of the churches_ in the colony. The cry of the saints was 'Return, how
long, O Lord, and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.' Some of
the more hopeful maintained that the midnight only heralded an
approaching dawn. Two ministers on Long Island, Barber and Davenport,
had received divine assurance of a return of power, and held themselves
in anxious waiting. At last, brilliant flashes began to play athwart the
sky, and instead of the meteoric glare which some feared, it indicated
the purer sunbeam, in whose genial power the church was to rejoice for
more than a third of a century. Whitefield's advent sent a thrill
through all New England. He sailed from Charleston to Newport, where
venerable parson Clapp, tottering with age, welcomed him as though he
had been an angel of God. Whitefield's power was comparable to the
supernatural, and it was in this view John Foster, at a later day, found
the only solution of his success. In the pulpit his appearance and
manners exceeded the dreams of apostolic grace--a youth of elegant form,
with voice of enchanting melody, clear blue eyes, an endurance which
knew no exhaustion--a fancy which ranged both worlds--were all fused by
a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. Such was Whitefield at
twenty-five, and as such he was worthy of that ovation which he received
at Boston, when governor and council went out in form to welcome 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.'