These are biographies that were in the files of E.F. & L. Harvey. They have been gleaned over many years and from various sources. The language is often antiquated but the facts speak for themselves.

Abbott, Benjamin

By David Freymiller

God’s minute man – Benjamin Abbott

It was midnight in the sleeping city of Philadelphia.  At one of the city pumps stood a youth, washing off the blood with which he had been begrimed in a recent fight.  Meanwhile he listened intently for the possible approach of the night watchman.

It was too late for this lad, the apprentice of a respectable hatter, to go to the merchant’s home.  So, putting on his torn coat and throwing his wet shirt over his arm, he strode off to the Quaker burial ground and lay down to rest between two graves.

Who was the boy sleeping in this strange place?  Benjamin Abbott—fighter, swearer, gambler and drinker.

Benjamin was not an ideal apprentice.  Before his time was up, he left his employer and turned to farming with his brother.  When he came of age, he rented a farm, moved to it with his wife and settled down to earn a living.

In those days anyone who did not attend religious services was peculiarly branded as a sinner.  Benjamin Abbott had no desire to be considered in this light; so, tiresome as the long sessions were, he often went to church.

The Spirit of God warned him of his peril, even though he never had heard the clear preaching of the Gospel and knew nothing of the necessity for repentance and conversion.  One night he had dreams of Heaven and Hell which impressed him greatly.  But, as they were not followed by any great calamity, his anxiety soon wore off and he went back to his old careless ways.

Years passed by.  A Methodist preacher opened revival meetings ten or twelve miles away and, through curiosity, Mrs. Abbott went to hear him.  She persuaded Benjamin to accompany her the next time.

He was so busy watching the congregation, many of whom were in tears, that he did not know what the sermon was about.  At its close, however, some strange words caught his ear.

“It may be that some of you think there is neither God nor devil, Heaven nor Hell; only a guilty conscience.  And indeed, my friends, that is bad enough.  But I assure you that there is both Heaven and Hell, God and devil.”

Abbot rode rapidly homeward—his thoughts on Heaven and Hell as he had seen them in his dream seven years before.

The evangelist came to preach at a place nearer the Abbott farm.  Benjamin, sitting under the sound of the Gospel, wept and cried aloud for mercy.

As he hurried home to go alone and pray, a realization of the frequency with which the Holy Spirit had striven in the past swept over him.  Satan, quick to see his advantage, whispered, “Your day of grace is over now.  Pray on, cry on; it is all of no use; I shall have you at last.”

Abbott had been brought up to believe in the doctrine of predestination, and the deceiver’s arrow sank deep.

A few days later he was driving through a dark woods in a despairing mood.  Suddenly the thought struck him that, as he was lost, he might as well hang himself and experience the worst of it at once.  Dismounting from the wagon, he looked for a tree strong enough to bear his weight.

Then he seemed to hear a voice saying, “This torment is nothing to Hell.”  He hastily clambered up into his wagon, drove home and spent the night alone, sighing, weeping and dreaming of torments to come.

The next morning he began to mow a field of grass.  But immediately he was taken with a fainting spell.  He left his mowing and went to the house, in great distress of soul.

That afternoon he, with his wife and small son, attended a Methodist meeting.  The preacher’s words were attended with such power that Abbott trembled as he listened.  He determined to leave, but his strength had so far failed him that he was unable to put his son down from his knee and rise to his feet.

On the following Sunday he again attended church.  That night he awoke with a consciousness of the Lord Jesus standing near him and saying, “I died for you.”  He looked to God in faith and heard the assuring words whispered in his soul, “I freely forgive thee for what Christ hath done.”

Day was just breaking, but he could not keep the good news to himself.  Calling the whole family up, he read the Bible aloud and exhorted them to the best of his ability.

Like many young Christians, Abbot supposed that his new-found rapture never would be interrupted.  So he was astonished when powerful temptations assailed his soul.  The devil told him he had grieved the Spirit and God had left him.

“If the Spirit has deserted you, you may as well go back to your old ways,” suggested Satan.

The tempter had overstepped. Abbott’s whole soul recoiled at the very thought, and he cried aloud, “No!  No!  I love my Jesus.  I never will go back to my old ways.  No, not for a thousand worlds.”

That night he prayed until a sense of God’s presence returned to him.  This experience taught him the valuable lesson that, though feelings may change and temptations may distress, God is “the same yesterday, and to day and for ever.”

One Saturday night Abbott awoke and told his wife, “I have just dreamed that the minister will disappoint us tomorrow, and that it is the will of the Lord for me to preach in his place.”

Sure enough, the next day the preacher failed to appear.  The people decided to sing and pray together before dispersing.  Abbott felt that God had placed right in front of him a work to be done.  But the cross was heavy, and he felt unable to take it up.

At once a cloud enveloped his soul, and he went home gloomy and depressed.  He could not rest until he had covenanted that, if God would only show His face again, he would preach any time, anywhere.

Opportunities soon came; he had invitations to preach in a number of places and he accepted them.

While riding out one day to preach at a place called Deerfield, he was met by a man who said, “Go back, go back, Mr. Abbott.  Deerfield is no place for you today.”

“I came to preach,” returned Abbott calmly.

“You must ride right home,” insisted the other.  “There is a mob out and they are ready to tar and feather you if you try to preach.”

“Hum,” said Mr. Abbott to himself, “that means my best coat spoiled and my hair all matted with tar.  None so pleasant, that!”

Instantly a voice whispered in his soul, “The servant is not greater than his Lord.”

Straightening himself in the saddle, he looked the man in the eye and declared, “I’m going to preach if I die for it.”

Arriving at his appointment, he pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered, gave out a hymn and started singing.  He went through four lines alone, not a person joined him.

The devil came near, and Abbott began to tremble.  He had but one remedy for every difficulty and he applied it now.

“Let us pray,” he said.  And as he knelt and lifted up his voice in prayer, the fear of man entirely left him.

He rose from his knees and began to preach.  And before the sermon was half finished, many were in tears.  The mob leader himself declared that he had not heard such preaching in many a day.

On his way home he met a godly preacher.

“Stop right here,” exclaimed Abbott.  “I must tell you what God has done for me.”  And he related what had just happened.

“It is nothing to what God will do for you,” replied the preacher.  “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.”

That very day Abbott began to hunger and thirst for full salvation.

Some time later a minister, calling at his home, prayed at family worship, “O God, come and sanctify us soul and body.”

“Come, Lord,” Abbott cried out after him.  “Come and sanctify me, soul and body.”

The Holy Ghost fell upon him, and for half an hour he lay as one in a trance.  He was conscious only that the fire from Heaven had descended on his soul.

One evening he sat at the supper table, fingering a letter that had just arrived.  It contained a request for him to preach at New Mills—a town sixty miles away.  At that period it took several days to make a journey of this length.

