A Holiness Revival. Absolutely Essential
In answer to the question how the Church is to be lifted up to the abundant life in Christ, to that expanded vitality which will fit her for the work that God is putting before her, many will without hesitation say: Nothing will help but a revival. That alone will be that something which must happen to the Church of which Dr. Denney spoke. Or as Mr. Oldham has put it: 1 “If the Conference had any meaning at all, it disclosed a situation so serious that nothing less than a tremendous spiritual revival can be adequate to meet it. It is a new and living apprehension of God and of His purpose for the world, that we seem most of all to need, if there is to be that irresistible spiritual movement which is the only thing adequate to the needs of the situation. Great tides of spiritual energy must be set in motion, if the work is to be accomplished.”
Yes, all will answer, nothing less than a mighty revival is needed to rouse and fit the Church for the work to which God calls her. And yet there
1 In an article in the C. M. Review of January 1911.
may be a great difference in what we understand by revival. Many will think of the power of God as it has been manifested in the work of evangelists like Moody and Torrey, and they feel sure that what God has done in the past He can do again. They will perhaps hardly be able to understand us when we say that we need a different and a mightier revival than those were. In them the chief object was the conversion of sinners and, in connection with that, incidentally the quickening of believers. But the revival that we need calls for a deeper and more entire upheaval of the Church. The great defect of those revivals was that the converts were received into a Church that was not living on a high level of consecration and holiness, and speedily they sank down to the average standard of ordinary religious life. Even the believers who had taken part in the work and had been roused by it, also gradually returned to their former life of clouded fellowship and lack of power to testify for Christ.
The revival we need is the revival of holiness, in which the consecration of the whole being to the service of Christ, and that for the whole life, shall be counted possible. And for this there will be needed a new style of preaching, in which the promises of God to dwell in His people, and to sanctify them for Himself, will take a place which they do not now have. Let me try and make this plain by an illustration from the history of Israel. When God redeemed His people from Egypt, by the blood of the Passover, and the deliverance at the Red Sea, this was but a beginning of what He intended to do. He had a higher purpose and a fuller blessing. He meant to dwell among them as the Holy One, and to be their God, and to hallow them to be His people. We find this twofold aim in the song of Moses (Ex. xv. 13 — 17): “Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed,” — that was the wonderful beginning. Then, “Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation.” Just as God had said to Moses, “I am the Lord, which bringeth you out from Egypt, and I will bring you in unto the land,” the redemption from Egypt was but the foundation; the house to be built upon it was the sanctuary in which God dwelt in the midst of His people as the Holy One to make them holy too. And yet how many of Israel there were who were brought out from bondage, but never were brought in into the rest; they perished in the wilderness through unbelief.
When our Lord Jesus, in His farewell discourse, gave the promise of the Holy Spirit, He spoke of the great New Covenant blessing that would then be experienced: God dwelling in His people. “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and I will love him,and we will make our abode with him.” So Paul also writes, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Dr. Maclaren has said that it seems as if the thought of Christ dwelling in the heart has been lost in the Church. With the Reformation the great truth of Justification, the bringing out from the bondage of Egypt, was restored to its place. But the other great truth of Sanctification, the bringing in into the land with its rest and victory, has never yet taken the place in the preaching and practice of the Church which God’s Word claims for it. It is for this we need a revival, that the Holy Spirit may so take possession of us that the Father and the Son can live in us, and that fellowship with them, and devotion to their will and service, shall be our chief joy. This will be in very deed a Holiness Revival.
A Holiness Revival! Has there ever been such a thing? There have been movements in the Church, sometimes more or less local, which, though they have not been known by that name, have resulted in definite and intense consecration to God and His will. But there have also been fuller manifestations of the Spirit which have left their marks in history. At the Edinburgh Conference mention was more than once made of the Moravian ideal as what the Church ought to aim at, — Every member ready for the work of the Kingdom. That community owed its birth to a true Holiness Revival. At Herrnhut there were gathered together a number of
Bohemian refugees, and along with them a number of Christians of different sects, who hoped there to find the Christian life as they sought for it. It was not long before disputes arose, and Herrnhut became the scene of contention and division. Zinzendorf felt this so deeply that he went down to live among them. In the power of God’s Spirit he succeeded not only in restoring order, but in binding them together in the power of devotion to Christ Jesus and of love to each other. More than once they had remarkable manifestations of the presence of the Spirit, and their whole life became one of worship and praise. It was after they had for a couple of years been having their nightly fellowship meeting that they were led to the consecration of the whole body to the service of Christ’s Kingdom.
When John Wesley visited them, he wrote as follows: — “God has given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a Church whose conversation is in heaven, in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked. Here I continually met with what I sought for — living proofs of the power of faith, persons saved from inward as well as outward sin, by the love of God shed abroad in their hearts. I was extremely comforted and strengthened by the conversation of this lovely people.”3 It was in a Holiness revival that the Moravian missionary idea was born and realised.
1 John Wesley Evangelist, by Rev. Richard Green, p. 208.
A Holiness Revival! What was the great Evangelical Revival in England through Whitefield and Wesley, but this? They had together at Oxford been members of “The Holy Club.” With their whole heart they had sought to live for God, to keep themselves separate from the world, to devote their life to the welfare of their fellow-men. They had not only sought deliverance from the guilt, but also from the power, of sin. When their eyes were opened to see how faith can claim the whole Christ in all His fulness, they found the key to that preaching which was so mightily effectual for the salvation of men.
What John Wesley did for the Methodists, General Booth, as his disciple, has done for the Salvation Army. Looking at the material on which he had to work, it is amazing how, with his teaching of the clean heart and full salvation, he has been able to inspire tens of thousands with a true devotion to Christ and to the lost. If I remember rightly, Dr. Whyte has said, that along with Spurgeon, John Wesley and General Booth are among those whom God has most honoured for winning many souls for Christ. Such a testimony has all the greater value because we know how far Dr. Whyte is from agreeing with the teaching of holiness as they think they have found it in God’s Word. There may be great differences of doctrine, but no one can be blind to the seal God has set upon the intense desire to preach a full salvation and an entire consecration.
A Revival of Holiness is what we need. Such a preaching of the claim that Christ has on us as shall lead us to live entirely for Him and His Kingdom; such an attachment of love to Him as shall make His fellowship our highest joy; such a faith in His freeing us from the dominion of sin as shall enable us in all things to obey His commandments; such a yielding to the Holy Spirit as to be led by Him in all our daily walk; — these will be some of the elements of the revival of true holiness for which the Church must learn to seek as for the Pearl of great price.
And how is it to be found? It will cost much prayer. It will cost more than that — much sacrifice of self and of the world. It will need a surrender to Christ Jesus to follow Him as closely as God is able to work it in us. We must learn to look upon religion, upon a life like Christ’s, having the very same mind that was in Him, as the supreme object of daily life. It is only when a prayer such as that of M’Cheyne becomes ours, “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be,” and begins to be offered by an increasing number of ministers and believers, that the promise of the New Covenant will be come a matter of experience. As the preaching of God in His holiness, of Christ as our Sanctification, of the work of the Spirit as the Spirit of holiness, takes the place that it has in God’s
Word, God’s people will have the power to do the work to which God has called them in making Christ known to every living creature. The promise will then be fulfilled: “The heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.”