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
So, along all the roads, there presses an untiring crowd, showing that
something unusual is going on somewhere. The roads are all picturesque
and lively with all sorts of people, on foot, on horseback, in old farm
carts, and even in carriages; all wending their way to the largest and
most central chapel of the neighbourhood. It is the chief service. It
is a Sabbath evening; the congregation is wedged together in the spacious
house of God; it becomes almost insupportable, but the Welsh like it.
The service has not commenced, and a cry is already raised that it had
better be held in an adjoining field; but it is said this would be
inconvenient. The doors, the windows, are all thrown open; and so the
time goes on, and the hour for the commencement of the service arrives.
All eyes are strained as the door opens beneath the pulpit, and the
minister of the congregation comes in, and makes his way, as well as he
can, for himself and his friend, the great preacher—there he is! that
tall, commanding figure,—that is he, the “one-eyed man of Anglesea.”
A murmur of joy, whisperings of glad congratulation, which almost want to
burst into acclamations, pass over the multitude. And the service
commences with prayer, singing, reading a chapter, and a short sermon,—a
very short one, only twenty minutes. There are crowds of preachers
sitting beneath the pulpit, but they, and all, have come to hear the
mighty minstrel—and the moment is here. A few more verses of a hymn,
during which there is no little commotion, in order that there may be
none by-and-bye, those who have been long standing changing places with
those who had been sitting. There, he is up! he is before the people!
And in some such circumstances he seems to have first sung that wonderful
song or sermon,
THE DEMONIAC OF GADARA.
The text he announced was—“_Jesus said unto him_, _Go home unto thy
friends_, _and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee_,
_and hath had compassion on thee_.”
The introduction was very simple and brief; but, before long, the
preacher broke loose from all relations of mere comment and explanation,
and seemed to revel in dramatic scenery, and pictorial imagination, and,
as was so usual with him in such descriptions, increasing, heightening,
and intensifying the picture, by making each picture, each scene, to live
even in the kind of enchantment of a present demoniacal possession. He
began by describing the demoniac as a castle garrisoned with a legion of
fiends, towards which the great Conqueror was approaching over the Sea of
Tiberias, the winds hushing at His word, the sea growing calm at His
bidding. Already He had acquired among the devils a terrible fame, and
His name shook the garrison of the entire man, and the infernal legion
within, with confusion and horror.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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