I have kept and reserved to this last lecture what is after all the greatest essential in connection with preaching, and that is the unction and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It may seem odd to some that I keep the most important thing of all to the end instead of starting with it. My reason for doing so is that I believe that if we do, or attempt to do, all I have been saying first, then the unction will come upon it. I have already pointed out that some men fall into the error of relying upon the unction only, and neglect to do all they can by way of preparation. The right way to look upon the unction of the Spirit is to think of it as that which comes upon the preparation. There is an Old Testament incident which provides a ready illustration to show this relationship. It is the story of Elijah facing the false prophets of Israel on Mount Carmel. We are told that Elijah built an altar, then cut wood and put it on the altar, and then he killed a bullock and cut it in pieces and put the pieces on the wood. Then, having done all that, he prayed for the fire to descend; and the fire fell. That is the order.
There are many other examples of the same thing. One of the most notable is in connection with the account of the erection of the Tabernacle in the wilderness in Exodus 40. We are told how Moses first did in detail everything that God had told him to do, and that it was only after he had done it all that the glory of the Lord came down upon the Tabernacle. That is my reason for reserving what is beyond doubt the most important factor of all, in connection with preaching, to the end. ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is true in this connection as in many others. Careful preparation, and the unction of the Holy Spirit, must never be regarded as alternatives but as complementary to each other.
We all tend to go to extremes; some rely on their own preparation and look for nothing more; others, as I say, tend to despise preparation and trust to the unction, the anointing and the inspiration of the Spirit alone. But there must be no ‘either/or’ here; it is always ‘both/and’. These two things must go together.
What is meant by this ‘unction or anointing’ of the Spirit? The best way of approach is to show from the Scriptures first of all what is meant by this. But before we do that let me put a question to all preachers. Do you always look for and seek this unction, this anointing before preaching? Has this been your greatest concern? There is no more thorough and revealing test to apply to a preacher.
What is this? It is the Holy Spirit falling upon the preacher in a special manner. It is an access of power. It is God giving power, and enabling, through the Spirit, to the preacher in order that he many do this work in a manner that lifts it up beyond the efforts and endeavors of man to a position in which the preacher is being used by the Spirit and becomes the channel through whom the Spirit works. This is seen very plainly and clearly in the Scriptures.
I propose therefore to look first at the scriptural teaching, then to view the subject from the historical standpoint, and finally to make some comments. It is quite clear in the Scriptures that all the Old Testament prophets are illustrations of this anointing, but I propose to confine our attention to the New Testament. We start with John the Baptist, because he is the forerunner of the Saviour. In Luke I we are told that a message was given to his father Zacharias to this effect:
For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just (verses 15-17).
That is an excellent summary of the position of the prophets of the Old Testament. Those men were aware of an afflatus which came upon them; the Spirit took hold of them and they were given a message, and the power to deliver it. It is the great characteristic of the prophets, and John was the last of the prophets. So we are told about him that he was endued in this very special way with the Holy Ghost and His power to do his work. And when you read the accounts of his ministry this becomes obvious. He spoke in such a manner that people came under powerful conviction. The preaching of John the Baptist convicted even Pharisees – that is the surest proof of the power of a ministry. But John was well aware of the merely preliminary character of his ministry and always emphasized that it was but preparatory – ‘ I am not the Christ’, he says. ‘One mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.’ ‘I indeed baptize you with water;…he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire’ (Luke 3:15-17). There was something further to come, something altogether greater.
Next we must observe what happened in the case of our Lord Himself. This is a point which is very often missed. I refer to the way in which the Holy Ghost descended upon Him as He was coming out of the river Jordan after John the Baptist had baptized Him. The Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove. He Himself explained afterwards what this meant, when He spoke in the Synagogue in His home town of Nazareth as recorded in Luke 4:18ff. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor….‘ What I am concerned to emphasize is that He says that what had happened to Him there at Jordan was that He was anointed by the Spirit to preach this Gospel of salvation, ‘to preach the acceptable year of the Lord’.
