Amy Carmichael’s Keswick connection

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Amy Carmichael’s Keswick connection

When the founder of the Keswick Convention was once asked to put in one sentence what had brought such a joy into his life, and what had made the name of Keswick fragrant over the whole world, he answered in the words of the Psalmist, ‘I have set the Lord always before me’ (Ps 16:8). The questioner was the Ulsterman W.Y. Fullerton²⁸⁶ at the 1916 convention in the series of Bible readings ‘The Practice of Christ’s Presence’.²⁸⁷

The testimony of the convention is that the living Christ, received by faith as the Saviour, can also give deliverance from sin by faith, the Holy Spirit making the truth, apprehended by faith, effective in experience and conduct. Many convention visitors will agree: Christ’s presence in Keswick means everything for them and they will not exchange the learning of one hour’s fellowship with Christ for all the liberal learning in hundreds of theological colleges. For them, to look into his face is earth’s most exquisite joy. Why do thousands of people travel to Keswick every year to attend the convention? It is the new listening to the voice of the Master, which they came for. ‘We are not here to listen to preachers, but to meet with God; to expose our lives to the searchlight of its truth.’²⁸⁸ At the first convention in 1875 God gave to the founding leaders the words of Psalm 62, for God alone my soul waits in silence, and that has been the purpose of the Keswick Convention ever since.

286. W.Y. Fullerton, born 1857 in Belfast, died in 1932. He was influenced by C.H. Spurgeon and, from 1894 until his death, was the Home Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society.

287. In H.F. Stevenson, ed., The Ministry of Keswick, First Series 1892–1919 (London: Edinburgh, 1963), 289. 288. See The Keswick Week (TKW) (1958): 24–25.

How to cite: Kommers, J. (Hans), 2017, ‘Amy Carmichael’s Keswick connection’, in Triumphant Love: The contextual, creative and strategic missionary work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in south India, pp. 81–94, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2017.tl41.04

Meeting place with God

Driving on the main A591 south-north route, towards the summit of Dunmail Raise, between Grasmere and Keswick, the traveller is inclined to stop every mile to view the stunning scenery. But nearing the busy capital of northern Lakeland, it is clear that times have moved on since the time Amy visited the town several times from 1887 to 1895 to attend the Keswick Convention. However, the beauty of Keswick’s encompassing hills appear enchanting and are still the same. Brilliant sunlight touches the mountains and the lake transforms all that comes within its range with radiant glory. Years ago, readers of Review of Reviews were asked to vote as to the loveliest view in Great Britain. The great majority voted that the most beautiful vista in the world would be from the terrace of St. John’s Church at Keswick. For most people this town in the Cumbria Lake District is dedicated to country life and yearly many tourists favour this place. But once a year in July, many come not primarily for a holiday, but first and foremost to meet with God. The convention that Canon Harford-Battersby started in 1875 could have no more wonderful setting: ‘Beauty is here, aye, beauty rare, but something fairer seek we here, “Beauty of holiness”: to see Thy face in glorious majesty.’²⁸⁹

Once a year – formerly for one, now for three weeks – the town is early astir when the streets echo to the sound of footsteps of many making their way to the morning prayer meetings. During the day, notes of praise sound strongly and in worship thousands look upon the Lord with the notes of intercession, supplication and prayers. People from all over the world have their Bibles open and then the responsibilities and privileges of the full-orbed Christian life is preached to the listeners. The convention is closed with a united communion service. Many frankly face the implications of the messages heard, and the ‘great transaction’ is made.

The thousands then disperse all over the country and to many parts of the world with thanksgiving, one of the vital secrets of Christian life. The town is transformed into a centre of evangelical devotion, under the watchword of holiness. The big tent erected for the accommodation of the thousands of visitors listening to the addresses given from the Bible is for many a sanctuary where many have often had days of heaven on earth. ‘Lives were revolutionized, deep seated prejudices went up in smoke, and men and women were liberated.’²⁹⁰ This was Keswick at the time Amy attended several of the yearly Keswick Conventions.

The Keswick Convention

The birth of the convention needs to be set against the backdrop of the growing turmoil in the Christian church, resulting in a tumult of faith. The publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 challenged much traditional Christian belief. The year 1860 saw the controversial volume Essays and Reviews in print, with contributions from Jowett and Temple. Jowett pleaded for the use of reason in the interpretation of the Scripture, and Temple argued that the advances in physical science in the maturing 19th century forced a more fearless and critical view of the Bible. The bishop of Natal, John Colenso put oil on the fire with the appearance of two commentaries, on Romans and on the Pentateuch, for which he was tried for heresy, and controversy continued to rage throughout the 1860s. These were years of huge religious uncertainty and the birth of the Keswick Convention needs to be set against the backdrop

289. By S.T.M.R. in TKW (1955), placed on the first unnumbered page.

290. This was the experience of Mildred Cable when present at the Keswick Convention of 1893. In M. Cable & F. French, Something Happened (5th edn., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964), 65. A year later in the same place she committed herself for mission work (p. 67). In 1901, as CIM missionary, she sailed from Liverpool to China (p. 76).

