THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
away from him could be nothing but misery, the love of God constituted a claim upon the man which could not be ignored — all of which considerations Moody urged with great power and pathos, guided by the instincts of a great heart, aflame with love to God. He preached particularly to despairing sinners, sinners who knew they were such and who could not believe that the grace of God was meant for them. Probably his greatest sermons were upon this general topic.
5. General "View of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Besides the revivals of the year 1800 and the years immediately following, it should be noted that the period of the Unitarian controversy in New 1. In England (1S19 sqq.) was also one of
General, revival. During the first thirty years of the century the Presbyterians increased fourfold in membership, chiefly by revivals, the Congregationalists twofold, the Baptists threefold, and the Methodists sevenfold. In the six years from 1S26 to 1S32 it is estimated that 200,000 people united with the leading Evangelical churches, of whom 60,000 were young men. The financial panics of 1S37 and 1857 were followed by revivals, the latter of great power. The Millerite excitement of 1S43 (see Advextists) produced a reaction unfavorable to revivals. But after 1857, for two years there was a general revival all over the country, conducted for the most part by pastors through their regular ministrations, having its chief expression in prayer-meetings, which brought in about 300,000 into the churches. The period of the Civil War was unfavorable to revivals; and it was not till 1874 that the current was reversed in connection with the great revivals under Moody, George Frederick Pentecost (q.v.), and others. The decade from 1870 to 1880 saw an increase of 3,392,567 communicants in Evangelical churches, among the best in the history of American Christianity. Nothing is more remarkable in the whole history than the revivals in colleges. Among recent prominent revivalists are to be mentioned B. Fay Mills, Sam Jones, and Sam Small, William A. Sunday, R. A. Torrey, and J. Wilbur Chapman (qq.v.).
F. H. Foster.
In the perspective of revival history during the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, three persons, Benjamin Fay Mills, Reuben Archer Torrey, and J Wilbur Chapman (qq.v.), all clergymen, appear as leaders in a movement especially noted for the prominent part taken in it by the laity. They all owe their stimulus in their special work to Dwight L. Moody (q.v., and see above), with whom they were early brought into close touch. They borrowed from him their message — plain, Scriptural, urgent, made effective by a fiery conviction, feathered by anecdote, incident, and experience, and unfettered by labored argumentation or the embellishments of rhetoric.
The first of these, Benjamin Fay Mills (q.v.), was a classmate at Lake Forest University, 111., of Chapman, with whom also for a time later he was associated with marked success in revival campaigns. He be;ran his evangelistic work in 1886,
and for ten years continued in it uninterruptedly, visiting many of the principal centers of population in the United States and Canada. His main and immediate dependence was a popular 2. Benjamin address to the masses assembled, in Fay Mills, which he was a master; but back of that, Mills may be said to have been the first to have " organized success." His one outstanding method was his " district combination plan " by which cities were divided into sectionr over which a network of services was spread. He was systematic, taking time and pains to prepare by arousing interest, enlisting support, and forming and multiplying prayer-circles. And then when the blow was struck in his Gospel appeal he drew the net by his card-signing device, which he was the first to introduce, thereby securing immediate decision. For the time in which Benjamin Fay Mills gave his fine talents to the work of soulsaving, few men have been more honored of God.
Next to him, an evangelist of commanding personality is Reuben Archer Torrey (q.v.). The rise of Torrey goes back to the founding 3. Reuben in 1889 at Chicago of the Moody Bible Arc er Institute, the purpose of it being a thorough and practical study of the English Bible. His close, personal connection with Moody in this Bible work made him, like Moody himself, a " Bible-man." Torrey is distinguished above both Mills and Chapman by a thorough mastery and use in revival work of the Bible in the vernacular. That Bible Institute, under Moody, Torrey, and others, became a veritable " powerhouse " in the great World's Fair campaign in Chicago in 1893. And since then, out from its Bible atmosphere Torrey himself has gone forth on many a revival enterprise, notably in the instance of his recent English mission which was marked by such intense interest, not, however, without much antagonism on the part of some non-conforming clergymen who took exception to his hyper-orthodoxy.
But the foremost of the three named is J Wilbur Chapman (q.v.). He is the product of a wider environment, and therefore reaches out 4. J Wilbur in influence to a larger periphery. He Chapman, was early associated with Moody both as vice-president of the Bible Institute and in evangelistic work. His pastorates were a gymnasium where he was put in training for the noblest athletics, that of bringing sinners to God — in Albany, N. Y., where in one revival he harvested more than 100 souls, including some of the leading men of the city; and later in a steady revival fire, gathering in more than 500 converts in five years; in Philadelphia, adding 1,100 to the membership of the church in three years; and in New York, when he resigned the pastorate, in 1902, to become head of the Evangelistic Committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
His subsequent record is brilliant. His famous Boston campaign, for magnitude, power, and permanence of results, is without a parallel in this country. Early in 1910 he returned from evangelistic journey around the world, in which he visited