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CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

HERE is reason to think that the interest felt

in the Evangelical Revival of the last century,

after declining for awhile, is again steadily increasing. It may be said that this quickened interest is but part of a larger intellectual movement, of a reaction, in which we have passed from undue disparagement of the eighteenth century to an exaggerated estimate of its importance and value. Nor is it likely, when eighteenth century forms of literature, philosophy, and social life are being studied with so much sympathy, that the most prominent event in its religious history would escape attention.

There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole account of the matter. The fact is, and we are continually being reminded of it, the consequences of the Revival are by no means exhausted. We are not yet at the end of its manifestations; and though some of its later forms have new and striking features of their own, their relation to the original movement is attested both by historic descent and by inward resemblances and affinities. So long as this is the case, and the Revival, or Reformation, of a century and a half ago is still amongst the living forces that influence society, the interest with

B

which its rise and progress are regarded will continue. Active Christian spirits will seek to understand and respond to its newer developments; and others, whether in sympathy with those developments or not, will be obliged to take account of them, and assign them, as far as possible, to their true succession and order.

In addition to its direct, historical consequences, moreover, time is continually discovering or suggesting remoter and more complicated results of the Evangelical Revival, thus rendering the study of the whole question at once more difficult and more attractive. What were its real relations, if any, to the teaching of Coleridge, the points of agreement and divergence, of attraction and repulsion between it and that original and influential mind, to which so many, who in their turn have influenced the course of religious thought in England, have confessed themselves supremely indebted 2 What is the connexion, revealed both by resemblances and by contrasts, between the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century and the Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic movement of the nineteenth, between the Oxford of John and Charles Wesley and the Oxford of Keble' and Pusey and Newman? What has the Revival contributed to the gradual but unmistakable change that has come over the theology of the Calvinistic Churches ; and, again, to the progress of democracy in Church and State? As regards some at least of these questions, it is too soon to look for precise and final answers; but their relevance will be admitted, and the evidence

by which they must be determined accumulates from year to year.

While the interest in the Evangelical movement is thus reinforced from various quarters, time, in the exercise of its kindliest office, has removed a principal hindrance to a fair appreciation of it. Justice is now generally done to the character of its leaders, and the existing differences of opinion as to the value of their work are, for the most part, differences of which there is no need to be ashamed. It is no longer necessary to vindicate their memory from ignoble charges of fanaticism, hypocrisy, or ambition. To slander Wesley,

or to ridicule Whitefield, has ceased to bring profit or to give pleasure to any one. Hardly a month passes but a monument is erected, a eulogy pronounced, a tribute paid to one or other of the men who, a hundred and fifty years ago, brought new life to the English Church and nation. Their reputation is not now a charge upon the loyalty of particular bodies of Christians, at once doing battle for themselves and for the character of their fathers and founders; they belong to the Churches, which are many, to the Church, which is One, and their names are in the keeping of the general company of Christians far and near.

And this change from the strife and bitterness of former days has come about, as such changes are wont to come, not so much by valiant advocacy or successful disputation, as by the sure working of God upon the hearts of men, enabling them to "discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth

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