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of this tumult of faith. The revival movements 100 years earlier supplied the logistic networks, interregional, international and interdenominational, that contributed to the formation of several evangelical conventions, of which Keswick is very outspoken and long-lasting. The catalyst for a change originated in America. In 1858–1859 a great movement for holiness – a defining idea for John Wesley in the previous century – swept through the Methodist church and affected other churches too. During the next 15 years, a number of American evangelists came to Britain to the spread the message, notably Moody and Sankey, and Robert Pearsall Smith and his charismatic wife Hanna, the author of The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.²⁹¹ A stream of correspondence, crisscrossing the Atlantic, brought the news from Northern Ireland’s revival to the other side of the ocean and the events during the revivals in America stirred the evangelical circles in Britain. The American A.T. Pierson²⁹² became in the 1880s and 1890s one of the most formative influential persons on the American and European missionary scene. When in 1893 Amy travelled to Japan she had some of Pierson’s books in her suitcase. As we will see further she heartily agreed with Pierson that everything in the church and on the mission field should be directed toward the saving of the lost.

The invitation to the first convention at Keswick in the summer of 1875 (28 June – 02 July) goes as follows:

We implore all who are interested in the welfare of the Church of Christ, and in the advancement of practical holiness, to unite with us in earnest prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the arrangements of these meetings, and for His blessing on the teaching and testimony of God’s servants.

These two factors: the welfare of Christ’s Church, and the advancement of practical holiness – and their interdependence – are as important today as when these same words were quoted again in the 1908 convention. To them were added the words from the Bampton lectures that year: ‘The startling contrast between the lives of Christians and the rules which they profess to accept, is the great religious difficulty of the present day’.²⁹³

In the 19th century, in Brighton, Presbyterian higher life leader William Boardman and others founded a series of deeper life meetings in what would become known as the Keswick Holiness movement. The union of the believer with Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit were emphasised. The Spirit filled the Christian’s experience with ‘full salvation’. The believer finds ‘rest’ in the Lord where there is entirely surrender to him. For some it meant that sanctification became a passive process of surrendering to God, rather than an active process of fighting against sin. This tendency is there but reading the Bible studies held at Keswick we clearly see that the believers never were discharged from the day-to-day reality of Christian obedience. It is by the Keswick message that many became active in home and foreign mission.

The man who brought this movement to Keswick was the Rev. T.D. Harford-Battersby, the vicar of the parish church of Keswick St. John from 1851 to 1883. Harford-Battersby was deeply impressed by the earnestness, holiness and sincerity of the leaders of the Oxford Movement like Newman, Pusey, Keble and Manning whose ideas were strongly Anglo-Catholic. Harford-Battersby’s teaching was always evangelical, based on sound reasoning and a study of the Scriptures. He thought the High Church and the ritualistic should be met by the energy and spirituality of the evangelicals. He went to

291. Printed first in 1870. 100 later nearly two million copies had been sold (publishers’ foreword, (20th edn., Old Tappon, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1970), 8).

292. Arthur Tappan Pierson (1837–1911). See D.L. Robert, Occupy Until I Come. A.T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003).

293. M.A.P. Wood ‘The Magnet of Keswick’, TKW (1962), 5. meetings of the Evangelical Alliance and attended conferences in Amsterdam and Basle. With Robert Wilson, a member of the Society of Friends, from Broughton Grange, near Cockermouth, he was at a convention in Oxford in 1874. There he believed to have had a revelation of Christ. Afterwards he wrote, ‘He was all that I wanted’. With Robert Wilson, Harford-Battersby decided to promote a religious convention in Keswick. He sent out invitations to three days of ‘Union Meetings for the Promotion of Practical Holiness’ to Christians of every section of the church of God. The first meeting was held on the grounds of the parsonage, but this meeting was postponed for one month because one of the main speakers, Pearsall Smith, withdrew at the last minute. The following month, July 1875, the meeting was held in a hired tent, erected in Eskin Street. A heavy storm caused the collapse of the tent, but nothing could stop the movement, which has flourished and grown ever since.²⁹⁴

Mr Robert Wilson, one of the founders of the convention who took its chair from 1891 to 1900, was a wealthy businessman, with great interest in the business of heaven. His characteristics were chiefly two: ‘great strength of will and purpose, especially in resisting silently, and great sweetness of spirit’.²⁹⁵ He was the one who selected the Keswick motto – ‘all one in Christ Jesus’ – and was responsible for the three flags – Love, Joy, Peace – which flew over the tent. He was a great help to Harford-Battersby at the beginning of the Keswick story, and one can ask oneself if there would have been a Keswick Convention after 1875 if Robert Wilson had not backed and supported it so tremendously.

‘This Convention, its message, all that it may do, and all that it has done, depends upon the preaching of the Cross.’²⁹⁶ These pregnant words cover everything that Keswick stands for. About Keswick, Amy Carmichael fully agreed with Bishop Handley Moule:

Keswick stands for the great and eternal truths, some of which, so to speak, it takes for granted but never forgets: the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. […] His death for us upon the Cross: Keswick is a rock upon the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and the benefit of pardon, utterly unmerited by us, which we have because Jesus died.²⁹⁷ There is nothing formal or rigid about the sequence of Keswick teaching, it is recognised that a true abhorrence of sin, a confession and renunciation of it, are the steps toward ‘fullness of the blessing of the Gospel’, which Keswick exists to proclaim. Keswick disagreed with the teachings that certain gifts of the Spirit are strongly manifested, like speaking in tongues. For Keswick, faith is the evidence of the filling of the Spirit, and not the outer extravagant manifestations. Faith involves full surrender and implicit trust in God. To walk in faith, a believer is looking to Jesus and not for physical evidence or manifestations. The emphasis is on holiness in the Wesleyan sense – that is, the possibility of the Christian living a life of faith free from the stain of sin – and on missions. Often many Christians attending the conventions were dispensationalists, which further strengthened their missionary resolve, along the lines of Matthew 24:14: ‘And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached, … and then the end will come’.

