_EARLY LIFE UNTIL HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE MINISTRY_.
Birth and Early Hardships—Early Church Fellowship—Beginning to
Learn—Loses an Eye—A Singular Dream—Beginning to Preach—His First
Sermon—Is Baptized—A New Church Fellowship—The Rev. Timothy
Thomas—Anecdotes—A Long Season of Spiritual Depression—Is ordained as
Home Missionary to Lleyn—Commencement of Success as a
Preacher—Remarks on Success—Marries—Great Sermon at Velinvole—A
Personal Reminiscence of Welsh Preaching.
Christmas Evans is not the first, in point of time, in the remarkable
procession of those men whose names we might mention, and of whom we
shall find occasion in this volume to speak, as the great Welsh
preachers. And there may be some dispute as to whether he was the first
in point of eminence; but he is certainly the one of the four whose name
is something more than a tradition. John Elias, Williams of Wern, and
Davies of Swansea, have left behind them little beside the legendary
rumour of their immense and pathetic power. This is true, especially, of
David Davies of Swansea; and yet, Dr. Rees, his successor, and a very
competent authority, says: “In some respects he was superior to all his
distinguished contemporaries.” But the name of Christmas Evans is,
perhaps, the most extensively known of any,—just as the name of Bunyan
has a far more extensive intimacy than the equally honourable names of
Barrow and Butler; and there is a similar reason for this. Christmas
Evans, in the pulpit, more nearly approached the great Dreamer than any
pulpit master of whom we have heard; many of his sermons appear to have
been long-sustained parables, and pictures alive with allegorical
delineation of human character.
CHRISTMAS EVANS was born at a place called Esgairwen (Ysgarwen), in the
parish of Llandysul, in Cardiganshire; he was born on Christmas Day—and
hence his Christian name—in 1766. His parents, Samuel and Johanna Evans,
were in the poorest circumstances; his father was a shoemaker, and
although this profession has included such a number of men remarkable for
their genius and high attainments, it has never found the masters of the
craft greatly remarkable for the possession of gold or gear. His mother,
by her maiden name Lewis, came from a respectable family of freeholders
in the parish; but the father of Christmas died when he was a child,—and
these were hard days of poverty, almost destitution, for the poor
struggling widow and her family,—so her brother, James Lewis, of Bwlchog,
in the parish of Llanfihangel-ar-Arth, took little Christmas home to his
farm, engaging to feed and clothe him for such labour on the farm as the
poor boy might be able to perform. Here he stayed six years,—six
miserable years; his uncle was a hard, cruel man, a selfish drunkard.
Christmas used to say of him, in after years, “It would be difficult to
find a more unconscionable man than James Lewis in the whole course of a
wicked world.” During these, which ought to have been the most valuable
years of his life, no care was taken of his heart, his mind, or his
morals; in fact, he had neither a friend nor a home. At the age of
seventeen he could not read a word, he was surrounded by the worst of
examples, and he became the subject of a number of serious accidents,
through which he narrowly escaped with his life. Once he was stabbed in
a quarrel, once he was nearly drowned, and with difficulty recovered;
once he fell from a high tree with an open knife in his hand, and once a
horse ran away with him, passing at full speed through a low and narrow
passage. There is an erroneous impression that, in those days, he was a
great boxer, and that he lost his eye in a fight; the truth is quite
different; he was not a boxer, and never fought a battle in his life. He
lost his eye after his conversion, when he and some other young men were
attempting the work of mutual help, in making up for lost time, by
evening meetings, for various works of instruction; a number of his
former companions waylaid him at night, beat him unmercifully, and one
struck him with a stick over the eye. In after years, when some one was
jesting before Robert Hall at Welsh preachers, upon his mentioning
Christmas Evans, the jester said, “And he only has one eye!” “Yes, sir,”
he answered, “but that’s a piercer; an eye, sir, that could light an army
through a wilderness in a dark night.” So that in his sightless eye,
Christmas Evans, like the one-eyed Spiridion, the noble witness in the
Nicean Council, really “bore in his body a mark of the Lord Jesus.” But
we are anticipating.
