The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

by Evan Roberts, Arthur Goodrich, G. Campbell Morgan, W. T. Stead, Evan H. Hopkins, and E. W. Moore

With Bonus chapter by H. Elvet Lewis

First published 1905 - Public Domain

This edition - Copyright 2012 Jawbone Digital

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Chapter 1 - A Message to the World

by Evan Roberts

THE Power of the revival in South Wales is not of men, but of God. He has been close to us and has shown us the way.

There is no question of creed or of dogma in this movement. The work that is being done has the support, I believe, of all Christian people and Christian churches in our country. I have merely preached the religion of Jesus Christ as I myself have experienced it.

God has “made me glad,” and I am showing others the great joy of serving Him, a joy so great and so wonderful that I shall never be able to express it in its completeness. We are teaching no sectarian doctrine, only the wonder and the beauty of Christ’s love, the love of man for Him, and the love of man for man.

I have been asked concerning my methods. I have none. I never prepare the words I shall speak. I leave all that to Him. I am not the source of this revival. I am only one agent in what is growing to be a multitude. I am not moving men’s hearts and changing men’s lives; not I, but “God worketh in me.” I have found what is, in my belief, the highest kind of Christianity. I desire to give my life, which is all I have to give, to helping others to find it also. Many have already found it, thank God, and many more are finding it through them.

This is my work as He has pointed it out to me. His Spirit came to me one night, when upon my knees I asked Him for guidance, and five months later I was baptized with the Spirit. He has led me as He will lead all those who, conscious of their human weakness, lean upon Him as children upon a father. I know that the work which has been done through me is not due to any human ability that I possess. It is His work and to His Glory. “I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou should’st lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now lead Thou me on.”

I desire nothing but to be allowed to continue this work that has begun. “The Lord is my Shepherd. I fear no want.” All things necessary He has provided, and will provide. I wish no personal following, only the world for Christ.

Some things have been said about our meetings, and about me which are not true; but God’s truth has not been hurt by these misstatements, and they, therefore, matter little. I believe, too, that He has put it into the hearts of those who have written of the revival to say helpful things, for some of the papers have carried our message to many whom we have not personally reached.

I believe that the world is upon the threshold of a great religious revival, and I pray daily that I may be allowed to help bring this about.

I beseech all those who confess Christ to ask Him today, upon their knees, if He has not some work for them to do now. He will lead them all as He has led us. He will make them pillars of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night to guide all men to Him.

Wonderful things have happened in Wales in a few weeks, but these are only a beginning. The world will be swept by His Spirit as by a rushing, mighty wind. Many who are now silent Christians, negative Christians, Christians whose belief means little to them and nothing to anyone else, will lead in the movement. Groping, hesitating, half-hearted Christians will see a great Light and will reflect this Light to thousands of those in utter darkness. The whole world will hear His message of “peace, good-will toward men,” and listening, will be blessed. Thousands upon thousands will do more than we have accomplished, as God gives them power. This is my earnest faith, if the churches will but learn the great lesson of obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Obedience! Obedience!! Obedience!!!

Chapter 2 - The Story of the Welsh Revival

by Arthur Goodrich

All South Wales is aflame with the spirit of a great religious revival. In a few weeks the fire of it has run up and down the length of the Garw Valley and the Rhondda, and has spread into hundreds of little outlying hamlets, where in steady, deadening routine the men work in the black coalpit through all the glorious days that come in that wonderful country of mountains and sunshine and clear air.

They are talking of little else in the snug little stone cottages that line the ridges like low ramparts; in the tiny shops where the women come to buy the day’s supplies; in the railway carriages, and at the street corners. Every church community is stirred to the depths, and out on the edges rough miners are shaking their heads wonderingly, and are being drawn toward it until the power of it seizes them and they leave their work to attend the day meetings as well as those at night. Strong men are in tears of penitence; women are shaken with a new fervor, and in the streets small children at their play are humming revival hymns.

“And they do say that the publicans (saloon keepers) are closing,” says a bent little man with a black beard, in a train to Landore, and certainly many drinking places that were crowded are empty, the frequenters being led away either by the religious workers in person, as they were at Ponticymmer, or by the irresistible spirit of the movement.

“Aye,” says another, “there’s something funny about it. They say you feel it as soon as you’re inside the building where he’s going to speak.”

“He,” is Evan Roberts, the young Lougher lad of 26 years, who alone among men has “fired up” the mining valleys, and who dominates the entire revival with a power which, as he says earnestly, is not from within him, but from above; the Spirit which led him to do what he has done.

In a railway carriage, men who have not seen him repeat with awe the stories they read in the papers, how he is pale-faced, and how he says his body is electrified, and how he has visions, and what a strange light he has in his eyes, and how he get’s only an hour’s sleep in a night, and has no watch that will keep time in his pocket, most of which is, of course, mere talk, and if true at all, true only in part.

Others, coming from their first meeting, are obviously perplexed at the man’s grip upon people, and yet they themselves have felt it, and hurry away to think by themselves whether the way he has pointed for them is not best after all.

And strangers—standing before a wayside chapel in the midst of farming land and seeing the men and women come hurrying from up and down the narrow road, or sitting in some larger building where the aisles are packed to the doors with miners and miners’ sons and wives and daughters, and beyond, into the hallway, and perhaps into the street outside—ask, as they look about at hard faces softening under the simple spell of the missioner’s talk, who this young man is who can work such wonders in a few weeks, and where he came from, and how it has all come about.

For an answer to this we must go back to Lougher, a little mining town near Swansea, and back, also, a number of years, and the story of Evan Roberts, the man, explains much of the secret of his power.

Fifteen minutes’ walk from Lougher station, in a district known as Gorseinon, is the little house of a hard-working, God-fearing miner. It is on a side road, and from where it stands you can look off across swampland to a great black colliery on the left, and beyond to the long range of the hills of Llanganech. The house is of stone, plastered over with cement and lime, hardened to a light brown, corduroy appearance. A gate leads to an inner path, and another gate to the front door, hidden from the road by profuse hedges and greenery.

