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
On another occasion, he met a young minister at Llantrissant, and, after
a meeting in the morning, he inquired of the young man what he was then
reading; the reply was, that he was going slowly through Beattie on Truth
a second time. Christmas Evans immediately replied, “You must come to
see me before you return to Swansea, and give me the substance of
Beattie: was he not the man that replied to David Hume, eh?” The young
man said he had the book in his pocket, and that he would cheerfully give
it him, but the print was very small. He, with still greater eagerness,
said, “I can manage that. I will take of it, with many thanks.” It was
a pleasure to give it him, and he pocketed it with as much pleasure as
ever a school-boy did the first prize, at the end of the session. In
three days after, the young man called upon him, at his own house, and
spent a couple of hours with him; but he says he could get no farther, in
conversation, than upon Beattie,—he was thoroughly absorbed in the
argument with Hume, and his school of scepticism, and unbelief. Yet he
was now sixty-five years of age; his one eye was very weak, though seeing
well enough, without a glass, at the proper distance; and he was,
otherwise, full of bodily infirmities; but his love of reading was
unabated, as was, also, his earnest curiosity to know what was passing on
in the world of thought.
And among his friends, at this period, we notice some members of the
Edwards family,—David Edwards, of Beaupre, or, as it is commonly
pronounced, Bewper, in Glamorganshire; and Evan Edwards, of Caerphilly,
the son, and grandson of one of the most remarkable men modern Wales has
produced, William Edwards, in his day a mighty engineer. Until his time,
the Rialto, in Venice, was esteemed the largest arch in Europe, but he
threw an arch over the Taff forty-two feet wider, and thus, for a long
time, it held its reputation of being the largest arch in the world. A
wonderful man was William Edwards, entirely self-made, not only a great
engineer, but a successful farmer, and an ordained Independent minister.
He was wealthy, of course, but he insisted upon receiving a good income
from his church, although he distributed every farthing among the poor of
his own neighbourhood, and added, considerably, to the sum he
distributed, from his own property. The successor to Mr. Edwards, as the
pastor of the Independent Church of Y-Groeswen, was the Rev. Griffith
Hughes, a person of about the same age as Christmas Evans, also, although
a polished gentleman, a self-taught man, a wit, a man of considerable
reading, and information, and widely advanced in his religious opinions;
although, professedly, a Calvinist, beyond the narrow, and technical
Calvinism of his time, and even beyond the Fullerism, or doctrines of
Andrew Fuller, which had been charged on Christmas Evans, as a crime, by
his enemies in Anglesea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account