‘Holiness is the characteristic of the man after God’s own heart’.²⁹⁸ Is not holiness, chastity of life and a living communion with God the end of a Christian life? Keswick speakers applied doctrine to everyday Christian living, as was done by the Puritans in their expository preaching. They wanted to win souls by preaching to heart as well as mind and to turn believers into active doers of the Word of God. Keswick made much of the application of the Word to holy living in daily life. Those attending

294. Cf. M. Armstrong, Linen and Liturgy. The Story of the Marshall Family and the Parish Church of Keswick St. John (Keswick: Peel Wyke Publications, 2002), 20.

295. J. Elder Cumming, in Leaders of the Keswick Convention (http://www.pratonicx.hubpages).

296. E.M. Blaiklock at the Keswick Convention in 1959 (‘The Costliness of Our Salvation’, TKW (1959): 11). 297. Cf. Elliot, A Chance To Die, 29.

298. O. Chambers, ‘Biblical Ethics’, in The Complete Works, 93.

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the convention come to Keswick with the express intention to know something of the wholeness, which they believe is in Jesus Christ. Cowper’s prayer ‘Oh, for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame’ is often remembered by the thousands who attend. Their confidence in the Scriptures as the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation was simple, total and pure. They were not different from other evangelical Protestants, but they behaved with greater intensity and – according to Sharpe ‘in a High Victorian earnestness’.²⁹⁹ To be ready to lay down the life in sacrificial service, having the marks of a Christian whose life is beginning to count and be of value in the world. On the opening night of the 1911 convention the Rev. E.H. Hopkins, whose name is always linked with the Keswick Convention, summarised what the people are looking for:

The first thing is to see whether we are right with God. […] We must submit, by trusting to Christ. Then we must commit, by trusting to Christ what you yourself have failed to manage.

These words were quoted at the 1962 Convention and the speaker then goes on:

As in earlier times, so today, the emphasis on personal holiness needs to be shown, not as an exotic bloom to be grown in the greenhouses of sheltered Christians, but as the hardy perennial, which should be the common flower in the garden of every work-a-day Christian where ever he may find himself.³⁰⁰ Since 1875 the Keswick Convention has expounded the Scriptures in that lovely Lakeland setting. Over the years, the centrality of the life of holiness in the believer has been emphasised, viz. on holiness and God’s claim that we shall become like him – in faith, which works by love. However, holiness is not self-centred nor self-contained, but will lead inevitably to dedicated service. Bishop Ryle of Liverpool was at first a bit reluctant to embrace Keswick teaching, because some Keswick holiness preachers placed emphasis on ‘entire consecration’, ‘victory over sin’, that ultimately would lead to the doctrine of sinless perfection.

Due to the work of the Bishops Moule and Ryle, Keswick is known throughout the world and it is no coincidence that a convention that highlights on holiness will inevitably lead to a call to service. Christian holiness is no cloistered virtue but a call to live in the world as men and women who, separated from the world, yet have a world-transforming message and mission. It is nothing less than a call to follow our Saviour. The continuing obligation of the great commission should be clearly set forth. The Christians here together all shared the same feeling, expressed in the watchword of the Convention: all one in Christ Jesus.³⁰¹ A great emphasis is always laid on the personal aspects of religion. This does not mean that Keswick teaching thinks that corporate religion is irrelevant, but the evangelicals treat personal faith as of primary importance. The ‘mystical’ body of Christ is the whole body of believers of every age and tongue and people. It is the church composed of all who are washed in the blood of Christ. The visible or denominational churches are the mixed bodies of Christians who God is using to carry out his mission in the world. It is said that Keswick:

[W]as solidly biblical, though rather narrow in its doctrinal range, and at that stage inclined to be too introspective. It did not help people to think doctrinally, but concentrated on devotional life and missionary stimulus.³⁰²

299. E.J. Sharpe, ‘The Legacy of Amy Carmichael’, IBMR (01 July 1996): 2.

300. M.A.P. Wood, TKW (1962), 6.

301. This motto was buzzing around among evangelical circles, in universities and missionary societies. Cf. the St. Andrews Student’s Club, with the St. Andrews Cross for their symbol. One of their mottos was ‘One in Christ’. In J. Wells, Stewart of Lovedale. The Life of James Stewart (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), 20.

302. In O. Barclay, Evangelicalism in Britain 1935–1995 (Leicester: IVP, 1997), 32.

In C.A. Fox’s ‘Cleanse all today’, we see what Keswick stands for:

Them, in the hush of this fair Tent,
And solemn stillness of this hour,
Three thousand souls before thee bent,
Break forth, O Holy Ghost, in power,
Sweep through, thou Wind of God, sweep through;
Once more cleanse, consecrate, renew!³⁰³

The Keswick Convention’s outlook: Introspective and Christian service

Frequent Keswick Convention goers know it; for several years the first song in the big tent has been:

Full salvation! Full salvation!
Lo, the fountain opened wide,
From the Saviour’s wounded side. Full salvation!
Streams and endless crimson tide.³⁰⁴

One of the most outstanding preachers at the end of the 19th century was Rev. F.B. Meyer (1847– 1929). He belonged to the inner circle of the BMS, supported the LMS and had an intimate friendship with Hudson Taylor of the CIM. The Keswick trustees, always open-eyed for men with a message, heard of the new uprising of spiritual influence and invited Dr Meyer to the convention. He went first as a visitor and the next year, in 1887, he was one of the speakers. Meyer came to Keswick and although he was well prepared, he felt spiritually empty. In his own words:³⁰⁵

