I begin this morning by drawing your attention
to two authors.
The first, Gacy Ryle, and his book, Five
Christian Leaders.
This is an account of many of the
revivals of the 18th century that took place
in the British Isles.
And I'm sure it is the best account
which you can read in this compass, or
perhaps in any compass, of those revivals.
He gives you the lives of the leaders,
and then he draws out many of the
practical lessons.
And I can't urge you too strongly to
obtain this little book, Five Christian Leaders, by
Gacy Ryle, at $1.15. And there are
plenty of copies, I think, available.
The second author, I'm sure, is a name
known to many of you, perhaps to all,
Robert Murray McChane.
His memoir by Andrew Bonner, another paperback, and
a book that you have in the States
and we don't have in England, The Sermons
of Robert Murray McChane.
Some years ago we sent over quite a
number to Carlisle, and we have sold them
out in Britain, and you still have a
stock, so you can buy this.
The Sermons of Robert Murray McChane.
Now that leads me into the subject that
is before us this morning.
I want to speak to you on the
Evangelical revival that took place in Scotland in
the last century, in the years 1830 and
the early 1840s.
And I do this for several reasons.
One is because, as I've just mentioned, there
is the memoir of McChane, which is such
an influential book, if I could but prevail
upon those that have not yet read McChane's
life to read it, well that would be
more than enough as it were this morning.
It was a turning point in my own
life, I believe, when this book was put
into my hands.
It was in rather strange circumstances.
I was on the other side of the
world in the Far East, and I went
shopping one day, and in my shopping came
across this Christian bookshop and was urgently persuaded
by the Christian woman who opened this shop
to buy McChane's memoir.
I did, and as I say, it became
in many ways a turning point in my
whole life.
I was simply staggered that McChane wasn't known
amongst Christians.
I went back to the chaplain of our
regiment, it was a Scottish regiment, and I
was a young Christian and not very prudent
perhaps in those days, and I was full
of zeal, and I spoke to him about
McChane, and I could see the man sort
of looked blank, and then he sort of
didn't want to reveal his ignorance, and he
said, oh yes, he said, he was a
saintly old man, he said.
Well, those of you who didn't laugh, McChane
died at the age of 29, so he
didn't know very much about it.
Well, McChane was only one of several hundreds
of similar men upon whom the unction of
the spirit rested in such power in those
days.
He was only one of many.
We have spoken a lot this week of
the Alexander family, and let me just tell
you an incident when James Wattle Alexander went
over from New York to Scotland in 1850,
and he was amongst these men who, in
the year 1843, the evangelicals in Scotland, almost
all of them, had been formed into the
Free Church of Scotland, and J.
W.
Alexander was visiting amongst these people, and he
wrote from Glasgow in 1851, these few days
in Scotland have shown me a permanent revival
of religion, such as proves to me that
God has a favour to his covenanting people.
The preciousness of it is that religion is
founded on chapter and verse, free from outcry
and sanctimony, but so courageous, active and tender
that I am as certain as I am
writing these lines that I am among the
best people on earth.
A thousand times have I said to myself,
oh, if my father could just for one
hour hear these prayers and observe these fruits
of unadulterated Calvinistic seed, and I was reminded
of those words in our prayer meeting this
morning, and earlier this week, if these men
from the past could be with us in
these times of prayer, I believe that Alexander
would have said the same thing.
It was then a period of great revival,
and I must simply this morning try to
pick out one of the men who was
used to prepare the way for the revival,
and then to speak to you a little
on the revival itself, and I hope to
get enough time to go into the lessons
which we may draw from it.
The man then who was perhaps more than
any other used to prepare the way was
a man by the name of Thomas Chalmers,
and he was born in a little seaport
in the county of Fife, in Scotland, in
the year 1780.
At the time he was born, the church
was at about her lowest ebb since the
Reformation.
Let me remind you in a word of
an important fact in Scottish church history.
In the late 17th century, after the Puritan
period, after the death of men like Samuel
Rutherford and David Dixon, after that period there
was severe persecution which lasted for about 28
years, and in that persecution many hundreds of
men and of women also were put to
death for the gospel.
You can see in Edinburgh today the spot
where many ministers were executed at that time.
That caused a great separation amongst those who
professed the gospel.
