The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-10-28
THE Law OF REVEALS.

column, argues peFSuaSiNeiy along lAc
line that preacher, who has the power
to kindle zeal, may become, with God's
help, the moving cause of a revival, in
stancing the manner in which Warde
the tragedian awoke Honolulu to the
grandeur of Shakespeare's plays, as
showing what might be done by a man
with similar gifts in the presentation
of the truths of Scripture.
OF course in any movement which
instrument, the man counts for very
much. But ii remains to be considered
whether the man makes the occasion or.
is made by it. When man appears
does the crisis come or when the crisis
comes does the man appear? Usually
the crisis comes first; and this brings
us back to the point made the other
day that the great evangelists and their
reyivals have been always preceded in
this country by some vast national mis-
fortune or emergency which inclined the
hearts of men to seek aid from above.
If it is not true that the man depends
upon occasion, how does it happen that
the influence of the orator, religious or
political, usually wanes with the cause
or the crisis with which his fame
was made? The exciting anti-slav-
cry issue gave Wendell Phillips his
chance and he shook the moral sense
of the North with his eioquence; but
when the slavery issue died, Wendell
Phillips, though ADLER in experience
and ripper of thought and quite as full
of magnetism as before, was never able
TO stir communities as he had done
Nor was it for lack of trying. The war
brought out the oratorical powers of
Henry Ward Beecher and made him
paramountNfor the time on the Ameri-
can platform; but with the war gone
and commonplace existence come
again, it was not often that Beecher
was able to set the wild echoes flying.
In fact this writer recalls a comfortable
nap at one of his lectures. Why We're
the latter-day meetings of Dwight L.
Moody and Francis Murphy so ordinary
as compared with those they had held
in the roaring seventies?'' 1t was not
because every one had heard them be-
fore and was tired of them. Thousands
of fresh audiences were collected; new
generation had come up; the men were
more spiritual, more accustomed to
platform work than they had been.
Why did they not set the country on
fire over and over again? Wasn't it
because the grass was no longer dry
enough to burn?
Frederick Warde did not strike us as
having brought on Shakespearian re-
vival here. To be sure that fine TRACE
dian made a deep impression on the
intellectual public of HonoIulu-but
people did not rally to build more
theaters. Shakespearian clubs or 500
cieties were not formed and our young
men did not begin to look to the stage
for a vocation. Nor have we seen since
then a greater local interest in the
drama or a larger collection for it az
the door. A revival is known by it's
fruits-not by the shaking of the tree.
AS to the law of revivals the Adver-
tiser can see no reason to change its
original view. First must come the
crisis which compels men to seek a
refuge in some power higher than their
own. Next comes the man to show the
way to safety and lead the multitudes
that. are eager to follow. Give Oahu a
day Of earthquakes and a pillar OF
smoke from Diamond Head; give it a
sweeping, devouring pestilence or the
threat of an enemy's fleet from over
business institutions come crashing
down and poverty sits in the ruins OF
wealth; give it any one of these calami-
ties and the churches will not hold the
multitudes that fiock to them nor typt
reveal the eloquence which will gusl
forth from every pulpit. But in these
commonplace times who could act tn,
part of Peter the Hermit? The role
has been tried over and over again
within the past two years by strangers
it had pathetic ending at the Gospe
Tent, up Fort street, not many months
ago, among people who were not stran
gers.
-%-
The Bulletins contributions to tn
Republican campaign last evening wer
a eulogy on Delegate Wilcox's brother
a card from Home Ruler Makainai de
Tending himself from the attacks O