04 - The Revival Meetings

CHAPTER IV THE REVIVAL MEETINGS THE course of the Revival under the leadership of Mr. Evan Roberts in South Wales was irresistible. It over­shadowed everything else. Its reports made up the chief feature in the South Wales daily press for many months. There was no building large enough to contain the crowds. Morning, afternoon, and evening meetings were held each day, and, frequently, meetings were much prolonged; the crowds would gather for the afternoon service ere the morning one would be ended, and the afternoon service would hardly be over in time for the commencement of the evening service; while the evening service would last till, and even past, mid­night. As one said of the Ulster Revival of ’59, "The difficulty used to be to get the people into the Church, but the difficulty now is to get them out." As remarkable a feature as any was that upon which the late Lord Pontypridd thus remarked, "The Revival finances itself. There are no bills, no halls, no salaries. "

PRAISE AND PRAYER

Praise was dominant; but prayer also found a large place. A notable feature was the audible praying of many at one and the same time, and that without producing the slightest sense of confusion. The Lord’s children were revived, and thousands professed to be converted. Churches, small and great, suddenly so swelled their ranks that a small church became a rarity in the land. Those who had long been members of churches discovered that they were destitute of any living experience of salvation and, with the rest, humbly found their way to the Cross. This last feature was perhaps a more notable one than even the conversion of those outside the churches.

"BROKEN EARTHENWARE"

There were, of course, thousands upon thousands of cases of conversion from the ranks of the irreligious. "Broken earthenware," in large numbers, were re-shaped in the Divine Potter’s hands. Magistrates, court advocates, and the police were given a real holiday; their occupation being almost altogether gone. Characters sunken in vice and crime, such as the law could neither regenerate nor control, nor indeed even intimidate, found transformation through the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ.

"BROTHER TOM" A most remarkable thing it was to notice how some of the very worst were transformed into characters of surprising saintliness. "Brother Tom," as he came to be affectionately known, of Ogmore Vale, was a most striking example of such. For years he had been the terror of the neighbourhood, and the despair of the police. His appearances before the Bridgend magistrates were almost innumerable. A drunken, violent sot he was; but-GOD! The change was marvellously com­plete and rapid. For some years now he has gone "to be with Christ, which is far better", but the fragrance of his holy walk is still fresh in the Ogmore. His way and success in soul-winning were remarkable; his insight into spiritual truth, not only exceptional, but literally unique. The writer will be permitted the confession that, for spiritual wisdom and penetration, he has heard from no human lips anything to surpass, nor perhaps to equal, what he once heard from the lips of this dear man who only a few years previously was the completest moral wreck imaginable. The wonderful grace of God!

"SHALL NOT SEE DEATH"

"Father," as Brother Tom familiarly but reverently re­ferred to God, was everything to him. He lived to worship and to pray. His love and simplicity were beyond words. In a few years this "down-and-out" had become one of the princes of God. His last years were years of much suffering. But, spite of his diseased lungs, he was a soul-winner to the last, When he had failed to go out in search of the lost the Lord brought the lost to him. His little room saw the re-birth of many a soul. He lived with his sister, and would insist on coming down each day from his upstairs bedroom. At the end of his last day on earth, with the help of his sister, he slowly struggled up the stairs, and, having at last reached his room, he weariedly sat upon the bed to recover somewhat his breath. Noticing a great change in his appearance his sister became alarmed and made as if she would rush out for assistance. Tom succeeded in calming her, saying that there was no need for alarm. A few more minutes passed, and then he lay himself upon the bed-cover. Presently, opening his eyes and looking up he said, "Father, I am ready; are You?" Immediately, "he was not, for God took him!" Even in his funeral a soul came to the Lord. The bones of a miracle-­working Elisha, though interred, still have virtue left in them.