At the back is a large garden which has to do with the story, and within, in the quaint, scrupulously clean general room, is the melodeon, beside which Evan Roberts and his brother Dan, who is helping him now in his work, sang the stirring Welsh hymns from their boyhood. And no one who has met the kindly, quiet, lovable personality of Evan Roberts’ mother, or who has seen the light of her great faith in her eyes, will fail to realise how much he, and how much South Wales, and perhaps the world, owes to her.

Evan Roberts is one of her seven sons, of whom only three are now living; and in all Lougher not a word can be said against him, and no man remembers anything but good of him.

As one man, who was evidently not greatly moved by the spirit of the revival, said to me: “Whatever else can be said about Evan Roberts, he was always good, always honest, straightforward and earnest.” Indeed, the feeling of Lougher for him is summed up in the words of a good woman who showed me the way to his home. “Evan Roberts, God bless him,” she said; and South Wales is catching phrase.

Women whose husbands had sunk into sordid degradation, and whom he has brought back to them out of the pit, are saying it; mothers whose sons have exchanged the public-house for the chapel, are repeating it; friends of men like Tom Hughes, the atheist, of Aberdare, who has burned his books of unbelief and is working and praying day and night for those who, like him, belonged to the so-called Ethical Society, are saying it; and the hundreds of men and women who have found a new guide for their hesitating steps, are crying it, singing it, praying it.

It is one of those simple homes—and there are many like it in South Wales—about which one feels unconsciously that every stone was laid with a prayer, and every board with a hymn.

The atmosphere of it is of steady, honest toil, of frugal living, and of an unquestioning, vital religious faith. And it was in this kind of a home that Evan Roberts lived during his boyhood. It had its share of trouble; times were not always good; the family was large, and a coal miner seldom receives more money than just enough to keep his home and to do his share toward the support of the chapel; but there was always in this home that beautiful, whole-souled trust in God which crowded out any gloom from their lives

When he was about twelve his father had a serious accident. He fell and hurt his foot so badly that he was told it would be four months before be could go back to his work in the mines, for Mr. Roberts’ work kept him constantly on his feet.

He was needed at the colliery, and, when they learned how long it would be before he could do all that they depended upon him to do, they came and asked him if he couldn’t come with one of his boys, keeping quiet himself and getting the boy to run here and there for him. And this was the way in which Evan Roberts first went into the Mountain Colliery—to help his father until Mr. Roberts was well. A few shillings every week, also, the father gave the boy for his help—the first money Evan Roberts earned.

When Mr. Roberts was able to do all of his work again, the boy was given a task of opening and shutting the doors for the cars in the mine, and after a time he became a “knocker.”

When he was just old enough to understand something of what a religious life meant, he heard one of the church deacons say at one of the week-day meetings—and he always attended these as well as the Sunday services—that if they prayed and waited in a prayerful spirit, some time the Holy Spirit would come to them.

From that night this became the great desire of Evan Roberts’ life, and be lived on gropingly, hoping, praying, believing that some day he would come into a full realization of what was to him the one important thing in life complete communion with God. He had from the beginning the fundamental, implicit faith of the woman who touched the hem of His garment

At night when he came home from the colliery, unless there was a meeting at the church, he settled down to his books, and he spent his carefully saved money for more books.

Among other things he learned shorthand, and he has what I have never seen before—a shorthand Bible. And, indeed, in whatever he did the Bible was always his greatest book—the one that he read constantly and with increasing insight.

As he grew older he began to take part in the meetings, and one evening, when he was away from home, he talked at a service in another town nearby. And what he said was so clear and forcible, and he said it in so vigorous and earnest a fashion, that the minister came to him after the meeting and told him that he ought to become a preacher.

Nobody at Lougher, even in his home, heard of this until someone else repeated it to them. For Evan Roberts is very silent about himself. his thought, I believe, has always been much more for the faith than for any part he himself might play in spreading it to others.

For years his life was a steady, simple routine. In the mornings he went to the mines, either at the Gorseinon Colliery or at Mountain Ash, where he worked for a time. All day long there was the hard toil that stiffened the fiber of his body, and the dealing with hard, older men, that strengthened the fiber of his soul. And at night he studied and read, and sang, and prayed, even as he worked, honestly and earnestly.

Evan Roberts, in whatever he has done from childhood, has “meant intensely and meant good.” And wherever he went people of all ages liked him for his manly vigor and for his unceasing cheeriness.

He was a union man in the colliery, and there came a time when a strike threw him—man-grown now—out of work. He had seen enough of a collier’s life to know how it saps men’s vitality He had made up his mind not to spend all of his life underground or over coal. And all the time the yearning for that touch of the Divine Hand was upon him, and he came to believe that some day he might preach the Gospel.

Many plans were in his mind, and he prayed over them all, this young man, strong-bodied, vigorous, thoughtful, with the air of youth in his blood. He thought of being a missionary, and when at last he settled upon the blacksmith’s trade it was with the half-formed idea of going to foreign lands, and alternately working as a blacksmith and preaching.

In January, two years ago, he paid his uncle, who had a little country “smithy” at Pontardulais, $6, and bound himself as an apprentice for two years. He went to work there in his usual eager way, and in a few months had made himself of great value to the smith. But the task was not that for which he was made, and he felt it quickly.

The struggle for a decision began again until one night, when he was upon his knees over it, a great light seemed to come to him, and a new elation and a new peace. That realization which he had sought ever since he had been a mere lad was at last his, and with it new inspiration, new joy, new hopes and purposes, and his decision was made for him almost in an instant.

He would preach; he would carry to others this message that he had heard and felt. It was near the end of his first year at the smithy, and he started at once to arrange the matter of his additional year of service with his uncle, and to plan for his new work, his lifework, that he had found at last.

The minister at Lougher in the meantime arranged for Evan Roberts to preach his first sermon one Sunday evening, and when that evening had come and passed he came to the young man and said: “You’re planning to go to school, and that is right. But you’re a preacher now.”

During the next months Evan Roberts was at home working at his books, for he had some examinations to pass at Newcastle-Emlen.

He had saved a little money, although he had always given to the chapel freely out of his comparatively small earning—he received $15 a week for his work in the mines. His people were ready to deny themselves, if necessary, to help him, so that the way seemed clear for his schooling.

