The Worldwide Impact of the Great Awakening of 1858

the

fervent prayer

The Worldwide Impact of the Great Awakening of 1858

By

J. Edwin Orr

MOODY PRESS

CHICAGO

Introduction Evangelical Awakenings

1 THE SOURCES OF THE REVIVAL

2 THE RISING TIDE

3 THE EASTERN STATES

4 WEST OF THE ALLEGHENIES

5 THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUTH

6 APPROVAL-AND DISAPPROVAL

7 THE AWAKENING IN UESTER

8 THE AWAKENING IN SCOTLAND

9 THE AWAKENING IN WALES

10 AWAKENING IN NORTHERN ENGLAND

11 AWAKENING IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND

12 APPRECIATION-AND DEPRECIATION

13 MID-CENTURY IN EUROPE

14 REVIVALS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

15 REVIVAL IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

16 THE IMPACT ON INDIA

17 EMPOWERED PREACHERS

18 CHRISTIAN ACTION

19 THE MISSIONARY EXTENSION

20 THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT

21 THE EVANGELISTIC EXTENSION

22 VOLUNTEERS FOR SERVICE

23 MISSIONARY REINFORCEMENT

24 SOCIAL INFLUENCE, I

25 SOCIAL INFLUENCE, II

SUMMARY THE 1858-59 AWAKENING

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Introduction Evangelical Awakenings

An Evangelical Awakening is a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and in its related community. Such an awakening may change in a significant way an individual only; or it may affect a larger group of believers; or it may move a congregation, or the churches of a city or district, or the whole body of believers throughout a country or a continent; or indeed the larger body of believers throughout the world. The outpouring of the Spirit effects the reviving of the Church, the awakening of the masses, and the movement of uninstructed peoples towards the Christian faith; the revived Church, by many or by few, is moved to engage in evangelism, in teaching, and in social action.

Such an awakening may run its course briefly, or it may last a lifetime. It may come about in various ways, though there seems to be a pattern common to all such movements throughout history.

The major marks of an Evangelical Awakening are always some repetition of the phenomena of the Acts of the Apostles, followed by the revitalizing of nominal Christians and by bringing outsiders into vital touch with the Divine Dynamic causing all such Awakenings—the Spirit of God. The surest evidence of the Divine origin of any such quickening is its presentation of the evangelical message declared in the New Testament and its re-enactment of the phenomena therein in the empowering of saints and conversion of sinners.

It is more than interesting to compare the characteristics of the Awakenings of various decades with the prototype of evangelical revivals in the Acts of the Apostles, a perennial textbook for such movements.

Our Lord told His disciples: 'It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses ... to the end of the earth.' Thus was an outpouring of the Spirit predicted, and soon fulfilled.

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Then began extraordinary praying among the disciples in the upper room. Who knows what self-judgment and confession and reconciliation went on? There were occasions for such. But, when they were all together in one place, there suddenly came from heaven a sound like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled all the house. The filling of the Holy Spirit was followed by xenolalic evangelism, not repeated in the times of the Apostles nor authenticated satisfactorily since. The Apostle Peter averred that the outpouring fulfilled the prophecy of Joel, which predicted the prophesying of young men and maidens, the seeing of visions and dreams by young and old. He preached the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What was the response? The hearers were pierced, stabbed, stung, stunned, smitten—these are the synonyms of a rare verb which Homer used to signify being drummed to earth. It was no ordinary feeling; nor was the response a mild request for advice. It was more likely an uproar of entreaty, the agonizing cry of a multitude.

Those who responded to the Apostle's call for repentance confessed their faith publicly in the apostolic way. About three thousand were added to the church. Then followed apostolic teaching, fellowship, communion and prayers.

What kind of fellowship? Doubtless the words of Scripture were often used liturgically, but it is certain that the koinonia was open. What kind of prayers? There are instances of individual petitions of power and beauty, but there are also suggestions of simultaneous, audible prayer in which the main thrust of petition is recorded, as in the prophet's day. The Apostles continued to urge their hearers to change and turn to God, which they did by the thousands. And no hostile power seemed for the moment able to hinder them. Persecution followed, but the work of God advanced.

The events recorded in the Acts have been repeated in full or lesser degree in the Awakenings of past centuries. From the study of Evangelical Revivals or Awakenings in cities and districts, countries and continents, generations and centuries, it is possible to trace a pattern of action and discover a progression of achievement that establish in the minds of those who accept the New Testament as recorded history an undoubted conclusion that the same Spirit of God Who moved the apostles has wrought His mighty works in the centuries preceding our own with the same results but with wider effects than those of which the apostles dreamed in their days of power.

