In the summer of 1856, four young men in my congregation resolved
to establish a social meeting for prayer, to be called the Sabbath-school
Teachers' Prayer-meeting. Little interest was felt in this meeting
for several months; yet these young men, having felt the power
of religion on their own hearts and lives, and knowing how little
success they could expect as teachers in winning souls for Christ
without His Spirit, continued to meet from time to time to implore
a blessing on their labours and on the gospel preached.
In the month of July 1857, 1 delivered a course of lectures on
the work and necessity of the Holy Spirit, which were blessed
in the conversion of some souls, but more especially in awakening
a greater interest in attending public worship and listening to
the word preached. But no marked, prominent feature of a revival
of religion appeared.
Early in the spring of 1858, tidings of a great revival in America
reached us. As the great awakening in New York and elsewhere was
evidently in answer to prayer, and as the Spirit of God is distinctly
promised to those who ask, we felt strongly induced to urge from
the pulpit the necessity of additional meetings for prayer, besides
the one, already in existence, conducted by the Sabbath-school
teachers.
As a mark of God's blessing on this proposal, eight prayer-meetings
sprang up within the bounds of the congregation, and were zealously
conducted by young men. At these meetings the Scriptures were
read, and fervent prayers offered up for the minister, and for
the Holy Spirit to be poured upon the people.
At first these meetings were thinly attended, but gradually the
interest increased, and the attendance became more numerous, and
it became manifest that the Lord was blessing them, as several
persons were led to the Saviour through their instrumentality.
All the important information that could be collected in the meantime
on the American revival was communicated from the pulpit, which
appeared. to impress the minds of the people with some such feeling
as this--" I wish the Lord would visit us in a similar way."
Prayer-meetings grew larger, the attendance on public worship
increased, more earnestness and a deeper solemnity marked the
worshipers. The Spirit of the Lord was evidently at work, striving
with men's consciences, evinced in the silent tear that was occasionally
wiped from the eye, as if the person were ashamed it should be
seen; and from the fact that persons were found stealing at night,
for fear of discovery, into a barn, or behind a hedge, to pray.
I saw evidently the mountain of sin yielding a little to the hammer
of the gospel; still, no great awakening appeared; we had nothing
that could be termed a revival.
On the 11th of June 1859, at a prayer-meeting in Glenconway schoolhouse,
the Lord made bare His holy arm in sight of all the people. A
young convert from County Antrim addressed the meeting earnestly
and solemnly on what the Lord had done for his soul. The people
listened with deep attention, tears stole down many a cheek, hearts
pent up with silent grief were ready to burst, and at the close
six persons were plunged into the most heart-rending anguish I
ever witnessed.
The cry of all was to the same effect--"Oh, my sins! my sins!-I
am going to hell!--Jesus, have mercy on me!".
One cried, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on my wicked father and
mother!"
Two young men shed tears bitterly, and, with the arrow, of the
Lord in their souls, they went from the meeting to a graveyard,
and there spent all night in wrestling with the Lord for pardon.
They are now candidates for the ministry.
It was thus evident the Lord was in the midst of us answering
the earnest and fervent prayers for His Holy Spirit, offered in
the name of Christ in that very place on many a previous occasion.
The following day, June 12, was the Sabbath--a day which will
never be forgotten by many in this parish. Oh, with what power
and majesty Jehovah walked amongst us! Zechariah xii. 10, was
wonderfully fulfilled to us. When the usual time for public worship
came, the church was so crowded that we were obliged to retire
to the churchyard, and conduct the services in the open air. The
crowd became immense, the minister and congregation of Scriggan
having joined us, and a more solemn assembly never met on earth.
During the services, the tears and suppressed sobs of many shewed
that it was no ordinary occasion--that it was the day of God's
power--that the Spirit of power was dealing personally with men's
souls. When the benediction was pronounced, a few retired, but
the great majority lingered --stood, in fact, as if held in a
vice, or bound with a chain--and in a moment, as if struck with
a thunderbolt, about a hundred persons were prostrated on their
knees, sending forth a wail from hearts bruised, broken,
and overwhelmed with horror, such as will never be forgotten,
and which, perhaps, for solemnity and awe, will never be surpassed
until the judgment-day. Oh, what must the wailings of the lost
in hell be, when the discovery is made that their lamps are gone
out, that the day of mercy is past, and the door of hope shut
for ever! For hours these stricken, smitten, bleeding souls remained
on their bended knees, unconscious of everything but their own
guilt and danger, and need of a Saviour, pleading and praying
with an intensity and fervour which surpasses all description.
The evening of Wednesday, June 15, was appointed for prayer, and
long before the hour for commencing the service, the church was
crowded. The awful sadness in every countenance bespoke the deep
earnestness within; even the most ungodly were overawed, and wore
a solemn sadness on their faces. Had a pestilence swept over the
neighbourhood, leaving one dead in every house, greater awe would
not have been produced. At the close of the services, several
efforts were made to dismiss the congregation, but without avail;
and it was not until four o'clock in the morning that the people
could be persuaded to go home. Multitudes were again, on that
night, steeped in awful sorrow, and stung with the most poignant
remorse for sin. Such unutterable horror overwhelmed one young
man, that the blood streamed from mouth and nose. Another man,
who all his life was a profligate, had such a vivid view of the
horrors of hell, and the pains of hell took such hold of him,
that he cried like a demoniac, that a hundred devils were dragging
him to the bottomless pit.
On the morning of Sabbath, June 19, nearly all the children in
the Sabbath school, to the number of a hundred, were plunged into
the same deep, sinking, sorrowing sense of great guilt and unworthiness.
