Of course there were men who opposed and maligned this blessed work of God’s Holy Spirit; or, at all events, did their utmost to discredit it by exposing, as they thought, the infirmities of those who were the chief agents used in promoting it. Ministers were blamed for their earnestness in voice and gesture, and for addressing themselves rather to the passions of their hearers than their reason. Others were censured for preaching the terrors of the law too frequently, and for frightening the people with hell-fire discourses. Objections were raised against so much time being spent in religious meetings; though the objectors had been significantly silent when the selfsame persons had formerly spent quite as much time, and even more, in taverns, and in sinful pleasures. Some were disgusted at the new converts so passionately warning, inviting, and entreating others to be saved. Some found fault with so much singing, forgetting that singing is one of the great employments of the beatified in heaven; and others found equal fault with children being allowed to meet together to read and pray, thus, unintentionally perhaps, resembling the priests and scribes, who were sore displeased when the children saluted Christ by shouting “Hosannah in the highest!” Thus did men mutter discontent when they ought to have sung praises; and not a few fell into the sin of those in olden times, who said concerning Christ, “He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” At the very time that this marvellous religious revival broke out in America, a similar work was begun in Wales. Howel Harris was born at Trevecca in 1714, and, a few months before the Wesleys went to Georgia, found the forgiveness of sins, and was made unutterably happy by a Divine assurance of his adoption into the family of God. The Wesleys, however, had no acquaintance with him, nor he with them. While they were on the ocean he left his home in Wales, and entered the university from which they had so recently departed; but here he was so distressed with collegiate immoralities, that, after keeping but a single term, he returned to his native hills, and, without orders, began at once to preach the salvation which he himself experienced. It is a curious fact, not generally noticed, that the first lay preacher, in the great Methodist movement, was Howel Harris. He commenced preaching in Wales just when the Wesleys and Ingham commenced in Georgia; and, before Wesley reached Bristol in 1739, had been the means of a most glorious work being wrought in the neighbouring principality. Up to this period the morals of the Welsh were deplorably corrupt; and in this respect there was no difference between rich and poor, ministers and people; gluttony, drunkenness, and licentiousness were general. In the pulpits of parish churches the name of Christ was hardly ever uttered; and, in 1736, there were only six Dissenting chapels throughout the whole of northern Wales.