Student Revivals: Prayer, Unity, and Societal Transformation

I'm not emeritus, but I am a senior citizen. I went on Social Security earlier this year, and I sometimes wonder. My memory slips occasionally. I don't know if that's caused by going on Social Security. Do you remember reading of student riots on a certain campus in which four students were shot by the National Guard? If I said where did that happen, you'd say Kent State. Do you remember reading of an actual siege of a university building by the police against embattled students? It's only within this past decade. Columbia University. Do you remember riots in which students burned down the Bank of America? That was Isla Vista, Santa Barbara.

But do you ever remember reading where they took a poll at Harvard University and discovered that in this whole student body there wasn't one believer? They took a poll at Princeton and discovered only two believers, and only five that didn't belong to the filthy speech movement. Do you know that when the dean at a prominent Eastern university opened the Bible in chapel to read, a pack of playing cards fell out? Some smart aleck had cut a square hole through the beautiful pulpit Bible and fitted a pack of playing cards. This was Sunday morning chapel, and the students cheered. A mob of radical students marched on a Presbyterian church in New Jersey, took out the pulpit Bible, and burned it in a bonfire. At Dartmouth, the students and faculty put on anti-Christian plays. Williams College, they had a mock communion to make fun of Jesus Christ.

I didn't read about this. No, this happened in the 1790s. One of the troubles with the now generation is they say, what does history have to teach us? All that we went through during the student turmoil of the late 1960s, we went through in a similar way in this country in the 1790s. I want to talk to you about the movement of the Spirit of God among students. In the Scriptures, you won't find anything dealing with revival among students. Yet I find since universities and colleges began, there have been movements of the Spirit of God among students. And this is something we want to talk about.

Now during the bicentennial year, our hearts were warmed with memory of the good things that God has done for this country. But there's also a great deal of sentimentality. I heard a dear friend of mine, a converted movie actress, say it's about time that people realize that this country was founded by men of God and men of prayer, including Tom Paine. He was a blasphemer, a rascal, died in disgrace, including Thomas Jefferson. He was a gentleman, but he was not a believer. He was a deist. He wouldn't even let the neighboring pastor pray with him when he was dying. He didn't believe in prayer. A great statesman, but not a believer.

Oh yes, there were believers. George Washington prayed. We know he prayed at Valley Forge, and I'm quite sure he prayed on other occasions. And in fact, evangelical pressure forced Thomas Jefferson to write the word Almighty God into the Declaration of Independence. The first draft didn't have any reference to God. So Jefferson compromised. He spoke about God, the Creator, and nature's God, and so forth. That was deism. But the fact is that in the wake of the American Revolution, this country had a moral slump. Not because it fought for liberty, oh no, but because in times of war, there is demoralization. Masses of men on the run, on the move, an increased amount of drunkenness, sexual immorality, especially profanity. Anyone who has ever served in uniform knows, I would say, I would have gladly endured a Japanese air raid every day if I could have been spared the profanity I heard when I was in uniform.

Well, what was it like in the wake of the American Revolution? Drunkenness was epidemic. A country of five million had 300,000 confirmed drunkards. They were burying 10,000 of them annually. They even had a whiskey rebellion in western Pennsylvania, and George Washington had to call out the National Guard of three states to put it down. Profanity was altogether common, and of the most shocking kind, according to Lyman Beecher. Immorality was rampant. Illegitimacy and venereal disease were the indices. Bank robberies were an altogether daily occurrence. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out for fear of assault.

Perhaps the worst conditions were in Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier. A committee in Congress discovered that for five years there had only been one court of justice held in Kentucky. Peter Cartwright, a whimsical Methodist evangelist, said that when his father settled in what is now Logan County, it was known as Rogue's Harbor. If a man committed a murder in Massachusetts or a robbery in Rhode Island or a perjury in Pennsylvania, all he needed to do was to get across the Alleghenies. No one could lay a finger on him. Peter Cartwright said the decent people formed vigilante regiments to fight for law and order. They called them the Regulators. They fought a pitched battle with guns and knives and bare fists and lost to the outlaws, so that Kentucky and Tennessee were like Sodom and Gomorrah.

What about the colleges? I told you, Harvard didn't boast a single believer in the student body. You say, but why? Now there had come the second wave, the French Revolution, which was infidel. And at night you'd hear the students shouting, Vive la Revolution. Lyman Beecher said that the whole class before him were infidels, and they used revolutionary nicknames like Robespierre, D'Alembert, and the like, Rousseau, the way today among the far left they'll call themselves by revolutionary names like Lenin and Keisha Vara and so forth.

