Read Ebook: Christmas Evans the Preacher of Wild Wales His country his times and his contemporaries by Hood Edwin Paxton Evans Christmas Other

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The anecdotes of this Timothy Thomas are too good and too numerous to be entirely passed by. Once he was preaching in the enchanting neighbourhood near Llandeilo, to which we referred in the first chapter--the neighbourhood of Grongar Hill, and Golden Grove; the neighbourhood of Dyer, Steele, and Jeremy Taylor. It was a still Sabbath morning in the summer, and in that lovely spot immense crowds were gathered to hear him. He had administered baptism, and preached, without interruption, when someone came up to him and told him, with startled fear and trepidation, that the clergyman,--the rector,--on his way to the church, had been detained, utterly unable to pass through the crowd, through the greater part of the service. Instantly, with admirable tact and catholicity, he exclaimed: "I understand that the respected clergyman of the parish has been listening patiently to me for the last hour; let us all go to the church and return the compliment by hearing him." The church, and the churchyard as well, were instantly crowded; the clergyman was delighted with the catholic spirit displayed by the Baptist minister, and of course not a word further was said about the trespass which had been committed.

Timothy Thomas was a noble specimen of what has been called the "muscular Christian;" he had great courage. Once, when travelling with his wife, and set upon by four ruffians, he instantly, with his single stick, floored two, but broke his stick in the very act of conquest. Immediately he flew to a hedge and tore up a prodigious stake, and was again going forth to victory, when the scoundrels, having had enough of this bishop of the Church militant, took to flight and left him in undisputed possession of the field. A remarkable man this,--a sort of Welsh chieftain; a perfect gentleman, but half farmer, half preacher. In the order of Church discipline, a man was brought up before him, as the pastor, for having knocked down an Unitarian. "Let us hear all about it," said the pastor. "To tell all the truth about it, sir," said the culprit, "I met Jack the miller at the sign of the Red Dragon, and there we had a single glass of ale together." "Stop a bit," said the minister; "I hope you paid for it." "I did, sir." "That is in your favour, Thomas," said the pastor; "I cannot bear those people who go about tippling at other people's expense. Go on, Thomas." "Well, sir, after a little while we began quietly talking about religion, and about the work of Jesus Christ. Jack said that He was only a man, and then he went on to say shocking things, things that it was beyond the power of flesh and blood to bear." "I daresay," said the pastor; "but what did he say?" "He actually said, sir, that the blood of Christ had no more power in it than the blood of a beast. I could not stand that any more, so I knocked him down." "Well, brother," said the minister, "I cannot say that you did the right thing, but I quite believe that I should have done so too. Go, and sin no more."

But with all these marks of a strong character, the lines of Timothy Thomas's faith were clear and firm.

Such was the man who received Christmas Evans into the Church of which he became so bright and shining an ornament. This noble man survived until his eighty-sixth year; he died at Cardigan, in 1840. He was asked, sometimes, how many he had baptized during his lifetime, and he would reply, brusquely, "About two thousand;" at other times, he would be more particular, and say, "I have baptized at least two thousand persons. Yes," he would add tenderly, "and thirty of them have become ministers of the Gospel; and it was I who baptized Christmas Evans,"--sometimes adding na?vely, "I did it right, too,--according to the apostolic practice, you know."

Thus we are brought to the interesting and important turning-point in the life of Christmas Evans. He had united himself with the Baptist communion. Our readers will clearly perceive, that he was a young man who could not be hidden, and it was soon discovered that the work of the ministry was to be his destination. As to his internal state, upon which a ministerial character must always depend, these early years of his religious life were times and seasons of great spiritual depression. Such frames of feeling depend, perhaps, not less, or more, upon certain aspects of religious truth, than they do upon the peculiarities of temperament; a nervous imagination is very exhausting, and brings the physical frame very low; moreover, exalted ideas, and ideals, produce very depressing appreciations of self. He thought himself a mass of ignorance and sin; he desired to preach, but he thought that such words as his must be useless to his hearers: then, as to the method of preaching, he was greatly troubled. He thought by committing his sermons to memory he forfeited the gift of the Holy Spirit; so he says he changed his method, took a text without any premeditation, and preached what occurred to him at the time; "but," he continues, "if it was bad before, it was worse now; so I thought God would have nothing to do with me as a preacher."

