: Christmas Evans the Preacher of Wild Wales His country his times and his contemporaries by Hood Edwin Paxton Evans Christmas Other - Evans Christmas 1766-1838

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

WE propose, in the following pages, to give some account of Christmas Evans, the great Welsh preacher; believing that he had a style and manner of preaching which, to English minds and readers, will seem altogether his own, perhaps more admirable than imitable. But before we enter upon the delineation of his life, or attempt to unfold his style, or to represent his method as displayed in his sermons, it may be well to present some concise view of Welsh preaching and Welsh preachers in general, especially those of the last age; for as an order of preaching it has possessed its own very distinctive peculiarities. Some readers may at first indeed inquire, Is not preaching very much the same everywhere, in all counties and in all countries? And Wales, which seems itself in its nearness now only like a district of England, and that district for the most part wild and but scantily peopled,--can there be anything so remarkable about its pulpit work as to make it either capable or worthy of any separate account of its singularities and idiosyncrasies? To most English people Welsh preaching is a phase of religious life entirely unknown: thousands of tourists visit the more conspicuous highways of Wales from year to year, its few places of public resort or more manifest beauty; but Wales is still, for the most part, unknown; its isolation is indeed somewhat disturbed now, its villages are no longer so insulated as of old, and the sounds of advancing life are breaking in upon its solitudes, yet, perhaps, its fairest scenes are still uninvaded. But if the country be unknown, still more unknown are the people, and of its singular preaching phenomena scarcely anything is known, or ever can be known by English people; yet it is not too much to say that, in that little land, during the last hundred years, amidst its wild glens and sombre mountain shadows, its villages retreating into desolate moorlands and winding vales, where seldom a traveller passes by, there have appeared such a succession and race of remarkable preachers as could be rivalled--in their own peculiar popular power over the hearts and minds of many thousands, for their eminence and variety--in no other country. Among these, Christmas Evans seems to us singularly representative; eminently Welsh, his attributes of power seem to be especially indicative of the characteristics of the Welsh mind, an order of mind as remarkably singular and individual, and worthy of study, as any national character in the great human family. But even before we mention these, it may be well to notice what were some of the reasons for the eminent influence and usefulness of Christmas Evans, and some of his extraordinary preaching comrades and contemporaries to whom we shall have occasion to refer.

Thus, it is not the first reason, but it is not unimportant to remember, that, until very recently, the pulpit in Wales has been the only means of popular excitement, instruction, or even of entertainment; until very recently the Welsh, like the ancient Hebrew lady, have dwelt among their own people, they have possessed no popular fictions, no published poems, no published emanations either of metaphysics or natural science; immured in their own language, as they were, less than a century since, among their own mountains, their language proved a barrier to the importation of many works accessible to almost all the other languages of Europe. It may be said that religion, as represented through the men of the pulpit, has made Wales what she is. When the first men of the pulpit, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and others, arose, they found their country lying under a night of spiritual darkness, and they effected an amazing reformation; but then they had no competitive influences to interfere with their progress, or none beyond that rough, rude sensuality, that barbarism of character, which everywhere sets itself in an attitude of hostility to spiritual truth and to elevated holiness; there were no theatres or race courses, there was no possibility that the minds of the multitudes should be occupied by the intellectual casuistries of a later day; Wales possessed no Universities or Colleges, and very few Schools; on the other hand, there were some characteristics of the national mind very favourable to the impulse these men gave, and the impressions they produced. So it has happened that the Welsh preacher has been elevated into an importance, reminding us of the Welsh tradition concerning St. David, the patron saint of Wales, regarding whom it is said, that, while preaching in the year 520, in Cardigan, against the Pelagian heresy, such was the force of his argument, and the eloquence of his oratory, that the very ground on which he stood rose beneath his feet and elevated itself into a hillock; and there, in after ages, a church was erected upon the spot to which awful tradition pointed as the marvellous pulpit of the patron saint.

