Book Description

Excerpt from A Memorial Address: Delivered at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the South Hall of Olivet College, Thursday, June 28th, 1866 General intellectual revival and accelerated social progress are wont to accompany religious revolution, or successful reform in religion. Thus the introduction of the Christian religion gave a mighty impulse to the intellectual energies of the Roman world. Humble fishermen and tax gatherers, and servants and women, were now for the first time inspired to think, to discuss, to instruct and to preach. Among the masses, aspiration for knowledge, a desire to hold opinions and advocate them, to disciple other men to their own views, took the place of intellectual stagnation and death. Everywhere along the triumphant march of christianity, schools for general education, and for the discussion of doctrines in philosophy and theology sprang up and multiplied. So the cry of Reform shouted by Luther, awakened the dormant mind of Europe to intellectual life. Never before had there been such intense intellectual ardor as the bold theses of this Reformer against the corrupt pretensions and practices of the papacy enkindled. Disputation, the writing and printing of books, invention and discovery, the founding of schools and universities, became so common as to give character to the age, - all under the powerful impulse of this great revolution in religion. Results somewhat similar followed the reforms enacted by the Puritans in England, and still later, the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitfield. Analogous effects have always followed extended revivals of evangelical religion in this country. The great revivals extending through the first third of the present century, and in which Beecher, Nettleton, Taylor and Finney preached with apostolic ardor and effect, are illustrations in point. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.