48. "The Lever of Archimedes."--In the revival agitation which swept over America in the decades following 1830 practically all of the English Lutheran churches (the German churches, in part, stood aloof) caught the contagion in a malignant form and in great numbers. While even Prof. J. W. Nevin, Schaff's colleague at Mercersburg, in his book _The Anxious Bench_ (1844), antagonized the extravagances of a movement which was germane to his own church, Lutherans such as Schmucker, Kurtz, Harkey, Passavant, and many others, became extremists in practising, and fanatics in advocating, "new measures" as the most needful and only effective methods of accelerating and deepening conversion and reviving the Lutheran Church. Vying in their wild extravagances with the most fanatical of the sects, Lutherans, in not a few places, condemned as spiritually dead formalists, head and memory Christians, all who adhered to the sound principles and old ways of Lutheranism. (Gerberding, _The Way of Life_, 197 ff.) S. L. Harkey, himself a fiery New-measurist, describes a revival held in connection with the convention of the Synod of the West, in 1839, as follows: "In an instant every soul in the house was upon the knees, and remained there weeping and praying for mercy." "The whole congregation became more or less moved. The place became truly awful and glorious, and it seemed that the time had come when a decided effort must be made upon the kingdom of darkness, and that under such circumstances to shrink from the task and, through fear of producing a little temporary disorder, to refuse to go heartily into the work, would have been nothing short of down right spiritual murder." "At one time during the meeting it was found necessary to invite the mourners to withdraw from the church and remove to the parsonage that the synod might have an opportunity to proceed with the transaction of business before it." (Neve, 97.) Dr. Kurtz wrote in the _Observer_ of November 17, 1843: "The so-called 'anxious bench' is the lever of Archimedes, which by the blessing of God can raise our German churches to that degree of respectability in the religious world which they ought to enjoy." (Neve, 95.) The _Lutheran Observer_ of March 21, 1862, while defending revivalism and misrepresenting the "symbolism" of the Missourians as the doctrine according to which one is saved by the Sacraments _ex opere operato_, without repentance and faith, condemns the Lutheran system of baptizing, catechizing, confirming, communing at the Lord's Supper, etc., as Romanism and Sacramentalism, as unbiblical and not at all the religion of Christ and His apostles, as fundamentally wrong and utterly ineffective, and disgusting also to Lutherans, as soon as they were enlightened by the Spirit of God. The _Observer_ continues: The success of Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and even of the Congregationalists among the Germans is due to revivals. "The