Article January 24, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Mary A. Livermore

The Congregationalist

One who met the late ex-Governor Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts at Oberammergau last summer reports him as answering the query "How did the Passion Play impress you?" thus: "Mr. G., I was so deeply impressed as to be overpowered. I was obliged to go to my room and think it over." The admiration of the foreign delegates to the International Congregational Council for the governor of the commonwealth, who welcomed them in Tremont Temple and later in his own executive chambers at the State House, knew no bounds. Many of them who had seen European monarchs and nobles said that they had never seen a kinglier or more knightly man. Wherever he went he reflected honor on mankind and his native home. Dr. Donald of Trinity Church, Boston, says of him that he was the noblest specimen of American manhood he has ever known in public life."—The Congregationalist.

Rev. Alberto A. Bennett, in an article on "New Elements in Revival Work" in the (Baptist) Examiner, says: "Religious awakenings of whole communities do not occur now, and simultaneous movements of different sections of the country are not found. It used to be that a revival would start in one place, and spread through all the adjacent country; now it dies where it begins. And evangelists tell us privately that it is increasingly harder to draw a crowd, or to move a crowed when it is drawn, and the difficulty grows greater year by year."

After some speculation in regard to the cause of the conditions described, the writer says he believes that in future "religious movements in churches or in communities will originate, not in the spontaneous action of a company of people who hardly know what they are doing, but in the conscious and voluntary action of individuals who know what they are about, and propose to do it."

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