ican sects,
separated themselves from the main body of Presbyterians by refusing to
accept, in face of the craving needs of the pastorless population all
about them, the arbitrary rule shutting the door of access to the
Presbyterian ministry to all candidates, how great soever their other
qualifications, who lacked a classical education. Separating on this
issue, they took the opportunity to amend the generally accepted
doctrinal statements of the Presbyterian churches by mitigating those
utterances which seemed to them, as they have seemed to many others, to
err in the direction of fatalism.

About the same time there was manifested in various quarters a generous
revolt against the existence and multiplication of mutually exclusive
sects in the Christian family, each limited by humanly devised
doctrinal articles and branded with partisan names. How these various
protesting elements came together on the sole basis of a common faith in
Christ and a common acceptance of the divine authority of the Bible;
how, not intending it, they came to be themselves a new sect; and how,
struggling in vain against the inexorable laws of language, they came to
be distinguished by names, as _Campbellite Baptist_, _Christ-ian_ (with
a long _i_), and (+kat' exochen+) Disciples, are points on which
interesting and instructive light is shed in the history by Dr. B. B.
Tyler.[242:1]

* * * * *

The great revival of the West and Southwest was not the only revival,
and not even the earliest revival, of that time of crisis. As early as
1792 the long inertia of the eastern churches began to be broken here
and there by signs of growing earnestness and attentiveness to spiritual
things. There was little of excited agitation. There was no preaching of
famous evangelists. There were no imposing convocations. Only in many
and many of those country towns in which, at that time, the main
strength of the population lay, the labors of faithful pastors began to
be rewarded with large ingatherings of penitent believers. The
languishing churches grew strong and hopeful, and the insolent
infidelity of the times was abashed. With such sober simplicity was the
work of the gospel carried forward, in the opening years of this
century, among the churches and pastors that had learned wisdom from the
mistakes made in the Great Awakening, that there are few striking
incidents for the historian. Hardly any man is to be pointed out as