What about the churches? What were they doing? They had their backs to the wall. The Methodist denomination was the fastest growing, but for several years they were losing more members than they were gaining. In fact, it averaged 4,000 losses a year in spite of immigration. The Baptists said they'd had their worst season. The Presbyterians met in General Assembly in Philadelphia to deplore the ungodliness of the country. The Congregationalists who were dominant in New England were badly off. The Reverend William Shepard of Lennox, for example, said he hadn't taken a single young person into membership for 16 years. And he said prospects were altogether melancholy. His congregation was composed of the aged and infirm. The Lutherans were so languishing that they decided they would unite with the Episcopalians, but didn't do it because they were even worse off. Samuel Provost, Bishop of New York, Episcopal Bishop of New York, quit functioning. He had confirmed no one for so long he decided he was unemployed and he looked for other work, took up teaching. John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, very famous Chief Justice, wrote to Bishop Madison of Virginia and he said, the Church is too far gone ever to be redeemed.

Now that was a picture in the 1790s, in the infancy of our Republic. Yet it was followed by one of the most thorough and glorious revivals in history. Now we must backtrack a little bit. A man of God, a Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland, John Erskine, wrote a plea for prayer. He called it a memorial, begging the people of God to pray for a revival of religion. He addressed his plea to the people of Scotland and elsewhere. I thought that was a very neat division of the world's population. He sent a copy across the Atlantic to Jonathan Edwards, whose heart was warmed because he remembered the revival of the 1730s and the Great Awakening of 1740. Now the tide was out. Jonathan Edwards penned a letter in response but got carried away. His letter got longer and longer until he published it as a book. The title of the book, you'll find it in the collected works of Jonathan Edwards, was as follows, if my memory serves me, a humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people in extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the extension of Christ's kingdom overseas. That was the title, not the book. In fact, that's an abbreviated title. It's longer than that. But don't miss the punch of the words. Books in those days had titles that read like synopses.

A humble attempt, that's New England modesty, to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people. Note the words. One of the weaknesses of the laudable Key 73 Project was that element was missing. In fact, they began by saying, somehow or other, evangelicals must get together. But they ended up by saying, now, you Southern Baptists don't need to bother with the Missouri Lutherans. You Missouri Lutherans don't need to bother with the Southern Baptists. And you Christian Reformed, you can't see eye to eye with the Nazarene. You don't need to bother. Each do your own thing. We'll all try to do it together. But notice what Jonathan Edwards said, a humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people. That's a mark of revival. In times of revival, Christians are not disloyal to the denominational distinctives. In times of revival, a Baptist doesn't suddenly feel that believers baptism is unimportant, nor does a Nazarene feel that the doctrine of sanctification must be retired. No. But when the Holy Spirit moves, they move closer together, and they pray together.

I'm not an anti-denominationalist. I don't accept the ecumenical dictum that denominationalism is sin. I would say it's less than the best. But the reason we have denominationalism, one of the good reasons, is because some of God's precious truth is being forgotten, and God raises up men and bodies of men to emphasize a truth.

I'm a Baptist, as you know, but how much poorer the world would have been if we hadn't had John Wesley. But he wasn't a Baptist. He was unenlightened at certain points, but he was way ahead of the Baptists of his day. The Wesleyan movement was a great blessing to the Baptists in England. It set them on fire.

So there's the first point: explicit agreement and visible union. In times of the movement of the Spirit, God's people, all the truly born-again people of God, pray together. To promote explicit union and visible, explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people in extraordinary prayer. What's that mean, extraordinary prayer? When you find God's people sacrificing to pray, getting up at six in the morning to pray, giving up the lunchtime to pray, spending half nights in prayer, not with the idea of breaking records in a kind of marathon or for publicity purposes. No, no. But when you find extraordinary prayer, it's a sign of the moving of the Holy Spirit. Wasn't it Matthew Henry who said, when God intends great mercy for his people, he first of all sets them up praying? That sounds Calvinistic. Yes, but when we pray, we lean over in that direction, don't we? As if everything depended upon him. I like to pray like a Calvinist and work like a Wesleyan.

