The GOSPEL TRUTH

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN REVIVALS

by

Frank G. Beardsley PH.D, S.T.D.

1912

Chapter 13

 

THE PERIOD OF THE CIVIL WAR.

 

The Great Revival did not allay the sharpness of the controversy over the slavery question. In the fall of 1859 the famous raid of John Brown occurred, and a year later the election of Lincoln to the Presidency brought the issue to a crisis. The Southern States seceded soon after and formed the Confederacy. The North still hoped for a peaceful adjudication of the difficulties which imperiled the life of the nation, but that hope was dissipated by the attack on Fort Sumter. From that time until the fall of Richmond and Atlanta, war with its scenes of carnage and disaster raged between the two sections. 

Such conditions could not fail to affect profoundly the religious life of the nation. In some communities every male church member capable of bearing arms was at the front fighting for his country. Many who were thus called away perished in battle, while others became demoralized through the deleterious influences of camp and army life, and were lost to the churches. The war was the topic of the day, the theme of conversation, and its items filled the columns of the public press. Stirring news of battle and tidings from the front absorbed the attention of the people. But the excitements of the time did not cause any appreciable decline in the life of the churches. Multitudes of church records throughout the Northern States testify to the fact that there was not only no diminution in religious interest, but that on the contrary church and Sunday School attendance greatly increased. Where able-bodied men had gone to the front, the aged, the women, and the children filled their places and maintained the work of the church with unflagging energy and undiminished zeal. 

Not only were the churches at home well cared for, but earnest efforts were put forth for the religious welfare of those who were at the front, endangered not only by the perils of war, but by the temptation to immorality, laxity, intemperance and vice, more or less incident to army life. Among the important agencies for this purpose was the Christian Commission, formed in New York City, November 14, 1861, at the call of the Young Men's Christian Association. The work of this Commission has been summed up as follows: "From November, 1861, to May, 1866, this Commission disbursed, both for the benefit of the patriot soldiers of the Union and for the Confederate wounded that fell into our hands, the sum of $6,291,107. We employed 4,859 agents, working without recompense, an aggregate of 185,652 days. These agents held 136,650 religious services and wrote 92,321 letters for the soldiers. They gave away 1,466,748 Bibles (in whole or in part), 1,370,953 hymn-books, 8,603,434 books or pamphlets, 18,189,863 newspapers and magazines, and 30,368,998 pages of religious tracts. They also greatly assisted in the operations of the Sanitary Commission, which expended in the same time $4,924,048, making an aggregate, by the two, of $11,215,155, poured out as a free-will, offering by a grateful country for the moral and physical welfare of its brave defenders."*

* Dorchester's Christianity in the U. S., p. 688. 

In religious zeal the South was not one whit behind the North. In July, 1861, the Evangelical Tract Society, corresponding to the American Tract Society, was organized at Petersburg, Va. It published a religious paper for soldiers, and put into circulation during the war 50,000,000 pages of tracts. The various denominational publishing houses, private individuals, and the Bible Society of the Confederate States, formed in March, 1862, engaged in the work of circulating tracts, religious papers. Bibles, etc. There is no means of obtaining accurate statistics of this work, but thousands of dollars were expended, and millions of pages of religious literature were put into circulation. Missionaries and colporters were employed to assist the chaplains in ministering to the religious needs of the soldiers. 

By the use of such means and the co-operation of praying officers a revival commenced, which became so extensive and powerful as to be termed the "Great Revival in the Southern Armies." 

The battle-field and camp may seem a strange place for a revival of religion. Instances there are on record of a praying soldiery. Many eminent commanders, like Washington, Wellington, Havelock and others, have been devout and earnest Christians. Cromwell's "Old Ironsides" who went into battle praying and chanting Psalms are often referred to. But a revival in an army actually engaged in deadly warfare was an occurrence hitherto unknown in history. The influences of the camp are not favorable to the cultivation of the virtues and graces of religion. There is little disposition to promote meekness, humility, faith, and love, which constitute the chief elements of the Christian faith. The tendency is in the opposite direction. Young men entering the army are withdrawn from the restraints of home, the presence of praying parents, the influences of church and Christian society, and are subjected to the temptation of a thousand vices. Gambling, drunkenness, lewdness, profanity, and a spirit of recklessness are the besetting sins of army life. The dangers incident to warfare and the carnage of battle, instead of being aids to sober reflection, often promote an indifference to religion and a spirit of recklessness respecting this present world and that which is to come. Religion, soldiers often admit, may be adapted to the pursuits of peace, but not to the murderous arts of war, and so the drift is towards godlessness and irreligion. 

