I want us to proceed this morning to
something of the history of revivals in the
Church of Christ.
And I was at once confronted of course
by a very considerable problem in regard to
selection and what to attempt to lay before
you.
My decision was to pass over the revivals
prior to the 18th century and to begin
this morning with the revivals that took place
here in America between the year 1740 and
the year 1860.
So that what I want to do, attempt
to do, and I do not suppose for
a moment I'll be able to complete it,
is to give you a broad survey of
some of the great outpourings of the Spirit
in the 120 years between 1740 and 1860
here in America.
I need not stop to detain you with
reasons why I passed over some of the
earlier great revivals.
The Reformation was a great spiritual revival.
The Puritan period both in Britain and in
New England was similarly marked by revivals.
But I pass over these and begin then
with this period.
I take the period partly because it was
the most creative period in your history.
You will recall I think the immense transformation
that took place between 1740 and 1860.
In 1740 there were just 13 colonies scattered
down the eastern seaboard.
The population from New England right down to
the south amounting to little more than a
million people.
The vast majority of people earned their living
in agriculture.
Philadelphia and New York were just in their
infancy as far as being great cities was
concerned.
That was 1740.
By 1860 there was this stupendous transformation.
The Union was independent of Europe.
Independent not only politically but independent in terms
of her manufacturing power.
The population had risen more than 31 million.
The northern states in 1861 could put an
army in the field that was larger than
the whole population of the year 1740.
And the states of course spread right across
to the Pacific.
There was this great creative era.
And all the influences which raised your nation
to world leadership are to be found within
those 120 years.
And those influences of course were manifold.
But I believe it can be demonstrated that
it was the Christian faith and the power
of the gospel that provided the supreme influence
that molded the direction of the national life
within those years.
The ideas of liberty and equality and fraternity
and the other ideas which are embedded in
the constitution.
These ideas could no more have built the
nation than they could in France.
It was the power of the gospel accompanying
the events of that period that built the
nation as she was then built.
Let me give you a quotation from Henry
Fish who ministered in Newark, New Jersey.
And writes these words in the year 1873.
Revivals he says, what blessings have they brought
to families, to neighborhoods and communities.
They have made good citizens, good neighbors, faithful
friends, useful laborers, wise parents, dutiful children.
Bless out what God has done by revivals
and our sky would be shrouded in gloom.
Our sanctuaries would be vacant, our missionary agencies
would be things unknown.
And languor and death would be about us
on every side.
So if the Christian and evangelical faith was
the influence that was so pervasive in this
period of history.
That influence was so strong for one reason
only and that is that there were genuine,
frequent and powerful revivals of religion.
Now in that 120 year period there are
three revival periods which can be distinguished.
That is three periods of general revival.
There are of course local revivals and we
shall mention one or two of them.
There were three great general revivals.
The first obviously from the year 1740 to
the year 1744 or 45.
The Great Awakening.
Then quite a long period through to the
end of the 1780s.
And then at the end of the 1780s
there was the beginning of another era of
extensive revival.
And that era went on right the way
through to the beginning of the 1840s.
50 years.
Possibly the most extraordinary period of revival documented
in the history of the church.
The third period beginning in the 1850s and
ending somewhere before the Civil War of 1861.
The Great Revival of 1857 in New York
and at the same time scattered across the
land in the south as well as in
the north.
There were mighty outpourings of the spirit.
You have read some of you I know
of the revivals that took place in the
Army of Virginia.
In the years 1861 and 1862 in the
Brigade of Stonewall Jackson.
These revivals were but the continuation of outpourings
of the spirit that had been seen across
Virginia and North Carolina in the years preceding
the Civil War.
So in north and south there was this
third period of general extensive revival.
Now of the first of these periods the
Great Awakening I want to say very little.
It of course could take several addresses on
its own.
But there are a number of books in
print on the Great Awakening.
Several by secular writers and although they are
not evangelical Christians even what they tell you
is impressive enough.
