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[HOW TO PRAY, by R. A. Torrey]
CHAPTER XII
The Place of Prayer Before and During Revivals
No treatment of the subject How to Pray would be at all
complete if it did not consider the place of prayer in revivals.
The first great revival of Christian history had its origin
on the human side in a ten-days' prayer-meeting. We read of that
handful of disciples, "These all with one accord continued
steadfastly in prayer." (Acts 1:14, R.V.) The result of that prayer-
meeting we read of in the 2nd chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
"They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." (v.4) Further on
in the chapter we read that "there were added unto them in that day
about three thousand souls." (v.41,R.V.) This revival proved genuine
and permanent. The converts "continued steadfastly in the apostles'
teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers."
(v.42,R.V.) "And the Lord added to them day by day those that were
being saved." (v.47,R.V.)
Every true revival from that day to this has had its earthly
origin in prayer. The great revival under Jonathan Edwards in the
18th century began with his famous call to prayer. The marvelous
work of grace among the Indians under Brainerd had its origin in the
days and nights that Brainerd spent before God in prayer for an
enduement of power from on high for this work.
A most remarkable and widespread display of God's reviving
power was that which broke out at Rochester, New York, in 1830, under
the labors of Charles G. Finney. It not only spread throughout the
State but ultimately to Great Britain as well. Mr. Finney himself
attributed the power of this work to the spirit of prayer that
prevailed. He describes it in his autobiography in the following
words:
"When I was on my way to Rochester, as we passed through a
village, some thirty miles east of Rochester, a brother minister whom
I knew, seeing me on the canal-boat, jumped aboard to have a little
conversation with me, intending to ride but a little way and return.
He, however, became interested in conversation, and upon finding
where I was going, he made up his mind to keep on and go with me to
Rochester. We had been there but a few days when this minister
became so convinced that he could not help weeping aloud at one time
as we passed along the street. The Lord gave him a powerful spirit
of prayer, and his heart was broken. As he and I prayed together, I
was struck with his faith in regard to what the Lord was going to do
there. I recollect he would say, 'Lord, I do not know how it is; but
I seem to know that Thou art going to do a great work in this city.'
The spirit of prayer was poured out powerfully, so much so that some
persons stayed away from the public services to pray, being unable to
restrain their feelings under preaching.
"And here I must introduce the name of a man, whom I shall
have occasion to mention frequently, Mr. Abel Clary. He was the son
of a very excellent man, and an elder of the church where I was
converted. He was converted in the same revival in which I was. He
had been licensed to preach; but his spirit of prayer was such, he
was so burdened with the souls of men, that he was not able to preach
much, his whole time and strength being given to prayer. The burden
of his soul would frequently be so great that he was unable to stand,
and he would writhe and groan in agony. I was well acquainted with
him, and knew something of the wonderful spirit of prayer that was
upon him. He was a very silent man, as almost all are who have that
powerful spirit of prayer.
"The first I knew of his being in Rochester, a gentleman who
lived about a mile west of the city, called on me one day and asked
me if I knew a Mr. Abel Clary, a minister. I told him that I knew
him well. 'Well,' he said, 'he is at my house, and has been there
for some time, and I don't know what to think of him.' I said, 'I
have not seen him at any of our meetings.' 'No,' he replied, 'he
cannot go to meeting, he says. He prays nearly all the time, day and
night, and in such agony of mind that I do not know what to make of
it. Sometimes he cannot even stand on his knees, but will lie
prostrate on the floor, and groan and pray in a manner that quite
astonishes me.' I said to the brother, 'I understand it: please keep
still. It will all come out right; he will surely prevail.'
"I knew at the time a considerable number of men who were
exercised in the same way. A Deacon P---, of Camden, Oneida county;
a Deacon T---, of Rodman, Jefferson county; a Deacon B---, of Adams,
in the same county; this Mr. Clary and many others among the men, and
a large number of women partook of the same spirit, and spent a great
part of their time in prayer. Father Nash, as we called him, who in
several of my fields of labor came to me and aided me, was another of
those men that had such a powerful spirit of prevailing prayer. This
Mr. Clary continued in Rochester as long as I did, and did not leave
it until after I had left. He never, that I could learn, appeared in
public, but gave himself wholly to prayer.
"I think it was the second Sabbath that I was at Auburn at
this time, I observed in the congregation the solemn face of Mr.
Clary. He looked as if he was borne down with an agony of prayer.
Being well acquainted with him, and knowing the great gift of God
that was upon him, the spirit of prayer, I was very glad to see him
there. He sat in the pew with his brother, the doctor, who was also
a professor of religion, but who had nothing by experience, I should
think, of his brother Abel's great power with God.
"At intermission, as soon as I came down from the pulpit, Mr.
Clary, with his brother, met me at the pulpit stairs, and the doctor
invited me to go home with him and spend the intermission and get
some refreshments. I did so.
"After arriving at his house we were soon summoned to the
dinner table. We gathered about the table, and Dr. Clary turned to
his brother and said, 'Brother Abel, will you ask the blessing?'
Brother Abel bowed his head and began, audibly, to ask a blessing.