At about seventeen years of age, he left his bad uncle and his more
servile employments; still continuing the occupation of a farming lad, he
went to Glanclettwr; afterwards he lived at Penyralltfawr, at Gwenawlt,
and then at Castellhywel. Thus the days of his youth passed; he looks
like a poor, neglected, and forsaken lad. Of books he knew nothing,—he
had no men of intelligence around him with whom to converse, and his
condition in life doomed him to association with all that was low and
brutal. And yet, strange as it may seem, as his friend and earliest
biographer, Mr. Rhys Stephen, has testified, even then, as in the
instance of the rugged young Samson, “the Spirit of the Lord began to
move him at times.” It is not credible that, however crushed down
beneath the weight of such abject circumstances, the boy could have been
exactly what the other boys and men round him were; restless feelings,
and birth-throes of emotion and thought, make themselves known in most of
us before they assume a shape in consciousness: it is natural that it
should have been so with him. With a life of seriousness, which resulted
in Church membership, and which appears to have taken place when he was
about seventeen years of age, commenced his life of mental
improvement,—the first humble beginnings of intellectual effort. It is
singular that the Church with which he first united, at Llwynrhydowain,
originally Presbyterian, and of considerable importance in the early
history of Welsh Nonconformity, approached very nearly, when Evans united
with it, to Unitarianism. Its pastor was the Rev. David Davies; he was
an Arian, an eminent bard, a scholar, an admirable and excellent man, who
has left behind him a very honourable reputation. Such a man as Mr.
Davies was, he would be likely to be interested in the intelligent and
intellectual state of the youth of his Church and congregation. The
slight accounts we possess of the avidity with which Christmas Evans and
his companions commenced their “pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,”
is very animating and pleasing; they combined together with the desire to
obtain the earliest and most necessary means of mental acquisitiveness,
such as reading and writing, a desire for the acquisition of religious
knowledge, and what may be spoken of as some of the higher branches of
study. But we will employ Christmas Evans’s own words:—
“During a revival which took place in the Church under the care of
Mr. David Davies, many young people united themselves with that
people, and I amongst them. What became of the major part of these
young converts, I have never known; but I hope God’s grace followed
them as it did me, the meanest of the whole. One of the fruits of
this awakening was the desire for religious knowledge that fell upon
us. Scarcely one person out of ten could, at this time, and in those
neighbourhoods, read at all, even in the language of the country. We
bought Bibles and candles, and were accustomed to meet together in
the evening, in the barn of Penyralltfawr; and thus, in about one
month, I was able to read the Bible in my mother tongue. I was
vastly delighted with so much learning. This, however, did not
satisfy me, but I borrowed books, and learnt a little English. Mr.
Davies, my pastor, understood that I thirsted for knowledge, and took
me to his school, where I stayed for six months. Here I went through
the Latin Grammar; but so low were my circumstances that I could stay
there no longer.”
To preach, as we all know, has often been an object of ambition with
young converts, and the novices in the vestibule of knowledge of the
spiritual life; such an ambition seems very early to have stirred in the
heart of young Christmas. We have already mentioned how it was that he
so cruelly lost the use of an eye; it illustrates the singular brutality
of the time and neighbourhood; an inoffensive lad, simply because he
renounced the society of profane drunkards, and was laudably busying
himself with the affairs of a higher life, was set upon in the darkness
of the night by six young ruffians, unmercifully beaten with sticks, and
the sight of an eye destroyed. It was the night after this calamity that
he had a dream; and the dream of the night reveals the bent of his day
dreams. He dreamt that the Day of Judgment was come, that he saw the
world in a blaze; with great confidence he called out, “Jesus, save me!”
And he thought he saw the Lord turn towards him and say, “It was thy
intention to preach the Gospel, but it is now too late, for the Day of
Judgment is come.” But this vision of the night clung to him when he
awoke; perhaps he feared that the loss of the eye would interfere with
his acceptance as a minister. Certainly the dream had an influence on
his future career,—so had many other dreams. It was always his belief
that he had received some of his most important impressions from dreams:
nothing, apparently, no amount of reason or argument, could persuade him
to the contrary. To preach the Gospel became an ardent desire now with
this passionately imaginative and earnest youth; but there were serious
hindrances in the way. There appears to have been a kind of law in the
Church with which he was connected at Llwynrhydowain, that no member of
the Church should be permitted to preach until he had passed through a
college course. It is very remarkable that two of the greatest preachers
who have adorned the pulpit of Wales should have been admitted into
Church fellowship together on the same evening,—David Davies, afterwards
of Swansea, whose name we have already mentioned, and Christmas Evans.