There were some who compromised with the civil
power who were the persecuting arm.
There were others who fled to the hills
and the mountains and who lived there and
sometimes died there.
There was this great separation.
Now when the persecution ended in the year
1688, those who had compromised unhappily were too
often allowed to remain in the national church.
There was just the one national Presbyterian Church
of Scotland.
And these men instead of being put out
of their churches were allowed to remain.
They gave of course lip service to the
confession of faith but they did not know
how to preach it and they became a
dead weight in the church.
And as the years went by, their numbers
instead of decreasing, increased.
The next thing that influenced the situation was
an act of parliament in the year 1712
by which the right of congregations to appoint,
to elect their own ministers was taken from
them.
The act of patronage as it was called
gave to patrons the right to induct ministers
into congregations.
Now these patrons were generally the landowners, the
aristocracy and the people upon whose land these
church buildings were erected.
They were made patrons.
I was thinking only this morning as I
reflected on this how wonderfully God overrules evil
for good.
Because some of the greatest men of the
18th century, some of the leaders here in
America, men like Witherspoon and in other parts
of the world, they came to America and
they came to England and to other parts
because patronage shut churches to them in Scotland.
There were cases where there were evangelical congregations
and they could not appoint an evangelical minister.
And as I say then some of the
best of these men were scattered across the
earth.
It certainly is an instance of God overruling
evil for good.
Yet it was a great evil for year
after year in many areas there was no
gospel preaching at all.
At the end of the 18th century God
raised up Robert and James Haldane whose names
I'm sure you know.
They began to itinerate and they discovered vast
areas of the north of Scotland where the
gospel had not been heard for a long
time.
When James Haldane preached in Orkney which is
an island off the coast of Scotland he
met a man of 92 years of age
who said how nearly 80 years before he
had prayed that God would send the gospel
to that part of Scotland.
So during the whole of the 18th century
with some exceptions about which I cannot speak
today but you will find a book on
the exceptions on the bookstore on the great
revival at Cambuslang in 1742 but with exceptions
the general condition of the country was one
of deterioration and this was the situation when
Chalmers was born.
Let me just give you perhaps just an
illustration or two to show you the kind
of thing.
One of the men who was raised up
in the end of the 18th century I
mustn't even trouble you with his name when
he was born his parents took him to
the minister for baptism.
The minister was about to go out on
a shooting expedition couldn't spare time for any
service but he offered and he performed the
baptism by cracking the ice with the butt
of his rifle and applying the water to
this little babe.
The babe later became a great evangelist.
And when he was a grown man and
an evangelist he preached in a parish called
Glenelg on the west of Scotland and after
the service was over the minister who was
a moderate said to him he said that
was a very good sermon I suppose but
it was very unsuitable here for you spoke
all day to sinners and I know only
one in all my parish.
Well I've used the word moderate and that
is the label that really was taken by
these men themselves.
They denied experimental religion.
They were sometimes partly orthodox but to give
you the words of Alexander Duff he says
they denied the peculiarities of the gospel.
There was no savour and unction of divine
grace.
Instead of the power and pathos of earnest
gospel invitations and appeals there were substituted cold
pretenses of academic learning that froze the sympathies
of the human heart.
They were really just moralists without the supernatural,
the moderates and they controlled the church at
the time when Chalmers was born.
When he was born as I say in
the year 1780 when he was 15 he
went to the University of St. Andrews which
was quite nearby and at the age of
19 he was licensed to preach the gospel.
His father was a godly man and a
Christian but when Chalmers went to St. Andrews
he was completely carried away by the moderatism
and by the prevailing religion of that place.
He says St. Andrews was at this time
overrun with moderatism under the chilling influences of
which we inhaled not a distaste only but
a positive contempt for all that is properly
and peculiarly gospel.
One day there was a theological lecture where
Chalmers was at and the boy sitting beside
him a boy by the name of William
Burns I'd like you to remember that name,
William Burns the lecture happened to be on
the doctrine of election and when the lecture
was over Chalmers turned to this other boy
and he said to him you are the
only Calvinist that I know in St. Andrews
and he invited this boy to come home
and to meet his father who he said
would agree with him but otherwise there wasn't
a single person known to Chalmers in St.
