By Rev Dr. Ed &
Janice Hird
-an article for the Light
Magazine “Healing Pioneers’ series
It’s remarkable how few Canadians have heard about one of
Vancouver’s greatest healing revivals with Charles Sydney Price. Born in Sheffield,
England in 1887, he lost his mom at age 4 when she gave birth to his sister
Jessie. After attending Wesley College,
he served in the British Navy for a couple of months before being discharged
for a bad knee. At age 20, he emigrated to Canada where he found work on a
railroad crew. Moving to Spokane
Washington, he was converted at a Free Methodist Mission:
One night in early autumn I
was standing with my back to a lamp post listening to the singing of a little
band of mission workers. When the street meeting was over a little old lady
detained me. “Do you know God wants you?” she said. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable.
I am afraid that I was rather rude in the way I excused myself and hurried away…
I began to feel as if God had spoken to the old lady and a feeling of dread and
awe came upon me. Slowly I retraced my steps and I arrived eventually at the
mission. What a battle went on in my heart that night!...I was getting to the
place that I did not care what happened, and while I was not in the gutter, yet
I was slipping down, down, down, and I knew it was disaster and sorrow in the
end. When Mr. Stayt gave the altar call, I sprang to my feet, squared my shoulders
and marched down to the front. That night I gave myself to God. I was
desperately in earnest. I was absolutely sincere.
That same year, he was ordained a Methodist minister, and
married Bessie Rae Osborn with whom he had
five children. Coming under the
influence of liberal theology, he became a Congregationalist pastor for twelve
years. This made him very sceptical about the Bible and its healing miracles.
Later, Price would describe himself as having been
'spiritually blind, leading his people into a ditch'. He pastored this way for
twelve years, with no altar calls or conversions. Then Price moved to
California where he was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Lodi. As a
cigar smoker, he built smoking rooms to attract newcomers. In 1921, a healing revival in San Jose broke
out with Aimie Semple McPherson. Some of Price’s own congregation were strongly
impacted:
His eyes were fairly dancing
and on his face was the joy of heaven itself. Clasping my hand, he said,
“Brother Price—Hallelujah!—Hallelujah!—Praise the Lord!” I gazed at him in
amazement. Expressions like that were not usual in my church. Throwing back my
head, I commenced to laugh. Still clasping my hand, he said, “Hallelujah—I have
been to San Jose and I have been saved—saved through the Blood. I am so happy I
could just float away.”
Price responded to his congregant, saying “I can explain it
all. It is metaphysical, psychological, nothing tangible.” “Slowly a
bitter antagonism”, said Price, “commenced to creep into my heart.” He
published an ad in the newspaper, promising to preach against Aimie Semple
McPherson as a fraud.
Inserting an advertisement in
the paper that I would preach the following Sunday on “DIVINE HEALING BUBBLE
EXPLODES,” I made my way down to San Jose, armed with pen and paper to take
notes. I intended to return the following Sunday and blow the whole thing to
pieces.
While listening McPherson in person, he came under great
conviction about his own emptiness. On the third night, he publicly responded
to the altar call, being filled with joy:
Down those steps I walked. I
was in the act of kneeling at the altar when the glory of God broke over my
soul. I did not pray for I did not have to pray. Something burst within my
breast. An ocean of love divine rolled across my heart. This was out of the
range of psychology and actions and reactions. This was real!! Throwing up both
hands I shouted, “Hallelujah!” So overcome was I with joy that I commenced to
run across the altar. Dr. Towner followed me—and wept for joy! Then in an
ecstasy of divine glory, I ran down the aisle to the back of the tent and back
to the front again, shouting, “I am saved—Hallelujah!—I am saved!”
During ‘tarrying’ meetings that week at the local Baptist
Church, Price experienced a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit:
Suddenly like a knife, there
appeared in that awful dark, a light and it flashed like a lighting flash
across the blackness above my head. The heavens were split and they commenced
to fold up until I could see the glory of a light through that opening in the
sky. Then as I gazed at that beautiful light, a ball of fire came down towards
me; lower and lower it came until it got to the level of the darkness on either
side. It began to shoot out darts of fire. Then the ball came down a little
lower. It shone so brightly it banished the darkness. I just watched,
fascinated and entranced, those tongues of fire. It then touched me on the
forehead and I felt a quiver go through my body and then my chest began to
heave and I started praising God. The Comforter had come!
Price returned to his own church where he once again began
giving altar calls. One thousand members began to hold seekers meetings crying
out to God for His presence. They started holding two-mile long Gospel parades in
their automobiles where Jesus was preached.
