Much is being said these days about
"revival." The world looks on in amazement as people
are "slain in the Spirit" and stuck to the floor with
"Holy Ghost Glue." Then again, I look on in
amazement at such things, too. Is this what revival is supposed
to be?
During the last century Charles Haddon Spurgeon
flourished as a minister of the Gospel in London. Few have ever
had his command of language, his ability to communicate. I took
the time to find out what this great man of God had to say about
revival. I share his thoughts here.
SPIRITUAL REVIVAL THE WANT OF THE CHURCH
"O Lord, revive thy work."—Hab.,
iii. 2
ALL true religion is the work of God: it is
pre-eminently so. If he should select out of his works that which
he esteems most of all, he would select true religion. He regards
the work of grace as being even more glorious than the works of
nature; and he is, therefore, especially careful that it shall
always be known, so that if any one dare to deny it, they shall
do so in the teeth of repeated testimonies to the contrary, that
God is indeed the author of salvation in the world and in the
hearts of men, and that religion is the effect of grace, and is
the work of God. I believe the Eternal might sooner forgive the
sin of ascribing the creation of the heavens and of the earth to
an idol, than that of ascribing the works of grace to the efforts
of the flesh, or to any thing else but God. It is a sin of the
greatest magnitude to suppose that there is aught in the heart
which can be acceptable unto God, save that which God himself has
first created there. When I deny God’s work in creating the
sun, I deny one truth; but when I deny that he works grace in the
heart, I deny a hundred truths in one; for in the denial of that
one great truth, that God is the author of good in the souls of
men, I have denied all the doctrines which make up the great
articles of faith, and have run in the very teeth of the whole
testimony of sacred Scripture I trust, beloved, that many of us
have been taught, that if there be any thing in our souls which
can carry us to heaven 'tis God's work, and, moreover, that if
there be might that is good and excellent found in his church, it
is entirely God's work, from first to last. We firmly believe
that it is God who quickens the soul which was dead, positively
"dead in trespasses and sins;" that it is God who
maintains the life of that soul, and God who consummates and
perfects that life in the borne of the blessed, in the land of
the hereafter. We ascribe nothing to man, but all to God. We dare
not for a moment think that the conversion of the soul is
effected either by its own effort or by the efforts of others; we
conceive that there are means and agencies employed, but that the
work is, both alpha and omega, wholly the Lord's. We think,
therefore, that we are right in applying the text to the work of
divine grace, both in the heart and in the church at large; and
we think we can have no subject more appropriate for our
consideration than the text. " O Lord, revive thy
work!"
First, beloved, trusting that the Spirit of God will help me I
shall endeavor to apply the text to our own soul personally, and
then to the state of the church at large, for it
well needs that the Lord should revive his work in its midst.
I. First, then, to OURSELVES. We should begin at home. We too
often flog the church, when the whip should be laid on our own
shoulders. We drag the church, like a colossal culprit, to the
altar; we bind her, and try to execute her at once; we bind her
hands fast, and tear off thongfull after thongfull of her
quivering flesh—finding fault with her where there is none,
and magnifying her little errors; while we too often forget
ourselves. Let us, therefore, commence with ourselves,
remembering that we are part of the church, and that our own want
of revival is in some measure the cause of that want in the
church at large.
Now, I directly charge the great majority of professing
Christians—and I take the charge to myself also—with a
need of a revival of piety in these days. I shall lay the charge
before you very peremptorily, because I think I have abundant
grounds to prove it. I believe that the mass of Christian men in
this age need a revival, and my reasons are these:
In the first place, look at the conduct and conversation of
too many who profess to be the children of God. It ill becomes
any man who occupies the sacred place of a pulpit to flatter his
hearers, and I shall not attempt to do so. The evidence lies with
too many of you who unite yourselves with Christian churches, and
in practically protesting against your profession.