As soon as Abbott felt sure that it was the Lord’s will for him to go, he saddled his best horse and rode off.  On the way he stopped to preach every time he had opportunity—and opportunity, for him, held wide meaning.

During his first night out his horse was stolen, and he had to return home for another.  He started out again and, arriving at a certain village, asked the only man in sight if there was any preaching of religion in that place.

“If you will go around to the houses and give notice, I will preach,” offered the stranger.

“They want no preaching here,” the man answered.

Immediately Abbott started telling what God had done for him.  Soon the man was joined by his wife and two young women.

As the stranger continued to talk, one of the girls burst out crying.  Abbot started to pray, and the other girl began to weep.

Soon the preacher had to leave them and go on his way.  At the last service which he held on his route, hundreds flocked to hear him, and sixteen persons were converted.  As he rode homeward, his heart was singing for joy.

One day, while on a preaching tour, he lost his way.  Pulling up his horse before a house by the wayside, he called to a man standing at the door and asked how to reach the village to which he wished to go.

“I’m off for that place right away,” was the answer.  “A Methodist preacher is to be there today, and our minister is going over to trap him in his talk.  Wait a minute; a friend of mine is coming along, and we’ll ride with you.”

The friend, dressed in ordinary homespun, turned out to be a constable.  The men did not suspect that they were escorting the Methodist rebel to his appointment.

The conversation turned upon the preacher in question.

“The old villain!” shouted the constable, with oaths.  “I’ll lose the right arm from my body if I don’t land him in jail this very day.”

The community was thoroughly aroused.  When the three men came in sight of the meeting place, they saw no less than two hundred horses hitched to the posts and fences.

The preacher tied his horse with the others and, slipping into the woods alone, covenanted with God upon his knees to be faithful, whether it brought him to jail or to death.  Then he strode up boldly to the house where the meeting was to be held.

“Come in here,” said the man of the house, hastily throwing open the door of a small room.  “Mr. Abbot, I just want to warn you.  You’re in a Presbyterian settlement, and the safest thing you can do is to preach up for war.  Now, take that from me.”  This was during the Revolution, when war sentiment ran high.

“My friend,” was the calm reply, “I shall preach just as the Lord directs me.”

His host then took him out to the people.  Two or three feet from the preacher stood the constable, who started and turned pale at the sight of the man whom he had denounced in his own hearing.

Mr. Abbott cheerfully gave out a hymn.  He sang four lines by himself, but it was dreary work.  He could pray alone better than sing a solo, so he went to his knees.

By the time he had finished his sermon, the people were melted into penitence and prayer.  No opposition was offered when he announced another meeting to be held in the village two weeks later.

This good man loved his work and pursued it steadfastly, even after old age overtook him.  When his wife died, he auctioned off his household goods and set out to ride circuit.

On a cold February day in 1795 he was taken with violent ague and fever.  He recovered in a measure from this attack.

Attending a funeral one day, he gave his last exhortation to a man who had been a useful worker for God but had become a backslider.  He was so weakened by the effort that he had to be helped home to bed.

The man opened his heart to the pleadings of Mr. Abbott and turned back to God—but not until the saint, exclaiming, “Glory, glory, glory!” had triumphantly swept through the gates into the Eternal City.—Retold.

More odd bits about Benjamin Abbott

. . . “Next day we went to our appointment, where the congregation was chiefly composed of Germans and a well-behaved people.  Here the Lord wrought wonders.  Divers fell to the floor, and several found the peace of God.

“I lost both the power of my body and use of my speech and cried out in a strange manner.  The people also cried aloud.  I thought I should frighten them, being in a strange country and among a people of a strange language.  But, glory to God, it had a contrary effect, for they continued all night in prayer.

“Next morning I set out with about twenty others for my appointment, where we found a large congregation.  When I came to my application, the power of the Lord came in such a manner that the people fell all about the house, and their cries might be heard afar off.

This alarmed the wicked, who sprang for the doors in such haste that they fell one over another in heaps.  The cry of mourners was so great, I thought to give out a hymn to drown the noise.  I desired one of our English friends to raise it, but as soon as he began to sing, the power of the Lord struck him and he pitched under the table and there lay like a dead man.