For several Sabbaths the services of the sanctuary had to give
way to the sobs and cries of pierced souls; and though every lawful
effort was made to suppress all excitement, yet the agony and
sorrow within were too great to be repressed, and frequently the
audible cry broke forth for mercy.
Numbers of cases of conviction of a very interesting nature took
place in private, in the family, or elsewhere. Some were struck
with a sense of sin in the field, when working--some on the highway--some
when conducting family worship, and others in their beds. One
person told me, when he awoke in the morning he found his pillow
wet with tears, and his whole frame feeble and exhausted. One
strong young man, when working alone in a turf bog, was prostrated
with a spade in his hand; and for hours he there wrestled in prayer
to God, and all the succeeding night, in his house, the cry for
mercy went up from a broken heart. It was not till the morning
he found peace, when his powerful muscular frame was shaken and
exhausted, as if he bad been rising out of a protracted and severe
fever. So powerfully and generally did the Spirit of God work
both in the public sanctuary and in private, that few in this
neighbourhood were unawakened. Would to God I could say they were
all converted!
The space allotted will not permit me to enter further into detail;
I shall therefore close this paper with a few practical remarks.
What has been the primary cause of this great religious awakening,
sweeping from family to family, and producing an anxiety about
the salvation of the soul, such as has never been experienced
by any preceding generation in this neighbourhood? The answer
is, God's Spirit has been signally dealing personally with the
consciences and hearts of the people. The mass of our church-going
people were cold, dead, formal, and prayerless-living and dying
in sin, and going to the judgment-seat and to eternity unblessed,
unconcerned, and unsaved. The ministration of the word had become
feeble and powerless; the lamentation was going forth from many
a godly minister, "Who hath believed our report?" "
The bellows are burned, the dead is consumed of the fire, the
founder melteth in vain; for the wicked are not plucked away."
Suddenly, as on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit shook the
"dry bones," awakened the slumbering conscience, and
impelled men to flee from the wrath to come.
What stronger evidence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit
than the dread of sin overwhelming the soul; "When He is
come, he will reprove the world of sin. "This was one most
prominent feature in the awakening here. The aspect of anguish,
the deep groan, the piercing cry of horror, and the intense earnest
appeal, "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon my soul!" is the
most distinct and demonstrative evidence that God was waking up
the soul to feel how intolerable the burden of sin was; and oh,
if intolerable upon earth, where there is hope, how will the sinner
endure it in its full, crushing, and overwhelming power in hell,
where there is none!
A large number of my congregation were stricken to the earth,
as if suddenly pierced with a spear, whilst others were distressed
and perplexed with an awful sense of unworthiness. The effects
in both cases were similar, being manifested in the earnest, prayerful
devotedness of their lives, teaching us to submit to whatever
way the Spirit of the Lord may please to work.
If I dare venture an opinion on the bodily distress many endured,
arising, no doubt, from a sense of guilt pressing on the mind
producing great anguish of soul, it would be this,--Professors
of religion had become so hardened in sin--so " gospel-hardened
"--so utterly impenitent, and the habit of resisting the
most powerful appeals from the pulpit had become so confirmed,
that God saw that an extraordinary remedy was necessary for an
extraordinary emergency; and I believe the loud wail coming from
the lips of the sinking, perishing sinner, preached with greater
power to a careless people than the most eloquent sermon that
could be delivered. And, therefore, regarding the physical features
of the revival here, I feel constrained to bow, and say, "It
is the Lord, let him do as it seemeth him good."
A striking feature in the people here is their insatiable thirst
for prayer. Prayer, the most earnest and persevering, preceded
the revival here, and now it is sustained in its vigour by prayer;
and, at the present moment, the district prayer-meetings, which
are numerous, are crowded every night--God fulfilling His promise,
that when He would pour out the Spirit of grace, He would accompany
it with the spirit of supplications also. The congregation is
composed of about two hundred families, one hundred and eighty
of whom worship God daily, not with the cold, formal prayers of
other days, but with burning hearts and burning words. A young
man or a young female, in many cases, leads the family devotions,
they being the converted persons in such families.
A desire for the conversion of souls still perishing, is very
strongly manifested. I have seen a young female, full of love
for the Saviour, kneel on the highway-side, and there pray with
a fervour I shall never forget for the conversion of her father.
Young men, after a hard day's work, often walk six or eight miles
to hold a prayer-meeting in some backward district, or to pray
with and warn. some ungodly family. But I must hasten to a close,
with the following important facts:
1. The greater number, of converts, are among those who regularly
attended the means of grace. How necessary, like blind Bartimeus,
to be in the way when the Saviour passes by!
2. God's people here were praying for, and expecting, a day of
quickening long before it came. How important, like the apostles,
to wait for the promise of the Father, and to continue waiting
on the spirit of prayer and supplications!
3. A larger proportion of the young than those in middle or old
age have been converted. What a lesson to the young to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and become converted before sin hardens
and blunts the soul !
4. There are more females than males, seemingly, converted, teaching
us that as men are more involved in the world, they are in more
danger of its blighting and withering influence on the heart.
I have thus given a few of the facts and features of the revival
of religion in this congregation, and I have confined my observations
strictly to what came under my own observation. May this imperfect
narrative of God's great work here be acknowledged by the Holy
Spirit, and may we all, as minister, Sabbath-school teachers,
and elders, pray more, labour more, and expect more, as I believe
we have only had a sheaf of the great harvest, a shower of the
Spirit, leading us to look out for and continually to expect the
flood--the flood upon the dry ground. Holy Spirit!
descend upon a dry, unfruitful Church, and on a cold, dead world,
and may righteousness go forth as a light, and the salvation of
our God as a lamp that burneth!