The young man was humbled; he entered every pulpit with dread; he thought that he was such an one that his mere appearance in the pulpit would be quite sufficient to becloud the hearts of his hearers, and to intercept the light from heaven. Then it seems he had no close friend to whom he could talk; he was afraid lest, if he laid bare the secrets of his heart, he should seem to be only a hypocrite; so he had to wrap up the bitter secrets of his soul in his own heart, and drink of his bitter cup alone. Is this experience singular? Is not this the way in which all truly great, and original preachers have been made?--Luther, Bunyan, Dr. Payson, Robert Hall,--how many beside? Such men have attained high scholarships, and fellowships, in the great university of human nature; like Peter, pierced to the heart themselves, they have "pricked" the hearts, the consciences, of the thousands who have heard them. Thus, more than from the lore of classical literatures, they have had given to them "the tongue of the learned," which has enabled them to speak "a word in season to those who were wearied;" thus, "converted" themselves, they have been able to "strengthen their brethren."

Evans passed through a painful experience; the young man was feeling his way. He was unconscious of the powers within him, although they were struggling for expression; and so, through his humility and lowly conceptions of himself, he was passing on to future eminence and usefulness.

Lleyn was the first place where he appears to have felt his feet. Lleyn at that time had not even the dignity of being a village; it is a little inland hamlet out of Caernarvon Bay; Nevin is its principal village; perhaps if the reader should seek out Lleyn, even upon a tolerable map of Caernarvonshire, he will have a difficulty in finding it. It seems to have been a hamlet of the promontory, on a grand coast, surrounded by magnificent hills, or overhanging mountains; we have never visited it, but those who have done so speak of it as possessing the charms of peculiar wildness: on the one side, precipitous ravines, shut in by the sea; on the other, walls of dark mountains,--forming the most complete picture of isolation possible to imagine. Here is said to be the last resting-place of Vortigern, who fled hither to escape the rage of his subjects, excited by his inviting the Saxons to Britain. A curious tradition holds that the mountains are magnetic, and masters of vessels are said to be careful not to approach too near the coast, fearing the effect upon their compasses; this is believed to be the effect of a strong undercurrent setting in all along the coast, dangerous to vessels, and apt to lead them out of their course. Such was Lleyn, the first field of labour on which this melancholy and brooding youth was to exercise his ministry.

Evans had attended the Baptist Association at Maesyberllan in Brecknockshire, in 1790; he was persuaded there to enter upon the ministry in this very obscure district, and he was ordained as a missionary to work among the humble Churches in that vicinity. It does not appear that, in his own neighbourhood, he had as yet attained to any reputation for peculiar power, or that there were any apparent auguries and prognostications of his future usefulness. It is curious to notice, almost so soon as he began his work in this his first distinct field of labour, he appears like a man new made; for this seems to have been the place where the burden of which Bunyan speaks, rolled from this Christian's back; here a new life of faith began to glow in him, and he knew something of what it is to have the "oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness." A little success is very encouraging; depreciation is frequently the parent of depression; success is often a fine old strengthening wine; and how often we have had occasion to admire men who have wrought on at life's tasks bravely and cheerfully, although success never came and sat down by their side, to cheer and encourage them; one sometimes wonders what they would have done had their efforts and words received the garland and the crown. Well, perhaps not so much; these things are more wisely ordered than we know. Only this also may be remarked, that, perhaps, the highest order of mind and heart can do almost as well without success as with it,--will behave beautifully if success should come, will behave no less beautifully even if success should never come.

At Lleyn, Christmas Evans tasted the first prelibations of a successful ministry; a wondrous power attended his preaching, numbers were gathered into the Church. "I could scarcely believe," he says, "the testimony of the people who came before the Church as candidates for membership, that they were converted through my ministry; yet I was obliged to believe, though it was marvellous in my eyes. This made me thankful to God, and increased my confidence in prayer; a delightful gale descended upon me as from the hill of the New Jerusalem, and I felt the three great things of the kingdom of heaven, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Indeed, very unusual powers seemed to attend him. He says, "I frequently preached out of doors at nightfall," and the singing, and the praising seem to have touched him very tenderly; he frequently found his congregations bathed in tears and weeping profusely. Preaching was now to him, as he testifies, a very great pleasure,--and no wonder; quite a remarkable revival of religious feeling woke up wherever he went. When he first entered Lleyn, the religious life was very cold and feeble; quite wonderful was the change.

