REVERE REVOLUTION. 



363 



mense extent, but the movement of history has shown most 

 of the detailed expositions to be false and fanciful. 



(M. B. R.) 



REVERE, PAUL (1735-1818), immortalized by one 

 of Longfellow's poems, was born in Boston, Jan. 1. 

 1735. He was of Huguenot ancestry, and was trained 

 in his father's trade as a goldsmith. In 1756 he served 

 as a lieutenant of artillery at Fort Edward, near Lake 

 George. After establishing himself as a goldsmith at 

 Boston he learned the art of copper-plate engraving, 

 and produced in 1766 a print em Hematic of the Repeal 

 of the Stamp Act. Others of his designs were the 

 Boston Massacre (1770), Landing of British Troops in 

 Hilton (1774). In 1775 he engraved the paper money 

 ordered by the Massachusetts Congress. He was also 

 commissioned by that body to learn the art of making 

 gunpowder, and to set up a powder-mill. He took 

 part in the destruction of tea in Boston harbor. On 

 the night of April 18, 1775, occurred his famous ride, 

 in which he notified the people of the British expedition 

 to seize the military stores at Concord. He was lieu- 

 trimnt-colonel of artillery in the State service during 

 the Revolution, and was engaged in an expedition to 

 the Penobscot in 1779. After the war he was engaged 

 in copper rolling at Canton, Mass., which business nas 

 long been carried on by the Revere Copper Co. He 

 died at Boston, May 10, 1818. 



His grandson, PAUL JOSEPH REVERE (1832-1863), 

 graduated at Harvard College in 1852, served with dis- 

 tinction in the civil war, risine from major to colonel, 

 and was killed at the battle of Gettysburg. Another 

 grandson, E. H. R. Revere (1727-1862), was surgeon 

 of a regiment and was killed at the battle of Antietam. 



R^VILLE, ALBERT, French author, was born at 

 Dieppe, Nov. 4, 1826, where his father had been pastor 

 of a Protestant church. After entering the ministry 

 he was vicar at Niines, then pastor at Luneray, and in 

 1851 was called to the charge of the Walloon church 

 at Rotterdam. At various times he returned to France 

 to take part in the religious conferences, at which he' 

 advanced rationalistic and non-Christian views. In 

 1880 a professorship of the history of religions was 

 formed in the College de France, at Paris, and Re'ville 

 was called to the chair. In 1886 he was called to pre- 

 side over the section of religious studies in the school 

 of higher studies then established in the old Sorbonne. 

 Besides translations from the English and German liu 

 has published Exsafs de critique rellgieuse (1860) ; JJi's- 



iri' (lit dogme'de la ilirinitr </e Jisnis Christ (i860) ; 



L' Enxeignement de. Jenu Christ (1870); Prole r/omenes 

 de thistoire des religion* (1881k Lex Religions des peu- 

 plex non-dvilMs (2 vols., 1883); Les Rdigwns du Mex- 

 ique, de t Ameriqite centrale et du Ptrou (1884). 



REVIVAL, RELIGIOUS. It is a historic truth that 

 the spread of Christian doctrine and Christian life has 

 not been uniform in its rate of progress. The growth 

 of the church was much more rapid in the apostolic 

 age than it has been at any subsequent period. Before 

 the apostles had passed away Christianity had entered 

 the imperial palace at Rome, and its doctrines were 

 taught and embraced in all parts of the empire. In 

 three hundred years from the death of Christ the 

 Pagan empire had passed away, and the Christian em- 

 pire had taken its place. We look in vain to see any 

 such movement of conquest or of missionary effort on 

 the part of the church after these early centuries until 

 the renewed zeal of the Roman church appears in the 

 16th century, as awakened by the great separation from 

 that church in the Reformation, and by the discovery 

 of new continents beyond the Atlantic. Very much of 

 the growth indicated both in the time of Coustantine and 

 in that of Xavier was superficial, and had no relation to 

 conviction and to spiritual life. Political agencies and 

 personal advantage were prominent factors in the estab- 

 lishment of the nominal church when worldly power 

 was centred in its hierarchy, which of course cannot be 

 alleged regarding the progress of Christianity at the 

 first, when persecution and death, attended the Chris- 



tian profession, and the doctrines preached antagonized 

 the natural passions of men. 



