These themes of pulpit and of religious press led, finally, to a live interest in practical Christianity and to a more genial religion than that which had characterized the Puritan age. The Half-Way Covenant had been killed. Education had received a new impulse, Christian missions were reinvigorated, and the monthly concert of prayer for the conversion of the world was instituted. [129] True, French and Indian wars, the Spanish entanglement with its West Indian expedition, and the consuming political interests of the years 1745-83, shortened the period of energetic spiritual life, and ushered in another half century of religious indifference. But during that half century the followers of Edwards and Bellamy were to develop a less severe and more winning system of theology, and the fellowship of the churches was to suggest the colonial committees of safety as a preliminary to the birth of a nation, founded upon the inherent equality of all men before the law. This conception of political and civil liberty was to develop side by side with a clearer notion of the value of religious freedom. FOOTNOTES: [a] This term came with the royal charter of 1662, but only gradually displaced the familiar "General Court." [b] The Milford church, like that of New Haven, suffered for many years from unjust exactions and taxation. [c] Commencement then came in September. [d] And this notwithstanding their willingness to include in their affirmation a denial of Mariolatry, purgatory, and other vital Romish tenets. CHAPTER XI THE ABROGATION OF THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM That house cannot stand.--Mark iii, 25. The times change and we change with them.--Proverb.