The Business Prayer Revival A Prayer Movement That Changed a Nation In the bustling streets of New York City in the autumn of 1857, a quiet revolution began. It did not start in a pulpit or in the halls of government, but in a small room on Fulton Street where an ordinary layman named Jeremiah C. Lanphier decided to pray. Lanphier, a former cloth merchant turned city missionary, was burdened by the spiritual decline of the city. Churches were shrinking, skepticism was rising, and the financial world was shaky. So he posted a simple notice: “A prayer meeting will be held on Wednesday at noon. Stop 5, 10, or 20 minutes, or the whole hour, as time permits.” On September 23, 1857, the first meeting opened with just six men. The next week there were twenty. By October the numbers had grown so large they decided to meet daily. Soon other churches and halls were filled with midday prayer meetings, drawing businessmen, clerks, and laborers alike. As the Panic of 1857 struck, with banks collapsing and unemployment soaring, desperate people turned to God. By the spring of 1858, over 10,000 men gathered daily in New York City alone for prayer. Newspapers reported conversions and gatherings across the city. The revival spread to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. Ships docking in New York carried the spirit of revival to ports abroad. Historians later called it the “Businessmen’s Revival” or the “Prayer Meeting Revival.” It was unusual in several ways: • It was led largely by laymen, not famous preachers. • It focused on short prayers, Scripture reading, and testimonies. No long sermons. • It crossed denominational lines. Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others joined hands. By 1859, it was estimated that over one million people in the U.S. were converted. Beyond America, revival fires soon spread to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and parts of Europe. What began as a noon prayer meeting became one of the most remarkable awakenings in modern history. When the Fire Crossed Oceans: The Businessmen’s Revival in South Africa The story of the 1857–58 Businessmen’s Revival in New York did not end in America. Reports of crowded prayer meetings and businessmen kneeling in repentance spread rapidly across the Atlantic. Revivals soon stirred in Ulster, Wales, and Scotland. By 1860, the same wave of prayer reached the Cape Colony in South Africa, igniting one of the most remarkable awakenings in the nation’s history. The condition of the colony before revival was spiritually bleak. South Africa in the mid-1800s was deeply marked by colonial control and racial division. Church life was stagnant. Many Christians were content with their status and resisted including slaves or people of mixed descent in their ranks. Prayer meetings were rare, often with only a handful attending. Yet a faithful remnant prayed for change. Reports of the American prayer revival began arriving by 1858–59. An 85-page booklet describing the New York movement circulated among South African congregations. In 1859, the South African Evangelical Alliance issued a public call to prayer, urging pastors to preach on God’s character, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the urgent need for prayer. This prepared the soil for what was to come. The Worcester Conference and Montagu outbreak became the turning point. On April 18–19, 1860, 347 leaders representing 20 churches, Dutch Reformed, Methodist, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, and Rhenish Mission, gathered at Worcester. They heard reports of revivals in America and Britain and studied the scriptural basis for awakening. Many left deeply stirred. The revival itself broke out first in Montagu in May 1860. Ordinary prayer meetings multiplied, sometimes three times daily. Soon extraordinary scenes followed: cries for mercy, public confession, tears, visions, and widespread conversions. Men, women, children, servants, and farmers prayed side by side in homes, fields, and mountain ravines. From farms to towns, Worcester and beyond, the fire spread. In Worcester, revival began not in the church but on a farm where believers had been gathering weekly for months. When Andrew Murray Jr., pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, visited, he was astonished to see even unbaptized coloured farm workers crying out under the Spirit’s power. Farming halted for three months as seekers flooded the meetings. The revival soon spread into Worcester itself. A youth prayer meeting of sixty young people was transformed when a fifteen-year-old coloured servant girl prayed. The hall shook with simultaneous cries for mercy. Andrew Murray, initially skeptical, tried to quiet the crowd, but could not. A visiting American assured him, “This is precisely what I witnessed in America.” From that moment, Murray recognized the Spirit’s work, even in the emotional scenes he once resisted. By the end of 1860 the revival reached far and wide. Wellington, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Tulbagh, Ceres, Robertson, and Calvinia all reported awakenings. In Paarl, the Evangelical Alliance’s week of prayer in January 1861 sparked a major surge. Prince Albert, Graaff-Reinet, and Richmond experienced powerful outbreaks later in 1861. At Graaff-Reinet, a communion service turned into a continuous prayer meeting lasting day and night. The results of the revival were life-changing. Prayer meetings became a normal part of church life. Daily conversions were reported, church attendance surged, and believers shared their faith boldly. Unity blossomed across racial and social boundaries. Families were reconciled, debts repaid, and businesses abandoned dishonest practices. Juvenile crime and immorality dropped, working conditions improved, and prisons began to empty. Missions flourished: more than fifty young men entered ministry, thirty began training as missionaries, the Women’s Missionary Union was born, and new mission institutes and seminaries opened. The Dutch Reformed Church alone launched twelve new mission stations. By 1900 it had 304 missionaries and 72,079 converts, along with 1,147 schools serving nearly 100,000 students. Revival effects endured for over fifty years, influencing South African society well into the twentieth century. A family legacy was fulfilled in the Murray household. Andrew Murray Sr., who had pastored Graaff-Reinet since 1822, prayed every Friday night for revival, for thirty-eight years. He lived to see his son, Andrew Murray Jr., become a central figure in the 1860 movement. When the awakening reached Graaff-Reinet, Murray Sr.’s joy was compared by his daughter to Simeon’s words: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” The second wave of revival in 1874–75 brought a different character. In Montagu, the revival returned, but this time it was marked not by deep conviction of sin but by exuberant praise and worship. The movement spread again to many other towns. In 1875 at Soutpansberg, it began among children at a mission station, who prayed day and night without food or sleep for three days. Soon adults and local tribes were swept in, witchdoctors, elders, and even criminals wept openly. Eyewitnesses described the scenes as “indescribable.” In conclusion, from Fulton Street in New York (1857) to Montagu in the Cape (1860) and beyond, the same pattern emerged: ordinary believers gathering in simple prayer meetings became the spark for extraordinary spiritual renewal. The South African revival not only transformed churches and communities, but also reshaped missions, education, and social life across the colony. The flame that crossed oceans in 1860 continued to burn for decades, a testimony to the power of united prayer and the Spirit’s sovereign work.