CHAPTER X.
THE AMERICAN CHURCH ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING--A GENERAL VIEW.
By the end of one hundred years from the settlement of Massachusetts important changes had come upon the chain of colonies along the Atlantic seaboard in America.

In the older colonies the people had been born on the soil at two or three generations' remove from the original colonists, or belonged to a later stratum of migration superimposed upon the first.

The exhausting toil and privations of the pioneer had been succeeded by a good measure of thrift and comfort.

There were yet bloody campaigns to be fought out against the ferocity and craft of savage enemies wielded by the strategy of Christian neighbors; but the severest stress of the Indian wars was passed.

In different degrees and according to curiously diverse types, the institutions of a Christian civilization were becoming settled.
In the course of this hundred years the political organization of these various colonies had been drawn into an approach to uniformity.