There are also the Lives of Whitfield, Dallimore's
Life of Whitfield that many of you have
seen.
These books will introduce you to many of
the facts of the Great Awakening.
And therefore I do not wish to stay
on it this morning except one or two
brief comments.
This title the Great Awakening is of course
a beautiful description of the spiritual transformation that
came at that time.
There was a minister of some years ago
who when he was dying said to a
ministerial friend.
Brother brother he said we are none of
us more than half awake.
Well before the Great Awakening it seemed as
though men slept, the world slept, the church
slept.
Ministers seemed to be asleep in their duties
and Christians slept in the pew.
Before the Great Awakening for many years there
had been complaints of the absence of powerful
conversions and of general decline.
Let me just give you one quotation from
Dr. Increase Mather who in the year 1721
was 82 years old.
He remembered the first days of New England.
He could remember the preaching of Thomas Shepherd
and John Cotton and these other men.
And as an old man of 82 this
is what he wrote in 1721.
Conversions he said have become rare in this
age of the world.
They that have their thoughts exercised in discerning
things of this nature have sad apprehensions that
the work of conversion has come to a
stand.
During the last age scarcely a sermon was
preached without someone being apparently converted.
And sometimes hundreds were converted by one sermon.
Who of us now can say that we
have seen anything such as this?
Clear sound conversions are not frequent in our
congregations.
The great bulk of the present generation are
apparently poor, perishing and if the Lord prevents
not undone.
Having been for 65 years a preacher of
the gospel I feel as did the ancient
men who had seen the former temple and
wept aloud when they saw the latter.
Well that was 1721.
And for another 20 years these conditions continued.
Samuel Blair writing in Pennsylvania in the year
1739 said that religion lay as it were
a dying and ready to expire its last
breath in this part of the visible church.
And then suddenly just as a mighty rushing
wind the spirit of God disturbed the churches.
And the sleep was ended.
Men awoke, awoke to the law of God,
awoke to eternity, awoke to the wonder of
salvation.
And within a space of months there was
this enormous movement of men and women pressing
into the kingdom of God.
Both in the middle states, in New England
and moving southward right down into Georgia.
I remind you again of that great book
by Archibald Alexander, The Log College.
He tells the story how William Tennant crossed
over from Ireland in the year 1718.
How he founded a little log college in
Pennsylvania, trained his sons, four of them for
the ministry and trained several others.
And these men became the leaders of the
awakening in the middle states.
And there were of course others, Jonathan Edwards
in 1740 was 37 years of age.
George Whitfield was 24, he was here on
his second visit from England.
And these men and others were used in
this great spiritual harvest.
Before I pass on let me just make
this one comment.
I think one sees in the great awakening
the care that God took to reserve the
glory to his own sovereign grace.
If you read some of the books on
the great awakening you would get the impression
that that awakening was due to the extraordinary
influence of one or two great leaders.
But that is not the case.
When George Whitfield was preaching here in New
Jersey in 1739 in November, preaching sermons which
had been greatly used elsewhere, there were no
influences apparently accompanying his preaching.
None of these men were uniformly able to
influence men, not so.
Jonathan Edwards in the month of May in
1741 preached in his own church at Northampton.
He preached a sermon entitled Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God.
I expect many of you have heard of
that sermon.
But not because he preached it in Northampton.
When he preached it in Northampton there were
no visible consequences of his preaching.
One month later in Enfield Connecticut he preached
the same sermon.
And that day in Enfield was a day
similar to the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
Men and women cried aloud to God and
it was the beginning of a great revival
in that part of Connecticut.
Again, possibly the most extraordinary blessing in the
whole Great Awakening occurred in Boston in the
late 1740s and it occurred under the preaching
of Gilbert Tennant.
Now the extraordinary thing is that Gilbert Tennant
was never in Boston in 1740.
He belonged to the Middle States.
He knew no ministers in Boston.
