Christmas Evans Part 12

AMONGST the characteristic names of Wales, remarkable in that department to which we shall devote this chapter, whoever may be pa.s.sed by, the name of Rees Pritchard, the ancient Vicar of Llandovery, ought not to go unmentioned. We suppose no book, ever published in Wales, has met the acceptance and circulation of "Canwyll-y-Cymry," or "The Welshman's Candle." Since the day of its publication, it has gone through perfectly countless editions; and there was a time, not long since, when there was scarcely a family in Wales, of any intelligence, which did not possess a copy.

Its author was born in the parish of which he became the vicar, so far back as 1575. He was educated at Oxford. His early life was more remarkable for dissipation of every kind, than for any pursuits compatible with his sacred profession. He was, especially, an inveterate drunkard; the worst of his parishioners were scandalised by his example, and said, "Bad as we may be, we are not half so bad as the parson!" The story of his conversion is known to many, who are not acquainted with his life, and work, and the eminence to which he attained; and it certainly ill.u.s.trates how very strange have been some of the means of man's salvation, and how foolish things have confounded the wise. As George Borrow says in his "Wild Wales," in his account of Pritchard, "G.o.d, however, who is aware of what every man is capable, had reserved Rees Pritchard for great, and n.o.ble things, and brought about his conversion in a very remarkable manner."

He was in the habit of spending much of his time in the public-house, from which he was, usually, trundled home in a wheelbarrow, in a state of utter insensibility. The people of the house had a large he-goat, which went in, and out, and mingled with the guests. One day, Pritchard called the goat to him, and offered it some ale, and the creature, so far from refusing it, drank it greedily, and soon after fell down in a state of intoxication, and lay quivering, to the great delight of Pritchard, and his companions, who, however, were horrified at this conduct in one, who was appointed to be their example, and teacher. Shortly after, as usual, Pritchard himself was trundled home, utterly intoxicated. He was at home, and ill, the whole of the next day; but on the day following, he went down to the public-house, and called for his pipe, and tankard. The goat came into the room, and again he held the tankard to the creature's mouth; but it turned away its head in disgust, hurried away, and would come near him no more. This startled the man. "My G.o.d!" he said, "is this poor dumb creature wiser than I?" He pursued, in his mind, the train of feeling awakened by conscience; he shrank, with disgust, from himself. "But, thank G.o.d!" he said, "I am yet alive, and it is not too late to mend. The goat has taught me a lesson; I will become a new man."

Smashing his pipe, he left his tankard untasted, and hastened home. He, indeed, commenced a new career. He became, and continued for thirty years, a great, and effective preacher; "preaching," says Mr. Borrow, "the inestimable efficacy of Christ's blood-shedding."

Those poetical pieces which he wrote at intervals, and which are called "The Welshman's Candle," appear only to have been gathered into a volume, and published, after his death. The room in which he lived, and wrote, appears to be still standing; and Mr. Borrow says: "Of all the old houses in Llandovery, the old Vicarage is, by far, the most worthy of attention, irrespective of the wonderful monument of G.o.d's providence, and grace, who once inhabited it;" and the old vicar's memory is as fresh in Llandovery, to-day, as ever it was. While Mr. Borrow was looking at the house, a respectable-looking farmer came up, and was about to pa.s.s; "but observing me," he says, "and how I was employed, he stopped, and looked now at me, and now at the antique house. Presently he said, 'A fine old place, sir, is it not? But do you know who lived there?' Wishing to know what the man would say, provided he thought I was ignorant as to the ancient inmate, I turned a face of inquiry upon him, whereupon he advanced towards me, two or three steps, and placing his face so close to mine, that his nose nearly touched my cheek, he said, in a kind of piercing whisper, '_The Vicar_!' then drawing his face back, he looked me full in the eyes, as if to observe the effect of his intelligence, gave me two or three nods, as if to say, 'He did indeed,' and departed. _The_ Vicar of Llandovery had then been dead nearly two hundred years. Truly the man in whom piety, and genius, are blended, is immortal upon earth!"

"The Welshman's Candle" is a set of homely, and very rememberable verses, putting us, as far as we are able to judge, in mind of our Thomas Tusser.

Mr. Borrow gives us a very pleasant taste in the following literal, vigorous translation, which we may presume to be his own:-

"G.o.d'S BETTER THAN ALL."

