by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
On 28 February 1873, vast crowds poured into Edinburgh to pay their respects to one of Scotland’s beloved pastors. An elderly man on the funeral route was heard to say, “he was a father unto us in very truth. Men may come and men may go, but it will be long before we get the like of Thomas Guthrie again.” Guthrie was born in Brechin, studied chemistry and theology at the University of Edinburgh, and went on to become one of Britain’s leading and much-beloved social reformers. After being a pastor of a rural parish in Arbirlot in Angus for seven years (1830-1837), he received the call to become an assistant minister to John Sym in the Old Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh.
Right from the beginning we hear his heartbeat for the poor in the Parish of Greyfriars. It is hard for us to imagine what it was like in the Edinburgh slums of that time. What better person than Guthrie to tell us in his own expressive and emotive style:
“I wandered in those houses for whole days without ever seeing a Bible, or indeed any book at all. I often stood in rooms bare of any furniture; where father, mother, and half a dozen children had neither bed nor bedding, unless a heap of straw and dirty rags huddled in a corner could be called so. I have heard the wail of children crying for bread, and their mother had none to give them. I have seen a babe pulling breasts as dry as if the starved-looking mother had been dead. I have known a father turn his step-daughter to the street at night – bidding the sobbing girl who bloomed into womanhood, earn her bread there as others were doing. I have bent over the foul pallet of a dying lad to hear him whisper how his father and mother – who were sitting half drunk by the fireside had pulled blankets off his body to sell them for drink. I have seen children blanched like plants growing in a cellar – for weeks they never breathed a mouthful of fresh air for want of rags to cover their nakedness; and I used often to observe in these dingy dwellings, where the air is poison, and the food is scanty, and the cold is bitter, and short is the gleam of sunshine, and they live in continual terror of a drunken father or mother, and where when they cry they are not kissed but beaten, that the children have an air of sadness, and look as if they never smiled. I don’t recollect of ever seeing a mother in these wretched dwellings dandling her infant, or of hearing the little creature crow or laugh as he leapt with joy. There, infants have no toys; and mothers’ smiles are rare as sunshine. Nobody can know the misery I suffered amid those scenes of human wretchedness, woe, want, and sin.”
For Guthrie healing the plight of the poor seemed like scaling a towering mountain with sheer rock faces, and many would have turned back at the knowledge of the real condition he knew so well, a condition that was hidden from most of the people in the city. And yet he steeled himself for the task of transformation through God’s help. He could have fled to the security of the suburbs, but he held firm to his deep conviction that “if a man won’t live among the scum of the Cowgate, I would at once say to him ‘you can’t be its minister.’’’
The first thing that Guthrie realised was that many of the poor did not come to church because they could not afford the pew tokens. This was due to an old custom that money for the church’s upkeep was raised in this way. Realising that he could not overcome the church token custom in Greyfriars Kirk, Guthrie gained permission to use Magdalen Chapel – the chapel famed for the reformers and Covenanters – and set up a church service for the poor who could not afford to buy tokens. Although the stench of the bodies in that place would drive the well-to-do away, for Guthrie it was a slice of heaven. But he soon realised that this small chapel could not contain the crowds that started coming. Something had to be done.
In 1840 St John’s on Victoria St was erected with money sacrificially raised by many, and the crowds poured in. The gallery was let to people of the city who could easily afford it, but the main floor was open free of charge to 650, thus allowing many of the poor that Guthrie had befriended to join the church. When the Disruption broke out in 1843 over the patronage system, most of the evangelicals left the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church, which meant that Guthrie lost this building. By 1845 Free St John’s (today’s St Columba’s Free Church) had been built opposite his old church, so he resumed his work there.
The fruit of the Ragged Schools he pioneered for street children spoke for itself, as Guthrie pointed out in 1859:
“I. The results our Schools are to be found in many happy homes, the abodes of those that, once wretched, ragged outcasts, are now honest men and virtuous mothers, useful citizens and heads of families… We – and in these results I include the influence of other, though smaller schools, have cleared the streets of Edinburgh of juvenile beggars, – a feat that the Magistrates and Police, with cells and prison at their back, were far from ever being able to achieve, that when our School was set on foot, their name was Legion. They swarmed through all the town – it was creeping with them.
II. We are fast emptying the prisons…
III. The Original Ragged School [founded in 1847] alone has rescued from great misery and certain ruin not less than five hundred children. They are now blessings to society… And if we make the much more probable supposition, that but for our school – its useful, kind, and holy training – two-thirds of those five hundred children would have developed into full-blown criminals, we have saved the country not less than 72,000 [about £9.8 million in today’s money]!”
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9, NIV).
Image: Statue of Thomas Guthrie, by F.W. Pomeroy, Princes Gardens, Edinburgh, Wikipedia Commons.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
“All the world is wild about Dr Chalmers” wrote William Wilberforce in his diary in 1817. This was some accolade, coming from the Christian MP who led the charge to abolish slavery in the British Empire. Of all the great Christian leaders in Scottish history, Dr Chalmers has been listed alongside such giants as John Knox. Chalmers had the extraordinary gift from God to be able lead the evangelical movement in Scotland like a military general, with great insight, strategy and precision. He had not always been an evangelical Christian, for he was converted to Christ as a liberal Presbyterian minister in 1810, largely through a book by William Wilberforce, with the title, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians. He wrote later that “as I got on in reading it, [I] felt myself on the eve of a great revelation in all my opinions about Christianity.” Indeed, his conversion was nothing short of revolutionary.
