It was a revival though not of the kind we usually think of. Many individual preachers all being brought out of a dead and worldly state to a passionate understandeing of the work of Jesus Christ, the gospel to a fever pitch all over the British Isles, but that was also the time just refore the American Revolution when Whitefield and Wesley came over here and brought the Great Awakening.
How I wish God would raise up another small army of such men to wake us up today.
George Whitefield said he was strongly influenced by a book by a Henry Scougal, The Life ofr God in the Soul of Man, and that too is at You tTube. You Tube is the layer of my feast these days.
Want to add here a personal report that I've been going through some pretty depressing mental states over the last few weeks, including the conviction that I'd committed unforgiveable sins and would never see God or heaven. The Lord let me stew in this state of mind for a whole dat at a time, which was almost more than I could stand although I kept trying to tell myself that surely He would show me that I was wrong, while at the same time being so convinced I was trying to imagine being in Hell knowing that H3e was right to send me there.
I had more than one of these states and may have more. He's sent me encouraging words through my reading each time though He seems to have wanted me to stew in them for quite a while before He did, and the encouraging words only last a short time before I'm in the pits again.
One thing that was encouraging in an overall way was the reports of some of these men, but particularly Spurgeon whose semons I've been listening to separately, that these states of mind have happened to them too and do happen to true believers and are a means of growth. That doesn't keep me from polunging into them each time but I'm always relieved to come back to it.