But while he worked hard as a student—and, of course, his previous education had been the fragmentary, partly undirected study of a busy, ambitious young man in his leisure hours—he was much more concerned with that spiritual uplift which had suddenly obtained complete control of him.

Prayer became sustenance to him. “It means more to me than food,” he said one night when he arose from his knees to answer the call to the evening meal.

And with this new life came new purpose and new vigor. He wrote religious verses in Welsh,—hymns that tried to express something of what he had within him to say,—and some of them were published and praised.

He passed his first examinations, and out of his slender purse he paid for his first term of work at the school. For a few weeks he took the stereotype courses which were mapped out for him. But the feeling came to him with growing insistence that there was other work for him to do—active work, not a few years later, but now; not as man willed, nor as he willed, but as God willed.

He went home to Lougher immediately, and opened his first meetings alone, and before the doubtful eyes of those who had always known him, and who wondered at his sudden change of plan—this leaving the school which be had left them to enter only a few weeks before. He could scarcely have chosen a more difficult place to begin a difficult work.

“Where will you get the money?” asked someone.

“Money!” he cried, with that merry, boyish confidence that is part of his charm. “Never mind about the money. Look above for the money. It’ll come.”

At the beginning little happened. The people who came to his meetings, came out of friendliness or out of curiosity. Why should this young theological student open special meetings all unaided, and why should anyone go to hear him? And those who heard him wondered the more, for although he said little that they had not heard before, he said everything in a way that crowded conviction upon them. He told them frankly at the start that he had not prepared anything to say, but that he would only say what was put into his mind by the Holy Spirit

Naturally, everyone talked about him, and, although few at first took him seriously, they came to hear him in gradually increasing numbers. And he seized them with a remarkable power that he had never shown before, and which he says frankly he had never felt before.

In a few days Lougher shops were closed early for the meetings; workmen hurried in late in their working clothes; evening meetings lasted far into the night; the chapel was crowded, and the road outside was lined with disappointed but waiting people. They came from miles around to hear him, and went away with old faith revived or new faith kindled. The papers began to talk of him as “a wonderful preacher”; neighboring churches heard of him, and asked him to come to them; ministers hurried to hear him, and came away mystified at the simple power of the young man, and with a new impulse in their hearts for harder effort

And that is the way Evan Roberts began a work which is slowly stirring the whole religious world to action.

Here is no mystic with some weird mystery to draw the morbid instincts of weak man. It is a full-blooded, hearty, young man, who has worked in the coal mines and at the smithy, and who hammers his unambitious words home with an inspiriting vigor. Here is no dreaming sentimentalist making a weeping appeal to the sympathetic hearts of women and children. It is a deep-voiced, firm-jawed young man moving men hardened by rough toil.

Here is no fiery, impassioned orator, stirring people by his rhetoric at night and being forgotten, along with his words, in the morning. It is a simple, straightforward speaker, who began alone, but who already has scores of active helpers, men and women, among those the whole course of whose lives have been changed.

Here is no exhorter terrifying his hearers into belief in God’s love by threats of eternal punishment. It is a buoyant, happy man trying to show in a quiet, direct way how joyful a thing Christianity really is.

Here is no quibbler over dogmas. “You haven’t any new creed in mind, have you?” I asked him one night. “You don’t mean to have differences with the present churches in that way?”

“Oh, no,” he said in his hearty way, and with a characteristic wave of his hand. “I am merely trying to show people the love of Jesus Christ as I have experienced it.”

Here is no pompous prelate who condescends to advise his congregation concerning their conduct. it is a frank, sincere man, who links his arm in yours, and means “brother” without saying it.

Here is no narrow sectarian. An army of ministers of all the denominations in Wales are working with him, and his only desire is for results.

Go into one of his meetings. Every seat is taken, there are people in the aisles, and more are crowding in. They are singing—and there is no such stirring congregational singing in the world, I believe, as in Wales—a swinging Welsh hymn, martial and inspiring.

In the midst of a verse a tall, boyish-looking young fellow slips in almost unnoticed, and takes a seat at the front, never behind the high desk, but down upon the main floor, he sings a verse with them, and perhaps starts another, while only a few realize that this is Evan Roberts.

When the singing stops, he steps out quickly before the audience, his hands in his pockets, shoulders thrown back, eyes bright, and his mouth widened in a smile.

A single sentence catches the attention of everyone in the building, for it is at once short, quiet, and vigorous. The tone is conversational, and the eyes are friendly. He begins to pace up and down, turning to the people with short, rapid phrases, and accentuating them with tense, earnest gestures as short and jerky as his speech.

He is seldom still, but when he is you can feel the restrained intensity. The movements are not those of high-strung, nervous force, but of superabundant vital energy.

Suddenly he stops short, and looks over the congregation, where every eye is upon him, and, uttering one quick sentence, laughs aloud. And such laughter as it is, boyish, joyous, confident. A moment later he is on his knees, leaning over the railing, his hands clasped, talking confidently with his audience as if it were one friend instead of many.

After a time he is on his feet again, and a Bible is in his large hands, and then he is again leaning over the railing and calling appealingly to the congregation, perhaps with tears in his eyes. Then suddenly it is over, and he sits down.

One of the girls who has come from Lougher or Pontycymmer to help him, begins to sing, and sweet as her voice is, it is not long before the congregation joins in one until the room rings with the melody.

He has talked less than half a hour. It has been entirely in Welsh, and yet without understanding a word he has said you have felt the spirit of it.

The frankness, the downright earnestness, the militant sincerity have given you a feeling that you have seldom had in an ordinary church service, and through the spirit of his message, they are working in the hearts of all the people about you.

And yet those who know the language say that he has said nothing that is extraordinary; that there has been little brilliancy of phrase; that he has talked simply and cheerfully of his own experience, and has asked those who are not Christians to give themselves to God.

Certainly it has all been very quiet. There has been no loud rantings, nor spectacular displays, nor open appeals to the emotions. But what is happening?

