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
For the purpose of producing effect,—and we mean, by effect, visible
results in crushed, and humbled hearts, and transformed lives,—it would
be a curious thing to try, in England, the preaching of some of the great
Welshman’s sermons. What would be the effect upon any audience of that
great picture of the Churchyard World, and the mighty controversy of
Justice, and Mercy? Let it be admitted that there are some things in it,
perhaps many, that it would not demand a severe taste to expel from the
picture, but take it as the broad, bold painting of a man not highly
educated,—indeed, highly educated men, as we have said, could not perform
such things: a highly-educated man could never have written the
“Pilgrim’s Progress”—let it be remembered that it was delivered to men,
perhaps, we should say, rather educated than instructed, men illiterate
in all things _except_ the Bible. We ourselves have, in some very large
congregations, tried the preaching of one of the most famous of Evans’s
sermons, “The Spirit walking in dry places, seeking rest, and finding
none.”
Christmas Evans’s preaching was by no means defective in the bone, and
muscle of thought, and pulpit arrangement; but, no doubt, herein lay his
great _forte_, and power,—he could paint soul-subduing pictures. They
were not pieces of mere word-painting, they were bathed in emotion, they
were penetrated by deep knowledge of the human heart. He went into the
pulpit, mighty from lonely wrestlings with God in mountain travellings;
he went among his fellow-men, his audiences, strong in his faith in the
reality of those covenants with God, whose history, and character we have
already presented to our readers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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