In 1922, Aimie Semple McPherson invited Price to join her
evangelistic team. When Ashland, Oregon churches invited “Sister Aimee” to lead
revival meetings there, she asked Price go in her place. Hearing of the Oregon
salvations and healings, the Victoria Ministerial Association unanimously
invited Price to conduct a three-week Crusade in April 2023. After thousands were
turned away, the meetings were moved to the new Willow Hockey Arena, where over
9,000 attended, still leaving 4,000 unable to get inside. Victoria at that time
only had a population of 55,000. Up to
1,000 per night were powerfully converted. The blind gained their sight, and
the lame were walking. Rev. W.J. Knott was healed from a 10-year-old neck
goiter that had grown so big that it was starting to choke him. One month later, Rev. Knott reported that he
could eat any kind of food, slept like a baby, and could read fine print
without glasses. Rev. J.F. Dimmick’s
daughter Ruby experienced the healing of her curved spine and deformed foot, allowing
her to run and walk freely without any paralysis. Newspapers all over Canada and the United
States printed the story. The Literary Digest printed an account of the case. Over
9,000 Chinese people attended the meetings, with at least 600 going forward to
receive Christ. Sadly, when he returned a year later, Price was arrested by the
Victoria police and kicked out of town for ‘practising medicine without a
license.’
The Vancouver Province newspaper on May
2nd 1923 reported: “Nothing that has happened in years has so
stirred religious circles like the coming of Rev. C.S. Price, an evangelist,
who for the next three weeks, commencing next Sunday, will address afternoon
and evening mass meetings in the Arena rink.” Price preached at the new Denman
Ice Arena to over 250,000 people in a three-week period where many were healed.
At that time, the Vancouver region only had a population of 175,000. Frank
Patrick, owner of the Denman Arena, commented: “[T]he evangelistic party
addressed over a quarter of a million people in the space of three weeks. On
more than one occasion, I could feel the very building tremble with the singing
of the multitude who were unable to wait for the opening hymn.” Every meeting
was filled with stretchers, crutches, and wheelchairs. Price liked to anoint
the sick with oil, praying, “May the mercy of God and the love of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and the power of His Holy Spirit — which are here now — enter
your soul, your mind, and your body for healing. Amen.” He regularly
reminded people that "it was Jesus who was the healer." In all his services,
Price encouraged people: "to forget, as much as possible, the instrument
who anointed them with oil. He told them to look away to Christ, in whom alone
they could find deliverance out of all their sufferings."
Price also held parallel meetings in Chinatown, with an
interpreter, at the Imperial Theatre. The
over-all response was one of the largest-per-capita response that has ever
occurred in BC. Over seven congregations were planted as a result of these
meetings. For four months after the crusade, the baptismal tank at Ruth Morton
Baptist was filled and used every Sunday.
Sadly, some clergy opposed the healing miracles, publicly speaking out
against them.
Price also held meetings in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, & Toronto, and
then in America in Minneapolis, Duluth, St Louis & Belleville, Illinois. In
1926, Price started publishing the "Golden Grain" periodical, which
included many testimonies of healings and miracles. In 1928, he decided to
purchase a tent to hold meetings, so that he no longer had to pay large
auditorium expenses. He called it the Canvas Cathedral. During the last 10 days
of the Belleville meetings, there were 1000 conversions a day. He counted
35,000 conversions in 1928 alone. The constant traveling however put a strain
on his marriage which ended in divorce in the 1930s.
In the later 1930s, he ministered in Norway, England, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey,
Syria, Lebanon, and Italy, as well as continuing to speak throughout the USA. In 1939, Price estimated that he had traveled
over a million miles on evangelistic campaigns since he began in 1922. He was a
prolific writer, including The Real Faith in which he taught that
healing is not about striving but rather surrender and abiding in His healing
presence.
Daily surrender of the will was Price’s passion:
In the last analysis, the goal
of every mature Christian should not be Divine Healing but DIVINE HEALTH! The
flow of His life through ours; the surrender of our will to His; the
impartation of His nature, until our natures are impregnated with the glory and
the presence of the Divine! Not in an instant! Not in some emotional
moment at an altar! But by that daily acknowledgment of His lovely presence in
ALL OUR WAYS, and the surrender of EACH MOMENT to His care and to His
keeping."
Price, who died on March 8, 1947, acknowledged that it was
not always easy to assess the long-term impact of any one evangelistic service.
Memorably he commented: "We cannot always visualize or comprehend the
result of our labors at the time we minister. We presume that the old cobbler
who preached the sermon on that wintry day in London might have thought he had
only one spiritual child. That child, however, was none other than Charles
Hadden Spurgeon. The old shoemaker might have had only one spiritual son, but
he certainly had a lot of grandchildren."
We pray for many spiritual grandchildren as Canadians
rediscover the healing well dug by Charles S. Price.
Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird, co-authors, God’s
Firestarters