He had no acquaintances there.
He had recently in his own home been
bereaved by the death of his wife.
And yet through a combination of circumstances he
was led to go to Boston.
And an unknown, unexpected stranger, though he was,
the preaching of Gilbert Tennant in Boston in
1740 was as it were a high watermark
of the great work of the Spirit of
God.
And when that work of the Spirit was
over, these same men, more mature, these same
men were not able to see again the
great harvest which had come in those years.
God reserved the glory to his own sovereign
power.
Now I mustn't stop on that but there
are a number of very striking stories that
could illustrate it.
There were men who had preached the gospel,
the Orthodox faith, preached it for 20, 30,
40 years before the Great Awakening and who
had seen very little fruit and bearing testimony
in the Great Awakening that they saw more
conversions in one week than they had seen
in 30 years.
There are many quotations to that effect.
Let me just give you one illustration.
There was a minister by the name of
Peter Thatcher who was pastor of Middleborough in
Connecticut.
He was ordained to the ministry in 1699
when he was 21 years of age.
40 years later he was still the pastor
of Middleborough but he was deeply discouraged and
he had come to the conclusion that his
work was done, he had seen no fruit
for some while and he was in the
course of seeking out a text from which
to preach his farewell sermon.
It was when he was going through these
exercises that Gilbert Tennant returned from Boston on
his way back to Pennsylvania and he came
through Middleborough.
He stayed the night with Thatcher and Thatcher,
old man as he then was, recounted to
Tennant the trials and the difficulties and the
decision that he had come to about severing
his pastoral tie with his church.
But Gilbert Tennant told him the news of
what was happening elsewhere in New England and
he exhorted him to pray and to look
for the outpouring of the spirit to change
these conditions and then Tennant preached for Thatcher.
Well, there were no apparent results from Tennant's
preaching except that in the course of the
months that followed members of the church revealed
their dislike at the manner of Tennant's preaching,
searching and pungent and to the conscience.
Six months later, Thatcher, who was still there
and now praying, arranged with a ministerial friend
a special day of prayer and this was
held early in October.
This, he says, was our errand to the
throne of grace to ask for the outpouring
of the spirit on this dry fleece.
At the end of that week, there was
a marked increase of seriousness in his congregation
and the following Monday, a visiting preacher came
and preached from, I believe it was Romans
chapter 1 and the 18th verse.
And this is what Thatcher says about that
day.
When the sermon was over, he gave an
exhortation to the people and then dismissed them
with the benediction but the people refused to
leave the church, the majority being under profound
conviction of sin.
He says, I have written accounts of 76
that day struck and brought first to inquire
what they should do to be saved.
This inquiry awakened many.
There were many professors of religion whose lamps
went out.
They discovered there was no oil of true
grace in them.
They tell us how they see now what
they never saw before, their original guilt and
actual sins and fear of the dreadful wrath
of God.
This filled them with unutterable anguish.
They seemed to be stepping into hell and
this drew trembling fear and cries from them.
They complained of hard hearts and blind eyes.
They complained that they had never seen before,
that they cannot believe, that they find their
hearts full of enmity to God, to Christ,
to His holiness, to His word and to
His saints.
And scores this day told me of their
hatred to me above anyone.
This state of conviction continued for many weeks
and about the end of November of the
same year, 1741, some 200 persons appeared to
be awakened.
Most of them, says Thatcher, carried on in
the birth.
In the next year, 170 were added to
the membership of the church.
Now that figure, I believe, is representative of
what was happening in many churches in the
colonies at that time.
It is estimated that something like 50,000
were added to the church membership of the
churches of New England.
That, of course, is not including those who
were already members and unconverted before the revival.
In all the colonies, something like 300,000
or more were brought in.
And when you think of the total population
of that time, it means that a vast
number, a vast percentage of the total population
was brought into the kingdom of God.
Or certainly brought under the power of the
gospel.
