Preaching and Preachers

'Demonstrations of tke Spirit andof thePower'read out of books to them. But there was such unction and powerattending his reading of these books that people were convicted of sinand converted. This went on for some time. He felt that he was sounworthy that he was unfit to be a preacher, so though he felt he wassomewhat dishonest in doing so, he went on reading out of the booksbut began also to interpose some of his own remarks as the thoughtscame to him, still keeping his eyes on the book. He continued like thatfor a while. Eventually he began openly to exhort the people, andgreat crowds gathered to listen to him. This man was the pioneer, ina sense, of a movement that shook the whole country and brought intobeing the denomination known as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, orpresent-day Presbyterian, Church of Wales. That is how it happened;it was the direct result of this special anointing and unction of theHoly Spirit. He would lose this at times for a while, and he wouldgrieve; then it would come back again. He went on like that until hedied in 1773. The same thing was true of many of his contemporariesand especially of the great Daniel Rowlands whose private journalswere unfortunately lost.You willfind the same thing in the biography, written by AndrewBonar, of the greatly used preacher W. H. Nettleton to whom I havereferred previously.In other words you find exactly the same type of experience in verydifferent types of men. Most of the men I have mentioned so far werevery able men. But in addition you have a man like D. L. Moody whowas not an able man but was nevertheless greatly used of God. Thiswas the direct outcome and result of an experience he had whilewalking down Wall Street in New York City one afternoon. Moodyhad been the pastor of a church in Chicago before that, and a successfulpastor. He had certainly been doing good work, but that pales intoinsignificance when you compare it with what he was afterwardsenabled to do.But let me take a final illustration. There was a great Revival in theU.S.A. in 1857 which spread over to Northern Ireland in 1858 and toWales in 1859. Revivals have generally happened simultaneously in a3 2 1