thoughts on revival
The following is an excerpt from an interview William T Stead gave to the London Methodist Times during the Welsh revival (1905). Reporter is in purple, Mr. Stead is in blue:
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“But is it all emotion? Is there no teaching?”
“Precious little. Do you think teaching is what people want in a revival? These people, all the people in a land like ours, are taught to death, preached to insensibility. They all know the essential truths. They know that they are not living as they ought to live, and no amount of teaching will add anything to that conviction.
“To hear some people talk you would imagine that the best way to get a sluggard out of bed is to send a tract on astronomy showing him that according to the fixed and eternal law the sun will rise at a certain hour in the morning. The sluggard does not deny it. He is entirely convinced of it. But what he knows is that it is precious cold at sunrise on a winter’s morning, and it is very snug and warm between the blankets. What the sluggard needs is to be well shaken—he needs to be snatched out of bed. ‘Roused,’ the revival calls it. And the revival is a rouser rather than a teacher.
“And that is why I think those churches that want to go on dosing (sic: dozing) in the ancient ways had better hold a special series of prayer meetings that the revival may be prevented coming their way.”