It has become very common now-a-days to join a church; go
where you may you find professing Christians who sit down at some
Lord's table or another; but are there fewer cheats than there
used to be? Are there less frauds committed? Do we find morality
more extensive? Do we find vice entirely at an end? No, we do
not. The age is as immoral as any that preceded it; there is
still as much sin, although it is more cloaked and hidden. The
outside of the sepulcher may be whiter; but within, the bones are
just as rotten as before. Society is not one whit improved. Those
men who, in our popular magazines, give us a true picture of the
state of London life, are to be believed and credited, for they
do not stretch the truth—they have no motive for so doing;
and the picture which they give of the morality of this great
city is certainly appalling. It is a huge criminal, full of sin;
and I say this, that if all the profession in London were true
profession, it would not be nearly such a wicked place as it is;
it could not be, by any manner of means. My brethren, it is well
known and who dares deny it that is not too partial, and who will
not speak willful falsehood ?—it is well known that it is
not ii) these days a sufficient guaranty even of a man's honesty,
that he is a member of a church. It is a hard thing for Christian
ministers to say, but we must say it, and if friends say it not,
enemies will; and better that the truth should be spoken in our
midst, that men may see that we are ashamed of it, than that they
should hear us impudently deny what we must confess to be true! O
sirs, the lives of too many members of' Christian churches give
us grave cause to suspect that there is none of the life of
godliness in them all! Why that reaching after money, why that
covetousness, why that following of the crafts and devices of a
wicked world, why that clutching here and clutching there, that
grinding of the faces of the poor, that stamping down of the
workman, and such like things, if men are truly what they profess
to be? God in heaven knows that what I speak is true, and too
many here know it themselves. If they be Christians, at least
they want revival; if there be life in them, it is but a spark
that is covered up with heaps of ashes; it needs to be fanned,
ay, and it needs to be stirred also, that, haply, some of the
ashes may be removed and the spark may have place to live. The
church wants revival in the persons of its members. The members
of Christian churches are not what once they were. It is
fashionable to be religious now; persecution is taken away; and
ah! I had almost said, the gates of the church were taken away
with it. The church has, with few exceptions, no gates now; her
sons come in, and go out of it, just as they would march through
St. Paul's cathedral, and make it a very place of traffic,
instead of regarding it as a select and sacred spot, to be
apportioned to the holy of the Lord, and to the excellent of the
earth, in whom is God's delight. If this be not true, you know
how to treat it; you need not confess to sin you have not
committed; but if it be true, and true in your case, O humble
yourselves under the mighty hand of God; ask him to search and
try you, that if you be not his child you may be helped to
renounce your profession, lest it should be to you but the gaudy
pageantry of death, and mere tinsel and gew-gaw in which to go to
hell. If you be his, ask that he may give you more grace, that
you may renounce these faults and follies, and turn unto him with
full purpose of heart, as the effect of a revived godliness in
your soul.
Again: where the conduct of professing Christians is
consistent, let me ask the question, Does not the conversation
of many a professor lead us either to doubt the truthfulness
of his piety, or else to pray that his piety may be revived? Have
you noticed the conversation of too many who think themselves
Christians? You might live with them from the first of January to
the end of December, and you would never be tired of their
religion for what you would hear of it. They scarcely mention the
name of Jesus Christ at all. On Sabbath afternoon all the
ministers are talked over, faults are found with this one and the
other, and all kinds of conversation take place, which they call
religious, because it is concerning religious places. But do they
ever talk of what be said and did, and what he suffered for us
here below? Do you often hear the salutation addressed to you by
your brother Christian, "Friend, how doth thy soul
prosper?" When we step into each other's houses, do we begin
to talk concerning the cause and truth of God? Do you think that
God would now stoop from heaven to listen to the conversation of
his church, as once he did, when it was said, "The Lord
hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written for
them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name?" I
solemnly declare, as the result of thorough, and, I trust,
impartial observation, that the conversation of Christians, while
it can not be condemned on the score of morality, must almost
invariably be condemned on the score of Christianity. We talk too
little about our Lord and Master. That word sectarianism has
crept into our midst, and we must say nothing about Christ,
because we are afraid of being called sectarians. I am a
sectarian, and hope to be so until I die, and to glory in it; for
I can not see, now-a-days, that a man can be a Christian,
thoroughly in earnest, without winning for himself the title.