Before I first spoke on the platform, I had my own deeper experience, on a memorable night when I left the little town with its dazzling lamps, and climbed the neighbouring hill. As I write the summer night is again casting its spell on me. The light clouds veil the stars and pass. The breath of the mountains leads me to yearn for a fresh intake of God’s Spirit. May we not count on the Anointing Spirit to grant us a fresh infilling when we are led to seek it? May we not dare to believe that we have received, even when there is no answering emotion? Do we not receive by faith? These were the questions which a few of us had debated far into the night, at a prayer meeting convened at which a number of men were agonizing for the Spirit. I was too tired to agonize, so I left that prayer meeting and as I walked I said, ‘My Father, if there is one soul more than another within the circle of these hills that needs the gift of Pentecost it is I: I want the Holy Spirit but I do not know how to receive Him and I am too weary to think, or feel, or pray intensely’. Then a Voice said to me, ‘As you took forgiveness from the hand of the dying Christ, take the Holy Ghost from the hand of the living Christ, and reckon that gift is thine by a faith that is utterly indifferent to the presence or absence of resultant joy. According to thy faith so shall it be unto thee’. So I turned to Christ and said, ‘Lord, as I breathe in this whiff of warm night air, so I breathe into every part of me Thy blessed Spirit’. I felt no hand laid on my head, there was no lambent flame, there was no rushing sound from heaven: but by faith, without emotion, without excitement, I took, and took for the first time, and I have kept on taking ever since. I turned to leave the mountain side, and as I went down the tempter said I had nothing, that it was all imagination, but I answered, ‘Though I do not feel it, I reckon that God is faithful.’

303. C.A. Fox ‘Cleanse All Today!’ TKW (1930): 34.
304. Composed by Francis Bottome (1823–1894). In The Keswick Hymn Book, no. 167, 61.
305. In W.Y. Fullerton, F.B. Meyer. A Biography (London: Morgan & Scott, 1929), 65–66.

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Dr Meyer was one of the oldest and most trusted speakers the convention ever had. For many years he was a member of its council.

In the biography of one of the founders of the Keswick Convention, Canon Harford-Battersby, is an analysis of his defining of the Keswick Convention’s distinctive characteristics: ‘its wide heartedness and catholicity of constitution, its sobriety of tone, its freedom from extremes, its genial spirit of brotherly love, its definiteness of purpose, and its missionary zeal’.³⁰⁶

Keswick’s testimony is that the Living Christ, received by faith as the Saviour, can also by faith give instant and constant deliverance from sin, the Holy Spirit making the truth, apprehended by faith, effective in experience and conduct – that and nothing beside.³⁰⁷ Keswick’s teaching never was focused on self-realisation. It is always ‘what the Lord said to me’ and ‘what I said to the Lord’. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of a total new disposition of Christ-realisation. Willing to obey the dictates of the Holy Spirit, who uses us as his instruments body, soul and mind. Instead of being in the centre yourself, there is sanctity, and spiritual reality, bringing forth fruit unto holiness. ‘The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus; He makes us written epistles not only in living, but in thinking.’³⁰⁸ Some say Keswick is, puritan, mystical, aggressive, but that is the fruit of experience. A week at Keswick gives to those who attend a sense of God’s working, a ‘coming to grips’ with spiritual issues. There is a unity in Jesus Christ, the one and only and irreplaceable object of the faith and baptism; at Keswick this ‘essential, indestructible unity, transcending racial, social, denominational differences, is gloriously demonstrated’.³⁰⁹ The convention platform has been the scene of a great cloud of prophetic witnesses. It is difficult for those who attend to ‘escape the searching, convicting power, and the healing grace of the Spirit of God in the midst’. ‘A visit to the Convention […] is a never-to-be-forgotten experience, which God willing, will make an indelible mark on your life.’ The people will experience:

[T]hat if God meets with us there will come into our hearts the conviction that we are to face the necessity for the fullness of God in our own experience.

Is the ministry of Keswick far too introspective? There has to be a time and a place for careful, deliberate, unhurried and completely honest self-examination. Repentance is the bridge across which the mercy of God travels to the sinner. A season of refreshing starts with repentance.

There is always the appeal to look at the blessed Lord, exalted at the right hand of the most high. That will arise and create in our hearts ‘a consciousness of sin’. We must begin with sin, and then we shall look upward and outward to the reality of the fullness of God. It is a thrilling thing to understand that truth is to understand the very essence of what is known as the Keswick message, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’. Many feel they have come to Keswick because in this place the Lord wants to speak to them, so that they recognise him as their creator, their redeemer, and their indwelling Lord.

At the convention, the teaching order is first the introspective teaching of sin in the life of a Christian, but it does not end there and in the teaching they look upward and outward to the reality of the fullness of God: the promise, the possession, the purpose of God. This, because the purpose of God, is ‘that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God’. Keswick-goers say: ‘the Lord Jesus received is holiness

306. In D.A. Edwards ‘T.D. Harford-Battersby (1822–1883), Co-founder of the Keswick Convention’, in Keswick Characters, vol. 3, ed. E. Foot & P. Howell (Carlisle: Bookcase, 2012), 90.

