848
THE KING’S BUSINESS I have just been reading anew some of the revivals God has sent to His praying people in by-gone days, notably the revivals at Shotts, in June, 1630; in Ulster in 1628; at Kilsyth, July 23, 1839; at Ant
The Revival We Need
werp, N. Y., and through the neighborhood in Chas. G. Kinney’s early days ; at Gartly, Scotland, in the days of Reginald Radcliffe ; at Broughshare, Ulster, in 1850. My heart has been deeply stirred, and I have been thinking and praying about it. A deep conviction has taken possession of me that we need in America and Europe another revical after the same general pat- tern. I rejoice in and thank God for the great work He is doing through Billy Sunday” and other of our present-day evangelists. I have had very recent and conclusive evidence of the depth and genuineness and permanence of the work done through Mr. Sunday in Scranton, Wilkesbarre, Philadel phia and other places. Many, of the converts were at the Montrose Confer ence and were very eager for the Word of God and were all aglow with passion for the salvation of the lost. Yet I am sure we sorely need a revival of another sort. There is too much of man and too little of God in these meetings ; too much that is of the flesh, too little that is unquestionably of the Holy Spirit; too much of meaningless but appealing songs and hurrah boys, and the world; too little of prayer and soul agony and deep work of the Spirit; too much of the spirit of the age and too little of the Spirit of God ; too much of machinery and commercialism, and buying and selling and worldly advertising ; too little of looking to God to work and trusting God to work. I am the last one who has a right to criticise unkindly all this ma chinery and advertising and book-selling, for I fear that the responsibility for introducing it into America lies more nearly at my door than that of any one else. When Mr. Alexander and I started out on our world-wide, tour we had no other helpers, and planned a campaign along old-fashioned lines, with no hymn books of our own to sell ; no troupe of workers, etc. But the workers increased in number, other things came in, and so it has gone on in ever-increasing measure. These great evangelistic machines are doing good, incalculable good, and will go on doing good, but we need, sorely need some thing else. We need movements in cities and villages and country neighbor hoods,^ where God’s people will get together to pray, and pray, and pray, till they “pray through” ; and then through their own pastor, or a pastor from abroad, or an evangelist, have the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Ghost, and Spirit-guided personal work done, with no jolly singer' from the outside to whoop it up ; no hymn books or other books to sell in the church or other places of meeting; mo business agent to get calls for the man who hires them, and to raise enormous sums of money by all manner of more or less questionable means ; no free-will offerings except such as people feel quietly led without solicitation, to give ; with dependence upon the Holy Spirit ; a work that from start to finish is carried on in an atmosphere of prayer “in the Holy Ghost.” Will such a movement, so opposed to the hustling, self-advertising spirit of the twentieth centur/ succeed in the twentieth century ? Is the Holy Ghost dead? Must we now resort to weapons that are carnal? Have we lost faith that weapons that “are not carnal” “are mighty through God to pulling down strongholds ?” Finney did not even have a Sankey with him. The music, on one occasion at least, was so dreadful that Finney (who had a
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online