This is a most striking statement. It throws great light, of course, upon the whole meaning and purpose of the Incarnation; but what is significant is that even our Lord Himself, the Son of God, could not have exercised His ministry as a man on earth if He had not received this special, peculiar ‘anointing’ of the Holy Spirit to perform His task. It is true even of Him.
Then – and I am but selecting what I regard as the most important passages which deal with this matter – we come to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and in Acts 1:8 we read, ‘But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and yes shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ That, of course, should be linked up always with the last chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, where we have an account of what our Lord said to the assembled disciples in the upper room. He said He was sending them out.
Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.
That leads on to Acts 1:8, and to fulfillment of that, as recorded in Acts 2.
The significance of this, as I see it, is that here we have men whom, you would have thought, were in a perfect position and condition already to act as preachers. They had been with our Lord for three years, they had heard all His discourses and instructions, they had seen all His miracles, they had had the benefit of being with Him, looking into His face and, having personal conversation and communion with Him. Three of them had witnessed His Transfiguration, all of them had witnessed the Crucifixion and the burial, and above all they were witnesses of the fact of His physical resurrection. You would have thought these men therefore were now in a perfect position to go out to preach; but according to our Lord’s teaching they were not. They seem to have all the necessary knowledge, but that knowledge is not sufficient; something further is needed, is indeed essential. The knowledge indeed is vital for you cannot be witnesses without it, but to be effective witnesses you need the power and the unction and the demonstration of the Spirit in addition. Now if this was necessary for these men, how much more is it necessary for all others who try to preach these things?
We read of the Spirit coming upon those men assembled on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem; and at once you see the difference that made to them. The Peter who in a craven spirit had denied his Lord, in order to save his own life, is now filled with boldness and great assurance. He is able to expound the Scriptures in an authoritative manner and to speak with such mighty effect that three thousand people are converted under his preaching. This was the inauguration, as it were, of the Christian Church as we know her in this dispensation of the Spirit, and that is the graphic picture we are given of how it began.
Here I must call attention to a further point, which I feel we also tend to miss. This ‘accession of power’, or if you prefer it, this ‘effusion of power’ upon Christian preachers is not something ‘once for all’; it can be repeated, and repeated many many times.
Let me adduce some examples of this. There on the Day of Pentecost we have seen the apostles filled with this power, and seen also that the real object of ‘the baptism with the Spirit’ is to enable men to witness to Christ and His salvation with power. The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is not regeneration – the apostles were already regenerate – and it is not given primarily to promote sanctification; it is a baptism of power, or a baptism of fire, a baptism to enable one to witness. The old preachers used to make a great deal of this. They would ask about a man, ‘Has he received his baptism of fire.’ That was the great question. It is not regeneration or sanctification; this is power, power to witness.
The Apostles received this on the Day of Pentecost and Peter immediately witnessed in a most powerful manner; and he and John again witnessed after the healing of the impotent man, and did so in their preaching in the Temple. But look again at Acts 4:7. Here are Peter and John on trial before the Sanhedrin, and charges are brought against them: ‘When they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what power, or by what name have ye done this?’ But notice what the record goes on to say: “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people…’
How do you interpret that? Why does it say, ‘Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit?’ You might argue, ‘But was he not filled with the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost as the other men were?’ Of Course he was. What then is the point of repeating it here? There is only one adequate explanation of this. It is not just a reminder of the fact that he had been baptized with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. There is no purpose in the use of this expression unless it means that he received a fresh accession of power. He was in a critical position. ; Here he was on trial with John, indeed the Gospel and the entire Christian Church were on trial, and he needed some new, fresh power to witness positively and to confute the persecutors – some new, fresh power, and it is given him. So the expression is used, ‘Peter filled with the Holy Ghost’. This was another filling for this special task.
There is yet a further example of this in that same fourth chapter of Acts in verse 31. There were all the members of the Church praying, in fear, at the threatening of the authorities who were trying to exterminate the Church. Then this is what happened, ‘And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost’ – the same people again. They had all been filled with the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, and Peter and John on subsequent occasions also; buy here the entire company is filled again with the Holy Ghost. It is obvious; therefore, that this is something which can be repeated many times.