307. Fullerton, F.B. Meyer, 194.

308. Chambers, The Complete Works, 123.

309. J.R.W. Stott, ‘The Calling of the Church of God’, TKW (1962), 36; ‘The Christian life is a Christ-centred life’ (p. 37). Paul sees his mission in Corinth as ‘a testimony to Christ’ (p. 37). begun; the Lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete’.³¹⁰ This meant to look up in life at him, a life of sanctification through identification with the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus as revealed in Romans 6 as a solid foundation to the faith. A life longing for a deeper experience of death to sin and a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire: hungry yet satisfied, it is possible to experience both. You are in the promised land with Jericho and Ai still to be taken.³¹¹ In the beginning of the Keswick Convention it was suggested that it could not escape the often one-sided aspect of the Higher Christian Life Movement that too much emphasis was put not on the regenerating power of the grace of God, but on individual consecration, individual fasting and prayer, individual devotion to God. Critics pointed out that the Keswick tone was pietistic, non-controversial, individualistic, and that the issues of social justice were ignored. However, the spiritual domain cannot be separated from the secular.³¹²

Pre-millennial: Focus on mission

The majority of those who had affinity with the Keswick Movement were also dispensationalists. The eschatological aspect of the Kingdom of God and the Parousia expectations have been an issue of continuing debate in the Christian church. From the days of the early church to today the real impact of these expectations is not spelled out. There is evidence that many leaders of the Keswick Movement favoured the pre-millennial approach in their view about the Second Coming of Christ or The Day of the Lord. That Day of the Lord was a day with ethical implications³¹³ and the importance of living without reproach to the end was emphasised; the expectations had a strong mission dimension. The consequence for the Christians is the awareness of living in the end of times and also of the call to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world ‘till Jesus comes’.³¹⁴ A.T. Pierson (1837–1911), the American mission advocate who visited Keswick for the first time in 1897, was also an advocate for pre-millennialism.³¹⁵ Pierson strongly believed that God instrumented faithful Christians to serve him. He used as an argument, that in Jesus’ parable of the household servants, the servants were told to ‘occupy until I come’.³¹⁶ This view he used in several of his speeches, also in Keswick, and many convention attendants got their inspirational focus through his enthusiastic talks for urban and foreign missions. Under Pierson’s editorship of the Missionary Review the influence of pre-millennialist thought spread all over the world.

The Lord’s return is an issue that appears several times throughout the years in the addresses delivered.³¹⁷ Since 1888, mission work has been in the focus at Keswick. The Keswick Convention Mission Minute Book (KCMMB) of 1892 has the following line at the end:

310. Missionary J. McCarthy, TKW (1962), 103.

311. Cf. Joshua 6 and 7.

312. Cf. D.W. Smith, Transforming the World: The Social Impact of British Evangelicalism (1988), 80. 313. 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20, ‘For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing (boasting)? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For you are our glory and joy’; 1 Corinthians 1:8, ‘Who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’.

314. Report of Rev. F.B. Meyer on his visit to India: ‘It burns in the heart of the missionaries to save, ‘till Jesus comes’ (TKW [1899]).

315. For more on his turn from postmillennialism to premillennialism, see Robert, Occupy Until I Come, 103–108. 316. See Luke 9:13. Amy says: ‘There is a definite service of some sort prepared for them, and for this they must be prepared. The only time for preparation is during the interval before the Lord returns – that is, today, this hour, this minute’ (Fragments that Remain, 24).

317. Cf. TKW (1947), 238–243.

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May it be ours to yield ourselves entirely to His will, that we may be instruments in His hand for spreading the knowledge of our Master Lord – ’till He come.³¹⁸ Mrs Penn Lewis visited Keswick in 1892 and in 1896. She befriended many convention leaders, many of whom interpreted the 1000-year reign in pre-millennial terms. During the Llandrindod Convention in Wales, 1904, A.T. Pierson, preached on Romans 8:19–23 under these headings: ‘return’, ‘reign’, ‘refreshing’, ‘revival’, ‘rest’, ‘resurrection’, ‘recompense’, ‘restitution’, ‘regeneration’, and ‘final redemption’.³¹⁹ All the events mentioned were to take place after the first Coming of Christ and before his final triumph. Another Keswick leader visited Cardiff in 1905 and prophesied in his address that the Second Coming of Christ would take place between 1910 and 1915.³²⁰

Not only at Keswick, for at the same time at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Conferences in America was this teaching dominant as it was with all the associates of the Toronto Mission Union.³²¹ One of the early speakers, Griffith Thomas, who frequently spoke at the Keswick Convention, strongly advocated that the Lord’s coming is pre-millennial. This view is also the inspiration of Christian service. In one of Griffith’s addresses, he mentioned Moody, Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, George Müller, Arthur Pierson, ‘whose work for world-wide missions is known everywhere’.³²² All those mentioned shared the same view more or less. Amy Carmichael rarely exposed her dogmatic views, but in her writings we see indications that she held this view about Christ’s Second Coming. She closes the introduction of her book From the Fight with the words, ‘Looking for the coming of the Conqueror’, followed by her name.³²³ To anticipate the day of Christ’s victory is also, and not least of all, an incentive to holiness:

Our primary task is to make clear from the Word of God how the child of God is to live a life of holiness in the midst of a world doomed to destruction, but in which he is called upon to make an effective witness to the saving truths of God’s Word. The Christian life is taught here and which we seek to live and anything lower than that is not essentially Christian.³²⁴ At the 1966 convention it was asked:

What is Keswick for? Is it to declare the issues of the day? It is the purpose of the Keswick Convention to get away from the hurly-burly of life for just one week that we might meet with God.