He tramps up and down the aisle, singing with the congregation, and perhaps leading them with inspiriting gestures. Now suddenly he has disappeared. In the gallery is a powerful-looking man, whose head ia hidden in his arms on the back of the seat in front of him. Evan Roberts is bending over him, helping him like a brother to make the right decision.

A moment later he stands straight, his eyes flashing with joy, and cries out with joyous fervor, and then the swinging, stirring cadences of that greatest of Welsh hymns, “Diolch Iddo,” which is always sung after a conversion, begins and grows in volume until they sweep another man upon his feet with an avowal of his changed life.

Evan Roberts is once more before the people, and he breaks in upon the singing with a few half-spoken, half-whispered words. A wave of deep feeling dashes aside something of his self-control as he begs them to “Come to Him! Come to Him!” and he sinks upon his knees in prayer, while one of the girls who have come with him sings a simple hymn in English.

Slowly the congregation has risen out of itself, out of its curiosity, out of its indifference. Something has caught them as in a rushing tide, and is bearing them on resistlessly. A minister rises as the song ends, and declares that, although he has preached the Gospel for years, he is now for the first time a Christian. There are others waiting to follow him now, men and women, some of whom have been negative Christians, and some of whom have never professed any religion.

Now it is a man who is known to the community chiefly as a drunkard; now it is a man whom you heard scoffing outside at the meeting and the missioner; now it is a woman who tremblingly whispers a few inaudible words, and sinks back into her seat; now it is a young lad of twenty, who has come out of curiosity, and will go out determined to a new, purposeful life.

Evan Roberts is everywhere—now upon his knees beside a man in the last seat by the door; now talking in his quiet, triumphant way from half-way down the aisle; now standing before them all as a burly man rises in the gallery, and telling him with closed eyes that he seems to see God on high confessing the man, even as the man is now confessing his God.

And always he is dominant, masterful, cheery, quiet, his power growing with his tense eagerness and his tremendous earnestness.

A cynical, indifferent critic watching any one of these meetings would be forced to admit that the young man is sincere to the core; that he descends to no trick of gesture or word or act; that he is straightforward and simple to the last degree; that he does not try to force people against their will, and yet that in some way he draws all before him, not to himself, but to the Spirit of Whom he is the avowed disciple.

And, in spite of himself, this hardened critic will feel the impulse and will say to himself, as a tough, knotty-looking man said to me in the train today: “There must be something in it.” And by that admission he does what Evan Roberts wishes him to do—he forgets the speaker, the mere agent, and reaches for that lifting Hand to which the missioner is trying to lead everyone he meets, and to whom he talks.

Go to Evan Roberts outside of a meeting if you can find an opportunity between the sessions that begin in the morning, and continue in the afternoon, and again at night, and last until early in the morning again, with only a brief hour for hurried meals; meetings that are sometimes held in three different towns in one day, with a considerable railway journey between each.

Go to him, I say, and talk with him. He is exactly the same man you have seen in the chapel, the same tense, manly man of the sort who grow upon one, and who are more admirable the closer one is to them.

“What is your message?” I asked him one quiet Sunday noon, as we were on our way to enjoy the whole-souled hospitality of a rugged Welshman and his kindly wife. He had locked his arm in mine, and his face beamed with “goodwill towards men.” He half-stopped as if to poise his thoughts.

“It’s very simple,” he said, with a quaint Welsh accent that makes his English very attractive.

“I have found what I believe to be the highest kind of Christianity. I want to give my life, God helping me, to lead others, many others, to find it. Many have found it already, thank God, and they are doing what I am doing, in a large or little way, as God gives them light. And that is all there is to the revival, and all there is to me, my friend.”

He had spoken slowly, as if weighing the words. He paused for a second, and then throwing all his pent-up feelings into a single exclamation, in a way that gives complete conviction of the man’s utter sincerity and abandonment of itself.

“Oh,” he cried in a long breath, his eyes bright with happiness, “it is great. I have always wanted to do this, but I didn’t know it, I wasn’t sure of it till God showed me the way.”

There is no such thing as evasion in him. If he likes what is said by someone else he says so, and shows it frankly. If he is not interested he shows his indifference with the same sincerity. His tongue is not a loose one, and he is slow to talk of himself or of the work he himself is doing, but the spirit of the man is as boundless as his energy, as determined as his confidence. He is a Welshman, and proud of it.

He loves his own language, and laughed his inspiring, boyish laugh often at my clumsy attempts to speak the words and phrases he put into my mouth. He goes upstairs, and I can hear him talking vigorously with another man of about his own age, who a few weeks ago came to his meetings, and who is now one of his most helpful assistants. He ran up the stairs, and he comes running down, singing at the top of his deep, resonant, bass voice.

“My voice is all right today,” he cries, with his merry laugh. “Last night it was bad, but it was given to me again today for my work.”

The short respite is ended, and we start back for another meeting at a different chapel. He strides along, stopping now and then to speak to people in the many groups that are walking down the middle of the road as they usually do in Wales—towards the same destination. Up every hilly side street they came, and they do not hold themselves aloof from him as if he were different and greater than they.

It would be difficult for anyone to hold himself aloof from this buoyant, simple, honest young man, who is working with them, not over them; who is leading them, not from some comfortable seat at the rear, or in some place of glory before them, but by their side, helpfully, mightily.

I watch that swinging, tall, big-boned figure, his decisive gesture, his firm jaw and steady, smiling mouth, and the fire of youth and of religious consecration in his eyes. I hear the resounding laughter and see the flash of clear, even teeth under his lips.

I feel the unassuming simplicity, the boyish ingenuousness, the commanding sincerity, and see how at one he is with the people, catching a hand here and grasping an arm or shoulder there in open-hearted friendliness, carrying his enthusiasm, his confidence, his dominating, cheerful spirit into their hearts, And inevitably I say to myself: “Here is a true ‘sky-pilot,’ who knows the course and who is giving himself that others may learn it.”

It was said to me that he was not resourceful enough; that he has not had enough education; that he is naïve, untrained, a mere boy. It may be so, and some of this is, of course, evidently true. But I never knew a man to whom education added kindness, or goodness, or fervor, or strength of soul; resourcefulness often becomes cunning. The Apostles of the New Testament were, some of them, humble fishermen who became “fishers of men.”

