I have said that the names of the old Welsh saints remind us of the antique poetic phase of the national British Church. But they also remind us of its devotional emotions and fervent enthusiasm. We know but little of St. Cybi or St. Seiriol—those gaunt hermits, wrapped up in shaggy goat-skins, with their sacred bells and their favourite animals. But we know thus much—that they were amongst the enthusiastic spirits who appeared in those dark times to keep up by a strange unearthly presence the sense of things unseen. And such as they were, with their childish visions and their solitary musings, such was the old British Church altogether—hardly ever leaving a permanent impression on the great practical world without, though producing now and then a holy prelate like St. David, now and then a holy anchorite like St. Cybi, now and then a holy heresiarch like Pelagius. And so in later times, the same passionate religious sentiment has shown itself in the fervour with which the Welsh people received the ministrations and the influence of John Wesley and George Whitefield, and the affection with which they clung to the hymns of their own rude Methodist poets. Amidst much folly and much obstinacy and much waywardness, all honour to those old saints who achieved what the Norman prelates could not achieve,—to those Methodist teachers who reached classes which perhaps could not have been reached by better and wiser men. Such enthusiasm is not sufficient by itself to produce true religion; it is compatible with a very imperfect morality and a very low stage of Christianity. Still it belongs to the great central fires which keep the human soul alive, and it has in various forms been God’s special gift to the Celtic races of mankind, especially in this country. If we were to remove it out of our national existence England would not be the great nation that she now is, and the English Church would lose one powerful means of raising the spiritual energies of the people. “Prove all things,” says the Apostle, and “hold fast that which is good”; but in the same breath, he says, “Quench not the spirit,” “Despise not prophesyings.” Quench not enthusiasm, despise not strong emotions: labour only to turn them into proper channels, so that they may help to make men more pure and more truthful—more near to God, more like to Christ. It is not only in the worship and teaching of our country that this enthusiasm shows itself. Listen to the account of the gallant deeds of Welsh soldiers, in the letter of an English officer writing to a friend, {32} describing the defence of Rorke’s Drift:— “Private John Williams was posted, together with Private Joseph Williams and Private William Harrison, in a further ward of the hospital. They held it for more than an hour—so long as they had a round of ammunition left.