But it is also historically true that in the growth of 

 the church there have been periods when spiritual re- 

 ligion especially flourished in certain localities, where a 

 new devotion has marked the lives of Christians, and 

 great numbers have been added to the church from 

 deep conviction, in true repentance and with sincere 

 faith. 



It is to these movements that the name of Revivals 

 is generally applied. Two theories obtain concerning 

 them one that they are the direct result of human 

 machinery, if we may use that term in a qualified way, 

 and the other that they are entirely of divine origin 

 and production, not dependent in any sense on human 

 action. Under the former theory a revival can be had 

 almost whenever the church wishes, and under the 

 latter no church effort is of any avail. Under the 

 former theory there is danger of a mechanical process 

 being inaugurated, and men busy themselves in " get- 

 ting up" a revival, as they would a concert or a fair. 

 In sucn cases the door is open for all sorts of extrava- 

 gance, discreditable to the name of religion. Under the 

 latter-theory there is danger of apathy, and men cease 

 to feel their responsibilities as Christians with a divine 

 commission to evangelize. The truth lies between the 

 two theories. The essential power in a revival is un- 

 doubtedly the Spirit of God, but it is no derogation 

 from his prerogative that he works through the faith- 

 ful sons of men. and we may hence believe that a 

 prayerful state of the church will be accompanied with 

 spiritual enlargement and numerical growth. If the 

 church were always equally prayerful (and by that is 

 implied a true life) we might expect a steady and rapid 

 growth instead of sporadic starts and ensuing stagna- 

 tion. 



In point of fact, we have the alternations. We find 

 historically that the beginning of this century developed, 

 in the churches of Great Britain and America, a zeal 

 for foreign missionary work. At the same time Bible 

 societies and tract societies sprang up and scattered the 

 written word over the earth in scores of languages. 

 In America several special seasons of renewed fervor 

 and large accessions to the church are noted, as the 

 Great Revival or Awakening in the days of Jonathan 

 Edwards (1751), and the later ones of 1831 (with which 

 the name of C. G. Finney is associated) and of 1857. 

 Some early revivals in Kentucky and other Western 

 States, and that in Ireland in 1859-60, were remarkable 

 for many manifestations of a physical character in the 

 converts, which only a superficial criticism will attribute 

 to hypocrisy or wantonness. It is not strange that when 

 suddenly the great realities of the unseen world and 

 the relations of a holy God to the human soul are made 

 known, the body should be affected by the shock of 

 surprise and fear sustained by the spirit. The reality 

 an(T sincerity of these bodily affections we cannot doubt, 

 while we also recognize the fact that such periods of 

 excitement will induce evil men to ply their hypocrisies, 

 and it is often difficult to separate the true from the 

 false. 



It is because of these evils which attach themselves 

 to revivals that many Christians have no confidence in 

 revivals, and dislike both the name and the thing. 

 But this is hardly consistent with a discriminating piety 

 that will encourage the true, even though the false is 

 at its heels. As men are, and as the church is, it 

 seems that Christians have to be awakened again and 

 again to new devotion and zeal, and hence revivals are 

 to be sought and expected, until the church shall have 

 been fully consecrated to its evangelizing work as desig- 

 nated in the Saviour's commission : ' Go ye into^all 

 the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." 



(H. c.) 



REVOLUTION, AMERICAN. At the conclu- 

 sion of the war with France in 1763 the heavy in- 

 debtedness of Great Britain induced the consideration 

 of a plan of laying taxes upon her American colonies. 