Thomas Chalmers grew up in the seaside town of Anstruther and at the age of eleven attended the University of St Andrews, where he studied mathematics. By 1799 he was licensed as a preacher and he then furthered his studies at the University of Edinburgh, after which he was an assistant to the Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews. In 1803 he was ordained as a minister in the Church of Scotland and served as the pastor for the small parish of Kilmany. He was able to continue teaching mathematics and chemistry, whilst running the parish church there.
Dr Chalmers was a multi-talented minister with the strategic brain of a military commander. In 1815 he left the small village parish of Kilmany, where he also had had his eyes on the Chair of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, and gave his life to serving the poor in the parish of the Tron in Glasgow. He soon realised that this parish had grown too large for a single church to manage, so he created the smaller parish of St John’s and began his “experiment”. He divided this parish into twenty-five districts with about 400 people in each, and appointed two visitors to be responsible for each district: one an elder, who would care for the spiritual needs of the people, and the other being a deacon, who would care for the practical needs of those on the district.
In this way the church made spiritual inroads among the poor as the elder set up a Sabbath School and a day school, as well as giving Christian teaching to the adults, and the deacon was responsible for ascertaining the greatest needs of the people on his district, and meeting their crises with the Poor Relief Fund from the church, as well as helping the locals to help themselves with employment.
By 1823 Chalmers’ experiment in Glasgow had thrived. He became something of a celebrity, even being asked to address Parliament in London about his work. People were split over his model: some enthusiastically embraced it and saw a great improvement in their parishes; others thought such a model would only work under the supervision of someone special like Dr Chalmers.
Chalmers was not content with the advances he was making though, and pioneered the Church Extension campaign in 1834, which was an ambitious project to build hundreds of new churches in Scotland, with a slogan, “A church and a minister within easy reach of every door.” He also repeated the Glasgow experiment in Edinburgh in 1844 in the slums of the West Port, which had a population of about 2,000 people, with a high proportion being paupers, thieves and prostitutes. Again, he was successful, leading to many ministers in both Scotland and England adopting his method.
In 1823 Chalmers left the role of being a parish minister to be appointed as the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. It was here that he became the inspiration for many students who became missionaries, and who took his Christian worldview to the nations. Five years later he transferred to the University of Edinburgh, where, as Professor of Theology, he continued to shape the minds of many students. It was Dr Chalmers too, who led the evangelical movement of 474 ministers who left the Church of Scotland over the controlling Patronage Act, and formed the Free Church of Scotland. His passion for gospel unity, on the other hand, was influential in the foundation of the Evangelical Alliance, which was formed in 1846. It is reckoned that up to half of the population of Edinburgh mourned his loss.
“… an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures…” (Acts 18:24, NKJV).
Image: Revd Dr Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), stained glass window in the Presbytery Hall, ETS, photo by Paul James-Griffiths
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
The question must be asked whether these three revivals of 1839, 1859 and 1873, actually changed people for the good, long-term, or did most of them return to their old lifestyles after the excitement had died down? Lennie, in his books on revival, gives us a balanced assessment of this. Certainly, there were some emotional excesses of a small minority of people trying to “work up” an atmosphere, but in the examination process by the ministers afterwards, these sensationalists were usually identified. We find that the long-term fruit of the revivals also partly depended on the follow-up process. In many churches there was a good nurturing programme to help the new converts; in some churches this was not followed through as efficiently as it could have been. Furthermore, many of the people who were Christians before the revivals, encountered God in such a way that their lives expressed the reality of Christ in an extraordinary way.
One of the pioneers on a scholarly appraisal of revival was J. Edwin Orr, whose theses for a PhD at the University of Oxford was on the second evangelical awakening in Britain. He claimed that out of a population in Scotland in 1859-61 of over three million people, there were about 300,000 converts – or about ten percent of the population. Although it is clear that great transformation on a large scale occurred, Lennie points out that Orr missed some important considerations in his calculations, but admits that “The number of converts from the 1859-61 revival in Scotland remains unknown and completely unverifiable but is universally considered to have run into at least numerous tens of thousands.”
In the Free Church, for example, 477 churches recorded over 15,000 new members in 1859 alone, and the usual attendance at these churches was recorded at an increase of over 50% for many years after that. Alcoholic addiction decreased between 1859 and 1864 by 55% in Edinburgh, and crime was noticeably reduced wherever the revival went. In villages like Ferryden and Cellardyke, the fruit of the revival made a huge difference to the communities, with almost all of those converted in the movement being faithful Christians twenty-nine years later. George Gardiner of Banff wrote about the long-term positive change that came over the towns in the North East of Scotland, for “The whole face of society in those villages is so changed that those who have known them before are struck with wonder.” Matthews claims that “All the mission movements – home and foreign – philanthropic schemes, and measures for the alleviation of human suffering, have been mainly manned and maintained by the converts of the revival of 1859 and the sixties, and those who sympathised with it.”
