ly moved by the appeal of
the revolutionary orator.

In diverting the current of quickened religious feeling into political
channels, the influence of Princeton College was a memorable one.
Founded by Presbyterians less interested in creeds than in vital
religion, and barring no person on "account of any speculative
principles," the new institution furnished an education that was
"liberal" in the political as well as in the intellectual sense of the
term. From this center emanated a new leaven. Here young men came from
all the Middle and Southern country to receive the stamp of a new
Presbyterianism compounded of vital religion and the latter-day spirit
of Geneva. In this era, by such men as John Madison, Oliver Ellsworth,
and Luther Martin, were founded the two famous societies, _Cliosophic_
and _American Whig_, where the lively discussions were doubtless more
often concerned with history and politics than with the abstract points
of theology or religion. It was in 1768 that John Witherspoon, the very
personification of the new influence, became president of the college. A
Scotchman educated at Edinburgh, he became at once an ardent defender of
the colonial cause, as "high a Son of Liberty as any man in America,"
destined to be better known as a signer of the Declaration of
Independence than as a Presbyterian minister of the gospel. During
twenty years previous to the Revolution, many men went out from
Princeton to become powerful moulders of public opinion. Few were
counted as theologians of note; few were set down as British Loyalists.
But they were proud to be known as Americans and patriots: ministers who
from obscure pulpits proclaimed the blessings of political liberty;
laymen who professed politics with the fervor of religious conviction.

And the Puritan spirit, in like manner deserting the worn-out body of
old theologies, was reincarnated in secular forms, to become once more
the animating force of New England civic life. The fall of the Puritan
theocracy was followed, half a century later, by the rise of the Puritan
democracy. As the old intimacy between State and Church disappeared,
the churches turned to the people for that support which was no longer
accorded by government. Thus there came into general use the famous
Half-Way Covenant, a wide-open back door through which all men of
blameless lives and orthodox beliefs might press into the churches, a
kind of ecclesiastical manhood suffrage undermining the