Then going on to Acts 6 we have an account of how the first deacons were appointed. Notice the qualifications which are stressed in verses 3 and 5: ‘Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.’ This is not true of everybody, but it is true of some – ‘whom we may appoint over this business’. And then in verse 5: ‘And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost’. ‘But,’ you say, ‘were they not all filled with the Holy Ghost?’ Not in this sense. There is something special here, there is something peculiar, there is something additional; and they were told to look out for that. In every case it is exactly the same point.
Then there is another example in Acts 7:55- the picture of Stephen just before he was stoned to death. This is not only memorable but of great importance – verse 54: ‘When they heard these things’ – these were his accusers, the members of the Sanhedrin -‘they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.’ This is again, obviously, a special endowment. It is once more a man in a great crisis; and the spirit comes upon him in an exceptional manner and enables him to face the crisis and to give a powerful witness.
One further example must suffice – in connection with the Apostle Paul who came later into the Church. It is in Acts 13:9. The Apostle Paul with Barnabas had arrived at a country where there was a deputy of the name of Sergius Paulus who desired to hear the Word of God. ‘But Elymas the sorcerer withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith’. Then verse 9: ‘Then Saul, (who is also called Paul), filled with the Holy Ghost’, it is not referring back to the fact that he was filled with the Holy Ghost in connection with his conversion and as the result of his meeting with Ananias. It would be ridiculous to repeat this if it had happened once and for all. This is again a special enduement of power, a special crisis, a special occasion, and he was given this special power for this special occasion.
I would go further and suggest that this always happened to the Apostles whenever they worked a miracle or whenever they had some very special situation to deal with. The significance of that comes out in this way. There is a great difference between the miracles worked by the Apostles and the ‘miracles’ it is claimed certain men perform today. One big difference is this, that you never find the Apostles announcing beforehand that they are going to hold a Healing Service in a few day’s time. Why not? Because they never knew when it was going to happen. They did not decide, and it was not within their control: what invariably happened rather was this. There was Paul for instance dealing with this man – you find the same thing in the case of the man at Lystra recorded in the fourteenth chapter – and suddenly he was given a commission to heal him. Paul knew nothing about this until he was impelled; by the Spirit and given the power; and so did it. So the first difference between the so called miracle workers today and the Apostles is that the Apostles could never predict or foretell or announce the working of miracles, and never did so.
There is a second difference also. The Apostles, you notice in the Book of Acts, never failed. It was never a case of making an experiment; there was no tentative element. They knew. They were given a commission, so they spoke with authority. They issued a command, and there was no failure; and there can be no failure when this is the position. That is clearly the general picture given in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
But there is something yet more direct and specific even than all this, namely the great statement of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 2, the crucial statement in which he describes his own preaching at Corinth. ‘And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing word of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God’ (verses 3 -5). That is the vital and controlling statement with respect to this entire matter. Here is a man who was greatly gifted, who had exceptional natural powers; but he deliberately determined not to use them in a carnal manner. He ‘determined not to know any thing among them, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified’; he then deliberately eschewed the manner of the Greek rhetoricians, both as to content and style, with which he was so familiar. As he says later to these same Corinthians he became ‘a fool for Christ’s sake’, in order that it might be clear that the power was not his but God’s, and that their whole position should not be based upon ‘the wisdom of men but upon the power of God’.
Coming from Paul of all men this, I think, is most striking. He reminds the Corinthians of this once more in the fourth chapter in verses 18-20. Some of the members in the church at Corinth were talking a great deal, criticizing the Apostle Paul, and expressing their opinions freely on him and his teaching. So he challenges them and says, ‘Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but he power. For the kingdom of God is; not in word, but in power.’ There is not text, perhaps, of which we need to be reminded so much at the present time as just that. There is certainly no lack of words; but is there much evidence of power in our preaching? ‘The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.’ ‘That,’ says the Apostle, ‘is the test’; and it is still the test of true preaching.
