William Wilberforce owed his first religious impressions to the preaching of Whitefield; with all his fine liberality of heart, he became an ardent member of the communion of the Church of England. It seems incredible to us now that he lived constantly in the expectation—we will not say fear—of indictments against him, for holding prayer-meetings and religious services at his house in Kensington Gore. Lord Barham, the father of the late amiable and excellent Baptist Noel, was fined forty pounds, on two informations of his neighbour, the Earl of Romney, for a breach of the statute in like services. That such a state of things as this was changed to the free and happy ordinances now in force, was owing to the spirit which was abroad, giving not only freedom to the soul of the man, but dignity and independence to the social life of the citizen. Everywhere, and in every department of life, the spirit of the Revival moved over the face of the waters, dividing the light from the darkness, and thus God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIII AFTERMATH. The effects of that great awakening which we have thus attempted concisely, but fairly, to delineate, are with us still; the strength is diffused, the tone and colour are modified. One chief purpose has guided the pen of the writer throughout: it has been to show that the immense regeneration effected in English manners and society during the later years of the last century and the first of the present, was the result of a secret, silent, most subtle spiritual force, awakening the minds and hearts of men in most opposite parts of the nation, and in widely different social circumstances. We would give all honour where honour is due, remembering that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” There are writers whose special admiration is given to some favourite sect, some effective movement, or some especially beloved name; but a dispassionate view, an entrance—if we may be permitted so to speak of it—into the camera, the chamber of the times, presents to the eye a long succession of actors, and brings out into the clear light a wonderful variety of influences all simultaneously at work to redeem society from its darkness, and to give it a higher degree of spiritual purity and mental and moral dignity.