The Puritans, who first settled New England, held orthodox views on the subject of justification by faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. This was their faith for more than half a century. But when they began to decline, legal forms were substituted for spiritual power. The "halfway covenant," as it was called, was introduced, and under it persons became members of the Church without conversion, and it was not even deemed an essential qualification for a minister of the Gospel that he be converted. The Church and State were united, and the courts by legal enactments compelled every man, no matter what his religious faith, to sustain a Church whose creed he did not believe. The same state of things existed in Virginia, where Episcopal rule obtained. The whole land seemed a "valley of dry bones." There was one light in New England. In the obscure town of Northampton Jonathan Edwards was preaching with marvelous effect, and his influence was felt all along the valley of the Connecticut; but it had not reached Boston. There was one man in Boston who waited for the salvation of Israel--Rev. Benjamin Coleman, pastor of Brattle Street Church. He had heard of the work in Northampton, and also of Whitefield, the youthful evangelist in the South, and longed to witness the like in Boston before he went hence, for he was now seventy years of age. He wrote to Whitefield at Savannah; the latter, anxious to visit the land of the Pilgrims, came in the demonstration of the Spirit, and such a revival as attended his ministry New England had never witnessed. A writer of some note gives the following description of his coming: "At the close of a beautiful autumn day, in 1740, Whitefield had arrived within full view of the city of Boston. Its spires were gleaming in the rays of the setting sun. Its neat, white dwellings were reflected from the mirror surface of the quiet waters, which nearly surrounded the whole site. Its attendant villages loomed up around the whole horizon. Withdrawing his eyes from the first glance at the city, which lay in full view from the hill on which he stood, he looked down the road before him, and saw a multitude of people--officers of the government, ministers of the Gospel, citizens, ladies, and children--who had all come forth to meet the accomplished stranger, and conduct him, amidst smiles and blessings, to the city. It must have been an interesting hour to the youthful hero of the cross. Three thousand miles from his native land, among entire strangers, he was welcomed to the renowned city of the Puritans with demonstrations of honor which Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon might have coveted. He was coming among them, not the gray-haired veteran hero of a thousand battles, not the brave warrior from the fields of victory, not the monarch with patronage and power in his hand, but the sincere-hearted, pure-minded, and eloquent-tongued Methodist missionary, who had drank from the pure fountain of evangelical truth, and had now