He had uttered but a sentence or two when he broke instantly down,
moved suddenly back from the table, and fled to his chamber. The
doctor supposed he had been taken suddenly ill, and rose up and
followed him. In a few moments he came down and said, 'Mr. Finney,
brother Abel wants to see you.' Said I, 'What ails him?' Said he,
'I do not know but he says, you know. He appears in great distress,
but I think it is the state of his mind.' I understood it in a
moment, and went to his room. He lay groaning upon the bed, the
Spirit making intercession for him, and in him, with groanings that
could not be uttered. I had barely entered the room, when he made
out to say, 'Pray, brother Finney.' I knelt down and helped him in
prayer, by leading his soul out for the conversion of sinners. I
continued to pray until his distress passed away, and then I returned
to the dinner table.
"I understood that this was the voice of God. I saw the
spirit of prayer was upon him, and I felt his influence upon myself,
and took it for granted that the work would move on powerfully. It
did so. The pastor told me afterward that he found that in the six
weeks that I was there, five hundred souls had been converted."
Mr. Finney in his lectures on revivals tells of other
remarkable awakenings in answer to the prayers of God's people. He
says in one place, "A clergyman in W----n told me of a revival among
his people, which commenced with a zealous and devoted woman in the
church. She became anxious about sinners, and went to praying for
them; she prayed, and her distress increased; and she finally came to
her minister, and talked with him, and asked him to appoint an
anxious meeting, for she felt that one was needed. The minister put
her off, for he felt nothing of it. The next week she came again,
and besought him to appoint an anxious meeting, she knew there would
be somebody to come, for she felt as if God was going to pour out His
Spirit. He put her off again. And finally she said to him, 'If you
do not appoint an anxious meeting I shall die, for there is certainly
going to be a revival.' The next Sabbath he appointed a meeting, and
said that if there were any who wished to converse with him about the
salvation of their souls, he would meet them on such an evening. He
did not know of one, but when he went to the place, to his
astonishment he found a large number of anxious inquirers."
In still another place he says, "The first ray of light that
broke in upon the midnight which rested on the churches in Oneida
county, in the fall of 1825, was from a woman in feeble health, who,
I believe had never been in a powerful revival. Her soul was
exercised about sinners. She was in agony for the land. She did not
know what ailed her, but she kept praying more and more, till it
seemed as if her agony would destroy her body. At length she became
full of joy and exclaimed, 'God has come! God has come! There is no
mistake about it, the work is begun, and is going over all the
region!' And sure enough the work began, and her family were almost
all converted, and the work spread all over that part of the
country."
The great revival of 1857 in the United States began in
prayer and was carried on by prayer more than by anything else. Dr.
Cuyler in an article in a religious newspaper some years ago said,
"Most revivals have humble beginnings, and the fire starts in a few
warm hearts. Never despise the day of small things. During all my
own long ministry, nearly every work of grace had a similar
beginning. One commenced in a meeting gathered at a few hour's
notice in a private house. Another commenced in a group gathered for
Bible study by Mr. Moody in our mission chapel. Still another--the
most powerful of all--was kindled on a bitter January evening at a
meeting of young Christians under my roof. Dr. Spencer, in his
'Pastor's Sketches', (the most suggestive book of its kind I have
ever read), tells us that a remarkable revival in his church sprang
from the fervent prayers of a godly old man who was confined to his
room by lameness. That profound Christian, Dr. Thomas H. Skinner, of
the Union Theological Seminary, once gave me an account of a
remarkable coming together of three earnest men in his study when he
was the pastor of the Arch Street Church in Philadelphia. They
literally wrestled in prayer. They made a clean breast in confession
of sin, and humbled themselves before God. One and another church
officer came in and joined them. The heaven-kindled flame soon
spread through the whole congregation in one of the most powerful
revivals ever known in that city."
In the early part of the seventeenth century there was a
great religious awakening in Ulster, Ireland. The lands of the rebel
chiefs which had been forfeited to the British crown, were settled up
by a class of colonists who for the most part were governed by a
spirit of wild adventure. Real piety was rare. Seven ministers,
five from Scotland and two from England, settled in that country, the
earliest arrivals being in 1613. Of one of these ministers named
Blair it is recorded by a contemporary, "He spent many days and
nights in prayer, alone and with others, and was vouchsafed great
intimacy with God." Mr. James Glendenning, a man of very meager
natural gifts, was a man similarly minded as regards prayer. The
work began under this man Glendenning. The historian of the time
says, "He was a man who never would have been chosen by a wise
assembly of ministers nor sent to begin a reformation in this land.
Yet this was the Lord's choice to begin with him the admirable work
of God which I mention on purpose that all may see how the glory is
only the Lord's in making a holy nation in this profane land, and
that it was 'not by might, nor by power, nor by man's wisdom, but by
My Spirit, saith the Lord.'" In his preaching at Oldstone multitudes
of hearers felt in great anxiety and terror of conscience. They
looked on themselves as altogether lost and damned, and cried out,
"Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?" They were stricken
into a swoon by the power of His Word. A dozen in one day were
carried out of doors as dead. These were not women, but some of the
boldest spirits of the neighborhood; "some who had formerly feared
not with their swords to put a whole market town into a fray."
