Men of the Awakening - Rowland Hill

Beneath the flowers of Bunhill Fields there lie interred the mortal remains of one, Lady Ann Erskine. Bunhill Fields is, of course, a graveyard. It is a graveyard where a whole host of God's most eminent saints lie buried awaiting the great resurrection morning when the dead in Christ shall rise. And if Lady Ann Erskine has a part in that glorious resurrection, then she has it because the Lord in His mercy sent forth the power of His gospel into her heart, and sent it forth under the human instrumentality of the subject of this edition's "Men of the Awakening", Rowland Hill of Surrey Chapel.

The scene is Moorfields Common where our man of the Awakening is preaching to a vast company of men and women. As he preaches, the gaudy carriage of Lady Ann Erskine approaches and the stylish Lady signals the coach and company to a halt. Every eye is drawn away from the preacher and on to the new arrival. But the open-air preacher seizes on the situation to apply the truths of the Law and the Gospel to this aristocratic heart. "Let us conduct an auction," he declares, turning his attention to the party concerned; "The article offered is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine, and there are three bidders! The world offers riches, honours and pleasures; the devil offers all the kingdoms of this earth and the glory of them; the Lord Jesus Christ offers grace here and glory hereafter. Who shall have the soul of Lady Ann Erskine?" The words, we are told, make a deep impression upon this noble-lady's heart, and by them she is, first of all, brought under a deep conviction of her sinfulness before the Lord, and later, into the liberty of the gospel of God's redeeming grace to sinners which places her flesh and bones among the eminent of Bunhill Fields, and her soul among the saints in glory.

Rowland Hill was "the only one of his mother" as far as preaching was concerned, as this incident should undoubtedly show, and we have the feeling that when "dear old Rowley" was made a preacher the mould that fashioned him was set aside and never ever used again. As the spiritual child of old John Berridge, who we looked at in the last edition of the Wicket Gate, it is, perhaps not surprising that he should develop a style of preaching that was the very essence of uniqueness and yet, of great usefulness.

Born in the year 1744, he was "born again" eighteen years later and continued in the work of the Lord until he went down to his grave as "a shock of corn fully ripe" in the ninetieth year of his age. Like most of the men of the evangelical awakening that was to lift the church of Christ out of its slumber and indefinite belief, Rowland Hill - right from the very start almost - knew the sharp end of religious oppositions and ecclesiastical censure. After his ministerial studies he was refused ordination by no less than six different Bishops for what was termed "perpetual irregularity." (How many scandals have been perpetrated under such veiled terms as those?) Rowland Hill needed no man's hand to "ordain" him, however, and in true apostolic succession he followed his spiritual fathers in the faith out into the highways and byeways. "Dear young honest friend," wrote the great George Whitefield to him as he set his plough to work in the open fields for the glory of the Lord. "Dear Professor," he addressed him on another occasion when he had heard of the Bishops' actions towards him - "Dear Professor, I wish you joy in the late high dignity conferred upon you. As one who has been admitted to the Degree of Doctor for nearly thirty years," he went on, "I assure you that I like my field preferment very well."

But, it wasn't only in the fields that Rowland Hill's voice was going to be heard and, under the Lord, there was erected for him the building with which his name is most readily associated, the Surrey Chapel in the East end of London. It was often referred to as "The Round House" on account of its shape – a shape, it is said, that was suggested by Rowland Hill himself "so that the devil might not have a corner in which to hide." According to all accounts, Rowland Hill was going to need every weapon he could find against the evil one in that particular place at that particular time. Old John Berridge gives us a hint of this in a letter which he wrote to the Countess of Huntingdon concerning his young son in the faith. "I am persuaded that your ladyship will rejoice," he wrote, "that dear Rowley is going, with the Lord's help, to erect a standard for the gospel in the very middle of the devil's territories in London. What a bellowing and a clamour the old enemy will make at this fresh invasion of his kingdom!" And an "invasion" of the old enemy's domain was, indeed, executed in that eastern sector of the great Metropolis.

But these were the days of "horseback evangelism," and although Rowland Hill's pulpit was at Surrey Chapel he, nevertheless, speaks volumes in the title which he smilingly adorned himself with: – "Rector of Surrey Chapel, Vicar of Wooton-under-edge, and curate of all the fields and lanes throughout England and Wales."

The value of his work in this "extended" parish eternity itself will alone reveal. "Sir," said two old men to him, when he himself had passed his threescore years and ten, "Do you remember preaching on this spot fifty years ago?" He remembered! "Well sir," they went on, "We came with our pockets loaded with stones to throw at you; but as you engaged in prayer, and then, read your text, and preached your sermon, we put our hands into our pockets and dropped the stones on the ground one after the other, for God had taken the stones out of our hearts."

The preaching that took the stones out of men's hearts, as the two old aged saints put it, although "unique" was, still withall, of the very essence of the evangelical awakening – Rowland Hill could see no other. He described those ministers who confessed to know the whole counsel of God but who held back in certain of the doctrines of grace, as "donkies munching thistles – they do it very cautiously." He himself knew nothing of "cautious" preaching. He spoke of the gospel as "a good milch cow." "I first give a pull at justification," he said, "then a plug at adoption, and afterwards, a bit at sanctification; and so, in one way and another I fill my pail with the good gospel milk." He was inclined to "roam" occasionally in his preaching. "Dear Mr Hill," said a lady to him after one such rambling address, "you surely took us from Dan to Beersheba tonight" "Never mind," he said, "it is all holy ground."

Like all of that generation of preaching giants, Rowland Hill was born to proclaim the gospel. "I would rather be shut up in my coffin than shut out of my pulpit," he said, and right to the end, he preached. It's told of him that on almost the last occasion that he did declare the unsearchable riches of Christ, he moved along the aisle of the church, when the crowds had all gone home and he was left alone with the caretaker of the building, and as he slowly left the building he was heard to recite to himself:

"And when I'm to die, receive me, I'll cry,
For Jesus hath loved me, I cannot tell why;
But this do I find, we two are so joined,
He'll not be in glory and leave me behind."

In a choice little volume entitled "Eccentric Preachers", Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who also laboured in the East of London a little more than a decade after Rowland Hill tells of what it was like there to meet with any of the old members of the Surrey Chapel: "It will do your heart good to see how their eyes sparkle as they recall the days of their youth when Rowland Hill – dear old Rowland Hill as they like to call him – was in his glory."