Passages like these will doubtless meet with a variety of tastes, and be subjected to different constructions. The effects of a great immediate power that followed the preaching of Abbot, Whitfield, and others, seeming for a time to irresistibly sway the subject, has been variously explained, or, perhaps, more properly, has never been explained to the full satisfaction of the thoughtful. There is something certainly in the nature of the _theme_; for who was ever struck speechless and nerveless by a political appeal, or a literary, philosophical, or financial address? To make the least of it, these phenomena show a wild, mighty vigor in the darkly oppressed religious element within, or the same amount of zeal on finance or the election of candidates would produce equal results. Whether the Holy Ghost be present or absent, the man whose word and personal presence palsies a beastly sinner or formal deacon, so that he can neither move nor speak, is himself no weak formalist; no wavering, half-and-half man, who lives on plausibility and apology. This much is certain, that he carries a conquering force, if the effect be _of him_; if not of him, if he is right in the declaration "not unto us" be the glory, a similar conclusion follows the admission of his instrumentality. We love harmony; and in the great harmony that the soul should enjoy genuine thunder will prove no essential discord. We enjoy quietness; but of the two, we say by all means give us the preaching that knocks men off their seats, to that which never moves them. But how comes on Newhampton? "I continued my visits to Newhampton for the space of three months. Some twenty of the youth were hopefully converted; I think I never saw converts of greater strength. But oh! what trials awaited some of this number! The first that came forward in this reformation had much persuasion to resist. Her father was an open enemy to religion, her mother was very pious, but wholly bound up in Calvinism, and the young woman was determined to be free and not be entangled with any yoke of bondage. A number of times was she threatened to be turned out of doors. She wished baptism; but being unordained I could not administer; and, as she was unable to join Mr. H.'s church, out of preference to the church of the first-born, she had to go against the current, which is never a _bad_ sign, as dead fish invariably move along with the stream. Many wished to be baptized, and Mr. H., thinking it a good opportunity to gather additions to himself, began to raise all his forces against me, spreading defamatory reports to sour the minds of the people, intending to drive me out of the place. I was reminded of the stanza: 'They hate the Gospel preacher, And cry out, a _false_ teacher! A wolf! an active creature, Will pull our churches down.'