We find later that he repeats much the same thing in 2 Corinthians 4. Talking about his own ministry he says, ‘As we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.’ He goes on to the moving statement in verse 6, ‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ And then immediately, ‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us’. It is always the same, he is always anxious to emphasize this utter dependence upon the power of the Spirit. The same is found again in 2 Corinthians 10:3 – 5: ‘For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’
It is always the same point, ‘not carnal’, ‘mighty through God’. It is a spiritual power. Indeed, the same emphasis is to be found in that extraordinary statement in 2 Corinthians 12 where he tells us of how he had been ‘lifted up into the third heaven, and had heard things which cannot be uttered’. And how then ‘the thorn in the flesh’ had come and he prayed three times for its removal; but the thorn was not removed. He was perplexed by this at first, but he had come to understand its meaning when God had said to him, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ He is now able to say therefore, ‘Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me…for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Another statement of this which never fails to move me is found at the end of Colossians in chapter 1. ‘Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.’ That is always Paul’s testimony. He was doing his utmost, but what really counts is ‘His working, which worketh in me mightily.’ That is what is meant by ‘unction’. A still more precise definition even than that is found in I Thessalonians 1:5: ‘For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.’ The Apostle is reminding the Thessalonians of how the Gospel had come to them. He had to leave them in order that he might preach elsewhere, and he writes this letter to them, which many think was his first letter to a church. It is a most important chapter indeed as the definitive and controlling statement concerning preaching and evangelism. He reminds them that the Gospel had ‘come‘ to them; ‘not in word only’. It had come ‘in word’, and he reminds them of the content of the word in verses 9 and 10, but it was ‘not in word only, but also….‘ It is this ‘also‘, this addition of the power of the Holy Ghost that ultimately makes preaching effective. This is what produces converts and creates Churches, and builds up Churches- ‘power’, ‘Holy Ghost’, and ‘much assurance’.
Peter teaches precisely the same truth in reminding the Christians to whom he wrote in his First Epistle of how they had become Christians, and of the character of the Gospel message. He says, referring to the prophets of the Old Testament, ‘Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.’ That is how the Gospel is preached says – ‘with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.’
My last quotation comes from the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. It is the statement by John about himself in the first chapter, verse 10: ‘I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice.’ How do we interpret that? Does it mean that John, being a Christian, was always ‘in the Spirit’? If that was the case why does he trouble to say so? This, clearly, was not his ordinary usual state and condition; it was something quite exceptional. He says, There was I on the Isle of Patmos on the Lord’s day and suddenly I found myself ‘in the Spirit’. It was a visitation of the Spirit of God. And it was as the result of this that he was given his great vision, the messages to the Churches and his understanding of the future course of history.
That is clear and unmistakable scriptural evidence and testimony with regard to preaching. But it may well be that your position is, ‘Yes, we accept that and w are in no difficulty about that. But all that ended with the Apostolic age, therefore it has nothing to do with us.’ My reply is that the Scriptures are also meant to apply to us today, and that if you confine all this to the Apostolic era you are leaving very little for us at the present time. In any case how do you decide what was meant for them only, and what is for us also? On what grounds do you do that; what are your canons of judgment? I suggest that there are none save prejudice. The whole Scripture is for us. In the New testament we have a picture of the Church, and it is relevant to the Church at all times in all ages.
Thank God, the history of the Church proves the rightness of this contention. The evidence for this is abundant. The long history of the Church shows repeatedly that what we find in the New Testament has characterized the Church always in periods of revival and reformation. This is why I have always maintained that next tot he reading of the Bible itself, to read the history of revivals is one of the most encouraging things that one can ever do. Take the situation with which we are confronted today. Look at the task, look at the state of the world, look at the modern mentality. Without believing in and knowing something of the power of the Spirit, it is a heart-breaking task. I certainly could not go on for another day but for this. If I felt that it was all left to us, and our learning and our scholarship and our organizations, I would be of all men the most miserable and hopeless. The situation would be completely hopeless. But that is not the case. What we read of in the New Testament is equally possible and opens to us today; and it is our only hope. But we must realize this. If we do not, we shall spend our time in ‘shallows and in miseries’; and we shall achieve nothing.