It was always the regret and complaint of their first pastor, that the
Church law to which we have referred, deprived his Church of the two most
eminent men it had ever produced. There were, no doubt, other reasons;
but it is singular, now, to notice the parallelism of the gifted pair,
for they also preached their first sermon, within a week of each other,
in the same cottage. Cottage preaching was then of much more importance
than it now seems to our ecclesiastical and æsthetic apprehensions; and
the congregations which assembled in those old Welsh cottages were such
as to try the mental and spiritual strength of a young preacher. How
Davies acquitted himself, and how he ran his course, we may notice
by-and-bye; our present concern is with Christmas Evans. Perhaps our
readers will not entertain a depreciating opinion of the youth, when they
hear him very candidly confess that the substance of his first sermon was
taken from Beveridge’s “Thesaurus Theologicus,” a book borrowed,
probably, from his pastor. But a Mr. Davies, who must have been a
reading man although a farmer, heard it, was very much impressed by it,
but went home and found it; so that the poor boy’s reputation as a
preacher seemed gone. “Still,” said the good man, “I have some hope of
the son of Samuel the shoemaker, because the prayer was as good as the
sermon.” But perhaps he would not have thought so hopefully of the young
man had he then known, what Christmas afterwards confessed, that the
prayer, too, was very greatly committed to memory from a collection of
prayers by a well-known clergyman, Griffith Jones of Llanddowror.
Such was the first public effort of this distinguished preacher; like the
first effort of his great English contemporary, Robert Hall, we suppose
it would be regarded as a failure. Meantime, we have to notice that the
spiritual life of the youth was going on; he began to be dissatisfied
with the frame of theologic sentiment of the Church to which he belonged.
He heard preachers who introduced him to the more grand, scriptural, and
evangelical views of Christian truth. The men of that time did not play
at preaching; the celebrated David Morris, father of the yet more
celebrated Ebenezer Morris; the great Peter Williams, Jones of Llangan,
Thomas Davies of Neath,—such men as these appear to have kindled in his
mind loftier views of the person and the work of Christ. Also, a man
named Amos, who had been a member of the same Church with Christmas
Evans, had left that communion, and joined that of the Baptists. A close
study of the Word of God led Christmas also to a change of convictions as
to the meaning and importance of the rite of baptism. A similar change
of theologic opinion was passing through the mind of his young friend and
fellow-member, David Davies, who finally united himself with the
Independent communion. Christmas Evans says, “I applied to the Baptist
Church at Aberduar, where I was in due time received; I was then about
twenty years and six months old. I was baptized by the Rev. Timothy
Thomas.”
As the names of successive persons and pastors pass before our eyes, and
appear in these pages, it is at once affecting, humbling, and elevating,
to think of men of whom our ears have scarcely ever heard, but who, in
their day, were men “of whom the world was not worthy,” and whose “record
is now on high.” Such a man, beyond all question, was this Timothy
Thomas, the son of an eminent father, the brother of men who, if not as
eminent as himself, were yet worthy of the noble relationship. He was a
Welsh gentleman, lived on a farm, an extended lease of which he held, and
which enabled him to preach and fulfil the work of a pastor without any
monetary reward. He appears to have devoted himself, his time, his
energy, and his property to the work of the ministry. His farm was a
splendid one in the vale of the Teivy. Mr. Rhys Stephen, who knew him,
speaks of his gallant bearing, his ingenuous spirit, and of his princely
magnanimity; he would ride thirty or forty miles on a Saturday, through
the remote wilds of Caermarthenshire and Cardiganshire, to be ready for
the services on the Sunday. His gentlemanly bearing overcame and beat
down mobs which sometimes assembled for the purpose of insulting and
assailing him. Mr. Stephen mentions one singular instance, when Mr.
