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RENT HEAVENS R. B. Jones |
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| 1. The Name | |
| “Thou shalt be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall name.” Isa. 62:2 “The Lord called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit.” Jer. 11:16 “As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no affection.” JONATHAN EDWARDS.
The Revival is herein preferably called, “The Revival of 1904,” and that in the same sense as “The Revival of ’59” is so named. Neither of these two blessed seasons of spiritual, power was confined to the year of its name. In each case the year is mentioned as that in which the mighty work came to a definite crisis and became publicly known. In each case the work belongs to years both prior and subsequent to that year. 1904 is memorable as the year of a great manifestation of Revival in the Principality of Wales. There was, as will be shown, real revival even ere 1904 dawned, and certainly before November, 1904. It needs also to be remembered that long after 1904 was past, the Divine work continued. “THE WELSH REVIVAL”The Revival is sometimes called “The Welsh Revival”, and that for the natural reason that the work had its beginnings in Wales, and also, perhaps, because it was there it found its most striking manifestations and fruits. It were, however, a mistake to infer from this title that the work was limited to Wales. True, for some inexplicable reason, it did not sweep over England and other parts of our island; and yet many a town and district in England, Scotland, and Ireland shared in the blessing. The mighty flame spread also to other lands. Many of the Protestant countries of Europe reported unusual movements of the Spirit, and mission fields in Africa and Asia were also touched. On the Khassia Hills and in other places in Assam, where the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales has a work, the intensity was almost as great as that experienced in Wales. It Moreover, in the United States and Canada there were very definite, stirrings in several parts. The writer was himself privileged with a part in a Revival which, early in 1907, swept through Churches in some Welsh colonies in Pennsylvania. These facts show that to speak of “The Welsh Revival” is apt to mislead.WORSE THAN MISLEADINGIn some ways, to speak of “The Welsh Revival” may sometimes be worse than misleading. Unconsciously perhaps to the speaker the phrase has occasionally fallen on Welsh ears with a suspicion of something like disdain. It may be that Welsh ears are somewhat ultra-sensitive, nevertheless it cannot be denied that there have been attempts, as at Pentecost, at discrediting the whole movement. Suggestions have been thrown out that it was little other than a characteristic unrestrained letting loose of “Welsh emotion!” Emotion, according to this much too widely-diffused notion, seems to be a monopoly of Celtic races, and found at its highest among the inhabitants of the Principality. All this sounds rather foolish to Welsh people, who know so many of their compatriots to be as stolid and impassive as any, and who read occasionally of ungovernable emotion at such places as Epsom Downs and Wembley.It matters little to Welsh people how they are regarded by their neighbour races, but it matters much when such notions, spreading themselves, hinder the spread of God’s fire when once He has kindled it. Many a child of God in Britain to-day may wonder why the Revival of 1904 did not sweep over the whole island. May it be lovingly and earnestly suggested that the reason, in great part, may be that that Revival was commonly attributed to a supposed characteristic of the Welsh people, and that British peoples, who, are not Welsh, seem to fear emotion when connected with spiritual movements. It is natural to shout at the “Derby”, but one must be more sedate in the religious service. Uncontrolled spasms of emotion are what no sane person would urge or favour, but, if the past is any clue, it may confidently be stated that those who fear to be stirred by deep feelings, sometimes difficult to suppress, had better not look for Revival. One notices that, already, predictions of the coming Revival make it clear that it will be something altogether different from former ones; it will certainly be “moral” rather than “emotional”! All this interests exceedingly, for the writer recalls his own similar predictions in the years prior to 1904; predictions, he gratefully confesses, entirely falsified by the event. Since then he has learned, that when the Holy Spirit is doing His “strange work” there is nothing so unreliable a guide as our poor human wisdom, and that those who fear being deemed as “full of new wine” had better give Pentecosts and Revivals as wide a berth as possible. AN “ORGY OF EMOTION”?The idea that the Revival of 1904 was largely an “orgy of emotion” has been so sedulously cultivated and spread that there seems to be every justification for an attempt at “nailing it down”, This, perhaps, can best be done by the telling of the following story, the detailed truth of which the writer vouches for; he knows the facts and the persons concerned; some of them, intimately. A Welshman in an Asiatic city—a very well-known Christian man—hearing of the outbreak in his native Wales in 1904, as soon as possible hurried home. Arrived in England he called upon a personal friend, a well-known evangelical leader, and told him what had thus suddenly brought him back to these shores. During the conversation that ensued he was definitely discouraged from going down to Wales, the impression given him being that it was not worth his while doing so to witness what was nothing more than the unspiritual display of carnal feelings! So did he trust the judgement of his friend that he there and then booked his passage and returned to his adopted foreign home, a bitterly disappointed man. Some years later he was back again in this country and on a visit to a centre where spiritual children of God from many a quarter meet for fellowship. Included in the company at that time were a few from Wales. The foreign Welshman heard their testimony and prayers with amazement, and felt the impact of the power of their lives.It was all so new to him that he naturally inquired who these people were and whence they came. When he learned that they were from Wales, and that their experiences were born in the Revival, he told them the story of his previous visit, and how he had been robbed of the blessing of going down to Wales and seeing for himself. A “BARRAGE OF ICE”.This incident, one fears, is but typical of much that happened in those years. And it is the writer’s deep conviction, if he may be permitted its expression, that herein lay