During the thrilling days of 1859-1860 often scores of urgent requests would come from different places at once to the Lord’s servants. So the revival spread through the Irish counties of Tyrone and Donegal, of Monaghan and Cavan, and later broke forth in County Armagh. By September of 1859 every part of Ulster was affected. Those that reported the work in progress were prone to expressions like, “the rushing flames,” “the spreading conflagration,” “the path of the flames,” the blaze spread in ever widening circles,” “as if driven by a mighty wind,” “like a rising tide that rolled in with ever-increasing majesty and power,” and “the tidal wave.”
A number of godly Presbyterian ministers such as the Moore brothers and Tommy Toye went to work, but confessed that the awakening was too big for “properly ordained clergymen,” and so men like Jeremiah Meneely and James M’Quilkin became prominent workers. Such “irregular” activities during the revival battered down the distinction between clergy and laity in the North of Ireland, freeing common Christians to enjoy priestly privileges and to use their spiritual gifts.
The preachers had difficulty getting congregations to go home after meetings that lasted several hours, and preachers everywhere sank under the exhaustion of their happy labors. Samuel Moore reported, “The open-air services, whether in town or country, on any evening of the week are attended by thousands; and these services, though so numerous, are often not far distant from each other. Our congregational weekly prayer meeting was attended by some fifty persons ordinarily. During the past month, whether held four times or seven times a week, it was attended by more than twenty times that number. The difficulty used to be to get the people into the church, but the difficulty now is to get them out of it. One night and morning we had three services. The first of these was three hours and a half.” Moore went on to tell how he tried to dismiss a congregation three times but could not get them to leave.
As converts from Connor traversed the district of Ahoghill, prayer meetings sprang up. At the opening of a new church building the congregation had to be dismissed, becaise of feari that the balconies would give way. This was a lit match to the kindling. The converts from Connor stood outside in the chill downpour and preached. Thousands stood with them to listen and hundreds among them were seen kneeling in the mud of the streets.
It was at Ahoghill that people began to fall prostrate under the conviction of sin. This was a topic that was debated across the Christian world. In Switzerland, doctors gave lectures on the manifestations of the 1859-60 revival. The learned Merle D’Aubigne wrote about these occurrences of burdened sinners who suddenly fell to the ground as the Word of God was preached, and John Darby urged the evangelists to discourage the crowds from excesses and disorder. It is important to compare what happened in this awakening with what we find in Scripture. When God manifested Himself, people fell prostrate before Him, as in the case of Moses, Joshua, David, Peter, Paul, and John.
This awe and reverence for God is quite different from the performance that charlatans call being “slain in the Spirit,” or the blasphemous “Toronto Blessing” in which a power comes over a crowd and men and women fall in uncontrollable laughter. Our Lord told us, “Woe unto you that laugh now” and “Blessed are they that mourn.” During the 1859-60 revival the Word of God was often preached by the un- educated and the newly converted, but still the Word was preached. There was doctrinal content and serious conviction of sin attending the meetings. All of which tells us that those who cite the phenomena of this awakening in order to give credence to spectacles of unmanageable silliness are simply being dishonest with the facts of history. How can the irreverence of some modern evangelicalism be compared to the solemn happenings of this revival? Consider the meetings for praise, prayer, and Bible study that were held every night through the district of Ahoghill (some were held at midday in the busiest season). Drunkards and prostitutes as well as the respectable were converted. Roman Catholics as well as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists were converted. In Ahoghill a blaspheming 18-year-old was rebuked. As the sober reproof came out of the preacher’s mouth, the young mocker collapsed. As he regained consciousness, he was praying, “Lord, save me; I perish.” Would that we were presently seeing this sort of thing.
As a convert from Connor spoke to a vast field meeting in the nearby Grange district, “the people fell before him on the ground like the yellow grain before the scythe.” The Christian leaders were astounded and asked for a time-out to discuss what they should do. As they planned their response and laid out their methods of operation, the people were streaming into the nearest church building. When these leaders returned, they found the building overflowing with singing and prayer.
At the moment of their arrival, a Roman Catholic who had just been saved stood up in the pulpit to testify for Christ. The meeting continued all night. At daybreak the people were persuaded to go home, but that did not mean they went home to rest. Throughout this town a solemn awe came over the lost. On the next night no one seemed to sleep either. Muffled cries, groans, and prayers were audible as people passed down the streets. In almost every house there was evidence of the power of the gospel. Business stood still except the supreme business of getting right with God or helping others to do so.
One observer, unable to gain access to a meeting, found in the vestry “a scene impossible to forget, and equally impossible to describe. An old man, a boy, and a young man were in various stages of conviction. “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” he heard the young man say, “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, I have despised His holy Name, and how shall I approach Him? Oh, my sins, my sins! Oh, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”‘
A visiting Christian worker reported, “Drunkenness has altogether disappeared; public houses have been closed every week; in some districts such a thing as an oath or a curse was not to be heard. Families have been reconciled, and people are living at peace with one another, taking part in the exercises of public and private worship.” Infamous characters and public nuisances were gloriously converted. “So mightily grew the Word of the Lord and prevailed.”