The Christian movement during Moody’s 1873-4 visit grew out of the work in 1859-61, beginning in Edinburgh, and spreading through much of Scotland. Although it was called a revival, it did not have the same deep and purifying effect as before, leading to a higher fall away rate of the converts, some of whom preferred later to worship in “God’s green cathedral”outside, rather than attend church on Sunday;and yet thousands were clearly changed for good, many becoming church ministers and helping with the missionary cause. When Moody returned to Scotland in the 1880s, the evangelical high-water mark was still rising, with a good response to his preaching, and less of a dour dryness about the churches. But his first visit of 1873-4 was always remembered as the most far-reaching.
The 19th century though, was a critical time, because it was in this period of pioneering mission societies, followed by three significant revivals, with a growing unity in the Protestant churches, that a godly spirituality spread throughout all classes, and permeated the nation, preparing the church for a most extraordinary expression of social action and mission, that would, in turn, have global consequences.
In this short series about Scottish revivals in the 19thcentury, I have only given you a taster. A full history would take many months! If you wish to read more about 19th century revivals in Scotland, I can heartily recommend Tom Lennie’s scholarly works: Land of Many Revivals (2015); Glory in the Glen (2009); and Scotland Ablaze (2018). All three books have been published by Christian Focus Publications Ltd.
“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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
When two relatively unknown American men, Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey, arrived to minister in England in 1873, they received an invitation from Revd John Kelman of Leith to come up to Edinburgh with the message of Christ. The previous revival had brought much new life to the city, but there was a need of a fresh movement. When Moody and his singing companion arrived in Edinburgh, they found that the ground was so well prepared that within a week the city was buzzing with their message. Ministers from across the Protestant denominations welcomed them and worked shoulder to shoulder to bring in a huge harvest of converted people. “Within a short time,” says Lennie, “the whole city was said to have been moved to its core.”
The unusual working of this revival was that it impacted every class of people, from the poor, right up to the well-to-do, professors, national leaders, and especially university students. The Monthly Visitortract distributed to most of Scotland and “circulated to every Family in the City”, covered the 1873-4 revival with gushing words of enthusiasm:
““What do you think of it?” was a common saying in Edinburgh, when six months ago this gracious work was beginning. Few who believe in conversion ask that question now… All classes – the rich and the poor – lawyers, doctors, soldiers, students, merchants, artisans, boys and girls at school, are enlisting for Christ; men of the world, drunkards and blasphemers, infidels, the very chief of sinners, are pressing into the kingdom… Truly “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by…” Go where you will, you hear people speaking of salvation, and no one wonders.”
Another report was equally fascinating, as it recalls that “For all the month of December nothing else was spoken of in Edinburgh. The work, the meetings, and the men were spoken of at breakfast, at dinner, on the streets, and even in the ball-rooms. What does it all mean? What is all this about? At certain hours there seemed no one in Princess [sic] Street who did not carry a hymn-book, the tramway cars were full of hymn-books, and often it happened that nearly everyone in them was interested in the same subject, and pleasant Christian fellowship was exchanged.”
One of the key elements that made this movement such a success was the unity of most of the churches in Edinburgh, Glasgow and across the nation. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and others, prayed together, laboured together, and harvested together. As an example of this unity the open-air meetings in Edinburgh, which typically gathered between 10,000 and 20,000 people, were led by ministers from different churches who shared the preaching. Back in 1837 David Nasmith had pleaded for a united gospel movement and preached that “the object of the mission is not to make people Protestants or Roman Catholics, Baptist, Episcopalians, Methodist or any other sect: its object was in no way sectarian, but to unite all denominations of Christians, and by one strong effort, to pluck sinners as brands from the burning.”
It was this inter-denominational and evangelical approach of the mission societies which broke down the sectarianism in the Scottish Protestant Church. There had already been a partial movement of this during the previous revivals, but now there was a fullness. Evangelical leaders were to be found in almost all of the Protestant groupings, and they put their full weight behind Moody’s visits. For example, the late Patricia Meldrum wrote her PhD thesis on forgotten evangelicals of the 19th century in Scotland, and found that the Episcopalian Church, which in the past had tended to see mission as the fanatical work of enthusiasts, now had twenty-four chapels in Edinburgh served by ninety-one evangelical clergy, most of whom were English. Besides this, the Evangelical Alliance had been founded in London in 1846, nurturing co-operation among gospel believing Christians across the denominations of Britain. The key person who inspired this alliance was Dr Thomas Chalmers from Edinburgh. Dr John Nicholls, formerly Director of London City Mission, wrote:
“This concern for a “Universal Home Mission” was also expressed in connection with the new Evangelical Alliance. In 1846 he [Dr Chalmers] published a pamphlet which advocated “each denomination through all its local congregations co-operating for the evangelisation of their respective neighbourhoods.””It was this groundwork between 1839 and 1861, which had prepared the way for the largest ingathering of people to Christ in Scottish history, in the 1873 movement.
“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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In his Memoirs the celebrated evangelist, Charles Finney from America, recorded: “I remained three months in Edinburgh [from August, 1859], preaching mostly in Mr. Kirk’s church, which was one of the largest places of worship in Edinburgh… many souls were converted.”
Although it was a fruitful time, Finney found that some of the tendencies in the Evangelical Union denomination, in which he was preaching, caused doors to close to him in other denominations, especially in the Presbyterian churches, thus crippling what he was doing. Sadly, this was reminiscent of what had happened with Wesley over Calvinism during the century before. With frustration he left Scotland after a trip to Aberdeen, to pursue a seam of openness in England.
