Ancrum (1840)
At Kelso, where Mr Horace Bonar laboured, and at Jedburgh, where Mr Purves was pastor, a more silent, but very solid work of conversion was advancing. At Ancrum (once the scene of John Livingston's labours), the whole parish, but especially the men of the place, were awakened to the most solemn concern. A Bonar.
According to the parish minister, the rev John Paton, there was an 'almost simultaneous reformation' in the behaviour of those previously addicted to outward immortality and an anxious inquiry concerning spiritual things within the community at large. So great did this feeling all at once become, and so rapidly did it extend, that week-night services were set up, which were attended by crowded and deeply interested audiences. There was 'a visible reformation from sin', but it could also now be said that 'the subject of politics, once the more heart-stirring in the village, has given way to the blessed solicitude about an interest in that deliverance which is eternal.' Nine weekly prayer meetings were operating in the village at the time. -
'Evidence on the subject of revivals' from the Presbytery of Aberdeen, pages 91-2.
With thanks to Tom Lennie's 'Land of Many Revivals', page 381.