Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales: His country, his times, and his contemporariesHood, Edwin Paxton
History
Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales: His country, his times, and his contemporaries
Hood, Edwin Paxton
Evans, Christmas, 1766-1838
Such power there is in human words when divinely wielded; such was the
spiritual power of Daniel Rowlands. Well does one writer say, the story
of Llangeitho, well written, would read like a chapter in religious
romance. It is very doubtful whether we have the record of any other man
who drew such numbers to the immediate circle of his ministry, as
Rowlands. He did not itinerate so largely as most of the great Welsh
preachers. In an obscure spot in the interior of Cardiganshire, in an
age of bad roads, and in a neighbourhood where the roads were especially
bad, he addressed his immense concourses of people. His monthly
communion was sometimes attended by as many as three thousand
communicants, of whom, often, many were clergymen. Upwards of a hundred
ministers ascribe to him the means of their conversion. Thus, in his
day, it was a place of pilgrimages; and even now, there are not a few who
turn aside, to stand, with wonder, upon the spot where Rowlands exercised
his marvellous ministry.
The four great Welsh preachers, Christmas Evans, John Elias, Williams of
Wern, and Davies of Swansea, on whose pulpit powers, and method, we have
more distinctly dilated, may be styled the tetrarchs of the pulpit of
Wild Wales of these later times. Their eminence was single, and
singular. Their immense powers unquestioned: rivals, never, apparently,
by their own selection, the great Welsh religious mind only rivalled them
with each other. After them it might be said, “Great was the company of
preachers,”—great, not merely in number, carrying also influence, and
usefulness of another kind; perhaps even superior to those honoured
names.
How, for instance, can we do sufficient honour to the labours of CHARLES
OF BALA? This truly apostolic man was born at Llanvihangel, in 1755.
While yet a boy, he managed to introduce family worship into his father’s
house; but it was in his eighteenth year that he heard the great Daniel
Rowlands preach, and he says: “From that day I found a new heaven, and a
new earth, to enjoy; the change experienced by a blind man, on receiving
his sight, is not greater than that which I felt on that day.” In his
twentieth year he went to Oxford, and received Deacon’s orders, and was
appointed to a curacy in Somersetshire; he took his degree at his
University, but he could never obtain priest’s orders; in every instance
objection was made to what was called his Methodism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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