REVIVAL OF SONG The spontaneous general outburst of praise and prayer at the meetings has been referred to. This was very wonderful. The singing was truly magnificent and stirring. Welsh con­gregational singing is something unique. In the places of worship the singing is not entrusted to a few who compose the choir. The whole congregation is the choir. No part in the harmony of a tune is missing, and most of the singers sing as ones trained. And so, from early youth, they really are. At any time, a characteristically Welsh congregation singing at a service is an experience worth going miles to hear. But imagine such an instrument with its every string swept by the breath of the Spirit of God in Revival degree. The reader will perhaps realize the same difficulty in imagining it as the writer does in describing it. The fact is, unless heard it is unimaginable, and, when heard, indescribable. In the Revival meetings there was no human leader. There was no hymn book; no one gave out a hymn. Anybody started the singing. And, very rarely did it happen that the hymn started, no one knew by whom, was out of harmony with the mood of the meeting at the moment. Once started, as if moved by a simultaneous impulse, the hymn was caught up by the whole congregation almost as if what was about to be sung had been announced, and all were responding to the baton of a visible human leader. "As a study of the psycho­logy of crowds," it was by one truly said, "I have seen nothing like it. You felt that the thousand or fifteen hundred persons before you had become merged into one myriad-headed but single-souled personality." Such was the perfect blending of mood and purpose that it bore eloquent testimony to a unity created only by the Spirit of God.

"The praying and singing," to quote an eloquent witness, "are both wonderful, but more impressive than either are the breaks which occur when utterance can no more, and the sobbing in the silence momentarily heard is drowned in a tempest of melody. No need for an organ. The assembly is its own organ as a thousand sorrowing or rejoicing hearts found expression in the sacred psalmody of their native hills." This feature made the Revival appear to many a "Revival of Song". That it was that in a marked degree is quite true, and in being so it followed the predilection and forecast of the Revivalist himself. At the same time it was far from being a revival of song exclusively. Praying mingled largely with the praising. And, such praying! Praying which rent the heavens; praying that secured immediate and marvellous answers. It startled one to hear the very young and unlettered pray with such unction, diction, and intelligence as could only be accounted for in one way. Filled with the Spirit, they were utterly beyond themselves in vision, thought, and expression.

PRAYERS’ IMMEDIATE ANSWERS

Speaking of answers to prayers being immediate, this may serve as an instance. At Aberdare, a young man passionately prayed for his brother. "Oh, Lord, save Abel," was the cry. Unconscious that prayer had been offered on his behalf, Abel walked into the chapel shortly afterwards, and the ecstasy of the audience can be better imagined than described when the prodigal brother rose to accept Christ.

Here is a still more striking illustration of the same imme­diateness. It was at the Tabernacle, Cardiff. A young man was seen to make his way to the big pew, and sink on his knees and pray. A middle-aged man in the body of the chapel, who had been watching the young man as he walked up the aisle, jumped up as if struck, and, rushing to the big pew, stood for a moment at the side of, the young man, and then knelt down at his side. The meeting went on in prayer and praise oblivious of the touching drama. When the two men particularly under notice arose, the younger man looked at the elder as if trans­fixed. "Father!" he cried. "Son!" replied the father, and both embraced with almost fierce joy. The father was a well­-known magistrate and mines’ official. The son had left home three years before, and the parents, meanwhile, had heard no tidings of him. Holding the youth by the arm, the father took him out of the "big seat", through the aisle, down to the body of the chapel, where the young man’s mother was engaged in prayer for her long-lost son. She was oblivious of everything around her, and looked up rather startled when she felt a touch on her arm. With a cry that thrilled every soul she threw her arms around her son’s neck, showering kisses upon him. When the audience had recovered from its own emotion the very rafters rang with "Diolch Iddo". Here was almost an instance of "Before they call I will answer".

HUMAN LEADERS DISPENSABLE

Time-limits in the meetings were forgotten. Announced to begin at a certain hour the people would gather an hour or two before. The meetings closed when they were ended. Clocks were completely out of action. And prayer and praise ceased not although the hours for meals or sleep were long past. Meetings began as soon as part of the congregation had assembled. There was no waiting for any human leader. "Never," writes one already quoted, "was there a religious movement so little indebted to the guiding brain of its leaders. It seems to be going ‘on its own’. There is no commanding human genius inspiring the advance. . . . In South Wales the leading role is taken by the third Person of the Trinity." Those called "leaders ", as a rule, entered when the meetings were already in full swing; incidentally, a very clear proof that the Spirit’s working was not in any degree dependent upon them.

REVIVAL, AND MISSIONS This last fact, perhaps, needs some stressing. Its signi­ficance is too important to be lost. A revival is a unique thing. One confesses to something not far removed from jealousy in regard to the use of the very word, "Revival." A Revival is not a "mission", although, thank God, many a mission has done much toward the reviving of the Lord’s people. A mission has a human leader; a mission is organized. Revival, on the other hand, has but one Leader--the Holy Spirit; Revival is never organized. It is energy, without man­made machinery. To use another’s words, "True Revival is never worked up; it always comes down from above." It is the work of the Spirit Who breatheth where He listeth. No one who has lived in a real Revival is ever tempted to call an annual mission by that name.