Thomas was expected to administer the ordinance of baptism, and, as was
not unusual in those days, in the natural baptistry of the river. A mob
had assembled together for the purpose of insulting and annoying the
service, the missiles of offence in their hands; when, suddenly, a
well-dressed gentleman, mounted on a noble horse, rode over the village
bridge; he hastily alighted, gave his bridle to a bystander, walked
briskly into the middle of the little flock; the inimical members of the
mob set him down for a magistrate at the least, and expected that he
would give the word to disperse; but instead of doing so, he took the
nearest candidate by the hand, and walked himself down into the stream,
booted and spurred as he was. Before the mob had done gaping, he had
done this part of his work; after this, however, he stood upon the brink
of the stream, still in his wet attire, and preached one of his ardent
sermons. He certainly conciliated the homage of the opposing forces, and
left them under the impression that the “dippers,” as the Baptists were
generally called, had certainly one gentleman among them. We do not know
how our Baptist brethren would like to submit to this kind of service,
but it certainly seems to resemble more closely the baptism of Enon, near
to Salem, and that of the Ethiopian prince by Philip, than some we have
seen.
The anecdotes of this Timothy Thomas are too good and too numerous to be
entirely passed by. Once he was preaching in the enchanting
neighbourhood near Llandeilo, to which we referred in the first
chapter—the neighbourhood of Grongar Hill, and Golden Grove; the
neighbourhood of Dyer, Steele, and Jeremy Taylor. It was a still Sabbath
morning in the summer, and in that lovely spot immense crowds were
gathered to hear him. He had administered baptism, and preached, without
interruption, when someone came up to him and told him, with startled
fear and trepidation, that the clergyman,—the rector,—on his way to the
church, had been detained, utterly unable to pass through the crowd,
through the greater part of the service. Instantly, with admirable tact
and catholicity, he exclaimed: “I understand that the respected clergyman
of the parish has been listening patiently to me for the last hour; let
us all go to the church and return the compliment by hearing him.” The
church, and the churchyard as well, were instantly crowded; the clergyman
was delighted with the catholic spirit displayed by the Baptist minister,
and of course not a word further was said about the trespass which had
been committed.
Timothy Thomas was a noble specimen of what has been called the “muscular
Christian;” he had great courage. Once, when travelling with his wife,
and set upon by four ruffians, he instantly, with his single stick,
floored two, but broke his stick in the very act of conquest.
Immediately he flew to a hedge and tore up a prodigious stake, and was
again going forth to victory, when the scoundrels, having had enough of
this bishop of the Church militant, took to flight and left him in
undisputed possession of the field. A remarkable man this,—a sort of
Welsh chieftain; a perfect gentleman, but half farmer, half preacher. In
the order of Church discipline, a man was brought up before him, as the
pastor, for having knocked down an Unitarian. “Let us hear all about
it,” said the pastor. “To tell all the truth about it, sir,” said the
culprit, “I met Jack the miller at the sign of the Red Dragon, and there
we had a single glass of ale together.” “Stop a bit,” said the minister;
“I hope you paid for it.” “I did, sir.” “That is in your favour,
Thomas,” said the pastor; “I cannot bear those people who go about
tippling at other people’s expense. Go on, Thomas.” “Well, sir, after a
little while we began quietly talking about religion, and about the work
of Jesus Christ. Jack said that He was only a man, and then he went on
to say shocking things, things that it was beyond the power of flesh and
blood to bear.” “I daresay,” said the pastor; “but what did he say?”
“He actually said, sir, that the blood of Christ had no more power in it
than the blood of a beast. I could not stand that any more, so I knocked
him down.” “Well, brother,” said the minister, “I cannot say that you
did the right thing, but I quite believe that I should have done so too.
Go, and sin no more.”
But with all these marks of a strong character, the lines of Timothy
Thomas’s faith were clear and firm.
Such was the man who received Christmas Evans into the Church of which he
became so bright and shining an ornament. This noble man survived until
his eighty-sixth year; he died at Cardigan, in 1840. He was asked,
sometimes, how many he had baptized during his lifetime, and he would
reply, brusquely, “About two thousand;” at other times, he would be more
particular, and say, “I have baptized at least two thousand persons.
Yes,” he would add tenderly, “and thirty of them have become ministers of
the Gospel; and it was I who baptized Christmas Evans,”—sometimes adding
naïvely, “I did it right, too,—according to the apostolic practice, you
know.”
Thus we are brought to the interesting and important turning-point in the
life of Christmas Evans. He had united himself with the Baptist
communion. Our readers will clearly perceive, that he was a young man
who could not be hidden, and it was soon discovered that the work of the
ministry was to be his destination. As to his internal state, upon which
a ministerial character must always depend, these early years of his
religious life were times and seasons of great spiritual depression.