Now I pass then from the Great Awakening
and bid you to read more of it,
1740 to 1744.
And I think the fact that these revivals
can be dated so underlines the sovereignty of
them.
Whatever men did after that year, they could
not reproduce those conversions, the evident power of
the Spirit of God.
God then gave the increase and the dates
we know to this time.
There then commenced this rather long period to
the 1780s where there was no general revival.
But there were some particular local revivals and
I want now to refer you to one
of them.
In Hanover County, Virginia, there were a small
group of settlers in the early 1740s who
belonged to the established church, the Church of
England, which of course was the only authorized
church in Virginia, the Old Dominion.
These people, through books, came to know the
gospel.
Some of them read Luther's Galatians and others,
one man in particular, was awakened by reading
Thomas Boston's Fourth World's Day.
Finding that the truths that they had read
were not preached in the churches, they began
to meet themselves on the Lord's Day.
Not one of them had the gift of
preaching.
So they read.
A certain man by the name of Samuel
Morris was appointed the reader and he would
get hold of a sermon, perhaps by Whitefield
or perhaps by another.
And through the reading of these sermons in
Hanover County, there was the beginning of a
true revival.
People heard of conversions.
They asked Morris to come and would he
read his sermons to them.
And within a few years, there were four
meeting houses established in that area.
Now these Christians, as they were, did not
know any denominational name.
They at first called themselves Lutherans, simply because
they thought so much of Luther on Galatians.
But when they heard a little more about
18th century Lutherans, they dropped the name Lutheran.
I expect some of you know the story
how they actually got their denominational name in
the end.
The governor of Virginia summoned the leaders to
Williamsburg.
They were to give an account of their
separation from the church established by law.
And on the way to Williamsburg, they were
detained by a violent storm.
So that they put into a house and
they stayed there, I'm not sure if it
was the whole night, certainly for many hours.
At any rate, while they were in this
house, one of them picked down from a
shelf an old dusty volume and was astonished
to find in it the very truth which
they believed but set out in a way
that was apparently so clear and beautiful that
they felt there was no better confession of
their faith in the world.
The owner of the house didn't want the
book so they took it with them to
Williamsburg.
And when the governor demanded of what persuasion
they were of and what their denomination was,
they handed the book as their confession of
faith.
Well, it was a good book.
It was the Westminster Confession of Faith.
And the governor had some knowledge of Presbyterian
Scotland and at once he dubbed them Presbyterians.
And so from that year, they were Presbyterians.
Well, the first pastor that they had settled
amongst them was Samuel Davies who came to
Hanover County as a young man in the
year 1748.
We sang last night that beautiful hymn which
Davies wrote.
I think we have in Britain a version
which is possibly more original than your version,
I'm sorry to tell you.
But we sing Great God of Wonders, all
thy ways are matchless, godlike and divine but
the fair glories of thy grace more godlike
and unrivaled shine.
Well, if you compare those words with the
words in the hymnal, I would suspect that
they are probably nearer to Davies but they
both tell, of course, the same glorious truth.
Great God of Wonders, all thy ways are
matchless, godlike and divine.
Well, Davies' preaching in Hanover County was accompanied
by the outpouring of the Spirit of God.
Within a few months, for example, there were
a hundred Negroes that were added to the
congregation as hearers and within three years forty
of these were baptized and brought into the
church and others followed later.
Davies ministered in Hanover County.
It was his only ministry until 1759 and
he died just two years later at the
age of 37 in 1761.
He was a burning, eloquent preacher.
I just want to give you a few
of his words so that you can catch
a glimpse of the man.
He is writing a letter to the Bishop
of London and he is writing it to
justify their separation in Virginia and to answer
certain criticisms which the Bishop of London had
circulated and had written to Philip Doddridge.
Now I can only give you a few
words.
For my further vindication, my Lord, I beg
leave to declare that in all the sermons
I have preached in Virginia I have not
wasted one minute in exclaiming or reasoning against
the peculiarities of the established church.
