Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales: His country, his times, and his contemporariesHood, Edwin Paxton
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Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales: His country, his times, and his contemporaries
Hood, Edwin Paxton
Evans, Christmas, 1766-1838
The good man, however, often felt that a burden was laid upon him, which
scarcely belonged to the work to which he regarded himself as especially
set apart. Perhaps he might have paraphrased the words of the Apostle,
and said, “The Lord sent me not to attend to the affairs of your
chapel-debts, but to preach the gospel.” There is not only pathos, but
truth in the following words; he says, “I humbly think that no
missionaries in India, or any other country, have had to bear such a
burden as I have borne, because of chapel-debts, and _they_ have not had
besides to provide for their own support, as I have had to do through all
my life in Anglesea; London committees have cared for _them_, while I,
for many years, received but seventeen pounds per annum for all my
services. The other preachers were young, and inexperienced, and the
members threw all the responsibility upon me, as children do upon a
father; my anxiety often moved me in the depths of the night to cry out
unto God to preserve His cause from shame. God’s promises to sustain His
cause in the world greatly comforted me. I would search for the Divine
promises to this effect, and plead them in prayer, until I felt as
confident as if every farthing had been paid. I laboured hard to
institute weekly penny offerings, but was not very successful; and after
every effort there remained large sums unpaid in connection with some of
the chapels which had been built without my consent.”
Poor Christmas! As we read of him he excites our wonder.
“Passing rich with forty pounds a year.”
looks like positive wealth as compared with the emoluments of our poor
preacher; and yet the record is that he was given to hospitality, and he
contributed his sovereign, and half-sovereign, not only occasionally, but
annually, where his richer neighbours satisfied their consciences with
far inferior bequests. How did the man do it? He had not married a rich
wife, and he did not, as many of his brethren, eke out his income by some
farm, or secular pursuit; a very common, and a very necessary thing to
do, we should say, in Wales.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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