Revival¹

2. A Historical Survey

Rev W A Weale

It is not our purpose to go to any extent into the history of the Roman Empire. Suffice it to say that, while the Christianising of the Empire under Constantine no doubt appeared a great blessing at the time, it proved otherwise, for all manner of heresies flooded into the Church and all manner of divisions took place and, with the rise of what became the Roman Catholic Church, all but destroyed it. The Lord, however, preserved a remnant throughout the long dark centuries until His time came to bring light into a darkness that was becoming ever more pronounced.

What has been termed the era of modern revivals began in the fourteenth century, and Henry Fish has divided it unto five periods which we may briefly summarise.

1. 1310-1560. The Lord had His witnesses during the long dark night of Popery, not least in the valleys of the Waldensians who faithfully kept the light of the gospel burning in the midst of great suffering. In the early fourteenth century there appear to have been great revivals, as Henry Fish points out. In Bohemia alone, “there were reckoned in 1315, no less than 80 000 witnesses for the religion of Jesus”.² In the same century, John Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation, heralded the dayspring and turned many to the Lord. Following him was John Hus, who was converted by Wycliffe’s writings, and Jerome of Prague, both of whom sealed their testimony at the stake.

In 1483 Martin Luther, under the hand of God, shook the papal throne to its foundations, and what followed was a time of revival or reformation that was to spread throughout a great part of the world. When one thinks of this era, one’s mind goes from Luther in Germany to Calvin in France and Zwingli in Switzerland and on to the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Poland and, of course, to Scotland and to names such as Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart and John Knox, and to the great revival here. James Kirkton, writing of this time says, “In Scotland, the whole nation was converted by lump; and within ten years after Popery was dislodged in Scotland, there were not ten persons of quality to be found in it who did not profess the true reformed religion . . . Lo! Here a nation born in a day”.³

2. 1600-1688. Within those dates fall the active lives of prominent Puritans such as Owen, Flavel, Baxter and Bunyan, to name but a few. Time and space only permit us to mention briefly the difficulties facing God’s servants in those days. There was the Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662 and remaining in its full force for over 25 years, by which some 2000 ministers were ejected from their pulpits. In 1664 the Conventicle Act was passed, and the next year the Five Mile Act, which sought to enforce conformity to the established Church of England. We simply mention those Acts in order to show the difficulties under which those great men, and others, laboured at that time. This period also saw the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers to America.

Of particular significance here is the revival at the Kirk of Shotts on 21 June 1630, under the preaching of John Livingstone. “It was on the Monday after a Sabbath of Communion”, writes Alexander Smellie. “With some friends he had spent the night before in laying fast hold on the promise and the grace of heaven. When the midsummer morning broke, the preacher wanted to escape the responsibilities in front of him. Alone in the fields between eight and nine, he felt such misgivings, such a burden of unworthiness, such dread of the multitudes and the expectation of the people, that he was consulting with himself to have stolen away; but he ‘durst not so far distrust God, and so went to sermon and had good assistance’.

“Good assistance indeed; for after he had spoken for an hour and a half on the text, ‘Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean,’ and was thinking that now he must close, he was constrained by the Lord Himself to continue. ‘I was led about an hour’s time in a strain of exhortation and warning, with such liberty and melting of heart as I never had in public all my life.’ No fewer than 500 men and woman, some of them ladies of high estate, and others poor wastrels and beggars, traced the dawn of the undying life to John Livingstone’s words that day.”⁴

In 1625 there was a remarkable revival in Northern Ireland under a “band of faithful men, most of whom went over from Scotland”. Also at this time there was a revival in various parts of England, not least in Kidderminster under the ministry of Richard Baxter.

3. 1730-1750. Before coming to the revivals of this period, we may mention the sad state of things at this time. A quotation from J C Ryle highlights this: “These times were the darkest age that England has passed through in the last three hundred years. Anything more deplorable than the condition of the country as to religion, morality, and high principle it is very difficult to conceive. As to preaching the gospel, the distinguishing doctrines of Christianity, the atonement, the work and office of Christ and the Spirit were comparatively lost sight of. The vast majority of sermons were miserable moral essays entirely devoid of anything calculated to awaken, convert, satisfy or save souls”.⁵

In America the situation was no better; in 1740 Samuel Blair declared that “religion lay a dying and ready to expire its last breath of life”. When we add to this the fact that infidel works by men like Hobbes, Tindal and Shaftesbury were in wide circulation, one might be tempted to believe that revival was impossible in such a situation. It was, however, to such an unpromising state that revival came, and it is worth remarking that the blessing came almost simultaneously in America and Europe.

First, there was a revival in New Jersey in 1730 and in the three following years, under the labours of the Tennents, whose story is so well related in Archibald Alexander’s The Log College. Next, in 1734, there was a wonderful work in Northampton, Massachusetts, under Jonathan Edwards. Such revivals spread throughout various districts in the years following; this was the commencement of the Great Awakening, whose greatest power was felt after the arrival of George Whitefield in Philadelphia in November 1739. In the weeks and months following, thousands flocked from all parts to hear the Word, so that, in 75 days, Whitefield preached 175 sermons and was able to say, “Never did I see such a continuance of divine power in the congregations to which I have preached”. It was estimated that at that time the population in all the American colonies was about 2 million and it was believed that the number of converts amounted to no less than 50 000.⁶

Much could be said about the thousands and tens of thousands that assembled to listen to George Whitefield after he returned home from America and also the response to the labours of Howell Harris both in England and Wales, but we conclude this period by referring to the blessings enjoyed in Scotland.

