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"The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century" by Edwin Paxton Hood is a classical book that covers the revival period in Britain. This skillfully written piece of work gives you a perspective of that period. The author in this book, sheds more light on the culture and civilization of that time and how this revival period changed the society. Edwin Paxton Hood does an excellent job of describing the circumstances leading up to and surrounding John and Charles Wesley's as well as George Whitefield's missions. The chapters were initially published as vignettes in the Religious Tract Society's weekly magazine, The Sunday at Home.
Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines. The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society underwent the New Birth. Virtually every New England congregation was touched. It is safe to say that most of the colonists in the 1740s, if not converted themselves, knew someone who was, or at least heard revival preaching. The Awakening was a critical event in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the colonies. The colonists' view of the world placed much importance on conversion. Particularly, Calvinist theology viewed the bestowal of divine grace as the most crucial occurrence in human life. Besides assuring admission to God's presence in the hereafter, divine grace prepared a person for a fullness of life on earth. In the 1740s the colonists, in overwhelming numbers, laid claim to the divine power which their theology offered them. Many experienced the moral transformatoin as promised. In the Awakening the clergy's pleas of half a century came to dramatic fulfillment. Not everyone agreed that God was working in the Awakening. Many believed preachers to be demagogues, stirring up animal spirits. The revival was looked on as an emotional orgy that needlessly disturbed the churches and frustrated the true work of God. But from 1740 to 1745 no other subject received more attention in books and pamphlets. Through the stirring rhetoric of the sermons, theological treatises, and correspondence presented in this collection, readers can vicariously participate in the ecstasy as well as in the rage generated by America's first national revival.
God's accomplishments through George Whitefield are to this day virtually unparalleled. In an era when many ministers were timid and apologetic in their preaching, he preached the gospel with zeal and undaunted courage. In the wake of his fearless preaching, revival swept across the British Isles, and the Great Awakening transformed the American colonies. The previous two-volume work George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival is now condensed into this single volume, filled with primary-source quotations from the eighteenth century, not only from Whitefield but also from prominent figures such as John and Charles Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, and William Cowper.
Interpreting the Great Awakening of the 18th century was in large part the work of Jonathan Edwards, whose writings on the subject defined the revival tradition in America. This text demonstrates how Edwards defended the evangelical experience against overheated zealous and rationalistic critics.
Joseph Tracy (1793-1874) was an American Congregationalist minister. His careful research draws together all the available contemporary sources to give a fascinating insight into the events surrounding the awakening that took place throughout New England in the eighteenth century. The immense roles played by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield are inevitably prominent, but all the other characters and the parts they played are also featured. It is estimated that between twenty-five and fifty thousand were converted during this period, from the local revivals in the 1730’s through the more extensive and widespread blessing of the early 1740’s and beyond. Tracy does not shirk the need to examine the aberrations and excesses that marked the revival in some parts, nor the controversies that raged between the friends and foes of the revival. From these, important lessons may be learned even now by all those looking for significant blessing on their ministries.