Andrews who believed what was still the actual
confession of the church.
So Chalmers went into the ministry in the
year 1802 with no experience of the power
of the gospel and indeed no gospel to
preach.
The truth is he was really a scientist
all his time and interest went into studying
chemistry and mathematics and physics and in these
areas he was quite brilliant.
Let me give you one example of this.
Chalmers biography was published in the year 1850
and when it was published the writer of
this biography, a man by the name of
Hanna says what an extraordinary thing it was
that when Chalmers went to his manse in
Fife 50 years, nearly 50 years before he
had installed gas pipes in the house because
he was certain that gas was going to
be the means of power and lighting in
the future.
Well in 1850 that had not taken place
and the biographer thought it was just an
oddity of Chalmers but of course Chalmers was
I suppose 60 or 70 years ahead of
other people.
He had gas piping in his house, it
was never used but this was the sort
of man he was.
Well I think that is quite extraordinary.
You would see him on an evening leaving
his manse to go and give an address
in another church he would not be going
with his bible but on the back of
his horse he had test tubes and bottles
of acid and he would actually give these
country folk demonstrations in chemistry and this sort
of thing.
Well all the time as he confessed later
he was seeking a reputation in the world.
There is no question about his brilliance.
He was a good speaker and by the
time, by the year 1808 when he had
been in the ministry for about 7 years
he was determined to get to London and
to find some publisher who would publish something
that he wrote and he was ready to
go in the month of July 1808 when
something happened which stopped him travelling.
He had a dear sister in Amstrothe which
was quite near his church, I didn't tell
you his church was in Kilmanny, also in
Fife but his sister in the month of
August took seriously ill and within a matter
of weeks she was dead.
The next year death came even nearer to
Chalmers.
Again in the, about the middle of the
summer news was sent to him that an
uncle had died suddenly.
This man was apparently a Christian he was
found kneeling in the act of prayer in
his kitchen and dead upon his knees.
Chalmers was sent for and went of course
he was touched for the man had evidently
been kind to him as a boy but
on his way back from this house where
his uncle had died he had to ride
through the kind of rain that we had
earlier this morning he had to ride some
20 or 30 miles he was drenched I
think his health was already somewhat undermined the
result was that for 3 months his life
hung in the balance he never left his
room and a revolution by the spirit of
God began in his thinking.
He opened his Bible afresh for the first
time in his life he began to try
to pray and we have recorded in his
diary something of the prayers that he began
to utter at this time let me give
you one Oh God he said fit, fitter,
poor, dark, ignorant and wandering creature to be
a minister of thy word in the next
year 1810 he was able to leave his
home and the people of Kilmanny saw him
coming to the church not as they had
seen him before but muffled up in a
big coat and a scarf around his neck
and in the pulpit preaching not on morality
not on the themes which had occupied the
few minutes that he had given previously but
preaching on the magnitude of eternity on the
brevity of time preaching in a way that
men had not heard him ever preach before
and in those years 1810, 1811 Thomas Chalmers
became a new preacher in Christ he says
I had a more intimate communion with God
in solitary prayer than I ever felt before
my sentiment was a total an unreserved and
a secure dependence on Christ the Saviour now
I have to resist the temptation to talk
to you about his preaching and his ministry
but it was as you can believe greatly
used two men were coming out of his
church one day they walked in silence down
the road and at last one said to
the other he said did you feel anything
particularly in church today?