“I gave it out again and asked another to raise it.  As soon as he attempted, he fell also.  I then made the third attempt, and the power of God came upon me in such a manner that I cried out and was amazed.  I then saw that I was fighting against God and did not attempt to sing again.
Mr. Boehm, the owner of the house and a preacher among the Germans, cried out, ‘I never saw God in this way before.’
“I replied, ‘This is a Pentecost, Father.’
“‘Yes, to be sure,’ said he, clapping his hands; ‘a Pentecost, to be sure!’
“Prayer was all through the house, upstairs and down.  I desired Mr. Boehm to go to prayer.  He did so, and five or six of us did the same.
“A watch-night service had been appointed for that evening.  Seeing no prospect of this meeting being over, although it had begun at eleven o’clock, I told Mr. Boehm that we had best quietly withdraw from the meetinghouse.
“When we had got out of the door, a young man came out and laid hold on the fence to support himself from falling and cried amain for God to have mercy on him.
“‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Boehm, ‘I never saw God in this way before.’
“We exhorted  him to look to God and not to give up the struggle, and God would bless him before he left the place.  I took the old gentleman by the arm, and we walked quietly to the house to get some dinner.
“About five o’clock someone came from the preaching house requesting that I would go there immediately, for there was a person dying.  We went without delay.  I went upstairs, and there lay several about the floor, some crying for mercy and others praising God.
“I then went into the preaching room, and there they lay about the floor in like manner.  I then went to see the person said to be dying; she lay gasping.  I kneeled down to pray, but it was instantly given me that God had converted her soul.  Therefore, instead of praying for deliverance, I gave God thanks that He had delivered her.  Immediately she arose and praised God for what He had done for her soul.
“We set out, with about forty friends, to the next appointment.  The people being gathered, after singing and prayer I began to preach.
“God laid to His helping hand; many cried aloud for mercy.  One young man, being powerfully wrought upon, retired upstairs and there thumped about the floor, so that Mr. Boehm was afraid he would be injured in body. ‘To be sure,’ said he, ‘I never saw God in this way before.’
“I told him that there was no danger; he was in the hands of a merciful God.  A few minutes after, attempting to come downstairs, he fell from the top to the bottom and hallooed aloud, ‘The devil is in the chamber!  The devil is in the chamber!’  This cry greatly alarmed all the people.
“It brought a damp over my spirits, for I thought if I had raised the devil, I might as well go home again.  However, after a little space I bade some of the dear people to go upstairs and see if the devil was there.  Several went up to see what the matter was, and here they found a man rolling, groaning and crying to God for mercy.  They returned and told us how matters stood.
“Next day at my appointment we had a crowded house, and the Lord laid to His helping hand.  Divers fell to the floor, and several cried aloud for mercy.  After preaching, an old Presbyterian gentleman attacked me and told me it was all the work of the devil; that God was a God of order, and this was perfect confusion.
“‘Well,’ said I, ‘if this be the work of the devil, the people (many of whom then lay on the floor as dead men), when they come to, will curse and swear and rage like devils.  But if it be of God, their notes will be changed.’
“Soon after, one of them came to, and he began to praise God with a loud voice; and soon another, and so on, until divers of them bore testimony for Jesus.
“‘Hark!  Hark!’ said I to my old opponent.  ‘Brother, do you hear them?  This is not the language of Hell but the language of Canaan.’
“I then appointed prayer meeting at a friend’s house in the neighborhood.  After the people had gathered, I saw my old Presbyterian opponent among them.  I gave out a hymn, and brother S── went to prayer, and after him myself.
“I had spoken but a few words before Brother S── fell to the floor, and soon after him every soul in the house except myself, my opponent and two others.
“I arose and gave an exhortation, and the two men fell.  Then every soul in the house was down, except myself and my opponent.  He began immediately to dispute the point, telling me it was all delusion and the work of the devil.  I told him to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.
“As the people came to, they all praised God.  There was not one soul but what professed either to have received justification or sanctification; eight of them professed the latter.
“‘Hark!’ I said.  ‘Is this the language of Hell?  Here your eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord.’
“Time called us away to our next appointment, which was about seven miles distant.  Here we met with my old Presbyterian opponent again.  On seeing him I was sorry, for I concluded that we should have some disputing again.  I fixed my eyes on him and cried mightily to God that if one man fell that day, it might be he.
“As I was preaching, I heard several cry out, ‘Water!  Water!  The man is fainting!’  I looked round and saw it was my opponent, trembling like Belshazzar.  I told them to let him alone and look to themselves, for it was the power of God that had arrested him.  They let him go, and down he fell on the floor, struggling for a while, and then lay as one dead.
“When I had finished my discourse and dismissed the people in order to meet the class, I desired some of our friends to carry him out, as he was in our way.  They did so and laid him on a bed in a back room.
“After class I went in to see my opponent; he had just come to and was sitting on the bed.  Now, thought I, is this the work of the devil or not?  But I said nothing to him, nor he to me.
“Next morning we went to our appointment, where we had a large congregation.  Looking round, I saw my old Presbyterian friend again.  This was nine miles distant from my former appointment.
“I felt great freedom in speaking.  A woman began to shake in a powerful manner, and three or four cried out, ‘Water!  Water!’  I told them it was the power of God that had fallen on her, so they let her go, and down she fell on the floor.  I bade them to look to themselves and went on with my discourse.  Some wept, some sighed and some groaned.
“When I dismissed the people, not one offered to go.  I then desired someone to speak to them, and Brother C── arose and said, ‘You stand amazed at the power of God, and well you may,’ and gave a pointed exhortation.
“By this time I had gathered a little strength and gave them an exhortation.  They wept all through the house.  I then said, ‘For God’s sake, if any can speak for God, say on; for I can speak no more.’
“Who should arise but my old Presbyterian opponent!  He began with informing the people, that he was not one of this sect; that he had been with me four days and that he never had seen the power of God in this way before.
“He gave a warm exhortation for about three quarters of an hour.  Then I dismissed the people.”
***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***
After laboring as a local preacher for upward of sixteen years, this “son of thunder” felt it his duty to join the traveling connection.  This he did at the conference held in Trenton, New Jersey, in April 1789.  He was appointed to Duchess circuit, in the state of New York.
The circuit was new, and he found but a few converted souls on it.  He, however, began to preach the doctrine of Bible holiness.  The Lord graciously owned His Word and rendered his labors a blessing to the people.
In 1790 Mr. Abbott was ordained a deacon and in 1793 was admitted to the office of an elder.  He labored in his holy vocation until the year 1795 when, on account of ill health, he was obliged to retire from the itinerant field.
Mr. Abbott’s last appointment was Cevil circuit.  On February 3, 1795, he was seized with a violent ague, which was followed by scorching fever and pain in his side.  The doctor pronounced his case hopeless and gave him up as a dead man.  However, he revived and was able to walk and ride out, and even to attend church and visit his friends.  He spent the winter of 1795-96 in Philadelphia.
About the first of June Mr. Abbott attended a funeral at which the officiating clergyman remarked, “Death is the king of terrors, and he makes cowards of us all.”
After the sermon Mr. Abbott sought out the minister and expressed a contrary opinion.  “Perfect love casteth out fear,” said he.  “For my part, I can call God to witness that death is no terror to me!  I am ready to meet my God, if it were now!”
The last sentence which he intelligently articulated was, “Glory to God!  I see Heaven sweetly opened before me!”  He died in Salem, New Jersey, August 14, 1796, in the sixty-fifth year of his age and the twenty-third of his ministry.  He was buried, according to his oft-repeated desire, in the Methodist burial ground in Salem.
Thus lived and died Benjamin Abbott, a man who had wasted forty years of his life in sin and yet became a monument to the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  The influence which he exerted over the minds of a congregation was truly wonderful, and the more so in view of his want of education.  The great secret of his success may be traced to his depth of piety; for, being one of those persons whom the Lord had forgiven much, he felt it his duty to love much in return.

More odd bits about Benjamin Abbott

A minister came that way preaching, and at family prayer in the Abbott household he prayed, “O God, come and sanctify us, soul and body!”  The farmer (Abbott) cried out after him in faith, “Come, Lord, come and sanctify me, soul and body!”

The moment his faith went out to God the Holy Spirit fell upon him, prostrating him to the floor, and depriving him of every power and sense but the consciousness of God.

He arose to see a new world—a softer blue above his head, sweeter green beneath his feet; he heard new tones of melody and richness in the songs of the birds, while the baptism of love within his soul was so full and compelling that love seemed to well up within him for every creature God had made.  This love divine was to mellow his fiery message to men. . . .

It was heavily laid upon him to make a special point of preaching entire sanctification.—Unknown.

“Not worth while,” said a brother minister to whom he confided his intention, “’tis not worth while; they will not understand.”

One supreme lesson Father Abbott had learned, however—when God bade him do a thing he never dreamed of dallying with it.  Obedience was the sole thought which then entered his mind.  Accordingly, at his next appointment, where he found six believers together, he preached to them holiness by faith in Jesus.  Two out of the six remained behind to say that if there were such a blessing as deliverance from inbred sin they would seek it until they found it.—Unknown.

