Willocks' death. It was taken down in 1844, but long before had lost its upper storey. But if I keep on speaking of the more important buildings of this provincial metropolis, you will think that in 1752 it was a place of fine residences. Not so! these dwellings of the quality-folk were Amboy's architectural exceptions—not typical examples. Its houses, of which at that time there were about one hundred and fifty, were, as a rule, poor enough; a visitor of a few years later, while recognizing the beauty of the location, writes, that "notwithstanding being the capital of the province, Perth Amboy has only the appearance of a mean village."

So with our traveller; as he made his way through the streets, he found many of their flanking buildings slovenly in appearance, showing them to have been hastily put together. Their rough-hewn flat-boarded frames lacked the dignity of the log dwellings seen in the clearings during the morning journey; these latter, with their feet buried in herbage, seemed less incongruous, and more in harmony with surrounding nature. Many of these Amboy houses were unpainted and already showed signs of the rustiness of age, but, bleached and patched by sun and shower, their crazy, weather-stained sides were less crude and staring than were the variegated colors of some of the newer houses, whose fronting gables and thick board shutters were painted white, while their remaining sides were covered with dingy red. Architectural taste was, of course, entirely wanting, and in most instances a single storey sufficed for the needs of the occupants.

Of churches there were two. In a previous chapter we have referred at length to the ancient altars and interesting memories of St. Peter's, whose spire rises near where the broad river rushes into the bay. Amboy's second denomination, owing to its large Scotch and English immigration, was, naturally, Presbyterian. Of the erection of its first church-building no record has been preserved, though the minutes of the Board of Proprietors show that in 1731 permission was given the congregation to "build a meeting-house on the southeast corner of the BurialPlace on Back (State) street." "Before the Revolution this church had disappeared; in the present edifice, that fronts the square, services were first held in 1803. The Reverend John Cross

THEOLOGY IN THE LAST CENTURY.

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of Basking Ridge is said to have first supplied the Presbyterian pulpit, and among that denomination's historical flotsam rescued from the ocean of time is the fact that in 1735 Gilbert Tennent preached at Amboy on the comforting and encouraging topic of the "Necessity of Religious Violence to Durable Happiness."

A text of severe sentiment, you will say !—but at this time the spiritual shepherds were wont to feed their flocks with food abounding in strength rather than sweetness. The angel of mercy hovered aloft, while the avenging one stood in the dwelling, at the road side, in the pew, ever ready under the tutelage of the pastors to wield the flaming sword of justice. The stern Calvinistic tenet that election and perdition were predestined by the divine plan irrespective of human merit was taught and believed, and the believing lacerated many a tender heart.

The religious atmosphere of the middle of the last century was dark with the heavy clouds of doctrine and theology. Polemical controversy was rife in the churches. Foreordination, predestination, election, and eternal damnation went hand in hand with free agency; the effort to reconcile these conflicting and apparently opposing dogmas, provoked labored sermons from the pulpit, and prolonged arguments and discussions in farm-house, field and shop. Ministers waxed severely eloquent in their terrible warnings to the unregenerate; while with equally solemn earnestness from such texts as "I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen," they preached to the pious and devoted ones of their congregations, "the doctrine of disinterested benevolence;" a doctrine that proclaimed the necessity of entire self-abnegation, and a willingness to accept for one's self eternal condemnation, if such could redound to the greatest good of the greatest number, and God's ends be better accomplished.

