Article June 13, 1901 Issue

The Next Great Awakening

Josiah Strong

History would seem to warrant the generalization that periods of great intellectual and spiritual activity have been preceded by periods of exploration and discovery, of invention and of expanding commerce; that is, by extraordinary material development. The law of growth for the individual seems to be also the law for the nation—first the physical, then the mental and moral; or, as Paul puts it, first that which is natural, then that which is spiritual.

The nineteenth century was characterized by a material development altogether marvelous and scarcely less than miraculous. It has left to us the heritage of a more of less refined materialism and of an intense commercialism. The question arises whether in the twentieth century, as in earlier ages, the great advance along physical lines is to be followed by a new advance along intellectual and spiritual lines.

The advent of the new century has been hailed, both in Great Britain and America, as a fitting time for a new awakening to the things of the spirit, a keener appreciation of realities which sustain no relations to the yard-stick, the scales, or the crucible; a deeper sense of values that are never quoted on the Stock Exchange. Extended efforts have been made on both sides of the Atlantic, and especially in England, to arouse the conscience and to quicken the religious life. But as yet we hear of no extraordinary results—nothing corresponding in the remotest degree to the great awakenings which occurred in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and in both the first and second half of the nineteenth. These great movements, which lifted whole nations to a higher plane, did not come uncaused or at haphazard. It is as easy to invoke them as to "call spirits from the vasty deep"—

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