Annotated edition · now available

A Revival in Baltimore

W. C. Walton’s Narrative of a Revival of Religion, in the Third Presbyterian Church, of Baltimore. By William Claiborne Walton (1793–1834). First published in Baltimore by William Wooddy, 1824.

In the summer of 1823, a young pastor in Baltimore, sick and discouraged, stopped waiting for revival and began, on his knees and on foot, to seek it. By the following February sixty-three people had joined the Third Presbyterian Church, and Christians across the city were meeting to pray.

The next spring Walton wrote this short account of what God had done and of the means he had learned to rely on: plain personal conversation, pointed preaching, and the duty of immediate repentance. Printed in four thousand copies, reprinted in Massachusetts and New York, and excerpted in London, it was credited with sparking revivals in places Walton never visited.

Walton was his own sharpest critic. He writes for pastors and church members who long for awakening but have grown used to its absence, and he “censures none so severely” as himself.

This annotated edition presents the complete text of 1824, unabridged and newly typeset. It adds an Introduction drawn from Joshua Danforth’s Memoir of Walton, notes on people, events, and period language, appendices, and questions for study and discussion in six sessions, with Scripture references.

Edition details

Paperback ISBN 979-8-9822421-2-9. eBook: PDF, 78 pages, 0.5 MB, or EPUB, 0.3 MB.
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Contents

1. Editor’s Note
2. Introduction: The Life of W. C. Walton
3. Remembered by Those Who Knew Him
4. The Title Page of 1824
5. Narrative of a Revival of Religion
6. Questions for Study and Discussion
7. A. Walton’s Scripture Allusions
8. B. A Brief Chronology
9. C. Note on the Text
10. For Further Reading