‘I can recommend without hesitation the reading of The Great Awakening<\/em>. It is really one of those marvellous heart-warming books and I cannot imagine a better way of spending a summer holiday. What Tracy gives us is an account of true revival.’ — D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES<\/p>\n ‘The history of genuine revival stirs us. Through it we see the realities of Christ and the Christian life illustrated in the lives of people like us. What a help it is to have an account of God\u2019s dealings with His people recorded for us by a careful historian! In compiling this history, Tracy has become a companion to us, both to awaken us with the thoughts of what the Almighty can do, as well as to warn us against a zeal without knowledge. Nothing outside of Scripture moves me as much as reading about the days when our Captain took the field and the gospel-godliness spread like fire.’ — JOHN D. SNYDER (Author, the Behold Your God<\/a><\/em> series.)<\/p>\n ‘This book will drive many Christians to their knees in prayer for revival and will encourage them with a greater hope that God will do something wonderful in the present dark age.’ — ARTHUR BENNETT<\/p>\n ‘Surely all who are concerned for the welfare of their local church and for the outpouring of God\u2019s blessing should read this book. And all who share that concern will be helped and instructed as they do so.’ — EVANGELICAL TIMES<\/p>\n Although a considerable number of scattered records accompanied what Jonathan Edwards called the \u2018Revival of Religion in New England in 1740\u2019 it was not until 1841 that Joseph Tracy thoroughly sifted these original sources and became its first historian. He aimed to provide \u2018a work which should furnish the means of suitably appreciating both the good and the evil of that period of religious history.\u2019 \u2018His design,\u2019 as C. H. Maxson has written, \u2018was admirably executed.\u2019<\/p>\n Scarcely any phenomenon could be more exacting for a church historian than the Great Awakening, for assessments of its nature and value differed widely at the time of its occurrence and have done ever since: \u2018The doctrine of the new birth made its way like lightning into the hearers\u2019 consciences\u2019, wrote George Whitefield, but an adverse contemporary critic asserted that \u2018Multitudes were seriously, soberly and solemnly out of their wits.\u2019 Certainly the Great Awakening does not fit into any of the usual norms. It had no procedures \u2013 neither \u2018altar-calls\u2019 nor enquiry rooms \u2013 for making and recording conversions, yet the numbers added to the churches in New England alone have been estimated at between twenty-five and fifty thousand. Emotion was profoundly stirred, yet some of the finest intellects of that age were among its leaders. It moved the common people, yet it led to the establishment of such new colleges of learning as Princeton and Dartmouth, Brown and Rutgers. Again, while the revival supplied neither social nor political messages, the changes it brought about in society were as far reaching as those associated with the 1776 Revolution itself; indeed, Tracy argues that the effects of the Revolution would have been very different if the country had not been \u2018strengthened by so many tens of thousands of converts\u2019.<\/p>\n The author follows his theme from the local revivals of the 1730s to the floodtide of 1740-42. While such major figures as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield are frequently prominent in the narrative, the material is broad-based and no small part of its fascination lies in the quotations given from the personal narratives and diaries of such men as Eleazar Wheelock, with his \u2018close, searching, experimental\u2019 preaching, and William Cooper of Brattle Street Church, Boston, who in one week in 1741 had more persons coming to him \u2018in deep concern about their souls\u2019 than in the 24 years of his preceding ministry. Extended treatment is also given to the ebb of the revival down to 1745, with a penetrating discussion of the aberrations and divisions which marked those years. The school of opinion which treated the Great Awakening as a movement of mass hysteria, generated by a few pulpit orators, has been losing ground of late years.<\/p>\n But while a number of modern writers have seen reason to question that thesis, they have not recognised, as Tracy did, that just as the doctrines of the Awakening were biblical so also were the phenomena. That is not to say that Tracy approves all that occurred in the 1740s (any more than the New Testament approves all the phenomena of the apostolic age), and much of the importance of his work lies in the mature and discerning judgment which he brings to his factual material.<\/p>\n This volume remains second to none in its definitive treatment of one of the most important and remarkable eras in the history of the Christian church in modern times.<\/p>\nBook Description<\/h2>\n
