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19 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Revivals of Religion
old woman in one of the houses, not now on Christ's side. ` Ah, that must be it,' she said. The two friends went up-found the woman in concern for her soul. Mrs. Jones herself visited her; she became one of the fifty-one [converts] in that marvelous fortnight.
" She had visited several villages near her home during the dark nights. The light, she said, had frequently accompanied her-not a terrifying light, but gentle and calm, just showing her way as she walked." " The problem," concludes Mr. Lewis, " still remains unsolved. But there can be no reasonable doubt of the appearance of these lights, at the time and place. Afterward they grew, no doubt, into a sort of foolish cult. Some, from mischief, made lights appear where Mrs. Jones went to conduct missions; at other times natural lights were taken to be extraordinary. But the earlier phenomena stand by themselves-possibly natural, but in any case abnormal. There still remain to be explained their association with her movements and their alleged clairvoyant signs."
It must be said that these phenomena have in some quarters been exaggerated out of all pro portion to their importance in the revival. The part that they played was comparatively insignifi cant. GwiLYM OswALD GRIFFITH.V. The Roman Catholic Mission: " Mission " is a term applied by Roman Catholics to efforts which are the equivalent of the Protestant " revival," consisting of efforts directed to reclaiming those within the territory of the Church who have been estranged from religious observances. There was no need for this sort of work until, with the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, large numbers of pagans came in, and, with the conversion of the Teutonic races, the Church was further increased by multitudes who were only superficially affected by the Christian spirit. The earlier penitential institutions no longer sufficed. When, in 1215, the duty of confession was made universal, the idea of legal satisfaction, made prominent by the hierarchical tendency, was a hindrance to real pastoral work, and neither the monks nor even the friars found the right road to successful pastoral influence. Only small communities, like the Brothers of the Common Life (see COMMON LIFE, BRETHREN OF THE) at the end of the Middle Ages, devoted themselves with real thoroughness and love to the cultivation of an inner spirit of Christian piety. It was the Reformation which stirred the Roman Catholic Church to make strong efforts to confirm the wavering and reclaim the wanderers. The Jesuits (q.v.) were the most zealous instruments of this movement for restoration among the upper classes, and the Capuchins (q.v.) among the lower. The movement first gained strength in France, where the bishops had kept up a tradition of personal acquaintance with the spiritual state of their dioceses. It was furthered by Vincent de Paul, who, in 1616, began his work in behalf of the galley-slaves, and at Folleville in the next year preached the desirability of general confession with such fervor that he was obliged to call in the Jesuits from Amiens to help him with the crowds who came. Ultimately he founded the Congregation of the Mission, or Lazarist order (see
LAzARIBTs), to promote not only education and missions among the heathen but also similar efforts in Christian lands. A new impulse was given by the congregation of mission-priests founded in 1815 by the Abbd Legris-Duval, expressly devoted to this particular work. After the upheaval of 1848 the German episcopate made frequent use of missions to reclaim the estranged masses; they were usually preached by Jesuits and Redemptorists (qq.v.), sometimes by Capuchins and Franciscans (qq.v.), and by the two latter orders from 1872 to 1894, when the two former were excluded from the Empire. [In the United States missions have become a regular part of the ecclesiastical machinery, held at intervals in most of the larger parishes, by Jesuits, Augustinians, Dominicans, Passionists, Paulists (qq.v.), and other orders.] They last two or three weeks, after careful preparation of the ground by the parochial clergy, and consist largely of frequent stirring sermons on sin, repentance, judgment, and Christian duties, leading to the reception of the sacraments of penance and communion, and closing with the solemn renewal of the baptismal vow by the whole congregation. There can be no difference of view between Protestants and Roman Catholics as to the duty of the Church to preach the Gospel not only to the heathen but also to lukewarm and nominal Christians. But there may well be a question as to whether this rapid succession of exciting sermons, accompanied by appeals to the emotions in external ways, is really calculated to produce lasting fruits rather than simply to bring the people into obedience to ecclesiastical precepts, especially confession. It is doubtful whether the constant striving after effect, the rhetorical declamation, the exaggerated pictures drawn of the evils and the punishment of sin, and the appeal to fear can well be productive of real moral renewal.
BIBLIOGRAPBY: To be taken into account are (1) the articles in this work on the men named as revivalists in the text. especially those of Edwards, Lyman Beecher, Tyler, Finney, Spring, Taylor, Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, Torrey, and others; (2) the works by those men which deal with the subject (e.g., Edwards' Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion, and Narrative of the Work of God in Northampton); and (3) the literature under the articles on these men, which often discusses the revival activities of the subjects.
Treatises on the general history of revivals are: W. B. Sprague. Lectures on Revivals of Religion, New York, 1833; C. G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, Boston. 1&35, new ed.. London, 1910; J. Gillies, Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of Success of the Gospel. Preface by H. Bonar, London, 1845; B. Tyler, New England Revivals, as they Existed at the Close of the 18th and the Beginning of the 19th Centuries, Boston, 1846; E. Porter, Letters on the Religious Revivals which Prevailed about the Beginning of the Present Century. Boston, 1858; H. Humphrey, Revival Sketches and Manual, New York, 1859; W. Gibson, The Year of Grace: a Hiat. of the Revival in Ireland, 1869 A.D., Boston, 1860; J. H. Vincent, Hist. of the Camp Meeting and Grounds at Wesleyan Grove, Boston, 1889; Mrs. M. N. Van Cott, The Harvest and the Reaper: Reminiscences of Revival Work, New York, 1876; C. L. Thompson, Times of Refreshing: Hist. of American Revivals, Chicago, 1877; W. W. Bennett, Narrative of the Great Revival in the Southern Armies during the Civil War, Philadelphia, 1877; J. Porter, Revivals of Religion, New York, 1878: S. C. Swallow, Camp Meetings: their Origin, Hist., and Utility; also their Perversion, New York, 1878; H. Bushnell, Building Eras in Religion, New York, 1881; C. F. Jones, From the Forecastle to the Pulpit; fifty ;'ears