Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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It cannot be too often remembered or repeated that when the Bible has been brought face to face with the conscience of corrupt society, in every age it has shown itself to be that which it professes, and which its believers declare it to be—“the great power of God.” It proved itself thus amidst the hoary and decaying corruptions of the ancient civilisation, when its truths were first published to the Roman Empire; it proclaimed its power to the impure but polished society of Florence, when Savonarola preached his wonderful sermons in St. Mark’s; and effected the same results throughout the whole German Empire, when Bible truth sounded forth from Luther’s trumpet-tones. The same principle is illustrated where the great evangelical truths of the New Testament entered nations, as in Spain or France, only to be rejected. From that rejection and the martyrdoms of the first believers; those nations have never recovered themselves even to this hour; and of the two nations, that in which the rejection was the most haughty and cruel, has suffered most from its renunciation.