"G.o.d's better than heaven, or aught therein; Than the earth, or aught we there can win; Better than the world, or its wealth to me- G.o.d's better than all that is, or can be.

"Better than father, than mother, than nurse; Better than riches, oft proving a curse; Better than Martha, or Mary even- Better, by far, is the G.o.d of heaven.

"If G.o.d for thy portion thou hast ta'en, There's Christ to support thee in every pain; The world to respect thee thou wilt gain; To fear thee, the fiend, and all his train.

"Of the best of portions, thou choice didst make, When thou the high G.o.d to thyself didst take; A portion, which none from thy grasp can rend, Whilst the sun, and the moon on their course shall wend.

"When the sun grows dark, and the moon turns red; When the stars shall drop, and millions dread; When the earth shall vanish, with its pomp, in fire, Thy portion shall still remain entire.

"Then let not thy heart, though distressed, complain; A hold on thy portion firm maintain.

Thou didst choose the best portion, again I say; Resign it not till thy dying day!"

But the age of preachers in Wales, to which the following pages will more immediately refer, commences with those two great men, who were indeed the Whitfield, and the Wesley of Wales-Howell Harris of Trevecca, and Daniel Rowlands of Llangeitho. It is remarkable that these two men, born to be such inestimable, and priceless blessings to their country, were born within a year of each other-Harris at Trevecca, in 1714, Rowlands at Pantybeidy, in Cardiganshire, in 1713. As to Harris, he is spoken of as the most successful preacher that ever ascended a pulpit, or platform in Wales; and yet nothing is more certain, than that he neither aimed to preach, nor will his sermons, so far as any knowledge can be obtained of them, stand the test of any kind of criticism. This only is certain, their unquestioned, and greatly pre-eminent usefulness.

He did not deliver composed sermons, but unpremeditated addresses, on sin, and its tremendous consequences; on death, and the judgment, and the world to come. It is said, "His words fell like b.a.l.l.s of fire, on the careless, and impenitent mult.i.tudes." Himself destined for a clergyman of the Church of England, an Oxford man, and with a fair promise of success in the Church-since before he left Oxford, he had a benefice offered him-he repeatedly applied, in vain, for ordination. Throughout his life, he continued ardently attached to the services of the Church of England.

It was, unhappily, from that Church, in Wales, he encountered his most vehement opposition, and cruel persecution. He, however, roused the whole country,-within the Church of England, and without,-from its state of apathy, and impiety; while we quite agree with his biographer, who says: "Any attempt to account philosophically for the remarkable effects which everywhere attended the preaching of Howell Harris, would be nothing better than an irreverent trifling with a solemn subject. All that can be said, with propriety, is, that he was an extraordinary instrument, raised by Providence, at an extraordinary time, to accomplish an extraordinary work."

But Llangeitho, and its vicar, seem to demand a more lengthened notice, as coming more distinctly within the region of the palpable, and apprehensible. Daniel Rowlands was a clergyman, and the son of a clergyman. At twenty-two years of age, he was appointed perpetual curate, or inc.u.mbent, of the united parishes of Nantcwnlle and Llangeitho, at a salary of ten pounds a year. He never received any higher preferment in the Church on earth, although so eminent a blessing to his country. He must have been some such man as our William Grimshaw, of Haworth. When he entered upon his curacy, he was quite an unconverted young man, given to occasional fits of intoxication, and in the summer he left his pulpit, to take his part, with his parishioners, in the sports, and games in the neighbouring fields, or on the village green.

But, in the immediate neighbourhood of his own hamlet, ministered a good and consistent Nonconformist, Philip Pugh, a learned, lovable, and lowly man; and, in the smaller round of his sphere, a successful preacher.

Daniel Rowlands appears to have been converted under a sermon of the eminent Rev. Griffith Jones of Llanddouror, at Llanddewibrefi; but it was to Philip Pugh that he was led for that instruction, and influence, which instrumentally helped to develop his character. It would seem that Rowlands was a man bound to be in earnest; but conversion set on fire a new genius in the man. He developed, hitherto undiscovered, great preaching power, and his church became crowded. Still, for the first five years of his new course of life, he did not know that more glorious and beautiful Gospel which he preached through all the years following.

