Recent surveys have indicated sadly that more than half of Americans do not believe – or understand – that Jesus is God. Similarly and tragically, most American churchgoers could not accurately define “The Gospel.” Yes, we need more biblical preaching and teaching to correct this weakness. But more than that, we need Spirit-driven revival to apply that teaching and preaching to bring spiritually dead hearts to life. As we saw in our last study (“Revive Us Again”), this is what we need to be earnestly praying for in our day of increased ungodliness, brokenness, hopelessness, injustice, and violence.
Another powerful prayer for such revival is found in the hymn, “O Breath of Life, Come Sweeping Through Us.” I still remember the first time I heard it. It was at the college fellowship at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS after the evening service. I was a timid and lonely freshman at Belhaven College just down the street, having just arrived a week earlier. That weekly gathering of students in the fellowship hall included a time of singing. Singing this hymn there that evening immediately struck me with the earnestness of the words, as well as the beauty of the music.
The hymn was written about 1914 by Elizabeth Ann Porter Head. Bessie, as she came to be known, was born in 1850 in Belfast, Ireland, the youngest daughter of Tobias Porter, manager of John Alexander’s flour mill. We know nothing of her early life, but in 1894 she became secretary of the YWCA in Swansea. She then served with the South African General Mission from 1897 to 1907, mostly in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Johannesburg, helping to found several branches of the YWCA.
The South Africa General Mission had its origins with the founding of the Cape General Mission (CGM) by Martha Osborn, Spencer Walton and well-known author Andrew Murray in 1889. The initial focus of this ministry was on the soldiers and sailors in the Cape Town area. But the mission soon expanded to broader evangelism among the Africans. Because the ministry had spread to other African countries, in 1965 it changed its name to Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF). AEF merged with Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) in 1998.
With the chairman of the Mission and a fellow missionary, Bessie toured North America in 1906-1907. Her intended return to South Africa in November 1907 was cancelled in favor of marriage, on 17 December, to the chairman of the mission, widower Albert Alfred Head, and they returned to England. He had been an insurance broker. She and her husband, both evangelical Anglicans, were also members of the annual Keswick Convention. She wrote much religious verse as well as prose articles about her missionary experiences for the SAGM. It was in one such collection of her verses, Heavenly Places and other Messages (1920), that this hymn first appeared in print.
This hymn belongs in the hymnal section about the Holy Spirit, since it is a prayer addressed to Him. Notice how each stanza addresses Him with a different title: Breath of God, Wind of God, Breath of Love, Heart of Christ, Lord. It is a penetrating and powerful prayer for revival and renewal, a prayer for cleansing and equipping, in light of the words of the Lord Jesus: Do you not say, “There are still four months and then comes the harvest”? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! (John 4:35). The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest (Matthew 9:37-38).
But instead of the missionary zeal of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we see, today by and large, a weakened and compromised church. There is doctrinal compromise, a setting aside of the fundamentals of the faith with the plea, “Let’s just get together and love one another.” Forgotten by many is the exhortation that we are to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).
There is also moral compromise in the church. Things are permitted and even endorsed by Christians that violate the holy separation God expects (2 Corinthians 6:17). Indeed, too often, the world has made more of an impact on the church than the church has on the world. True revival always brings new zeal to root out sin in our lives. Paul faced that need in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 5:1-8), and it is still around. The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17).
In stanza 1, we recognize that we need life and power to cleanse us and make us fit to respond to the needs and opportunities of the moment. To ask to be revived means that we recognize that we have become at least lethargic, if not worse! And what a perfect title for the Holy Spirit: the Breath of Life. This is the God who breathed life into the form of Adam in the ground, who breathed life into us in our conversion, and who can now breathe new life into us in our sanctification.
O Breath of Life, come sweeping through us,
Revive Thy church with life and power;
O Breath of Life, come, cleanse, renew us,
And fit Thy church to meet this hour.
In stanza 2, we recognize the sin involved in our present condition and turn to the Lord in confession and repentance. We have been given the means of grace to energize our otherwise lifeless souls. It truly is sin if we fail to make use of those means. And yet, as with the Old Testament prophets, the same God who indicts us for our sin is also tender in His forgiving grace that revives and restores us.
O Wind of God, come bend us, break us,
Till humbly we confess our need;
Then in Thy tenderness remake us,
Revive, restore, for this we plead.
In stanza 3, we pray to the one who breathed life into Adam and can breathe life into us. We needed this to happen in our regeneration. We also need Him to come now and breathe new life into us, our churches, and our country. Revival does indeed renew people in “thought and will and heart.” We need new strength to resist sin, new strength to love the Lord, and new strength to love – and live – His Word!
O Breath of love, come breathe within us,
Renewing thought and will and heart;
Come, Love of Christ, afresh to win us,
Revive Thy church in every part.
In stanza 4, we recognize two important kinds of brokenness, Christ’s and ours. The text juxtaposes Christ’s brokenness at the cross (This is My body broken for you – Matthew 26:26) with our need to be broken in repentance for our sin (A broken and contrite heart He will not despise – Psalm 51:17). Revival always produces a profound awareness of our sin and need for cleansing, both individually and corporately … in the church at large as well as in the culture.
O Heart of Christ, once broken for us,
’Tis there we find our strength and rest;
Our broken, contrite hearts now solace,
And let Thy waiting church be blest.
In stanza 5, we have the direct allusion to Jesus’ challenge in Matthew 9:37-38 about the harvest fields. In this text, we do exactly what Jesus instructed us to do, to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send workers into the fields. And we recognize that because of our sinful hearts, our zeal will grow dim. And so we pray that He will energize us with revival to love Him and care for the lost, equipping us to spread the light of the gospel.
Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating
While harvest fields are vast and white?
Revive, us Lord, the world is waiting,
Equip Thy church to spread the light.
The tune SPIRITUS VITAE is a beautiful composition that fits the “mood” of the text marvelously. Its harmony fittingly conveys the sense of a plea lifted up to God, as each phrase begins at the high point of the melody line. Sadly, we know virtually nothing about Mary J. Hammond (1878-1964), the British composer.