What then is the evidence of history? We could well start from the Protestant Reformation. There is ample evidence at that time of the mighty working of the Spirit. There was that great experience that Luther himself describes when the whole room seemed to be filled with light. That undoubtedly is the key to the understanding of his extraordinary preaching. We are so interested in Luther the theologian that we tend to forget Luther the preacher. Luther was a mighty preacher. The same is true of John Calvin also.
But there were two men in England who were quite outstanding in this respect. One was Hugh Latimer, whose preaching at St. Paul’s Cross in London was obviously attended with very great unction and the power of the Holy Spirit. This again is something we tend to forget. We are rightly interested in the great theological upheaval at the time of the Protestant Reformation; but let us never forget that it was also a popular movement. It was not confined to the learned and the professors; it came down tot he people because there were these great preachers who were anointed with the Spirit.
There was a man called John Bradford who obviously was a very great preacher in this same sense. He was one of the early Protestant martyrs. The same was true of other countries also at that time. There was a mighty preacher in Scotland at the end of the sixteenth century called Robert Bruce. A little book concerning him has recently been republished. In that book you can read the account of what happened on one occasion when he was at a conference of ministers in Edinburgh. At that time things were very bad indeed and most discouraging. The ministers were talking to one another and conferring, but they were all very depressed. The more they talked the more depressed they became –as is not unusual in general assemblies and other religious conferences.
Robert Bruce tried to get them to pray, and they were trying to pray. However it was clear to Bruce that they were but ‘trying to pray’, and he did not regard that as praying. So he was ‘stirred in his spirit’, as Paul was at Athens, and said that he was going to ‘knock’ the Holy Spirit into them. So he began to thump the table with his fists; and he certainly achieved something. They then really did begin to pray ‘in the Spirit’ and they were lifted up out of their depression to the heights and given great assurance from God that He was still with them and that He would ‘never leave them, nor forsake them’. They went back to their work re-invigorated and with a new hope and confidence.
But come to what is in many ways my favorite illustration. It concerns John Livingstone who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Scotland. John Livingstone was also a very able man as most of those men were. Those early Reformed ministers in Scotland were a succession of tremendous men from the standpoint of ability, learning and knowledge; but the thing that characterized them above everything else was their knowledge and experience of this spiritual power and unction.
John Livingstone, as I say, was a very fine scholar and a great preacher. He had to escape to Northern Ireland on account of persecution, and while there had had some experiences of a Revival. But his great day came in 1630. There was a Communion season at a place called Kirk O’Shotts, just off the road between Glasgow and Edinburgh. These Communion seasons would last many days and were characterized by much preaching by several visiting preachers. On this particular occasion they had all felt from the beginning right through to the Sunday evening that there was something unusual. So the brethren decided to have an additional preaching service on the Monday, and they asked John Livingstone to preach. Now Livingstone was a very modest and humble and godly man, and so was fearful of the great responsibility of preaching on such an occasion. So he spent most of the night struggling in prayer. He went out into the countryside and there continued praying. Many of the people were praying also. But he was in a great agony of soul, and he could find no peace until in the early hours of Monday morning God gave him a message and at the same time gave him an assurance also that his preaching would be attended with great power. So John Livingstone preached on that famous Monday morning, and as the result of that one sermon 500 people were added to the churches in that locality. It was a tremendous day, an overwhelming experience of the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon an assembled congregation. The remainder of his life’s story is equally significant and important. John Livingstone lived; many years after that but he never had such an experience again. He always looked back to it, and he always longed for it; but it was actually never repeated in his experience.
Similar spiritual experiences are described in the lives of preachers in the U.S.A. I derived great benefit a few years back from reading the Journals of Cotton Mather, the author of Magnalia Christi Americana. Those journals, and his history of religion in America, have many illustrations of the power of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing more important for preaching, as I have said, than the reading of Church history and biographies. There are remarkable descriptions in Cotton Mather’s own Journal of these ‘visitations’ as he would call them, of the Spirit of God and the effect they had upon his preaching. Again I emphasize the fact that Cotton Mather was a very able and scholarly man, and not just an ignorant, credulous and excitable preacher. All those Mathers were able men; and he had the still abler Cotton influence in his blood as well. He was a grandson of both John Cotton, perhaps the most scholarly of the first American preachers, and also Richard Mather. No man could have a better pedigree, a better ancestry from the standpoint of intellect and ability; yet nothing is more striking about this man than his realization that he could really do nothing without this unction and power of the Holy Spirit, and his sense of utter dependence upon it.
