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252-6»
REVIVALISM.
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BY
MONCURE D, CONWAY,
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, FINSBURY,
Sunday, April 4.TH, 1875.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
��REVIVALISM.
Finsbury, April ¿ph, 1875.
It would seem to be the attitude of wisdom to
preserve a cautious respect for popular movements,
a respect that holds many of them at a respectful
distance, and never plunges into any. ’Tis said
the finest wine is pressed from vintages that grow
on fields once inundated with lava. So far we must
respect the lava. But the wine does very little good
to those who lie buried in the lava; and if there be
any religious lava bursting out and streaming
around to-day its far-off results will benefit only
those who keep out of its way. I do not deny that
some good has been reaped in the past from periods
of religious excitement. They have broken up the
old routine; they have set the sultry air in motion;
they have ended that stagnation which is death,
even though the life they substituted might be of a
poor kind. A change in the religious atmosphere
is healthy. In the 55 th Psalm it is said that the
�4
Israelites forgot God because they had no changes ;
and we may still say that where there are no
changes the people suffer by moral fossilisation,—
and a forgetfulness of the true import of their own
dogmas. . Travelling recently in Yorkshire I sat
in the same carriage with an affable merchant, and
our conversation fell on the American revivalists.
This merchant did not like them. He said, “I
don’t believe in this religious excitement; I don’t
believe it brings men to the Saviour.” I remarked,
“ And yet, when one comes to think of it, some
of the doctrines taught us are of rather an ex
citing character. You and I are going to Bradford :
now if we had this moment a divine revelation
that to-night at one o’clock all Bradford was
to be burnt up, and everybody in it burnt unless
they fled the town, surely that would justify some
excitement. It would be only reasonable if, when
we arrived there, we should rush through the streets
shouting to the people and warning them to leave
a place doomed to be burnt. Yet the burning of
Bradford and everybody in it were a small cata
strophe compared with the everlasting fires into
which they are to be plunged unless they are con
verted. If the common doctrines of God’s wrath
and the eternal hell are true, surely we must admit
that the American revivalists are right in raising
�5
some excitement about the matter.” When I had
thus spoken the merchant seemed to disappear into
a shell. He looked out of the window and said he
thought we should have more snow. But not
another word about the revival could I get from
him. I suppose that he is the type of millions of
well-to-do people who find it an easy part of
conventional life to accept a dogmatic system,
but never dream of realising its import. They
hate to have that which they accept for the
sake of ease turned into a source of uneasiness.
What such call their religion is simply a decent
kind of selfishness. The revivalist is a better type
of man.. He has at least the sense to see that if his
dogma be true it is a tremendous truth, and that to
complain of his excitement—to bid him be quiet
about it, is as if you asked a mother to be quiet
when her child has just fallen overboard.
The main thing about this revival, as it is called,
is its character as a confession made by the churches
and chapels of their own long incompetency and
unreality. A few of us have for some time been
telling them that they were mere pretences, that,
unconsciously or not, dogmas were on their lips
which did not correspond with their easy-going
lives, that they had a name to live but were dead.
We told them that men who believed the masses
�6
to be pouring into Hell ought never to rest another
hour, but run through the streets, and cry aloud,
like the prophets of old. When we said it, it was
called infidelity; but now these revivalists are
proving it. They preach with determination dog
mas ordinarily covered over with decorum; and
every preacher, every noble lord, who appears on
their platform, confesses that hitherto he and his
church or chapel have been uttering words without
sincerity or heart. Moreover, they have come—
these revivalists—among a population of sectarians,
each professing to hold the salvation of man above
all things, yet each preaching his own church
before all. These men have kept their sect in
the background, and they have made it evident
that the people have got tired of sectarianism, and
feel that the question of party is an impertinence
in the presence of the overwhelming and eternal
issues presented by the fundamental doctrines of
each and all. This is a step forward, for if it were
not for the partisan spirit engendered by sects and
their rivalries, the dogmas themselves could not
survive the light of one clear day.
But in itself this revival is an anachronism, a
grotesque attempt to galvanise into activity a thing
that is dead. That fact is indeed shown in the arts
employed for the work. They are arts borrowed
�H
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from the stump and the music-hall.
The chief
revivalist is a man who while preaching among
the Germans in Chicago found that they preferred
to pass their Sunday evenings in beer gardens
where entertainments went on, to coming to his
chapel, and he hit on the plan of making his
services a rival entertainment. He got a good
singer, he borrowed the popular ballads, set them
to hymns, told comic stories and Western anecdotes, caught the tricks of the stump-speaker, and
succeeded in getting up an amusement for Sundays
which did not reach the Germans, but did attract
others not so free in their ideas of Sunday.
But this plagiarism from the world was a con
fession that his doctrine could not stand alone.