I have not exhausted my zeal in railing
against the established clergy in exposing their imperfections
or in depreciating their characters.
No, my Lord.
I have matters of infinitely greater importance to
exert my zeal and spend my time and
strength upon to preach repentance towards God and
faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ to alarm
secure in penitence to reform the profligate to
undeceive the hypocrite to raise up the hands
that hang down.
These are the ends I pursue and if
ever I divert from these to ceremonial trifles
let my tongue cleave to the root of
my mouth.
He then goes on to declare that he
made no effort to win over any true
Christian from the Church of England and he
would rather that men were made members of
the church triumphant in the regions of bliss
by the preaching of a minister of the
Church of England in a Presbyterian church.
But it was his distress that the clergy
of Virginia did nothing to prepare men for
eternity.
I find that the generality of them as
far as can be discovered by their common
conduct and public ministrations are stupidly serene and
unconcerned as though their hearers were crowding to
heaven and there was little or no danger
that they address themselves to perishing multitudes in
cold blood and do not represent their miserable
condition in all its horrors.
Do not alarm them with solemn, pathetic, affectionate
warnings and expostulate with them with all the
authority, tenderness and pungency of the ambassadors of
Christ to a dying world.
I find that their common conversation has little
or no saving favor of living religion.
That instead of intense application to study or
teaching their parishioners from house to house, they
waste their time in idle visits, trifling conversation,
slothful ease.
The plain truth is a general reformation must
be promoted in this colony by some means
or other or multitudes are eternally undone.
And I see alas but little ground to
hope for it from the generality of the
clergy here till they be happily changed themselves.
This is not owing to their being of
the Church of England as I observed before
for were they in the Presbyterian Church or
any other, I should have no more hopes
of their success but it is owing to
their manner of preaching and behavior.
This thought my Lord is so far from
being agreeable to me that at times it
wracks me with agonies of compassion and zeal
intermingled.
And could I entertain that unlimited charity which
lulls so many of my neighbors to their
serene stupidity.
It would secure me from many a melancholy
hour and make my life below a kind
of anticipation of heaven.
I can boast of no high attainments my
Lord.
I am as mean and insignificant a creature
as your Lordship can well conceive me to
be.
But I dare profess that I cannot be
an unconcerned spectator of the ruin of my
dear fellow mortals.
I dare avow my heart at times is
set upon nothing more than to snatch the
brands out of the burning before they catch
fire and burn unquenchably.
And hence my Lord it is that I
consume my strength and life in such great
fatigues in this jangling ungrateful colony.
There is one thing that Davies did which
I must mention.
In the year 1753 he crossed over to
Britain with his spiritual father who was Gilbert
Tennant.
Tennant and Davies went together.
And you may read the full account of
their visit in Samuel Davies journal.
And if you want to know where to
find his journal let me tell you and
I hope you will get it.
A man by the name of William Henry
Foote F-O-O-T-E wrote a
book called Sketches of Virginia.
It's a great big book of about 700
pages written 150 years ago perhaps but reprinted
just a few years ago by the John
Knox Press of Richmond, Virginia.
Sketches of Virginia by W.H. Foote and
that has in it a great deal of
detail on these revivals and a great deal
on Samuel Davies and others.
I recommend it to you and especially to
ministers but to all who enjoy reading of
these great events.
I think it may still be in printed
but certainly printed within the last five or
six years.
Now Davies then went with Tennant to Britain
and the purpose of their visit was to
raise funds to establish a college in New
Jersey.
Towards the end of the 1740s a college
was indeed inaugurated.
It was called the College of New Jersey
but it was very small and struggling.
It desperately lacked funds so these two great
preachers were sent over to Britain to raise
support and Davies writes in his journal how
he was doing this not simply for the
present but with the prayer to God that
in years to come it might bear fruit
and it did.
The college of course was established.