To rest and to be with Christ, and when we leave we have to get involved in the needs of other people. Also that you might get a clearer view of yourself. Christ AND him crucified is the centre of the Keswick message. W.H. Aldis at the 1926 convention said:

We have not come to Keswick merely to attend the Convention meetings and to feel good, but we have got to deal with secret sins and let the searchlight of the living God go right through us.³²⁵

318. In Keswick Convention Mission Book (Carlisle Record Office, DSO 250/1/3/1, meeting 26 July 1892). 319. Cf. B.P. Jones, The Spiritual History of Keswick in Wales (Moab, UT: The Christian Literature Press, 1989), 13. 320. See N. Gibbard, Fire on the Altar. A History and Evaluation of the 1904–05 Welsh Revival (Wales: Bryntirion Press, 2005), 179.

321. Cf. R. Goforth, Goforth of China (Minneapolis, MN: Zondervan, 1937), 58.

322. G. Thomas, ed., The Victorious Life. Messages from the Summer Conferences 1917 at Whittier, Princeton, and Cedar Lake, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA: Victorious Life Conference, 1918), 110: ‘The lives of living exponents of Premillennialism testify to their remarkable interest, success, and blessing in evangelistic and missionary work.’ 323. From the Fight, 5.

324. TKE (1958).

325. In A. MacBeath, W.H. Aldis (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1949), 68.

Keswick aims at the following: sin must die in me. God does away with sin, and a wave of piety occurs ‘which takes the form of devotion and sentimental religious activity while the real message of the Gospel is lost by obliteration’. These words of Oswald Chambers³²⁶ warn us against an emphasis on a second definite work of grace in which the pious man is in focus. What is important in sanctification is that the emphasis is on the regenerating power of God, and not on our individual consecration, fasting and prayers and our individual devotion to God. Jesus is Saviour and Sanctifier. The Keswick Convention and its close connection with non-denominational missions ‘provided a model of spirituality’.³²⁷ Although the Keswick Convention accepted the Scriptures as infallible and redemption only by the blood of Christ, who died for the sins of man on the Cross, the leaders of the convention tended to be experience-centred. The result was that human methodology was characteristic in mission work, which was supported by the Keswick Convention. All have to admit that the Spirit of God used the Keswick Convention to set its mark on evangelistic enterprise by many who attended the convention and took home with them the torch of fire and that it influenced and contributed directly or indirectly to overseas mission work. The convention deepened the spiritual lives of many believers, and gave birth to the awareness for mission work in many countries where the British flag waved due to the many ‘Keswick Conventions’ that were started in those countries. The Keswick Convention branched out in the 20th century to wield worldwide influence, the benefits of which are enjoyed in our 21st century generation.

The Keswick Convention Mission Committee

Since the 1880s, the Keswick Convention had a deep impact on missions in Britain as well as overseas. The Church of England saw a threefold increase in numbers of missionaries in the 1890s; thousands were influenced by the doctrine of holiness.³²⁸ According to Dana Robert, Amy was ‘one of the most famous Keswick-inspired missionaries’.³²⁹ She felt at home when she was with friends and Keswick songs were sung. In the final page of her Bible she affixed a photo of the big white tent taken during one of the yearly conventions in Keswick. Next to the photo she had written: ‘Keswick, Praise Meeting, July 28, 1888’, and the text from 2 Corinthians 12:9–10, where she had underlined verse 12:

But He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.³³⁰ It was in that year’s convention, as we will see further on, that she saw ‘a new committal’ for her life.

The influence of Keswick’s expectations on spiritual life can be seen in the life and ministry of Amy Carmichael. For many visitors to the convention, and the same applies to the majority of churchgoers in the second half of the 19th century, was holiness a major aspect of the spirituality of the time.³³¹ ‘Holiness was intimately bound up with the spirit of the age’ and faith missions sprung from the same source as the holiness movement.³³² It was the environment of experience over doctrine, which minimised ecclesiastical boundaries and downgraded doctrinal concerns.³³³

326. In Chambers, The Complete Works, 32.
327. In O. Barclay, Evangelicalism in Britain, 32.
328. See Robert, Occupy Until I Come, 254.
329. In Robert, Occupy Until I Come, 254.
330. In Amy’s Bible (1895).

331. See D.W. Bebbington, Holiness in Nineteenth-Century England (Bel Air, CA: Send The Light, 2000), 2. 332. In Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 168.

333. In Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 179.

Chapter 4

Keswick stands for piety that is stamped by the life in God. The life of Jesus manifested in lives of men and women, to bring glory to God. Men and women, saturated with the truth of God, who can go and speak to people in terms that appeal to our day. Living the life to which sanctification introduces us, the life of oneness with Christ Jesus, and a longing that that oneness is manifested in our practical life and is a sacramental element in his hands. To be abandoned to the love of God will leave the impression of the holiness and the power of God. Hearing Christ’s personal call to obedience, and experiencing Christ’s personal provision for victory, has opened up the way for many to receive Christ’s personal commission for service. Practical holiness is the only holiness of any value in this world, Keswick members have thought, because this is the only kind the Spirit of God will endorse. When the Word of God takes root in the heart and life and teaching and planning of someone, God has a weapon forged in his hand for world evangelism. Visitors felt that over the convention was a wave of missionary enthusiasm.