After a time, exhausted with his work in these villages, he accepted an invitation to visit the more remote parts of South Wales. When ministers, like Christmas Evans, are enfeebled in health, they recreate themselves by preaching; the young man was enfeebled, but he started off on his preaching tour; he could not obtain a horse, so he walked the whole way, preaching in every village or town through which he passed. Very frequently large numbers of the same congregation would follow after him the next day, and attend the services fifteen or twenty times, although many miles apart. So he went through the counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, Caernarvon, Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecknock, stopping and holding services at the innumerable villages lying on his way. The fame that a wonderful man of God had appeared spread through South Wales on the wings of the wind, and an appointment for Christmas Evans to preach was sufficient to attract thousands to the place. While he yet continued at Lleyn as itinerant missionary, in that short time he had acquired perhaps a greater popularity than any other preacher of that day in Wales.

We have not said that, during the first years of his residence at Lleyn, he married Catherine Jones, a young lady a member of his own Church,--a pious girl, and regarded as in every way suitable for his companion. It will be seen that, so far from diminishing, it seemed rather to increase his ardour; he frequently preached five times during the Sabbath, and walked twenty miles; his heart appeared to be full of love, he spoke as in the strains of a seraph. No wonder that such labour and incessant excitement told upon his health, it was feared even that he might sink into consumption; but surely it was a singular cure suggested for such a disease, to start off on the preaching tour we have described.

Christmas Evans was, from that moment, one of the most famous preachers in the Principality. Lord Byron tells us how he woke up one morning and found himself famous. In those days, a new great Welsh preacher was quite as famous a birth in the little country of Wales as the most famous reputation could be in the literary world of England.

We can conceive it all; for, about thirty-five years since, we were spectators of some such scene. It was far in the depths of the dark mountains beyond Abersychan, that we were led to a large Welsh service; but it was in a great chapel, and it was on a winter's night. The place was dimly lit with candles. There were, we remember, three preachers. But whilst the first were pursuing their way, or the occasional hymns were being chanted, our companion said to us, "But I want you to hear that little hump-backed man, behind there; he will come next." We could scarcely see the little hump-backed man, but what we saw of him did not predispose our minds to any very favourable impressions, or prophecies of great effects. In due time he came forward. Even as soon as he presented himself, however, there was an evident expectation. The people began more certainly to settle themselves; to crane their necks forward; to smile their loving smile, as upon a well-known friend, who would not disappoint them; and to utter their sighs and grunts of satisfaction. He was as uncouth a piece of humanity as we have ever seen, the little hump-backed man, thin and bony. His iron-grey hair fell over his forehead with no picturesque effect, nor did his eyes seem to give any indication of fire; and there was a shuffling and shambling in his gait, giving no sign of the grace of the orator. But, gradually, as he moved along, and before he had moved far, the whole of that audience was subject to his spell of speech. His hair was thrown back from his forehead; his features were lighted up. Hump-backed! You neither saw it, nor thought of it. His wiry movement seemed informed by dignity and grandeur. First, there came forth audible gaspings, and grunts of approval and pleasure. His very accent, whether you knew his language or not, compelled tears to start to the eyes. Forth came those devout gushings of speech we have mentioned, which, in Wales, are the acclamations which greet a preacher; and, like Christmas Evans with the close of his first grand sermon, the little hump-backed man sat down, victorious over all personal deformity, amidst the weeping and rejoicing of the people. We have always thought of that circumstance as a wonderful illustration of the power of the mind over the body.

Christmas returned to Lleyn, but not to remain there long. The period of his ministry in that neighbourhood was about two years, and during that time the religious spirit of the neighbourhood had been deeply stirred. It is most likely that the immediate cause which led to his removal may be traced to the natural feeling that he was fitted for a much more obvious and extended field of labour. Lleyn was a kind of mission station, its churches were small, they had long been disorganised, and it was not likely that, even if they woke at once into newness of life, they could attain to ideas of liberality and Church order, on which the growth and advance and perpetuity of the Churches could alone be founded; and then it was very likely discovered that the man labouring among them would be demanded for labours very far afield; it is awkward when the gifts of a man make him eminently acceptable to shine and move as an evangelist, and yet he is expected to fill the place, and be as steady in pastoral relations as a pole star!