What was the purpose of the prayer? For a revival of religion. And then note, the extension of Christ's kingdom. Before that time, there were no missionary societies, with just a couple of exceptions. The SPG, the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel, was more like an English Church of England chaplaincy, following the settlers to the colonies. The Moravians had a running start on the others through the revival of 1727. Actually, out of this movement of prayer came the modern missionary movement. I shall probably speak about that in one of the classes that's been announced.

After Jonathan Edwards died, John Erskine republished the two books together, his plea and Jonathan Edwards' response. He sent a couple as a gift to Mr. Baptist, Dr. John Ryland, editor of the Baptist Register in England. You may not place his name, but I'm sure you've heard a story of how William Carey spoke on the obligations of believers to evangelize the heathen. And the moderator of the meeting said, sit down, young man. When God decides to evangelize the heathen, he'll do it without help from you or me. That was John Ryland.

Now here, a denominational big wheel received two books on prayer. Probably he was too busy to read them himself, too busy in serving the Lord, but at the same time his conscience wouldn't let him scrap them, so he gave them to two praying Baptist ministers, one a man called Andrew Fuller, the other one called John Sutcliffe. Andrew Fuller took leave of absence and traveled the length and breadth of Britain, England, Scotland, and Wales, urging believers to pray for revival. John Sutcliffe didn't travel, but he had a very energetic layman in his congregation called William Carey, a shoemaker, who got involved in this union of prayer. They persuaded the Baptist Association of Leicestershire to set aside one day a month for prayer for revival. Then the whole Baptist Association of the Midlands. Then the whole denomination took it up as a project. The tide was out, and they prayed for revival of religion and the extension of Christ's kingdom. The Congregationalists, then known as Independents, copied them, adopted it for the whole denomination. Then Evangelicals in the Church of England, and Evangelicals in the Church of Scotland, but of course especially the Methodists, who were still societies within the established Church. Until, within seven years, Britain was laced with a network of prayer meetings for revival.

There's another sign of revival. By the way, this movement didn't appear in the United States for ten years, and then it was known as the Concert of Prayer. Now, John Wesley died in 1791, and in 1792 the revival appeared. There's a very excellent book, no doubt, on your library shelves, written by a deceased friend of mine, John Wesley Brady, a Presbyterian, by the way, John Wesley Brady, on England Before and After Wesley. The popular edition was called This Freedom Whence, in which he traced the great social gains of the 19th century back to the influence of the Evangelical revival of Wesley's day. He had a case, but he missed one important point. Between the revival that we associate with the name of Wesley and Whitefield, and the great social movements and the missionary movement of the 19th century, there was a great backsliding. I don't mean of the Methodists, I mean of the churches and the people. A great slough of despondent. I described it for you in America, but it was the same in Britain, it was the same in Scandinavia, it was the same elsewhere, especially in France, where the whole of the Reformed Church apostatized. Every church in France, almost every church, was closed as a result of the French Revolution.

Now, the revival appeared in Yorkshire among the Methodists. In the United States, there is popular a phrase, I'm sure you've read it, frontier revivalism. That's nonsense. Revivals don't begin on the frontier. Now, the word revivalism is used in two ways in the United States. First of all, perhaps I should go back further, the word revival appeared in English in 1702. It was designated an awakening in or of religion. An evangelical awakening, of course. It's never been used by the Roman Catholics until very recent times, and it's never been used by the Greek Orthodox or by Islam or Judaism or anything like that. It's an evangelical word. When you read of a revival of religion, it's an evangelical concept. The word revivalist is one who participates or promotes, participates in or promotes such revival. And revivalism is a state of religion prevailing in such movements of revival.

But in modern dictionaries in the United States, when you see the word revival, it says a revival of religion, and then it says also a week of meetings, especially in the South. That's one of my pet peeves. I saw a sign outside a church in the San Fernando Valley, revival every Monday. What they do during the rest of the week, I don't know, but I guess what the evangelist was doing, because in Burbank, some miles away, I saw a sign outside a church that said revival every night except Monday. The evangelist must have been moonlighting. Now, that's not what we mean by revival. We go back to the original word. But I can't resist knocking the secondary idea every time I get a chance. It has cheapened the whole idea. I said to one of the faculty on our way to have lunch, I said, I think the American use of the word revival is one of the hindrances to revival. When you can get a letter from an evangelist who says, wonderful thing happened. While I was holding a revival in San Antonio, a revival began. What was he holding then? Well, he said, this was a real revival. Then was the other unreal or phony? We've cheapened the whole thing.