‘God is Working His Purpose Out’ was a hymn affirming a quite widespread belief that the time was drawing ‘nearer and nearer’ when ‘from utmost East to utmost West’ the earth would be filled with his glory. The hymn was written by an Eton schoolmaster for a festival of the CMS in 1894. Christians liked to sing this hymn and found it easy because for a number of years their world mission spirit seemed part of their destiny of a world empire. They saw Christ working – and they were the vehicles – in areas until now without the Gospel, to establish his dominion before his coming. The Keswick Convention Mission Committee streamed the wish of many to be involved in mission work. In the autumn of 1883 Moody came to Cambridge and held an historic eight-day mission which influenced a large number of undergraduates so greatly that their lives affected Church, state and mission field over the next 50 years. Many students every year came to Keswick and they offered their lives for service overseas. At Keswick, many gave the convincing answer and made unconditional surrender to the Lord, and a great number serving on many mission fields responded to his call at a Keswick missionary meeting.

There is a strong link between Keswick and the Buxton family. The family worked in mission service in Japan and Africa as well as helping to found the InterVarsity Fellowship (IVF) and work among the students in England. Even All Nations Bible College had its origins in the Buxton family and is based at the former home of that family. The Japan Evangelistic Band came into being at Keswick in 1903. At that time Barclay Buxton and Paget Wilkes, who were ministering in Japan, were at the Keswick Convention. They met Miss Estelle Edmeads, who felt that she was called to Japan. Her passage money and support were fixed by the evening of that day. In October that same year she left for Japan and worked in the city of Kobe. Towards the end of the last century there were, according to Philip Hacking, ‘still many echoes of Keswick in the evangelical ministry in that city and elsewhere in Japan’. The year 1911 saw the birth of a Keswick link with South America in the formation of the Evangelical Union of South America (EUSA). This was largely through the influence of Stuart Holden of the Keswick Convention Council.

Chairpersons of the Keswick Convention Council have included directors of the CIM/OMF and the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society. It was at Keswick where the vision of the IVF was born in the spirit of revival.³³⁴ The morning hours at the conventions were for the missionary prayer meetings. As usual, an attempt was made to cover the whole world in the course of five mornings. The general practice each morning of allotting a few minutes to enable a large number of people to be mentioned before the Lord individually by name led to the reciting of lists of names, often heard only by those in the immediate vicinity and almost without pause this went on for about 15 minutes. There was a special

334. Cf. D.D. Winter, ed., My Dear C.U.M.B., Norman Grubb’s Letters to the Cambridge University Missionary Band, 1922–1989 ( Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2006), 61. prayer in 1930 for churches in India where a dead formal Christianity existed. Wednesday afternoons were for the reception of all the missionaries and overseas visitors. Sometimes more than 60 different countries were represented at the receptions. For many it was a true experience of the reality of the Keswick motto ‘all one in Christ Jesus’ to mingle among fellow Christians from all parts of the globe, exchanging greetings and news concerning the work of the Lord in their respective lands. According to custom, Friday mornings were devoted to missionary meetings. With a bird’s-eye view, many Christian witnesses from many parts of the world gave news about the way God was at work in their country, and the meeting closed with the singing of the doxology. Always the missionary meetings ended with a united communion service for the remembrance of his death ‘until He come’. The service in 1947 opened with the hymn ‘Thou Art Coming’.³³⁵ That year about 250 young men and women attested their willingness to go anywhere for Christ.

There was always a keen sense of the present opportunities for the fulfilling of our Lord’s last commission. At the 1958 Convention Amy Carmichael and her work were mentioned ‘at Dohnavur among children rescued from a life of shame and degradation in Hindu temples’. At several meetings parents were asked if they were willing to allow their children to go to a foreign field if the Lord asked for them. Young people present at these meetings were appealed to, those who were willing to give their lives to the Lord’s service abroad were asked to rise. At the 1966 meeting between 400 and 450 sprang to their feet in response. Many of the dark places of the earth have received the Light as a result of these great missionary meetings.

The young lady in the big tent

Somewhere in the big tent sat a young woman, short of stature, with a lovely, kind face, conscious that the Holy Spirit was dealing with her; she prayed for rest from the ‘cry’ of thousands who had never heard of the name of Jesus. Here – it was the 1888 Keswick Convention – she was blessed by the Lord; ‘it was an unforgettable time’ and resulted in ‘a new committal of one’s whole life’, and in 1895 she was bound for India. She knew that it was God’s will for her to go there – and she went. Nowadays in India, there are some very old people who witness that they came to Christ through her service. This young woman was Amy Carmichael. Her thoughts at that time are captured in the following words: ‘Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God’.³³⁶

At the conventions in Keswick and other places, Amy had seen that there is infinite wealth of grace in Christ Jesus. She presented her ‘check’ and it was cashed. By presenting ‘the check-book of faith’³³⁷ she appropriated to herself everything she needed for time and eternity, for life and godliness, for mission service overseas. The connections she had with Keswick for several years became her springboard for the call to mission work. The Lord had used the challenge of the Keswick Convention to initiate new missionary endeavour.

Keswick always had a great place in Amy’s thoughts and prayers. On a single day in Japan 1893 she writes in her letter home: ‘July 23. Keswick Sunday!’ She knew that on that day all the convention goers would attend the services in one of the Keswick churches.

335. Cf. TKW (1947): 228.

336. See the beginning of this chapter.

337. A Spurgeon phrase. Cf. also in G. Thomas, ed., The Victorious Life, 41, a visitor’s comment on the Keswick Convention: ‘I learned how to cash my checks’.