In spite of these unpromising conditions a revival of unusual power broke out, and extended from post to post, and from camp to camp, until there was scarcely a regiment or company in the Southern Army which was not affected by its gracious influences. The first tokens of this work appeared in the autumn of 1861 in the armies encamped about Richmond. The scenes of battle often served as impressive lessons and from the hospitals there came expressions of deepening interest on the part of those who had been wounded. From the hospital the revival spirit was carried back to the camp and each new convert became an evangel to bear the gospel tidings to others. The story is told of one who had been converted in the hospital and on his return he invited any who might be interested to join him in a prayer meeting. Five were present, and from that little gathering a work was inaugurated which resulted in more than a hundred conversions. 

As the revival extended from company to company, from regiment to regiment, from brigade to brigade, and from camp to camp, it increased in intensity and power. After Lee's invasion of Maryland and the battle of Sharpsburg, there was a manifest increase in the religious interest of his army, occasioned no doubt to some extent by a sense of the perils which they had so narrowly escaped. 

The first glimpses of the revival in the West were seen in the year 1863, in the army of the Tennessee, where a work was inaugurated, during the progress of which some thousands were converted. By midsummer the awakening had become general throughout the Confederate armies. At Fredericksburg and in the armies encamped in its vicinity there were gracious quickenings. Even the troops in beleaguered Vicksburg were visited with seasons of converting grace. 

Christian Associations and Associations of Chaplains were organized in various parts of the field to promote the religious interests of the soldiers. Such organizations were of great value in furthering the revival. But the crying need of the hour was more workers. "Truly the harvests were plenteous but the laborers were few." The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, issued an appeal to their churches for men and means to carry forward this work. The response to this and similar appeals was prompt and hearty. The missionary boards of the various churches were enabled to employ missionaries and colporters to assist the regimental chaplains in the work of evangelization. Sermons were preached, tracts were distributed, inquiry meetings were held, and the soldiers were dealt with personally in regard to their spiritual welfare. To this work the Presbyterians sent fifty-three missionaries, the Baptists about sixty, and the Southern Methodists a score or more. 

So general did the revival become that there was scarcely a position in which the soldiers might be placed where its spirit was not felt. In the camp, on the march, and on field of battle, tokens of converting grace appeared. The entire atmosphere of the army was greatly changed. In place of the oaths, coarse jests, and impure songs, so common to the camp, prayers and praises and songs of Zion were heard. 

The Richmond Christian Advocate in describing the work said: "Not for years has such a revival prevailed in the Confederate States. Its records gladden the columns of every religious journal. Its progress in the army is a spectacle of moral sublimity over which men and angels can rejoice. Such camp meetings were never before seen in America, The bivouac of the soldier never witnessed such nights of glory and days of splendor. The Pentecostal fire lights the camp, and hosts of armed men sleep beneath the wings of angels rejoicing over many sinners that have repented." 

The revival eventually extended to the remote Southwest, to the armies encamped in Arkansas. It was in this section of the field that Army Churches were established by Rev. Enoch Marvin, who afterwards became a bishop of the M. E. Church, South. 

The plan and purpose of such churches is learned from the following: Articles of Faith and Constitution of the Church of the Army, Trans-Mississippi. 

The Christian men of the army, believing that the habitation of God by his Spirit constitutes the Church, agree, for the edification and conversion of their fellow-men, to organize the Church of the Army, with the following articles of faith and constitution: 

I. We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience. 

II. We believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the same in substance; equal in power and glory. 

III. We believe in the fall of Adam, the redemption by Christ, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit 

IV. We believe in justification by faith alone, and therefore receive and rest upon Christ as our only hope. 

V. We believe in the communion of saints, and in the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments.

The Christian men who have been baptized, adopting these articles of faith and constitution, in each regiment shall constitute one church; who shall choose ten officers to take spiritual oversight of the same. 

Of the officers so elected the chaplain, or one chosen by them for that purpose, shall act as moderator. 

The officers will meet once a month, and oftener if necessary; and in the exercise of discipline will be guided by the direction of Christ. They will keep a record of the names of all the members and the manner in which their ecclesiastical connection with this church is dissolved. 

The institution of these army churches proved a source of great good. A Methodist presiding elder, who was an associate chaplain, in writing of their value said: "Soon after the organization of these army churches in the various regiments, we were visited by a gracious revival, in which hundreds were converted and gathered into these army churches. My position as presiding elder on two large districts since the war has given me large opportunity to compare the results of the work in this organization. My conviction is that a much larger percentage of the converts in these army churches have remained faithful than is usual in ordinary revival meetings."*

* Bennett's Great Revival in the Southern Armies, p. 378. 

