Great revivals and the great republic

Front matter

GREAT REVIVALS

AND THE

GREAT. REPUBLIC

Preface

I. Religion and National Life . II. A Nation Founded by Faith

III. Revivals in the Old World Gave

to Colonies in the New

IV. The Great Awakening . ; -. ' Y. The Wesleyan Revival .

VI. The Great Revival of 1800

VII. The Revival of 1858

VIII. The Revival in the Days of Moody Sankey

Rise and

IX. Evangelical Christianity the Security of the Great Republic and the Hope of the World .....

"' X. The Next Great Awakening .

Index

PAGE

281 309 329

(vii)

PREFACE.

PREFACE.

This volume is a study of American history from a standpoint which has been generally overlooked by writers upon both the secular and the religious history of the United States.

It has been prepared with a view of doing good to both Church and State by the promotion of a pious patriotism and the stimulation of a patriotic piety. In its pages, it is hoped, will be found disclosed such a connection between the religious history and the civil development of the "Great Republic" as will inspire the patriot with fresh devotion and move the Christian to renewed zeal. It is especially desired that men of all classes and of all shades of opinion may be led to a just appreciation of that evangelical and evangelistic type of Christianity which must be the security of our institutions for the years to come, as it has been their inspiration and preservation in the days that are gone. It is believed that a careful and unprejudiced consideration of the facts presented will lead to the conclusion that a revivalistic religion — the prevalent form of Christianity in American Churches — is at once the salvation of our own country and the hope of other lands.

4 Authorities Belied On.

The authorities 'relied on to establish the statements and confirm the inferences of the book are sufficiently acknowledged in the current of the discussion, but with a view to commending the restudy of certain valuable works — some of which, strangely enough, have been permitted to drop out of print — the author makes mention of his special indebtedness in the preparation of this volume to "Religion in America," by Robert Baird; Tracy's "History of the Great Awakening;" Jonathan Edwards's "On Revivals;" Luke Tyerman's Biographies of Whitefield and Wesley; "A Handbook of Revivals," by Henry C. Fish, D.D. ; "History of American Christianity," by Leonard Woolsey Bacon; "Christian Leaders of the Last Century*" by the Bishop of Liverpool; "Wesley and Methodism," by Isaac Taylor; "Christianity and the Nation," by Bishop Charles B. Galloway; "The Great Revival of 1800," by William Speer, D.D. ; "Christ in the Camp," by Rev. J. William Jones, D.D. ; and the "Wesley Memorial Volume," by J. O. A. Clark, LL.D. Nothing outside the study of the Bible itself could contribute more directly to the promotion of a national revival than a general and prayerful perusal of these highly interesting and exceedingly stimulating treatises.

I. Religion And National Life

To ruy mind the great epochs in the world's historyare marked not by the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migration of races, or by French revolutions. . . . The real history of man is the history of religion. . . . This is the foundation that underlies all profane history; it is the light, the soul and life of history; without it all history would be profane. — Max Midler.

From history we learn that the great function of religion has been the founding and sustaining of States. — Prof. Seeley.

Ne^ver was a State founded that did not have religion as its basis. — Rousseau.

We know that religion is the basis of civil society and the fruitful source of all blessing and comfort in human intercourse. — Edmund Burke.

All political and social questions refer for their ultimate solution to the religious principle. — Quizot. (6)

I.

RELIGION AND NATIONAL LIFE.

The forms and forces of national life take their rise in the religion of the people.

National life is feeble or strong according as the faith of the people is faint or vigorous. The fruitful periods of a nation's history are those during which religion is flourishing, and periods of religious declension are marked by the withering of all social and political vitality. Literature and art have no such vital relation to political institutions. They may flourish without invigorating national life and fail without enfeebling it. They have often attained to their highest development during periods of national decay, and some of their finest forms have sprung up amid political ruins. But such is not the case with religion. When it withers the State wanes. When faith begins to perish, all things else begin to die, as if the dew of heaven had been denied, or the former and the latter rain had been withheld.

This was manifest in the historv of ancient

8 Atheistic Governments Unsteady.

Israel, and not less so in the history of the Grecian and Roman commonwealths. The book of Judges in the Old Testament is a record of backsliding and bondage, and of revivals and restored prosperity. The annals of Greece and Rome equally reveal the connection between a loss of faith and a loss of power. Declension in religion was followed by declension in morality, and that, in turn, by the enfeebling of national life and the loss of political freedom.