One young man however, had come every night to his meetings in the Brighton Street Chapel. His experience of that week was different to Finney’s record of “many souls” being converted by the end of his three-month trip. William Robertson wrote in his testimony that when he went to hear Finney in November, that “although large audiences attended, still, however, there seemed to be but little interest”.
On the last day he records that he came to Christ through Dr Kirk after Finney had left. His testimony is fascinating because it relates the quest for God of one individual during the revival. He tells us that when he lived in Glasgow, he and some of his fellow teachers at East Gorbals Free Church Sabbath School, decided to go to the Wynd Church at the end of June in 1859, because they had heard about the revival. William Robertson witnessed the scenes of distress of soul and cries for God’s mercy amongst those there, but his “heart seemed as cold and unfeeling as the stones”. This was in spite of the fact that he was a Bible teacher and known to be a “Christian” of good character. When others asked him to help them counsel those seeking Christ from his own Bible class, he turned them down. “I was a hypocrite, at least I was not fit for the position I filled in the Sabbath School”, he wrote, “I was unconverted… All around me in the church, both young and old, were in deep distress, and I could look on it all quite unmoved, needing salvation as much as any of them and yet all unconcerned.”
In September Robertson left Glasgow to take up the headmastership of Pilrig School, which used to be in James St (now Spey Terrace), off Leith Walk. Shortly afterwards he received letters from teachers and pupils of his former Sabbath school in the Gorbals rejoicing in how the revival had broken out there with many becoming Christians. One of his former pupils asked him to read out his letter to the children at Pilrig School, and closed with the words of a popular hymn of that time: “We’re travelling home to Heaven above, Will you go?” He did as was asked, and was stunned that same morning when some of the children asked whether they could start a prayer meeting.
Not long after he was converted, and saw his deputy also turn to Christ. They began to pray every morning for the school, and during the Bible class one of the most restless of the children began to break down in tears because of her sins. By the afternoon they had to close the usual lessons because the same phenomena were occurring throughout the school, as virtually the whole school sought Christ. As God’s presence hung over the school on Friday 18th November 1859, Robertson, the headmaster, wrote: “The holy ecstasy with which He filled us cannot be told. We seemed to be translated from the world and things earthly, and on this and subsequent occasions I thought I could not live because of the joy with which the Lord filled me.”
These children became extraordinary evangelists, sharing their faith and seeing many of their parents, families, and neighbours also converted, resulting even in notorious drunkards and violent men being transformed. The Monthly Visitor tract expressed what many were thinking in the nation during the 1859 revival. “In former times,” it said, “we were wont to hear of an awakening at Kilsyth, or at Dundee, or in Arran, or in some particular and limited district. Now, blessed be God, for the first time, we can speak of the awakening in Scotland.”
If the 1839 wave had brought great times of refreshing to parts of Scotland, the second wave of 1859 eclipsed it in its extent and impact; but a third wave was coming in 1873, which some say overshadowed even that.
“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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In 1859the Edinburgh City Mission’s Annual Report states that “A spirit of fervent prayer and of earnest ‘waiting for the promise of the Spirit’, has of late years pervaded, in a remarkable manner, many of the churches in town, and has found the means at once of its expression and its maintenance, in the Union Prayer Meeting, held in Queen St. Hall, and in similar devotional services conducted elsewhere.”
The same pattern occurred in Edinburgh as in much of Scotland, although this revival mostly impacted the working class. In Newhaven, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, a work similar to that described in Glasgow broke out among the tough fishing community in February 1860 at the close of a meeting, in which “a great weeping and crying began among the people. Many seemed truly to have been brought to Jesus. The whole place was moved. A beloved minister in the village supposed that at that time there were some “five hundred souls wailing after Christ.”” The above citation is part of an account of the 1859-61 revival which was put into a tract in the Monthly Visitor, and distributed throughout the land to 230,747 people in 1861, thus spreading the movement even more.
In Edinburgh, the missionaries were finding the same deep hunger for God, which startled them, for “Multitudes who would formerly have resented any direct inquiry respecting their state before God, began eagerly to court opportunities of being conversed with on this topic, and some would follow the missionary to his house, or accompany him in a walk to the country, pressing, in various forms, the momentous inquiry, ‘What must I do to be saved?’… Coarse and reckless men have become as little children entering the Kingdom; harlots have returned into the bosom of their wondering families, testifying of Jesus; the self-righteous and the secure are asking with burdened hearts, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’”
Edinburgh City Mission worked closely with Carrubbers Close Mission in the Royal Mile, which became the epicentre for the Edinburgh revival, under the leadership of the Free Church minister, Revd James Gall. Having been stirred by reports of the revival in Glasgow, the believers there renewed their enthusiasm for prayer. On 14th October 1859, “the shower came on” and an “extraordinary… work of grace” began. Multitudes of people seemed to be drawn to the mission like moths to a light as “night after night the careless became earnest, the earnest became convicted, and the convicted at length found peace in the blood of Jesus.”
By 1860 multitudes of people had been converted there and the crowds were so big that “hundreds had to be turned away”,resulting in a temporary move to the Theatre Royal, with extra meetings being put on. Finding again that this was too small, they had to move to the New Assembly Hall, above The Mound and next to the Royal Mile, which became “densely packed”and where queues of people came desperately seeking Christ. Working in conjunction with this great harvest of souls were the Free Church evangelist Brownlow North, Revd James Hood Wilson, and the English evangelists Reginald Radcliffe and Richard Weaver, who saw a large ingathering into the churches, including 125 prostitutes who were transformed.