Such frames of feeling depend, perhaps, not less, or more, upon certain
aspects of religious truth, than they do upon the peculiarities of
temperament; a nervous imagination is very exhausting, and brings the
physical frame very low; moreover, exalted ideas, and ideals, produce
very depressing appreciations of self. He thought himself a mass of
ignorance and sin; he desired to preach, but he thought that such words
as his must be useless to his hearers: then, as to the method of
preaching, he was greatly troubled. He thought by committing his sermons
to memory he forfeited the gift of the Holy Spirit; so he says he changed
his method, took a text without any premeditation, and preached what
occurred to him at the time; “but,” he continues, “if it was bad before,
it was worse now; so I thought God would have nothing to do with me as a
preacher.”
The young man was humbled; he entered every pulpit with dread; he thought
that he was such an one that his mere appearance in the pulpit would be
quite sufficient to becloud the hearts of his hearers, and to intercept
the light from heaven. Then it seems he had no close friend to whom he
could talk; he was afraid lest, if he laid bare the secrets of his heart,
he should seem to be only a hypocrite; so he had to wrap up the bitter
secrets of his soul in his own heart, and drink of his bitter cup alone.
Is this experience singular? Is not this the way in which all truly
great, and original preachers have been made?—Luther, Bunyan, Dr. Payson,
Robert Hall,—how many beside? Such men have attained high scholarships,
and fellowships, in the great university of human nature; like Peter,
pierced to the heart themselves, they have “pricked” the hearts, the
consciences, of the thousands who have heard them. Thus, more than from
the lore of classical literatures, they have had given to them “the
tongue of the learned,” which has enabled them to speak “a word in season
to those who were wearied;” thus, “converted” themselves, they have been
able to “strengthen their brethren.”
Evans passed through a painful experience; the young man was feeling his
way. He was unconscious of the powers within him, although they were
struggling for expression; and so, through his humility and lowly
conceptions of himself, he was passing on to future eminence and
usefulness.
Lleyn was the first place where he appears to have felt his feet. Lleyn
at that time had not even the dignity of being a village; it is a little
inland hamlet out of Caernarvon Bay; Nevin is its principal village;
perhaps if the reader should seek out Lleyn, even upon a tolerable map of
Caernarvonshire, he will have a difficulty in finding it. It seems to
have been a hamlet of the promontory, on a grand coast, surrounded by
magnificent hills, or overhanging mountains; we have never visited it,
but those who have done so speak of it as possessing the charms of
peculiar wildness: on the one side, precipitous ravines, shut in by the
sea; on the other, walls of dark mountains,—forming the most complete
picture of isolation possible to imagine. Here is said to be the last
resting-place of Vortigern, who fled hither to escape the rage of his
subjects, excited by his inviting the Saxons to Britain. A curious
tradition holds that the mountains are magnetic, and masters of vessels
are said to be careful not to approach too near the coast, fearing the
effect upon their compasses; this is believed to be the effect of a
strong undercurrent setting in all along the coast, dangerous to vessels,
and apt to lead them out of their course. Such was Lleyn, the first
field of labour on which this melancholy and brooding youth was to
exercise his ministry.
Evans had attended the Baptist Association at Maesyberllan in
Brecknockshire, in 1790; he was persuaded there to enter upon the
ministry in this very obscure district, and he was ordained as a
missionary to work among the humble Churches in that vicinity. It does
not appear that, in his own neighbourhood, he had as yet attained to any
reputation for peculiar power, or that there were any apparent auguries
and prognostications of his future usefulness. It is curious to notice,
almost so soon as he began his work in this his first distinct field of
labour, he appears like a man new made; for this seems to have been the
place where the burden of which Bunyan speaks, rolled from this
Christian’s back; here a new life of faith began to glow in him, and he
knew something of what it is to have the “oil of joy for mourning, and
the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness.” A little
success is very encouraging; depreciation is frequently the parent of
depression; success is often a fine old strengthening wine; and how often
we have had occasion to admire men who have wrought on at life’s tasks
bravely and cheerfully, although success never came and sat down by their
side, to cheer and encourage them; one sometimes wonders what they would
have done had their efforts and words received the garland and the crown.
Well, perhaps not so much; these things are more wisely ordered than we
know. Only this also may be remarked, that, perhaps, the highest order
of mind and heart can do almost as well without success as with it,—will
behave beautifully if success should come, will behave no less
beautifully even if success should never come.
