Preaching and Preachers

I Demonstrations of the Spirit andof the Power'preacher. He had had to escape to Northern Ireland on account ofpersecution, and while there had had some experiences of a Revival,But his great day came in 1630. There was a Communion season at aplace called Kirk 0' Shotts, just off the road between Glasgow andEdinburgh. These Communion seasons would last many days andwere characterised by much preaching by several visiting preachers.On this particular occasion they had all felt from the beginning rightthrough to the Sunday evening that there was something unusual.So the brethren decided to have an additional preaching service onthe Monday, and .they asked John Livingstone to preach. NowLivingstone was a very modest and humble and godly man, and so wasfearful of the great responsibility of preaching on such an occasion. Sohe spent most of the night struggling in prayer. He went out into thecountryside and there continued praying. Many of the people werepraying also. But he was in a great agony of soul, and he could find nopeace until in the early hours of Monday morning God gave him amessage and at the same time gave him an assurance also that hispreaching would be attended with great power. So John Livingstonepreached on that famous Monday morning, and as the result of thatone sermon 500people were added to the churches in that locality. Itwas a tremendous day, an overwhelming experience of the outpouringof the Spirit of God upon.an assembled congregation. The remainderof his life's story is equally significant and important. JohnLivingstone lived many years after that but he never had such anexperience again. He always looked back to it, and he always longedfor it; but it was actually never repeated in his experience.Similar spiritual experiences are described in the lives of preachersin the U.S.A. I derived great benefit a few years back from readingthe Journals of Cotton Mather, the author of Magnalia ChristiAmericana. Those journals, and his history of religion in America,have many illustrations of the power of the Holy Spirit. There isnothing more important for preaching, as I have said, than the readingof Church history and biographies. There are remarkable descriptionsin Cotton Mather's own Journal of these 'visitations' as he would call3 17