{"id":51143,"date":"2019-06-04T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/\/uk\/?p=51143"},"modified":"2019-06-03T15:59:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T14:59:19","slug":"caesar-malan-and-the-great-turning-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.banneroftruth.org\/uk\/resources\/articles\/2019\/caesar-malan-and-the-great-turning-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Caesar Malan and the Great Turning Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a moving story about how Charlotte Elliott came to write the well-known hymn, \u2018Just as I am,\u00a0without one plea,\u2019 which has been a blessing to so many. It seems that Miss Elliott, a lifelong invalid, was\u00a0going through a period of deep depression before her conversion and could not find the way to Christ: it\u00a0was obscured to her because of her own profound sense of unworthiness. At just this point a friend of her\u00a0father\u2019s, a man who was a minister in the city of Geneva, spoke with her and said, \u2018Come just as you are,\u00a0Charlotte\u2019. It was these simple words that brought her peace; and from them, too, came the beautiful verses\u00a0of her famous hymn.<\/p>\n

I am not concerned just now with the hymn-writer, however interesting her story may be, but with the\u00a0counsellor who was able to help her. His name was Caesar Malan, and he was one of a group of men\u00a0whom God raised up in the first quarter of the 19th century to preach again in great power throughout\u00a0French-speaking Europe the glorious truths of the Reformed faith. Others were F. S. R. L. Gaussen (the\u00a0great theologian), J. H. Merle d\u2019Aubign\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0(the church historian), Alexandre Vinet, and the Monods. But it\u00a0was Malan to whom \u2018the grace and glory were given to be the first publicly to raise from the ground the\u00a0tarnished banner of the Church of Geneva, and from the pulpit of Calvin<\/a> boldly to proclaim, without reserve\u00a0and without compromise, that Gospel whose echoes scarcely lingered within his temple.\u2019<\/p>\n

Geneva had during the 18th century fallen into the most fearful hardness and unbelief. It was a time when\u00a0reason reigned as king and when the successors of Calvin, the very professors of theology themselves,\u00a0professed unitarian principles and worse, rather than the gospel of Christ which had once been so powerfully\u00a0preached in the city. The church was cold and dead, and nowhere did there seem to be any token of spiritual\u00a0life. And then a man named Robert Haldane<\/a>, a Scottish gentleman who spent his life in Christian work and teaching, went to Geneva and began to expound to a group of students, in his own rooms, the Epistle to the Romans. The substance of that exposition is still available in his commentary afterwards published and in print again at the present time. Many students were converted through Haldane\u2019s testimony; and one\u00a0young man already ordained a minister, was brought, not to orthodoxy for he was already convinced of the\u00a0truth of Scripture, but to a living faith in Christ. His mind, he himself declares, was orthodox, but his soul\u00a0\u2018had not yet been awakened.\u2019 \u2018At the time I was awakened to life everlasting, I was still in darkness and\u00a0great feebleness in almost all points, and I know how useful, how efficacious, under God\u2019s blessing, to my\u00a0mind, to my soul, to my humbled heart, were the teaching and fatherly guidance of Mr. Haldane,\u2019 he later\u00a0gratefully wrote.<\/p>\n

But that new-found faith had to be given expression. In May of 1817 it came Malan\u2019s turn to preach in\u00a0the Cathedral of St. Pierre, the church of Calvin; and he did so, in the presence of the great and notable of\u00a0the city, Arian, unitarian, unbelieving, rationalistic and proud, with great boldness and faithfulness. \u2018His\u00a0eloquent words,\u2019 we are told, \u2018dropped on the leaden slumbers of his audience like bolts of fire shot from\u00a0heaven.\u2019 His hearers were furious and as he left the church almost gnashed their teeth upon him in their\u00a0intense hatred for him and the truth he had preached. He was a leper in their eyes, and they despised him.<\/p>\n

Even his wife, who was herself not yet converted at this time, was resentful because she saw their hopes\u00a0for the future dashed by this intemperate act on her husband\u2019s part. Malan went home from the service\u00a0dispirited and depressed, to hide himself in his own room. But as he opened the door of his house he saw\u00a0waiting for him the familiar figure of his friend, Robert Haldane, who looked the younger man in the eye,\u00a0grasped his hand, and said: \u2018Thank God! The Gospel has been once more preached in Geneva!\u2019 Malan was\u00a0comforted; and he and his friends went on with their preaching till the ancient faith had been revived by\u00a0God\u2019s blessing, not only in Geneva, but also in many other parts of Europe as well.<\/p>\n

I tell this story because there is a lesson in it, I think, for ministers today. Malan had to learn — and he\u00a0did learn it gloriously! — that the great thing for a minister is faithfulness to the gospel, no matter what the response and even hatred of men. It was a hard thing to accept, but it brought him freedom from the fear\u00a0of man and very great blessing. We live in a day when there is again little sense of the presence of God,\u00a0and when ministers themselves seem to speak with small authority and little spiritual power. Perhaps they are bound too much by the world about them and live in another fear than that of God alone. What a joy it\u00a0is to know that we are unimportant, and that Christ only is important! Ministers are but the paranymphioi,\u00a0the friends of the bridegroom, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist understood that when he said: \u2018He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth\u00a0him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom\u2019s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.\u2019 (John 3:29) \u2018Thank God! The Gospel has been once more preached in Geneva!\u2019 That is, \u2018Thank God! The voice of the\u00a0bridegroom has once more been heard in the city!\u2019<\/p>\n

And what, after all, is more significant than that?<\/p>\n

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This article was first published in the November 1968 edition of the Banner of Truth<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

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Of Further Interest<\/h3>\n