Apropos of the independence of the Spirit as to human leaders in Revival, the following, by a writer giving his im­pressions of the work in Wales as early as November, 1904, may be of interest. He said, "My second impression is that the Revival is not inseparably connected with the personality of an individual human being. The revivalist is not an eloquent man, neither is he a learned man, nor even, as far as I could judge, a man of strong mental abilities .... This seems to be another object-lesson to Wales that the light and the influence came from God, and not from man."* * The Life of Faith, Nov. 30, 1904·

It is right to add that the Revivalist himself was extra­ordinarily careful that it should not be thought that the work depended upon him. He soon decided that his movements must not be announced beforehand. "People must not rely on me," was his constant cry. "I have nothing for them. They must rely on Him Who alone can minister to their needs." "When you go to the window," he observed on one occasion, "you do not go to look at the glass but through it at the scenery beyond. Then look through me and see the Holy Spirit."

PREACHERS "CLOSURED" The spontaneity in worship, the unending flow of praise, testimony, and prayer, in many districts almost completely ousted preaching. Indeed, to cease preaching, at that time, seemed to many the natural and right thing to do. Many preachers ascended pulpits only to be "closured". And, in many cases, preachers gladly submitted, feeling their unfitness to speak in such an atmosphere. As to others, so also to ministers, it was a most searching time, and many who should have been leaders found themselves outstripped spiritually by their own members. The light that shone so brightly brought everything to view, and lack of spirituality or of orthodoxy would instantly be detected did one attempt to preach or teach. There was an intense hunger for the Word, and the awakened ones could not tolerate anything but the Word, and that too spoken by those who had had personal experience of its power in their own hearts and lives. Herein, perhaps, lies one reason why a proportion of ministers failed to appreciate and support the mighty work. To be constantly comparing the two Revivals of ’59 and 1904 is natural, and one should be permitted here to note how a difference between the two is recalled by the matter of the last paragraph. A fresh reading of the story of the former of the two Revivals, has impressed the fact that the leader thereof was supported by a surprisingly large number of ministers. The Rev. David Morgan, though the greatest of the revivalists, was by no means one of but a few. Every­where there were ministers touched by the fire, men who were capable of taking a Revival meeting with results almost com­parable with those of David Morgan himself. In fact, that Revival, in large measure, seemed to be led by the ministers of the districts where the blessing had fallen. Whatever may have been the reason, it must be confessed, this was not the case in anything like the same degree in 1904. THE "FOUR POINTS" The "closuring" of the preacher, however, was not an un­known thing even in 1859; even the chief Revivalist himself hall sometimes even to shout his message above the din of the worshipping saints. But, in 1904, the meetings in which there was neither preaching nor teaching were many. Some pastors boasted that they had not preached for close on a full year! From this distance it is impossible not to deplore the fact, and to regard one’s fears at the time to be justified. More unfortunate still, Mr. Roberts himself gradually ceased to speak at his own meetings. Except that, occasionally, he would intervene with a word of guidance, in the latter stages of his public ministry he would maintain silence. At the first he spoke pointedly, and often at much length. Sometimes he would speak for close on an hour before setting the meeting open for praise and prayer. And what he did say was most valuable. Everywhere he would set before the people what became known as "The Four Points". Did they desire an outpouring of the Spirit? Very well; four conditions must be observed. And, they were essential. "(I) Is there any sin in your past that you have not confessed to God? On your knees at once. Your past must be put away, and yourself cleansed. (2) Is there anything in your life that is doubtful­-anything that you cannot decide whether it is good or evil? Away with it. There must not be a cloud between you and God. Have you forgiven everybody, everybody, EVERYBODY? If not, don’t expect forgiveness for your own sins. You won’t get it. (3) Do what the Spirit prompts you to do. Obedience -prompt, implicit, unquestioning obedience to the Spirit. (4) A public confession of Christ as your Saviour. There is a vast difference between profession and confession." THE PURIFYING WORD