The history of modern France emphasizes the lesson taught by the records of the world's earlier governments. French governments have lacked steadiness and stability because they were not rooted in the depths of religion, from which spring the conservative and inspiring powers of national life. Lamartine lamented this fact in the history of his people. He says: "I know, and I sigh when I think of it, that hitherto the French people have been the least religious of all the nations of Europe. . . . The republic of these men without a God was quickly stranded. The liberty, won by so much heroism and so much genius, did not find in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it, against that atheism which was called glory."

Faith of the 'Founders. 9

The founders of the American republic, which has remained stable in spite of many shocks, established it in a nobler spirit, and erected it upon a more enduring basis. They recognized the vital connection of national strength and religious life, and cherished faith as the formative force of the nation.

At the outset of the War of Independence, Congress, by formal action, expressed its desire "to have the people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God's superintending providence, and of their duty to rely in all their lawful enterprises on his aid and direction." Accordingly, a general fast was proclaimed, that the people might, "with united hearts, confess and bewail their manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life appease God's righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ obtain his pardon and forgiveness."

In the midst of the war General Washington issued an order commanding a proper observance of the Sabbath by the army, and throughout his illustrious career he gave the force of both his precept and example to the maintenance of Christian faith.

10 Franklin's Speech,

In the Convention, assembled after the war to frame the Federal Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, then above eighty years of age, offered a motion for daily prayers in the body, and, in support of the proposition, said: "In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed the frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national f eTicity. And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that ' except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his

Political Systems and Religions Faith, 11

concurring aid we shall succeed, in this political building, no better than the builders of Babel." These were remarkable words, coming from a man of iiberalistic opinions. They point to a prevalence of religious sentiment which reached and affected the astutest among the rationalists even. Men who were descendants of the first colonists could not rid themselves of the convictions which had driven their ancestors to the New World, nor utterly renounce the faith from which their colonial institutions had sprung. They knew, as their forefathers had believed and taught, that commonwealths not founded in religion rest precariously on shifting sands.

It must be so. The deepest and most influential thing in the life of any people is its religion, and its customs and codes must inevitably be colored and controlled by its moral convictions. Atheism breeds anarchy as like begets like, and in all the gradations of civil government, from the lowest absolutism to the highest types of free institutions, the character of the political system is exactly determined by the faith that underlies it.

The governments of all heathen lands are despotisms by the very law of their being.

12 The Product and Propagator of Religion.

Civil freedom cailnot live in an atmosphere of pagan superstition. Nations that forget God do thereby forge chains for their own hands.

And in the nominally Christian lands it will be found that the power of political institutions is in direct proportion to ' the purity of the Christianity with which they coexist. According to the different degrees of religious intelligence in the nations of Christendom will be found the elevation or degradation of their political systems. Romanism has made South America and Southern Europe what they are, and Protestantism has made England, Germany, Holland, and North America what they are. As Romanism wanes in Italy, freedom waxes stronger; but when a chill falls upon the Protestant Churches of the United States, the moral vigor of the nation is impaired.

From the widest observation of the political systems of mankind, in all lands and in all times, we derive, therefore, the generalization that national life roots itself in religious conditions, and that it is feeble or powerful according to the religion from which it springs. Religion makes and molds States; irreligion mars them. With governments, as with individuals, godliness with contentment is great gain.

-II.

^NATION FOUNDED BY FAITH.

Religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. — M.

de Tocqueville.

They were driven forth from their fatherland, not by earthly want or by the greed of gold or by the lust of adventure, but by the fear of God and the zeal for a Godly worship. — From Green's " Short Itistory of the English People.'"

It con.cerneth New England always to remember that she is a religious plantation and not a plantation of trade. The profession of purity of doctrine, worship, and discipline is written upon her forehead. — From Prince's ''Christian History."

A work which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in the propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.— One of the reasons assigned for the grant in the first charier of the Colony of Virginia.

It is remarkable that in every charter granted to the

Southern Colonies the "propagation of the gospel" is

mentioned as one of the reasons for undertaking the

planting of them. — FromBaird's "Religion in America."

II. A Nation Founded By Faith

"The great migrations of mankind,1' says Goldwin Smith, "are the great epochs of history." To the same purpose speaks Whipple, affirming that "there was never a great migration which did not give rise to a new form of national life." These observations are abundantly confirmed by the history of that migration which has resulted in the American Republic. It gave rise to a unique form of national life, in exact conformity to its own moral character.