Although the records are scarce, there were Evangelical Awakenings in the centuries before the rise of John Wycliffe, the Oxford reformer. But such movements in medieval times seemed very limited in their scope or abortive in their effect. What was achieved in the days of John Wycliffe—the dissemination of the Scriptures in the language of the people —has never been lost, nor has the doctrine of Scriptural authority. Thus the Lollard Revival led to the Reformation, which would have been unlikely without it; and the principle of appeal to the Word of God in the matter of reform has not been lost either. The Reformation thus led to the Puritan movement in which the essentials of evangelical theology were refined; and the Puritan movement prepared the way for the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century Awakenings occurring in more rapid succession.

A student of church history in general and of the Great Awakenings in particular must surely be impressed by the remarkable continuity of doctrine as well as the continuity of action. Anyone could begin reading the story of the Gospels, continue on into the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, then without any sense of interruption begin reading the story of the poor preachers of John Wycliffe, the itinerants of the Scottish Covenant, the circuit riders of John Wesley, the readers of Hans Nielsen Hauge in Norway, or the Disciples of the Lord in Madagascar.

Not only so, but the student of such movements would find in the preaching of the Awakenings and Revivals the same message preached and the same doctrines taught in the days of the Apostles. But non-evangelical Christianity, with its accretions of dogma and use of worldly power, would seem a system utterly alien to that of the Church of the Apostles, resembling much more the forces both ecclesiastical and secular that had opposed New Testament Christianity.

The reader of the Acts of the Apostles must surely notice that the Church began to spread by extraordinary praying and preaching. So too the 'upper room' type of praying and the Pentecostal sort of preaching together with the irrepressible kind of personal witness find their place in Great Awakenings rather than in the less evangelical ecclesiastical patterns.

The first three centuries of progress were followed by a millenium of changed direction when the Church was united with the State and political force compelled the consciences of men. These centuries are rightly called the Dark Ages, though they were not entirely without light.

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Before the fifteenth century, a change began, commencing a progression of awakenings that moved the Church by degrees back to the apostolic pattern and extended it all over the world. Not only were theological dogmas affected and missionary passion created, but society itself was changed.

From the times of the Lollards onward, the impact of the Evangelical Revivals or Awakenings was felt in the realm of personal liberty— knowing the truth made men free, and made them covet freedom for all. Thus the Social Rising of 1381 championed a charter of freedom based on evangelical conviction. Its daughter movement in Bohemia defended its freedom against the forces of tyranny for a century.

The consequent Reformation that soon began in Germany caused such a ferment in men's minds that a rising became inevitable— but it was crushed, only because some of those responsible for the hunger for freedom betrayed it. The hunger for righteousness of the early Puritans brought about another attempt to establish freedom under the law, but, like various ventures before it, the Commonwealth failed because it relied more upon secular force than persuasion.

In the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the revived Evangelicals re-learned an earlier method. New Testament counsel began to prevail, helping persuade freethinkers and Christians, traditionalists and Evangelicals, that freedom was God's intent for every man, everywhere. Thus the nineteenth century became in itself the century of Christian action, taking Good News to every quarter of the earth, to every phase of life. Those whose hearts the Spirit had touched became the great initiators of reform and welfare and tuned even the conscience of unregenerate men to a sense of Divine harmony in society.

Yet Christians believed that the horizontal relationship of man to men was dependent upon the vertical relationship of man to God, that social reform was not meant to take the place of evangelism, 'so to present Christ in the power of the Spirit that men may come to put their trust in Him as Saviour and to serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of His Church and in the vocations of the common life/

What may be called the General Awakenings began in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, among settlers in New Jersey and refugees from Moravia about the same time. The First Awakening ran its course in fifty years, and was followed by the Second Awakening in 1792, the Third in 1830, the Fourth in 1858-59, the Fifth in 1905.

The movements of revival in the English-speaking world were hampered by the outbreak of war between Great Britain and the American Colonies. Trevelyan noted the year 1776 as a low-water mark in the ebbtide of infidelity in Britain, while in the revolting American States the onslaught of war produced a sorry effect on all the Churches—even though there were sporadic local revivals on both sides of the Atlantic. Greater troubles soon followed.

The infidelity of the French Revolution represented the greatest challenge to Christianity since the time preceding the Emperor Constantine. Christians had endured the threat of the northern barbarians, the assault of the armies of the crescent, the terror of the hordes from the steppes, and an eastern schism and a western reformation. But, until 1789, there had never been such a threat against the very foundations of the Faith, against believing in the God revealed in the Scriptures. Voltaire made no idle boast when he said that Christianity would be forgotten within thirty years.

