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and preached on temperance in 1828, the year the church was built. Ile preached in the schoolhouse, where the meetings were then held. It was the first temperance sermon the people had ever heard, and it produced a powerful impression. My father had a distillery, and was so convinced of the evils of intemperance that he gave up the business. A temperance society was soon formed."

In another town a Christian man and wife were on their way to hear the temperance lecture by Dr. Woodbridge. The wife said to her husband, "Shall you sign the pledge to-day?" "No," was the emphatic reply; "I don't think there is any need of it; I can manage myself." They listened attentively to the lecture. At the close opportunity was given to any who were disposed to come forward and sign the pledge. The husband whispered to his wife, “Will you sign the pledge if I will?" "Yes," was the prompt reply. Both went up together to the desk and put down their names, and remained ever after firm advocates of temperance, and their children after them. The work went on triumphantly. Multitudes speedily fell into the ranks. In two or three years the sentiment of the entire community was changed; and though other workers were early in the field, no one probably did more towards effecting the revolution in the immediate vicinity than the pastor of Hadley.

He was ever the warm friend of the colored race. He had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the labors and plans of Samuel J. Mills for Africa, the organization of the Colonization Society, and its far-reaching aims. He earnestly sympathized with them. He anticipated favorable results both to the free and enslaved negroes of the south; and saw in the distance ameliorating influences flowing from them to the unnumbered tribes of that tortured and benighted continent. While not coinciding with Garrisonian abolitionists, he was severely opposed to the system of American slavery, and always regarded it as an aggravated sin against God,

threatening divine judgments to the nation. In a foot note to a Thanksgiving sermon preached in the Bowery church, New York, 1835, and published, he remarks: "The writer has never taken any part with those who have lately styled themselves abolitionists. He utterly disapproves of their imprudence, their violence, their opposition to that excellent institution, the Colonization Society, and not a few of their doctrines. He is disposed, however, to give them, as a body, the fullest credit for good intentions; and he is happy to believe that experience will correct many of their errors. For some of these gentlemen he feels the sincerest respect and esteem."

Ile gives his views of slavery in the same sermon: "Our civil and political privileges are unrivalled. Our constitutions of government are designed to extend equal immuni ties to all, and ours is the only example of a great nation which has pursued such an object with success. The only hereditary distinction we know is confined to a portion of the states; and that, it must be admitted, is the most odious and unjust of all-- the distinction of master and slave. After the freedom with which I have been accustomed to express my opinions, I fear not that my hearers will misunderstand me on this subject. Slavery, everywhere a disgrace, is surely a blot most foul on the escutcheon of a nation of freemen; and it should grieve rather than surprise us, that some, who see the infamy attached to it, attempt to wipe it off, with an inconsiderate rudeness and officiousness adapted to repel co-operation, and fix indelibly the stigma they would Indiscreet men, when unduly excited, will doubtless do indiscreet things; and they may be in danger of setting fire to the house itself, in their zeal for consuming whatever in it deserves to be destroyed. We blame their rashness; but, be it known, we are none the less the enemies of hereditary bondage for all that; and we contend that the cause against which their vengeance is directed is one of the most execrable that the sun, in its journeyings around the globe, ever shone upon."

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His daughter writes: "He gave up the use of tobacco when past forty, after having taken it from his boyhood, and never touched it afterward." She adds: "He was progressive, able to see improvement when there was any. He thought the world was growing better, and not worse. He saw the dawning of a brighter day for the church and for the world."

We have here brought to view one of the determinative elements of the genuine reformer. It is the quick perception and judgment of the truly practical man. He discerns

at once the bearings of proposed principles and measures of improvement; sees their congruity or incongruity with the primary laws of the human mind and of society; and welcomes or rejects them accordingly. The visionary or fanatic seizes on the proposed principle or measure without duly considering its foundation or its ultimate results, and thus "loses by over-running." His ardent nature, pained in view of aggravated vices and desolating evils, eagerly grasps at everything that seems to offer relief, though it be but a floating straw. The genuine reformer is not less ardent, but he is more thoughtful and sagacious. He is conservative, while progressive; goes forward with zeal, but with wisdom. He is hopeful, but not in unaided or misdirected human efficiency. Reposing on him in whose hands are the hearts of men, he says with the Psalmist, "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him." Such was Dr. Woodbridge as a reformer.

SECTION V.

AND

DR. W. AS A REVIVALIST; THE INSTRUMENTALITIES MEASURES BY WHICH HE PROMOTED AND CONDUCTED SUCH SEASONS OF REFRESHING GREATLY STRENGTHENED HIS ULTIMATE INFLUENCE OVER HIS PEOPLE.

Admiration of God's character, and surpassing love of his dominion and glory, interpenetrated and heightened with his desire for the exaltation of Christ as the infinite and only possible Mediator; combined with his views, often overwhelming, of the greatness of the human soul on its interminable career of ever-increasing development, and the ineffable value of its salvation to the honor of the adorable Redeemer, quickened and deepened his interest in these special visitations of mercy.

"The Revival" formed the centre in which his holy activities converged and rose in one intense flame. The fact that his own Christian life began and received its first direction in a revival; that his theological education was, in part, prosecuted in such a scene of divine power; and that the reviving influences witnessed in the earlier part of his ministry had proved the source of such signal forces of spiritual growth to individuals and the church, connected with their tender and hallowed associations, which still lingered around them, as fragrance from the celestial plains, - all conspired to strengthen his aspirations to see sinners broken-hearted and trembling in view of their just deserts, bowing in crowds at the Saviour's feet, and the church laboring and praying as if the fires of the Holy Ghost were kindling and guiding their Christian zeal. Revivals had an interest to him surpassing the grandest results of human enterprise. In view of the rising cloud, though indicative to him of wearying work, of great anxiety, of corrosive care, perhaps of sleepless nights, his soul leaped for joy. True, he discriminated between the genuine and the false

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in revivals, as between the genuine and the spurious in individual conversions. The mere religious excitement, the mere exhilaration of the natural sympathies, not even meetings crowded nor hopes fast multiplying, answered his ideal of a pure revival. The revivals which he anticipated with joy were exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit, the thorough conviction of sin, the profound sense of ruin, of utter helplessness without interposing grace and entire consecration to Christ works characterized by impressive stillness; producing the solemn consciousness of the actual presence of God in his convicting and converting power. He sought revivals which are glorious to God alone; not mainly to their promoters; revivals, which, like tributary streams, will swell the volume of the church's influence, deepening and broadening its channel for generations to come; nay, which will be felt in the choral symphonies of saints and angels in the glorified spheres of immortality.

He said on one occasion: "It is not certain that you are favored with a genuine revival of religion, because you witness an uncommon excitement on the subject; because religious meetings are numerous, and thronged with listening crowds; and a religious sympathy, swift and resistless as lightning, pervades all classes. The passions may burst forth like the lava of a volcano, and their effects in the moral world be scarcely less destructive than is the influence of this latter terrible agent of nature on the field waving with harvest, and the populous, busy village, suddenly overwhelmed in ruin. . .

...

"At the foot of Sinai, the children of Israel gave to the golden calf the glory which belonged to the true God, and joined to their costly offerings the most vehement expressions of zeal for the worship of their contemptible idol. The servants of Baal, in the time of Elijah, manifested an ardor of feeling which could hardly have been exceeded. At a time when a stupendous miracle was expected, to attest the divinity of the true object of worship, they