Coleraine Town Hall (1859)
With Dr Carson, I have no doubt that the physical agent, whatever it may be, has been sent by God, and for a specific purpose. Such was its effect one night in Coleraine, he remarks, that it was like the day of judgment when sinners will call on the mountains and the rocks to hide them. "It struck terror to the heart of the most hardened and obdurate sinner. The whole town was in a state of alarm, business was forgotten, and the revival was the only subject of conversation. A French invasion could not have produced so great a panic. I have seen much of the .accumulated misery of bodily disease and mental distress, but I never saw anything to be compared to the harrowing scene in the Coleraine Town Hall. It would be quite impossible to imagine any agency more powerful for drawing the attention of men to the state of their souls. heard many people mocking and scoffing, before that night, about the revival; but when I saw the same parties examining the cases in the Town Hall, their mocking was at an end, and they looked like criminals whose hour was at hand. No other sort of a revival could have had the same effects. If one-half of the inhabitants had been converted in a minute, in the ordinary way, the other half would not have believed it—they would have laughed at it as a vision. It would have had no effect upon them."
From ‘Authentic Records of Revival, now in progress in the United Kingdom, published in 1860, re-printed and edited in 1980 by Richard Owen Roberts, p299.
Additional Information
The Town Hall was re-built in 1859.