More odd bits about Benjamin Abbott

A New Jersey farmer, Benjamin Abbott, who was transformed form a gambling, swearing sinner to a monument of the grace of God, was powerfully convicted under the preaching of a Methodist itinerant. Upon hearing the truth set forth he trembled and cried for mercy, while tears flowed in abundance. He sought relief in his field at work, but his depressed heart beat so loud that he could hear the beats. On passing through a lonely woods one night he was tempted to commit suicide, but for fear of Hell he dashed on toward home, with his hair raising on his head, because he thought Satan was close behind him.

In a dream, seeing Christ with arms extended, and seeming to say, “I died for you,” his load of sin lifted, the Scriptures were opened to his understanding, and he found the joy inexpressible.

The next day, because of his exhorting his neighbors, the report spread abroad that Abbott was raving made. This tempted him to doubt, but after praying he determined he would not doubt though all the devils in Hell were arrayed against him. This new life became his relish. Next to his conversion his happiest day was the day when his wife met him telling him she had received salvation. A man who had heard Abbott swear, now had the privilege of hearing him preach. Using his wagon for a pulpit he preached to thousands, many of whom became monuments of the grace of God.–Thomas C. Paull.

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George D. Watson

 By G. D. Watson

George D. Watson
Apostle to the Sanctified

George D. Watson seems to have been a man who stretched his soul to capacity in order to explore the limitless continent of Grace.  For that reason he deplored the complacency of Christians, satiated with temporal blessings, who, after a crisis experience, remained stunted and stagnant.  He constantly urged on all who would listen to or read his messages, that they might comprehend the exceeding greatness of God’s power to “usward who believe.”


This faithful preacher by word and pen was indeed an Apostle to the Sanctified.  How many Christians will call him blessed in the Great Beyond because he answered their most poignant questions at critical points in their experience!  He is one of the few who instructs the man or woman who, trusting God for purity and victory, sees much in character that requires attention if God’s greatest glory is to be achieved.  He was convinced that many have dealt with the subject of Christian holiness from man’s side—how to obtain it, what to expect from it, etc.—but scarcely any have shown God’s side.  Few have begun to grasp our Father’s boundless provision, His great desire, His patient pursuit, and His faithful application of providence that we might mature and be pleasing in His sight.

George D. Watson was born in Virginia in 1845.  His parents and grandparents were Methodists.  This, in those days, was a precious heritage.  Family prayer, Sunday School, and many other godly influences were thrown around him.  Frequently a series of special services would be held in his district, but George declared that he was the black sheep of the flock—passionate and self-willed, the worst boy of the whole six in his family.  Of the first operations of God on his heart, he tells us:

My earliest convictions were when I was five or six years old.  One night, father and mother went to church and left us children alone, the eldest being twelve or thirteen years of age.  We sang “Rock of Ages,” and all got under conviction.  I prayed and cried, but did not know what ailed me.  At that early age I was called to preach.  When I was twelve or thirteen, I sought religion.  But my will was not thoroughly broken down.

When the American Civil War broke out, George, at the age of eighteen, joined the Confederate (Southern) Army.  It was while in service that the great turning point of his life took place.  One night during a card game, suddenly, to the surprise of all, he threw down his pack and exclaimed as if alarmed by his own thoughts, “Boys, this is my last game.”  He made his way to a Gospel meeting that was being held for the soldiers and ended up kneeling beside a pine log, calling on God to forgive his sins for Christ’s sake.  He arose transformed.

George Watson soon had ample opportunity to test the reality of the change that had come to him.  His holding of prayer-meetings and his wholehearted service for his new Master excited the enmity of godless mates, some of whom actually knocked the Bible out of his hand.  The realization dawned that, happy though he was with his new-found joy, there was something inside that was capable of being ruffled by such treatment.  Oh, if there had only been some mature Christian available! Such a one, knowing the secret of full redemption, could have shown him the provisions of Calvary to deal with that fallen nature which arose to cause trouble in spite of all his efforts and tears.  How much suffering and waste of time he would have been saved!

Though in poor health after the war, he felt called to preach the Gospel and, after a course at a Biblical Institute at Concord, New Hampshire, he joined the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Church in 1868.  All the time he was seeking for inward heart victory.

The young minister attended a Camp Meeting at Oakington in 1869, and there heard his first sermon on entire sanctification which must have deeply affected him, for he knelt and sought the experience publicly.  He was much influenced by the godly Alfred Cookman, then a member of the same conference.  Such an inward peace was his that he called it “perfect love” and went home to testify to having received the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Ridicule came from the very man who should have been the chief exponent of that wonderful provision for sinful nature.  This presiding elder was joined by others in his opposition of George  who yielded to the pressure and became slack and even cowardly in witnessing to this inner victory.  Though never preaching against the doctrine, he utterly failed to defend it.  Great personal loss was the result!  We are told that he “descended from a restful Christianity to a toilsome Christianity” and lapsed into his old tobacco habit.

Occasionally, the young preacher would enjoy seasons of communion with God.  Preaching was a delight; he seemed to enjoy the excitement of special campaigns and his zeal for his church was unflagging.  Studying was a pleasure and he often felt thrilled with “the harmony and grandeur of Bible truth.”  Philosophy had its attraction also, and these years were a mixture of a reaching out for more of God on the one hand, and an indulgence in the intellectual handling of Scriptural truths on the other.  His labors appeared at times to be not without a measure of success.  But what was that when a deep hunger still gnawed at his heart?

I was having a terrible struggle with myself.  I felt my whole life to be one unending will-struggle.  I suffered more than tongue can tell from melancholy.  An unkind or unfavorable criticism, or an apparent neglect, would often hurl my spirit into deepest gloom.  I grew tired of living in the public eye, tired of routine work, but most tired of myself.  My wife was sick, and I could not bear sickness.  I had a great deal of trouble that others did not see was trouble, and yet it sorely tried me.
In October, 1876, I began to seek holiness again.  I was now filled with all sorts of notions.  I said, “I will grow into it.”  Then I took up the repression theory, then the Zinzendorf theory.  I was like a sailor, first setting his sails one way, then another.
One cannot always tell by the way a man talks, what he thinks.  Three weeks before I was sanctified, I said in a preachers’ meeting, “When God converts a soul, He makes it as pure as it ever will be.”  And at the same time I was seeking holiness!

