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
“It is beyond the power of the strongest imagination to conceive the
joy and gladness of this family. The joy of seafaring men delivered
from shipwreck; the joy of a man delivered from a burning house; the
joy of not being found guilty at a criminal bar; the joy of receiving
pardon to a condemned malefactor; the joy of freedom to a prisoner of
war, is nothing in comparison to the joy of him who is delivered from
going down to the pit of eternal destruction. For it is a joy
unspeakable and full of glory.”
The effect of this sermon is described as overwhelmingly wonderful. The
first portion, in which he pictured the mysterious and terrible being,
the wild demoniac, something of a wild beast, and something of a fiend,
made the people shudder. Then, shifting his scene, the catastrophe of
the swine, the flight of the affrighted herdsmen, the report to the
master, and the effect of the miracle on the populace, was rendered with
such dramatic effect, the preacher even laughing himself, as he painted
the rushing swine, hurrying down the steep place into the lake,
especially the “black hog,” and all,—for they all understood the point of
that allusion,—that beneath the grim grotesqueness of the scene, laughter
ran over the whole multitude. But the pathos of the family scene! Mary
embracing her restored husband; and the restored maniac’s experience, and
hymn of praise. The place became a perfect Bochim; they wept like
mourners at a funeral. Shouts of prayer and praise mingled together.
One who heard that wonderful sermon says, that, at last, the people
seemed like the inhabitants of a city which had been shaken by an
earthquake, that, in their escape, rushed into the streets, falling upon
the earth screaming, and calling upon God!
This sermon has never been printed; indeed, it is obvious that it never
could be prepared for the press. It defies all criticism; and the few
outlines we have attempted to present are quite inadequate to reproduce
it. All who heard it understood, that it was a picture of a lunatic, and
demon-haunted world; and it was beneath the impression of this, that
passionate cries, universal, thankful, penitent murmurs rose; whilst
amidst loud “Amens!” and sobs, and tears, some petitions ascended: “O
Lord, who didst walk on the sea, that Thou mightest meet the Gadarene,
cast out some demons from our midst to-night.”
Although the demoniac of Gadara is not, in the strict sense of the word,
an allegory, yet it is allegoric throughout; a fine piece of shadowy
painting, in which unconverted, and converted men, and women might
realize something of their own personal history, and the means by which
they would “come to themselves.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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