For any genuine revival to occur in the church, which leads to an awakening in the unbelieving population, the ground has to be ploughed and prepared through prayer and the sowing of the gospel, before the rain comes and produces a harvest. Before the 1839 revival in Edinburgh, some had prayed and labored. However, something began to shift in 1832.
David Nasmith, a young man who had pioneered Glasgow City Mission in 1826, came to Edinburgh with his rallying cry: “May the glory of God and the salvation of souls be our chief – our only end!” Setting up his Edinburgh City Mission (ECM) base in a shop opposite St Giles’ in the Royal Mile, he sought to follow Dr Thomas Chalmers’ strategy for winning a city, by splitting it into about 30 districts and appointing a missionary in each one to spearhead united prayer, united evangelism and united social reform. John Wesley had tried to break down the division in the gospel churches the century before, but had failed. Now a new day was dawning in which God used Nasmith to establish a neutral mission that acted as a bridge for the church denominations to pray and work together.
Between 1832 and 1839, there was a growing united prayer movement in Edinburgh and Leith, along with a growing stream of Christians sharing the gospel. In 1839, breakthrough came. The ECM Report of that year states: “During the past year the people of God have been aroused from lethargy… Sinners in numbers, not like the gleanings of the vintage, but like the firstfruits of a coming and abundant harvest, have been made to cry, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ And many have been added to the Lord.” Beforehand, ECM could say: “… there had been such lack, either of sympathy and support on the one hand, or of method and efficiency on the other, that by the time the founders of the City Mission met [in 1832], the number of these earlier agents [missionaries] had been reduced to three or four, who were with difficulty feeling their way through a few of the more destitute localities.” But in 1839 they could declare that “a missionary spirit has been excited in the city.”
Both William Chalmers Burns and Robert Murray McCheyne preached in Edinburgh and Leith between 1839 and 1842, and according to McCheyne the spiritual hunger for God was so intense that it appeared “as if the ever-memorable scenes of Kilsyth, Dundee and Perth were to be repeated in Leith.” It was not just an emotional outpouring amongst the poor and needy, but a life-changing work, which also spilled over into some of the well-to-do churches in Edinburgh, such as in St Luke’s near the fashionable George St, in which Burns was the interim pastor. Here there were scenes of “calm weeping” and an “overflowing church.” If the first revival wave hit Scotland and Edinburgh in 1839 bringing change, a second, and much bigger wave, would engulf the churches in the famous 1859 revival.
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV).
Image: Fire: Oscar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.