The Secret of the Great Revival
Up to this point the range and scale of the revival have been described; but it is worth while to ask at this stage what is the explanation of a movement which so profoundly aflfected the whole nation; and where the secret of its strange energy is to be sought.
The secret, of course, belongs to the spiritual realm. It is idle to seek for it in the personal qualities of the men who were its agents, in the overwhelming oratory of Whitefield, the hymns of Charles Wesley, the ordered and matchless industry, the genius for organisation, of John Wesley. Nor does the explanation lie in the realm of doctrine. England in the eighteenth century was not revolutionised by the discovery of a new theology, nor yet by the force of an old theology set in a new perspective and proclaimed in new accents. The revival of’the eighteenth century, it is customary to say, is the supreme historical re-birth of evangelicalism amongst the English-speaking race. And that is true; but it is not the whole truth. The most evangelical reading of theology is, in itself, a powerless thing. It will not save an individual, much less influence a nation.
In its last analysis the secret of the great religious movement here described is lu w fvnud in a rich outpouring of the living Spirit of God on the nation; and in the ( ivciiiii:-f ;iii<c iluit iU ti 1.^ particular moment that Divine Spirit found, in a particular grouj) of men, fit instruments, with fit measure of devotion and faith, for a work so great. Flowing through the channel of true doctrine, and using the agency of fit human instruments, the grace of the Holy Spirit wrought this great work.
But the question still remains, what was that particular reading of Christianity which the revival represents, and which serves to explain its scale and its enduring energy? What are evangelical doctrines?
The Christian religion, as all history shows, lies open, perpetually, to danger from two o])j)ositc extremes. One extreme resolves it into a pale and attenuated Deism, a theory which exhausts all the great words of Christianity of their meaning, and all the great offices of Christ of their reality. It ignores — it treats as non-existent or as insignificant — that dread and measureless interval, a moral gulf, which no wit or toil of man can bridge, betwixt sin and righteousness. Sin, on this reading, is merely a stage in human development. It has no enduring element of guilt, and is pursued by no eternal penalties. Forgiveness, if any forgiveness indeed is necessary, comes through no awful mystery of suffering running up to the very person and throne of God. It is a cheap and easy thing, the mere gift of God’s good nature. Conversion is a phrase. Christ’s priesthood is, if not an impertinence, at least an irrelevance; for man needs no priest. A divine redemption accomplished through sacrifice is unintelligible. Christ has no redeeming oflBces. He is simply a teacher, a little wiser than, say Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius; or even perhaps not quite so wise! Religion is a little scheme of moral reform, accomplished easily by the unaided energy of the human will.
This theory evaporates the Bible into a mist; it drains its supreme passages of all meaning. It is a creed which inspires no martyrs, creates no saints, sends out no missionaries, writes no hymns, and has little use for prayer. Jesus Christ, in its scale of values, is merely a Jewish Confucius. The denied, or the forgotten, offices of Jesus Christ — of Christ the seeker, of Christ the redeemer — are the reproach of this theory of religion and the secret of its weakness. And, as we have seen, this was the version of Christianity which, at the moment when the great revival began, had captured all the pulpits, and nearly all the mind, of England.
The opposite misreading of Christianity is the sacerdotal version in all its moods and forms. It does not deny Christ’s priesthood, but betwixt the personal human soul and the great High Priest of the human race it puts the barrier of a human priesthood. Redemption, in this reading of the Christian system, is robbed of its freeness, of its simplicity, of its amazing grace. Religion becomes a scheme of measured and mechanical duties; of pious
THE SP:(^RET op the great revival 271
efforts regulated by a clock, and undertaken in a temper of bondage. The sacerdotalist, when analysed, is a man who has never heard the great message of Christianity to each accepted and forgiven soul — “Thou art no more a servant but a son.” On the sacerdotal theory, divine grace flows exclusively through the ‘’lean and scrannel pipe” — to borrow a Miltonic phrase — of a particular line of ordained men. This is a theology which suits the austere and select few, but has no message for the common crowd. It inspires great earnestness, but kindles no sunshine. It sometimes evolves martyrs, but it never makes a rejoicing .saint.
These opposite misreadings of Christianity stand in sombre contrast with that great system of evangelical belief which comes betwixt them both, and avoids the falsehood of each. What are evangelical doctrines? A chain of mountain peaks, that pierce to the crown of the heavens, and on whose summits brood perpetual sunshine! They constitute a close-knitted succession of truths that break out of eternity and have its scale — truths that relate to sin, and proclaim its measureless guilt, its hurrying and inevitable doom; but which also reveal an immediate and personal deliverance from sin — a deliverance which comes as an act of divine grace, and on the simplest terms of penitential acceptance. But it is no light and easy deliverance which costs the Deliverer nothing. It is the supreme miracle of the spiritual universe, made possible only by the mystery of Christ’s redemption. It is brought near by the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s grace. It sets the forgiven soul in personal and rejoicing relationship with a reconciled and loving Father.
