M CHAPTER XVIII THE LAST AWAKENING From sinking sand He lifted me, From shades of night to plains of light, Words by CHARLOTTE G. HOMER. ATURED in the crucible of the experience of its modern masters, the American revival discarded obvious crudities of method, adapted itself to changing mental and emotional responsiveness and synthesized the elaborate, sweeping strategy of mass evangelization. The close of the first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the consummation. A national idea and objective were put to work for a universal inculcation of the religious incentive. Uniformity of thought and feeling and action made a people malleable. They were ripe for a new experience in spiritual togetherness and the revival was ready for them. It began in Boston where the Great Awakening under Whitefield reached its meridian in 1740. And, from present portents, the unparalleled mobilization of evangel manpower and legions of Italy in 1909 constituted what may be rightly termed as the Last Awakening. In calm seriousness and with rational control this culmination of the evolution of the revival justified its ambitious magnitude by revitalizing, refilling, and reconsecrating the one hundred sixty-six churches that sponsored it voluntarily. To their one hundred twenty thousand members were added ten thousand to fifteen thousand more. These conversions were not mere handshakes and overnight affairs. They were not the bestowal of independent grace upon lone-coursing souls. Every one that was counted meant a seat filled in a church. The total outlay for the three-weeks campaign was twenty thousand dollars. For the minimum of ten thousand actual church accessions that meant a cost of two dollars apiece or a virtual assessment of only a little over sixteen cents upon each of the one hundred twenty thousand original church members. Compared with what happened to the big revival in subsequent years, the Boston result was definitive and intrinsic rather than inconclusive and transitory. Instead of a grandiloquent revivalist walking off with anywhere from ten thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars for himself alone, the Bostonian churchmen stayed within the bounds of true New England common sense and made every cent count. And yet not for a moment were they scrimping with talent or parsimonious toward the size of the job. A phalanx of sixty first-string evangelists and choristers with Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman, the preacher, Charles Alexander, the Gospel singer, and Robert Harkness, the revival pianist, holding down the center at Tremont Temple, conducted a day and night campaign in all of the Protestant churches of the city and the suburbs within a dozen miles' radius. Commander Evangeline Booth came in person and Colonel Adam Gifford led the Salvation Army's full local strength out into the streets in co-operation with the efforts going on in the edifices. At the end, Dr. A. Z. Conrad, pastor of the Park Street Church-at old Brimstone Corner as Chairman took the whole revival to Mechanics Hall, then the largest auditorium in the city. The climax welded the work into a perfect whole. City editors performed a heroic task in getting the widespread story covered. "District men” had standing assignments on the simultaneous revivals in Brookline, Cambridge and Watertown, Everett, Malden, Melrose, Medford and Stoneham, Somerville, Newton, Quincy and Lynn. The city staffs were heavily drawn upon for the churches inside the city limits. For twenty-one days the "lead" on the first page "broke" to inside layouts of "follows." Features in "boxes" and pictures dressed up the arrangement. It might have been a little difficult to have tried converting some of the copy-readers and make-up men. And a few of the reporters were worn a bit ragged. One of them, asked in the lobby of Tremont Temple if he was a Christian, misunderstood and answered "No, I'm just a newspaper man.” The newspapers were under no other compulsion than imperative public interest, however. The revival was a "good story" in the parlance of the press, the sort any editor prefers to print. In the first place, here was a strong company of interesting men who naturally made news. Among the three-score collaborators with Chapman were such as John Elliott, a veteran of Moody's Chicago battle of 1893; James O. Buswell, from the lumber camps of the Northwest, and A. W. Spooner and Charles T. Schaeffer, who illustrated their sermons with lightning pictures in chalk or charcoal. Albany Smith, the son of the Gypsy Smith, dates his own evangelistic career from being a leader of song in Chapman's little army. Among the other singers were Lawrence Greenwood, who, like Chapman, had trained with B. Fay Mills, the twin brothers Ernest and Everett Naftzger and F. M. Lamb. The last two were strong for ornithological allegory, Naftzger specializing in "His Eye is on the Sparrow" and Lamb in "The Bird with the Broken Pinion." It was Chapman's greatest revival. For fourteen years he was leader of the Winona Lake (Indiana) Bible Conference Movement, the rallying ground of revivalists great and small and the laboratory where their adroit modern system was worked out. When the three hundred seventyfive ministers of Greater Boston invited him, in May, 1908, to be their boss-awakener, he accepted because he saw the strategic value to the future of the revival in concentrating upon large centers of population. Unlike most evangelists, Chapman had no definite time or place to which to attach his conversion. Born in Richmond, Indiana, on June 17, 1857, he joined the Presbyterian Church in 1876 without any emotional storm and stress. But his first collegiate experience was at Oberlin which was saturated with the memory of Charles G. Finney and later at Lake Forest he met up with B. Fay Mills. They called each other "Bill" and "Fay" and rode the revival wave together till Mills transshipped to Unitarianism. Chapman, out on his own revival, converted a Governor of Michigan in 1903. After that he hooked up with Alexander, who had been with Torrey, and they had acquired an international reputation when Boston asked to be roused religiously. It was to be the biggest and "thoroughest" revival job ever undertaken. Chapman took his time and made Boston lay ground-work from June till January. The solidarity of the participating churches was brought about by dovetailing of responsibilities within the machinery set up. Seven major committees did the work. Subscriptions from the church members paid the costs. Yankees have been in the habit of wasting neither toil nor money. They had expert assistance in conserving both in the salvation venture. At this point, reflecting the trend to practicality, the revival was a cold, hard business proposition. Chapman sent his brother, E. G. Chapman, whom Chairman Conrad described as "a business man of rare ability, sagaciousness, suavity and effectiveness," to talk ways and means with those Bostonian bidders for the evangelist's services. A general committee proceeded to line up the churches and put a preliminary $10,000 in the war chest. In September Chapman himself came and in parley with the parsons told what he would do and how he would do it. Dr. Conrad said that the man was not "arbitrary" but that "God interposed and overruled" and the pervading elements of the campaign were to be "faith and love." He added that "the business side of the Chapman-Alexander meetings was significant and the importance of organization was properly emphasized." Early in December the Chapman staff specialists were on the scene organizing "personal work" and "publicity" departments. The churches were grouped and evangel teams assigned. The dates were as set―January 26 to February 17—and every pulpit began working toward the now inevitable and unescapable. All Boston, the thirty per cent of alleged Mayflowerers and the 70 per cent of Cunarders (no offense to the White Star Line and the good old S. S. Celtic), was going to be evangelized. Chapman brought with him some relics of Mills,—the "Good Cheer" and "Mother's Day" meetings and the "opportunity cards" for those impressed by the spirit. He added a "Flower Day" and a "Day of Rejoicing" to exer |