I never felt myself to be a lost
sinner until the day when I was listening
to that sermon it's very strange replied his
companion it was just the same with me
well Chalmers began to make evangelical friends Andrew
Fuller came up from England and stayed in
his manse a friend of William Carey other
contacts were made and the word went round
that Chalmers the scientist the philosopher had become
an evangelical Christian the moderates laughed they nicknamed
him mad Chalmers and the evangelicals of course
gave praise and thanks to God well passing
on then because time is against me passing
on Chalmers left Fife and went to the
city of Glasgow beginning his work there about
the year 1814 and continuing until 1823 great
numbers attended his preaching there was great opposition
there were many conversions and the evangelical faith
was heard of as it had not been
heard of in Glasgow for some long time
and in his diary we find these words
as Chalmers was looking to God to revive
the church thy blessing and thy spirit O
Lord beyond this parish and neighbourhood O that
a day of power and of refreshing were
to come amongst them I implore thy spirit
on behalf of this county O may its
ministers be turned to the Lord send them
pastors according to thine own heart stay not
thine arm O God make it bare come
forth in the might of thine all subduing
spirit and reveal Christ in many hearts for
his sake well just as Chalmers was in
the midst of this great work in Glasgow
or so it seemed to those who observed
he surprised everyone by taking an appointment as
professor of moral philosophy in St Andrews University
in the year 1823 and he did that
because he believed with all his heart that
a change in the churches was to be
brought about by a change in the pulpit
and a change in the pulpit had to
be effected by a changed way of training
then for the ministry of the gospel and
so he believed that God had led him
and surely he had to spend the rest
of his life in training other men for
the ministry so he went first to St
Andrews he was there from 1823 to 1828
and from 1828 he went to his the
greatest work of his life the professorship of
theology in the University of Edinburgh there are
many accounts of the first lecture which Chalmers
gave in Edinburgh it was a winter's morning
November 1828 Edinburgh was swept with snow the
lecture was to be given at 11 o
'clock in the morning and the hall was
crowded by nine the police even had to
be called to contain the crowd and the
subject of Chalmers lecture the subject was the
effect of the right study of theology and
Chalmers great theme that morning was to show
that the learning of the truth and the
study of the truth was in order to
spiritual and moral transformation and one of the
men that was present was William Cunningham a
student and when Cunningham left the lecture hall
that morning he went to his room and
he wrote in his diary it is impossible
not to indulge the hope that the time
to favour our Zion yea the set time
is come well in the next decade the
1830's boys who had been school boys in
the 1820's men like McChane and Andrew Boner
and Alexander Somerville, George Smeaton many others, these
young men in their late teens and early
twenties they became students under Chalmers let me
just give you as I've tried to summarise
them the main lessons which Chalmers impressed upon
his divinity students first of all that the
governing principle upon which the strength of ministerial
duties depend is regard for the approval of
God he told them that if a minister
lacks that principle his public work will be
dominated by regard for himself and for the
approbation of men but if we seek the
approval of God then first of all Chalmers
said we must be well assured ourselves that
we have the saving and the sanctifying influences
of the gospel in our own hearts our
primary concern must be to see that God
approves us and so he says by far
the most effective ingredient of good preaching is
the personal piety of the preacher himself secondly
he taught them that ministers and indeed all
Christians should never rest satisfied without growth in
personal holiness he says a great deal about
this in his own diary advance the power
and life of religion in my heart he
prayed and he writes to a friend pray
unceasingly for the progress of his work in
your heart strike the high aim of being
perfect even as God is perfect never let
go your aspirings oh with what unceasing progress
towards perfection should we be unable to advance
did we cast all self-seeking and self
-confidence away from us did we consent to
be altogether guided by his strength and be
altogether accepted in Christ's pure and unstoppable righteousness
his third principle that ministers must give themselves
wholly to their true work now I don't
stop to elaborate that but it meant a
great deal in that day because ministers had
become gentlemen, scholars literary men, gardeners there were
many famous ministerial gardeners the professor of Greek
in Edinburgh a little before this people said
how did he get into the professorship of
Greek we call it in Britain perhaps you
do in America too the chair, the Greek
chair in Edinburgh University, how did he get
into the Greek chair well people said he
fell into it out of an apple tree
that is to say the man that spent
his days in his garden and someone thought
well it would be a nice honor to
make him professor of Greek so he fell
into the chair out of his apple tree