Why, we must not talk of this doctrine, because perhaps such a
one disbelieves it; we must not notice such and such a truth in
Scripture, because such and such a friend doubts or denies it;
and so we drop all the great and grand topics which used to be
the staple commodities of godly talk, and begin to speak of any
thing else, because we feel that we can agree better on worldly
things than we can on spiritual. Is not that the truth? and is it
not a sad sin with some of us, that we have need to pray unto
God, "O Lord, revive thy work in my soul, that my
conversation may be more Christ-like, seasoned with salt, and
kept by the Holy Spirit?"
And yet a third remark here. There are some whose conduct is
all that we could wish, whose conversation is for the most part
unctuous with the gospel, mid savory of truth ; but even they
will confess to a third charge, which I must now sorrowfully
bring against them and against myself; namely, that there is
too little real communion with Jesus Christ. If thanks to
divine grace, we are enabled to keep our conduct tolerably
consistent, and our lives unblemished, yet how much have we to
cry out against ourselves, from a lack of that holy fellowship
with Jesus which is the high mark of the true child of God
Brethren, let me ask some of you how long it is since you have
had a love-visit from Jesus Christ—how long since you could
say, "My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the
lilies?" How long is it since "he brought you into his
banqueting house, and his banner over you was love?" Perhaps
some of you will be able to say, "It was but this morning
that I saw him; I beheld his face with joy, and was ravished with
his countenance." But I fear the greatest part of you will
have to say, "Ah, sir, for months I have been without the
shinings of his countenance." What have you been doing,
then, and what has been your way of life? Have you been groaning
every day? Have you been weeping every minute? "No!"
Then you ought to have been. I can not understand how your piety
can be of any very brilliant order, if you can live without the
sunlight of Christ, and yet be happy. Christians will lose
sometimes the society of Jesus; the connection between themselves
and Christ will be at times severed, as to their own feeling of
it; but they will always groan and cry when they lose their
Jesus. What! is Christ thy Brother, and does he live in thine
house, and yet thou hast not spoken to him for a month? I fear
there is little love between thee and thy Brother, for thou hast
had no conversation with him for so long. What! is Christ the
Husband of his church, and has she had no fellowship with him for
all this time? Brethren, let me not condemn you, let me not even
judge you, but let your conscience speak. Mine shall, and so
shall yours. Have we not too much forgotten Christ? Have we not
lived too much without him? Have we not been contented with the
world, instead of desiring Christ? Have we been, all of us, like
that little ewe lamb that did drink out of the master's cup, and
feed from his table? Have we not rather been content to stray
upon the mountains, feeding anywhere but at home? I fear many of
the troubles of our heart spring from want of communion with
Jesus. Not many of us are the kind of men who, living with Jesus,
his secrets must know. O! no; we live too much without the light
of his countenance; and are too happy when he is gone from us.
Let us, each of us, then, for I am sure we have each of us need,
in some measure, put up the prayer, "O Lord, revive thy
work!" Ah! methinks I hear one professor saying, "Sir,
I need no revival in my heart; I am everything I wish to
be." Down on your knees, my brethren! down on your knees for
him! He is the man that most needs to be prayed for. He says that
he needs no revival in his soul; but he needs a revival of his
humility, at any rate. If he supposes that he is all that he
ought to be, and if he knows that he is all he wishes to be, he
has very mean notions of what a Christian is, or of what a
Christian should be, and very unjust ideas of himself. Those are
in the best condition who, while they know they want reviving,
yet feel their condition and groan under it.
Now, I think I have in some degree substantiated my charge, I
fear with too strong arguments; and now let me notice, that the
text has something in it which I trust that each of us has. Here
is not only an evil implied in these word—"O Lord, revive
thy work;" but there is an evil evidently felt. You see
Habakkuk knew how to groan about it. O Lord," said he,
"revive thy work!" Ah! we many of us want revival, but
few of us feel that we want it. It is a blessed sign of life
within, when we know how to groan over our departures from the
living God. It is easy to find by hundreds those that have
departed, but you must count those by ones who know how to groan
over their departure. The true believer, however, when he
discovers that he needs revival, will not be happy; he will begin
at once that incessant and continuous strain of cries and groans
which will at last prevail with God, and bring the blessing of
revival down. He will, days and nights in succession, cry,
"O Lord, revive thy work!"
