A History of the American People

participated in it-perhaps three out of four of the colonists. It was not just the fainting, weeping,
and shrieking which went on at the mass meetings and round the campfires. It was the much less
visible but still fundamental stirring of the emotions which Edwards aimed to produce. He urged
a rebirth of faith, to create a New Man or a New Woman, rather as Rousseau was to do in France
a generation later. He was fond of quoting the Cambridge Platonist John Smith: A true celestial warmth is of an immortal nature; and being once seated vitally in the souls of men, it will regulate and order all the motions in a due manner; as the natural head, radicated in the hearts of living creatures, hath the dominion and the economy of the whole body under it ... It is a new nature, informing the souls of men.' This, and similar ideas, as presented by Edwards, had undoubted political undertones. Just as in France, rather later in the century, the combination of Voltairean rationalism and Rousseauesque emotionalism was to create a revolutionary explosion, so in America, but, in a characteristically religious context, the thinking elements and the fervid, personal elements were to combine to make Americans see the world with new eyes. There was a strong eschatological element in Edwards and many other preachers. Those who listened to him were left with the impression that great events were impending and that man-including American man-had a dramatic destiny. In his last work, going through the presses at the time of his death in 1758, he wrote:And I am persuaded, no solid reason can be given, why God, who constitutes all other
created union or oneness, according to his pleasures ... may not establish a constitution whereby
the natural posterity of Adam, proceeding from him, much as the buds or branches from the
stock or root of a tree, should be treated as one with him.' Man was thus born in the image of
God and could do all-his capacities were boundless. In human history, Edwards wrote, all the changes are brought to pass ... to prepare the way for the glorious issue of things that shall be when truth and righteousness shall finally prevail.' At that hour, Godshall take the kingdom' and
Edwards said he looked towards the dawn of that glorious day.' The Great Awakening was thus the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible. It crossed all religious and sectarian boundaries, made light of them indeed, and turned what had been a series of European-style churches into American ones. It began the process which created an ecumenical and American type of religious devotion which affected all groups, and gave a distinctive American flavor to a wide range of denominations. This might be summed up under the following five heads: evangelical vigor, a tendency to downgrade the clergy, little stress on liturgical correctness, even less on parish boundaries, and above all an emphasis on individual experience. Its key text was Revelations 21:5:Behold, I make all things new'-which was also
the text for the American experience as a whole.
If, then, there was an underlying political dimension to the Great Awakening, there was also a
geographical one. It made not only parish boundaries seem unimportant but all boundaries.
Hitherto, each colony had seen its outward links as running chiefly to London. Each tended to be
a little self-contained world of its own. That was to remain the pattern in the Spanish colonies for
another century, independence making no difference in that respect. The Great Awakening
altered this separateness. It taught different colonies, tidewaters and piedmonts, coast and up-
country, to grasp and appreciate what they had in common, which was a very great deal. As a
symbol of this, Whitefield was the first `American' public figure, equally well known from
Georgia to New Hampshire. When he died in 1770 there was comment from the entire American
press.