The world had got the start, and he could only
move forward by linking his chapel on to it,
adopting its minstrelsy and its methods. They
have been remarkably impartial in their appropria
tions of poetic literature. For instance, I once gave
a discourse in a Unitarian chapel in America
on the text “ Nothing but leaves.” A lady of
liberal views who belonged to the congregation
embodied the sentiment of the sermon in a little
poem which she sent me. The poem was printed
in the Unitarian paper of New York, and now Mr.
Sankey is singing it with great unction in Agricul
�8
tural Hall, without in the least caring- about its here
tical origin. Nor is his hymn “ Nothing but leaves ”
the only one which heresy has supplied. I only
wish there were more of them, for too many are of
the silly sentimental order.
However, it is in large part as an amusement
that many are attracted to the meetings. Beyond
the indifferent crowd which attends out of curiosity,
there are thousands who have never been allowed
the usual amusements. Nearly all of the dis
senting sects denounce theatres, music-halls, balls
and other places of entertainment; and there are
many thousands of young people who never
attended any such place in their lives. A religious
service which combines the features of a prayer
meeting with those of the concert and the negro
entertainment, a sermon which interlards piety
with Western slang and newspaper stories, must
present a powerful attraction to the starved tastes
of those poor victims of modern asceticism. But
what moves them is not that gospel which Dr.
Dryasdust has for years been preaching to them
without quickening their torpid pulses; it is an
infusion of life from that very world which the re
vivalist denounces while he utilises it. It is con
fessed that his dogmas in themselves have lost their
power ; that the world has outgrown them; that
�9
something new was needed. Of course it was
necessary that the new power borrowed from
worldly amusement should be tricked out in some
of the cant phrases and current dogmas of the past;
but the effect is that of new cloth patched on to old ;
the patch points out the threadbare condition of the
old cloth that had worn out, and needed mending.
And yet among the thousands who are drawn
by the novelty of this motley mixture of worldly
and pious things how many are the illiterate, the
weak minded, the unreasoning, who are brought
to the verge of insanity by it! The revivalists
claim to have converted vast numbers—no doubt
they have. But neither they nor we can yet see the
outcome of this excitement any more than they
who in a past century preached a crusade against
witchcraft could see the tragical result, as we see it
now. Unlike the movements of Wesley and Fox,
this excitement is against all the learning of this
age, it is an appeal to pure ignorance. With it
there is kindled a flame that may easily spread to
an epidemic fanaticism.
Just consider for a moment the astounding
anomaly of thousands of people in a state of
furious agitation and anxiety about the salvation
of their souls from the wrath of God and the
clutch of Satan ! This is not in ancient Persia
�IO
where Ormuzd was seen every night conquered
by a demon of darkness, and conquering him in
turn every morning. It is not in China, where
lately the goddess of small-pox was worshipped
and prayed to preserve the dying emperor, but
having failed to do so was flogged and burnt.
No, all this outcry to propitiate a barbaric deity is
here in the country of progress—in the age of
science. Messrs. Moody and Sankey are actually
in the same city with Tyndall and Huxley. Their
meetings go side by side with those of the Royal
Society.
Washington Irving has given us a type of
men who are behind the times in Rip Van
Winkle. While he slumbered the world went
forward many years, and when he awaked
and talked as if nothing had happened, it gave
rise to amusing situations. He declares himself
a loyal subject of King George, ignorant that
while he slept America had become a Republic,
and he is roughly handled as a traitor. But one
can fancy in these days a reverse picture. One
can imagine the fable of a man falling asleep
amid the civilisation of this period, and waking
up to find himself amid the Dark Ages. Instead
of railways he would find stage-coaches toiling
through marshes; he would be beset by highway-
�11
men at every turn; he would find a group of
clergymen burning heretics and witches, and when
he expressed his disbelief in witchcraft and claimed
the rights of conscience, he too would be burnt,
and perhaps he would not object to leaving such a
world as that into which he had relapsed. Now
if any reasoning and reading man or woman—any
believer in the science or student of the philosophy
of this age—wishes to pay a visit to the Middle
Ages, or even farther back, he or she has only to
go to the Agricultural Hall. Recently a Unitarian
entered their rooms for private inquiry, and told
the chief revivalist that he had difficulties of a
scientific kind about the Bible. “ Bah! ” replied the
revivalist, “if you want to save your soul you
must never mind what the scientific men say.”
That was quite logical, at any rate. This whole
revivalistic phenomenon is the result of not minding
what science says. It is the natural result of ignor
ing all the knowledge that has been accumulated
for a thousand years. Take away from us all
that we have learned in that time and we should
-all relapse into barbarians, cowering before every
phenomenon of earth or sky, feeling ourselves
waylaid by devils, and offering up the blood of the
Lamb literally to propitiate a divine enemy.