A divine redemption; a realised pardon; a restored relationship to God through faith; the entrance of supernatural forces into the life by the grace of the Divine Spirit; the present and perfect attainment of God’s ideal in the character. And all this made intelligible and credible by the redeeming work and oflSces of Jesus Christ — and by the saving energies of the Holy Spirit in the human soul! This is the evangelical version of Christianity!
There is nothing new in these doctrines. They represent no theological discoveries. But they are the effective doctrines of Christianity. They differentiate it from a mere scheme of morals. They make it something more than a theology. They directly bear on character. All the dynamic energies of Christianity find their spring in them. These are the doctrines that send out missionaries, that inspire martyrs, that regenerate slums! They awaken deeper vibrations in the human soul than all other truths put together. They are the doctrines in which dying men find comfort. All tile gi’eat hymns of Christian worship reflect them; all the great prayers of human need give them speech. They formed exactly the message which the dying Christianity of the England of that day needed. “Men,” the message ran, “are in utmost and instant peril; they need, not some new and heavier chain of duty, but a divine deliverance accomplished through redeeming grace. And this salvation is possible. A Saviour walks amongst men, touching them with hands of tenderness. Hope is born! All men may be saved here and now.”
No olher j)reachers painte<i .sin with colours so dark, and yet so true to human consciousness, as did the men who carried this message. N(me il’pictfd God’s love in Christ in such radiant sunshine, or proclaimed Christ as a Saviour in tones so confident. These.doctrines, too, were preached by men ^vIm- veri;i(i’ Ibem. They had
brought them to that ultimate test of all religious theories, the forum of conscious experience. They were not advocates, they were witnesses. Every syllable on their lips rang with those accents of reality which no art can feign. They challenged their hearers to an immediate and personal verification of the trullis they proclaimed.
And in the speech of these men thrilled that strange power which uses human logic and emotion as its instruments, but which is something different from them all and greater than them all — the power of the Holy Ghost; the “power” that first made human speech its vehicle at Pentecost, and has never been lacking since in those who have learned the secret of Pentecost.
Is it any wonder that such a gospel — preached by such men, in such a spirit, and at such a critical moment — accomplished what is nothing less than a moral revolution? It permanently changed the very currents of religious history.
But it may be asked, Did not Wesley preach at least some strange and startling doctrines of which sober Christianity knows nothing, or at least knows only doubtfully? The whole question of the theology of the revival is discussed later, but it may be asked here, What were those two great doctrines of ‘’assurance” and of “perfection” with which the names of the Wesleys alid of Whitefield are associated, and which in the judgment of multitudes still discredit their work and blot their fame?
That these doctrines are still suspected only proves how imperfectly the Christian religion, after nineteen centuries of (Christian history, is understood even in Christian lands. The doctrine of perfection, as Wesley taught it, is only the belief that God’s ideals in redemption for the human soul are capable of being realised, and realised here and now. It is the doctrine that the highest possibility of religion is not struggle merely, but victory; that what God demands, man, with the help of God’s grace, may give. The first and great commandment, that sums up in its brief syllables all human duty, is — “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.” Is that to be for ever, and for the souls which Christ has redeemed, and in which the Holy Spirit dwells, a law unfulfilled; a challenge to the human conscience unanswered; its pain and condemnation? To assert this is to say that the Christian religion, when translated into the terms of human life and experience, is a failure. It is to say that God’s ideal and man’s character must be for ever in discord. This surely is a theology of despair; a doctrine which is but a disguised atheism.
There were, no doubt, many strange and wild misreadings of the doctrine of perfection in Wesley’s time; but as he held it, and taught it, it is a very sane and Scriptural bit of theology, and its rejection is the denial, not only of man’s hope, but of God’s grace.
What, again, was that doctrine of “assurance” which to the wondering ears of multitudes in that day, seemed a new and wild heresy; and which is still a thing suspect — or a least uncomprehended — by multitudes in the Christian churches to-day? On Wesley’s lips, it was, of course, only a reassertiou of one of the forgotten offices of the Holy Sj)irit. It was one of the essential gifts of the
Christian religion drawn into the sunlight from the realm of musty and ancient forgetfuluess. I’ardon, he taught, was to find its verification and seal in the consciousness of the pardoned soul. God’s forgiveness was not to lie always in the realm of doubt, a dark and perplexed uncertainty; at best only a trembling hope; for most men, indeed, a fear-haunted problem which only death could solve. “The Spirit itself.” r;in tlip iMossniyc of the great revival, ’ beui-.s witutrss with our .spirits thai we are the children of flod.” Why should that which was the gladness ol the Christian consciousness in the first century, be the despair of the Christian consciousness in the eighteenth century?
And the doctrine of assurance, as Wesley taught it, was an ajjpeal to the human consciousness. Forgiveness, he insisted, wrought in the human soul a divine peace which was its witness and seal. Alas! that this great doctrine to-day, as in all days, finds a reflex so faint in the personal experience of multitudes who are yet trying to follow Christ. By so much has human narrowness denied to God’s grace some of its sweetest oflBces!