The interpreters of the Scriptures held before their people as tests of abiding faith the necessity of eliminating from their religion every element of selfishness, in order that they might have minds and affections so disposed as to be able to accept with complacency the possibility that it might be God's sovereign pleasure to damn them eternally. Such views of life and the future-state evolved a gloomy piety. Agonies of doubt beset the most faithful, when intent on severe internal examination in the

endeavor to discover evidences that they were not under the ban of God's wrath. Such earnest souls, after lives of the most conscientious well-doing, often died still uncertain of the attainment of eternal happiness. Jonathan Edwards, who died in Princeton in 1758, was capable in his sermons of producing so great pain to the quick sensibilities of his hearers that during his discourses the house would be filled with weeping and wailing auditors; on one occasion another minister present is said to have cried out in his agony, "Oh! Mr. Edwards! is God not a God of mercy?" This celebrated preacher succeeded the elder Burr, who died in September, 1757, in the presidency of Princeton college, but he did not take his seat until in February of the following year. Mr. Edwards held the position scarcely a month, dying while undergoing inoculation for the smallpox. He has been called the turning point in the spiritual existence of the congregations of the last century. It is asserted that New England and New Jersey in the age following him, under the guidance of such disciples as his son, Dwight, Bellamy, Hopkins, Brainerd and Tennent, gave more thought to religious philosophy and systematic theology than the same amount of population in any other part of the world.

CHAPTER XVI.

Social Aspects of Perth Amboy in 1752-The Gentry-Slavery-Travelling.

There was much of interest to Johannes in this provincial capital besides the churches, and the public and private buildings. The bustle, animation, and variety of its thoroughfares presented an appearance quite foreign to their present aspect; for there was a picturesqueness in colonial times that must have added much to the light and shade and general effect of ordinary scenes. In those early days population occupied only the fringe or border of the great wastes and solitudes; we have seen that New Jersey's cultivated lands were largely confined to a narrow strip extending from the Hudson to the Delaware. Belts of wilderness stretched across New York and into New England; indeed, the whole country east of the Mississippi was covered with vast forests, with but occasional signs of civilization and cultivation along the borders of the sea, and in the valleys of the larger rivers. At the centres of population-one of which Amboy at that time fairly could claim to be-the people, congregating as they did from many quarters of the globe, formed to each other strong contrasts, and the local color of civilization must to the chance visitor have made an interesting picture.

The Indians were still in goodly numbers about New Jersey towns, and they appeared much more like the children of the forest of our imagination than do those now to be seen on the reservations of the far west, whose distinguishing badge of semicivilization is often a government blanket, and a battered silk hat adorned with bedraggled feathers. These old-time redmen were much less imbued with or affected by the habits of Europeans. They came into the towns with skins, and also sup

plied the people with baskets and wooden dishes and spoons. The redemptioners-men, women and children who for a time owed personal servitude to individual masters must have heightened the general effect; and the trappers and hunters, fresh from the woods, with their rifles, powder horns, moccasins, and linsey shirts fringed with deer skin, contributed their bit of color and form to the kaleidoscopic appearance of the streets. Among the expatriated Irish, Dutch, Germans and English inhabiting the vicinity, there must have been many curious and picturesque specimens of the genus homo. Necessarily many of these later were worthless characters, and the pillory, stocks and whipping post on the public square doubtless had a marked influence in preserving the peace and proprieties of this rough age. Opposed to this latter type was the less conspicuous but more useful element of society, the sturdy yeomanry-the stouthearted middle class; men who themselves, or whose fathers before them, often had left the old country for political and religious motives rather than a mere desire for adventure and trade. "God sifted a whole nation," said stern, old Governor Stoughton of New England, "that he might send choice grain over in this wilderness."

Those of my readers whose ancestral trees root in Rhenish soil, will be pleased to know that the published account of travels in America in the last century all corroborate each others' assertions in speaking of the Teuton portion of this latter class— the bone and sinew of the provinces. They bear universal testimony that population in the middle colonies was powerfully promoted by its German element; a people who in their own country had been disciplined in habits of industry, sobriety, frugality, and patience, and were consequently peculiarly fitted for the many laborious occupations of a new land. Among the yeomen, husbandmen, and mechanics they were regarded as the most economical as well as the most industrious of the population, and the least attached to the use of rum and malt liquor. They were slow in contracting debts and were always endeav-. oring to augment their means of subsistence.

But it was the gentry, richly dressed in all the magnificence of the times, that presented in customs, manners, and apparel, the strongest contrast to the other actors on this stage of "auld