It was Princeton College built in 1756 and
was for many years the largest college structure
in America.
The College of New Jersey became Princeton College.
Ten years after Samuel Davies' death dying in
1761 ten years later at the beginning of
the 1770s there was a remarkable effusion of
the Spirit of God in Princeton College.
It seemed to be confined as it were
almost to the college.
The result of that revival was that of
the graduating class of the year 1773 there
were 29 men in the graduating class.
Three of these men became governors of states.
23 of them became ministers of the gospel.
23 out of 29 and of the 23
four became presidents of colleges.
One became president of Dickinson College at Carlisle.
Another about whom I must now speak became
president of the College of Hampden-Sydney.
But through that revival as Foote says in
the book that I've just mentioned to you
through that revival the fruits of the power
of the gospel were scattered across the states.
Now let me turn then to one of
these graduating men of 1773 in Princeton John
Blair Smith.
John Blair Smith.
I wonder how many of you even know
his name.
And yet he was a great spiritual leader
as I hope we'll see.
His father was Robert Smith and his father
had been converted under the preaching of George
Whitefield.
And there were three sons and the three
sons went into the ministry of the gospel.
One was to become president of Princeton College
later and this one John Blair Smith went
south into Virginia.
He was licensed and ordained to the ministry
in Virginia in 1779 and he became pastor
of the churches at Brewery and Cub Creek.
I like those names and I hope perhaps
one day I should be able to see
them.
Perhaps some of you people know them.
But Brewery and Cub Creek I hope to
mention them again later this week.
But as well as becoming pastor there he
was made the president of the college of
Hamden, Sydney.
That was a Presbyterian college nearby on the
borders of Charlotte County and Prince Edward County
and so he accompanied he combined these two
duties.
Pastor and president in the college.
Now evidently from the beginning of his preaching
John Blair Smith was a powerful preacher.
Somebody who knew him said there was more
fervor and animation in his preaching than was
common in those days.
But still same writer for some years his
preaching seemed to take no effect.
There was no awakening of sinners a rousing
of cold professors nor reclaiming of backsliders.
Well when he had been in Virginia for
just a few years the War of Independence
began and everyone who writes on this period
bears witness to the fact that spiritually the
War of Independence set back the work of
the gospel.
The Lord's Day of course was almost forgotten
in the battlefields and the military operations which
took place in Virginia.
Infidelity seemed to grow the principles of the
French philosophers were introduced at this time very
widely and after the War of Independence in
the late 1780s there was a general condition
of coldness and deadness on every side.
A cold and lukewarm indifference was manifest in
all the ministrations of the gospel throughout all
that region says an eyewitness.
Well the college at Hampden-Sydney was a
microcosm of this deadness.
There were 80 students in the college and
of that 80 there was not one who
was known to be in any way serious
or thoughtful upon the subject of religion.
They were generally says one of them later
they were generally very vicious and profane and
treated religion and religious persons with great contempt
and ridicule.
But although there were none who were known
to be religious of that 80 there were
one or two in whom there was already
spiritual concern.
One of these was a young man whose
name I do not recall but he had
a friend who lived nearby the college and
would go home at weekends and this friend
had a sister and this young man asked
that he would make a request at home
that he might borrow some book to help
while away his hours and this sister sent
back a book it was Alain's Alarm to
the Unconverted.
Now when the book came back into this
boy's hands he immediately locked it in his
trunk because he was desperately alarmed that someone
would see him reading a book with such
a title.
But he still was intrigued to read it
and one day having shut his door and
got alone he got out the little volume
and began to read it.
But he hadn't read a great deal before
someone burst through the door and he threw
the book aside on the bed but the
man who had come in had seen that
he was reading something and picked it up
and at once he asked him whatever are
you reading a book like that for?
Well this student says he was torn by
temptation to laugh it off and to avoid
the truth but instead of doing that he
confessed to the student who had broken into
the room he confessed that he was somewhat
concerned to know the truth of these things
and as soon as he said that the
reaction of this other student was very unexpected.