‘Time fails me,’ like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to speak about Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd. Their biographies are available, both old and new, and should be compulsory reading for all preachers. Then there was Gilbert Tennant and other members of that notable family. Gilbert Tennant was used for a period like a flaming sword, and then the power seems to have left him, and for the remainder of his ministry in Philadelphia he was a comparatively ‘ordinary’ preacher.
Once more there is the story of George Whitfield and the Wesleys. John Wesley is an important man in this whole argument for several reasons. One of these, and the most important in many ways, is that if ever there was a typical scholarly man it was John Wesley. He was also a typical Englishman, which means that he was not emotional by nature. The Englishman we are told is phlegmatic and does not get excited; he is not easily moved, and is not mercurial like the Celts and the Latin races – through this does not appear to be true in the realm of football! Now John Wesley was the most typical Englishman conceivable, pedantic, precise, and exact. His upbringing had been very strict and rigorous and disciplined, and after an excellent academic career as a student he had become a fellow of a college in Oxford. He was exact in his exegesis, precise in statement, with every word in order, and moreover he was a very devout and religious man. He gave his spare time to visiting the prisoners in jails; he would even go with some of them to their execution. He gave of his money to feed the poor. Even all this did not satisfy him; he gave up his position at Oxford and crossed the Atlantic to preach the Gospel in Georgia to the poor slaves and others. But he was quite useless, a complete failure, and he came to the conclusion that he needed the Gospel quite as much as the poor slaves in Georgia. And he did. There was no power in his ministry. In addition he was not clear about the way of salvation, and this was brought home to him in a storm in mid-Atlantic, when he observed the difference between himself and some Moravian brethren face to face with death. So he returned to England.
Having got back to England he was first of all put right on the doctrine of justification by faith only. He came to see it clearly in March 1738, but still he was a failure as a preacher, indeed he began to feel that he should not preach. He said to the Moravian Brother, Peter Bohler who had helped him into this understanding of justification by faith, ‘I see it clearly with my head but I do not feel it, and I had better stop preaching until I feel it.’ ‘No,’ said Peter Bohler in that immortal answer, ‘Do not stop preaching it, but go on preaching it until you do feel it.’ You remember what happened. On the twenty fourth of May, 1738, he had that climactic experience. In a little meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, a number of people had met together to study the Scriptures and to build one another up in the faith. On that particular night a man had been appointed to read the Preface to Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans – not the Commentary but the Preface. Here was this man reading that Preface to Luther’s Commentary on Romans, and as he was reading Wesley says that his heart ‘was strangely warmed’ and he suddenly felt that God had forgiven his sins – even his. As he felt this warmth something began to melt within him; and it was from that moment this man began to preach with a new power and was greatly used by God. All this is but confirmatory of what we find in the Scriptures. You can have knowledge, and you can be meticulous in your preparation; but without the unction of the Holy Spirit you will have no power, and your preaching will not be effective.
Whitefield tells us that he was aware, actually in his Ordination Service, of the power coming down upon him. He knew it. He was thrilled with the sense of power. The very first Sunday after his ordination he preached in his hometown of Gloucester, and it was an amazing service. It was so remarkable that people wrote to the Bishop – Bishop Benson – complaining against Whitefield, and asserting that as the result of his sermon fifteen people had become insane. The Bishop was not only a wise man but a good man; so he replied saying that he wished all his clergy could produce some effect on people, for most of them had no effect at all. He was glad to hear of a man who had some effect. Of course these people had not become insane; what had happened was that they had come under terrifying and powerful conviction of sin. People at that time, even as many medical doctors and others today, were very ready to make the diagnosis of ‘religious mania’; but what actually happens is that the person, or persons, concerned have been brought under tremendous conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit of God. The subsequent Journals of Whitefield, and the various biographies of him, contain endless accounts of his awareness of the Spirit of God coming upon him while he preached, and also at other times.