Chapter 4

How I am with you in spirit, and sing even now, as you will on Saturday next,
Set on fire our hearts’ devotion with the love of Thy dear name,
Till o’er every land and ocean, lips and lives Thy Cross proclaim!
Fix our eyes on Thy returning, keeping watch till Thou shall come,
Loins well girt, lamps brightly burning. Then, Lord, take Thy servants home.³³⁸

Writing further in her diary, she notices, ‘It is almost time for your early Communion at St. John’s, Keswick’s Parish Church. This time last year we were together there.’ She urges the people at home:

Will you not think of these far-away ones. […] For my own part, I never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice… It is emphatically no sacrifice! So wrote Dr Livingstone, and, though very humbly, so write I.³³⁹ Even after Amy’s death, the visitors to the Keswick Convention heard the news from Dohnavur. For example: it was in 1958 that Miss Wilkinson told of the ongoing work there and urged the people to pray for the work there, because:

[I ]n India the dedication of girls for temple service is illegal now, the powers of evil represented by this system are not to be broken by the passing of a law. There is a great increase in the number of houses of ill-repute, and women in these houses even take girl babies, to bring them up to a life of prostitution.³⁴⁰ A distinguishing feature of the Keswick Convention was its idea of ‘full surrender’ and its promotion by female protagonists:

More concretely, the call to full surrender undoubtedly had attractions in an age when female submission was axiomatic. Frances Havergal liked thinking of Christ as ‘Master’. ‘It is perhaps my favourite title’, she wrote, ‘because it implies rule and submission; and this is what love craves. Men may feel differently, but a true woman’s submission is inseparable from deep love’. […] This form of female piety was almost certainly the root of the growing practice at the end of the century of addressing public prayer to the Lord Jesus rather than to the Father through Him. […] Women were fashioning devotional practice through the holiness movement.³⁴¹ We will see that in Amy’s thinking as well as in the development of the DF the emphasis is on the work of the Holy Spirit. It permeated her life, and also the way the DF operates. The influence of the holiness movement also broadly conceived to her missionary thought and practice. Especially around the time Amy arrived in India, British missionaries were sent by the CMS; their mission had increasingly become ‘Keswickfied’ or turned to non-perfectionist holiness expressions. The DF was on the same trajectory as those Keswick leaders whose articulation of moderate holiness piety would further help to shape what is understood now as Keswick piety. Since 1875, there has been controversy about whether sanctification was the result of a crisis of the movement, or a process of a lifetime. With her strong Presbyterian background and knowing the Reformed doctrine, together with to some extent Brethren teaching she received during her stay in Broughton Grange, Amy tended to their views, both advocating sanctification as a process. From its earliest days, Keswick stressed the combination of a crisis of personal surrender to Christ leading to the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and a process of growth in godliness. In practice, it was the stressing of missionary endeavour.³⁴² Next to Bishop Moule it was Rev. C.A. Fox

338. From Sunrise Land, 45.
339. From Sunrise Land, 46.
340. In TKW (1958): 169.
341. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 175.
342. Cf. C.S. Price & I.M. Randall, Transforming Keswick (Carlisle: OM Publishing, 2000), 14–15.

who as a regular Keswick speaker influenced Amy in her spiritual search for God’s intention with her. Rev. Fox and Miss Sophia Nugent ‘agreed that she must obey God’s call, even though the cost to Robert Wilson was so great’.³⁴³ Fox also wrote the introductory note for Amy’s first book in which he called her ‘my friend Amy Wilson Carmichael’.³⁴⁴

In the years surrounding the Great Indian Revival of 1905–1907 Keswick delegates visited India. The first delegation of Keswick missioners came to south India in 1889 and conducted Keswick meetings. Several times Keswick delegates would visit Amy in India. In 1899 Dr F.B. Meyer came to Palamcottah, ‘a delightful man in every way’. His message:

[L]eft a deep mark upon the few who responded to it in sincerity; and raised the standard for the Church at large whether it responded or not. […] The flag of holiness was definitely raised, and may it never be taken down.³⁴⁵ It was Dr Ingwood³⁴⁶ who told Amy, after he had seen everything in Dohnavur, ‘You ought to tell it. It is keeping back something that belongs to Him if you don’t.’ One and a half years later, in 1921, it resulted in Amy’s writing Nor Scrip, a story about God’s provision and guidance of the DF.³⁴⁷ Keswick influence and spirituality became widespread in British India. The Keswick inter-denominational influences in the first decade of the 20th century shaped the revival of that time and many missionaries thought and worked in their respective mission stations according to the Keswick holiness piety. No wonder that Keswick spirituality – as we will see – was so manifest in Amy Carmichael’s Dohnavur Fellowship.

343. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 52.
344. C.A. Fox, ‘Introductory Note’, in From Sunrise Land, XI.
345. Walker of Tinnevelly, 220.

346. About his visit to Dohnavur, see Gold Cord, 131–132. Two years later Amy wrote Tables in the Wilderness and after six more years, Meal in a Barrel.

347. Nor Scrip, 2–3. See also about the Keswick missioners in Oconer, L.J. “‘Keswickfied’ Methodism: Holiness Revivalism in Indian Methodism, 1870–1910,” Weslyan Theological Journal 49(2) (2014): 122–143.

I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather

burn it out where men are dying in darkness

than in a land flooded with light. From the Fight, 59.

Blessed are the far-seeing men and women of all ages, who are always watching for great things, bending forward, and listening for the prophetic voices, quick to see the great light in heavens, when it first gilds the tops of the Eastern

hills. Sunrise Land, 7.

The School of Divine Guidance by God’s Sayings is one of severe discipline. It will mean great heart – searching’s,

great patience, and great simplicity to be guided. Chambers, The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids, Discovery House Publishers, 2000), 272.