Christianity spread during the first three centuries by “one living spirit setting another on fire,” says T.R. Glover (1869 – 1943) in his remarkable book The Jesus of History. That indeed has always been the method of Christian progress at its periods of greatest vitality. Great preachers like Wesley and Whitefield, no doubt, started the fire of the Evangelical revival, but the real work of the revival was carried on through the witness of men and women who had come into a vital experience of Jesus Christ. Through the personal witness of these re-created lives the Evangelical Revival spread all over England. The same method has been adopted by every aggressive Evangelical movement in modern Christianity. The world today, more than ever, is waiting to be convinced that Christianity works. That conviction will come not so much through oratory or argumentation as through living examples of the Power of Jesus Christ in the lives of men and women of today. The sceptic can evade almost every argument except the evidence of a man or woman who can say – “Whereas I was blind now I see.” The great demand for today’s church is for “living apostles” who can be read and known of all men. If the churches were to concentrate on a campaign of personal witness, more progress would be made than by almost any other method. To-day, as in the early centuries, Christianity advances best by “one living spirit setting another on fire.”
John
