Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/390

 376 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

It was general in southern New England and marked by the fact that it was mainly the work of the churches by themselves without any one great leader or much use of professional evangelists. The common opinion that the depression that fol- lowed it was due to the Civil War does not seem to rest on much evidence when we study it comparatively. It simply fol- lowed the usual trend. And it was the only great revival that immediately followed a great financial disturbance.

5. The increasing length of time from one revival to another is worthy of some attention. Between the first and second of these four revival years it was 11 or 12 years. Between the second and the third it was 15 years, and then 19 to the revival of 1877. And we must then count ^ years or more to the present. Is this to be the trend? Have modern means of com- munication, the more general and better education of the people, their lessened willingness to accept those old forms of doctrine which were the working forces of the old-fashioned revival, and the greater dependence on some great leader with the central assembly and the large expenditure of money with elaborately organized machinery, made the old-time revivals less frequent and more difficult? Are there also psychological reasons for this increasing length of time between revivals?

May better knowledge of social forces and of psychological principles, while enabling the modern revivalist to effect his objects more intelligently, at the same time make a larger num- ber of people more critical and less ready to be "hypnotized" as some are now putting it?

6. The general figures for the revival of 1877 are significant of another possible change. The totals for the five years pre- ceding 1877 are to those of the following five years including the larger additions of the revival year about as 20 to 21. The Congregational ists of Massachusetts seem to have been losers by that revival of 2,757 in the additions of the quinquennial period including the revival year as compared with the preceed- ing five years, and other denominations seem to have fared but little better. Conditions are silently changing. A half-century and more ago many people looked forward to the next revival