This is what he said.
The other student who was from North Carolina
said that before he left home he had
been a church member but when I came
here among these wicked students I locked up
my Bible and abandoned my profession forsook my
God and turned my back upon my Savior
and so here were two students confessing their
need to one another and within a matter
of weeks there were three or four more
who were added to their number so they
arranged that one Saturday afternoon this little group
would meet to pray and they did so
this one Saturday I think they went somewhere
far out in the woods but the next
Saturday was threatening rain so they took a
room in the college carefully locked the doors
and had their time of prayer or at
least they were in the midst of their
time of prayer when there was a great
hammering upon the door.
Some of the other students had heard what
was going on but people were actually praying
and they cursed and swore and kicked the
door and within a short space of time
there was quite a riot in the college.
Two of the professors were hurriedly called and
the students were dismissed to their rooms and
the president John Blair Smith who didn't live
in the college of course knew nothing of
this or the cause of it until the
evening when he came to take college prayers
and after prayers were over he asked a
reason for the tumult and the uproar in
the college that afternoon and there was silence
and then some of the leaders of this
mob came forward and they said that some
of the students had shut themselves up in
a room and were singing and praying and
carrying on like Methodists.
And to stop they said to stop this
disturbance they had tried to break up the
meeting.
Now John Blair Smith was overcome with amazement
he knew nothing of any serious students being
in the college at all.
Someone who was there said the president's eyes
filled with tears.
It was the first intimation he had that
there was such seriousness in the college.
After a short pause he said and has
it come to this?
Is it possible some of my students are
under religious impressions and determined to serve their
saviour and is it possible that there are
such monsters of iniquity in this college sons
of Belial who dare set themselves against such
things who will neither serve God themselves nor
suffer others to do so?
And after other words of exhortation he told
these students that they could meet again the
following Saturday but that he would be pleased
to meet with them and that they would
meet in his parlour and that any others
who wished might attend.
The following Saturday these students very nervous at
the idea of praying in the company of
the college president they came to his parlour
and to their surprise there were others there
too.
He called upon them each to pray and
after they had prayed he gave a word
of exhortation.
Within two weeks or thereabouts fully half the
students of the college were present at this
Saturday prayer meeting apparently deeply impressed and under
conviction for their sins.
Deep impressions and concern were general throughout the
neighbourhood.
In the meantime I should have told you
that the congregations at Browrie and Cub Creek
had been earnestly praying for outpourings of the
spirit and by this was in the end
of the year 1787 at the beginning of
the year 1788 there was evidence of a
general outpouring of the spirit not only in
the college but in the local congregations and
within a matter of months for over an
area of about a hundred square miles.
W.H. Foote says there was a general
awakening in Prince Edward, Cumberland and Charlotte counties.
The professors of religion awaked as from sleep
and put on the armour of godliness.
Some declared themselves convinced that their former profession
had been a lifeless one and professed conversion
anew.
John Blair Smith's father came down a man
who had known the great awakening and this
is what he wrote after he had seen
what was happening.
The half had not been told me of
the display of God's power and grace among
them, no not the tenth part.
I have seen nothing equal to it for
extensive spread, power and spiritual glory since the
years forty and forty one.
The work has spread for over a hundred
miles amongst people of every description, high and
low, white and black, rich and poor, learned
and unlearned, orthodox and heterodox, young and old,
especially amongst the youth whom it seems to
have seized generally.
Two hundred and twenty five hopeful communicants have
been added to the Lord's table among John
Blair Smith's people, that was in the local
congregation, in the space of eighteen months.
Such sweet singing I never heard in all
my life.
I have seen a hundred wet cheeks, some
deeply penetrated with convictions, some fainting with love
sickness as it were in the arms of
the Saviour, and others rejoicing for the day
of God's power and grace, and all under
the same sermon.
And he goes on at greater length to
describe this amazing revival.