“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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
It is difficult to pinpoint where exactly in Scotland the 1859 revival broke out first. Some have suggested it actually began in Aberdeen in the winter of 1858. However, Lennie suggests that the epicentre was Glasgow. It is clear though that both cities had been influenced by the revivals in both America and Ulster, in Northern Ireland. Revivals always begin with passionate prayer, and a network of churches in America and Britain had been doing this for years, but the starting place of the revival seems to have begun with one missionary called Jeremiah Lanphier in the Dutch Reformed Church in New York. Droves of pastors and inquisitive Christians travelled from Britain to America to investigate what was happening, and returned with glowing reports of something very special.
In Scotland an American minister was invited by the Free Church to speak at their General Assembly in 1858. As Revd Dr Maclean extolled what God was doing in his own country, the Scottish pastors were enthralled and became expectant for a similar visitation of God here. Many eager Irish Christians also poured into Scotland to share their testimony about what was going on in Ulster, stirring up many Scots to go there and witness first-hand what was happening. Of the 123 clergymen from Britain who travelled to Ulster in 1859 to investigate the Irish revival, 40% were from Scotland, of which most of them were from the Free Church.
When John Horner came from the Irish Coleraine revival to preach at the Religious Institution Rooms in Glasgow on 24th July 1859, the congregation began to experience what was happening in Ulster and America. According to The Scottish Guardian scores of people were “in great distress” and “many were seen weeping”. In less than a week, daily meetings were being held in the Religious Institution Rooms, but as the crowds kept growing, they had to find a bigger venue. The Trades Hall also became too small, so that the hungry masses had to meet in different large buildings in the city, even in the open-air. In close conjunction with the Religious Institution Rooms was the Wynd Free Church, which soon became a centre of the revival in Scotland. Despite the cautious nature of most of the Free Church people and ministers who tried to suppress emotionalism as much as possible, God’s Spirit was being poured out on people, usually with scenes similar to that of previous revivals. It is a remarkable fact that the Free Church was right at the heart of the movement, witnessing the transformation of many churchgoers and the conversion of multitudes.
On 19th August 1860, a crowd of thousands gathered to hear the preaching on Glasgow Green where they witnessed similar scenes to the famous Cambuslang revival of George Whitefield in 1742. Richard Weaver, one of the evangelists there, said that “The Spirit came in such power that many were struck down under the word and had to be carried into a neighbouring church. There they lay on the floor as if dead.”
This extraordinary spiritual fire broke out in many locations in Scotland, leaving in its wake many transformed lives. Often the scoffers would go to mock and end up encountering God for themselves, leaving them humbled, repentant and broken; often they would be raised up to preach effectively throughout their local districts and beyond; the alcoholics and profligates were being changed; the worst of sinners were becoming saints. In Argyll and the Western Isles there was a particularly extraordinary transformation, with many churches doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling within months. In the Revd Cameron’s church in Kilchoman on Islay, his congregation exploded rapidly from 60 to 900 regularly attending the daily prayer meeting. In Campbeltown, the Free Church minister reported that the prayer meeting that used to have about a dozen people, and which recently had ceased altogether, now attracted 400-500. Such accounts were being reproduced in many parts of Scotland, and for the most part, the tens of thousands of converted people remained in the churches.
“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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
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.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
On 23rd July 1839, something extraordinary occurred in a Presbyterian church in Kilsyth. William Chalmers Burns, who had been converted to Christ in Edinburgh, was preaching to the packed congregation. The people listened attentively to him as he spoke of his Saviour, but then it was like a spiritual dam burst, with a sudden outpouring of weeping, wailing, groaning, and also shouts of praise from some of the Christians there. Burns wrote in his Memoir:
“The appearance of a great part of the people from the pulpit gave me an awfully vivid picture of the state of the ungodly in the day of Christ’s coming to judgement. Some were screaming out in agony; others, and among these strong men, fell to the ground as if they had been dead.”
From that time on it was the topic of conversation in the town. Daily services were held in the church and hundreds would gather for morning prayers in the Market Square. Crowds began to come to Kilsyth to find out what on earth was happening. Later, an open-air communion service was held in September with estimated numbers of 12,000 to 15,000 people in attendance. The phenomena occurred in other churches in town. In response to the message of the gospel among the Methodists “forty or fifty stout able bodied persons fell to the ground as if dead. On being removed to a house, and recovering themselves, they all cried aloud to God for mercy.”
It is not that there was some sort of psychological manipulation going on; there was no use of sensational music, or emotional preaching to whip up the crowds. Burns spoke about a “sweet melting of heart among the audience, and many of the unconverted were weeping bitterly aloud, though I spoke throughout with perfect calmness and solemnity.”
When Dr Thomas Guthrie went to Kilsyth to investigate what was happening, and report back to the churches in Edinburgh, he wrote: “The difficulty at Kilsyth is not, as here, how to get people to church, but the difficulty has almost been to get them away from it, so that the common business of life might not be neglected.”
Revival had hit Kilsyth, and like a stone being dropped into a pond, its waves would be felt in the surrounding areas. When Burns preached in Dundee at the church where he was filling in for its minister, the same effects occurred there, as in Kilsyth. The young godly pastor, Robert Murray McCheyne, was visiting Palestine at the time, but when he returned, he rejoiced to see the revival in Dundee. Within a few years this movement would spread throughout much of Scotland, bringing thousands of unconverted people to Christ.
