Andrew Murray ****
South
African churchman, educator, and author. Son of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC)
minister in the then frontier town of Graaf-Reinet, South Africa, Andrew Murray
was educated in Aberdeen, Scotland, and in Utrecht, Holland. He was ordained in
the Netherlands and returned to South Africa in 1849, where he became the first
regular DRC minister north of the Orange River. His parish covered fifty
thousand square miles, and Murray's ministry required frequent long and
dangerous journeys to reach the nineteen thousand people in his charge.
After
nine years of frontier ministry Murray published his first book, Jesus the
Children's Friend, in 1858. He opened Grey College, later to become the
University of the Orange Free State, in 1859, and became its first rector. In
1860 he returned to the Cape Colony to a parish in Worchester. In 1862 he was
elected moderator of the DRC and became involved in a long theological,
political, and legal battle with liberal ministers who were attempting to wrest
control of the DRC from evangelicals like Murray.
He moved to Cape Town in 1864 and to
Wellington in 1871. In 1879 Murray began what was to become the first of seven
great evangelistic tours. He toured South Africa organizing revival meetings
which were an astounding success. These activities, plus his growing stature as
a theological writer, led to his being invited to preach at the Northfield,
U.S.A., and Keswick, U.K., conventions in 1895.
Murray
was a systematic thinker who wrote over 250 books and many articles. His
best-known works are Abide in Christ (1882), Absolute Surrender (1895), and
With Christ in the School of Prayer (1885). Through his mystically inclined
theology and The Second Blessing (1891) he became associated with the
charismatic movement. His book Divine Healing (1900) increased his links with
Pentecostalism.
Throughout
his life Murray took an active role in South African society. In 1852 he helped
organize, and acted as the official interpreter for, the important Sand River
Convention, which led to the British recognition of the South African Republic
in the Transvaal. He took a keen interest in the welfare and education of
Africans and held enlightened views on the race question. One of his last
works, Godsdienst en Politiek (Religion and Politics), was a warning against
the practice of Afrikaner Nationalist politicians in promoting their political
views, which led to the development of apartheid, as "Christian
politics." Later, in the 1930s, followers of Murray were to fight a losing
battle against Nationalists in the DRC who ignored Murray's evangelical
insights and sought to reform the DRC in terms of Abraham Kuyper's neo-Calvinism.
Andrew
Murray was deeply affected by Law's
"Affectionate Address to the Clergy" and said "I do not know where to find anywhere
else the same clear and powerful statement of the truth which the Church needs
at the present day. I have tried to read or consult every book I knew of, that
treats of the work of the Holy Spirit, and no where have I met with anything
that brings the truth of our dependence on the continual leading of the Spirit,
and the assurance that that leading can be enjoyed without interruption, so
home to the heart as this teaching ...which I believe to be entirely
scriptural."