At Lleyn, Christmas Evans tasted the first prelibations of a successful
ministry; a wondrous power attended his preaching, numbers were gathered
into the Church. “I could scarcely believe,” he says, “the testimony of
the people who came before the Church as candidates for membership, that
they were converted through my ministry; yet I was obliged to believe,
though it was marvellous in my eyes. This made me thankful to God, and
increased my confidence in prayer; a delightful gale descended upon me as
from the hill of the New Jerusalem, and I felt the three great things of
the kingdom of heaven, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost.” Indeed, very unusual powers seemed to attend him. He says, “I
frequently preached out of doors at nightfall,” and the singing, and the
praising seem to have touched him very tenderly; he frequently found his
congregations bathed in tears and weeping profusely. Preaching was now
to him, as he testifies, a very great pleasure,—and no wonder; quite a
remarkable revival of religious feeling woke up wherever he went. When
he first entered Lleyn, the religious life was very cold and feeble;
quite wonderful was the change.
After a time, exhausted with his work in these villages, he accepted an
invitation to visit the more remote parts of South Wales. When
ministers, like Christmas Evans, are enfeebled in health, they recreate
themselves by preaching; the young man was enfeebled, but he started off
on his preaching tour; he could not obtain a horse, so he walked the
whole way, preaching in every village or town through which he passed.
Very frequently large numbers of the same congregation would follow after
him the next day, and attend the services fifteen or twenty times,
although many miles apart. So he went through the counties of Cardigan,
Pembroke, Caernarvon, Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecknock, stopping and
holding services at the innumerable villages lying on his way. The fame
that a wonderful man of God had appeared spread through South Wales on
the wings of the wind, and an appointment for Christmas Evans to preach
was sufficient to attract thousands to the place. While he yet continued
at Lleyn as itinerant missionary, in that short time he had acquired
perhaps a greater popularity than any other preacher of that day in
Wales.
We have not said that, during the first years of his residence at Lleyn,
he married Catherine Jones, a young lady a member of his own Church,—a
pious girl, and regarded as in every way suitable for his companion. It
will be seen that, so far from diminishing, it seemed rather to increase
his ardour; he frequently preached five times during the Sabbath, and
walked twenty miles; his heart appeared to be full of love, he spoke as
in the strains of a seraph. No wonder that such labour and incessant
excitement told upon his health, it was feared even that he might sink
into consumption; but surely it was a singular cure suggested for such a
disease, to start off on the preaching tour we have described.
At last, however, in an unexpected moment, he became great. It was at
one of those wonderful gatherings, an Association meeting, held at
Velinvoel, in the immediate neighbourhood of Llanelly. A great concourse
of people were assembled in the open air. There was some hitch in the
arrangements. Two great men were expected, but still some one or other
was wanted to break the ice—to prepare the way. On so short a notice,
notwithstanding the abundant preaching power, no one was found willing to
take the vacant place. Christmas Evans was there, walking about on the
edge of the crowd—a tall, bony, haggard young man, uncouth, and
ill-dressed. The master of the ceremonies for the occasion, the pastor
of the district, was in an agony of perplexity to find his man,—one who,
if not equal to the mightiest, would yet be sufficient for the occasion.
In his despair, he went to our old friend, Timothy Thomas; but he,
declining for himself, said abruptly, “Why not ask that one-eyed lad from
the North? I hear that he preaches quite wonderfully.” So the pastor
went to him. He instantly consented. Many who were there afterwards
expressed the surprise they felt at the communication going on between
the pastor and the odd-looking youth. “Surely,” they said, “he can never
ask that absurdity to preach!” They felt that an egregious mistake was
being committed; and some went away to refresh themselves, and others to
rest beneath the hedges around, until the great men should come; and
others, who stayed, comforted themselves with the assurance that the
“one-eyed lad” would have the good sense to be very short. But, for the
young preacher, while he was musing, the fire was burning; he was now,
for the first time, to front one of those grand Welsh audiences, the
sacred _Eisteddfod_ of which we have spoken, and to be the preacher of an
occasion, which, through all his life after, was to be his constant work.
Henceforth there was to be, perhaps, not an Association meeting of his
denomination, of which he was not to be the most attractive preacher, the
most longed-for and brilliant star.
