Great Rev i va l s and Evang e l i s t s By JOHN H. HUNTER III. ULSTER REVIVAL OF 1859, (Continued) ,f ■ Copyright, 1915, by John H. Hunter
The pastor quoted above, Mr. Moore, ask ed one of his young men at the close of a Sabbath evening service if he could not do something more for God. “Could you not,” said he, “gather at least six of your care less neighbors, either parents or children, to your own house, or some other convenient place, on the Sabbath, and spend an hour with them, reading and searching the Word of God?” The young man promised to try. He did try, and organized a Sabbath school. Nearly two years afterwards a prayer meet ing was organized in connection .with this Sabbath school from which came the first fruits of the great ingathering. How this prayer meeting was born is thus related by Dr. Arthur T. Pierson in his ex cellent book, “George Muller of Bristol” : “In November, 1856, Mr. James McQuil- kin, a young Irishman, was converted, and early in the next year read the first two volumes of that narrative. He said to him self : ‘Mr. Muller obtains all this simply by prayer so may I be blessed by the same means,’ and he began to pray. First of all he received from the Lord, in answer, a spiritual companion, and then two more of like mind; and they four began stated sea sons of prayer in a small school house near Kelts, Antrim, Ireland, every Friday even ing. On the first day of the new year, 1858, a farm-servant was remarkably brought to the Lord in answer to their prayers, and these five gave themselves anew to united supplication. Shortly a sixth young man was added to their number by conversion, and so the little company of praying souls slowly grew, only believers being admitted to these simple meetings for fellowship in reading of the Scriptures, prayer, and mu tual exhortation.
S HAS been stated, for three ° r ^°Ur years Precsd*nS the yTjj outpouring of the Holy 1 ” Spirit, the godly ministers in Ulster had been organizing
Bible classes, and keeping before their Sab bath congregations the need of a revival; accounts of past revivals on both sides of the Atlantic were frequently given from the pulpit, and when the revival of 18S7-S8 was in progress in thè United States extracts from the newspaper accounts of that' glor ious visitation were read to the people. They had been preaching also the three R’s of the Gospel : RUIN through the FALL. REDEMPTION through the BLOOD. REGENERATION through the SPIRIT. It' was no mere exhortation to better liv ing; no mere reformation of morals; no “so cial uplift” or “community welfare” appeal; no religion of salvation by works; no mis statement of, or silence regarding, the great verities of the Christian faith, that pre pared “the way of the Lord.” Says the pastor in whose parish the earliest mani festations were observed, the preaching “was very plain, and barren of all attempt at ordi nary pulpit refinements. The terrors of the Lord, and the free offers of mercy—heaven and hell—these.constituted the almost ex clusive themes.” PRAYER AND REVIVAL Many prayer meetings, cottage prayer meetings, had quietly come into being be fore the tide of revival swept over the land. How one of these originated—one which be came identified with the very beginnings of the work of conversion—is intensely in teresting.
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