Remember that this young man of twenty-six, in the freshness of his zeal and with absolutely honest unselfish purpose, gave up his schooling and, all alone, began to hold meetings under no auspices except that of the Spirit which was with him.

And that in a few rapid weeks he lifted all South Wales upon a wave of religious thought and feeling; that he has turned hundreds of lives that were well-nigh useless into great usefulness and unmeasured happiness, beside bringing a new life into thousands of other hearts and lives; that he, a Methodist in training but under no denominational leading strings, has brought together all the Non-conformist churches of that section into a solid phalanx working for single, simple purpose.

All men honor the convictions and the strength of a real man. This is a real man. And he has an added Power which men can feel but cannot fathom.

There is a simple hymn that is sung in revival meetings in America that typifies the spirit of Evan Roberts’ revival in Wales. “There is sunshine in my soul.” A preacher in Swansea is reported to have said that, although he had not attended any of the meetings, he had read about them in the papers, and he added that he considered the appeals “barbarous.”

If this preacher ever hears Evan Roberts, and I hope he will, he will be ashamed of himself; for Roberts talks chiefly of God’s love and of the great joy of living in obedience to that love. As to his appeal, it is simple and direct, and is seldom characterized by a great demand upon his hearers’ emotions.

None of the hundreds of dramatic scenes that have occurred in these meetings have come while Roberts has been talking. They have come afterwards and often a considerable time afterwards. And Evan Roberts, I believe, has said that he is glad that this is the case, for it proves that it is not Roberts, the man, his magnetism, or his personality that is so great an influence, but rather the Spirit at work in the meetings.

A few times, indeed, so greatly has he been moved by his own strong feeling, he has lost control of himself and has broken down in the midst of his appeal.

“But I mustn’t do that,” he said to me frankly. “It has a mere emotional appeal, and its effect is temporary and does not do the good I want to do. I don’t wish to move men temporarily. I want to convince them permanently. But the Spirit will guide me.”

He has something of the same feeling about the hymn singing, I am told. Much as he loves it himself, and music is in him to his very fingertips, be feels—I judge both from the hearsay and from watching him break into the midst of the singing when, in a way they have in Wales, they repeat over and over the same stirring melody—that too much singing moves only surface emotions and takes the congregations’ mind from the deeper influence of prayer and close communion with God. He believes completely in the efficacy of prayer, and he has for many years spent a considerable amount of time daily upon his knees.

Indeed, one of the great differences between this revival and some others is the comparative quietness of method, if it can be called method. The “sunshine” of it is another. There is nothing spectacular about the man or about any of his helpers.

His talk is simple and forcible; the young women converts who sing, sing simple, appealing hymns that suggest the happiness of Christianity; and I saw day after day an entire audience caught in the spell of the fresh young voices’ sweetness and the tenderness of the songs’ sentiment, and the evident feeling of the young singers who were using the best means they had been given to add their message to his, until there was scarcely anyone whose eyes were not wet, and yet many eyes saw some things the clearer for the sudden mist.

And if some of the local ministers are too zealous occasionally in trying to force those who are least moved, that is not part of Evan Roberts’ intention, and it only serves to show how ministers as well as people have been seized by his impelling force.

What Evan Roberts has done, and is doing, seems wonderful when one remembers how this revival began, and how it has grown; but the man’s confidence, not in himself, nor in any human power he has, but in the guidance of a Spirit from above is boundless.

“If you can do this in a few weeks,” I asked him one day, “what will you do in a lifetime?”

“We’ll change the world,” he cried, and his face was aglow with the joy of his hopes. “We’ll change the world. I believe it.”

Do not think that he meant this as a boast, for he did not, nor as personal pride in his achievements. It is only his entire trust that the whole world will be brought to God, and his belief that he will be one of the forces by which men will be converted to that new life that means everything to him. And, indeed, his success elsewhere can scarcely be more surprising than what he has already done.

“Will you go to London?” I asked him more than a month ago. “Certainly you will finish the work here first.”

“I have already had three invitations to London,” he said. “I shall go whenever the Spirit guides me, but I should rather work here now.”

When Roberts leaves a town he leaves often one or two young converts, and some of the young women whose singing at his meetings began naturally as a result of their new religious experience. And in this way the movement is not dropped suddenly when he goes, but continues while he travels on to spread it elsewhere.

Ministers, too, who have caught the fire from him, go back to their churches in places where Roberts has not yet been heard, and begin more meetings. So great has become the demand upon his time, that one preacher has taken from him all the worry of plans, and is arranging his itinerary, and is seeing to all the details of his movements.

“I believe it’s merely a money-making affair,” said a man, scoffing at the revival in the hall of a mining town hotel. And that reminds us of the question Evan Roberts was asked at Lougher when he began his meetings: “Where will the money come from?”

I have attended a number of his meetings and I have not seen a collection taken, although I believe there have been collections to defray traveling expenses.

But railroad fares are not large in that country where the mining towns are only a few miles apart, and the churches where he speaks can afford to pay these, and to entertain him and those who come with him, at their homes. And this is all Evan Roberts is concerned with, to get enough money to carry on the work.

There have been religious charlatans, commercial prophets in both senses and with both spellings, but this is not one. He is seeking honestly not money or personal fame, but the glory of God. I say, not fame, or notoriety. The man would scarcely talk with me when I told him frankly I was a journalist.

“I do not care for interviews,” he said quickly. And it was only when he realized how the true story of what is happening in Wales might stir the religious thought and feeling of men the world over that he made free to talk.

Perhaps there is no better example of a town which has both felt the thrill of revival interest, and which has continued its results long after the first impulse died away, than Aberdare.

Evan Roberts was still at Lougher in the midst of his most crowded meetings, where he worked day and night, slept little, ate little, and threw his entire vitality into his new achievement.

It so happened that the Methodist preacher at Trecynon, on the edge of Aberdare, sent word one week that he could not occupy the chapel pulpit on the following Sunday.

In that country many of the preachers are itinerant to a greater or less degree, preaching in one chapel a certain number of times and spending the remainder of their time doing the same work elsewhere. The people of the little church had little time in which to find a substitute.

