This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...at Boston furnish an illustration. At the first shock, the awakened sleepers ran into the streets for safety, and gathered in terrorstricken groups, not knowing but their end had come. Some verily thought the last trump had sounded for the judgment. Nor was the excitement allayed after this shock was over, for four or five times before daylight the earth trembled. In fact, these disturbances continued for several weeks, being felt thirty times during the next ten days, and only ceased after a shock nearly as great on the 30th of January following.1 This continuance of the earthquake had a solemnizing influence upon the minds of the people, and was used with great effect by the ministers in their sermons, as though God were holding the people over the bottomless pit awaiting their reformation. When the day at Boston dawned, the streets were thronged, and every one had some experience to relate. The ministers were ready to utilize the occasion. For years they had thundered in the deaf ears of New England. Was the time at hand when God's righteons judgments would be visited upon them? Cotton Mather was the first to move. About ten o'clock in the forenoon, at his direction, the bell of the Old North Church was rung to summon the people to "some seasonable exercises of religion." His church had the largest capacity of any in Boston, and it was quickly packed to its utmost. Other ministers came. No audience had been seen for many a year so solemn and devout. One after another the ministers were heard in prayer, and they were sincere outpourings of a repentant spirit, moving the worshipers to tears. A less thoughtful people would have made it a service of thanksgiving for their deliverance; but they had heard again and again warnings...

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Harry Stout's groundbreaking study of preaching in colonial New England changed the field when it first appeared in 1986. Here, twenty-five years later, is a reissue of Stout's book: a reconstruction of the full import of the colonial sermon as a multi-faceted institution that served both religious and political purposes and explained history and society to the New England Puritans for one and a half centuries.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.