THE character of Christmas Evans, it will be seen, from all that has gone before, appears to us to be eminently interesting as the most distinct, to us the most central, and realizable figure, in the religious life of his country, and his times: he is the central figure in a group of remarkable men. We shall not discuss the question as to whether he was the greatest,—greatness is so relative a term; he appears, to us, certainly, from our point of view, the most representative Welsh preacher of his time, perhaps of any time: in him seemed embodied not merely the imaginative, but the fanciful, the parable-loving spirit of his department of the great Celtic family; with this, that ardent devotion, that supersensuous absorption, which to our colder temperament looks like superstition. One writer finely remarks of him, and with considerable truth, so far as his own country is concerned, “He is a connecting link between the beginning and the ending of the eighteenth century; he has the light, the talent, and the taste of the beginning, and has received every new light that has appeared since. He was enabled to accompany the career of religious knowledge in the morning, and also to follow its rapid strides in the evening. In this he is unlike every other preacher of the day: the morning and evening light of this wonderful century meet in him; he had strength to climb up to the top of Carmel in the morning, and remain there during the heat of the day, and see the consuming sacrifice, and the licking up of the water; his strength continued, by the hand of the Lord, so that he could descend from the mount in the evening, and run without fainting before the king’s chariot to Jezreel.”