He was a tremendous alarmist; the dangers of sin, and the terrors of the eternal judgments, were his topics; and his hearers shrank, and recoiled, while they were fascinated to listen. Again, the venerable Nonconformist stepped in; Philip Pugh pointed out his defect. "My dear sir," said he, "preach the Gospel-preach the Gospel to the people. Give them the balm of Gilead; show the blood of Christ; apply it to their spiritual wounds; show the necessity of faith in a crucified Redeemer." "I am afraid,"

said Rowlands, "that I have not all that faith myself, in its full vigour, and exercise." "Preach on it," said Mr. Pugh; "preach on it, until you feel it in that way,-it will come. If you go on preaching in the way you have been doing, you will kill half the people in the country. You thunder out the curses of the law, and preach in such a terrific manner, that n.o.body can stand before you. Preach the Gospel!"

And again the young clergyman followed the advice of his patriarchal friend, and unnumbered thousands in Wales had occasion, through long following years, to bless G.o.d for it.

Does not the reader call up a very beautiful picture of these two, in that old and obscure Welsh hamlet, nearly a hundred and fifty years since?-the conversation of such an one as Paul, the aged, with his young son, Timothy; and if anything were needed to increase our sense of admiration of the young clergyman, it would be that he did not disdain to receive lessons from old age, and an old age covered with the indignities attaching to an outlawed Nonconformist. In Wales, there were very many men like Philip Pugh; we may incidentally mention the names of several in the course of these pages-names well worthy of the commendation in Johnson's perfect lines:

"Their virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the Eternal Master found Their single talent well employed.

"And still they fill affection's eye, Obscurely wise, and coa.r.s.ely kind; And let not arrogance deny Its praise to merit unrefined."

Then there opened a great career before Rowlands, and Llangeitho became as a shrine in evangelical Wales. He received invitations to preach in every neighbourhood of the Princ.i.p.ality; many churches were opened to him, and where they were not, he took freely, and cheerfully, to the chapels, or the fields. His words, and accents were of that marvellous kind we have identified with Welsh preaching. Later on, and in other times, people said, he found his successor in Davies of Swansea; and the highest honour they could give to Swansea, in Davies' day, was that "it was another Llangeitho."

Rowlands had the power of the thunder, and the dew; he pressed an extraordinary vitality into words, which had often been heard before, so that once, while reading the Church Service, in his own church, he gave such a dreadful tenderness to the words, "By thine agony, and b.l.o.o.d.y sweat!" that the service was almost stopped, and the people broke forth into a pa.s.sion of feeling. Christmas Evans says: "While Rowlands was preaching, the fashion of his countenance became altered; his voice became as if inspired; the worldly, dead, and careless spirit was cast out by his presence. The people, as it were, drew near to the cloud, towards Christ, and Moses, and Elijah. Eternity, with its realities, rushed upon their vision. These mighty influences were felt, more or less, for fifty years. Thousands gathered at Llangeitho for communion every month, and they came there from every county in Wales."

Such power there is in human words when divinely wielded; such was the spiritual power of Daniel Rowlands. Well does one writer say, the story of Llangeitho, well written, would read like a chapter in religious romance. It is very doubtful whether we have the record of any other man who drew such numbers to the immediate circle of his ministry, as Rowlands. He did not itinerate so largely as most of the great Welsh preachers. In an obscure spot in the interior of Cardiganshire, in an age of bad roads, and in a neighbourhood where the roads were especially bad, he addressed his immense concourses of people. His monthly communion was sometimes attended by as many as three thousand communicants, of whom, often, many were clergymen. Upwards of a hundred ministers ascribe to him the means of their conversion. Thus, in his day, it was a place of pilgrimages; and even now, there are not a few who turn aside, to stand, with wonder, upon the spot where Rowlands exercised his marvellous ministry.

The four great Welsh preachers, Christmas Evans, John Elias, Williams of Wern, and Davies of Swansea, on whose pulpit powers, and method, we have more distinctly dilated, may be styled the tetrarchs of the pulpit of Wild Wales of these later times. Their eminence was single, and singular. Their immense powers unquestioned: rivals, never, apparently, by their own selection, the great Welsh religious mind only rivalled them with each other. After them it might be said, "Great was the company of preachers,"-great, not merely in number, carrying also influence, and usefulness of another kind; perhaps even superior to those honoured names.

How, for instance, can we do sufficient honour to the labours of CHARLES OF BALA? This truly apostolic man was born at Llanvihangel, in 1755.