But what is a revival? It is the supernatural visitation of God to his church in such a tangible way, that the Christians become saturated with him, resulting in double-minded hypocrisy and sin coming to the surface in their lives, so that they become broken and repentant, forsaking sin and living for Christ. This movement of the Holy Spirit can be sensed by those who previously had no interest in God at all, resulting in multitudes being deeply anxious of their sin, and becoming converted and remaining in the faith. It is not just an emotional high that is exciting for a while, then dies away like a straw fire; it is a genuine, spiritual fire that leaves a permanent and deep transformation in many lives and communities.
It is simply not possible to explain the reason for the tremendous and rapid growth and effectiveness experienced in periods of our Scottish Christian heritage without understanding this key part of our revival history. Scientists, psychologists, and sociologists, might scratch around to try and explain the cause of such a huge Christian influence on shaping Scotland in past movements, but they usually neglect to properly address the subject of genuine revivals. As usual, it begins with prayer and consecration to God, then God’s fire falls.
“Revive me according to Your word” (Psalm 119:25, NKJV).
Image: Fire: Oscar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In 2012 The Herald ran an article entitled, “Bid to break dog-fighting rings”. Most of the people in Scotland who heard about this were appalled because we are a nation of animal-lovers. The article went on to say that “dog-fighting rings are operating in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Grampian areas, while badger-baiting is rife across the central belt”. Perpetrators of this cruel sport have been justly fined and imprisoned, because it is against the law. However, it has not always been like this. If you cross over from Edinburgh to Fife and visit the town of Leslie, you will find a large rock known as The Bull Stone. In the past, the locals there liked to have fun tying a bull to this rock, and then setting dogs on it. The more the screaming, roaring and blood there was, the better. Many dogs would be flung up into the air by the bull, and upon hitting the ground, their backs would be broken and they would have to be killed; others would be gored to death, or maimed for life. The bull, being worn down by the stream of enraged dogs, would be torn gradually to pieces and collapse, a heaving, exhausted wreck, where its throat would be ripped out. Bear-baiting was a rarer and more exciting sport for the locals. All across Scotland and Great Britain, such savage entertainment was practiced for the bloodlust of the multitudes.
How did we turn away from this savagery and condemn it by law? Again, it was the influence of Christians. The Puritans had banned such “sports” in the Commonwealth between 1642 and 1660, but as soon as King Charles II was restored to the throne, the practice resumed. It would not be until 1800, that the first person would take a political stand. Sir William Pulteney, a Scotsman of Dumfries (1729-1805), sought to pass a bill outlawing bull-baiting, and he narrowly lost by 43 votes to 41. Before this, English clergymen, like Revd John Wesley, Revd Augustus Toplady, Revd James Granger and Revd Humphry Primatt, had preached and written against this cruelty, but it was another Scottish Christian called Lord Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) from Edinburgh, who stood and fought to ban all of animal cruelty in Great Britain. He was inspired by the Scripture in Proverbs 12:10, which says: “A righteous man regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel”. He was successful at the first hurdle, winning the votes of the House of Lords, but failed to win in the House of Commons. Finally, some progress was made when another Christian, Richard Martin, pushed through his bill and the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act was passed in 1822.
Watching the heroic efforts of Sir William Pulteney, Lord Thomas Erskine and Richard Martin, was an English clergyman, Revd Arthur Broome (1779-1837). Stirred by the Bible, he firstly wrote a tract in 1801, called Unjustifiableness of Cruelty to the Brute Creation,and distributed this widely. In this pamphlet he cried out, “Oh! Let us not be “dumb” ourselves, but loud in their defence”. This call was inspired by the Scripture in Proverbs 31:8, and he applied it to the plight of animals who had no “advocate to plead in behalf of their invaded rights”.
He then went on from his base in London to pull together a team of mostly Christian politicians, clergymen and lawyers. The first gathering of 22 supporters met on 16 June 1824, in the Old Slaughter’s Coffee House, in London. Of the dozen key founders of what became known as the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), almost all were Christians. William Wilberforce MP was appointed as the first chairman, with Revd Arthur Broome as the first secretary. Among these pioneers there were two Scottish Christians: Sir James Macintosh MP and Sir James Graham MP. The Minute Book in 1832 states that, “the proceedings of the Society were entirely based on the Christian faith and Christian principles”.
This influential group exerted pressure on government, and when the Quaker Christian, Joseph Pease, presented his bill to Parliament, he won, and the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835 was passed, making it illegal to mistreat animals in Britain. This was followed by the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1849. In 1840 Queen Victoria, who was their Christian patron, granted them the royal charter, and so SPCA now became the RSPCA, whose influence in advancing the welfare of animals in the world is well known.
In 1839, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) was launched in Edinburgh, following the pattern of the London model. This work was pioneered by a Christian called Mrs. Martha Gibson, who had also sponsored the prize money for the best book on this subject. The first winner in 1839 was the post-graduate theological student from the University of Edinburgh called James Macauley, with his Essay on Cruelty to Animals.
“A righteous man regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel” (Proverbs 12:10, NKJV).