Someone, however, had heard that the man named Evan Roberts, who was said to be doing remarkable things at Lougher, was a fine preacher as well as a revivalist. At the last moment they wrote, asking him to speak at Trecynon on Sunday, and received an answer that he would come.

Sunday morning at church time no preacher appeared, and it was not until the congregation had waited drearily, spasmodically singing hymns, for a long time, that a young man, with a springy step and an entire lack of gloomy solemnity, came in with five young women, and, to their surprise, made his way to the front.

For a half hour he talked to them in his characteristic way, saying more or less conventional things in a way that somehow gripped their hearts and made them sit straight and then lean forward, so as not to lose either a word or a particle of that enthusiastic spirit.

Then some of the girls who had come with him sang, and the coldness of the people was half melted as they joined in and sang with Welsh voices and Welsh fervor.

Evan Roberts stopped at Trecynon during the week, carrying on the same sort of work with the same inspireing, hearty zeal that had brought all Lougher to the Moriah Chapel. And, as at Lougher, men came to scoff at the “boy Preacher who saw visions,” and before they left their first meeting had given their lives to Christian work.

All the churches were at work quickly, and religious power swept over the town like a mighty wind. People went to hear Evan Roberts, and stayed to drop to their knees before God.

All sorts of men and women, from Tom Hughes, the atheist, to young girls whose lives were waiting for a hand to mould them, stood up before crowded pews and told, with a simple eloquence that no one at Aberdare knew they possessed, what new, bright light had come to them.

And then, when the people were filling three good-sized chapels every night, and when, far down toward the center, people standing still in the clear, quiet, moonlit night, heard the martial swing of their triumphal hymns, and, wondering, felt, even there, the stir that was in the air; when dozens of men’s lives and women’s lives were being changed every day, remade in determination at least in a few hours, Evan Roberts went away because he was needed more elsewhere. His brother, Dan Roberts, however, came in his place.

I attended two meetings there, weeks after Evan Roberts had gone. One afternoon, just outside the little chapel in Roberts’ town, across the railroad from Trecynon, I met an elderly Englishman who had just left the meeting.

“I was afraid I’d never feel that way again,” he said to time, “but I have now. I’ve been through three pretty strong revivals, but I never was moved in my life as I was this afternoon. I haven’t been so happy since I was a boy.” There were tears in his eyes, but his mouth was smiling joyously. I left him standing there looking up at the sunset light about the high hills, and blessing God in his heart.

Within was a strange scene. It was all disorder. About the altar-rail knelt a line of people praying for forgiveness?

Directly before me one of the Christian Endeavour workers was sitting with his arm about a man who was evidently just from work, whose head was sunk upon his arms, and whose great body was shaking with emotion, while his friend chanted to him in low, almost uncanny monotony “the old, old story.” At the left a young lad of twenty, his eyes closed, his face upturned with a rapt look, was talking in high, loud voice, rapidly, confidently, although until three days before he had always feared to talk before people, even a few, casually.

In the gallery the largest, strongest-looking man in the room had thrown himself forward and was sobbing in his hands; while a little, sad-faced woman and a sturdy, apple-cheeked girl—his wife and daughter probably—put their arms about him as if to drag him on to better things. Behind, a little man with a large voice was singing alone one of the less familiar Welsh hymns, and he seemed entirely oblivious of time crowds about him. All this was happening just as I went in.

Now a quaint, pitiful little figure in black kneels, and in quavering words, scarcely above a whisper, begs that her boy may be brought to God; and then a hush falls upon nearly all as a young man comes hurrying up the aisles, self-conscious, but with his jaw set tightly, and kneels down beside her. Then her arms grope their way about his broad shoulders, and until after I have left the chapel they remain there, mother and son, in tears and happiness.

Meanwhile the audience bursts quickly into that stirring, swinging hymn that follows conversion—music that, I think, caught me in its sweeping melody with more resistless power than any song and any singing I have ever heard.

To me no oratorio society, no group of trained professional singers that it has been my good fortune to hear, sing as well as almost anyone of the Welsh congregations I heard sing at the Roberts meetings, and here and there were wonderful individual voices, backed by great musical temperament.

Suddenly, as the long hymn ends, the little woman and the young girl beside the man in the gallery leap to their feet in joy and wave their hands. Again the triumphant hymn, louder, now rumbling bass and strong tenor weighing evenly with the simple but mighty air. In all this time I have not heard a word from any of the three ministers, except the usual expressions of joy and the picturesque Welsh words of encouragement.

And this is another way in which the Roberts meetings differ from any other revival meetings I have attended.

The people are the meeting, not the preacher, once his short talk is ended, though his spirit remains to fire them to congregational rather than individual leadership.

The evening meeting was similar, and lasted far into the morning, a joyful meeting with its greatest enthusiasm just before it closed. This was a month after Evan Roberts first stirred the Aberdare people, and suggests that he stirred not merely the surface but the depths. And it is the same elsewhere.

The stories that might be told of the experiences, the deeds, and the sayings of individuals among the congregations in the Welsh revival—dramatic scenes, of tender pathos, lightning bits of humor—are already numbered in thousands and tens of thousands. And each one has served as added fuel to this religious flame, which, like the fires that sometimes have swept the prairies and the forests of the Western States, has gone beyond the power of men to stop, and must determine its own destiny.

Every night and every morning they are repeated in the mines and the shops, on the streets, and in the tidy little homes of Wales. The newspapers bear them on where Evan Roberts is only a name, and a single vital incident often carries the spark which sets new fires burning fiercely.

A clergyman, so one story goes, is standing in the open street with a collier. They have just come from a meeting.

“A good meeting,” says the clergyman, “afire with enthusiasm. But what will happen when the fuel is exhausted?”

“Fuel,” cries the Welshman “No fear of Wales running out of fuel. You’ll be an archbishop before this light goes out.” And then and there he raises his voice in prayer for the doubting clergyman.