Now, the revival began in Dewsbury in Yorkshire under the ministry of William Bramwell, for whom General Booth named his eldest son. Wonderful time of revival. He started prayer meetings at 5 o'clock in the morning. He had 50 people converted in his little church on Christmas Day and another 50 on Easter, and between 500 and 600 between the two. It was a movement of the spirit first among believers, then an awakening of the masses. And the revival spread throughout Britain.

What about the States? When the Baptists heard of what the Baptists in England were doing, they started prayer meetings in the vestry of First Baptist Church in Boston. Do you know at that time every Congregational Church in Boston had apostatized into Unitarianism, with one exception, the Old South Church. But such a revival began among the Baptists in 1792 that many Congregationalists flocked in and were renewed, some converted, and went back and helped redeem Congregationalism in a wonderful movement.

However, in New England, a minister called Isaac Bacchus sent out a plea for a concert of prayer. We are so used to using the word concert for entertainment, we forget the idea of a concerted prayer. He addressed this letter signed by 20 New England ministers to every minister of every Christian denomination in the United States, urging the churches, because of the desperate situation, to set aside one day a month to pray for revival. Now in case you think what I have quoted about the situation in the United States at that time sounds like the panic of the day, look up La Tourette, the great church historian. He says of that very period, it seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men. It seemed, in the vernacular, as if the Christian faith was all washed up. So Isaac Bacchus said, let us pray. And so they started in a movement of prayer.

Now as I say, the movement in Britain began in industrial Yorkshire, and the movement in the United States began in Connecticut, not on the frontier. There is a standard text in our libraries called Modern Revivalism by William McLaughlin of Brown University. He's regarded as the authority on the subject. He writes for the Encyclopedia Britannica. But he says in this book, the second great awakening began in the camp meetings of Kentucky and Tennessee. That is not so. It began in the older settlements and reached the frontier last. Even if you were to look at revivalism as mass evangelism, take Whitefield. When Whitefield came to the United States, where did he preach? The first place he aimed for was Philadelphia, the biggest town.

The second place he went to was Boston, the second biggest town. Where did he preach? In England, in London, in Bristol, in Newcastle. And take a line from Whitefield to Billy Graham. Supposing, for instance, the worthy Christians of Glasgow, Montana, feel they need an evangelistic campaign, do you think they could get Billy Graham to go to Glasgow, Montana? Billy would say, well, I'd love to go, but I've got too many calls. I've got to go to Cleveland. I've got to go to Melbourne, and so forth.

This frontier revivalism is a myth. But why? Why is it so popular? They try to put out that our evangelistic evangelicalism is a kind of effervescence of the frontier among ignorant people. The way they teach it is that the first Great Awakening was unstructured, and the second Great Awakening, more or less unstructured. Then along came Finney and structured it, and along came Moody and urbanized it, along came Billy Sunday and made it big business, and now we have Billy Graham. Well, I have no doubt there's a line between Whitefield and Billy Graham. God raises up world evangelists. But the unstructured movements are continuing, though we seem to have lost sight of it. But overseas, especially, there are these great unstructured movements of the Spirit.

Now, the revival began in New England, spread to New York, marked by all sorts of strange things. For instance, in New Jersey, the ministers formed Aaron and Hur societies. While the pastor preached, his best praying people would meet in the vestry and pray while he preached, holding up his hands. The revival reached the frontier in a strange way. There was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister called James McGrady, whose chief claim to fame was that he was so ugly he attracted attention. Nowadays, you have to be good-looking to get anywhere. But McGrady was so homely that people would stop in the street and say, did you see that face? What does he do? They said he's a preacher. Then they reacted. They said, a man with a face like that really must have something to say.

Now, he followed the emigrants over the Cumberland Gap into the new Middle West, which was Kentucky. He settled in Logan's County. He had three little box-like churches. He said the winter of 1799 was, for the most part, weeping and mourning with the people of God. He was such a zealot for prayer, not only did he promote the concert of prayer, one day a month, all day for prayer, but he asked his people to pray for him for half an hour at sunset Saturday and sunrise Sunday. Why? Well, people didn't have watches in those days. So he said, when you see the sun go down on Saturday evening, you pray for your pastor. And when the sun comes up on Sunday morning, you pray for your pastor.

