Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/37

Rh of the type that this generation knows as the spasmodic revival, was not a matter of a week or a month, but had been the business of the colony from the time when their grandparents had come into the wilderness and, with the aid of God, had built up a thriving city.

There were book-stores and culture of a kind, but just as we see cities, communities and nations influenced and swayed by dominant intellects, so here the dominating intellects were men whose culture was narrow; men who, representing generations of persecution for their beliefs, had grown to hate all not closely allied with their own sect; men who, like Cotton Mather—though he was a leader, with none quite like him—saw God only in the thunder and the storm, and never dreamed that humanity could be led to reverence the Deity through the simple processes of Eternal Law, unfolding and unraveling man's liberty, equality and happiness.