In my native country of Wales there were two remarkable men in the eighteenth century, Howel Harris and Daniel Rowlands. Their lives are equally eloquent in this respect. Howel Harris was a young schoolmaster. He was convicted of sin at Easter time in 1735, and was in great trouble of soul until Whit Sunday when he was given assurance that his sins were forgiven and he began to rejoice in this fact. However, three weeks later as he was sitting in the tower of a church reading the Scriptures, praying and meditating, he says, ‘God began to pour out His Spirit upon me’. He describes how it came in ‘wave upon wave’ until he could scarcely contain it physically, and tells how he was filled with the love of God shed abroad in his heart. Now it was from that moment that Harris began to feel the impulse to evangelize his heathen neighbors. At first he used to visit the sick, and he would read good books to them. He did not utter a word of his own, he just read out of books to them. But there was such unction and power attending his reading of these books that people were convicted of sin and converted. This went on for some time. He felt that he was so unworthy that he was unfit to be a preacher, so though he felt he was somewhat dishonest in doing so, he went on reading out of the books but began also to interpose some of his own remarks as the thoughts came to him, still keeping his eyes on the book. He continued like that for a while. Eventually he began openly to exhort the people, and great crowds gathered to listen to him. This man was the pioneer, in a sense, of a movement that shook the whole country and brought into being the denomination known as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, or present day Presbyterian, Church of Wales. That is how it happened; it was the direct result of this special anointing and unction of the Holy Spirit. He would lose this at times for a while, and he would grieve; then it would come back again. He went on like that until he died in 1773. The same thing was true of many of his contemporaries and especially of the great Daniel Rowlands whose private journals were unfortunately lost.
You will find the same thing in the biography, written by Andrew Bonar, of the greatly used preacher W.H. Nettleton to whom I have referred previously.
In other words you find exactly the same type of experience in very different types of men. Most of the men I have mentioned so far were very able men. But in addition you have a man like D. L. Moody who was not an able man but was nevertheless greatly used by God. This was the direct outcome and result of an experience he had while walking down Wall Street in New York City one afternoon. Moody had been the pastor of a church in Chicago before that, and a successful pastor. He had certainly been doing a good work, but that pales into insignificance when you compare it with what he was afterwards enabled to do.
But let me take a final illustration. There was a great Revival in the U.S.A. in 1857 which spread over to Northern Ireland in 1858 and to Wales in 1859. Revivals have generally happened simultaneously in a number of countries. This was true in the eighteenth century as well as the nineteenth, a most interesting fact in itself. But I am thinking in particular of the man who was most used of God in Wales in that Revival, whose name was David Morgan, and particularly of one aspect of his amazing story. There was a Welshman in the U. S. A at the same time, a Humphrey Jones, who came powerfully under the influence of the Revival. Having entered into his new life, and being filled with the Spirit of joy and rejoicing he said to himself, ‘I wish my people at home could experience this’. This became such a burden to him that he went home to Wales. Having arrived he just began to tell the people of his home county about what he had seen and experienced. He went round and spoke in the chapels, and the ministers and people would listen to him. David Morgan had listened on a number of occasions to Humphrey Jones, and gradually became interested and began to feel a longing for Revival. One night Humphrey Jones was speaking with exceptional power and David Morgan was profoundly affected. He said later, ‘I went to bed that night just David Morgan as usual. I woke up the next morning feeling like a lion, feeling that I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.’ At that time he had been a minister for a number of years. He was always a good man, not outstanding – in fact just an ordinary preacher. Nothing much happened as the result of his preaching. But he woke up that next morning feeling like a lion, and began to preach with such power that people were convicted and converted in large numbers followed by rejoicing; and additions to the churches followed. This went on for over two years; wherever this man went tremendous results took place.
Among the many stories of conversions under Morgan’s ministry none is more striking than that of T. C. Edwards, the author of a well known Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which can still be found on the shelves of second hand bookshops. Thomas Charles Edwards was an undoubted genius. His father Lewis Edwards was the Principal of the first Theological College in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, and his mother was a grand daughter of the famous Thomas Charles who, to a great extent was responsible for the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society.