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The Revivals
From: Classic Books for Today #156
By S. B. Shaw (1905)
(Used by Permission)

"Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?"   Psalm 85:6

And then another essential note to be remembered is this. I have already said that it is essentially a Church Revival in the broadest sense of that word. What is the Church doing? If you go to Wales and get near this work you will see the Church returning to the true functions of her priesthood. What are the functions of the Christian priesthood? Of course I need hardly stay to say that I am referring to the priesthood of the Church, for there is no priesthood in the Church separated from the Church; and I am not at all sure that God is not restoring to Wales the true functions of priest-hood, partly because she refuses to be dominated by any false system of priesthood.

There are two essential functions to the Christian priest-hood. The first is eucharistic, the giving of thanks: the other is intercessory, praying. That is all. That is going on. The Church every-where singing and praying and offering praise, and pleading with God. Every meeting is made up almost exclusively of these things. Evan Roberts, and those who sing with him, and those who are speaking in other parts, are urging the people to praise, to pray, and the Church everywhere is doing it, and while the Church is praising, singing plaintively in Welsh such songs as -

"Oh, the Lamb, the gentle Lamb, The Lamb of Calvary,"

or while the Church is singing of the love of God, men and women are coming down broken-hearted, sin-convicted, yielding themselves to Jesus Christ. It is a great return on the part of the Church, under the inspired touch of the Spirit of God, to the exercise of its priestly functions, giving praise and interceding.

And then it is a great recognition of the presence and power of the Spirit manifesting itself in the glorification of Christ. What are the effects produced upon the converts? Again I am taking the largest out-look. Two words, I think, cover the whole thing -- vision and virtue. Men are seeing things! Oh, yes, it is quite cheap and easy to stay at a distance and smile. It is intensely easy for the Lancet to predict in-sanity. I will tell you something in passing. The insanity that will be produced in Wales by this Welsh revival will be as nothing to the in-sanity from drink which it will cure.

It is intensely cheap and easy for cold-blooded men at a distance, who know nothing of Celtic fire or spiritual fire, to smile at this whole thing, this seeing of visions. But while you smile, these men are seeing visions. They will tell you crudely of them, perhaps, but it is one of those strange things that no man can ever tell a vision when he sees it really. They are seeing God. Well, but you say, that will pass. It is passing. The vision is passing out into virtue, and men are paying their debts, and abandoning the public-house, and treating their horses well. Oh, my masters! Did you say the next revival would be ethical?

It is that, because it is spiritual, and you will never get an ethical revival except in this way. Vision is merging into virtue, and theatrical companies are packing up and going back because there are no houses, and on every hand there is sweeping down these Welsh valleys a great clean river. It is the river of God, and men are being cleansed in it, in personal and civic relation-ships. We are quite willing to appeal to the coming years about this work, but the evidences are already present on every hand. Tradesmen are being startled by men paying debts even though the Statute of Limitations has run out. Trades-men, you know what that means! An emotion that will make a man do that is worth cultivating, and it is good all the way through.

This is very fragmentary, but it must be if a man talks of these things. No man ever yet could de-scribe a burning bush, and I know I have not described this to you.

Will you let me hold you while I say something to you about our own lessons?

First of all, as to Wales itself, and especially to this great district. I am perfectly sure that it will be a good thing for us if we let it alone. By that I mean that General Booth never manifested his wisdom more than when he packed up and came home. And I love him, and have for years. Any of us that go down there with any thought in our heart we can help, we had better leave the thing in God's hand. To me it is so sacred a manifestation and glorious that I became frightened, as it wore on, lest my presence, without any desire that it should be so, should check the great movement. That was why I said to Evan Roberts, "I am going away, man, because I will not, so help me God, hinder by fiveminutes this great work" I feel we had better let that thing run. We did not originate it anywhere, and -- for-give the Americanism -- we can not run it. We had better stand aside and pray, and get ready for what God means to do for us.

What are the great values of this movement in Wales? First the re-affirmation of the spiritual. Secondly, this marvelous union of the spiritual with the practical, this manifestation of an ethical result from a spiritual renewal. Let me say it. I am not at all sure that God is not rebuking our over-organization. We certainly have been in danger of thinking there could not be a revival, or any work done for God unless we had prepared everywhere. I am the last man to speak against organization in its proper place, but I am inclined to think God is saying to us, Your organizations are right, providing you do not live in them, and end in them. But here, apart from all of them, setting them almost ruthlessly on one side, Pentecostal power and fire are being manifested.

What shall we do in the presence of this great movement? Imitate it? Imitation will be fatal. Let no man come back and attempt to start any-where in London meetings on the lines of those held in Wales, and for this simple reason: that no man started them there. If somewhere here there should break out some great manifestation such as this, then God grant we be ready to fall in line. You can not imitate this kind of thing. What shall we do? If we can not imitate, we can discover the principles. What are they?

Let us listen for the Spirit, confess Christ, be absolutely at His disposal. Oh, but you say to me, Are not we all that? Well, I do not know. God help us to find out for ourselves. I think we are in terrible danger of listening to the Spirit, and when His voice speaks to us, quenching Him. You say, Something moved me to speak to that man about his soul, but I did not like to. That is how revival is stopped. Speak to him. Listening to the Spirit, confessing Christ openly; absolutely at His disposal.

Let us in our church work not at-tempt to imitate the thing afar, but let us prayerfully take hold of every organization and every method, and strengthen it. Strengthen it how? By seeing to it that through the organization the Spirit of God has right of way; by bringing your Sunday-school class, dear teacher, into a new realm, and instead of treating it as a company of boys and girls you care for very much, that you teach and interest on Sunday afternoons, treat it as a company of souls to be saved.

Begin to try and teach along the line, instead of treating our congregations as congregations to be instructed ever in holy things; treat them as men and women that are to be persuaded to holy things, and consecration, and Jesus Christ. And in order to the doing of all this, what we supremely need is that we ourselves should be at the end of ourselves, that we should dare to abandon ourselves with the same amount of passion to our work. Oh, we have been too -

"Icily regular, faultily faultless, Splendidly null"

What we do need is the abandonment of ourselves to the great truths we know so well, to the great forces that indwell. Let us "strengthen the things that remain."

And so -- now forgive me if I ad-dress myself to my own people --shall we not turn ourselves -- ministers and staff and officers, and all the members, and shall we not say, at least we can now take up this work and make it instinct with new devotion and life, at least we can take hold of the thing that lies closest, and put into it the passion of a great devotion. We can begin there.

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