Mrs Colville (continued)

So Mrs Colville returned to England unaware that her faithful door-to-door ministry and her discipling of one young man had, in the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, become a catalyst for a great Revival in Ulster.  We never know what faithful obedience might produce.

The beauty of older stories is that we can trace them into their future.  We cannot do this for our own.  And so we zip forward to,2016.  That's fairly contemporary for a blog in 2016!

For just a few weeks ago a famed Baptist Church in Edinburgh City Centre moved into its new building.  When I say 'new' I mean 'fresh' because the the building was a former Parish Church.

But what has this to do with Mrs Colville?  It goes like this.  A young woman came to life in Jesus in that Ulster Revival and was so moved by the power of prayer in it that she set about praying for her church in Edinburgh City Centre.  Now what we want to read here is that, a year later, a thousand people came through the door.  The truth is that as the 20th century began and she had been praying for 30 years the church was down to 35 attendees.  

But she had bequeathed to her family the vigour to trust and pursue in prayer.  And so it was that a new pastor arrived.  Joseph Kemp teamed up with a Church Secretary who himself had captured his mother-in-law's vision of revival.  And the rest, as they say is history.

There did indeed become a year when a thousand people were saved at the chapel.  There were prayer meetings that were measured in days not minutes.  And so today it is still possible to buy unwittingly into Mrs Colville's legacy not only as a student in Edinburgh City Centre but in many other places through the world.

Except that of course it is not that this springs from one woman.  She was the trigger but the power was the Lord's.  She did not even believe she was a trigger - but she did believe she was the Lord's!  And that will do.

Mrs Colville

Today at Church we thought about sowing seeds of goodness (Galatians 6:7-10).  It reminded me of Mrs Colville from Gateshead.  

What did Mrs Colville do?  It was embarrassingly simple really. In the middle of the 19th century she went from door to door seeking to tell people about the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.

She arrived in Ballymena in Ireland with the Baptist Missionary Society.  Going from door to door one day she was she found two ladies who were already conversing with a young man about spiritual things.  His name was James.  James subsequently sought out Mrs Colville for further discussion and his life began to change.

The story moves to Kells, a nearby village, where two young men - Jeremiah Meneely and Robert Carlisle - were walking home with the school-master following a school property meeting.  Robert asked them had they heard about the great change that had come over James.

That autumn, reflecting on James's change of life, Jeremiah was inspired to begin a Prayer Meeting.  After 3 months nothing much had happened, except two more men had joined.   On January 1st the first conversion took place as a result of the prayer-meeting.

But after that there were conversions one after another. By year's end about fifty young men were taking part in the prayer meeting.

From that meeting in North Antrim the seed of revival grew into the great Revival of 1859 in Ulster, one glimpse of which might be seen in this description of one of countless great meetings which often lasted days - I could not get into the building; every open window was more than occupied. In the vestry room there were those under conviction of sin; it was a scene impossible to forget and equally impossible to describe. An old man, a boy, and a young man were in varying stages of upset. They all wanted to be free from sin. “ I know that my redeemer liveth, the young man said. “I know that He can save my soul. I know that He can wash me from all uncleanness in the fountain of His atoning blood. But, Oh I have crucified Him, I have crucified Him."

Or this from the local newspaper in one town:  Common street prostitutes and public nuisances who had frequently been convicted for drunkenness and loitering are now clothed with attention to decency and struggling to earn their livelihood by honest labour, and by learning to read. They are all daily and humbly beseeching pardon for their past sin and in regular attendance at some place of worship.  At the Raceview Woollen Mills by twelve noon the factory had to close down as so many of the employees were crying out to God.

Mrs Colville had returned from her Mission Trip sad at the poor response.  Yet she had been the sower of a seed that, even in the amazing events of 1859, had scarcely begun to reveal its true harvest.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh . . .

A young lady was converted in that great revival of 1859 and all she could pray for was one thing. That revival would break out in her little church in Edinburgh. Time went by - thirty years went by - and she still had not seen an answer to her prayers.  But she was sowing in prayer as surely as Mrs Colville had previously done to lead towards that Revival in which this lady had been saved. But that will take another blog.