"I saw a cloud of horsemen and footmen riding on the road... I supposed it might have been the Governor or some great man, but as I came nearer the meeting-house, I saw shapes of men, and trees, and houses, all dim and visionary... When I saw Mr. Whitefield come upon the scaffold, he looked almost angelical... He looked as though he was clothed with authority from the great God." — Nathan Cole, journal entry on traveling to hear George Whitefield preach at Middletown, Connecticut (October 1740)
Cole's description illustrates which feature of the Great Awakening?
- Acheck_circle
The capacity of itinerant evangelical preaching to mobilize ordinary colonists across long distances
- B
The dominance of formal Anglican liturgy in eighteenth-century New England
- C
The rejection of religious enthusiasm by most colonial laypeople
- D
The Crown's effort to enforce uniform worship through royal commissions
Explanation
Whitefield drew massive crowds throughout the colonies. Cole's account, with its rush to leave farm work to hear an itinerant, captures the popular, mobilizing energy of the revivals.