In the closing years of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, God was pleased to revive the light of the gospel in Scotland, where it had again grown dim. Outstanding instruments in this work were two brothers, Robert and James Haldane. They were the sons of a wealthy Scotsman, but they devoted their lives and their wealth to the service of God. Robert was born in 1764, and his brother four years later.
They lost both parents while still young, and both served with some distinction in the Navy. Their godly mother had implanted in their young hearts the knowledge and fear of God, but, as is often the case, it became, in afterlife, blurred and dormant under the attraction of the world, and, while moral and upright, they reached maturity without concern for Christ or eternity. But God, who had chosen them for His service, worked in their hearts and in different ways, but much about the same time He brought them to a clear understanding of the gospel and to faith in Christ. James came first into the good of salvation, largely by the study of the Scriptures. Robert’s exercises arose out of the French Revolution, in which he at first saw great hopes for mankind, but the teaching of a godly clergyman led him to a serious study of Christianity. While thus exercised, a long talk with a Christian stonemason working on the estate opened his eyes to the gospel. This seems to have marked the turning point in his soul. Both brothers became decided believers, and ere long they devoted their lives to the service of God. Robert planned to sell his beautiful estate and go to India as a missionary, but the plan failed as the government refused permission.
About this time James came in touch with some earnest evangelical men, among whom was an ironmonger in Edinburgh named Campbell, whose “warehouse was then the only repository in Edinburgh for religious tracts and periodicals, and it became a sort of house of call or point of reunion for all who took an interest in the kingdom of Christ.” Campbell later became a missionary in the unexplored interior of Africa, but at this time he performed the services of a city missionary, district visitor, Scripture reader, and teacher. He kept in contact with the leading evangelicals of the day, such as Lady Huntingdon and others, and carried on a vast correspondence with those interested in the Lord’s service.
Christianity was at a low ebb in Scotland at this time. The ministers, for the most part, were careless and indifferent and deeply tainted with Socinianism. Campbell had been exercised about the large mining village of Gilmerton where no gospel had been preached in the parish church for forty years. There, in a small hall, James Haldane preached for the first time. Crowds began to come. The local minister deprived them of the hall, so they preached in a large barn. Lay preaching was frowned on in those days, but James Haldane and his friends preached in 1797 in every town in Scotland, ranging from Berwick and the Solway Firth to John O’Groats and the Orkneys and Shetlands. A wave of blessing followed. On their way, thousands of tracts were also distributed. At Kerrymuir on Lord’s Day, July 16, 1797, a thousand people stood in the marketplace to listen. Later at Aberdeen, the whole population turned out to hear him.
All over Scotland the crowds came to hear James Haldane in numbers varying from hundreds to upwards of six thousand. Multitudes dated their conversion to this great awakening. And it was not transient either. The results endured. Forty years after, a minister in the small town of Wick (smaller doubtless then than now) told of forty persons, to his knowledge, who owed their conversion to these labors. The number of Christians in Scotland was greatly increased. Largely as a sequel to these efforts and to follow up the work, there was established in Edinburgh at this time the “Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home.” The Haldane brothers were prime movers in this enterprise, and Robert Haldane himself provided most of the funds. It was expressly stated that their object was not to form or extend the influence of any sect, but solely to make known the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This work of the Haldanes received the warm approbation of other leading evangelicals such as Charles Simeon and John Newton.
In the following year, 1798, Aikman and Haldane made another preaching tour, mostly in the West, with equally blessed results, multitudes again flocking to hear. In Ayr an attempt was made by the local magistrates to stop the preaching, but it failed. Indeed, the crowds were increased, and the opposition only provoked public sympathy and increased interest.
In 1798 Robert Haldane sold his paternal estates at Airthrie with a view to devoting his life and his means to promote the gospel. In the same year, he and others decided to use the Edinburgh Circus, a large building holding twenty-five hundred people, as a preaching place. On July 29, Rowland Hill preached there for the first time. During the week and following weeks, he preached to vast audiences. Eighteen thousand listeners are also recorded as attending his preaching at Calton Hill.
About this time, Rowland Hill published and dedicated to Haldane a journal of his tour in Scotland. In it he criticized all the existing sects and finally suggested that “if another place of worship should be built [in Edinburgh], what should be its glory? Let it embrace all who love the Lord Jesus and be the center of union among them who are now disunited. Let it then be called the Union Church and let her prove she deserves the name. Let her pulpit be open to all ministers who preach and love the gospel and her communion equally open to all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity.”
Rowland Hill’s influence on Haldane led to his opening such places of worship, not only at Edinburgh, but also at Glasgow and Dundee. Bitter attacks were launched against these activities by the official Churches, but the gospel was preached and souls were saved.
James Haldane became the pastor of a body of Christians numbering about three hundred who began to meet on what they felt to be scriptural ground, excluding from their communion all who were not sound as to their faith or godly in their walk. They proceeded on what was generally known at that time as the Congregational principle. Bunyan’s Church at Bedford was begun, it will be recalled, on similar lines. In the life of Greville Ewing, one of the leaders in this movement, written by his daughter, we have the following account given of the early days of this company.
“With many souls it was the season of first love, and even those who had long known the grace of God in truth looked back to it ever after as a time of life from the dead. There was a fervor of spirit, a love to each other for the truth’s sake and a delight in all the ordinances of the gospel, which makes it resemble more perhaps the Pentecostal period in Jerusalem than any that has succeeded it. The fear of singularity and the love of the world seemed alike for the time to have lost their power. The work of God in seeking the conversion of sinners was made the business of life. ... The multitudes, also, who crowded to the Circus, the zeal and activity of those engaged in Sabbath schools and various other useful institutions and the intelligence received from others, sent forth to more distant labors: All these were animating in the highest degree. They furnished in abundance topics for the most improving conversation, while they became alike the source of thanksgiving and encouragement to prayer. ... To warn, to beseech or to exhort their fellow-sinners was a spontaneous, delightful employment; to describe the blessedness of ‘peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)) was but to express the overflowings of their actual experience. And to crown all, they were at peace among themselves.”
The harvest at this time was great and the laborers few. To meet this, Robert Haldane established a seminary for young preachers at his own expense.
He came to see that a Christian had no part in politics and made his views public, stating that in this respect he felt he should follow the example of the Lord and His apostles.
The Circus was replaced by a Tabernacle built by Robert, and there for fifty years James Haldane served as Pastor. But his labors in the gospel extended to a wider field. In 1801 we find him preaching to crowded congregations in northern Ireland, where, as in so many other places, the blight of Arianism had fallen on the Churches. Space, however, forbids a fuller account of his long and abundant labors.