Then there came the outpouring of the Spirit on the frontier and the great camp meetings. Sometimes 20,000 people coming in on their wagons and carts. There were all sorts of extravagances on the frontier. There were none on the eastern seaboard. Report after report in Connecticut, Massachusetts, said there were no emotional extravagances, no rants of joy, no dancing, and so forth. I wondered why they said this so often. I think it was in the wake of the Great Awakening that James Davenport, who was an exhibitionist, brought the revival into disrepute by promoting extravagance. But on the frontier, people fell down in a faint. We call it prostration under conviction of sin. Others danced for joy when they were liberated. Some pounded their fists against benches or rocks. Some trembled. Some screamed. Some wept.

But when I was in seminary, they always emphasized the barking. You heard the story of the barking on the frontier? I remember William Warren Sweet, a great Methodist historian, University of Chicago. When I took a class with him, he reduced the students to helpless laughter describing the barking. He said, well, they were ignorant people, you see. They thought they had the devil up a tree, like a possum. So they got down on their hands and knees and barked like dogs to keep the devil up the tree while the other preachers were holding forth. They ran interference, you see, that way. And of course, this was regarded as very funny, at least to these students.

I can understand. I've seen a schoolboy tremble when he thought he was going to be expelled. I've seen a soldier collapse when he thought he was going to be shot for sleeping on duty. As far as dancing for joy is concerned, all you need to do is look at these giveaway television programs. Scream. You can understand this. Any psychologist can explain this. But what would be the purpose of barking? I thought this requires a little research. I found a book, probably on your shelves, called Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals by F.M. Davenport, written about 1900, in which he described the exercises on the frontier. But then he said there was barking, but it was not too common.

Forty years later, Professor Alice F. Tyler, University of Minnesota, wrote a book called Freedom's Ferment, in which he said there was barking on the frontier, and it was altogether too common. I looked for her documentation. She cites Davenport. He didn't say that. Who did he cite? Nobody. Then Francis Xavier Curran, not a Southern Baptist, wrote a book, I've forgotten the title, in which he said there was barking on the frontier. It was altogether disgraceful. Who does he cite? Tyler and Davenport. I thought we'd go back to the contemporaries. Who could I read that was alive that time? Oh, David Benedict, the great Baptist historian. He wrote a great tome called The History of the Baptists. He was a walking encyclopedia. He knew how many Baptists there were in Islington and London. He knew how many Baptists there were in Hogs Hollow in Tennessee. He wrote to them all. And he says the Baptists did not bark, but the Presbyterians did.

I said to myself, let's not be nasty to the Presbyterians. So I got History of the Presbyterians in Kentucky. I find no record of barking. Occasional allusions, the later the book, the more likely the allusion to barking. The only contemporary who ever mentioned barking was a man called Richard McNamara, a fanatic who joined the Shakers. The Shakers are almost dead out today. They died out because of one of their peculiar doctrines. They didn't believe in sex, and that's why they died out. Well, when I say there are still some today, there are about eight old ladies, but we don't expect any issue from that. Now, Richard McNamara said that some Kentuckians fancied themselves as dogs and barked. That's the only reference. Barden Stone, who was at those meetings, one of the founders of the Disciples of Christ, said there was no barking. The nearest thing to barking was people who jerked and trembled and grunted and sobbed while they did it. And apparently the whole legend of barking that's used for entertainment throughout the United States in theological seminaries stems from an aged Presbyterian minister, 84 years of age, who under deep conviction of shortcomings was sobbing and trembling before the Lord, and because he was so old, he held on to a little tree while he sobbed and gave some Unitarian the excuse for the legend of the barking.

That's a digression. By the way, I mentioned this at the Conference on Faith and History at Capital University in Ohio. Three hundred historians fell on me like a ton of bricks. They said, oh, you're spoiling good classroom fun. I wouldn't mind a little bit of, shall we say, far-fetched humor, but they do it maliciously to try and pimp. Friends, any time they show a television documentary on evangelism in the United States, they have to show snake handlers in Kentucky. They want to pin something on us.

Now, what did this do for the colleges, this revival? At Williams College, they'd had a mock communion to make fun of Jesus Christ. The Christian students were so few in numbers in campuses that they met in secret and kept their minutes in code like a communist cell. Because of persecution. The first student Christian groups were secret societies, like the Saturday Evening Club at Harvard. That's what they called it, this Harvard Saturday Evening Club. They didn't say they were Christians.