Let me mention some groaning times, which will always occur to
the Christian who needs revival. I am sure he will always groan, when
he looks upon what the Lord did for him of old. When
he recollects the Mizars and the Hermons, and those places where
the Lord appeared of old to him, saying, "I have loved thee
with an everlasting love," I know he will never look back to
them without tears. If he is what he should be as a Christian, or
if he thinks he is not in a right condition, he will always weep
when he remembers God's lovingkindness of old. O! whenever the
soul has lost fellowship with Jesus, it can not bear to think of
the "chariots of Aminadab;" it can not endure to think
of "the banqueting house," for it hath not been there
so long; and when it does think of it, it says,
"The peaceful hours I then enjoyed,
how sweet their memory still.
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill."
When he hears a sermon which relates the glorious experience
of the believer who is in a healthy state, he will put his hand
upon his heart, and say, "Ah! such was my experience once;
but those happy days are gone. My sun is set; those stars which
once lit up my darkness are all quenched; O! that I might again
behold him; O! that I might once more see his face; O! for
those sweet visits from on high; O! for the grapes of Eschol once
more." And by the rivers of Babylon you will sit down and
weep. You will weep, when you remember your goings up to
Zion—when the Lord was precious to you, when he laid bare
his heart, and was pleased also to fill your heart with the
fullness of his love. Such times will be groaning times, when you
remember "the years of the right hand of the Most
High."
Again, to a Christian who wants revival, ordinances will
be also groaning times. He will go up to the house of God; but he
will say of himself when he comes away, "Ah! how changed!
When I once went with the multitude that kept holy day every word
was precious. When the song ascended my soul had wings, and up it
flew to its nest among the stars; when the prayer was offered, I
could devoutly say, 'Amen;' but now the preacher preaches as he
did before; my brethren are as profited as once they were; but
the sermon is dry to me, and dull. I find no fault with the
preacher; I know the fault is in myself. The song is just the
same—as sweet the melody, as pure the harmony; but ah! my
heart is heavy; my harp strings are broken, and I can not
sing;" and the Christian will return from those blessed
means of grace, sighing and sobbing, because he knows he wants
revival. More especially at the Lord's Supper he will think, when
he sits at the table, "O! what seasons I once had here! In
breaking the bread and drinking the wine my Master was
present." He will bethink himself how his soul was even
carried to the seventh heaven, and the house was made "the
very house of God and the gate of heaven." "But
now," he says, "it is bread, dry bread to me; it is
wine, tasteless wine, with none of the sweetness of paradise in
it; I drink, but all in vain. No thoughts of Christ. My heart
will not rise; my soul can not heave a thought half way to
him!" And then the Christian will begin to groan
again—" O Lord revive thy work!"
But I shall not detain you upon that subject. Those of you who
know that you are in Christ, but feel that you are not in a
desirable condition, because you do not love him enough, and have
not that faith in him which you desire to have, I would just ask
you this: Do you groan over it? Can you groan now? When you feel
your heart is empty, is it "an aching void?" When you
feel that your garments are stained, can you wash those garments
with tears? When you think your Lord is gone, can you hang out
the black flag of sorrow, and cry, "O my Jesus! O my Jesus!
art thou gone?" If thou canst, then I bid thee do it. Do it,
do it; and may God be pleased to give thee grace to continue to
do it, until a happier era shall dawn in the reviving of thy
soul!