well Chalmers spent a great deal of time
teaching his students that they had to leave
aside not only these things but even such
things as committee work and society work and
a great deal of other work which took
far too much of the time of ministers
their entire time he said was to be
disposable to the purposes to which the apostles
gave themselves wholly that is the ministry of
the word and prayer speaking of his own
experience in Glasgow of all the duties that
were laid on him and how he fought
against them he says this I have set
my face against and though I have a
good deal of opposition yet I am persuaded
that I have the solid countenance and approval
of those who value the true objects of
the Christian ministry fourthly then he taught his
students that they must deal directly and personally
with people with regard to the need of
salvation they must press home arguments upon the
conscience they must yearn and plead and speak
boldly Chalmers never forgot his own experience for
seven years he says in Kilmanny he never
spoke to a single person about their spiritual
state once he became an evangelical he believed
that it was not only his duty to
preach from the pulpit but to speak to
those with whom he had to do when
he was in Glasgow he visited in one
year eleven thousand homes himself short visits I
admit but he was a great believer in
visitation I move on then and I am
beginning to leave Chalmers now and to come
to the men that he trained in his
vestry in Edinburgh on Saturday mornings he encouraged
a group of students to meet they met
for prayer and after prayer they went out
into the poorer districts of Edinburgh two by
two to visit and to call upon people
and from this group about twelve to twenty
students from this group there came the leaders
of revival in the next five and ten
years one of them was of course McChane
himself he first joined the group in 1834
and discovered as he says what embedded masses
of human beings are huddled together unvisited by
friend or minister well Chalmers was the leader
of the church extension work of the Scottish
church in his five years of office in
the work of church extension some 222 new
churches were built and into these churches went
many of his own students a few months
ago Mr. Ernest Riesinger and Mr. Roger Irwin
and myself made a pilgrimage to Dundee it
was their suggestion it was not mine but
we went to Dundee and we stood in
one of these as it was then a
new church that was opened in the year
1837 still very much as it was the
church to which McChane was called St. Peter's
Dundee it was a very moving experience and
these young men who went into these churches
went with a clear vision of the need
of revival McChane's first sermon in St. Peter's
was on the text the spirit of the
Lord is upon me to preach the gospel
to the poor many of the texts that
these men began their ministry with were on
this note of revival and prayer for the
spirit they maintained a prayer fellowship once a
month they had a day for prayer, they
were not always able to meet but on
a particular day, sometimes a day varied it
was often the first Monday of the month
they gave much of that day to prayer
and meditation and in between the month one
of them would write a sort of circular
letter encouraging the others to pray and sharing
information Andrew Bonner for example writes in 1837
remember to observe he says these are concerted
times of prayer and count it absolutely necessary
to be often alone like Jacob at Jabbok
until you can call your study penial for
I have seen God face to face and
to another ministerial friend he writes I often
think of your prayer meetings is there any
sign of the spirit poured out and so
on there was then increasing prayer and this
prayer of course was shared in by many
older Christians now let me take up again
for a moment the man who I mentioned
as a boy sitting in the desk next
to Chalmers in St. Andrews William Burns he
was a Christian and an evangelical and he
spent his whole life in a little country
parish called Killscythe about 12 miles from Glasgow
he went there I suppose well early in
the 19th century and there he stayed he
saw no great blessing upon his ministry he
preached faithfully, he taught his people he brought
up a family and one of his sons
was William Chalmers Burns W.C. Burns in
the year 1839 McChain went to Palestine on
a mission of enquiry to see whether they
could begin missionary work there and while he
was away this son of William Burns the
son William Chalmers Burns was asked to occupy
the pulpit of St. Peter's Dundee which he
did in the month of July W.C.
Burns went through to help his father at
Killscythe in the communion season in Scotland the
communion season generally lasts about 5 days, begins
on Thursday and concludes on Monday it's just
an old tradition, tradition really I think which
comes from the revivals of possibly even the
17th century there is preaching from Thursday through
to Monday night the Thursday was a fast
day, a day for self-examination on Friday
the emphasis was on the marks of evidences
of salvation there was experimental discussion and then
over the weekend the Lord's Supper was observed
and on the Monday night there was further
preaching by way of praise and thanksgiving now
the communion had been held in Killscythe and
there was an uncommon sense of God's help
so much so that it was decided there
would be a further service on the Tuesday
morning at 10 o'clock and W.C.