But at Williams College, a group of students were meeting for prayer in a maple grove for privacy. A thunderstorm threatened, so they raced to a haystack, promised God to go anywhere in the world he would send them. After they finished their training, they went down to the headquarters of their denomination in Boston and asked to be sent overseas as missionaries. They had a cool reception. One minister said, who do they think they are? This is presumptuous. Another man said, it's quite premature. We don't have funds to do it. But one man said, if God has spoken to these young men, and we believe he has, why shouldn't we help them? They formed a committee called the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Interdenominational to begin with, but as each denomination started its own society, this became the Congregational Missionary Society. And that was the beginning of the whole missionary work of the United States.

Before that time, to my knowledge, there wasn't one American outside the United States preaching the gospel. Some of my black brethren have said, what about George Lyle? Yes, George Lyle, a black man from South Carolina, was preaching in Jamaica, but he was a runaway. The British took him out during the War of 1812. He had a price on his head, and if he'd gone back, of course, he would have been executed in South Carolina. So he was an involuntary missionary. Before that meeting, under the haystack, there was no American missionary endeavor.

Today, there are something like 35,000 American missionaries all over the world. It grew out of that movement, and so did so much of social reform. Most Americans don't think highly of George III. I rather admired Prince Charles' courage when he said, from the British point of view, he was a good king. He did a lot for his subjects. He was very badly advised about American colonies.

But he heard, during the revival in London, that a single teacher was teaching a class of 800 boys. He thought, this I must see. Have any of you ever taught a Sunday school class of 12 boys? He got his coach and coachman, went down to Borough Road, and there he found Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker. He said, my good man, how do you maintain order? Lancaster said, by the same principle that thy majesty's army is kept in order, by the chain of command.

What Lancaster had done was to take a dozen young ruffians off the street. At that time, the working people were working a 96-hour week, 16 hours a day for six days a week. There's no time for the children. The children roamed the streets as vandals. He took a dozen of them off the streets. He said, now I'll teach you to read and write. He maintained discipline. Twelve, he found he could do it. But then he said, next year, if you come back in September, I'll teach you second year, and you'll teach first year. You teach them what I've taught you. So you'll teach the boys the alphabet, you see? And then third year taught second year, second year taught first year, until he was teaching 800 boys. This is what was called monitorial education.

When Lancaster came to the United States, he had a reception from the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States. This spread all over the world. It was a necessary development between no education, or what you might call privileged education, and popular education. That came out of that revival. Out of the revival came the emancipation of the slaves throughout the British Empire. And first of all, the abolition of the slave trade, then the emancipation of the slaves. It took another generation because of vested interests before slaves were emancipated in this country. All this came out of the revival, and it was most potent among students.

Now, I meant to continue on through the middle of the 19th century, and the work of Moody, and right up into the 20th century, but I find I've just run out of time. However, I'm sure you're interested in the subject. I wrote my Doctor of Education dissertation on the subject of the work of God among students at their request at UCLA. I called it Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities. And Regal Books asked if they could publish it, but they said, we'd never sell it with a title like that. Well, that's what it is, Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities. I said, well, if you want to put revivals among students. So instead of that, they took it called Campus Aflame. The word flame has been very popular among evangelicals for several years. I don't know why you've got this, that, and the other thing aflame. World aflame, and everything is aflame. But now that the campus turmoil has died down, the campus is no longer aflame, that title is a handicap. I haven't said to the publisher, I told you so, but they publish it under that title.

However, I did bring some copies along for Brother Wynkoop, and I asked him if it would be permissible, because I work with students, know how students are, to let you have those two books, the one that dealt with yesterday's subject, Faith That Persuades, and this book, Campus Aflame, two books for the price of one. And he agreed, at least, so help me, I thought he agreed. So if you want those two books, you better toddle off the only limited number of them down to the bookstore and get your bargain, the two books for the price of one.

Now, why do I speak to you along these lines? I'd like to update it, if I do it in some class, perhaps I'll be able to do it, that this movement of the spirit among students recurred in the middle of the 19th century, broke out at the beginning of the 20th century, broke out in 1949, gave us Urbana, InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, a series of student revivals, and this sort of thing is happening to this day. And I was told yesterday something of what happened when the overflow from the Asbury College revival reached Nazarene Theological Seminary in 1970. God still works this way, and you should be interested in it.

Let us stand for the benediction. Will thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee? Lord, we pray for this collegiate community, this body of students preparing to serve the Lord. Will thou not move upon us?