A local preacher encouraged him to have some evangelists from Cincinnati come for a three-day conference on the Sanctified Life.  Dr. Watson responded willingly and was greatly moved the first night.  But the next day he got angry several times in the home.  Doubtless the Holy Spirit was lovingly allowing him to see his very great need.  His wife added fuel to the flame of desire, by saying she was ashamed of him, remarking, “I am afraid you have not a bit of religion, and you preaching as you do.”  He was deeply ashamed, and alternated between self-defense and crying to the Lord for help.  He can best relate his experience at this time:

But that Friday night I was teachable as I lay on the edge of the bed, with my hand under my cheek and my face toward the door, so as not to disturb anyone.
Then the Lord began to talk to me.  “Will you receive it?”  “Yes, Lord.”  “Will you consent for Me to make your family sick, your wife sick?”  “Yes, Lord; give me the blessing.”  “Will you let Me take your health in My hand?”  “Yes, Lord.  Any time You want me to die, I will consent to go.”  “Will you consent to leave those large appointments you have been having?  Will you consent to take a poor appointment for Me?”  “Yes, Lord, I will take the poorest appointment in Indiana if it is Thy will.” (And there were some poor ones.)
“Will you give up your tobacco that your body may be My temple?”  I had tried several times to give it up but would go back to it again.  I said, “Yes, Lord, I will give it up.  I will do anything.  Give me the blessing.”  When I got through, I dropped to sleep.  I do not know how it was but, when I awoke next morning, I found the appetite for tobacco was gone.  I never have taken back the consecration.
The following Monday, December 4, at noon, I went into my study and began reading the Scriptures with the first chapter of First Peter:  “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. . . . Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit.”  I stopped.  “There,” said I, “that is sanctification.”  “Whom having not seen, ye love.”  “I do love Thee, and I know Thou lovest me.”  “In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”  As I uttered these words, God let loose a Niagara of salvation in my soul.  I walked back and forth shouting, “Glory to God!”  After a time that subsided into a calm.

Dr. Watson never looked back.  But he was a very honest man, and God persistently and lovingly, as he says in one of his books, was using every means to conform him more and more to the image of Jesus Christ.  Now, inwardly satisfied that the inner foe was dealt with by the Cross, he went all out to see others come into the same blessed experience of full salvation.
The task was far from easy for the church of his next appointment was ultra-worldly.  The Lord did save a few, and other Christians experienced a deeper fellowship with Christ, but they were in the minority.  In his exasperation this dear learner at Jesus’ feet, would get rash and speak harshly at times.  He saw so much need that he was much more inclined to strike blows than to encourage.  Reading how he finally became known as such a mellow, self-effacing man, one marvels at the raw material he at first presented to the Divine Designer.

Sometimes I acted wrongly with my wife.  I tried to hurry her along and have her get the experience as I did.  It was not her nature, and it could not be expected she would get it as I did.  Sometimes, perhaps, I would say things to urge her along too fast.  Then I would see I had done wrong and ask her pardon.  Then I would go to the Lord and say, “Put me in the fountain.”
I went to another place and began urging men too fast.  An old man came to me and put his arms around me and said, “You are preaching holiness in the wrong way.” About that time I had a sort of vision.  I thought I saw a large flock of sheep.  I was walking around among the sheep with a club trying to keep them right.  I saw I was wrong.
Then I was in a hurry.  I wanted to be as perfect as Paul in all things, right away.  The Lord has since melted me down and softened my heart.  I love all God’s people.  The devil has tried, on one side, to make me too tame.  I had been too radical and, when I began to be too conservative, the Lord brought me back.  I was like a pendulum—first swinging too far this way, and then the Lord would bring me back.
And now, after suffering many defeats, learning many lessons in this Canaan of perfect love, I praise God for the trials of my faith and for His marvelous keeping power.  I have learned that I must be an uncompromising, unwavering witness to the cleansing power of Christ; that I must not make an idol of holiness or holy people; that I must not lean upon my emotions, but must walk by faith, and sometimes in seasons of darkness; that Satan tempts and tries me more directly and boldly than ever before; that I must often be dead to things and plans that are in themselves innocent; must sow and reap, or sow and let others reap.
A sense of utter nothingness is growing upon me, together with an increasing sense of the merit of Jesus.

During subsequent years, George Watson burned with a passion to show God’s children the nature and possibility of full salvation or scriptural holiness.  Leaving his pastorate to become an evangelist, he was able to reach the largest number of Christians possible with the message.  He avoided the danger into which many fall, of glorifying the crisis experience alone, real though it was to him.  He also recognized other perils incident to the higher life, such as a temptation to spiritual pride, censoriousness, self-righteousness, smugness which nestles in the pleasing sentiment of “having attained,” exclusiveness, religious legality, and a resting in an experience rather than in the great Giver.

He was a teacher of the sanctified, and very searching and to the point are his books and articles as may be seen by several of his chapter headings in his book, Soul Food, entitled:  “Lukewarmness,” “Fretting over Ourselves,” “Loquacity,” and “Praying for an Enemy.”

His various books are inspiring, honest, and exhaustive in exploring the possibilities, problems, prospects, and perils of the crucified and Spirit-filled life.  Any seeker after God’s best can profit much by reading and digesting as many as possible of his works such as: Love Abounding, Soul Food, A Pot of Oil, God’s Eagles, Our Own God, White Robes and Spiritual Feasts, Pure Gold, Bridehood Saints, and Heavenly Life.

It is no mystery why George Watson, in his writings, brings us into so many of God’s secrets.  To him, communion was the most natural as well as one of the most prized of his possessions through Christ.  He taught that “God is our nearest relative.”  Our Heavenly Father can therefore understand us better than a husband can comprehend the deepest secrets of his life-partner.  Conversely, given right relationships and conditions, we are capable of knowing God better than we can understand the closest of human beings.  More than most modern Christians, this teacher seems to have approached the status of an Abraham or a Moses in being favored with the revelation of divine secrets.

In one of his books, Dr. Watson gives a most moving description of how God knows and loves us as individuals.  He reminds us that He Who knows the number of the hairs of our head and Whose “eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth,” can describe us so minutely that his angel messengers can identify any one of us by how we weep or smile, or by any one of a number of personally identifying marks.

A constant traveler, Mr. Watson says that he became so accustomed to the motion of trains that he could tell when brakes were being applied, or more steam was being generated for a special pull.  He could know by his system of balance, when they were rounding a curve.  He pictures an intimacy with God’s leadings, promptings, and providences as the “Divine Pull.”  He writes:

This sensitiveness to the motion of a train should be realized in the spiritual life.  If we keep in a very humble and crucified state of mind, and in unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit, the interior sensibilities of the soul will be just as keen as those of the body.  We can detect the least slackening of speed, or the least veering to the right or left, and, blessed be God, we can be conscious when the heavenly Engineer turns on more spiritual pressure.
It will often happen in secret prayer, when all the faculties of the soul are open to the sway of the Spirit, that we can feel a divine pull upon our hearts, a sudden yearning of the soul after God stronger than hitherto; a deep, sweet passion for Christ takes hold upon the fountains of desire; a longing, an intense craving to be just like Jesus, pervades the whole mind. . . .
When the Spirit gives us such gentle pulls to Himself, we should open the throttle-valve of the heart to its uttermost; let the tears flow; let hours, if need be, glide away unheeded, even if it is midnight; let the Divine nature open its great, sweet splendors to our mind; let us push our way at such times into the very bosom of Jesus; let us take the hint of His drawing, and make deep and passionate love with Him.  At such times, let us spread before Him all our unselfish longing for the salvation of souls, special petitions for relatives and friends and foes, for great revivals, for mission-fields.  Many a season of prayer is without fruit because the “Amen” is said just about the time the blessed Spirit is getting His fingers on the heart-strings for a heavenly pull.1