Burns the young man was asked to preach
well he preached that day the service was
to have been in the marketplace in the
open air but the day was wet so
they met in the church and the service
went on to 3 o'clock in the
afternoon preaching and this is what happened Burns
preached from the text thy people shall be
willing in the day of thy power and
as he preached it seemed as though the
clouds of blessing were gathering over them and
towards the conclusion of the sermon he spoke
of the works of God's power in revival
in former times and even as he spoke
men said it appeared that the God of
history had come to be present in their
midst his father says the eyes of most
of the audience were in tears and those
who could observe the faces of the hearers
expected half an hour before the scene which
eventually followed when W.C. Burns was at
the height of his appeal speaking on the
words no cross no crown, no self denial
no salvation, no cross no crown then it
was that the emotions of the audience were
most overpoweringly expressed a scene followed which scarcely
can be described I have no doubt says
the father from the effects which followed from
the very numerous references to this day's service
as to the immediate cause of their remarkable
change of heart and life in the convincing
influence of the Holy Spirit on that day
W.C. Burns standing in the pulpit said
the appearance of the great part of the
people from the pulpit gave me an awfully
vivid picture of the state of the young
godly in the day of Christ's coming to
judgment.
Well that was the beginning of the revival
in Kiltsyth July 1839 for three months services
continued every night Burns went back to Dundee
and shortly there also revival broke out McChain
came back from Palestine in November and when
he came back he saw a transformed scene
although there had been blessing before his departure
he says when he came back the word
of God had come with such power to
the hearts and consciences of the people here
and their thirst for hearing it became so
intense that the midweek classes in the school
room were changed into densely crowded congregations in
the church and for nearly four months it
was found desirable to have public worship almost
every night I often think says McChain that
the change which people have experienced might be
enough to convince an atheist that there is
a God and to convince an infidel that
there is a savior the effects that have
been produced upon the community are very marked
it seems to be allowed even by the
ungodly that there is such a thing as
conversion men can no longer deny it well
McChain resumed his own ministry and for the
rest of his life W.C. Burns became
an itinerant missionary and evangelist for the next
two or three years he was greatly used
in Scotland preached in many places and both
under his ministry and under the ministry of
other men of whom I cannot now speak
there were similar revivals let me just give
you one quotation one of McChain's friends who
was ministering in Perth he says there are
all the marks of a work of God
which we see in the preaching of the
apostles that is these marks are amongst us
the multitude were divided families were divided the
people of God were knit together they were
filled with zeal and joy and heavenly mindedness
and numbers were constantly turning to the Lord
and one last quotation from W.C. Burns
he preached for a week in Perthshire in
August 1840 and he said at the end
of the week it has been indeed a
resurrection of the dead sudden and momentous as
the resurrection of the last day nay far
more momentous for the individuals concerned and I
was compelled to think last night as we
listened to the evening address of W.C.
Burns having been one of the best known
preachers in Scotland he literally disappeared that is
to say he went as a missionary to
China he died in the heart of Manchuria
about the year 1868 and spent the greater
part of his life well almost the whole
of his ministerial life in China and in
the far east when he died his possessions
were sent home from Manchuria he was buried
out there but his possessions were sent home
came back to the manse in Kiltsyth and
one reads in his biography how the box
containing his possessions was opened and what was
found inside I think it was two shirts,
a pair of trousers a Chinese flag, a
Bible perhaps one other book and that was
the total sum of the earthly possessions of
W.C. Burns now the remainder of our
time lets draw out some of the lessons
but if you read of course the memoir
of McChane you will get a good deal
more on the revival upon which I have
only touched in the first place this revival
as so many other revivals led to the
disruption of the Church of Scotland you have
already heard how moderatism had been so strongly
implanted in the church and for many years
as the evangelical cause revived there was increasing
collision and opposition between the evangelicals and the
moderates but when the spirit of God was
poured out in this way it became intolerable
for the evangelicals to regard the ministry of
the moderates men like McChane went into the
parishes of the moderates and preached there to
the congregations of the moderates without being asked
you can imagine you can imagine how unpopular
they were and previously you see there had
been a kind of neutrality, the evangelicals had
preached to their own people, the moderates had
preached to theirs but when this sense of
people's need of salvation was so laid upon
the evangelicals they had to throw aside their
prudence and go to the people so that
the collision intensified and in particular the controversy
raged on the subject of patronage the evangelicals
worked to throw patronage out of the church
so that ministers were appointed entirely by congregations.