And remark, in the last place, upon this point, that the soul,
when it is really brought to feel its own sad estate, because of
its declension and departure from God, is never content
without turning its groanings into prayer, and without
addressing the prayer to the right quarter: "O Lord, revive
thy work!" Some of you, perhaps, will say, "Sir, I feel
my need of revival; I intend to set to work this very afternoon,
as soon as I shall retire from this place, to revive my
soul." Do not say it; and, above all things, do not try to
do it, for you never will do it. Make no resolutions as to what
you will do; your resolutions will as certainly be broken as they
are made, and your broken resolutions will but increase the
number of your sins. I exhort you, instead of trying to revive
yourself, to offer prayers. Say not, "I will revive
myself," but cry, "O Lord, revive thy work!" And
let me solemnly tell thee, thou hast not yet felt what it is to
decline, thou dost not yet know how sad is thine estate,
otherwise thou wouldest not talk of reviving thyself. If thou
didst know thy own position, thou wouldest as soon expect to see
the wounded soldier on the battle-field heal himself without
medicine, or convey himself to the hospital when his limbs are
shot away, as thou wouldest expect to revive thyself without the
help of God. I bid thee not do anything, nor seek to do any
thing, until first of all thou hast addressed Jehovah himself by
mighty prayer—until thou hast cried out, "O Lord,
revive thy work!" Remember, he that first made you must keep
you alive; and he that has kept you alive must restore more life
to you. He that has preserved you from going down to the pit,
when your feet have been sliding, can alone set you again upon a
rock, and establish your goings. Begin, then, by humbling
yourself-giving up all hope of reviving yourself as a Christian,
but beginning at once with firm prayer and earnest supplication
to God: "O Lord, what I cannot do, do thou! O Lord, revive
thy work!"
Christian brethren, I leave these matters with you. Give them
the attention they deserve. If I have erred, and in aught judged
you too harshly, God shall forgive me, for I have meant it
honestly. But if I have spoken truly, lay it to your hearts, and
turn your houses into a "Bochim." Weep men apart, and
women apart, husbands apart, and wives apart. Weep, weep, my
brethren: "It is a sad thing to depart from the living
God." Weep, and may he bring you back to Zion, that you may
one day return like Israel, not with weeping, but with songs of
everlasting joy!
II. And now I come to the second part of the subject, upon
which I must be more brief. In THE CHURCH ITSELF, taken as
a body, this prayer ought to be one incessant and solemn litany:
"O Lord, revive thy work!"
In the present era there is a sad decline of the vitality
of godliness. This age has become too
much the age of form, instead of the age of life. I date the hour
of life from this day one hundred years ago when the first stone
was laid of this building in which we now worship God. Then was
the day of life divine, and of power, sent down from on high. God
had clothed Whitefield with power: he was preaching with a
majesty and a might of which one could scarcely think mortals
could ever be capable; not because he was anything in himself,
but because his Master girded him with might. After Whitefield
there was a succession of great and holy men. But now, sirs, we
have fallen upon the dregs of time. Men are the rarest
things in all this world; we have not many left now. We have no
men in government hardly, to conduct our politics, and scarcely
any men in religion. We have the things that perform their
duties, as they are called; we have the good, and, perhaps, the
honest things, who in the regular routine go on like pack-horses
with their bells, for ever in the old style; but men who dare to
be singular, because to be singular is generally to be right in a
wicked world, are not very many in this age. Compared with the
puritanic times even, where are our divines! Could we marshal
together our Howes and our Charnocks? Could we gather together
such names as I could mention about fifty at a time? I trow not.
Nor could we bring together such a galaxy of grace and talent as
that which immediately followed Whitefield. Think of Rowland
Hill, Newton, Toplady, Doddridge, and numbers of others whom time
would fail me to mention. They are gone, they are gone; their
venerated dust sleeps in the earth , and where are their
successors? Ask where, and echo will reply, "Where?"
There are none. Successors of them, where are they? God hath not
yet raised them up, or, if he have, you have not yet found out
where they are. There is preaching, and what is it? "O Lord,
help thy servant to preach, and teach him by thy Spirit what to
say." Then out comes the manuscript, and they read it. A
pure insult to Almighty God! We have preaching, but it is of this
order. It is not preaching at all. It is speaking very
beautifully and very finely, possibly eloquently, in some sense
of the word but where is the right down preaching, such as
Whitefield's ? Have you ever read one of his sermons? You will
not think him eloquent; you cannot think him so. His expressions
were rough, frequently very coarse and unconnected; there was
very much declamation about him; it was a great part, indeed, of
his speech. But where lay his eloquence? Not in the words you
read, but in the tone in which he delivered them, and in the
earnestness with which he felt them, and in the tears which ran
down his cheeks, and in the pouring out of his soul. The reason
why he was eloquent was just what the word means. He was
eloquent, because he spoke right out from his heart—from the
innermost depths of the man. You could see when he spoke that he
meant what he said. He did not speak as a trade, or as a mere
machine, but he preached what he felt to be the truth, and
what he could not help preaching. When you heard him preach, you
could not help feeling that he was a man who would die if he
could not preach, and with all his might call to men and say,
"Come! come! come to Jesus Christ, and believe on him!"