Journey to Anglesea--Cildwrn Chapel, and Life in the Cildwrn Cottage--Poverty--Forcing his Way to Knowledge--Anecdote, "I am the Book"--A Dream--The Sandemanian Controversy--Jones of Ramoth--"Altogether Wrong"--The Work in Peril--Thomas Jones of Rhydwilym--Christmas's Restoration to Spiritual Health--Extracts from Personal Reflections--Singular Covenant with God--Renewed Success--The Great Sermon of the Churchyard World--Scenery of its Probable Delivery--Outline of the Sermon--Remarks on the Allegorical Style--Outlines of Another Remarkable Sermon, "The Hind of the Morning"--Great Preaching but Plain Preaching--Hardships of the Welsh Preacher.

In 1792 Christmas Evans left Lleyn. He speaks of a providential intimation conveyed to him from the Island of Anglesea; the providential intimation was a call to serve all the Churches of his order in that island for seventeen pounds a year! and for the twenty years during which he performed this service, he never asked for more. He was twenty-six years of age when he set forth, on his birthday, Christmas Day, for his new and enlarged world of work. He travelled like an Apostle,--and surely he travelled in an apostolic spirit,--he was unencumbered with this world's goods. It was a very rough day of frost and snow,

"The way was long, the wind was cold."

He travelled on horseback, with his wife behind him; and he arrived on the evening of the same day at Llangefni. On his arrival in Anglesea he found ten small Baptist Societies, lukewarm and faint; what amount of life there was in them was spent in the distraction of theological controversy, which just then appeared to rage, strong and high, among the Baptists in North Wales. He was the only minister amongst those Churches, and he had not a brother minister to aid him within a hundred and fifty miles; but he commenced his labours in real earnest, and one of his first movements was to appoint a day of fasting and prayer in all the preaching places; he soon had the satisfaction to find a great revival, and it may with truth be said "the pleasure of the Lord prospered in his hand."

Llangefni appears to have been the spot in Anglesea where Christmas found his home. Llangefni is a respectable town now; when the preaching apostle arrived there, near a hundred years since, its few scattered houses did not even rise to the dignity of a village. Cildwrn Chapel was here the place of his ministrations, and here stood the little cottage where Christmas and his wife passed their plain and simple days. Chapel and cottage stood upon a bleak and exposed piece of ground. The cottage has been reconstructed since those days, but upon the site of the queer and quaint old manse stands now a far more commodious chapel-keeper's house. As in the Bedford vestry they show you still the chair in which John Bunyan sat, so here they show a venerable old chair, Christmas Evans's chair, in the old Cildwrn cottage; it is deeply and curiously marked by the cuttings of his pocket-knife, made when he was indulging in those reveries and daydreams in which he lived abstracted from everything around him.

The glimpses of life we obtain from this old Cildwrn cottage do not incline us to speak in terms of very high eulogy of the Voluntary principle, as developed in Anglesea in that day; from the description, it must have been a very poor shanty, or windy shieling; it is really almost incredible to think of such a man in such a home. The stable for the horse or pony was a part of the establishment, or but very slightly separated from it; the furniture was very poor and scanty: a bed will sometimes compensate for the deprivations and toils of the day when the wearied limbs are stretched upon it, but Christmas Evans could not, as James Montgomery has it, "Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head, upon his own delightful bed;" for, one of his biographers says, the article on which the inmates, for some time after their settlement, rested at night, could be designated a bed only by courtesy; some of the boards having given way, a few stone slabs did some necessary service. The door by which the preacher and his wife entered the cottage was rotted away, and the economical congregation saved the expense of a new door by nailing a tin plate across the bottom; the roof was so low that the master of the house, when he stood up, had to exercise more than his usual forethought and precaution.

Here, then, was the study, the furnace, forge, and anvil whence were wrought out those noble ideas, images, words, which made Christmas Evans a household name throughout the entire Principality. Here he, and his Catherine, passed their days in a life of perfect naturalness--somewhat too natural, thinks the reader--and elevated piety. Which of us, who write, or read these pages, will dare to visit them with the indignity of our pity? Small as his means were, he looks very happy, with his pleasant, bright, affectionate, helpful and useful wife; he grew in the love and honour of the people; and to his great pulpit eminence, and his simple daily life, have been applied, not unnaturally, the fine words of Wordsworth--

"So did he travel on life's common way In cheerful lowliness; and yet his heart The mightiest duties on itself did lay."

