Killymurris Presbyterian Church (1859)



"We have received the following letter from Rev. John Wilson of Killymorris:-

"It affords me much pleasure being able to inform you the religious awakening has made rapid progress and been most beneficial in its results. Having opened a class for the instruction and comfort of recent converts, I was much gratified to find both old and young freely enter it. Never have I met a more interesting class — one of such anxious enquirers and apparently so deeply impressed with divine truth. The keen desire manifested for the reading of the Bible, and the Scriptural views expressed by the converted, give strong evidence that the work is from Him Who has said, 'Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me.' Visiting a family, in which were three children who had passed through the ordeal of deep conviction, the father said to me 'he had just been reading to his children an account of the revival as given in the memoir of McCheyne, but he saw their attention was lost and could only be regained by reading to them from the Bible.

"Going down the other evening to Portrush, I found in the train many with Bibles in their hands and heard them sing some of the sweet songs of Zion.

"'Our weekly congregational prayer meetings, and all the prayer meetings about here, are largely attended. I went to the townland -- of to establish a weekly prayer meeting, where formerly there had been none. We met a large congregation, so many assembled, we were under the necessity of holding the meeting in the open-air, and such was the desire of the people for prayer that instead of one prayer meeting we needed two, for they said, `No house could hold us.' These meetings are generally conducted by experienced leaders. Reading the scriptures, prayer, and praise are the principal worship. A young man said to us that Christ came to him as he lay alone in an open field, bathed in tears on account of his sins, and spoke peace to his troubled soul and that he would not exchange the peace he now had for the brightest of earthly thrones. He also added that he had experienced more pleasure and delight in the House of God for the past two Sabbaths than almost all his time before. Finding the reason, he came to worship God, Who is Spirit, in Spirit and in Truth.’” "The Ballymena Observer" 18th June 1859.


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