Here then were the "Four Points". The heads of the Revivalist’s teaching in the Revival’s earlier days. And, as the late Mrs. Penn-Lewis then pointed out, they are essentially the message emphasized at Spiritual Life Conventions such as Keswick and Llandrindod. Here was no empty appeal to emotion, but the bringing of hearts and lives under the search­ing light of the Spirit and the Word. Alas! under the terrific nervous strain of those days, the continuing of such teaching became to Mr. Roberts a physical impossibility. And thus he could but sit silently in the pulpit, and take but little part other than in quiet prayer; a spectacle rather than a prophet. The perspective, which the years that have followed supply, compels the judgment that this was a vital loss. Indeed, it is not too much to say that, when the human leader could no longer speak his characteristic, vital message, his work entered upon a new phase. The Word of God is not only pure but also purifying. Its giving forth, whether in reading, preaching, or teaching, has a vital effect upon a meeting’s atmosphere and success, for it lays an effectual check upon any elements therein that may be carnal. Others of the Revival’s leaders, men of less fame but hardly of less influence, did not, one is glad to record, give up preaching and teaching the Word. So much was this done by them that their Revival campaigns, in different parts of the country, were simply several series’ of successive Conventions. TO THE CHURCHES FIRST

And, it is of much interest, not to say much profit, to note that, while the message was given to the Lord’s people, sinners were converted. One of the workers who, during those years, conducted as many, if not indeed more, Revival gatherings than any other, has been heard to testify that, never once in those years, was he given a message directly applicable to the unconverted, and yet he was privileged to behold hundreds, if not thousands, at his meetings professing to be converted! In one of his meetings the converts numbered well over two hundred! One feels that such facts point eloquently a most important lesson, which is this: The success of the Gospel in the case of the unsaved is conditioned by its success, first of all, in the case of the saved. God reaches those without through those within. Mr. Evan Roberts saw this clearly and never tired emphasizing it. "My mission," he used to say, "is first to the churches. When the churches are aroused to their duty, men of the world will be swept into the Kingdom. A whole church on its knees is irresistible." To the same effect are the words of the leader of the Revival in Wales in I859, "When the bonds of Paul and Silas in Philippi’s prison snapped, the bonds of all the prisoners snapped. So, when the church is freed from the bonds of apathy and worldliness, those who are being drawn by Satan to eternal death will be released also."* If the Revival of 1904 had anything that might be called a slogan, it was this, "Bend the church, and save the people."

* Dafydd Morgan a Diwygiad ’59, p. 545.

It is a most solemn reflection, even a terrifying truth, that when God’s people fail to respond to the message God had sent them, their very failure deprives lost sinners of the power to respond to God’s message to them. A dead church is the most effective obstacle the enemy can devise in the way of sinners’ coming to Christ. A circular issued by the Free Church Council of Carmarthen about the time of the great outburst in 1904 stresses this very point. It says, "We cannot justly expect sinners to be saved, and our places of worship to be filled by those from the outside, until we ourselves get right with God; and this can only be done by an absolute surrender of our whole lives to Jesus Christ as King, and a faith accep­tance of the Holy Spirit." Thus, whosoever prays for Revival, let him be sure that when it comes God will concentrate upon His own people. This is the lesson taught, not only by the Revival of 1904, but by all Revivals. It is a lesson also which needs not only the vision, but also the courage, of faith to act upon it. Certainly, go after the lost, but concentrate upon God’s people. The key to the whole evangelistic position is there. An awakened church creates the atmosphere in which decisions by the lost to accept the Saviour will be made easier. The holiness movement, as the late Dr. R. W. Dale truly said, is the hope of the church; it is more, it is the hope also of the world. This feature, so marked in the Revival of 1904, is remarked upon by the late Rev. Evan H. Hopkins thus, "The Revival is in some respects unlike those that have preceded it. God is showing us to-day what He can do, not so much through the individual missioner as through the whole company of believing people assembled together in His Name. We have been accus­tomed to the Holy Spirit’s working through the missioner, or evangelist, directly upon the unconverted. But what we are witnessing to-day is the same Divine power working through the Church in its corporate capacity on those who are un­saved."** **The Life of Faith, Jan. 25, 1905 v PRACTICAL RESULTS "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord com­mandeth it not? "

- Lamentations 3:37.

"Whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly cleanse His threshing-floor."

- Matthew 3:12 (RY.).

"Every valley shall be filled, And every mountain and hill shall be brought low; And the crooked shall be made straight, And the rough ways smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

- Luke 3:5-6 (R.V.).