And there was a period in Wordsworth's life, before place, and fame, and prosperity came to him, when the little cottage near the Wishing Gate, in Grasmere, was not many steps above that of the Cildwrn cottage of Christmas Evans. The dear man did not care about his poverty,--he appears never either to have attempted to conceal it, nor to grumble at it; and one of his biographers applies to him the pleasant words of Jean Paul Richter, "The pain of poverty was to him only as the piercing of a maiden's ear, and jewels were hung in the wound."

It was, no doubt, a very rough life, but he appears to have attained to the high degree of the Apostle,--"having food and raiment, let us be therewith content;" and he was caught up, and absorbed in his work: sermons, and material for sermons, were always preparing in his mind; he lived to preach, to exercise that bardic power of his. That poor room was the study; he had no separate room to which to retire, where, in solitude, he could stir, or stride the steeds of thought or passion.

During those years, in that poor Cildwrn room, he mastered some ways of scholarship, the mention of which may, perhaps, surprise some of our readers. He made himself a fair Hebraist; no wonder at that, he must have found the language, to him, a very congenial tongue; we take it that, anyhow, the average Welshman will much more readily grapple with the difficulties of Hebrew than the average Englishman. Then he became so good a Grecian, that once, in a bookseller's shop, upon his making some remarks on Homer in the presence of a clergyman, a University man, which drew forth expressions of contempt, Christmas put on his classical panoply, and so addressed himself to the shallow scholar, that he was compelled, by the pressure of engagements, to beat a surprisingly quick retreat.

A little while ago, we heard a good story. A London minister of considerable notoriety, never in any danger of being charged with a too lowly estimate of himself, or his powers, was called to preach an anniversary sermon, on a week evening, some distance from London. Arrived at the house of the brother minister, for whom he had undertaken the service, before it commenced, he requested to be shown into the study, in which he might spend some little time in preparation: the minister went up with him.

"So!" said the London Doctor, as he entered, and gazed around, "this is the place where all the mischief is done; this is your furnace, this is the spot from whence the glowing thoughts, and sparks emanate!"

"Yes," said his host, "I come up here to think, and prepare, and be quiet; one cannot study so well in the family."

The Doctor strode up and down the room, glancing round the walls, lined with such few books as the modest means of a humble minister might be supposed to procure.

"Ah!" said the Doctor, "and these are the books, the alimentary canals which absorb the pabulum from whence you reinvigorate the stores of thought, and rekindle refrigerated feeling."

"Yes, Doctor," said the good man, "these are my books; I have not got many, you see, for I am not a rich London minister, but only a poor country pastor; you have a large library, Doctor?"

It was during the earlier period of Christmas Evans's ministry at Anglesea, that a great irruption took place in the island, and, indeed, throughout the Principality; and the Sandemanian controversy shook the Churches, and especially the Baptist Churches, almost beyond all credibility, and certainly beyond what would have been a possibility, but for the singular power of the chief leader, John Richard Jones, of Ramoth. Christmas Evans himself fell for some time beneath the power of Sandemanian notions. Our readers, perhaps, know enough of this peculiar form of faith and practice, to be aware that the worst thing that can be said of it is, that it is a religious ice-plant, religion in an ice-house,--a form chiefly remarkable for its rigid ritualistic conservation of what are regarded as the primitive forms of apostolic times, conjoined to a separation from, and a severe and cynical reprobation of, all other Christian sects.

Christmas Evans says of himself at this period: "The Sandemanian heresy affected me so far as to quench the spirit of prayer for the conversion of sinners, and it induced in my mind a greater regard for the smaller things of the kingdom of heaven, than for the greater. I lost the strength which clothed my mind with zeal, confidence, and earnestness in the pulpit for the conversion of souls to Christ. My heart retrograded, in a manner, and I could not realize the testimony of a good conscience. Sabbath nights, after having been in the day exposing and vilifying, with all bitterness, the errors that prevailed, my conscience felt as if displeased, and reproached me that I had lost nearness to, and walking with, God. It would intimate that something exceedingly precious was now wanting in me; I would reply, that I was acting in obedience to the Word; but it continued to accuse me of the want of some precious article. I had been robbed, to a great degree, of the spirit of prayer, and of the spirit of preaching."

