Chauncey also charges the leaders of the movement with a claim of immediate inspiration. Verses of scrip- ture, dreams and visions, unusual imaginations were taken as messages from God. Davenport on one occasion attempted to cure a distracted and dumb woman. He went solemnly to her house in procession and prayed over her, finally announcing a day on which she would recov- er. It happened that she died on that very day, but Davenport claimed that she was delivered by being received to heaven. One itinerant evangelist named Bar- ber came to the town of Oldman, Connecticut, and settled down there in idleness "until he was grown very fat and ragged," alleging that he must stay as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle.
Such surrender to delusion was extremely dangerous. In the town of Northampton for a time there was an epi- demic of suicide. One man had cut his throat in a fit of melancholia and others kept hearing voices which would say, "Now is a good time to cut your throat. Do it now." And other expressions of a like sort. Most had sense enough to realize that if these voices were super- natural, they were bringing messages from the devil, but a number seem to have taken them in another way. Ed- wards set himself firmly against such illusions and tried, as Paul did under similar circumstances, to draw atten- tion to the fact that Christian practice, not extravagant,
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emotional experience, is the real test of friendship with God.
Chauncey's next objection was to the itinerant preach- ing. The lay exhorters became a great nuisance. At Yale there was in the early forties a state of continual dis- turbance. The students started out in evangelistic bands touring the country. They were "greatly spirited to save souls, but wanting furniture." They and other itinerants always turned to abuse of the ministers who did not wel- come them and many churches were seriously disrupted as a result.
I have already called attention to the silence of con- temporary records with regard to the movement in Salem. There is no doubt of the spread of the contagion to this community, but it was certainly not favored by the minis- ters who were settled here during that period. A meet- ing was proposed in Boston in the year 1744 or 45 of ministers who favored it and those unable to attend are asked to report by letter their opinions. The papers were collected and published under the name of "The Chris- tian History" by Thomas Prince. None of the Salem ministers responded.
Whitefield, on his return from a trip along the North Shore, in the early part of October, 1740, preached three times on the common with considerable effect.9 We have already noticed that Rev. Peter Clark of Salem Village was on a former occasion greatly impressed. Mr. Clark was one of the ablest ministers of his day in this vicinity, a Dudleian lecturer at Harvard in 1763. The Rev. John Cleaveland of Chebacco was an enthusiastic supporter. He was in 1758 chaplain of Col. Bagley's regiment in Abercrombie's Expedition. He was a man on the whole of excellent judgment and independent mind. The minis- ters in Ipswich were also friendly to the movement. We cannot doubt but that the same manifestations that accom- panied the revival elsewhere were familiar to our ances- tors here, and that many of them were swept along on the full tide of this emotional movement. I cannot, how- ever, find that it produced any permanent effects and 9 Boston News Letter, 1740, Nos. 1905, 1908.
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
judging by the silence of the local ministers I infer that it did not have their official approval.
By 1750 the movement had waned. In Northampton the reaction set in in 1744. The church turned violently against Edwards and finally drove him from the pulpit. From 1744 to 1750 there were no applications for mem- bership. The same reaction set in throughout the entire country. Davenport publicly apologized for his behavior and particularly for his censoriousness. So far as the churches were concerned, there was a period of religious apathy. This was due in part to the fact that the colonies were absorbed in the struggle with France and with Eng- land. There is, however, no doubt but that the natural reaction from the emotional debauch of the great awaken- ing also played its part.
In attempting to estimate the movement as a whole, we must not lose sight of the fact that there were many genuine reformations of life. One interesting account is contained in a letter "from G. D. to W. N. at Bidde- ford," dated Boston, November 22, 1740, and quoted from the "Glasgow Weekly History" in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, Vol. 53, Page 200. It is the story of a gentleman who hated Whitefield, but one day in his own house thought he heard him preach- ing. He followed the sound and came upon one of his negro slaves, who for his own edification was imitating one of Mr. Whitefield's sermons. The man listened with great amusement and some time later when he was enter- taining a few friends at dinner and the pipes and wine were brought, he had the negro come in and repeat the performance. The negro gave an excellent imitation of Mr. Whitefield, finally coming to the exhortation, "I am now come to my exhortation and to you my master after the flesh. But know I have a master, even Jesus Christ my Saviour, who has said that a man cannot serve two masters. Therefore, I claim Jesus Christ to be my right master and all that come to him, he will receive. You know master you have been given to cursing, swearing, and blaspheming God's holy name, you have been given to be a drunkard, a whoremonger, covetous, a liar, a
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THE GREAT AWAKENING
cheat, but know that God has pronounced a woe against all such and has said that such shall never enter the Kingdom of God. Except you shall repent, you shall likewise perish." "The negro spoke with such authority," the account continues, "that struck the gentlemen to heart. They laid down their pipes, never drank a glass of wine, but departed every man to his own house and are now pious sober men, but before were wicked persons."
I suspect that this account is not strictly historical but many such tales were told and were believed partly be- cause such reformations did take place. There is no doubt about the fact that many men under the preach- ing of earnest persons like Edwards, even under deluded charlatans, like Davenport, had their lives organized about a new center. I think that most of us would be- lieve, however, that these reformations were purchased at too great a cost in emotional stability and in the stand- ing of religion among men of intelligence and sanity. The clergy of New England never regained the dominant position they held before the movement began.
We may well ask why the movement made so little impression in Salem. The mass of the people here were as much affected by Whitefield's preaching as were those in other places, but the leaders of the community stood aloof. Their aloofness, no matter how they may have explained it, was probably due in part to the vivid mem- ory of the witchcraft delusion and its horrible results. Men still in active life during the decade from 1740 to 1750 would remember Judge Sewall's recantation and apology and the shame that attended the recovery from the madness of those terrible days. The community had experienced a purgation of those emotions on which the fear of the supernatural rests. This is not the whole explanation. Salem men were beginning in those days the sea ventures which were to have so glorious a future. They were not helplessly exposed to destructive forces beyond their control. They had achieved the emotional stability which comes from successful activity and a hope- ful future.
JONATHAN HARADEN
BY SAMUEL H. BATCHELDER
The Haradens came originally from England and first settled in Ipswich. In 1657 Edward Haraden, from whom Jonathan doubtless descended, bought of Robert Dutch a house, barn, and all his land, in Gloucester. This property was in Planter's Neck where Dutch had a fishing stage. Edward added to his possessions at this place by subsequent purchases and appears to have been the first permanent settler in that section which is now known as Squam Point. Jonathan Haraden was born in Gloucester November 11, 1744. His parents were Joseph and Joanna (Emerson) Haraden. It is not wholly clear, but it seems likely that Joseph was a son of Benjamin who was born at Gloucester in 1671 and died there on February 3, 1725. Benjamin, in turn, was the youngest of the eight children of the Edward who originally removed from Ipswich and settled in Annisquam. Edward, the eldest son of the original Edward and born probably before his father moved to Gloucester, often appears as an officer in the militia and is credited with being the father of eighteen children by two marriages. John, another son of the original Edward followed the sea and in 1709 was in the service of the Colony as master of one of the sloops fitted out to attempt to take a vessel supposed to be a French privateer forced by a storm to anchor off Nahant. In 1711, he was pilot of the ship Montague, in the disastrous expedition against Canada; and, for his expenses and wages, received an allowance from the General Court in 1714. Another Haraden, Andrew, perhaps a son of John, was a fisher- man, sailing from Annisquam. An incident in the life of Andrew well illustrates the kind of blood which flowed in the Haraden veins.
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