Ulster Revivalism; a Retrospect, by the Rev.
Authors: Ilwaine W. M. 
Published: February 2018

The excitement attendant on the “Ulster Revival” was at its height, in the town of Belfast, during the month of July in the year 1859: it is in itself, a significant fact that a person taking up his pen to discuss the subject in the month of December, of the same year, is permitted to treat of it historically. The excitement is over; it has utterly collapsed: no amount of human effort, (and such has not been spared) has availed to perpetuate it. At the time above referred to, no day in the week, it might be said with truth no hour in the day, passed without some occurrence so strange as to attract the observation of the most listless and inattentive. In certain localities of the town at almost every hour, but epecially in the afternoon and evening, or during the breakfast and dinner hour of the working classes, groups were to be seen standing or kneeling at the corners of the streets joining in the devotions or listening to the exhortations of preachers of all ages, and of all classes and denominations, from the boy, and even the girl of twelve or 14 years of age, to the gray-headed minister, layman, class-leader or deacon. From morning until midnight jaunting cars were to be seen, conveying to their homes young females, generally supported in the arms of a friend, or of a young man, an improvised “church office bearer,” insensible or frantic, uttering screams and cries, and with dishevelled hair, and the wildest or most deathlike aspect, from the church or meeting house or prayer meeting where they had been “struck.” At all hours of the day the streets and neighbourhoods where the “converts” or “convicts” (the latter was and is the favourite designation of the class) resided were traversed by the “agents” of the revival, most usually with a Bible in their hands, or beneath their arms; and in these localities every second or third house was the scene of a daily, or weekly, or bi-weekly prayer-meeting: at almost all of which, persons were “struck;” and the resort became a favourite one in proportion to the number of cases so produced. The Revival then had (indeed still has) its literature, periodical and stated. Under the former head may be classed some local journals, in the columns of which, as regularly as the “leader” or “special correspondence” appears in the Times, was the daily column headed “Religious Revival in Belfast.” These “daily readings” served as most effectual fuel to the revival excitement, and indeed might, of themselves, have gone far, with any well-judging and reflecting person, to reveal the true character of the human element at work in that remarkable movement. Suffice it to say that such journalism was characterized by the most unprincipled exaggeration and indeed unscrupulous mis-statement imaginable. These, of course, were in a great measure concealed and unknown to readers at a distance, but to those on the spot, who were cognizant of the real facts of the case, the spirit of lying which prevailed (for it amounted to nothing short of this), became disgusting in the extreme. Nor was this the only sample of laxity in morals which the revival organs presented. “Anger, wrath, malice,” vituperation, misrepresentation and “all uncharitableness” were the weapons of their warfare, wielded with all the energy imaginable in the case, against any who differed from Revivalism. Some of the instruments, too, employed in the production of this species of literature were curiously characteristic; for example—detailed histories of the movement have appeared from the pens of individuals whose habits notoriously oscillated between drunkenness and sobriety. “Penny-a-liners” and sub-editors of professedly religious and respectable papers, executed their daily and weekly tasks in the same spirit, and with the same results, as regards veracity.