And the man who headed and gave effect to this Sandemanian movement, which was regarded as a mighty reform movement, was Jones of Ramoth. No doubt a real and genuine character enough, a magnificent orator, a master of bitter wit, and vigorous declamation. That is a keen saying with which Richard Hooker commences his "Ecclesiastical Polity:" "He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment is subject; but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider." This seems to have been the work, and this the effect, of John Richard Jones: very much the sum and substance of his preaching grew to be a morbid horror of the entire religious world, and a supreme contempt--one of his memorialists says, a superb contempt--for all preachers except himself, especially for all itinerant preachers. In fact, Ramoth Jones's influence in Anglesea might well be described in George MacDonald's song, "The Waesome Carl:"--

"Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang, And a'thegither a' wrang; There's no a man aboot the toon But's a'thegither a' wrang.

"The minister wasna fit to pray, And let alane to preach; He nowther had the gift o' grace, Nor yet the gift o' speech.

"He mind't him o' Balaam's ass, Wi' a differ ye may ken: The Lord He opened the ass's mou', The minister opened's ain.

"Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang, And a'thegither a' wrang; There's no a man aboot the toon But's a'thegither a' wrang."

Compared with the slender following of the Sandemanian schism now,--for we believe it has but six congregations in the whole United Kingdom,--it seems strange to know that it laid so wonderful a hold upon the island of Anglesea. It did, however; and that it did was evidently owing to the strong man whose name we have mentioned. He was a self-formed man, but he was a man, if not of large scholarship, of full acquaintance with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; he was a skilful musician; he understood the English language well, but of the Welsh he was a great master. But his intelligence, we should think, was dry and hard; his sentiments were couched in bitter sarcasm: "If," said he, "every Bible in the world were consumed, and every word of Scripture erased from my memory, I need be at no loss how to live a religious life, according to the will of God, for I should simply have to proceed in all respects in a way perfectly contrary to the popular religionists of this age, and then I could not possibly be wrong." He was very arrogant and authoritative in tone and manner, supercilious himself, and expecting the subordination of others. He was so bitter and narrow, that one naturally supposes that some injustice had embittered him. Some of his words have a noble ring. But he encouraged a spirit far other than a charitable one wherever his word extended; and it has been not unnaturally said, that the spread of this Sandemanian narrowness in Anglesea, realized something of the old Scotch absurdity of having two Churches in the same cottage, consisting of Janet in one apartment, and Sandy in the other; or of that other famed Scottish Church, which had dwindled down to two members, old Dame Christie, and Donald, but which seemed at last likely to dwindle yet farther into one, as Christie said she had "sair doubts o' Donald."

The work of Christmas Evans, so far successful, seemed likely to be undone; all the Churches seemed inoculated by these new and narrow notions, and Christmas Evans himself appears, as we have seen, to have been not altogether unscathed. There is something so plausible in this purism of pride; and many such a creed of pessimism is the outgrowth of indifference born, and nurtured, upon decaying faith,--a faith which, perhaps, as in the instance of Ramoth Jones and his Sandemanian teachers, continued true to Christ, so far as that is compatible with utter indifference to humanity at large, and an utter separation from the larger view of the Communion of Saints.

There was, however, a grand man, who stood firm while ministers and Churches around him were reeling, Thomas Jones, of Glynceiriog, in Denbighshire; he is said to have been the one and only minister, at all known to the public, who remained in his own denomination firm, and, successfully in his own spirit, withstood, and even conquered, in this storm of new opinion. And this Thomas Jones did not stand like an insensible stone or rock, but like a living oak, braving the blasts of veering opinion. Most men think in crowds,--which is only to say they are the victims of thoughtless plausibilities. This Thomas Jones appears to have known what he believed; he was eminent for his politeness, and greatly deferential in his bearing; but with all this, his courtesy was the courtesy of the branch which bows, but retains its place. He was a man of marvellous memory, and Christmas Evans used to say of him, that wherever Thomas Jones was, no Concordance would be necessary. He was a great master in the study of Edwards "On the Freedom of the Will," and his method of reading the book was characteristic; he would first seize a proposition, then close the book, and close his eyes, and turn the proposition round and round that it might be undisturbed by anything inside the treatise, or outside of it, and in this way he would proceed with the rigorous demonstration. He was a calm and dignified knight in the tournament of discussion; and, before his lance, more vehement but less trained thinkers and theologians went down.