This migration, the greatest in the history of mankind, was not begun under the obscuring mists of a remote past; it began in the open, before the eyes of the nations of modern times, and it is not clouded by the uncertain myths and doubtful traditions of a prehistoric period. We know with absolute certainty its origin and the course it has run. We may analyze with accuracy the forces which gave rise to it and mark with precision the flow of its current. And it

is beyond question that religion was the prime

16 "Great in Their Unconsciousness"

m

and moving cause that gave rise to the migration which, beginning with the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements and continuing to the present time, has created the republican nation known as the United States. The call of Abraham and his departure from Chaldea, and the exodus from Egypt, while attended by more miraculous circumstances, were no more truly re ligious events than the founding of the American colonies. The coming of the colonists was a movement from religious impulses as devout and far more intelligent than the inspiration which produced the Crusades, and it can scarcely be doubted that the religious results which have followed their coming will affect the destiny of mankind during the centuries to come, when the influence of the Crusaders will be an utterly spent force.

The colonists did not go to make a republic, nor did they come with any preconceived plans of political government. Following God, they founded States almost unconsciously and builded more wisely than they knew. In his noble address entitled "The Founders Great in Their Unconsciousness" Horace Bushnell has stated the case of all in describing that of the New England colonists. "Their end," he says, "was reit

The Last Effort of Divine Providence" 17 ligion, simply and only religion. Out upon the lone t>cean, feeling their way cautiously, as it were, through the unknown waves, exploring in their busy fancies and their prayers the equally unknown future before them, they as little conceived that they had in their ship the germ of a vast republic that in two centuries would command the respect and attract the longing desires of the nations, as that they saw with their eyes the lonely wastes about them whitening with the sails and foaming under the swift ships of that republic already become the first commercial power of the world. ^ . . . No! they crossed the sea in God's name only, sent by Him, as they believed, to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' But whither those straightened paths will lead and in what shape the new kingdom of the Lord will come, they as little conceive as John the Baptist himself." It is impossible to form an adequate conception of this far-reaching movement to the shores of North America if the providential purpose of God or the pious submission of the colonists to the divine direction be left out of the account. Emerson is not extravagant when he declares.;

"Our whole history appears like a last effort 2

18 Neither the Rich nor the Rabble.

of Divine Providence in behalf of the human race." In the colonization out of which came the Great Republic, Providence selected the best stocks of the Old World for the purpose of the divine kingdom in the New World. By persecutions and trials of faith, a process of election was operated, whereby a chosen seed was secured for a land prepared and reserved to be the home of a type of evangelical religion such as had not been in the earth for centuries.

With what precision that process worked to its end is seen in the character of the emigrants who constituted at the first the primal germ of the nascent nation, whose aftergrowth has been conformed to the original type which they gave to it. After a careful analysis of their colonial charters, customs, and laws, Dr. Robert Baird, in his monumental work entitled "Religion in America," thus summarizes their case:

"1. They were not composed of the rich, the voluptuous, the idle, the effeminate, and the profligate; neither were they, generally speaking, composed of poor, spiritless, dependent, and helpless persons. They rather came from that middle class of society, which is placed in the happy medium between sordid poverty and overgrown wealth. They knew that whatever com-

Virtuous and Religious. 19

fort or enjoyment they could look for in the New World was only to be attained by the blessing of God upon their industry, frugality, and temperance.

"2. They were not an ignorant rabble, such as many ancient and some modern States have been obliged to expel from their borders. Taken in the mass, they were well-informed — many of them remarkably so for the age in which they lived and which in the case of none of them was an age of darkness. . . . With few exceptions, they had acquired the elements of a good education. There were few persons in any of the colonies that could not read.

"3. They were a virtuous people; not a vicious herd, such as used to be sent out by ancient States and such as chiefly colonized South America and Mexico — men of unbridled passions and slaves to the basest lusts. The morality of the early colonists of the United States was unrivaled in any community of equal extent and has been lauded by almost all who have written about them, as well as by those who have governed them.

"1 They were religious men. They believed and felt that Christianity is no vain fancy — a fact that holds true even as respects those of

. 20 Bible-Reading Protestants.

them with whom religious motives were not the chief motive for expatriating themselves. The overwhelming majority stood acquitted of the slightest approach to infidelity. Neither were they what are called 'philosophers,' attempting to propagate certain new theories respecting human society and suggesting new methods for rendering it perfect. By far the greater number of them were simple Christians, who knew of no way by which men can be good or happy but that pointed out by God in his Word.