There was a great dispute but in the
end the dispute went to the parliament, the
British parliament and the parliament ruled that patronage
must stay in force and at that point
the evangelicals said well then Christ must rule
and we shall leave this church and continue
in a free evangelical church now you know
when we talk of secession and separation these
days it's not just what it was then
the parish system dominated the country the schools,
the churches, the mansions all belonged to the
national church there was not one brick which
belonged to an individual church, all the property
on the mission field and there was a
good deal in India it all belonged again
to the national church so when men spoke
of leaving the church people simply smiled that
would have meant losing their homes losing all
their possessions and losing about a hundred thousand
pounds a year which was given by way
of government aid to the church now I
know you don't know what that figure means
but take my word for it, it's a
large amount of money especially in those days
so when people spoke of secession some people
said well maybe 40 ministers might leave and
a few said well a hundred at the
most and many said well the people won't
follow them the people have always gone to
the parish churches but there came a day,
the 18th day of May in 1833 when
more than 450 ministers together left the church
of Scotland and a vast body of Christian
people and they formed the free church of
Scotland and I believe that the difficulties which
they faced would never have been faced were
it not for the conscious presence of Christ
and of the Holy Spirit in their midst
it's a very moving story to read the
sacrifice of that time perhaps I'll return to
it in just a moment but on that
18th day of May the disruption took place
and for those who left the church it
was a day when the spirit of God
and of glory rested upon them they had
their first general assembly meeting and those who
were at that meeting when it was over
they said that they went home as though
they had been to a scene at Pentecost
and one of them wrote he said hallelujah
I shall never see the like of this
till heaven so the revival disrupted the church
that has often happened a second lesson these
revivals were used to restore credibility to the
Christian faith now by that I mean two
things firstly that Christians themselves were restored to
the power of faith William Burns of Killsight
says that before the revival there the idea
of revival had been a tradition of bygone
days but what had until now been a
tradition took strong possession of the minds of
Christian men and has never since lost its
hold from that hour it ceased to be
a thing incredible that God could raise the
dead the faith of Christians was enormously increased
but also it gave credibility to the Christian
faith to the world.
Now remember what the ministers had been like,
these moderates they were just professional men they
made a good living, they earned a reasonable
salary, there was no real suffering there were
no difficulties, people looked at them and they
judged them to be what they were just
like themselves and the image of the ministry
had been utterly debased and for the ministry
to be restored to its true position required
a great deal of suffering and sacrifice and
this is what the revivals and the disruption
did.
When these more than 400 men left their
homes and their livings, people all over Scotland
had their ears open and their eyes opened
to a new message.
They saw people who had given up everything
for the message they said they believed.
They weren't used to anyone believing any message,
they thought that the moderates just gave their
opinions and other men gave theirs but here
were people who were thus suffering.
Now you may read an account of those
sufferings and it's a very moving story.
For example one minister whose home was on
an island off the west coast of Scotland,
a very beautiful part of Scotland had his
mansions, church he had to put his belongings
and his family into this boat and they
were rowed across to the mainland, it was
very rough when they left their home their
youngest boy was just 5 and being so
unpleasant in the sea this little boy cried
out to his father, take me home daddy
take me home.
The father said what did it feel like
to know that I had no home.
There were many similar stories like that and
the suffering went on because as I mentioned
before the patrons were generally the landowners.
So in many parts of Scotland all sites
for church building were refused.
So people winter after winter had to meet
in the open air, some met on sea
shores, others met on roadways which were public
property.
One church bought a boat and it was
tied up about half a mile from the
shore and people went out to this boat,
it was called the Iron Church All over
Scotland people were thus left without buildings, the
purpose of course was to drive the people
back into the churches but it had the
opposite effect.
When these sufferings were endured as they were,
the eyes of multitudes were opened to see
and to hear the gospel.
