Outside his college duties, and as a part of his care for its spiritual welfare, President Dwight's immediate purpose was to combine all forces that could be used to stem the dangerous currents rushing against the bulwarks of Church and State. He had early favored the drawing together of Congregational and Presbyterian bodies. He had discerned, as early as 1792, a stirring of new life in the religious world, the breaking down of the apathy of half a century that had been indicated by revivals in places far scattered, not only throughout New England but in other states. Towns in Massachusetts, with East Haddam and Lyme in Connecticut, had been roused as early as the year named. That element of personal experience which had been so marked a feature of the Great Awakening reappeared, but without that excessive emotionalism [i] which characterized the earlier revival. Nor was there any such pronounced leadership as then. There was the same conviction of sinfulness, the peace after its acknowledgment, and the joyous satisfaction in the determination to lead an upright life, seeking God's grace and will. Recognition of this spiritual awakening had in some measure entered into the proposed disposal of the money from the Western Lands, as it had also in the discussion of the joint missionary work of 1791-1794, and again in 1797-98, [200] when the General Association of Connecticut was incorporated as the Connecticut Missionary Society, [j] In all of these movements President Dwight had taken an active part. Upon entering the presidency of Yale he at once began a series of sermons, which he delivered Sunday mornings, and which were so arranged that in each four years the course was complete. These lectures were his "Theology Explained and Defended," first published in 1818. President Dwight, with the leading Presbyterian or Congregational ministers, together with the Methodist and Baptist clergy, continued to favor the revival movement. This reached its height in 1807. From beginning to end it lasted nearly a quarter of a century, and was punctuated by the revival years of 1798, 1800, and 1802, that were especially fruitful of conversions in Connecticut. That of 1802 attracted large numbers of the college students. The success of the revivals was marked by increasing austerities, such as the denunciation of amusements, both public and private, and the revival of dead-letter laws for the more strict observance of Sunday. Traveling or driving was prohibited without a pass signed by a justice of the peace. Travelers were held up over "holy time." Attempts were made to prevent the young people from gathering in companies on Sunday evenings after the Sabbath was legally over. Too much hilarity, though innocent, was condemned. Such restrictions were extremely distasteful to a large minority in the state, and seemed to many citizens only repeated proofs of how closely the government and the Presbyterian-Congregational church were banded together.