It is fascinating to read of the divine coordination and timing that was the frequent experience of this man who seemed to press so deeply into the knowledge of God.  During one season of special trouble and concern, Mr. Watson would often be awakened at about 3.00 a.m. and pray out his need.  Imagine how it must have strengthened his faith to receive a letter from a woman across the sea, in Nottingham, England, telling of a great burden placed upon her heart and an enabling to pray mightily for him, the very same petition that he was making on his own behalf.  To add to this, a very dear minister who walked very closely with God, visited him and told how he had been awakened at 3.00 a.m. to pray for him.  Following this, a letter from a devoted couple in Canada arrived saying “that they had been strangely awakened several times at 3.00 a.m. to pray for him.”

All this drew forth this observation: “I saw, in a stronger light than ever before, that the Holy Spirit, as an infinite personality, enveloped the human race as a tender, watchful ocean of love; I saw an extraordinary proof of His compassion and interest in me, an infallible proof that He would answer the prayers which He had so marvelously prompted.”

At another time when many things were pressing sorely upon his heart, he prayed that the Lord would lay this prayer burden on some other souls.  Four days later he received three letters on the same post, from three different parts of the country.  Each writer said that on a certain day, the day of Dr. Watson’s agonizing prayer, that he or she had been strangely burdened in prayer for him!

At still another time, he was in financial straits resulting from the complete failure of the orange groves in Florida, due to frost.  He had vital interests in these crops.  Pressing obligations had to be met by a certain date in November.  During the last week in October, he received a letter from a poor but sanctified widow fifteen hundred miles away, who had never seen him, stating that she had been powerfully impressed to spend a whole day in prayer for the supply of Mr. Watson’s temporal needs.

And one day as he was praying, a voice said, “Money is nothing to Me; it is only My wrapping paper, and is inexhaustible; just give Me continually your warmest love and perfect obedience, and I will attend to your finances.”  He knew that moment that his prayer had been heard.  That very day before the money must be to hand, he received a letter from a dedicated business man several thousand miles away, saying that a strange impulse had come to him to send a check for more than two hundred dollars.  This sum was ample to pay off the debt after a tithe for the Lord had been subtracted.

We desire to include a quotation from Dr. Watson’s works, revealing God’s ultimate purpose for each individual life.

Before God can launch us out into the breadth and sweetness of His service, and entrust to us great things for Himself, we must be perfectly subdued in every part of our nature to His will and disposition of His mind.  We must be subdued in our hearts, in our wills, in our words, in our tempers, in our manners; subdued through and through so thoroughly that we will be flexible to all His purposes and plans.  We must be subdued that harshness, severity, criticism, sluggishness, laziness, impetuosity, and all wanting our way, even in religious matters, must be subdued out of us.
Conversion will not finish this work, and perhaps, in not one case out of a thousand will the second work of grace produce this complete condition of teachable subjugation to God’s will.  Being able to preach strong sermons on sanctification will not do it, or having charge of camp-meetings, or conventions, or Bible Schools, or the writing of books and editing of papers on Christian holiness will not prove adequate for this.

We must be subdued, not merely in our own opinion, not merely think ourselves subdued, not only subdued in the esteem of our friends and fellow-workers, but subdued so perfectly that the all-seeing eye of God can look us through, and the Omniscient One know that we are subdued; God must conquer the man that He can trust with His great thoughts and plans.
The Holy Ghost must saturate us with a divine conquest before He can use us to conquer other souls.  The Lord will begin to subdue us with gentle means, and if we sink lovingly and promptly into His mind, the work will be done; but if we have flint or iron in our nature and it is necessary, He will use heroic means and put us between the millstones and grind us to powder until He can mould us without any resistance to His purpose.  The greatest difficulty in the way of God using His servants, even His zealous and oftentimes sanctified servants, is that they are not perfectly, universally, and constantly subdued under the power of God.
We must be subdued as to stop meddling with other people’s matters that God has not entrusted us with, so subdued as not to be calling God’s servants hard names, and thrusting at Christians who are doing what they can in various fields for the Master; so subdued that we can hold our tongues, and walk softly with God, keep our eyes upon Jesus, attend to our own work, and do God’s will promptly and lovingly, glad to have a place in His kingdom and to do a little service for Him.
Oh!  It is grand to be absolutely conquered by the Holy Ghost, and swing out a thousand miles from everybody and everything into the ocean of God’s presence, and work with Him in humility, without stumbling over others, without religious peevishness, and bend with every plan God gives us.
When we are subdued in the sight of God, He will work miracles in us and power in experience, in healing, in finance, in service, in gentleness and in sweetness of the inner heart life— miracles of grace that will astonish us and surprise our friends and utterly amaze our enemies when they come to know the magnitude of what God has wrought.  Let us get subdued in every way, in everything; so subdued that we can keep still in God and see Him work out the great, bright thoughts of His eternal mind in our lives.

This devoted servant and friend of Christ was spared to labor all over the States and also to make occasional trips abroad in the interest of vital Scriptural Holiness.  He ministered in Britain several times and also visited the Far East.  Though frail in body during his last years, the inner spirit was unquenchable.  In 1923, he passed to be forever in the presence of Him, Whom he had sought so constantly to know and to serve on earth.

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Edwin F. Harvey

By Trudy Harvey Tait

(Born 1908 – Died 1983)

Edwin was brought up and educated in the Metropolitan Church Association, a Christian community founded by his uncle, which had emerged from the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1890’s. After teaching in the high school for some years, Edwin was sent in 1935 to Great Britain to oversee the Scottish branch of the MCA. A few years later he returned to the US to marry Lillian Johnson whom he brought to Scotland.  They remained through the Second World War ministering to people suffering the ravages of war.

As principal of a Bible School in Glasgow and editor of a Christian magazine entitled, “The Message of Victory,”  Edwin soon found himself invited to speak in various denominations throughout Britain.  This eventually caused a rift between himself and his home church in the States.  Influenced by his circumstances and a thorough study of Scripture, he found himself looking beyond many denominational beliefs which he had formerly considered indispensible.   His loyalty to a denomination was exchanged for a deeper loyalty to Christ and all believers of whatever background who had experienced the same divine touch from God.   This change of viewpoint, however, never altered the deep gratitude which he felt for the early training given him by his denomination and the genuine revival in which he had experienced a profound work of grace.

