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Andrew Murray
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| The Revivals Page 6 | |
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Return to Revivals Main Index >> The Revivals "Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?" Psalm 85:6 A Meeting at Skewen It was into the peculiarly sacred atmosphere created by an hour and a half of intensely spiritual worship that Evan Roberts came at two o'clock. They prayed and sang, and sang and prayed, as if nobody noticed him, and yet, of course, everybody had. This absorption of worship just suited him, and he was much impressed by the devout waiting upon God, instead of the merewaiting for the evangelist. The people were now singing, "Send the Breeze from Calvary's Hill," and he asked them to sing it tenderly, and as they instantly and beautifully responded, everybody knew the prayer was answered. He began to talk about that verse, "For such the Father seeks," but he soon got to the theme of self-sacrifice, as suggested and required by the great love of which they had been singing. "Do you say the call for self-sacrifice is hard? Not harder than for the Son to leave the Father's house. Is it dark? Not darker than Calvary" The transition from this to "When I survey the wondrous cross" was most apt and impressive, and the feeling was almost too in-tense to be endured. For an hour nearly everything had been in Welsh, and then the English were so stirred that first one and then another prayed and testified, and for the next hour it was nearly all English. Evan Roberts himself shed tears of gratitude and was moved to speak briefly in English, and told how he was receiving letters from England, Scotland, Ireland, Nor-way, France, Spain, America and Africa. After this the Welsh tongue prevailed, and one minister from North Wales thanked God that Snowdon was being shaken by the prayers of the quarrymen. And whilst nine or ten people were praying at the same time, without any semblance of disorder, the congregation sang very gently and softly in a faint under-tone, in which the four parts were beautifully blended. "Oh, send the Holy Spirit, Lord." The effect of this soft musical accompaniment to the prayers of several voices can not be described. It is deeply impressive, and often leads the soul into a quiet ecstasy that is truly of Heaven. I believe it would be impossible for us to imitate this special feature of the revival worthily in England. I know one instance where it was at-tempted, and it was a ghastly failure, culminating only in a horrible medley of discordant noises suggestive of pandemonium or worse. And there are one or two other features in which the Welsh excel, which we may well admire, but not imitate. We shall just prove our-selves ungainly and awkward in at-tempting to do what we can not. The evening meeting was at the other end of the village at the Tabernacle. Here, too, there were about 1,500 people crammed into a chapel that would look very full with 900. The windows in the lobby were taken out to prevent suffocation, and the doors were wide open, but whilst this arrangement let in air, for which we were thankful, it also admitted sounds, for which we were not. Although a large overflow meeting was held at Horeb Baptist Church there was still a surging crowd in the street, and the police said there were thousands. This is very likely an exaggeration, and yet there were probably more outside than there were in. The huge throng distressed and alarmed the babies and their mothers, and they all disturbed us, except when we were singing, and such glorious harmony nothing could disturb. It soothed the disappointed hosts outside, and as soon as we stopped Babel began again. Ordinarily this would have been fatal to a really good meeting, and it was a very serious hindrance, but it was astonishing with what tact and patience and judgment Evan Roberts led us on step by step to disregard these distractions, till in the last half hour we gained a glorious victory, and finished the daywith hallelujahs. I found myself next to Rev. Llewellyn Morgan, of Neath Abbey, in the Swansea (Welsh) circuit. The membership of his church was 142, and the revival has brought him seventy more, including several who had given up attendance at any place of worship. This is proportionately one of the largest increases recorded among our Wesleyan churches. One young man who prayed fervently was the organist of our little chapel at Pontardawe, and another lad of sixteen from the same place also prayed with wonderful force and passion. Both of these have only learnt to pray in the revival. One old man asked God to melt all the icebergs in the churches, and this led a London vicar to thank God that "the symbol of Christianity is not ice (although to judge by some Christians we should think it was), but fire -- not wild fire, but holy fire." The next brother did not seem to be so afraid of wild fire, for he asked God that we might "get on fire with such big flames that no one could put them out." In England everybody knows that grand old song, "The Lost Chord." In Wales recently at their singing festivals one of their best-known songs has been a lamentation over "The Lost Amen." But in the revival the lost has been found, and nothing has been more surely recovered than the Amen. So now a stirring melody has been composed rejoicing in the "Return of the Amen" At this evening's service a peasant girl with eyes shut, and as if completely absorbed in her theme, declaimed this new song with magnificent effect, and it succeeded in rousing to the full that national fervor that is so inimitable. It was a wonderful effort, and there wasn't a Welsh heart that wasn'tstirred or a Welsh face that wasn't wet with tears. Later on in this service Evan Roberts put a searching question which he has put once before, but not when I have been present. "Will those of you who have done your best for Jesus stand up?" Six or eight near me in the big pew, including two London clergymen well known at Keswick meetings, immediately arose, but no one else in that crowded assembly seemed prepared to bear such a testimony. Person-ally I dared not, for this reason: I honestly believed I had done my best for Him as far as quantity was concerned, but when I thought of the quality of this quantity, it was far from satisfactory to me, and so I was sure its defects would be still more glaring in God's white light. And so I sat still and asked in-stead, as a devout woman did last week, "Lord, make me like a white sheet of paper without blots." As the meeting came to a close about ten o'clock I witnessed a scene the like of which I have not known before. Evan Roberts called upon Christian people to stand and testify in the words of Scripture. First people rose in dozens, then in scores, next in hundreds, and all of them quietly and reverently quoting Scripture. No one shouted. It was a most exhilarating exercise, and as the faces of the witnesses beamed with the joy of the Lord I could only ascribe the glory to Him who hath "washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God" Delightful tidings reach us of the success of Mr. George Clark at Newport, Mr. Herbert Booth at Cardiff, and Gipsy Smith at Pontypridd. But the finest work of all is being done by a glorious company of enthusiastic and aggressive churches in almost every town and village in South Wales. These churches receive no extraneous aid, but they are depending solely on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit manifested in answer to importunate prayer and self-denying activity, and there are being added to these churches daily those that are being saved. Wales is resounding with doxologies. The mountains and the hills have broken into singing, and in our generation we have never before heard the like. One of the finest laymen Methodism has in the far North said to me on Tuesday, "I have been praying for this for years, and I was beginning to fear I should have to die without the sight; but it has come at last, and now won't I praise Him!" -- London Methodist Times |
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