Image: Julius Caesar Ibbetson (c.1817), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
It is hard for us to imagine the poverty of many in the Victorian period. Today’s Royal Mile in Edinburgh is the busiest street in Scotland. Multitudes come to see this old and iconic place. Running parallel to this famous street is the Grassmarket, with the Cowgate nearby. These days the Cowgate is the hub of nightclub life for the city. Take the clock back however, to the 19th century, and we would be shocked to see the plight of the poor. In the 18th century the New Town in Edinburgh was built, and the wealthy left their houses in the Old Town, and relocated there. Greedy landlords subdivided the houses in the Old Town to cram as many tenants in as possible for the greatest income. In time, these dwellings became slums. Adults turned to cheap gin and whisky, with large swathes of the local population becoming alcoholics. Their children were forced out onto the streets to beg for money; older girls became prostitutes, and boys became thieves. If they did not bring in enough income, their parents beat them. It was safer for these children to live on the streets. As far as the population of Edinburgh was concerned, these children were doomed to a life of crime. The Christians however, had a different opinion.
The Ragged School Union was an offshoot of the Sunday School Movement and “its purpose was to catch, befriend, and educate, “human eels in the mud””. In 1798 Thomas Cranfield of Southwark, London, saw the terrible plight of the children from the slums who were too ragged to attend Sunday Schools. Many of them lived on the streets and were beggars, pick-pockets and prostitutes. For some this was a safer existence than being at home to face the drunken brawling and abuse of their parents. Cranfield set up several schools for these urchins, waifs, and strays, under the supervision of Revd Rowland Hill. John Pounds of Portsmouth attempted the same vital work, but neither of these men saw a breakthrough which would see continuity. This would change with the visionary work of another Scottish man called Thomas Guthrie.
When Revd Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873) was appointed in 1837 as assistant minister at Greyfriars’ Kirk in Edinburgh, much of his work was focused among the poor of the district, for whom he poured out his life. It is hard for us to imagine what it was like in the Edinburgh slums of that time. What better person than Guthrie to tell us in his own expressive and emotive style:
“I wandered in those houses for whole days without ever seeing a Bible, or indeed any book at all. I often stood in rooms bare of any furniture; where father, mother, and half a dozen children had neither bed nor bedding, unless a heap of straw and dirty rags huddled in a corner could be called so. I have heard the wail of children crying for bread, and their mother had none to give them. I have seen a babe pulling breasts as dry as if the starved-looking mother had been dead. I have known a father turn his step-daughter to the street at night – bidding the sobbing girl who bloomed into womanhood, earn her bread there as others were doing. I have bent over the foul pallet of a dying lad to hear him whisper how his father and mother – who were sitting half drunk by the fireside had pulled blankets off his body to sell them for drink. I have seen children blanched like plants growing in a cellar – for weeks they never breathed a mouthful of fresh air for want of rags to cover their nakedness; and I used often to observe in these dingy dwellings, where the air is poison, and the food is scanty, and the cold is bitter, and short is the gleam of sunshine, and they live in continual terror of a drunken father or mother, and where when they cry they are not kissed but beaten, that the children have an air of sadness, and look as if they never smiled. I don’t recollect of ever seeing a mother in these wretched dwellings dandling her infant, or of hearing the little creature crow or laugh as he leapt with joy. There, infants have no toys; and mothers’ smiles are rare as sunshine. Nobody can know the misery I suffered amid those scenes of human wretchedness, woe, want, and sin.”
For Guthrie, healing the plight of the poor seemed like scaling a towering mountain with sheer rock faces, and many would have turned back at the knowledge of the real condition he knew so well, a condition that was hidden from most of the people in the city. And yet he steeled himself for the task of transformation, through God’s help. He could have fled to the security of the suburbs, but he held firm to his deep conviction that “if a man won’t live among the scum of the Cowgate, I would at once say to him ‘you can’t be its minister.’”
In 1841 Sheriff Watson had set up the first Ragged School in Scotland in Aberdeen, and Guthrie found that such a ministry needed to be set up in Edinburgh. The Ragged School Union had already been established in London in April 1844, with Lord Shaftesbury as its first president, but Guthrie was to play a prominent part in spreading this movement for the children in rags. When he and his congregation moved into Free St John’s (today’s St Columba’s Free Church), they decided to use the basement for the first Ragged School in Edinburgh, but the elders and deacons changed their mind when they realised the reality of what this would mean. Not being thrown into despondency, Guthrie picked himself up, and raised the funds for the first Ragged School in the city, built in 1847, which today stands next to the Camera Obscura on the way up to the castle. It is estimated that 300,000 poor children went through the Ragged Schools in London between 1844 and 1881, but Guthrie was the key mover in Scotland, with thousands of children been plucked out, like “human eels” from “the mud”of society’s degraded underbelly.
Guthrie’s Committee of Management consisted of members from the Episcopalian Church, Church of Scotland, Free Church, United Presbyterians, Baptists and Independents, so it was a non-denominational evangelical ministry. They did however hit trouble – this time from the Roman Catholics. Guthrie said that he had never seen a Roman Catholic priest working in the slums in twenty years, where “the girls were left to grow up as prostitutes, and the boys to become thieves”. But as soon as the children of Roman Catholic parents started to receive help to improve their lives and to learn to read the Bible, opposition broke out, as Guthrie put it: “Father Keenan of Dundee… boldly stated that he would prefer to see children perish in the streets rather than get food and education and God’s Word in the Dundee Ragged Schools.”This caused a rumpus, and the city of Edinburgh was “stirred to its depths”as a four-hour debate raged in the Music Hall. But when the vote was taken to continue the Ragged Schools as they were, a sea of hands was seen, with only five people standing against the motion.