Up in Ebenezer Chapel at Trecynon at midnight comes a well-known man, and the people stop singing and stare at him in amazement. He is an atheist. “I have burned my books that said there was no God,” he says. “I was shipwrecked and the waves were gathering fast about the plank which alone stood between me and hell. But God called to me and I came to Him and was lifted out of destruction.” Tom Hughes, the atheist, knows what be means when he sings “Throw out the life-line.”

A certain collier in Cilfynydd has been “cropped” for “filling dirty coal.” In anger and with threats he tells the officials that he will make trouble for them. He’ll have it taken up by the union, and the union will make the officials understand what they can do and what they can’t do. He goes to hear Evan Roberts; amid he comes from the meeting in a totally new spirit.

“I’m not going to say anything to the union,” he tells the officials, “and I’ll go back to work. And what’s more, you won’t have to talk about dirty coal in my trams again.”

“We’ve prayed for this awakening,” cries a workman at one meeting. “We’ve seen the devils worst often; but now, at last, we are seeing Christ’s best.”

A certain gambler is owed £100. After one meeting he goes to a clergyman and offers to give money to the church and to the cause.

“I cant take gambling money,” says the preacher as gently as possible.

The gambler is bitterly disappointed. He has no money except “gambling money.” He goes away and refuses the £100 owed him as a gambling debt.

A young woman trembling with emotion rises at Pontycymmer. Everyone knows her. Only a short time ago she was a leading figure in the police-court. “Can anyone as bad as I am be saved?” she asks. “Certainly,” cries the missioner. “No one of us is too bad to be saved. Tears roll down the woman’s cheek. “No one has fallen lower than I have,” she declares. “He saves me. Come to Him, all the rest of you.” Is it a wonder that people all about her, who have sins of their own, and hesitate to confess them, are weeping, or that the whole audience is suddenly moved.

Throughout this section of Wales in every town there are clubs formed for men. Ostensibly they are for social intercourse, but in reality, as far as I have been able to learn, many of them are little more than select drinking places and houses where the members can evade the law against public drinking on Sundays.

Listen to these two confessions at Ammanford. The first is from a middle-aged man holding a baby in his arms:

“I used to spend three or four pounds in a single evening at the bar. I’d give my wife and children a few stray shillings now and then. I’d steal coppers from my child’s money-box and spend them for beer. I was seldom sober. But, thank God, that’s done with.”

Another man follows him quickly when he sits down:

“I’ve been the worst kind of a drunkard,” he says. “And what’s more—and this is something my wife here never knew until now—I served three years in jail as a professional thief. Now I am really happy for the first time in my life.”

A farmer near Lougher, it was said, in the early days of the revival, sent one of his men with a load of turnips to the town. This man had been converted to a new life at one of the first meetings. On the way to Lougher a woman met him and begged him to join her in prayers for her husband.

The man left his cart and went with her. An hour later the farmer, coming by, discovered the cart standing by the wayside and watched over by two children. Inquiring the way to the house, he followed the servant and in a few moments lie, too, was kneeling in prayer beside his servant and the good woman.

One man, a workman, asked where he was going by some of his friends, remarked with a laugh that he was going down to see that “crazy man,” Evan Roberts. Before the meeting was over he had risen, trembling, to his feet and had asked the people to pray for him.

Here is a seafaring man telling of a wreck from which he was saved by a life-line, and the entire congregation throws itself unrestrainedly into the hymn, “Throw out the lifeline.”

Here are a pugilist giving up his “profession,” a postman getting leave of absence to attend meetings, a policeman remarking that people are going mad over the revival, and then after attending one meeting joining the “mad people” at whom he jeered, a racing man burning his racing clothes, a notorious “rough” asking prayers for his “pals,” a girl throwing her arms about another girl whom she had refused to speak to for a year, a school at which prayer meetings have temporarily replaced some of the study, and colliers working in the pits kneeling in prayer beside their trains.

These only suggest the changes in men’s hearts and lives that are being made by the tens of thousands in Wales. What is doing it? Come to Ynishir. A chapel is well filled with expectant people. They are singing Welsh hymns as they wait the coming of the missioner of whom they have heard so much, and whom they have never seen. Now and then some fervent church-member, who until Evan Roberts began to stir the churches went about his religious duties with little life or animation, prays in chanting monotone for the Spirit to descend upon this meeting, or quotes with gentle voice “The Lord is my Shepherd,” —I heard a dozen men do this at various meetings, —or rises to his feet and, one hand raised while time other covers his eyes, tells what God has done for him.

They are singing again when Evan Roberts comes in quietly, listening with a happy smile on his lips to the swelling tide of melody. Up in the gallery there is a group of young people and children and unconsciously they are leading the singing with their fresh young voices. Roberts’ eyes, wandering keenly about the room and, to use a figure, shaking hands with every other pair of eyes they meet, light upon these enthusiastic children and his smile broadens.

“I could listen to such singing all night,” he declares when the fifth “repeat” has been finished. And again the music rises triumphantly.

“Mae’r etifeddiaeth i ni’n d’od,

Wrth Destament ein Tad.”

A moment later the missioner is talking in his jerky, whole-hearted, inspiring way, with the hymn as a text, saying simple, pithy things that appeal strongly to the people before him. Suddenly he turns to the children in the gallery.

“Will you go out into the streets of Ynishire and sing that hymn there as you have sung it here?”

There is immediate and inspiring response.

“If you will,” cries the missioner, his face alight, “the people here must be hard if they don’t yearn for Christ as they listen.”

The meeting goes on. Miss Rees is talking in Welsh now, and singing in English that simple hymn, with its catching melody, in which all can join:

“Looking this way, yes, looking this way,

Loved ones are waiting, looking this way.”

Now Mr. Roberts is calling beseechingly to the people to stand up for God.

“‘He that is not with me is against me.’ Where do you, each of you, stand. Are you for Him or against Him. Be men and tell us.”

No one could describe or explain how the climax has come, but here it is. Gradually the pool of human hearts has been stirred deeper and yet deeper, and now the flood of confession, of contrition, of penitence for the past, of aspiration for better things, bursts out in every part of the hall. There are men on their feet and women on their knees all about us, talking freely of what they have done, of what they have been, and of what they mean to do and be; or praying plaintively for forgiveness for themselves and for those who are dear to them.