He took a grand text: “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies
in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, in the body of
His flesh, through death, to present you holy, and unblamable, and
unreprovable in His sight.” Old men used to describe afterwards how he
justified their first fears by his stiff, awkward movements; but the
organ was, in those first moments, building, and soon it began to play.
He showed himself a master of the instrument of speech. Closer and
closer the audience began to gather near him. They got up, and came in
from the hedges. The crowd grew more and more dense with eager
listeners; the sermon became alive with dramatic representation. The
throng of preachers present confessed that they were dazzled with the
brilliance of the language, and the imagery, falling from the lips of
this altogether unknown and unexpected young prophet. Presently, beneath
some appalling stroke of words, numbers started to their feet; and in the
pauses—if pauses were permitted in the paragraphs—the question went, “Who
is this? who have we here?” His words went rocking to and fro; he had
caught the “_hwyl_,”—he had also caught the people in it; he went
swelling along at full sail. The people began to cry, “_Gogoniant_!”
(Glory!) “_Bendigedig_!” (Blessed!) The excitement was at its highest
when, amidst the weeping, and rejoicing of the mighty multitude, the
preacher came to an end. Drawn together from all parts of Wales to the
meeting, when they went their separate ways home they carried the memory
of “the one-eyed lad” with them.
Christmas Evans was, from that moment, one of the most famous preachers
in the Principality. Lord Byron tells us how he woke up one morning and
found himself famous. In those days, a new great Welsh preacher was
quite as famous a birth in the little country of Wales as the most famous
reputation could be in the literary world of England.
We can conceive it all; for, about thirty-five years since, we were
spectators of some such scene. It was far in the depths of the dark
mountains beyond Abersychan, that we were led to a large Welsh service;
but it was in a great chapel, and it was on a winter’s night. The place
was dimly lit with candles. There were, we remember, three preachers.
But whilst the first were pursuing their way, or the occasional hymns
were being chanted, our companion said to us, “But I want you to hear
that little hump-backed man, behind there; he will come next.” We could
scarcely see the little hump-backed man, but what we saw of him did not
predispose our minds to any very favourable impressions, or prophecies of
great effects. In due time he came forward. Even as soon as he
presented himself, however, there was an evident expectation. The people
began more certainly to settle themselves; to crane their necks forward;
to smile their loving smile, as upon a well-known friend, who would not
disappoint them; and to utter their sighs and grunts of satisfaction. He
was as uncouth a piece of humanity as we have ever seen, the little
hump-backed man, thin and bony. His iron-grey hair fell over his
forehead with no picturesque effect, nor did his eyes seem to give any
indication of fire; and there was a shuffling and shambling in his gait,
giving no sign of the grace of the orator. But, gradually, as he moved
along, and before he had moved far, the whole of that audience was
subject to his spell of speech. His hair was thrown back from his
forehead; his features were lighted up. Hump-backed! You neither saw
it, nor thought of it. His wiry movement seemed informed by dignity and
grandeur. First, there came forth audible gaspings, and grunts of
approval and pleasure. His very accent, whether you knew his language or
not, compelled tears to start to the eyes. Forth came those devout
gushings of speech we have mentioned, which, in Wales, are the
acclamations which greet a preacher; and, like Christmas Evans with the
close of his first grand sermon, the little hump-backed man sat down,
victorious over all personal deformity, amidst the weeping and rejoicing
of the people. We have always thought of that circumstance as a
wonderful illustration of the power of the mind over the body.
Christmas returned to Lleyn, but not to remain there long. The period of
his ministry in that neighbourhood was about two years, and during that
time the religious spirit of the neighbourhood had been deeply stirred.
It is most likely that the immediate cause which led to his removal may
be traced to the natural feeling that he was fitted for a much more
obvious and extended field of labour. Lleyn was a kind of mission
station, its churches were small, they had long been disorganised, and it
was not likely that, even if they woke at once into newness of life, they
could attain to ideas of liberality and Church order, on which the growth
and advance and perpetuity of the Churches could alone be founded; and
then it was very likely discovered that the man labouring among them
would be demanded for labours very far afield; it is awkward when the
gifts of a man make him eminently acceptable to shine and move as an
evangelist, and yet he is expected to fill the place, and be as steady in
pastoral relations as a pole star!