By January, 1865, it was estimated that 150,000 soldiers in the Southern Army had been converted during the progress of the war. At this time it was believed that more than one third of all the soldiers, both officers and privates in the Confederate armies, were praying men. In times of peace this revival would have been accounted an extraordinary work of grace. The occasion, the circumstances, the events, combine to make it one of the most remarkable religious awakenings in the history of American Christianity. The subjects of the work were men, soldiers under arms, engaged in one of the most deadly and calamitous wars of all history. Under ordinary circumstances the camp and battle-field would have been considered the most unfavorable conditions for a revival of religion, but in this revival the very influences which otherwise would detract seemed to be used by Providence for the promotion of this truly wonderful work of grace. 

The surrender of Lee at Appomattox, and Johnston at Greensboro, put an end to the war and also to the Confederate Republic. 

As the Great Revival of 1857 had prepared the Northern States for this struggle which convulsed the nation and threatened its overthrow, so too we may look upon the revival in the Southern armies as a providential preparation for the defeat which overwhelmed them. The South had staked its all and had lost. Plantations were laid waste, homes were broken up, educational institutions had been suspended, their buildings destroyed and their endowments swept away, churches had been desecrated and their services discontinued, fortunes had vanished, in fact the ruin and desolation of the South seemed complete. It is difficult to conceive how the South could have borne up under the dire calamities which had visited it had it not been for the influence of this revival, since men never stand so much in need of the consolation and sustaining power of religion as in the dark hours of adversity. Were it not for the hope which faith inspires they would be plunged into the abyss of despair. But reconstruction came and from the ashes of the old a new South has arisen to fulfill its destiny and carry out its divinely appointed mission. 

During the war Rev. A. B. Earle, D.D., came into prominence as an evangelist of national reputation. He was born at Charlestown, N. Y., in 1812, and commenced preaching at the age of eighteen, continuing in the active ministry almost to the time of his death in 1897. After a brief experience in the pastorate he entered the evangelistic field. Although he was a Baptist by choice he labored chiefly in union revival services. During the war he conducted successful revivals in Boston, Fall River, and, Springfield, Mass.; Concord, N. H.; Biddeford and Saco, Me.; New Haven, Conn.; Washington, D. C, and at various other places in New England and the East. 

The winter of 1866-1867 was spent on the Pacific coast, where it was estimated that five thousand persons were converted under his labors. From the various cities visited, expressions came of the great good which had been accomplished and the marked changes wrought in the morals and habits of the people through these revivals. 

In his use of methods Dr. Earle was eminently judicious. His preaching was directed to the intellect and will, rather than to the emotional elements of man's nature. As a consequence his labors were seldom if ever followed by any unfavorable reaction, which is so often the case with perfervid revivalists. He insisted upon the prayer of faith as the indispensable condition to a revival. During his earlier labors he employed the "anxious seat," but afterwards used the "inquiry meeting," in dealing with seekers. During his long career as an evangelist Dr. Earle witnessed the conversion of more than 150,000 persons. 

During the war Rev. E. Payson Hammond, D.D., also attained to prominence in the evangelistic field. After his graduation from Williams College in 1858, and a partial course of study at Union Theological Seminary, he went abroad and for a time prosecuted his studies at Edinburgh. In connection with his student life he supplied a church at Musselburgh, where a revival of considerable power attended his labors, as a consequence of which his services were called into requisition in various portions of England and Scotland. 

In 1861 Mr. Hammond returned to America and while the war was in progress conducted notable revivals in various cities throughout the Northern States. In each of the following cities -- Rochester, Newark, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia -- there were more than a thousand conversions. Often the interest was so great as to overshadow the news of war. Mr. Hammond was ordained as an evangelist by the Presbytery of New York in January, 1863. 

Since the war Dr. Hammond has prosecuted his evangelistic labors with untiring energy. Besides several trips abroad, he has visited nearly every important city in the Union, preaching the gospel with the fervor of an apostle and winning multitudes to Christ. He has been especially successful in reaching children and has written several small volumes on the subject. 

In the North and South alike the war had drawn the different churches closer together. Since the war the trend has continued towards Christian unity, not organic unity, to be sure, but that mutual fellowship and mutual toleration of differences which makes possible great Christian enterprises and causes the Kingdom of Christ to draw nigh apace. 

The return to peace was accompanied by evils of no small magnitude. Immorality, luxury, extravagance, speculation, intemperance, and crime became so frequent and so violent that the periodicals of the day referred to these conditions as the Carnival of Crime. But with the readjustments which followed the return to peace, a new era was inaugurated, which has been characterized by Christian activity, church extension, and revivals of great depth and power in which the laity have borne no inconspicuous part.

 

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