Days in the OpenCrandall, Lathan A. (Lathan Augustus)
General
Days in the Open
Crandall, Lathan A. (Lathan Augustus)
Fishing
Sunday in North Wales is a day for rest and worship, not for golf and
picnics. It was on a Saturday evening that we reached Garn, and it
seemed like a “deserted village” when we looked up and down the street
the next morning. Any such assumption was thoroughly dissipated later on
when the hour for morning service came. Then people gathered from
every direction for miles around, and when we entered the plain,
Non-Conformist Church-house it was filled to the doors, galleries and
all. The visitor could not understand songs or prayers or sermon,
for all were in the Welsh tongue. When the sermon began my thoughtful
friend, who sat beside me, jotted down the salient points of the
discourse as the preacher proceeded, so that the handicapped American
gained a very fair idea of the outline. It was not the sermon, however,
but the singing that made the strongest impression. Needless to say,
not a word could be understood, but somehow it reached the heart. The
dominance of the minor would have been somewhat depressing had it not
been for the occasional evident exultation and rejoicing which swept
forth to fill the church.
It was at the evening service that the most profound impression was made
upon the writer. The second service of the day closes before it becomes
necessary to light the lamps. The sun was low in the west, when, after
the sermon, a man came down from the gallery and stood up before the
pulpit to sing. That song, in an unfamiliar tongue, melted the heart and
filled the eyes with tears. The rays of the setting sun fell through the
western windows upon the singer, and we thought of one in a far-off
land and time whose face did shine when he returned to his people from
talking with God. Later on our host told us that this man had been a
popular concert singer whose heart God had touched during the great
revival which had then just swept over Wales. The song to which we had
listened told of the joy of the wanderer when he had come back from the
“far country” to his Father’s house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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