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\n <\/td>\n Preface<\/em><\/td>\n ix<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 1<\/td>\n INTRODUCTORY \u2014Previous State of Religious Opinions and Practices \u2014Decline of Piety \u2014Preaching of Edwards \u2014\u2018Surprising Conversions\u2019 at Northampton, and in other Places<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 2<\/td>\n REVIVALS OF 1739, 1740; at Newark, Harvard, Northampton, New Londonderry, and New Brunswick \u2014 Remarks on the Presbyterianism of that Age<\/td>\n 19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 3<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD IN EARLY LIFE \u2014His Birth, Education, and Religious Experience \u2014His Success as a Preacher \u2014 His first Visit to Georgia \u2014His Return to England, Opposition and Success \u2014Controversy with the Bishop of London \u2014His Intercourse with Watts and Doddridge \u2014His Return to America<\/td>\n 37<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 4<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD\u2019S LABORS \u2014His Preaching and Success at Philadelphia, at New York, and in the Middle and Southern Colonies<\/td>\n 53<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 5<\/td>\n PARTIES IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH \u2014Different Views of Regeneration, and Controversies growing out of them \u2014Acts of the Synod in 1728, 1737, 1738, and 1739 \u2014Meeting of the Synod in 1740 \u2014Tennent\u2019s Nottingham Sermon \u2014Meeting of the Synod in 1741 \u2014The \u2018Great Schism\u2019<\/td>\n 63<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 6<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD AT THE SOUTH \u2014Scenes at the Orphan House \u2014Visit to Charleston \u2014Ecclesiastical Prosecution \u2014Conversions at and around Charleston \u2014Schools for Negroes \u2014The Bryans<\/td>\n 79<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 7<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD\u2019S FIRST VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND<\/td>\n 87<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 8<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD IN NEW YORK, AND AT THE SOUTH<\/td>\n 109<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 9<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL IN BOSTON \u2014The Period from Whitefield\u2019s Departure to the Arrival of Davenport; including the Labors of Gilbert Tennent<\/td>\n 117<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 10<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL IN NEW ENGLAND \u2014Natick, Wrentham, and Bridgewater \u2014Exhorters and Raptures in Bridgewater<\/td>\n 125<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 11<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL IN NEW ENGLAND \u2014Lyme, and other Places in that part of Connecticut \u2014The \u2018Needful Caution in a Critical Day \u2019\u2014Pastors Itinerating<\/td>\n 139<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 12<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL IN NEW ENGLAND \u2014Plymouth, Sutton, Taunton, Middleborough, Halifax, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Reading, Newcastle, Westerly, Northampton<\/td>\n 165<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 12 \u2014Extracts from the Private Journal of the Rev \u00a0Eleazer Wheelock \u2014Extracts from the Private Journal of the Rev \u00a0Ebenezer Parkman, of Westborough, Mass<\/td>\n 206<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 13<\/td>\n EDWARDS \u2014The Revival at Enfield \u2014Outcries, Faintings, and Convulsions<\/td>\n 223<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 14<\/td>\n DAVENPORT \u2014 His Rise, Progress, Excesses, Recovery, and \u2018Retractations\u2019\u2014His Posthumous Influence The Eleventh Congregational Church in Boston \u2014Note, on the Catastrophe of Hugh Bryan<\/td>\n 241<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 15<\/td>\n WHITEFIELD IN ENGLAND \u2014His Breach with Wesley \u2014The Revival in Scotland<\/td>\n 267<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 16<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL IN NEW ENGLAND \u2014Conventions and Testimonies<\/td>\n 299<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 17<\/td>\n OPPOSITION TO THE REVIVAL IN CONNECTICUT \u2014Pains and Penalties \u2014The Separatists<\/td>\n 321<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 18<\/td>\n THE CONTROVERSY IN MASSACHUSETTS \u2014Whitefield\u2019 Second Visit to New England \u2014His subsequent Labors and Death<\/td>\n 345<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 19<\/td>\n THE REVIVAL CONTINUED AT THE SOUTH \u2014The Presbyterian Synods \u00a0\u2014The Rise of Presbyterianism in Virginia \u2014Whitefield\u2019s Labors in the Southern Colonies \u2014The Healing of the \u2018Great Schism\u2019<\/td>\n 393<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 20<\/td>\n THE RESULTS<\/td>\n 409<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n Related Podcast Episode:<\/h3>\n