a chief reason why the grand work did not spread to Wales’s immediate neighbours. That “barrage of ice” hindered the fire spreading. It was a serious slandering of the Work, and a solemn grieving of the Spirit. To attribute to carnal emotion what was manifestly the work of the Holy Ghost can hardly be less than blasphemy. Repentance for this sin would, one sincerely believes, remove a great obstacle in the way of the coming Revival for which so much prayer ascends.Had the wise advice of the late Bishop Moule been heeded, how different things might have been! Writing to his clergy at that time he earnestly, appealed that they “observe the movement with a reverent welcome and a sacred hope”. He, who himself knew the ’59 Revival, added, “A venerated friend of mine, intimately conversant with the Revival time of 1859, told me a few years ago that nothing was more saddening than the cold view of that extraordinary upheaval taken by too many.” Alas, that it is ever true, whenever God appears, it can be said, even of the Lord’s own people, “There standeth One among you whom ye know not.” THE SMOKELESS FLAMEProtesting at the time the Vicar of Rhos wrote; “Sneers are made at our Celtic temperament, but God gave it, and God can use it for the glory of His Name.” If the Welsh people share rather liberally, as is commonly assumed, in the gift of emotion, they need have no shame on that account, It nor need it be gratuitously assumed that they do not know how to control it. Said an English visitor, an eminent journalist, of his experiences, “I certainly saw nothing of that (emotional) kind that might not be paralleled in mission services in England.... There was absolutely nothing wild, violent, hysterical, unless it be hysterical for the labouring breast to heave with sobbing, that cannot be repressed, and the throat to choke with emotion as a sense of the awful horror and shame of a wasted life suddenly bursts upon the soul. . . . The vast congregations were as soberly sane, as orderly, and at least as reverent as any congregation I ever saw beneath the dome of St. Paul’s, when I used to hear Canon Liddon, the Chrysostom of the English pulpit. But it was aflame with a passionate religious enthusiasm, the like of which I have never seen in St. Paul’s.”He further testifies that Mr. Evan Roberts, “while absolutely tolerant of all manifestations of the Spirit, was stern to check any disorder.” Giving an instance of this, he continues, “At F—— , where some persons had been disturbing the meeting by exuberant and unseemly noises, he said, ‘He who would walk with God must come to His house in a spirit of prayer, of humility, of awe. Joy is permissible in the house, but it must be sanctified joy. For think of the majesty of the Divine Person. . . . If we truly walk with God, there can be no disorder, no indecency.’” The same witness puts his testimony on this point in a nutshell when he says, “The flame of Welsh enthusiasm is as smokeless as its coal.” PRACTICAL EMOTION“I saw no trace of extravagance or fanaticism,” wrote the late beloved Rev. J. J. Luce, M.A., of Gloucester, after a visit with the Rev. Francis Paynter, M.A., to several of the “storm centres” in Glamorganshire. Our brother, in writing so, did not of course wish to give the impression that the meetings were of the “cemetery” type. Mr. Luce— himself well known as a sweetly boisterous Christian—would hardly have enthused over such. He would, rather, have heartily agreed with the quaint comment of an old “fifty-niner” (the Rev. Griffith Jones, Tregarth) who, when someone reflected rather critically on the commotion at a meeting said, “I do not wonder at the great ado to-night. I have noticed that there is always a great commotion when one birth takes place, but here to-night are scores of newly born ones. “Mr. Paynter, a different type of man from his friend and companion,
was equally definite on the matter. Nothing that he saw and heard offended
his deeply sensitive spirit, and in his written impressions in ‘The
Life of Faith’ we find these words, “Though the work is
emotional, and we do not despise emotion in its proper place, it is
most practical.” He added, “We have mingled with them, as,
for hours together, they waited on God in a quiet, orderly way with
very little excitement, singing their beautiful Welsh melodies.”
Once more, the same witness said, “I went to South Wales to see
what God is doing, and have come back full of thankfulness and praise.
We have drawn nigh, and seen a great sight in this sceptical age.” “THE EVAN ROBERTS REVIVAL”Another name given the work is “The Evan Roberts Revival”, a name which Mr. Evan Roberts himself, with many others, would strongly deprecate. “The grace of self-effacement,” as the late Rev. Evan Hopkins justly said at the time, “is one of the things that impress one in Evan Roberts.” Of course, it is easily understood how such a description would arise seeing that he was far and away the most prominent figure in the movement. As is well known, in a few months the name of the young miner-student from Loughor had become famous throughout the world. In those years he was easily the best known Christian in the five continents. Doubtless, he was signally used to popularise the work then proceeding in Wales. But it were wrong to assume that the Revival, humanly speaking, is to be attributed to him. He himself would willingly agree that he was more the child than the founder of the work. Just as in 1859 in Wales, the Rev. David Morgan came in to carry on what another (the Rev. Humphrey Jones) had begun, so was it also in 1904. It must also be remembered that the Revival reached almost every nook and corner in the Principality, whilst the ministry of its principal figure was, with little exception, entirely exercised within one of its twelve counties. The fire burned in places which he did not and could not visit; in several places which he did visit the fire was already blazing ere he came. This fact, and its important lesson, should not be forgotten. One of the characteristics of true Revival is that it depends upon no human personality. It is “the wind that bloweth where it listeth”. True Revival is never organised; it is never, so to speak, carried in any individual’s pocket. This was specially true of that Revival in 1904, concerning which the then Editor of ‘The Life of Faith’ glowingly challenged, “Has there ever before been anything equal to this?”
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| Electronic Copyright © 2002-2004 Tony Cauchi, unless otherwise stated. Copying, printing, or any other reproduction of this electronic version is prohibited without express permission from Tony Cauchi, the publisher. Original website design by Jon Caws:
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