In 1956, Edwin and his family launched out on interdenominational lines and were soon engaged in leading an evangelistic team all over the British Isles.  Concurrently, the editing of the Message of Victory led him and his wife to see the importance of deeper-life literature and they were soon collating articles and quotations from a wide range of authors which eventually formed the many compilations which bear their name.

Reading Edwin’s books, one will encounter many references to British and American authors and lifestyles.  This is due to the fact that he was an American who spent many years in Great Britain: over twenty years in Scotland, and over twenty years in England.  In 1982, after forty seven years of ministry in Britain, Edwin returned with his family to his native USA and “Passed into Life” shortly thereafter.

Edwin F. Harvey was a man of the Word and of prayer.  Above his bed were the words, “We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry.”  This sense of devotion is apparent in all his writings.

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Abel, Charles

By Unknown

Charles Abel of Kwato

Charles Abel was the apostle to the Papuans of New Guinea.  Like so many shining souls in the last generation—Studd, Grenfell, Tucker, Biscoe of Cashmere, the Cambridge Seven, his light was lighted from Dwight L. Moody’s torch.  Charles and Robert Abel, as two boys, were brought by their mother to the Moody meetings at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, London.  That night, at home, they prayed together with great earnestness, having first stopped the old pendulum clock that hung in their bedroom so as not to be disturbed by its loud tickings.  From that time onward their lives were pledged.

Adventurous blood ran in Charles Abel’s veins, and his early life was one of wandering and varied experiences in Australasia.  He lived among the New Zealand Maoris, labored in timber forests, and worked as a stevedore on the Sydney docks.  His contact with New Zealand Maoris turned his mind to mission work.  After a night of prayer, he made his decision, began studying by himself, and finally returned to England for more systematic training.

What a people, those to whom he dedicated himself—cannibals who gloated on human flesh as the only meat one could gorge without after-effects, cruel in their torturings, constant in their tribal warfare, grotesque in their vast, frizzled mops of hair and painted skins.  Chalmers, who first guided Abel in his pioneering, perished at their hands.  “They did not know what love is,” wrote Abel.  “No animal is more careless with its young than the average Papuan mother.”  Cruel themselves, they believed themselves ringed about with cruel spirits.  “The attitude of the people, when I first moved among them, was one of wretched foreboding of imminent evil.  Those who think that heathen are happy and should not be intruded on by Christian missions, little know their true situation.”

Papuans are in abject fear of witch doctors.  One such, who averred that he had messages from spirits in a high tree, incited his following against Abel and his word.  An immense tidal wave was impending, so he said, which would sweep the intruders from the earth and bring to the Papuans shiploads of tobacco, calico, and other desirable things.  At times, this hostility took perilous turns and brought the unwanted teacher to the verge of destruction.

Like Paul, Abel found himself in peril of his country-men, English gold prospectors with little conscience in their treatment of Papuan natives, and especially of native women.  “When I saw Taubada (Abel) face revolvers pointed by his own angry countrymen, that he might plead for some Papuans, I knew he was truly our friend,” testified one native eye-witness.  And they returned his goodness in kind when he had once won their hearts.  One day, a capsized whale-boat was hammered by breaking surf.  All that saved Abel’s life was the stout refusal of his boys to leave him, though to stay meant utmost hazard to themselves.

In the early days, it seemed as if the grip of sin would never break.  Abel and his wife spent nights in prayer.  They also realized that their converts needed the fortification of an ordered life, that idleness endangered them in every way, that a wholly new framework of living called for establishing.  So alongside of their schools they raised workshops and a steam sawmill, built the mission launch with Papuan hands, established copra plantations, and fought malaria.  Evangelists, earning their own support after the Pauline model and evangelizing at the same time, supplemented the old system where teachers, in spite of their sincerity, settled down to idle inefficiency.  “Why are your ways different?” would be asked of Christian boys from Kwato, felling hardwood in heathen areas.  The explanation quickly followed.  The test of the fruit is the eating.  It was a common thing for Papuan students, when preaching, to point to Paulo, once outlawed even from cannibal communities, as the best proof of the truths they were stating.

Everything needs cleansing in these sin-smitten people.  With the clean, blue sea washing their shores, with cool, pure mountain streams running near every village, there is no excuse for the unspeakable filth in which they live.  They like dirt.  And alas!  The Papuan is no cleaner in his mind than he is in his body.”

Such is “the state of nature,” M. Jean Jacques Rousseau!  Such is the natural heart, Dr. Channing, you with boyish, self-confident face and tight-bound stock, on Boston Common.

“As I have done my work, face to face with my begrimed, skin-diseased, reeking congregation,” wrote Mr. Abel, “my heart has sickened and the temptation has come to take boat and make for the next village.  I was one day reproved by the thought that Christ must often have worked among very dirty people in the slums of Jerusalem.”

Abel faced other audiences who also needed regeneration, little as they suspected it, and nowhere did the Christian manliness of the man show itself more attractively.  On his occasional visits to English-speaking countries, he was sometimes asked to speak before anthropological groups, scientific bodies, Yale students, the Century Club, and the like.  The outlook and attitude of his hearers was, as far as the Gospel is concerned, usually indifferent or hostile.

When asked to address the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, it was intimated to him that an evangelical message would be quite an unusual thing.  He turned the suggestion down.  “It must be His message, and no trimmings,” he said to himself.  The microphone reared its head, snake-like, in front of him.  The announcement of the chairman that their speaker was a man of international renown filled Abel with disgust, but he succeeded in making clear to his packed audience that what Christ had done for Papuans, He could do for every hungry heart present that evening.

Charles Abel was cut off in the vigor of his years by a road accident in England but his work goes on.  Thousands have entered Christ’s fold.  These converts immediately get busy in what they call “the work of getting right,” hunting up unpaid debts, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, putting away witchcraft with all its complications.  Many of those dominated by spirits were awful-looking, haggard-faced folk.  Their whole appearance is now changed.  One converted sorceress at Wagawage formerly terrorized the community.  She used to dig up graves and eat corpses, a usual witch-practice, and confesses to have murdered eleven people in her lifetime.  Now she goes about preaching Jesus.

People to whom the concept, love, was once unknown, today demonstrate it.  At Wagawage is a mission school to which children come from far distances for training in a Christian atmosphere.  One Christian woman, and there are others who do likewise, feeds thirteen children beside her own while they are at their schooling and declares that never has her garden been more fruitful than since she undertook this for the Lord.