Three-fourths of any amount of power which either or any of these first preachers, or their successors, have obtained over their countrymen, and countrywomen, arises from the fact that the Welsh possess, in an eminent degree, what we call a Religious Nature; they are very open to Wonder; they have a most keen and curious propensity to inquire into the hidden causes of things, not mere material causes, but Spiritual causes, what we call Metaphysics; the Unseen Universe is to them as to all of us a mystery, but it is a mystery over which they cannot but brood; when education is lacking, this realizing of the unseen is apt to give rise to superstitious feelings, and superstitions still loiter and linger among the glens, the churchyards, and old castles and ruins of Wales, although the spread of Christian truth has divested them of much of their ancient extravagance; when, therefore, the earnest voice of their native speech became the vehicle for unfolding the higher doctrines of the Christian life, the sufferings of the Redeemer and their relation to eternal laws and human conditions, probably a people was never found whose ears were more open, or whose hearts were more ready to receive, and to be stirred to their utmost depths. Thus Religion--Evangelical Religion--became the very life of the land of Wales.

"There is not a heathen man, woman, or child in all the Principality," said a very eminent Welshman to us once, probably with some measure of exaggeration; "there are wicked men, and women," he continued, "unconverted men, and women, but there is not a man, woman, or child throughout Wales who does not know all about Jesus Christ, and why He came into the world, and what He came to do." Thus, within the memory of the writer of this volume, Religion was the one topic upon which you might talk intelligently anywhere in Wales: with the pitman in the coalmine, with the iron-smelter at the forge, with the farmer by his ingleside, with the labourer in his mountain shieling; and not merely on the first more elementary lessons of the catechism, but on the great bearings and infinite relations of religious things. Jonathan Edwards, and Williams of Rotherham, and Owen, and Bunyan, and Flavel,--these men and their works, and a few others like them, were well known; and, especially, the new aspects which the modified opinions of Andrew Fuller had introduced into religious thought; thus, you might often feel surprised when, sitting down in some lowly cottage, you found yourself suddenly caught, and carried along by its owner in a coil of metaphysical argument. This was the soil on which the Welsh preachers had to work, and cast abroad their seed.

It must not be supposed from this that they imagined that prayer was to dispense with preparation; their great preachers studied hard and deeply, and Williams of Wern, one of the greatest of them all, says, "In order to be a good preacher, usefulness must be the grand aim, usefulness must choose the text and divide it, usefulness must compose the sermon and sit at the helm during the delivery; if the introduction be not clear and pertinent it is evident the preacher does not know whither he is going, and if the inferences are of the same character, it is obvious he does not know where he has been. Unstudied sermons are not worth hearing or having; who would trust his life in the hands of a physician who had never thought of his profession?" But these men never permitted the understanding to supersede emotion, and, when they met the people face to face, the greatest of them went prepared, warmed and kindled, and ready to warm and kindle.

It is indeed true that many of their great preachers repeated the same sermon many times. Why not? So did Whitfield, so did Wesley, so have most eminent preachers done; but this need in no way interfere with--it did not interfere with--the felt necessity for unction on the part of the minister; and as to the people they liked to hear an old favourite again, or a sermon, which they had never heard although they had heard much about it. We believe it was to Christmas Evans a pert young preacher said, "Well, you have given us an old sermon again to-day."

"What then, my boy?" said the Master of Assemblies; "had you a new one?"

"Certainly," was the answer.

"Well, but look you," said the unblushing old culprit, "I would not take a dozen new sermons like yours for this one old sermon of mine."

"O'i wiw ?y i weu e ?;--o'i iau Ei wyau a wea, E wywa ei w? aua, A'i weau yw ieuau ia."

To this, the great Gronwy Owen added a kind of counter change of vowels, and the translation has been given as follows:--

"From out its womb it weaves with care Its web beneath the roof; Its wintry web it spreadeth there-- Wires of ice its woof.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!