Thus it was that he preached a great Association sermon at Llangevni, in 1802, which dealt the Sandemanian schism a fatal blow; the captivity beneath the spell of the influence of Ramoth Jones was broken, and turned as streams in the south. While the sermon was being preached, Christmas Evans said, "This Thomas Jones is a monster of a man!" Then the great revival sprang up,--the ice reign was over; but shortly after, he was called away to Rhydwilym, in Caermarthenshire. Young as he was, when John Elias heard of his departure, he said, "The light of the north is removed." He died full of years, full of honours, full of love; closing a life, says one, of quiet beauty, which perhaps has never been surpassed, at Rhydwilym, in 1850.

This irruption of Sandemanian thought, as we have said and seen, affected the spiritual life and earnest usefulness of Christmas Evans. It is well we should place this passing flower upon the memory of Jones of Rhydwilym, for he, it seems, broke the spell and dissolved the enchantment, and bade, in the heart of Christmas Evans, the imprisoned waters once more to flow forth warm, and rejoicing, in the life and enthusiasm of love. May we not say, in passing, that some such spell, if not beneath the same denomination of opinion, holds many hearts in bondage among the Churches in our time?

"The swain in barren deserts, with surprise Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise; And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds, to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear."

"I was weary," he says, referring to this period, "of a cold heart towards Christ, and His sacrifice, and the work of His Spirit--of a cold heart in the pulpit, in secret prayer, and in the study. For fifteen years previously, I had felt my heart burning within, as if going to Emmaus with Jesus. On a day ever to be remembered by me, as I was going from Dolgelly to Machynlleth, and climbing up towards Cadair Idris, I considered it to be incumbent upon me to pray, however hard I felt in my heart, and however worldly the frame of my spirit was. Having begun in the name of Jesus, I soon felt, as it were, the fetters loosening, and the old hardness of heart softening, and, as I thought, mountains of frost and snow dissolving and melting within me. This engendered confidence in my soul in the promise of the Holy Ghost. I felt my whole mind relieved from some great bondage; tears flowed copiously, and I was constrained to cry out for the gracious visits of God, by restoring to my soul the joys of His salvation; and that He would visit the Churches in Anglesea that were under my care. I embraced in my supplications all the Churches of the saints, and nearly all the ministers in the Principality by their names. This struggle lasted for three hours; it rose again and again, like one wave after another, or a high flowing tide, driven by a strong wind, until my nature became faint by weeping and crying. Thus I resigned myself to Christ, body and soul, gifts and labours--all my life--every day, and every hour that remained for me; and all my cares I committed to Christ. The road was mountainous and lonely, and I was wholly alone, and suffered no interruption in my wrestlings with God.

"From this time, I was made to expect the goodness of God to Churches, and to myself. Thus the Lord delivered me and the people of Anglesea from being carried away by the flood of Sandemanianism. In the first religious meetings after this, I felt as if I had been removed from the cold and sterile regions of spiritual frost, into the verdant fields of Divine promises. The former striving with God in prayer, and the longing anxiety for the conversion of sinners, which I had experienced at L?yn, were now restored. I had a hold of the promises of God. The result was, when I returned home, the first thing that arrested my attention was, that the Spirit was working also in the brethren in Anglesea, inducing in them a spirit of prayer, especially in two of the deacons, who were particularly importunate that God would visit us in mercy, and render the Word of His grace effectual amongst us for the conversion of sinners."

And to about this time belongs a most interesting article, preserved among his papers, "a solemn covenant with God," made, he says, "under a deep sense of the evil of his own heart, and in dependence upon the infinite grace and merit of the Redeemer." It is a fine illustration of the spirit and faith of the man in his lonely communions among the mountains.

Covenant with God.

Is not this an amazing document? It is of this time that he further writes:--"I felt a sweet peace and tranquillity of soul, like unto a poor man that had been brought under the protection of the Royal Family, and had an annual settlement for life made upon him; and from whose dwelling painful dread of poverty and want had been for ever banished away." We have heard of God-intoxicated men; and what language can more appropriately describe a covenant-engagement so elevated, so astonishing, and sublime?

Now, apparently strengthened as by a new spirit, with "might in the inner man," he laboured with renewed energy and zeal; and new and singular blessings descended upon his labours. In two years, his ten preaching places in Anglesea were increased to twenty, and six hundred converts were added to the Church under his own immediate care. It seemed as if the wilderness and the solitary place were glad for him, and the desert rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.

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