Concerning one of them, then a mighty strong man, now a mighty
Christian, say that his end in coming into church was to consult with
his companions how to work some mischief."
This work spread throughout the whole country. By the year
1626 a monthly concert of prayer was held in Antrim. The work spread
beyond the bounds of Down and Antrim to the churches of the
neighboring counties. So great became the religious interest that
Christians would come thirty or forty miles to the communions, and
continue from the time they came until they returned without wearying
or making use of sleep. Many of them neither ate nor drank, and yet
some of them professed that they "went away most fresh and vigorous,
their souls so filled with the sense of God."
This revival changed the whole character of northern Ireland.
Another great awakening in Ireland in 1859 had a somewhat
similar origin. By many who did not know, it was thought that this
marvelous work came without warning and preparation, but Rev. William
Gibson, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church in Ireland in 1860, in his very interesting and valuable
history of the work tells how there had been preparation for two
years. There had been constant discussion in the General Assembly of
the low estate of religion, and of the need of a revival. There had
been special sessions for prayer. Finally four young men, who became
leaders in the origin of the great work, began to meet together in an
old schoolhouse in the neighborhood of Kells. About the spring of
1858 a work of power began to manifest itself. It spread from town
to town, and from county to county. The congregations became too
large for the buildings, and the meetings were held in the open air,
oftentimes attended by many thousands of people. Many hundreds of
persons were frequently convicted of sin in a single meeting. In
some places the criminal courts and jails were closed for lack of
occupation. There were manifestations of the Holy Spirit's power of
a most remarkable character, clearly proving that the Holy Spirit is
as ready to work to-day as in apostolic days, when ministers and
Christians really believe in Him and begin to prepare the way by
prayer.
Mr. Moody's wonderful work in England and Scotland and
Ireland that afterwards spread to America had its origin on the
manward side in prayer. Mr. Moody made little impression until men
and women began to cry to God. Indeed his going to England at all
was in answer to the importunate cries to God of a bed-ridden saint.
While the spirit of prayer continued the revival abode in strength,
but in the course of time less and less was made of prayer and the
work fell off very perceptibly in power. Doubtless one of the great
secrets of the unsatisfactoriness and superficiality and unreality of
many of our modern so-called revivals, is that more dependence is put
upon man's machinery than upon God's power, sought and obtained by
earnest, persistent, believing prayer. We live in a day
characterized by the multiplication of man's machinery and the
diminution of God's power. The great cry of our day is work, work,
work, new organizations, new methods, new machinery; the great need
of our day is prayer. It was a master stroke of the devil when he
got the church so generally to lay aside this mighty weapon of
prayer. The devil is perfectly willing that the church should
multiply its organizations, and deftly contrive machinery for the
conquest of the world for Christ if it will only give up praying. He
laughs as he looks at the church to-day and says to himself:
"You can have your Sunday-schools and your Young People's
Societies, your Young Men's Christian Associations and your Women's
Christian Temperance Unions, your Institutional Churches and your
Industrial Schools, and your Boy's Brigades, your grand choirs and
your fine organs, your brilliant preachers and your revival efforts
too, if you don't bring the power of Almighty God into them by
earnest, persistent, believing, mighty prayer."
Prayer could work as marvelous results today as it ever
could, if the church would only betake itself to it.
There seem to be increasing signs that the church is
awakening to this fact. Here and there God is laying upon individual
ministers and churches a burden of prayer that they have never known
before. Less dependence is being put upon machinery and more
dependence upon God. Ministers are crying to God day and night for
power. Churches and portions of churches are meeting together in the
early morning hours and the late night hours crying to God for the
latter rain. There is every indication of the coming of a mighty and
widespread revival. There is every reason why, if a revival should
come in any country at this time, it should be more widespread in its
extent than any revival of history. There is the closest and
swiftest communication by travel, by letter, and by cable between all
parts of the world. A true fire of God kindled in America would soon
spread to the uttermost parts of the earth. The only thing needed to
bring this fire is prayer.
It is not necessary that the whole church get to praying to
begin with. Great revivals always begin first in the hearts of a few
men and women whom God arouses by His Spirit to believe in Him as a
living God, as a God who answers prayer, and upon whose heart He lays
a burden from which no rest can be found except in importunate crying
unto God.
May God use this book to arouse many others to pray that the
greatly-needed revival may come, and come speedily.
LET US PRAY
Postscript by a personal worker: Please remember that
this work was first published in 1900. Even those who would question
Dr. Torrey's discussion of scandalous sins can benefit from his
insights into prayer. And even without condemning entire art-forms
or media of communication, if we re-evaluated the CONTENT of our
entertainments and diversions, perhaps we would find ourselves
delivered from sinful stuff and pulled away from the poor and even
the good things into the BEST that God has for us, that is, close
fellowship with Himself.
May God give to me and to many of His people a true spirit of
prevailing prayer through this ministry of His servant Dr. Torrey,
even until the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Keyed into electronic media by
Clyde Price, Bible teacher
P.O.Box 667, Red Oak, GA 30272-0667 USA
CIS#76616-3452
voice phone (404)761-2327
