to awaken a dead
church, and warn sinners and lead them to seek the new spiritual life
which he himself had found." Three years later two brothers, William and
John McGee, one a Presbyterian minister and the other a Methodist, came
through the beautiful Cumberland country in Kentucky and Tennessee,
speaking, as if in the spirit and power of John the Baptist, to
multitudes that gathered from great distances to hear them. On one
occasion, in the woods of Logan County, in July, 1800, the gathered
families, many of whom came from far, tethered their teams and encamped
for several days for the unaccustomed privilege of common worship and
Christian preaching. This is believed to have been the first American
camp-meeting--an era worth remembering in our history. Not without
abundant New Testament antecedents, it naturalized itself at once on our
soil as a natural expedient for scattered frontier populations
unprovided with settled institutions. By a natural process of evolution,
adapting itself to other environments and uses, the backwoods
camp-meeting has grown into the "Chautauqua" assembly, which at so many
places besides the original center at Chautauqua Lake has grown into an
important and most characteristic institution of American civilization.

We are happy in having an account of some of these meetings from one who
was personally and sympathetically interested in them. For in the spring
of the next year Barton Warren Stone, a Presbyterian minister serving
his two congregations of Concord and Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, and
oppressed with a sense of the religious apathy prevailing about him,
made the long journey across the State of Kentucky to see for himself
the wonderful things of which he had heard, and afterward wrote his
reminiscences.

"There, on the edge of a prairie in Logan County, Kentucky,
the multitudes came together and continued a number of days
and nights encamped on the ground, during which time worship
was carried on in some part of the encampment. The scene was
new to me and passing strange. It baffled description. Many,
very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for
hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless
state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting
symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a
prayer for mercy fervently uttered. After lying there for
hours they obtained deliver