While yet a boy, he managed to introduce family worship into his father's house; but it was in his eighteenth year that he heard the great Daniel Rowlands preach, and he says: "From that day I found a new heaven, and a new earth, to enjoy; the change experienced by a blind man, on receiving his sight, is not greater than that which I felt on that day." In his twentieth year he went to Oxford, and received Deacon's orders, and was appointed to a curacy in Somersetshire; he took his degree at his University, but he could never obtain priest's orders; in every instance objection was made to what was called his Methodism.

The doors of the Establishment were thus closed against him, and he was compelled to cast in his lot with the Welsh Methodists, in 1785. Before this, he had preached for Daniel Rowlands in his far-famed church at Llangeitho, and the great old patriarch simply uttered a prophecy about him when he said, "Mr. Charles is the gift of G.o.d to North Wales." He was an eminent preacher, but it was rather in other ways that he became ill.u.s.trious, in the great religious labours of his country. Moving about to preach, from place to place, his heart became painfully impressed, and distressed, by the great ignorance of the people everywhere, and that such mult.i.tudes were unable to read the Word of G.o.d; so he determined on the establishment of schools upon a singular principle.

It was two or three years before he commenced his more settled labours in Wales, that Robert Raikes had originated the Sunday-school idea in Gloucester. Thomas Charles was the first to seize upon the idea, and introduce it into his own country. Charles had an organizing, and administrative, mind; he fixed upon innumerable places, where he settled schoolmasters, for periods of from six to nine, and twelve months, to teach the people to read, giving them the initial elements, and rudiments, of education, and then removing these masters to another locality.

So he filled the country with schools-Sabbath, and night-schools. He visited the schools himself, periodically, catechizing the children publicly; and in the course of his lifetime, he had the satisfaction of seeing the aspect of things entirely changed. He used no figure of speech, when, towards the close of his life, he said, "The desert blossoms as the rose, and the dry land has become streams of water." To these purposes of his heart he was able to devote whatever money he received from the work of the ministry; he testifies affectionately that "the wants of my own family were provided for by the industry of my dear wife;" and he received some help by donations from England. He found, everywhere, a dearth of Bibles, and it is curious to read that, although the Church of England would not receive him as one of her ministers, when his work became established, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge made him, after considerable reluctance, a grant of no less than ten thousand Welsh Bibles. After this, he went to London, for the purpose of establishing a Society to supply Wales with the Holy Scriptures. It was at a meeting of the Religious Tract Society, which was called together for that purpose, that it was resolved to establish the British and Foreign Bible Society; and before that society had been established ten years, it had supplied Wales with a hundred thousand copies of the Word of G.o.d.

Other men were great preachers, but Thomas Charles was, in the truest sense of the word, a bishop, an overseer,-travelling far, and wide, preaching, catechizing, administrating, placing and removing labourers.

All his works, and words, his inward, and his outward life, show the active, high-toned saintliness, and enthusiastic holiness, of the man.

There is, perhaps, no other to whom Wales is so largely indebted for the giving direction, organization, and usefulness to all religious labour, as to him. His modesty transcended his gifts, and his activity. John Campbell, of Kingsland, himself noted in all the great, and good works of that time, relates that at a meeting, at Lady Anne Erskine's, at which Mr. Charles was requested to state the circ.u.mstances which had made little Bala a kind of spiritual metropolis of the Princ.i.p.ality of Wales, "he spoke for about an hour, and never once mentioned himself, although he was the chief instrument, and actor, in the whole movements which had made the place so eminent."

This good man, John Campbell, afterwards wrote to Mr. Charles's biographer: "I never was at Bala but once, which was not long after his removal to the regions of immortality; and such was my veneration for his character, and labours, that, in approaching it, I felt as if I was about coming in sight of Sinai, or Jerusalem, or treading on cla.s.sical ground.

The events of his life, I believe, are viewed with more interest by the glorified than the battles of Actium, or Waterloo."

But, as a preacher, he was unlike those men, whose words moved upon the wheels of thunder, and who seemed to deal with the lightnings of imagination, and eloquence. As we read his words, they seem to flow with refreshing sweetness. He was waited for, and followed everywhere, but his utterances had nothing of the startling powers we have seen; we should think he preached, rather, to those who knew, by experience, what it is to grow in grace. There is a glowing light of holiness about his words-a deep, sweet, experimental reality. Of course, being a Welshman, his thoughts were pithily expressed. They were a sort of spiritual proverbs, in which he turned over, again and again, some idea, until it became like the triads of his country's literature; and dilating upon an idea, the various aspects of it became like distinct facets, setting forth some pleasant ray.

