ents.[159:1] It was doubtless owing to the firm and judicious
guidance of such a pastor that the intense religious fervor of this
first awakening at Northampton was marked by so much of sobriety and
order. In later years, in other regions, and under the influence of
preachers not of greater earnestness, but of less wisdom and discretion,
there were habitual scenes of extravagant and senseless enthusiasm,
which make the closing pages of this chapter of church history painfully
instructive.

It is not difficult to understand how one of the first places at a
distance to feel the kindling example of Northampton should be the
neighborhood of Newark. To this region, planted, as we have seen, with
so strong a stock from New England, from old England, and from Scotland,
came, in 1708, a youth of twenty years, Jonathan Dickinson, a native of
the historic little town of Hatfield, next neighbor to Northampton. He
was pastor at Elizabeth, but his influence and activity extended through
all that part of New Jersey, and he became easily the leader of the
rapidly growing communion of Presbyterian churches in that province, and
the opponent, in the interest of Christian liberty and sincerity, of
rigid terms of subscription, demanded by men of little faith. There is a
great career before him; but that which concerns the present topic is
his account of what took place "sometime in August, 1739 (the summer
before Mr. Whitefield came first into these parts), when there was a
remarkable revival at Newark.... This revival of religion was chiefly
observable among the younger people, till the following March, when the
whole town in general was brought under an uncommon concern about their
eternal interests, and the congregation appeared universally affected
under some sermons that were then preached to them."

Like scenes of spiritual quickening were witnessed that same season in
other parts of New Jersey; but special interest attaches to the report
from New Londonderry, Penn., where a Scotch-Irish community received as
its pastor, in the spring of 1740, Samuel Blair, a native of Ireland,
trained in the Log College of William Tennent. He describes the people,
at his first knowledge of them, as sunk in a religious torpor,
ignorance, and indifference. The first sign of vitality was observed in
March, 1740, during the pastor's absence, when, under an alarming sermon
from a neighbor minister:

"There was a visible appearance of much soul-co