The opposition did not stop there—­sermons were preached in several of the neighbouring churches, and people earnestly warned against attending certain services, and told not to countenance them by their presence.  The newspapers also took up the matter, and public report was not behind in its usual exaggeration.

I give here an extract from a Letter I thought it necessary to write at this time, on “Religious excitement”: 

“My Dear Sir,—­I have been seriously considering, for some time, the necessity of making a public statement respecting the work of God in this place; with a view partly of drawing attention to an all-important, though very neglected subject; and partly with a view of giving some definite and authoritative form to the various and varied reports which are in circulation.  It is vain to pretend to know nothing about them, and it is equally vain to suppose that reports about our proceedings are likely to lose less by repetition, than those on other subjects of less moment.

“I embrace, therefore, the opportunity which your Sermon on religious excitement offers, to make a statement.

“I do remonstrate against your publishing to the world a sermon avowedly against ‘proceedings connected with a neighbouring church;’ and that instead of encouragement, counsel, and cooperation in what I know is the work of God, I receive this public rebuke.  I make this remonstrance the more earnestly, because several of the opinions you have expressed, are not, as I believe, consistent with the teaching of our Church; and lastly, I venture to be the remonstrant, because I am the person, and mine the church, which are the objects of your animadversions.

“You hold deservedly a high position among us in respect of rank and esteem for your piety and learning; but at the hazard of incurring the imputation of arrogance, I cannot, I must not, and I will not be unfaithful to the light in which I walk, by the grace of God; and therefore I do simply and plainly protest, in the first place, against the supposition that Excitement is a means which I am using, or an end I have in view; secondly, against the supposition that conversion is a gradual work, which is to be worked out by Sacraments and Means of Grace; and thirdly, against a teaching which supposes and actually declares that a Person may believe, may be pardoned, may be cleansed from sin, yet not know it.”

“In the sense in which you censure Religious Excitement, namely, as a means to ‘force, as it were, the Spirit of the Lord,’ and ’for the purpose of strongly working on the animal feelings, etc.,’ it may be justly censurable.  Those who make excitement the end and object of their endeavours in a religious movement, must soon find the emptiness of it; they throw dust into their own eyes, and will ever verify your words that ‘excitement lifts up for a moment and then lets fall again,’ and that ’like dram-drinking, it leaves those that indulge in it weaker than before.’