F OR the last three or four weeks the newspapers—or many
of them, for some have taken no notice—have been full of accounts of what are described as " great religious revivals." There has been a revival in Wales ; there is a revival going on at present in the North of England, chiefly at Liver- pool; and we are now promised a great revival in London itself. The story of the successive awakenings of enthusiasm among the people who have attended the revivalists' meetings is a little striking. The movement seems to have begun, not very many weeks ago, in the discovery by a young Welshman named Evan Roberts that he could get together and move the emotions of congregations of miners and colliers ; he believed that he had himself been suddenly con- verted, and be wanted others to share the blessings he had found. He does not seem to have the gift of great eloquence —indeed, at some of his most successful meetings he has only actually spoken a few words—but evidently the miners want to hear what he has to say, and are stirred by the marching music of the hymns they sing; besides, there have been many meetings held at which Evan Roberts has not been present, and the fervour of the congregations has been unmistakable. And whatever may be the truth—it is difficult to appreciate from reports precisely what happens at meetings of this kind— as to the methods by which these appeals are made to the emotions, one thing appears to be perfectly clear, that the lives of the men who have come under the influence of this movement have, at all events for the present, altered for the better. Many men are said to have given up drinking,—it is even stated, though we doubt the figures, that the output of the breweries in the district has decreased by forty per cent. Some of the younger men, indeed, are actually said to have given up football! To those who have only seen football played as it ought to be played, as a manly if necessarily a rough game, that no doubt looks ridiculous enough ; but remember that in these days money has secured an extraordinarily strong grasp of professional football—the services of fast, strong, clever players are bid for and bought year by year by the different clubs, precisely as racing men buy horses—and when money begins to make itself felt as an influence in game-playing queer and extremely strong hatreds are certain to be aroused. It is, as a fact, nothing very wonderful that the Welsh revivalist converts should have fixed on football as played to-day as one of the pursuits which ought to be given up. They may be ill-balanced in suddenly deciding that their " pastime " is wicked ; but if they honestly think so, the fact that they give it up is the main point to take into account.
The Welsh revival somehow does strike a note of clear sincerity. Its effect, if it is to have a lasting effect, cannot yet be judged. But whatever the effect may be, one point seems to stand out plain enough, that those who have held the revivalist meetings in Wales have not done so with any idea of obtaining notoriety. Evan Roberts, it is to be gathered from a letter written to a friend by the Bishop of Durham (who evidently is impressed by the genuineness of the Welsh revival), has refused an offer "to
" is a grand note of reality." But in the form of revival which followed Evan Roberts in England, which has clearly made a considerable impression on Liverpool, and which is meant to make a great impression in London, is there exactly a " grand note of reality " ? There may be, perhaps there is ; and when we hear that the two revivalists who have so affected the corporate life of Liverpool, that they have actually been entertained at luncheon by the Mayor, have engaged the Albert Hall for a consecutive number of meetings arranged for two months, and have planned a subsequent "campaign" in South London, it is just as well to remember that very much the same kind of thing was done by Moody and Sankey thirty and twenty years ago. Quiet Englishmen naturally are inclined to distrust movements preceded by the blare of advertisement, and to doubt whether there is not some latent mischief in the hiring of great buildings at great expense in order to preach the teaching which cost, not money, but life, when Christianity first fired its apostles. It is stated that no less a sum than seventeen thousand pounds, of which twelve thousand have already been subscribed, will be needed to carry out the objects of the revivalists in London. The Albert Hall cannot, of course, be hired for nothing ; and the idea of erecting a temporary building to hold six thousand people, in the South of London, may look to some as if the revivalist regarded his mission from rather too practical a point of view. But the most dubious of onlookers still might remember that Moody and Sankey, whose mission, without doubt, was an influence for good among the classes to which appeal was made, hired the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket for six weeks thirty years ago. John Wesley's meetings were held in the open air, it is true; and we need not necessarily classify the present revivalist meetings with those from which Methodism took its birth under. the leadership of a scholarly preacher who left Oxford because he knew he had a mission to the poor, and who spent the thirty thousand pounds which he got from his writing among the poor he loved. But for all that, the revivalist meetings, organised in public buildings and paid for in the ordinary course of business, as such meetings must be paid for if they are to be held in large towns, have as yet done no apparent harm, though they might do harm, because hysteria is dangerous ; and that they have done real good is obviously believed by those who have had an opportunity of being present in person at the meetings.
And, after all, although large numbers of quiet people will never like theonoise of brass bands and tambourines, the.work which has been and is being done by what is to all intents a permanently revivalist body, the Salvation Army, cannot be denied a high value on the whole. Forty years ago, when the Salvation Army first came into a small existence, under the name of the " Christian Mission," there was almost savage criticism of the work it undertook ; and for forty years there has been, and even to-day there is, a considerable body of opinion which greatly dislikes shouting and drum-beating combined with religious work. But as evidence of the value of a certain kind of music, and the rhythm of marching, considered as helps towards enlisting the attention of people who will not listen, or at all events have not listened, to anything else, the work of the Salvation Army stands secure enough. It has been the means of reaching thousands of minds unattraeted by other teaching ; and as to money, it has collected and spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, on the whole, to very good purpose,—a purpose officially recognised by the Committee of Inquiry (Lord Onslow, Lord James, Mr. Sydney Buxton, and others) which sat in 1892. The Salvation Army has gained its own name and place by now; but it is still perhaps as well not to forget that it was helped to do so by official inquiry into its methods, and that there is no a priori reason why another body working on the same lines should not be equally successful.
We have, it is true, a certain distrust of religions move- ments which cost very large sums to bring into working action, because the great religious movements of history have been spontaneous and self-sacrificing; and many would urge that no better work has been done among the poor than by the ill-paid clergymen who minister in the great districts of the East End of London, and in Glasgow and Manchester and the other large towns. Still, it is a plain enough fact that great meetings cannot be held in public buildings without paying for the use of the building ; and if the extreme aim of the preacher is to collect great crowds of people and to work on their feelings in the mass, it is easy to see that in addressing large bodies of town people money must be collected and must be spent. In any case, the great test of all movements of this kind remains the same,—the test of time. Time has already discredited, and will always discredit, extravagant hysteria. But the deep conviction of the converts of John Wesley's meetings may have been mistaken by contemporary writers for hysteria, and the Salvation Army, with all its accompaniments of sheer noise, has justified its name. It may be that the movements of to-day will gain as sound a justification ; but even if their work does not per- manently remain, still if they have brought into stormy and sad lives even a glimpse of what is great and clean and good, they will at all events have done something.
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