Such was Thomas Charles. Wales lost him at the age of sixty-a short life, if we number it by years; a long life, if we consider all he accomplished in it; and, to this day, his name is one of the most revered throughout the Princ.i.p.ality.

It is impossible to do the justice even of mentioning the names of many of those men, who "served their generation" so well, "according to the will of G.o.d, and then fell asleep." And it is as necessary, as it is interesting, to notice how the various men, moved by the Spirit of G.o.d, found Him leading, and guiding them in the path of labour, their instincts chose.

In the history of preaching, we believe there is no more curious chapter than this, of these strange preachers in Wales. They have an idiosyncrasy as entirely, and peculiarly, their own, as is that of the country in which they carried on their ministrations. The preaching friars of the times we call the dark, or middle ages, are very remarkable, from the occasional glimpses we are able to obtain of them.

Very remarkable the band of men, evoked by the rise of Methodism in England,-those who spread out all over the land, treading the paths indicated by the voice, and finger of Whitfield, or Wesley. Very entertaining are the stories of the preachers of the backwoods of America, the sappers, and miners, who cleared a way for the planting of the Word among the wild forests of the Far West.

These Welsh preachers were unlike any of them,-they had a character altogether their own. A great many of them were men of eminent genius, glowing with feeling, and fancy; never having known college training, or culture, they were very often men who had, somehow, attained a singular variety of knowledge, lore, and learning, which, perhaps, would be despised as unscientific, and uncla.s.sified, by the schools, but which was not the less curious, and, to the Celtic mind, enchanting.

They all lived, and fared hard; all their thoughts, and fancies were high. If they marched before us now, the nineteenth century would, very likely, regard them as a set of very rough tykes. Perhaps the nineteenth century would regard Elijah, Amos, and Nahum, and sundry other equally respectable persons, in much the same manner. Rude, and rough in gait, and attire, the rudeness, and the roughness would, perhaps, be forgotten by us, if we could interpret the torrent, and the wail of their speech, and be, for a short time, beneath the power of the visions, of which they were the rapt seers, and unveilers. We wonder that no enthusiastic Welshman has used an English pen to pourtray the lives, and portraits of a number of these Welsh worthies; to us, several of them-notably, John Elias, and Christmas Evans-seem to realize the idea of the Ancient Mariner,-

"I pa.s.s like night from land to land, I have strange power of speech; The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me- To him my tale I teach."

For instance, how many people in England ever heard the name of THOMAS RHYS DAVIES, an extraordinary man? And he left an extraordinary diary behind him, for he seems to have been a very methodical man; and his diary shows that he preached during his lifetime at least 13,145 times, and this diary contains a distinct record of the time, place, and text; and it is said that there is scarcely a river, brook, or tarn, from Conway to Llansanan, from Llanrwst to Newbridge, from the sea at Llandudno, to the waters of the Berwyn mountains, in whose waves he had not baptized.

In fact, he was, perhaps, in his own particular, and peculiar line, second to none of the great Welsh preachers; only, it is said that his power was inexplicable, and yet that it stood the severest tests of popularity. His sermons are said to have been exceedingly simple, and very rememberable; they sprang out of a rare personal charm; he was himself; but, perhaps, if he resembled one of his great brethren, it would be Williams of Wern. His style was sharp, pointed, axiomatic, but ant.i.thetic, never prodigal of words, his sermons were short; but he was able to avail himself of any pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance in the congregation, and to turn it to good account. Once, when a congregation seemed to be even more than usually disposed to cough, he said, "Cough away, my friends, it will not disturb me in the least; it will rather help me than not, for if you are coughing, I shall be sure that you are awake."

He had that rare gift in the preacher, perfect self-possession, the grand preliminary to mastery over a congregation, an entire mastery over himself. All great Welsh preachers, however they may sometimes dilate, and expand truths into great paintings, and prolonged descriptions, excel in the pithy, and proverb-uttering power; but Thomas Rhys Davies was remarkable in this. Here are a few ill.u.s.trations:-

"Ignorance is the devil's college."

"There are only three pa.s.sages in the Bible which declare what G.o.d is, although there are thousands which speak about Him. G.o.d is a Spirit, G.o.d is Light, and G.o.d is Love."

"Pharaoh fought ten great battles with G.o.d, and did not gain one."