In France, even the Huguenots apostasized. Deism rode high in every country in Europe, and so-called Christian leaders either capitulated to infidelity or compromised with rationalism. The infant but sturdy nation on the American continent was swept by unbelief, so that the faithful trembled. Between the mailed fist of French military power and the insidious undermining of faith, there seemed no escape.

The spiritual preparation for a worldwide awakening began in Great Britain seven years before the outpouring of the Spirit there. Believers of one denomination after the other, including the evangelical minorities in the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, devoted the first Monday evening of each month to pray for a revival of religion and an extension of Christ's kingdom overseas. This widespread union of prayer spread to the United States within ten years and to many other countries, and the concert of prayer remained the significant factor in the recurring revivals of religion and the extraordinary out-thrust of missions for a full fifty years, so commonplace it was taken for granted by the Churches.

The outbreak of the Revolution in France at first encouraged lovers of liberty in the English-speaking world to hope that liberty had truly dawned in France. When the Terror began, and when military despotism rose, they were fearfully alarmed. The British people decided to fight. In the second year of the Revolution, John Wesley died.

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The revival of religion, the second great awakening, began in Britain in late 1791, cresting in power among the Methodists who seemed unafraid of the phenomena of mass awakening. It was also effective among the Baptists and the Congregationalists, though manifested in quieter forms. It accelerated the evangelical revival going on among clergy and laity of the Church of England, strengthening the hands of Simeon and his Eclectic Club and those of "Wilberforce in his Clapham Sect—an Evangelical party in the Anglican Establishment which soon became dominant in influence.

At the same time, the principality of Wales was overrun by another movement of revival, packing the churches of the various denominations and gathering unusual crowds of many thousands in the open-air. The revival accelerated the growth of the Baptists and Congregationalists, increased the number of Wesleyan Methodists, and caused the birth of a new denomination, the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, now the Welsh Presbyterians, who separated from the Church of Wales because of its failure to provide either ministers or sacraments for its societies.

Phenomenal awakenings also swept many parts of the kingdom of Scotland, raising up such evangelists as the Haldanes, and such pastoral evangelists as Chalmers in Glasgow and MacDonald in the North. The Scottish revivals began in the teeth of majority opposition in the Church of Scotland but within a generation had evangelized the auld Kirk. The coverage of the Scottish Revival was patchwork, its occurrence sporadic, because of the desperate state of the country. The light prevailed over the darkness.

Not for the first time, nor the last, the unhappy kingdom of Ireland, a majority of whose inhabitants were disfranchized, was rent asunder by turmoil that boiled over into the Rebellion of 1798. In the midst of strife, local awakenings occurred among the Methodists, affecting the evangelical clergy of the Church of Ireland. The Presbyterians of the North were fully occupied contending for orthodoxy against a Unitarian insurgency. Revival brought forth societies for the evangelization of Ulster and the renewal of church life.

This period of revival in the United Kingdom brought forth the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the Baptist Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, and a host of auxiliary agencies for evangelism. It produced also some significant social reform, even in wartime.

Before and after 1800, an awakening began in Scandinavia, resembling more the earlier British movements of the days of Wesley and Whitefield, though borrowing from the later British awakening in adopting its home and foreign mission projects, its Bible societies, and the like. In Norway, the revival was advanced by a layman, Hans Nielsen Hauge, who made a lasting impact upon Norway as a nation. Another layman, Paavo Ruotsalainen, expedited the movement in Finland. There were several national revivalists operating then in Sweden, but the influence of George Scott, a British Methodist, later exceeded them all. In Denmark, the revival seemed less potent and was sooner overtaken by a Lutheran confessional reaction, which inhibited the renewal of revival in the 1830s—unlike Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which experienced extensive movements up until the mid-century, Gisle Johnson and Carl Olof Rosenius being the outstanding leaders in Norway and Sweden respectively.

In Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, the general awakening was delayed until the defeat of Napoleon. A visit to Geneva by Robert Haldane triggered a chain reaction of revival throughout the Reformed Churches of the countries named, raising up outstanding evangelists and missionary agencies. In Holland, the movement was somewhat delayed, and was sooner cramped by confessional reaction among the Dutch Reformed, some of whom objected to state control as well as evangelical ecumenism.

In the German States, the general awakening followed the defeat of Napoleon, and raised up scores of effective German evangelists, such as the Krummachers, Hofacker, Helferich, vonKottwitz, and the vonBelows; German theologians, such as Neander and Tholuck; social reformers, suchasFliedner; and noteworthy home and foreign missionary agencies. As in other European countries, the complication of state-church relationships provoked confessional reaction among Lutherans who repudiated the evangelical ecumenism of the revivalists in general. Next to British evangelical pioneers, the German revivalists achieved the most lasting social reforms. Close collaboration between British and German revivalists existed in home and foreign mission projects.