NEW ENGLAND REVIVALS 375
ances, is 51 per cent. Taking out the Methodists for 1858 but making no allowances for the few churches which continued their revival into the following year or had one in some subse- quent one of the five years, we get the average additions of the 299 Baptist and Congregational churches in the four periods taken together as 38.4 per cent, of those of the one revival year. In other words the annual average of additions in Baptist and Congregational churches having great revivals, for the next five years after the revival judging by the past, may not be ex- pected to be over 8 per cent, of what they are in the revival year.
It will be noticed that the percentage in the period of 1843 was much lower than in either of the others. This may be due to the peculiar character of that revival, which centered appar- ently among most churches very largely around the teaching of Miller, who predicted the end of the world as coming in 1843. The motive of fear had unusual influence and when it was withdrawn interest slackened more than usual. The vag- aries of Rev. Jacob Knapp were also followed by a severe decline among the Baptists. The appeal too was to a less stable part of the population.
4. The great revivals were those of fifty or more years ago. Both Connecticut and Vermont report 30 churches adding 50 or over in 1831. And yet there is no report from Hartford County, Conn., and a small part of New Haven County, reported that year, the two being the most populous counties probably in the state. More than a third of those who were in the Congre- gational churches of Connecticut at the close of 183 1 had come in during that single year. The 5,100 added to the Congre- gational churches of Vermont that year were 28.7 per cent, of the members in all those churches of that state at the end of the year. The additions to the Congregational churches of Massachusetts as a whole were 9.1 per cent, of the member- ship in 1843. They were 12.7 per cent, in 1858 and only 6.7 per cent, in 1877. The revival of this latter year in Connecti- cut was chiefly in and around two or three of the chief cities, where Moody and Pentecost labored. The revival of 1858 was probably the most useful in New England of any of the four.
