The Religious Aspect of Ulster Revivalism

Extract

The regions of religion and philosophy are distinct, but by no means opposed. Some professors of the Christian faith may have fallen into the error that revelation and science are antagonistic, but such a position has neither any foundation in fact, nor any countenance in the Divine record. Warnings, no doubt, occur in the apostolic writings under the head of science and philosophy; but these are directed against “science falsely so called“, and such philosophy as is identified with “vain deceit.” There can be no opposition between nature and revelation, inasmuch as the author of both is the same God, who is “light“, and whose essence is “truth”. In examining therefore a mental phenomenon, such as that of Revivalism, as lately exhibited in the northern counties of Ireland, and during whose rise and progress so much of a religious element was developed, it would be, in a manner, impossible to do justice to the subject, without a direct reference to this element; nor will the interests of evangelical truth be injured, by an endeavour to discriminate between the false and the true, the genuine and the factitious, in this singular excitement; neither, I must presume, will the pages of a journal devoted mainly to subjects of a psychological character be diverted from their legitimate application if the Religious Aspect of Ulster Revivalism be introduced to them.