"5. With few exceptions, the first colonists were Protestants; indeed, Lord Baltimore's was the only Roman Catholic colony, and even in it the Romanists formed but a small minority long before the Revolution of 1775. The great mass had sacrificed much — some their all — for the Protestant faith. They were Protestants in the sense of men who took the Bible for their guide and who believed what it taught, not what human authority put in its place. 'What saith the Lord?' This was what they desired to know first of all and above all. And it was the study of the Bible that opened their eyes to truths that bore upon every possible relation of life and upon every duty. And while they learned from the Bible what were their duties,

Asylums for the Persecuted. 21

so they learned also what were their rights. This led them at once to practice the former and to demand the latter.

"6. The great majority of them had suffered much oppression and persecution, and in that severe but effectual school had learned lessons not to be acquired in any other. It had led them to question many things to which otherwise their thoughts might never have been directed, and it gave them irresistible power of argument in favor of the right of the human mind to freedom of thought. Indeed it is remarkable how large a proportion of the early colonists were driven from Europe by oppression. Although Virginia and the Carolinas were not expressly established as asylums for the wronged, yet during the commonwealth in England they afforded a refuge to the 'Cavalier' and the 'Churchman,' as they did afterwards to the Huguenot and the German Protestant. X Georgia was colonized as an asylum for the imprisoned and 'persecuted Protestants;'/ Maryland as the home of persecuted Roman Catholics; and the colony of Gustavus Adolphus was to be a general blessing to the 'whole Protestant world,' by offering a shelter to all who stood in need of one. Even New York, though founded by Dutch merchants, with an eye to

22 Exiled for Freedom and Faith.

trade alone, opened its arms to the persecuted Bohemian and to the inhabitants of the Italian valleys. So that, in fact, all of these colonies were originally peopled more or less, and some of them exclusively, by the victims of oppression and persecution ; hence the remark of one of our historians (Bancroft) is no less just than eloquent, that 'tyranny and injustice peopled America with men nurtured in suffering and adversity. The history of our colonization is the history of the crimes of Europe.'

u 7. Though incapable of emancipating themselves from all the prejudices and errors of past ages, with respect to the rights of conscience, they were at least in advance of the rest of the world on these points, and founded an empire in which religious liberty is at this day more fully enjoyed than anywhere else — in short, is in every respect perfect.

"8. Lastly, of the greater number of the early colonists it may be said that they expatriated themselves from the Old World, not merely to find liberty of conscience in the forests of the New, but that they might extend the kingdom of Christ by founding States where the Truth should not be impeded by the hindrances which opposed its progress elsewhere. This

Pilgrims of Faith. 23

was remarkably the case of the Puritans of New England; but a like spirit animated the pious men who settled in other parts of the country. They looked to futurity and caught glimpses of the glorious progress which the gospel was to make among their children and children's children. This comforted them in sorrow and sustained them under trials. They lived by faith, and their hope was not disappointed."

It is thus evident how the Great Republic, in the earliest stages of its history, was formed by religion and conformed to the Word of God. As no other of modern times, it is a nation founded by faith. As soon as the first settlers who came to the Western world had landed, public worship was commenced and Churches were organized. The place of religious service was from the first center of life in the colonies. Thither went the entire population every Sabbath, and in some of the colonies citizenship was conditioned on Church membership. They professed, as -the controlling motive for their coming into the wilderness, "a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation (or at least to make some way thereunto) for propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the

24 Moses the Model.

world." The corner stones of their civilization

^were liberty and law, education and religion.

The laws of Moses were the models of their

codes, and the doing of God's will was the aim

of their endeavor. They sought to fashion their

lives according to the pattern of the mount, and,

working by faith, builded more wisely than they

knew and attained to the greatness of

" Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot And mold the world unto the scheme of God."

III. Revivals In The Old World Gave Rise To Colonies In The New

These men came out from amid great awakenings; and after the first plantations every arrival from the old country brought them news of the revivals which took place under the Bunyans and Baxters of England. —Henry C. Fish, D.D.