Now, there is considerable curiosity abroad about
�12
the state of mind underlying this movement. Those
who have been educated amid the liberal ideas
of the present day are so far removed from the
terrors, the experiences and operations going on
in these meetings, that it may sometimes occur to
them that there must be something real, something
novel, in these strange ecstasies. For the benefit
of such I will relate what I know about it. It was
my destiny to be born in a region where this kind
of excitement was almost chronic. Revivalists
swarmed, prayer meetings were kept up through
the winter, and I can hardly remember an evening
which was not passed by me in looking on at what
was called the “ mourners’ bench,”—a long bench
where men and women knelt to be prayed for,
and sung over, while they filled the air with their
shrieks for mercy. When the summer came the
leading Methodist families—of which my father’s
was one—went to dwell in the woods in tents.
About two weeks were there spent in praying and
preaching all the day long—pausing only for
meals,—and during all that time the enclosure in
front of the pulpit,—an enclosure as large as
this chapel—was covered over with screaming
men and women, and even frightened children.
For many years after I had become of a conver
tible age I was talked to by preachers and
�I
| prayed with, but could not feel the usual exciteIment which they called “conviction of sin.”
Finally I became very unhappy about it. Most
of my relations and young companions had been
converted, and I felt quite lonely and humiliated
that I had not the same experience. I felt that it
was something that had to be gone through with,
like vaccination.
And at last, during a very
vigorous revival, I went to the mourners’ bench,
resolved never to leave it until I had found all that
the others had. While I was there women came
and wept over me ,• preachers quoted Scripture to
me. Not one whispered to me that I should
resolve to be better, more upright, true, and kind.
Hundreds were converted by my side, and broke
out into wild shouts of joy. But I had no new
experience whatever. More than a week passed ;
every night of it I had knelt in silence from eight
until midnight amid wild scenes. I was not in the
least a sceptic. I believed every word told me.
Yet nothing took place at all. On a certain evening
I swooned. When I came to myself I was stretched
out on the floor with friends singing around me,
and the preachers informed me that I had been
the subject of the most admirable work of divine
grace they had ever witnessed. I took their word
for it. All I knew was that I was thoroughly
exhausted, and was ill for a week.
�14
When I got far enough in time away from that
proceeding to reflect on it, I began to perceive
that its explanation was to be found in physiology,
not in religion. And in the hundreds of conversions
which I subsequently witnessed, I observed that
they generally took place when the body was re
duced to the point of exhaustion. In the so-called
revivals which have been going on in this country
of late, we rarely hear of many conversions at first ;
it is after people have been going for a good many
nights in succession, when the nerves have been
weakened by late hours and unusual habits, that the
delirium sets in, beginning with a sense of depres
sion which results in a reaction. This reaction is
nature’s relief to the overstrained system, and it is
sometimes pleasant enough to be called conversion,
or finding Jesus.
Only utter ignorance of the simplest physio
logical laws can regard this process as having
anything religious or moral in it. On the contrary,
it has a demoralising effect on the individual; like
any other intoxication, its transient elevation is
generally followed by deep depression. The con
vert finds himself no better for having been con
verted, but somewhat worse. I have heard them
confess this in hundreds of cases in the experience
meetings which often accompany revivals. They
�Æ are told by preachers that it is a temptation of the
1 Devil, who is trying to get the soul back again in
-n his grasp. Vast numbers of the converts become open
j 11 backsliders ’’—that is the phrase—while others,
Ij having become members of chapels and churches,
I sink into conscious or unconscious hypocrisy, keeping
up as a heartless form and profession the pietism
which has no reality. The most sincere are those
who perpetually lash themselves into excitements,
and whose morbid condition becomes habitual.
That large multitudes of our people should con
fuse this kind of dissipation with true religious feel
ing argues a mental condition which is most de
plorable. It is the saddest social feature of our
time that, just as the people are advancing in
political power, they are showing themselves in
large part subject to the basest superstitions and
j the most irrational agitations. Any demagogue
I who undertakes to raise a convict into a martyr,
stands a chance of being followed to Hyde Park by
thousands of his dupes, and religious mountebanks
draw vaster numbers than the greatest teachers ot
science. In this ignorance have the people been
left by those who have for centuries held the seats
of learning and the centres of religious instruction.
They have not taught the people to reason ; nay,
they have discouraged reason. They have burned
�i6
in one age those who have tried to enlighten the
masses,—in another age have imprisoned them, and
even now denounce them. As they have sown
they shall reap. For the moment the revival is
mingled with snobbery. It was urged against
Jesus that none of the rulers believed on him, but
these revivalists have live lords and even a lordchancellor around them, and reserved seats for dis
tinguished people. No doubt some of these eminent
persons hope to control the movement for their own
ends; but it is far more likely to control them, and
to degrade wiser men. That which is bom of
one excitement may be swiftly turned by another to
other ends. I sometimes think that a terrible
Nemesis is yet to come from this mass of barbarism
on those who have permitted it to grow,—a retribu
tion which shall flame on the walls of society and
signify to all times and nations the danger that lies
in the propagation of superstition among classes
predestined soon to wield supreme power over
civilisation.
