This is not to suggest that the preaching tour was without any consequences. It seems Conception Bay Methodists were at an all- time low, in fact, near extinction. Had it not been for women classes and the leadership of Stretton and a few others, Methodism may indeed have vanished. From Black's visit it is obvious that there were only Methodist remnants in Harbour Grace, Carbonear, Blackhead, Old Perlican, Bay Roberts, and Port de Grave, the latter two presumably communities established by Stretton and Thomey on their "excurtions." The revival of Coughlan was remembered as "a great stir" but lay now in a distant past. The majority of the former converts, Black was told, had either left Newfoundland, fallen away, or died. This description corresponds most likely with reality. The inordinate population distress during the eighties and early nineties kept Conception Bay society rather fluid. In the summer of Black's visit, the cod fishery in the bay had reached bottom productivity. Black himself observed this distress when he notes after visiting some poor people: "They are not many degrees above the savage tribes, either in manner of living, or intellectual improvements." As far as ecclesiastical organization was concerned, in Carbonear--the field of McGeary's activity--there was "no regular Society: only about fifteen women meet among themselves." At Harbour Grace, where Stretton lived and had erected a meeting house, the situation was similar. "There is no regular Society here,"writes Black, "only about twelve or thirteen women meet together in Class." Bay Roberts, further to the south, attended at the time by George Vey, could boast 26 members, although Black's revival meetings there and in neighbouring Port de Grave drew an estimated 250 and 300 people each. Finally, Old Perlican in Trinity Bay, where Hoskins had laboured, was now without any preacher but maintained a society of ca. thirty.

Black's preaching for the first time resembles the concentrated revivalist effort of future itinerants, with repeated visits to Harbour Grace and Carbonear, a saturation effort on the part of the revivalist, whose performance like that of a sensitive stage performer improved with the increasing response of his audience. There were backsliders being restored, but the initial response seems to have come from newcomers to the Methodist faith. The impact of Black's preaching upon individuals was not unlike that of Coughlan's twenty years before, the fear of an angry god and the liberating message of release from sin and guilt. A former listener reminisced years later:

Many years ago, when Parson Black came into these parts .... There was a terrible alarm among sinners at that time. We were afraid to hear the man. But I went nothing afraid of the man, but something he said scared me terribly. I see'd myself a new man that night. I see'd God was angry wi' me then, and I cried for mercy. Nor did I rest till I knew that his anger was turned away and that Jesus died to save me.

But charisma did not exclude order. Despite Black's subjectivity, he was able to analyze the revival in rational terms as a divine work with accompanying human manifestations. After an especially intense service, where "the church appeared all in confusion" and "nothing was to be seen but heaving breasts and weeping eyes," he observed matter-of-fact:

Part of this work may be natural or animal; may arise from sympathy; but it is evident much of it is divine. Nothing but the Spirit of God can awaken and alarm the sleepy, guilty conscience of fallen man. God alone can enlighten his understanding, and beget in him a due sense of the vileness of sin, as it stands opposed to the divine nature and will: can draw his affections from earth, and fix them on heavenly objects; can fill his soul with meekness, patience, resignation; with contentedness, peace and joy; with faith, hope, love; none I say but God can produce these. But these are produced; it follows then, this evidently is a work of God, notwithstanding some appendages or attendants of the work may be from nature; yea, from Satan.

In the end, Black's visit, as stimulating as it may have been for himself and his hearers, represents a transitory phase in his overall missionary activity and had only a limited effectiveness as far as Newfoundland Methodism is concerned. It was occasional in design and temporally too limited, despite a demonstrated need for him to stay longer and visit other locations. Despite an urgent need to visit Old Perlican in Trinity Bay, Black abstained, "lest I should miss a passage to HALIFAX, and be detained upon the island all the winter."

The impression of the occasional character of the visit is reinforced by a lack of follow-up visits or coordinated missionary activities after Black's return to Halifax. When there occurred a new itinerant ministry in Newfoundland during the mid-1790s, the preachers were sent directly from England without any prior consultation with Nova Scotia or the U.S. But even then, Newfoundland and the Eastern British American theatre of operation took a backseat in Coke's planning. As late as 1804, when Thomas Coke recommended to the Missionary Committee for Newfoundland John Remmington, "a man of GREAT piety, and GREAT zeal, but of small abilities," his neglect of Newfoundland is quite obvious by his choice of a missionary. Coke wrote: "I know the native fishermen on that coast are a very rude ignorant set of men, and that a man of small abilities would do for them." Although he considered Remmington's abilities "smaller than [originally] ... apprehended," his being sent to Newfoundland had the added advantage that "in time he would return to Ireland, and the Irish Conference who gave him to me, would be judges, how far they should employ him, so that he would be no burden to the British part of the Connexion in that respect." While tradition is unanimous in crediting Black with single-handedly saving Newfoundland Methodism from utter ruin, the ever thoughtful Arthur Kewley comes closer to the truth when he observes, "whatever saved Methodism from extinction, it was not the visit of the Reverend William Black." Rather:

It is significant that Methodism in Newfoundland did not gain recognition and self-confidence from a great revival, or a moving wave of evangelism; nor through a courageous programme of social and moral reform; nor by an effective practice of class meetings, prayer meetings, gospel singing, testimonies, and conversion --but instead through another basic dimension of Methodism, organization with direct supervision."