The period of the settlement of this country was singularly identical with that of the breaking up of the old religious life of Europe. Indeed, since the Crusades, the Old World had passed through no such convulsions as shook her whole religious, political, intellectual, and social framework at a time when every nation was sending forth her sons — albeit, many exiles in the number— to establish themselves on the Atlantic coast of this continent. It was not from any stagnant nations that immigrants came to our wooded shores, but from stirred and aroused peoples. . . . Europe's best blood was hot with aspirations — we might better call them inspirations — at the very moment when this new field was opened for the greatest fulfillment in modern history. — Bishop John F Hurst.

When the colonies in America were planted, both from England and the Continent, the people who constituted them arrived at the moment of Europe's awakening. They brought the best aspirations of the Old World, and determined to realize them in the New. The hour of American colonization was the fittest one in all modern times for the New World to receive the best which the Old World had to give. — Ibid. (26)

III.

REVIVALS IN THE OLD WORLD GAVE RISE TO COLONIES IN THE NEW.

Whence came these founders to the shores of North America ?

With reference to their former residence, and speaking geographically, the most of them came from the British Isles — in the main, from England. So predominant were these English elements that as late as 1775 four-fifths of the people were of British origin and spoke the English language. In the earlier days the proportion of English to the whole population was even larger.

Having reference to their ecclesiastical antecedents and their religious position, they were cast on these shores by the expulsive forces of the Reformation and the religious convulsions in Europe consequent upon that mighty movement. Most of them were Protestants, and Protestants of the most evangelical type. In this fact was found the main cause of their coming to America.

The Reformation had set all Europe in a ferment. Before it began Christianity had been

connected with the State in all European lands,

28 Persecuting Popes and Princes.

and the papal throne was higher than that of any secular prince or sovereign. The Pope assumed to confer crowns and to exercise lordship over kings. The supreme pontiff was a sort of king of kings as well as the head of the Church. Dissent from the dogmas of Romanism was a civil offense as well as an ec-/ clesiastical sin. Heresy was a crime. A dreadful absolutism extended its rule over the human mind and soul, enforcing its decrees with the power of the civil arm. Against this ecclesiastical monarchy by which the spirits of men were enslaved, and to which crowned heads bowed, the Reformation was a revolt. In the very nature of things, such a movement was resisted by the hand of persecution. The Pope and his subservient allies were bound to join hands against it. Princes who derived influence from papal recogDition took up arms to suppress it. The superstitious multitudes, who knew nothing of the faith that justifies, were aroused to fury against it by the appeals of priests whose craft and gains were endangered by it. The vicious opposed it because of its purity. Its adherents at first were found only among that class which is always in the minority — the men who are too intelligent to believe fables, too pure to in-

The Beligious Element Dominant. 29

dulge vice, and too loyal to God to fear earthly usurpers of divine authority.

Such men can no more fail in a work of faith v than they can escape the persecution of the faithless. Therefore, the movement speedily attained to the magnitude of a moral revolution. Into it at length were swept the masses and the classes. Some princes, even, who had long been restive under papal pretensions, availed themselves of the opportunity to rid themselves of a galling yoke. Political elements thus entered into what, in the beginning, was a revival of spiritual religion, and that alone. But the religious element was always dominant, and the heavenly fire within it increased the heat of the earthly flames which burned everywhere. It was an era of fierce controversies and not of tepid religious convictions. And it inaugurated an epoch during which evangelical faith steadily advanced in clearness of vision and purity of life through a succession of struggles and triumphs which may be justly called revivals. This was especially true in England and Scotland, where Ridley and Latimer and Cranmer and Knox wrought righteousness and subdued kingdoms, and where the Puritans and the Covenanters subsequently contended earnestly for the faith once delivered to

30 From Sires to Sons.

m

the saints. From these revival centers, and out of these fights of faith, driven by persecution and drawn by the hope of religious freedom, came the first colonists to America.

Grandsires of the men who composed the Jamestown settlement were contemporaries of the Protestant martyrs of the British Isles. The hearts of these settlers in the New World had been stirred by stories of the stormy times and the heroic-deeds of their ancestors. Perhaps from eyewitnesses of those martyrdoms some of the first colonists had heard how, "without Bocardo Gate," opposite Baliol College, on a day in October, 1555, the dauntless and saintly Latimer had died, exclaiming to his companion in suffering and glory: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out." From the lips of saintly sires mayhap others had heard the story of Rowland Taylor, the good Vicar of Hadleigh, who went to his death, by burning, amid the lamentations of his parishioners, who burst out crying: "Ah, good Lord, there goeth our shepherd from us! God save thee, good Dr. Taylor; God strengthen thee and help thee; the Holy Ghost comfort thee!"