That which is raised up in the country by Revival
ism as religion is the reverse of all real religion. It
is the paralysing spirit of fear. The honest re
vivalist said last week in his sermon, “ If I did not
believe in Hell, I would go back to America to
morrow.” Of course he would. The mainspring
�4« of his movement would be broken. Yet, what is
more base, selfish,—what more essentially irreli«S gious than this yielding to terror of that which
at despised considerations of love or of principle?
Even the Catholic Madame Guion had learned the
grossness of this pious cowardice. She met in her
vision an angel bearing a furnace and a pot of
w water. “ Whither goest thou ? ” she asked. “ I go
w with this furnace to burn up Paradise, with this water
>1 to quench Hell, that men may hereafter love God
without fear, and without hope of reward.” As fear
■reverses the spirit of true religion, noise drowns its
true voice. The tendency of all progress in moral
and inward culture for ages has been to show the
highest power within man to be that which is most
-quiet. It is so in external nature. The fiercest
thunderstorm has not in its ¡lightnings so much
force as the little magnet that silently guides
the ship. The blaze of the sun, and all its colours,
-are not so potent as those rays which cannot be
seen at all, but in their latent power fix and photo
graph each object set before them. I have heard
of an inward kingdom that cometh not with obser
vation ; a power lost sight of when men cry “Lo,
here, and lo, there,” or cry “ Lord, Lord I ” I have
heard of a pure, a silent growth in the heart, akin
to that which clothes the earth with bloom, gliding
�18
softly from winter to spring, revealing in each first
the blade, then the ear, and the full corn in the ear.
But I have not heard that gentle unfolding of the
deeper nature hinted in any of the manifold revivals
I have witnessed. I do not doubt that the deepest
longing of thousands who attend these revivals is
for repose—repose for their tempest-tossed lives,
and for their passion tossed hearts. They seek
repose amid dogmas of danger and despair; dog
mas which would turn their Heaven itself into
horror for every good heart, which must feel
beneath it the abyss of woe. There is but one way
of repose for a humane heart. It is to be freed for
ever from these phantasms out of darkened ages.
But no liberating, no really saving word, shall you
hear in any revival meeting.
You shall have to wait long there to hear man
told of the path that leads from ignorance to know
ledge, from vice to virtue, from conformity with
vulgar creeds to freedom of mind—the only real
new birth of man. This ranting is about imaginary
dangers, their exhortation is to a fictitious salvation.
Every enemy is named that is no enemy; the ven
geance of God, the vengeance of Satan ; no word is
ever said of man’s only real enemy—his own ignor
ance, his animalism. So I turn from the revivalists
of Islington, and journey rather to the mount where
�*9
I p prophet stood, far away in, dim dawn of time, to
>Jearn what even Doctors of Divinity and Lord
ifchancellors it seems have not yet learned;_ As
[^Elijah sat on the mountain, behold a strong- wind
«¡brake in pieces the rocks, but the Lord was not in
rithe wind ; and after the wind an earthquake, but
d|the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the
^earthquake a flame, but the Lord was not in the
;Bflame; and after the flame a small, still voice. And
ijit was so that when Elijah heard the small, still
«voice, he wrapped his face in his mantle.
WATERLOW AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT WINCHESTER STREET, E.C.
�Smtfjj Jlhu (S^apH.
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN
THE LIBRARY.
BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
. . .
. n
t
PRICES,
The Sacred Anthology: A Book of *. i.
Ethnical Scriptures.............................. 10 0
The Earthward Pilgrimage
..
..
5
0
Republican Superstitions................................ 2
6
David Frederick Strauss................................ OS
John Stuart Mill..................................... 0
Sterling and Maurice
..
..
•.
2
0
Mazzini.................................................0
2
1
BY BABOO KESHUB GHUNDER SEN
The Theists’ Prayer Book..
..
..
0
3
True Faith....................................................... 03
BY HENRY N. BARNETT.
f *
Religious Enthusiasm
......
0
3
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Revivalism. Discourse delivered by Moncure D. Conway, South Place Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday April 4th 1875
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 19, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, Great Winchester Street, E.C., London. A list of the author's works available from South Place Chapel listed on back unnumbered page.
Publisher
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South Place Chapel
Date
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[1875]
Identifier
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G3331
Subject
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Christianity
Atheism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Revivalism. Discourse delivered by Moncure D. Conway, South Place Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday April 4th 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Morris Tracts
Revivalism