Joseph Tracy
472 pages
Although a considerable number of scattered records accompanied what Jonathan Edwards called the 'Revival of Religion in New England in 1740' it was not until 1841 that Joseph Tracy thoroughly sifted these original sources and became its first historian. He aimed to provide 'a work which should furnish the means of suitably appreciating both the good and the evil of that period of religious history.' 'His design,' as C. H. Maxson has written, 'was admirably executed.'
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: 'The doctrine of the new birth made its way like lightning into the hearers' consciences', wrote George Whitefield, but an adverse contemporary critic asserted that 'Multitudes were seriously, soberly and solemnly out of their wits.' Certainly the Great Awakening does not fit into any of the usual norms. It had no procedures - neither 'altar-calls' nor enquiry rooms - 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 'strengthened by so many tens of thousands of converts'.