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Untitled Article
school-room , then separated a& 4 placed o # different seats * according to their presumed character of '^ converts * " or " anxious , " or " unconcerned , " and then addressed with language ; imagined to be suited to their several conditions . Comparisons were made $ the anxious were pointed to the happy
converts , who of course ; would feel flattered by so enviable a distinction ; the careless , or those presumed to be so , were pointed to the anxious ; copgratu . lations , warnings , and denunciations , were scattered about with an effect as terrible as if they had been " fire-brands , arrows , and death ; " there were tears and sighs and groans enough to break the heart of these young creatures , and the whole school was convulsed with raptures and fears and ae-onies . And vet the clergyman grained credit- and the school lost none .
Turn we now to a few of the recorded effecte of these odious excitements . On this head something has already been said when we were tracing an outline of their rise and progress . Schism in the church , and broils in the family , are evils to counterbalance which no good 9 as far as we can see , can possibly arise from revivals . But these are not all . Dr . Beecher himself speaks thro
of his Revivalist brethren asdriving " the whirlwind of their insane piety ugh the churches with a fury which could not be resisted , and with a desolating influence which , in many places , has made its track visible to the present day . " Again , " Davenport , disregarding the general consequences of his conduct , and intent only on its immediate result , though he saved a few , doubtless entailed moral desolation and darkness and death upon thousands
of unborn generations . " Of the revival that took place in Troy , in 1816 , Mr . Brenan himself asserted , that there « c were but eighty received into the church , and of that number forty were now under church censure . " In the article in the Congregational Magazine to which we have before referred , mention is made of the town of Northampton , in New Hampshire , United States , which has been visited , during the ministry of one person—a period of sixty years—with five revivals , in each of which the majority of the young people of the town were concerned for their eternal salvation . Yet what were the results ? The successor of the Revivalist minister states , that
" licentiousness greatly prevailed among the youth in the town ; that the youth of both sexes would often spend the greater part of the night in frolics ; that their indecency was often apparent in the house of God ; and
that the town was divided by a spirit of contention . " We are further informed that , after the last of these harvests , as they were termed , " came a far more degenerate time than ever before . " Revivals , however , went on under the second as well as under the first minister . Accordingly , some time after a second harvest , the pastor was informed that some young persons , members of his church , had books in their possession which they employed to promote lasciviousness and obscene discourse . Inquiry proved
the report to be true , and that there were but few of the considerable families of the town to which the delinquents were not more or less nearly related . The discovery of these shameful proceedings so alienated the people from the minister , that he was dismissed by a vote of the church , after having served the congregation fourteen years . The writer from whom we have drawn these facts adds , with great propriety , •« With this deplorable issue of the revivals at Northampton before us , let us wait at least the expiration of fourteen years before we confidently pronounce our decision on the nature
of any religious movement that may come before us in the shape of a revival , and with apparent marks of an extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit . " The great mischief of these Revivals is , that every thing is distorted by
Untitled Article
562 The Watchman *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1829, page 562, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2575/page/42/
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