What are termed evangelistic ser vices are, in their present form, of com paratively recent date. They give the dash of excitement to modern religious society that was furnished by the open air preachings of Wesley and Whitfield last century, and at a later date by the American institution known as the camp-meeting. In the early days of pioneer life in the United States the camp-meeting came to be looked upon as a recognised institution. For a week at a time, a miscellaneous crowd of whites and negroes would camp in the pine woods. Religious exercises were varied with buying, selling and trafficking in slaves. Of late years these meetings have been attended with so much drunkenness and im morality, that in many places they have been abolished. In their place has sprung up a system of evangelical services conducted by peripatetic preachers in music halls and theatres in the large centres of population, and in movable structures, known as gospel tents, in the more thinly populated districts.
