ted in any religion
are ready to embrace the first that offers."

Yet in many a community, on the frontier and in every part of the Middle
colonies, the mingling of races compelled men, however well instructed,
to ignore the minor points of their proper creeds. The Moravian
missionary Schnell, preaching at South Branch, Virginia, to an audience
of English, Germans, and Dutch, quite satisfied them all by discoursing
from the text, "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink."
Although his principles forbade him to baptize the children which were
brought to him, they "liked Brother Schnell very much," and desired him
to remain with them. And communities there were where men had forgotten
the very names almost of Protestant sects. Some people in Hanover
County, assembling on Sundays to read a book of Whitefield's sermons
which by some chance had come their way, and being desired by the county
court to declare what religion they were of, found themselves at a loss
for a name, "as we knew but little of any denomination of Protestants,
except Quakers." But at length, "recollecting that Luther was a noted
reformer, and that his books had been of special service to us, we
declared ourselves Lutherans; and thus we continued until Providence
sent us the Rev. Mr. William Robinson." Aided by Luther and edified by
Whitefield, they were quite content to be further instructed and
"corrected" by Mr. Robinson, Presbyterian though he was, "being informed
that his method of preaching was awakening."

And, indeed, toward the middle of the century, the "awakening" preacher
was everywhere welcome. In America, as in England itself, a strange
lethargy had fallen on the churches in that interlude between the
Puritan regime and the Revolution. Dead literalism had crept into the
pulpits, and conventional conformity too often did duty for conviction
among the people. It was a condition which could not endure in
communities where religion was still the chief intellectual and
emotional refuge from the daily routine of commonplace duties. Thus it
happened that both in the older settlements, where for the unlettered
the dull round of life was rarely broken either by real or fictitious
adventure, and in those newer regions where primitive conditions brought
the primal passions readily to the surface, the burning words of the
revivalist met with ready and unprecedented response. Let him but preach
"vital" religion, and none questioned too closely