The fruit of the Ragged Schools spoke for itself, as Guthrie pointed out in 1859:
“I. The results our Schools are to be found in many happy homes, the abodes of those that, once wretched, ragged outcasts, are now honest men and virtuous mothers, useful citizens and heads of families… We – and in these results I include the influence of other, though smaller schools, have cleared the streets of Edinburgh of juvenile beggars, – a feat that the Magistrates and Police, with cells and prison at their back, were far from ever being able to achieve, that when our School was set on foot, their name was Legion. They swarmed through all the town – it was creeping with them.
II. We are fast emptying the prisons…
III. The Original Ragged School [founded in 1847] alone has rescued from great misery and certain ruin not less than five hundred children. They are now blessings to society… And if we make the much more probable supposition, that but for our school – its useful, kind, and holy training – two-thirds of those five hundred children would have developed into full-blown criminals, we have saved the country not less than 72,000 [about £9.8 million in today’s money]!”
“… undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free… [do] not hide yourself from your own flesh…” (Isaiah 58:6-7, NKJV).
Image: Revd Dr Guthrie (1803-1873) in Princes Gardens, Edinburgh, by Paul James-Griffiths
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
We have long grown used to our national education in Scotland and taken it for granted, as if it has always been there. One day I took to the streets to ask British students at the University of Edinburgh from where they thought our education system had come. Not one of them knew, so I decided to try Scottish people in Musselburgh, thinking that they would be able to tell me. This time I focused on the more elderly population. I met with embarrassment, as if the locals should know the answer, but did not. Various suggestions were made, such as the Labour Party. Eventually a lady in her eighties gave the right answer: “The church,” she said quietly and confidently.
Christians like Kentigern in the sixth century were seeking to educate people in Scotland. By the Middle Ages schools were springing up, with the nation’s oldest being the High School of Glasgow (c.1124) and the Royal High in Edinburgh (1128), both being founded by the church. When the Reformation came there was a dramatic acceleration of education in Scotland, as shown in the extraordinary document called the First Book of Discipline (1560). It is here that we find the blueprint for a national education in the following remarkable words:
“Of necessity therefore we judge it, that every several church have a schoolmaster appointed… And further, we think it expedient that in every notable town, and especially in the town of the superintendent, [there] be erected a college, in which the arts, at least logic and rhetoric, together with the tongues, be read by sufficient masters, for whom honest stipends must be appointed; as also provision for those that are poor, and are not able by themselves, nor by their friends, to be sustained at letters, especially such as come from landward… Last, the great schools, called universities, shall be replenished with those that are apt to learning; for this must be carefully provided, that no father, of what estate or condition that ever he be, use his children at his own fantasy, especially in their youth; but all must be compelled to bring up their children in learning and virtue.”
The Church of Scotland worked hard to achieve the vision of “a school in every parish”. By 1660, Bishop Burnet was astounded to see widespread literacy in much of Scotland, even among the poor cottagers who could reason on points of the Bible and expressed opinions concerning government. Besides this, the Church of Scotland pioneered Sabbath schools long before Robert Raikes’ English Sunday School Movement. Dr John Brown stated that “Mr Raikes was the founder of the English schools, and that he had no acquaintance with the prior existence of these schools in Scotland… we had Sabbath Schools of a superior order long before the days of that eminent philanthropist.” Brown then cites examples of Sabbath schools in Norham in 1757 and in Simprin in 1707.
By 1819 there were 452 Sunday schools in Scotland, most of which were run by Independent or interdenominational church groups, although the Sabbath School Union for Scotland claimed that there were also 567 schools affiliated with them, with 39,000 pupils.By 1842 Glasgow alone was educating 25,000 pupils with its Sunday school growth outstripping the population growth by four times; this was largely due to the evangelical movement. By 1891, 46% of children between the ages of five and fourteen were in Sunday schools there: this amounts to 108,205 pupils, being taught by an army of over 10,000 teachers. Illiteracy in that city had also fallen through this work between 1850 and 1870, from 18.3% to 5.8%.
In the Sunday school records we can see a pattern emerging across Scotland: there was huge growth from the 1830s to the 1890s, and then the numbers begin to tail off. At its height in 1890, the Church of Scotland had 217,207 pupils; the Free Church had 166,166; and the United Presbyterian Church had 103,010 – or a total of 486,383 children in Sunday/Sabbath Schools, and this did not include the Independent and other churches, missions and societies.
The politician, Sir Thomas Chambers, after the national school boards had been established with the 1872 Education Act, asked, “Who are they that have brought about this marvellous improvement in the amount of Education given, and in the Educational machinery involved? Who but the members of all the Evangelical Churches throughout the country? Who have filled the Sunday Schools, and the Ragged Schools, and the British and Foreign Schools, and to a great extent, the National schools, with teachers? Who but the men [and women] who have acted from religious motives, and whose conduct has been influenced by the teaching of the Gospel?”
“He [Solomon] spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five. Also he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; he spoke also of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish. And men of all nations, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom, came to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:32-33, NKJV).
Image: Castle Hill School (1888), the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Photo by Paul James-Griffiths