In 1859, John Darby visited Coleraine, and said that souls were being saved in a way similar to the awakening under John Wesley’s preaching a hundred years previously.
The work in Coleraine commenced with a great open-air meeting. The converts from Ballymoney gave melting appeals which compensated for any lack of learning. “Their liquid eyes spoke eloquently of the love which their hearts bore to Christ.” As prayer was offered, most of the crowd went down on its knees, and nine people had to be carried from the ground. Others followed as the meeting proceeded until scores were in deep distress in every corner of the meeting place. Some soul winners never got to bed that night. The weekly Coleraine Chronicle went to press late because three on the staff were so incapacitated. On their return the owners gave permission for a prayer meeting to be held, with time given for new converts to testify. The Chronicle said, “The Holy Spirit has come with power at most unexpected times, in unlooked for places, and to individuals who seemed farthest from grace and godliness.”
A medical doctor, James Carson, saw a teenager standing on a stone, preaching to a crowd in Coleraine, saying, “Some people call it the work of the devil. All I can say to this is, that up to last week I have been serving the devil as well as I could, and I am sure he was well pleased with my service; but if he is employing me now, he is so far changed that I would not know him to be the same man.” Carson wrote, “A scene like the one which took place on the night in which the new Town Hall in Coleraine was first filled with these cases, has, perhaps never been equalled in the world. It was so like the day of judgment, when sinners would be calling on the mountains and the rocks to hide them from the storm of God’s wrath, that it struck terror to the heart of the most hardened and obdurate sinner. The whole town was in a state of alarm, business was forgotten, and the revival was the only subject of conversation. A French invasion could not have produced so great a panic.”
At a school in Coleraine, boys and girls were on their knees, praying for mercy. People passing by came to investigate, and soon the place was filled with sinners seeking God. Parents came to find their children, and God found them. That school day lengthened to 11 p.m.
A united prayer meeting in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast on June 29 held a conservative estimate of 25,000 in attendance. The meeting was held to answer questions and encourage prayer for the progress of the revival. Brownlow North spoke. After four hours, the congregation broke up into smaller gatherings of 500-1,000. The October race course meeting attracted only 500 instead of the usual 10,000, and Messrs. Mackenzie’s distillery, which was capable of producing 1,200,000 gallons of whisky annually was put up for auction. Business was so bad that the owners decided it had to be sold or dismantled. When C. H. Mackintosh was in Belfast, a man told him, “There is a wonderful change come over this town, sir. Where there used to be nothing but drinking and swearing and fighting, there are prayer meetings now, and as you go along the street on an evening, you hear psalm singing everywhere.” After checking this report by more critical observers, Mackintosh said, “The police told us substantially the same thing.”
This awakening was birthed in prayer meetings and nursed as the saints prayed. At Ahoghill, “the open field, the country kitchen, the back of the dyke–every place became hallowed ground, and services would have gone on all night if the people had not been dismissed.” Besides hearing the gospel in densely packed auditoriums night after night, phenomenal ingatherings of souls happened at hastily arranged open-air meetings. Helped along by a dry summer, there were crowds so immense that they could not be compressed into any auditoriums. Much of the work of awakening also went on in informal cottage meetings for praise, prayer, and exhortation from the Word of God. And those doing the work of exhortation went to the verge of collapse. One preacher never laid down to sleep for a week.
The work in Ulster would spread into the vicinity of Dublin in the south, into Scotland, and England. Among those engaged in this work whose names we might recognize: F. C. Bland, Lord Congleton, H. Grattan Guiness, John Hambleton, T. Shuldham Henry, R. C. Mahoney, Henry Moorhouse, John Morley, Brownlow North, Richard B. Owens, and J. Denham Smith. A striking feature was that no one Christian was overly conspicuous in this work.
C. H. Mackintosh answered critics of the revival, saying, “The writer of these lines has, during the last two months, visited almost all the principal scenes of this most interesting movement in the province of Ulster. He has done this with a double object, namely, first to judge for himself; and, secondly, to help, so far as the Lord might enable him, by ministering the Word to exercised souls. The result of all that he has seen and heard, is a deep and settled conviction that the work is of God. That Satan should seek to mar such a work, is only what might be expected. Wherever the Holy Ghost has been specially manifesting His precious operations, there the enemy is sure to intrude himself, in order to soil and tarnish what he cannot prevent.” Mackintosh said the revival in Northern Ireland was “as manifestly of God, so far as it goes, as was the work at Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost.”
Materials for this article were taken from:
The Witness, Dec. 1959
J. G. Hutchinson, Sowers, Reapers, Builders, Gospel Tract Publ.
C. H. Macintosh, Things New & Old, vols. 2-4
S. J. Moore, The Great Revival in Ireland 1859, Plantation Press
Ian Paisley, The “Fifty Nine” Revival, Nelson & Knox
John Weir, Heaven Came Down: The 1859 Revival, Ambassador Productions