Let me just give you a few facts
and figures I do not have before me
the number of congregations which joined the Free
Church perhaps it was something like 500 but
within 2 years 163 new churches had been
formed, new congregations in many cases they had
no buildings and then by 1848 when the
sites had been in many cases granted over
700 new churches were built now remember Scotland
is a little country, a small place and
700 churches is a great many churches and
there is a marvelous story of how money
simply flowed into the church people gave themselves
and their substance and there was this mighty
movement of evangelization and revival, the harvest was
reaped in all parts of the country lastly
then this revival led to a restoration of
a true sense of priorities in the church
now when the disruption occurred you might have
supposed that the problems that would have been
uppermost would be the problems of finding new
mansions for the ministers, how to get men
salaries, how to build new buildings, these might
have been the problems but these were not
the problems the anxiety which these men showed
was an anxiety how vital godliness could be
strengthened in their midst, in Chalmers words their
burden was that the gospel should be carried
to every cottage door in Scotland, the desire
which above all else the free church cherished
says Thomas Brown was to receive some token
of God's favor in the revival of her
spiritual life the night before the disruption a
meeting took place in a church in Edinburgh
St. Luke's church and the purpose of this
meeting was to pray for the outpouring of
the spirit of God and at this meeting
W.C. Burns preached and this is what
he said it is easy to perceive that
if these trials which are now at the
door if they do come to us without
a great measure of the Holy Spirit along
with them, then the most fearful consequences will
follow where will ministers be who do not
receive that influence of the spirit when they
lose the influence belonging to their present position
when they have no title and no church
and no pulpit they will either get influence
by carnal means and they are to be
pitied who get it in that way or
they must get it by being men evidently
full of the spirit of their master and
publicly owned by him as those who are
winning many souls to Christ.
In other words they were saying that without
the outpouring of the spirit they would have
no future as a church at all but
after the free church had been in existence
for one year, the second general assembly met
and in this assembly two days were given
to discussion on the state of personal religion
in their midst they turned their thoughts from
everything else and they gave their attention to
what is the state of vital piety in
our midst.
Charles Brown was called upon to preach and
I think his sermon was one of the
most remarkable ever preached in Scotland for this
reason let me tell you in just a
second his text was Habakkuk 2 and verse
1 I will stand upon my watch and
set me upon my tower and will watch
to see what he will say unto me
and what I shall answer when I am
reproved.
The burden of his sermon was on God
reproving and of God reproving them and he
spoke on the deficiencies of their lives, the
deficiencies of their ministries.
Now mark you he was speaking after 12
months of the most remarkable blessing and spiritual
harvest.
When all over Scotland hundreds of people were
being converted and yet the burden of his
preaching was a burden of humiliation and of
repentance that impresses me deeply as the preacher
prosecuted his great work his faithful and searching
confessions and warnings urged with all the impressive
power of a heart thoroughly in earnest and
directed as we believe by the spirit of
God the whole vast multitude were bowed and
shaken like a forest of trees beneath a
mighty wind and one visitor who was present
from Ireland said they bowed down before God
and when instead of railing against their enemies
they confessed in deep prostration the plagues of
their own hearts and the sins of their
own lives in one universal cry that prayer
arose to heaven, God be merciful to us
sinners we never witnessed a scene more solemnly
sublime.
And at that general assembly the assembly drew
up and placed on record these words with
profound humiliation and in reliance on the great
strength of almighty God we solemnly devote, dedicate
and consecrate ourselves anew as laborers to the
service of God and his holy purpose of
glorifying his great name in saving souls through
the preaching of the truth and the operation
of the Holy Ghost.
I say the revival had brought the church
back to her priorities.
Money flowed buildings were built, salaries were paid
but these were not the things that men
thought about or scarcely spoke about, they thought
about the advancement of the kingdom of Christ
and as they did that all these things
were added to them.
Well our time is gone one last brief
quotation if you can see a book by
Thomas Brown called Annals of the Disruption that
will give you a very good account of
this period but he closes that book with
these words If the church is to gain
over the world men must recognize her faith,
her zeal, her self-sacrificing love and in
these they must trace the evidence of Christ's
abiding presence with her as her living head
in disruption times this was what men lived
and prayed for and they did not pray
in vain Let us pray Oh Lord our
gracious God and Father we once more come
before thee to give thee thanks and praise
thou art indeed the God of all grace,
the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,
the God who in past days hath visited
thy people Oh Lord we thank thee that
thou art amongst us at this hour, that
we are not our own, that by the
precious blood of Christ thou hast brought us
nigh to thyself and we do continue to
call upon thee that thou would speak to
us and with us and we may know
our hearts to burn within us as we
sit under the preaching of thy word Oh
Lord do thou make us truly to praise
thee may thy grace rest upon us all
in the continuing hours of this day that
thy purposes may be fulfilled in us and
that we may all be drawn nearer to
thyself hear us and pardon all our sins
as we ask it in Jesus name, Amen