Now, that is just the lack of these times. Where, where is
earnestness now? It is neither in pulpit nor yet in pew, in such
a measure as we desire it; and it is a sad, sad age, when
earnestness is scoffed at, and when that very zeal which ought to
be the prominent characteristic of the pulpit is regarded as
enthusiasm and fanaticism. I ask God to make us all such fanatics
as most men laugh at—to make us all just such enthusiasts as
many despise. We reckon it the greatest fanaticism in the world
to go to hell, the greatest enthusiasm upon earth to love sin
better than righteousness; and we think those neither fanatics
nor enthusiasts who seek to obey God rather than man, and follow
Christ in all his ways. We repeat, that one sad proof that the
church wants revival is the absence of that death-like, solemn
earnestness which was once seen in Christian pulpits.
The absence of sound doctrine is another proof of our
want of revival. Do you know who are called Antinomians now, who
are called "hypers," who are laughed at, who are
rejected as being unsound in the faith? Why, the men that once
were the orthodox are now the heretics. We can turn back to the
records of our Puritan fathers, to the articles of the Church of
England, to the preaching of Whitefield, and we can say of that
preaching, it is the very thing we love ; and the doctrines which
were then uttered are—and we dare to say it
everywhere—the very self-same doctrines that he proclaimed.
But because we choose to proclaim them, we are thought singular
and strange; and the reason is, because sound doctrine hath to a
great degree ceased. It began in this way. First of all the
truths were fully believed, but the angles were a little taken
off. The minister believed election, but he did not use the word,
for fear it should in some degree disturb the equanimity of the
deacon in the green pew in the corner. He believed that all men
were depraved, but he did not say it positively because if he
did, there was a lady who had subscribed so much to the
chapel—she would not come again; so that while he did
believe it, and did say it in some sense, he rounded it a little.
Afterward it came to this. Ministers said, "We believe these
doctrines, but we do not think them profitable to preach to the
people. They are quite true: free grace is true; the great
doctrines of grace that were preached by Christ, by Paul, by
Augustine, by Calvin, and down to this age by their successors,
are true; but they had better be kept back—they must be very
cautiously dealt with; they are very high and dreadful doctrines,
and they must not be preached; we believe them, but we dare not
speak them out." After that it came to something worse. They
said within themselves, "Well, if these doctrines will not
do for us to preach, perhaps they are not true at all;" and
going one step further, they said they dare not preach them. They
did not actually say it, perhaps, but they began just to hint
that they were not true; then they went one step further, giving
us something which they said was the truth; and then they would
cast us out of the synagogue, as if they were the rightful owners
of it, and we were the intruders. So they have passed on from bad
to worse; and if you read the standard divinity of this age, and
the standard divinity of Whitefleld's day, you will find that the
two cannot by any possibility stand together. We have got a
"new theology." New theology? Why, it is anything but a
Theology; it is a theology which hath cast out God utterly
and entirely, and enthroned man, as it is the doctrine of man,
and not the doctrine of the everlasting God. We want a revival of
sound doctrine once more in the midst of the land.
And the church at large, may be, wants a revival of
downright earnestness in its members. Ye are not the men to
fight the Lord's battles yet. Ye have not the earnestness, the
zeal, which once the children of God had. Your forefathers were
oaken men; ye are willow men. Our people, what are they many of
them? Strong in doctrine when they are with strong doctrine men ;
but they waver when they get with others, and they change as
often as they change their company; they say sometimes one thing,
and sometimes another. They are not the men to go to the stake
and die; they are not the men that know how to die daily, and so
are ready for death when it comes. Look at our prayer-meetings,
with here and there a bright exception. Go in. There are six
women; scarcely ever enough members come to pray four times. Look
at them. Prayer-meetings they are called ; spare meetings
they ought to be called, for sparely enough they are attended.