James Buchanan describes it in this way: “In 1742, many parishes in Scotland were visited with times of refreshing. The parish of Cambuslang, near Glasgow, then under the pastoral charge of Mr M’Culloch, was one of the first to be visited. After he had preached for about a year on the nature and necessity of regeneration, he was requested by about ninety heads of families to give them a weekly lecture. Prayer meetings were formed; and one after another, and at length fifty in the same day, came to him in distress of mind. After this, such was their thirst for the Word of God that he had to provide them a sermon almost daily; and before the arrival of Mr Whitefield, three hundred souls had been converted.

“When that eminent servant of God preached at the dispensation of the sacrament soon after, there were present about twenty-four ministers, and from thirty to forty thousand souls. Three thousand communicated at the tables, many of them from a great distance, who carried with them to their several homes a saviour of good things; and not fewer than four hundred, belonging to the parish, were enrolled in the minister’s lists as having been converted that year.” Buchanan goes on to speak of blessing in the parish of Kilsyth, where James Robe was minister. During that same year “thirty, sometimes forty, were awakened in a week; in all there were about three hundred whose subsequent lives attested to the sincerity of their conversion”.

4. 1790-1842. In speaking of the rapid decline in spiritual things between 1750 and 1790, historians mention the fearful inroads of “French infidelity”, which had sapped the foundations of faith and hope in God and, combined with other internal influences, had made the hearts of the faithful fail them for fear”.⁷ In answer to prayer, however, revival again came, so that the wilderness rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.

Space permits us to give only a brief overview of these revivals and the instruments used in them during this period. In Scotland the names of Robert and James Haldane stand out during the early part of this period, as does that of Alexander Stewart of Moulin in Perthshire, where a remarkable revival of true religion occurred in 1798. In the north of Wales the name of Thomas Charles of Bala is fondly remembered. Much could be written on the labours of such men as Edward Griffin and Asahel Nettleton in America. Nettleton writes, “During a period of four to five years, commencing in 1798, not less than one hundred and fifty churches in New England were favoured with the special effusions of the Holy Spirit; and thousands of souls, in the judgement of charity, were translated from the kingdom of Satan unto the kingdom of God’s dear Son”.⁸

For a flavour of those revivals in America, one could do no better than read W B Sprague’s Lectures on Revivals, which, along with his nine lectures, contains an appendix of nearly 200 pages containing 20 letters from noted divines from whom the author requested insights on the subject of revival.

Later during this period, in 1812, a great revival occurred on the Isle of Arran under the ministry of Neil MacBride, where it is reckoned that between two to three hundred souls were converted. In the same year there was a great revival on the Isle of Skye, when several hundred were added to the Church. In 1824 a revival occurred in the parish of Uig in Lewis, under the ministry of Alexander MacLeod, when it is estimated that 9000 people flocked from all quarters to hear the Word. Seasons of revival continued more or less unabated throughout the period, in the countries mentioned and beyond. This was a time, however, that was marked by what is referred to as “revivalism”, when men such as Charles Finney introduced much that was of man rather than of God.

5. 1857-1860. The revival which was experienced during this period, while brief in comparison to the others, was in many ways the most remarkable. It seems to have had its beginning in New York, where such men as William B Sprague and James W Alexander, son of Archibald Alexander, laboured. During the summer of 1857 James Alexander and his wife crossed the Atlantic for a holiday which it was hoped would benefit his poor health. On returning in October it was to find, in his own words, “as it were a pall of mourning over every house”. The cause of this was the financial crash that affected the whole country.

A month before this, Jeremiah Lanphier, one of Alexander’s members, had begun, as described by Iain Murray, “a noontime prayer meeting in the Lecture room of the North Reformed Dutch church in Lower Manhattan. The first week only six attended. The next week the number reached twenty and the following forty. During October the meetings, previously held weekly, became daily. By the time the new year began, a second room had to be used simultaneously to accommodate the numbers and in February a third. By then a number of similar meetings had begun elsewhere in the city and so marked was the turning to prayer that the Daily Tribute of 10th February 1858 reported, ‘Soon the striking of the five bells at 12 o’clock will generally be known as ‘the hour of prayer'”.⁹ Much more could be said of this revival in America; Mr Murray tells us that, by June of 1858, “figures of fifty thousand conversions in New York and two hundred thousand across the North-east were in circulation”.

The revival was, however, not confined to America. “The times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord have at last dawned upon our land”, wrote C H Spurgeon at the end of 1859. Throughout the Sabbaths of that year – perhaps the greatest and most fruitful of his long ministry – he had preached in London to a congregation of some 8000 people, besides addressing, almost daily, vast multitudes in different places.

To the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, revival came also, and congregations throughout the land, from the cities to the most remote island villages, had their own encouraging stories to relate. The same was true of Ireland. In the introduction to Brownlow North’s The Rich Man and Lazarus, we are told of how, in the summer of 1859, the author crossed to Ireland and preached throughout the length and breadth of Ulster, addressing congregations of some 4000-5000 in the marketplace of Londonderry, 7000 in Portrush, 11 000 in Ballymena and 12 000 in Limavady. Such figures gives us some idea of the thirst for the Word of God at this time, as well as the extent of the revival.

¹The first section of this Theological Conference paper gave a definition of revival and looked briefly at revivals in biblical times.
² H Fish, Handbook of Revivals, Boston, 1874, p 8.
³ Quoted in Iain H Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth, 1971, pp 5,6.
⁴Smellie, Men of the Covenant, Banner of Truth reprint, 1962, pp 121-2.
⁵Quoted in Fish, Handbook of Revivals, p 45.
⁶Fish, Handbook of Revivals, p 53.
⁷Fish, Handbook of Revivals, pp 56,57.
⁸Fish, Handbook of Revivals, p 60.
⁹I H Murray, Revival and Revivalism, Banner of Truth, 1994, p 342.