It is worth noting how steadfastly, from the moment of his conversion to his dying breath, Wesley kept his own experience and teaching within the shining curves of evangelical belief. In them he himself, a wearied sacerdotalist, foind deliverance. He tells the tale of the long despair which had lain like a blight on his life; of the spiritual weariness of those thirteen sad years betwixt his entrance into the ministry and his conversion. He was convinced, he writes in 1738, that the cause of his spiritual disquiet was unbelief, and that “the gaining of a true faith was the one thing for him.” He had faith, indeed, of a sort, but, he says, “I fixed not this faith on its right object. I mean only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ.” Those words touch the very kernel of this evangelical theory!
Wesley, as we have seen, found deliverance when he came into personal touch with Christ as a personal Saviour. Justifying, saving faith in the light of that great experience he defines as “a full reliance on the blood of Christ as shed for me; a trust in Him as my Saviour, as my sole justification, sanctification, and redemption.” The saving emphasis lies on the pronouns!
Then Wesley tasted the gladness of that blessed experience he calls “;issi’rnlre.” “An assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and delivered me from the law of sin and death.”
Wesley for the rest of his days, we repeat, kept on the high lands of evangelical belief and experience. He found in evangelical doctrines the keynote of all his sermons. The text of his first open-air sermon was the I)assage, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.” More than fifty years afterwards he preached at Leatherhead his last discourse from the text, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.” The text ou which he i)rpached iriosi frequently is that passage which declares how God in Christ is “made unto us wisdom, rightoonsness, sanctification, and i-edomptioii.” Almost his last whispered sentences as he lay dying consisted of the words, “There is no way into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus.” Who masters the meaning of these words will understand what is that evangelical doctrine which was the special message of Wesley to his generation, and is indeed the great proclamatiou of Christianity to all generations.
Wesley himself is almost more remarkable as a witness to these truths than as a worker or leader. Paley has built on the conversion of Paul an almost matchless demonstration of the truth of Christianity itself. The moral transformation, sudden and permanent, of a strong, proud, passionate nature is one of the most remarkable facts in human history. To transform a zealot, at a breath, into a saint, a persecutor of Christianity into a martyr for the truths of Christianity — this is a miracle! An event so amazing must have behind it a cause not less wonderful. And this is the problem in Wesley’s history.
What explains the difference in the two stages of his own experience — the doubted-tormented sacerdotalist of early years, and the radiant saint of later years? Up to May 24, 1738, Wesley wore his religion as a monk of the thirteenth century might have worn his hair-cloth shirt. It was a task, an anguish, a burden. But on that date he suddenly stepped into a realm of certainty, of freedom, of gladness.
That great hour at the humble meeting in Aldersgate Street was certainly the turning point in Wesley’s career. It marks the dividing line of his life. On one side are struggle, doubt, toil, failure. On the other side are certainty, gladness, power, achievement. Something happened in that supreme moment which explains the change. It was Wesley’s conversion. He received the living Christ by personal faith as a living and personal Saviour; and the sublime ideals of redemption, as they exist in the mind and purpose of God, were fulfilled in him.
But it may be said that this was a purely subjective experience; valid, perhaps, for its subject, but of authority for nobody else. What conclusion, having authority for mankind at large, can be drawn from the subjective experience of a solitary human soul? Nor, perhaps, does it strengthen the case to argue that Wesley’s experiences were repeated in thousands of other souls. Multiply a cipher no matter how often, it remains a cipher.
But the change in Wesley was not merely subjective. It took concrete form in his life. It registered itself in history. It has the scale and permanency of history. How was it that he, who in 1727 could not move a village, after 1739 could shake three kingdoms? How did it come to pass that the teacher who was driven »ut of a little colony as a mere human irritant became the teacher, the comforter, the trusted leader of whole generations?
The explanation certainly does not lie in any personal gifts of body or brain Wesley possessed. These were exactly the same at both stages of his career. Wesley at Wroot was twenty-five years of age. He had then the scholar’s brain, the zealot’s fire, the orator’s tongue; and he failed — failed consciously and completely. “I preached much,” is his own record, “but saw no fruits of my labour.” Wesley, again, in Savannah, was thirty-two years of age. At no stage of his life did he show a higher passion of zeal, or more methodical and resolute industry; a self-sacrifice so nearly heroic in temper. And yet he failed!
But something came into his life by the gate of his conversion, something he never lost, something which transfigured his career. It was a strange gift of power — power that used Wesley’s natural gifts — his tough body, his keen iutellect, his resolute will — as instruments, but which was more than these. Who looks on Wesley’s life as a whole, and sees on one side of a particular date doubt, weakness, and defeat; and on the other side certainty, gladness, and matchless j)ower, cannot doubt that the secret of Wesley’s career lies Iti the spiritual realm. Wesley’s story is simply one embodied, historic, and overwhelming demon.stration of the truth of what is called the Evangelical reading of Christianity.