And very few there be that go to our fellowship-meetings, or to
any other meetings that we have to help one another in the fear
of the Lord. Are they attended at all? I would like to see a
newspaper printed somewhere, containing a list of all the persons
that went to those meetings during the week in any of our
chapels. Ah! my friends, if they should comprise all the
Christians in London, you might find that a chapel or two would
hold them all. There are few enough that go. We have not
earnestness, we have not life, as we once had; if we had, we
should be called worse names than we are; we should have viler
epithets thrown at us, if we were more true to our Master; we
should not have all things quite so comfortable, if we served God
better. We are getting the church to be an institution of our
land—an honorable institution. Ah! some think it a grand
thing when the church becomes an honorable institution! Methinks
it shows the church has swerved, when she begins to be very
honorable in the eyes of the world. She must still be cast out,
she must still be called evil, and still be despised, until that
day shall come, when her Lord shall honor her because she has
honored him—shall honor her, even in this world, in the day
of his appearing.
Beloved, do you think it is true that the church wants
reviving? Yes, or no? "No," you say, "not to the
extent that you suppose. We think the church is in a good
condition. We are not among those who cry, 'The former days were
better than these.'" Perhaps you are not: you may be wiser
than we are, and therefore you are able to see those various
signs of goodness which are to us so small that we are not able
to discover them. You may suppose that the church is in a good
condition; if so, of course you can not sympathize with me in
preaching from such a text, and urging you to use such a prayer.
But there are others of you who are frequently prone to cry,
"The church wants reviving." Let me bid you, instead of
grumbling at your minister, instead of finding fault with the
different parts of the church, to cry, "O Lord revive thy
work!" "O!" says one, "if we had another
minister. O! if we had another kind of worship. O! if we had a
different sort of preaching." Just as if that were all! It
is, "O! if the Lord would come into the hearts of the men
you have got. O! if he would make the forms you do use full of
power." You do not want fresh ways or fresh machinery; you
want the life in what you have. There is an engine on a railway;
a train has to be moved. "Bring another engine," says
one, "and another, and another." The engines are
brought, but the train does not move at all. Light the fire, and
get the steam up, that is what you want; not fresh engines. We do
not want fresh ministers, or fresh plans, or fresh ways, though
many might be invented, to make the church better; we only want
life in what we have got. Given, the very man who has emptied
your chapel; given, the selfsame person that brought your
prayer-meeting low; God can make the chapel crowded, open the
doors yet, and give thousands of souls to that very man. It is
not a new man that is wanted; it is the life of God in him. Do
not be crying out for something new; it will no more succeed, of
itself than what you have. Cry, "O Lord, revive thy
work!" I have noticed in different churches, that the
minister has thought first of this contrivance, then of that. He
tried one plan, and thought that would succeed; then he tried
another; that was not it. Keep to the old plan, but get life in
it. We do not want anything new; "the old is
better"—let us keep to it. But we want the life in the
old. "O!" men cry, "we have nothing but the shell;
they are going to give us a new shell." No, sirs, we will
keep the old one, but we will have the life in the shell too; we
will have the old thing; but we must, or else we will throw the
old away, have the life in the old. O! that God would give us
life. The church wants fresh revivals O! for the days of
Cambuslang again, when Whitefield preached with power. O! for the
days when in this place hundreds were converted sometimes under
Whitefield's sermons. It has been known that two thousand
credible cases of conversion have happened under one solitary
discourse. O! for the age when eyes should be strained, and ears
should be ready to receive the word of God, and when men should
drink in the word of life, as it is indeed, the very water of
life, which God gives to dying souls! O! for the age of deep
feeling—the age of deep, thorough-going earnestness! Let us
ask God for it ; let us plead with him for it. Perhaps he has the
man, or the men, somewhere, who will shake the world yet; perhaps
even now he is about to pour forth a mighty influence upon
men, which shall make the church as wonderful in this age, as it
ever was in any age that has passed.
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