He wrote an extensive chapter on the winter of 1904-5 in Britain, when a widespread religious revival in England and Wales coincided with numerous other strange occurrences: the appearances of ghosts, poltergeists, a few purported cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion, and a ravenous wolf (or perhaps werewolf) mutilating sheep and other farm animals in Northumberland.
Born in Calhoun, Georgia in a family beset by post Civil War poverty, Matthews grew up in the environment of Southern revivalism and, later, post-Reconstruction radical agrarian politics.
The move by the seminary to study Saiva scriptures led to an important social transformation amongst the local Tamils because it began a process that led to a Saiva revivalism led by Arumuka Navalar.
It is home to many cultural insituitions that are important for the Saiva revivalism of the local Sri Lankan Tamils as initiated by Arumuga Navalar.
Further the Saiva revivalism initiated by Arumuga Navalar has enabled many high status Tamils to subsume the village deities within the Agamic pantheon.