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Andrew Murray
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| The Revivals Page 19 | |
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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 You say, "How do you reconcile these things?" I do not reconcile them. They are both there. I leave you to reconcile them. If you put a man into the midst of one of these meetings who knows nothing of the language of the Spirit, and nothing of the life of the Spirit, one of two things will happen to him. He will either pass out saying, "These men are drunk," or he him-self will be swept up by the fire into the kingdom of God. If you put a man down who knows the language of the Spirit, he will be struck by this most peculiar thing. I am speaking with diffidence, for I have never seen anything like it in my life; while a man praying is disturbed by the breaking out of a song, there is no sense of disorder, and the prayer merges into song, and back into testimony, and back again into song for hour after hour, without guidance. These are the three occupations -- singing, prayer, testimony. Evan Roberts was not present. There was no human leader. Mr. Mantle was with me, and spoke a word or two, when a man in the gallery rose and said to him in broken English, "Is your work in London near Greenwich?" "Yes," said Mr. Mantle, "close to Greenwich." "Take this address down," said the man, "my brother is there. He is drinking and a skeptic. I am praying for him." Mr. Mantle pulled out his notebook, and said, "Give me the address," and he dictated it to him, and then they started singing "Songs of Praises," and the man prayed, and Mr. Mantle is on his track today. That is an incident. A most disorderly proceeding, you say? I will be very glad when thathappens here, when you will break through all conventionalities. When a man is in agony about the soul of his brother, he will dare to ask. But it must only be as the spontaneous answer of the soul to the Spirit of God. In the afternoon, we were at an-other chapel, and another meeting, equally full, and this time Evan Roberts was present. He came into the meeting when it had been on for an hour and a half. I went with him, and with the utmost difficulty we reached the platform. I took absolutely no part, and he took very little part. He spoke, but his address -- if it could be called an address -- was punctuated perpetually by song and prayer and testimony. And Evan Roberts works on that plan, never hindering anyone. As the result of that afternoon I venture to say that if that address Evan Roberts gave in broken fragments had been re-ported, the whole of it could have been read in six or seven minutes. As the meeting went on, a man rose in the gallery and said "So and So," naming some man, "has decided for Christ," and then in a moment the song began. They did not sing "Songs of Praises," they sang "Diolch Iddo," and the weirdness and beauty of it swept over the audience. It was a song of praise be-cause that man was born again. There are no inquiry rooms, no penitent forms, but some worker announces, or an inquirer openly confesses Christ, the name is registered, and the song breaks out, and they go back to testimony and prayer. In the evening exactly the same thing. I can tell you no more, save that I personally stood for three solid hours wedged so that I could not lift my hands at all. That which impressed me most was the congregation. I looked along the gallery of the chapel on my right, and there were three women and the rest were men packed solidly in. If you could but for once have seen the men, evidently colliers, with the blue seam that told of their work on their faces, clean and beautiful. Beautiful, did I say? Many of them lit with heaven's own light, radiant with the light that never was on sea and land. Great rough, magnificent, poetic men by nature, but the nature had slumbered long. Today it is awakened, and I look on many a face, and I knew that men did not see me, did not see Evan Roberts, but they saw the face of God and the eternities. I left that evening, after having been in the meeting three hours, at 10:30, and it swept on, packed as it was, until an early hour next morning, song and prayer and testimony and conversion and confession of sin by leading church members publicly, and the putting of it away, and all the while no human leader, no one indicating the next thing to do, no one checking the spontaneous movement. Now, for one moment let me go a step further and speak just a word or two about -- the man himself.
Evan Roberts is hardly more than a boy, simple and natural, no orator, no leader of men; nothing of the masterfulness that characterized such men as Wesley, and Whitefield and Moody; no leader of men. One of our most brilliant writers in one of our morning papers said of Evan Roberts, in a tone of sorrow, that he lacked the qualities of leadership, and the writer said if but some prophet did now arise he could sweep everything before him. God has not chosen that a prophet shall arise. It is quite true. Evan Roberts is no orator, no leader.
What is he? I mean now with regard to this great movement. He is the mouth-piece of the fact that there is no human guidance as to man or organization. The burden of what he says to the people is this: It is not man, do not wait for me, depend on God, obey the Spirit. But whenever moved to do so, he speaks under the guidance of the Spirit. His work is not that of appealing to men so much as that of creating an atmosphere by calling men to follow the guidance of the Spirit in whatever the Spirit shall say to them.
I do not hesitate to say that God has set His hand upon the lad, beautiful in simplicity, ordained in his devotion, lacking all the qualities that we have looked for in preachers and prophets and leaders. He has put him in the forefront of this movement that the world may see that He does choose the things that are not to bring to nought the things that are, the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; a man who lacks all the essential qualities which we say make for greatness, in order that through him in simplicity and power He may move to victory.
For a moment let us stand back, and look at the whole thing more generally. Let me speak of some of the incidental -- peculiarities of the movement -- as I saw it, and gathered information concerning it on the ground. In connection with the Welsh revival there is no preaching, no order, no hymn-books, no choirs, no organs, no collection, and finally, no advertising. Now, think of that for a moment, again, will you? Think of all our work. I am not saying these things are wrong. I simply want you to see what God is doing. There were organs, but silent; the ministers, but among the rest of the people, rejoicing and prophesying with the rest, only there was no preaching. Yet the Welsh revival is the revival of preaching to Wales.
Everybody is preaching. No order, and yet itmoves from day to day, week to week, county to county, with matchless precision, with the order of an attacking force. No books, but, ah me, I nearly wept tonight over the singing of our last hymn. Mr. Stead was asked if he thought the revival would spread to London, and he said, "It depends upon whether you can sing." He was not so wide of the mark. When these Welshmen sing, they sing the words like men who believe them. They abandon themselves to their singing. We sing as though we thought it would not be respectable to be heard by the man next to us. No choir, did I say? It was all choir. And hymns!
I stood and listened in wonder and amazement as that congregation on that night sang hymn after hymn, long hymns, sung through without hymn-books. Oh, don't you see it? The Sunday-school is having its harvest now. The family altar is having its harvest now. The teaching of hymns and the Bible among those Welsh hills and valleys is having its harvest now. No advertising. The whole thing advertises itself. You tell me the press is advertising it. I tell you they did not begin advertising it until the thing caught fire and spread. And let me say to you, one of the most remarkable things is the attitude of the Welsh press. I came across instance after instance of men converted by reading the story of the revival in the Western Mail and the South Wales Daily News. |
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