The island of Lewis has been the scene of a very gracious movement of the Spirit. The breath of revival has been felt, and communities have been conscious of the mighty impact of God. This island had, in days past, experienced seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, but of late years the stream of vital Christianity appeared to be running low.

In our day of spiritual superficiality and anemic Christianity, characterized by sin-infested pulpits and indifferent pews, the subject of revival is nonetheless a popular one. Few who talk of it, however, have the faintest idea what a real moving of God is all about. Impressive financial holdings, ornate edifices of worship, statistical proofs of "success," and mind-boggling technological sophistications merely mask the spiritual bankruptcy within the Church as a whole today. We are indeed poor in spirit. The real problem is, we seem completely incapable of even beginning to recognize just how spiritually poor we have become. We lean to our own understanding, make peace with our pet sins, deem ourselves to be rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing, all the while piddling piously with ideas of revival.

But revival can never be piddled with. It is very, very costly. Duncan Campbell, in this heart-stirring message of personal and corporate revival, strikes the taproot of the genuine working of God among His people. Such revival is rare, priceless, and exceedingly costly. Campbell captures the spirit of God's desire to work, and carefully delineates both God's sovereign moving and man's responsibility to respond to the promptings of the Spirit of God.

This world has witnessed God's sovereign dealings through the humblest of men, often at the darkest hours in history. We remember the rebirth of Martin Luther and the Reformation that followed. The Puritans obeyed God's Word with abandonment in the midst of a wicked generation. The Spirit moved mightily upon the congregation of the dry preacher Jonathan Edwards and affected an entire generation. The eighteenth century saw the powerfully convicting work of God's Spirit in New England, the nineteenth had its great New York prayer revival and the early twentieth century heralded a phenomenal spiritual awakening in Wales.

The cry of our day is, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" The question might better be asked, "Where are the Elijahs of the Lord God?"

While there is much prayer today, there is little of the humility behind it that characterized the life of Duncan Campbell. Here is a message by this great servant of our century. It is hot with the breath of God. It needs to be read and reread upon our knees until it burns its way into the hearts of the people of God and out through our lives. The truth is here to kindle the flame. Are we ignitable? May God once again drench us with the oil of the Spirit and set us ablaze!