You can read the full account in the
book that I mentioned by W.H. Foot,
Sketches of Virginia.
Now, this was the year then, seventeen eighty
eight, and it proved to be, not a
local revival, but the beginning of a whole
era of public powerful spiritual awakenings.
In that same year, seventeen eighty eight, there
was a student by the name of James
McGreevey, who had just completed his studies in
Pennsylvania.
His home was in North Carolina.
On his way back from Pennsylvania, he passed
through Hampden, Sydney, the college here, at the
height of the revival.
The result was that when he began his
ministry in North Carolina, he began it as
a man preaching in the same spirit, with
the same conviction, as John Blair Smith and
these others.
Well, he was forced to leave his church.
He was threatened with death, I think, his
church.
If I remember rightly, it was even burned.
At one time, he was written letters in
blood, and within a few years, he crossed
the mountains, down into Kentucky, and settled in
Logan County, in Kentucky, in 1796.
From 1797, James McReady, and the two small
charges he had in Logan County, encouraged his
people to pray for the outpouring of the
Spirit of God.
In the year 1799, there were signs of
true revival in that congregation.
He said, in the summer of 1799, about
this time, a remarkable spirit of prayer and
supplication was given to Christians, and a sensible,
heartfelt burden of the dreadful state of sinners
out of Christ, so that it might be
said with truth, that Zion travailed in birth
to bring forth her spiritual children.
This travail ended in the year 1800 with
the beginning of what is rightly called the
Great Revival.
It began in Logan County, Kentucky.
McReady says, the overflowing floods of salvation, which
the eternal, gracious Jehovah has poured out upon
us like a mighty river.
Let me give you just one description of
one service.
The power of God seemed to shake the
whole assembly.
After the congregation was dismissed, the solemnity increased,
till a greater part of the multitude seemed
engaged in a most solemn manner.
No person wished to go home.
Hunger and sleep seemed to affect nobody.
Eternal things were the vast concern.
Here, awakening and converting work was to be
found in every part of the assembly.
I should of course have taken a little
time to say something on the state of
Kentucky and Tennessee and these parts before the
revival.
It is probably familiar enough knowledge to many
of you.
The people that went there did not go
to settle there.
For the sake of the gospel, they were
money greedy, they were land grabbing, they were
speculators.
The whole area was occupied by such persons.
And yet it was in the midst of
that, that this great awakening began.
From Kentucky, the revival was found in Tennessee,
then in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and
for about five years this work of engathering
went on.
No one can say the multitudes who entered
the church.
There seems to be clear evidence that the
numbers were enormous.
In the western district of Tennessee for example,
3,000 members were added in the year
1802 only to the Methodist churches.
3,000 in one area of Tennessee.
One man who was visiting Kentucky in 1802
he said, I found Kentucky the most moral
place I had ever been in.
A religious awe seemed to pervade the whole
country.
In South Carolina, a minister defended the revival
on these grounds.
He said that the principal fruit of this
work is a holy, upright life.
Now, I think that our time has gone.
Let me just say as I close that
in preparing these lectures I had to look
again at the great revival of 1800, the
Kentucky revival as it's sometimes been called.
Some of you will know that that revival
was accompanied by extraordinary phenomena.
People were seized with fear.
Men collapsed.
There was a phenomena known as the jerks
when those who were opposers of the gospel
coming under the sound of the truth were
unable to control themselves and shook and quivered.
And sometimes these signs and accompaniments were magnified
and fanaticism was thereby encouraged so that they
were able to that shook and trembled was
supposed to be under the influences of the
spirit.
But when all that has been said and
when all that needs to be said by
way of discriminating criticism has been said, there
is no doubt of the fact that the
revival of 1800 was an enormous movement of
the spirit of God that brought thousands upon
thousands in the south into the kingdom of
Christ.
Well as you see I've only progressed about
half way through our 120 years but we
have reached a good point at which to
break off.