The story is told of a convert named Bokamani who went into a remote region to evangelize.  He was ignorant and inexperienced.  For two weeks he lived in Guimi village waiting for the Spirit’s command, but it did not come.  So he sought to live as Jesus would live, carrying firewood for astonished old women, fetching drinking water from the spring, showing kindness to cripples and gentleness to all.  The people were amazed.

Then came the day when the Spirit of God said, “Speak,” and Bokamani recounted the story of his new birth.  Now the villagers knew what it meant.  The mystery of his kindness was made clear to them, and he was soon leading them into the Kingdom, one by one.

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Aitken, Robert

By D. W. Lambert

Robert Aitken of Pendeen

Our story takes us from the borders of Scotland away down to a Cornish village, with intervals at Leeds and the Isle of Man.

Robert Aitken was born in 1800 at Crailing near Jedburgh, where his father was the village schoolmaster.  The stern religious background of the Scotland of that day, with its narrow Calvinistic emphasis, did not suit young Robert and he was drawn into the Episcopal Church, through the influence of the saintly Bishop of Elgin, later being ordained by the Bishop of Durham and becoming curate at Whitburn near Sunderland.  From there, for the sake of his wife’s health, he moved across to the Isle of Man.  He bought a small estate and lived the life of a gentleman farmer except on Sunday when he took services, becoming known, throughout the island, as an eloquent preacher.  Now came an hour of crisis.

Although prosperous and popular, he had no rest in his soul.  Let his son, Canon Hay Aitken tell the story:

“Whilst occupied with composing a treatise on the Atonement, and pondering on the part played by Christ’s human nature in the great sacrifice, he heard a voice, not an outward voice, yet distinct as any human utterance, saying:  ‘You are making a Gospel for God, instead of believing God’s Gospel.’  Startled and perplexed, he fell on his knees, asking for light, when again the voice spoke, this time more distinctly than before, inasmuch as he actually glanced round to see if anyone was present, and it said:  ‘All thy righteousness is as filthy rags.’

“Never doubting that this warning was of God, he spent many days in great agony of mind, neither eating nor sleeping and finding no help either from God or man . . . At last on the sixteenth day of sleeplessness, he cast himself exhausted on his bed, crying, ‘Now Lord let me see Thy Salvation.’  He then fell into a profound sleep, from which he awoke with the joy of assurance flooding his soul.”

What was the outcome of this amazing experience?  Canon Aitken goes on to tell how, beside himself with joy, he climbed the mountain near his home, and “shouted his praises aloud” . . . “the whole parish became alight with his new-found happiness.  He went to men who were at work in the fields, to the farms, the villages, the towns:  in barns, warehouses, streets, it mattered not, wherever he could get men to hear, he preached the glad, great news of a free salvation.”

From now onwards, Robert Aiken was a soul-winner; like Wesley, a hundred years before, he found his own church did not welcome his passionate evangelism, but the followers of Wesley did and he worked among them up and down the land.  Wherever he went revival broke out:  it is said that in Sheffield alone, in six weeks, there were three thousand converts.  These were “perhaps the great harvest years of his life.”

After ten years as a free-lance evangelist, or should we say “bringer of revival fires,” this ardent and sensitive soul was burdened for the state of the Church of England which he had never left (in this also he was like Wesley).  The bishop to whom he applied for reinstatement after his years of “schism,” wanted to put him under a ban from preaching for three years; this was humbly accepted, but the ban was lifted, and Aitken was allowed to minister, first in Liverpool, and then in Leeds, and later in Coatbridge.  During this period he passed through much sorrow and frustration, which led to deep spiritual search.  In spite of his evangelistic success (or perhaps because of it) he was conscious of pride, and aware of his own heart need.

To a friend he wrote:

“It is now two years since I began very earnestly to seek after holiness . . . It pleased God to give me to see very soon that I had little or no spirituality, and that Christ was not in me at all.  He was certainly neither formed in me, nor doing His great work in me.  I mean condemning sin in the flesh.  The discoveries that were made of my thorough selfishness were simply appalling . . . I was like one bound to a rock, and vultures picked at me and tore me in pieces.  Observe, this had nothing to do with outward sin; the conflict was altogether internal.”

Through reading the life and works of the German pietist, Tersteegen, he found that “there was in truth a hidden life, a state of real union with Christ which was to be enjoyed on earth” and which “by God’s grace I most earnestly set myself to seek.”  He did not seek in vain, although there was much agony of soul, as he cried out, “The Spirit, the Spirit; oh, give me the Spirit!”

At last rest came to his troubled heart, and great joy and peace.  He summed it up in these simple words:  “How needful it is to apprehend Christ dying for us, but how precious, how glorious it is to have Christ living in us.”  He humbly adds:  “True, my heart is but a poor stable and there are oxen in it still but, Oh, my adorable Maker has humbled Himself to come there, and He is working meekness and lowliness and nothingness and moderation and patience and charity.”

At this time, Robert Aitken was offered a parish in a mining area down in Cornwall, but there was no church, no vicarage, no school, no income!  The challenge was manfully accepted, thanks largely to the prayers and faith of a man of God who wished to see the work of the Lord revive among the pagan miners of the district.  The new vicar challenged the men to bring their picks and shovels and help him put up a temporary church; and while the work was going on many of the men were converted.  Soon the revival fires were alight.

Then he started a daily service, promising to preach whenever there were fifty persons present.  Soon he was preaching every night, and the work of salvation continued until the whole district was affected.  He wrote, “We are in a state of wild religious excitement.  Blessed be God it is better than spiritual death . . . you see it never rains in Cornwall but it pours.”

Robert Aitken was still a mighty evangelist, but the deeper experience into which he had entered, had made him a loving pastor and an understanding shepherd of souls.  His home became a Mecca to which many pilgrims journeyed seeking spiritual help, and rarely did any depart unblessed.  A daughter of Dr. Arnold of Rugby (and sister of the famous Matthew Arnold) describes a visit paid to Pendeen:

“The wonderful consistency of the whole life there is something beautiful and inspiring.  A whole family, father, mother, sons and daughters with their hearts in Heaven, all their energies bent on helping others into the right way . . . all combined to give one a memorable proof of what real vital faith can do.”

Mrs. Aitken, a godly and practical character, worked with her daughters and the maids in the kitchen.  At noon the Angelus was rung, and everyone throughout the house spent fifteen minutes on their knees in silent prayer.  One visitor who stayed several months said: “During the whole time I was there, I do not believe that Mr. Aitken was (except in his sleep) for five minutes out of the conscious presence of God.”

Through the years that followed, this saint of God faithfully carried on his fruitful ministry in the out-of-the-way village of Pendeen, henceforth to be linked with his name.  In 1873 God suddenly called him Home.  Over his grave in the church is a slab, bearing a symbol of his inner life, a cross entwined with thorns, and the text, true to his life ministry, Galatians 6:14.

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