“Diolch Iddo,” “Thanks to Him,” rolls out a mighty chorus.

Come to Ferndale. Trehondda Chapel is filled with all sorts of people, all creeds and no creed, many grades of education and no education. Already the indefinable stir that we have seen grow so often and so inexplicably has begun.

Evan Roberts speaks: “Let us see what God’s Spirit will do for us in a quiet meeting. It did wonderful things at Lougher when no one sung or spoke.”

A few moments later all are kneeling in five minutes of silent prayer. The crowded room is still except for quick gasps of sobbing breath from those who are deeply moved. Here and there a half audible voice is mumbling inarticulate prayer. Deeper yet grows time silence and more impressive. Wrinkled faces are upturned, and unseeing eyes look upward. Heads are bowed in folded hands. Shoulders are convulsed with emotion, and lips are moving from which no sound comes.

Still the preacher gives no sign. Gradually a single low voice is heard in all parts of the chapel, singing sweetly the hymn, “Have you seen Him?” in Welsh. For an instant there is time stillness of listening with bated breath; then slowly other voices join in singing until the building rings with thrilling melody. It is as if they have burst from prayer into song.

And this is a scene of the revival which so respected a paper as the Lancet, evidently without investigating it except through time reports of the sensational papers and its own prejudice, calls “a debauch of emotionalism,” “a hysterical outburst,” marked with “scenes of disorder.”

Come to Treorchy. We shall have great difficulty in getting into this meeting unless we are very early. So great is the interest that the football game in the afternoon has been played before an assemblage that was only three or four times the size of the team in the field.

A man stops us outside and points to the packed vestibule and the waiting, disappointed people outside.

“That’s the most remarkable thing I ever saw,” he says. “It’s the first time I ever saw a church where they had to hang out a ‘standing room only’ sign. Most always you can occupy a whole row in the stalls free, and here I’d pay a guinea for a seat and I can’t get it! It’s amazing, that’s what it is, amazing.”

He talks like a theatrical man, and he is evidently a stranger for anyone who has attended Evan Roberts’ meetings knows that this is the rule and not the exception wherever he has gone. He turns away before we make any appreciable impression upon the almost solid wall of people standing at the door, and goes off down the street shaking his head.

Evan Roberts is already speaking when we have worked our way to a place where we can hear. He is talking pleadingly, with manly pathos and deep feeling, about the agony of our Savior. As he talks we seem to see the picture of Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and to understand something of His suffering.

Suddenly a sweet, girlish voice breaks in on the missioner’s quick speech. The words are Welsh, but the voice is tense with emotion, and the liquid sweetness of it holds the entire congregation taut and motionless.

The verse ends and the speaker proceeds with his moving description. Suddenly the voice breaks in again. It is Annie Davies. We can see her now.

The words are Welsh still, but we have heard them so often that we understand them. “Jesus only,” sings the thrilling voice, and stops short. Her hands cover her eyes and the girl is sobbing unrestrainedly. “Oh, Jesu, Jesu,” she moans, “for me.” There is a moment of silence, broken only by pent-up sobbing. Now the entire congregation is singing, and singing mightily, and there are tears in our eyes. And we have come merely as onlookers.

Whether his share in the work be great or little, I think Evan Roberts cares as little as any human person can care, so long as the work is done. No one of all those who have watched him more closely and continuously than I have, have seen a single sign of any tendency in him to place himself ahead of any of his coworkers. The people have done that, and he accepts the large opportunity gladly.

Personally, I think I have never met a man who appealed to me as being so completely consecrated to his cause as this young man of twenty-six years, trained in the colliery and at the “smithy.” When one thinks of it, no young man of his years and native environment could have endured against so strong a tide of personal success unless he had an enduring grip upon mighty moorings.

Chapter 3 - The Lesson of the Revival

by G. Campbell Morgan

“For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day; but this is that which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel:

And it shall be in the last days, saith God,

I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh:

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

And your young men shall see visions,

And your old men shall dream dreams:

Yea, and on My bond-servants and on My bond-maidens in those days

Will I pour forth of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy.”

--Acts 2:15-18.

I have not read these words as a text, but as an introduction to what I desire to say, as God shall help me, concerning the most recent manifestation of the Pentecostal power. I refer to the great work of God that is going on in Wales at this time; and I trust that something more than curiosity makes you desire to hear of this work, for I am not speaking with any intention to satisfy curiosity. I want now in the simplest way to speak to you, first, very briefly, and as far as it is possible, of what my own eyes have seen, my own ears heard, and my own heart felt.

I do this in order that we may ask finally, what are the lessons God would teach us in this day of his visitation? Yet I cannot help reverting, before going further, to the passage that I have read in your hearing. Peter stood in the midst of one of the most wonderful scenes that the world has ever beheld. When men said of the shouting multitude that they were drunk, Peter said, “No, these men are not drunken as ye suppose;” but “this is that” which was spoken by the Prophet Joel.

If anyone shall say to me, “What do you think of the Welsh revival?” I say at once, “This is that.”

This is no mere piece of imagination, and it certainly is not a piece of exaggeration. “I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your Sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” is the promise now evidently fulfilled in Wales. If you ask for proof of that assertion I point to the signs. “Your young men shall see visions!” That is exactly what is happening. It does not at all matter that this cynical and dust-covered age laughs at time vision. The young men are seeing it. “And your old men shall dream dreams,” and that is happening. The vision goes forward, the dream goes backward; and the old men are dreaming of ‘59, and feeling its thrill again. “Yea, and on My bond-servants and on My handmaidens,” that is, on the slaves and the domestic servants, “I will pour My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy.” It does not at all matter that some regular people are objecting to the irregular doings. “This is that.” if you ask me the meaning of the Welsh Revival, I say:

IT IS PENTECOST CONTINUED,

without one single moment’s doubt.

But, for a few moments let me speak of the thing itself. Let me talk familiarly and quietly, as though sitting in my own room.

I left London on Monday, reaching Cardiff at 8:30 that evening, and my friend who met me said to me, “What are you going to do? Will you go home, or will you go to the meeting?” I said, “What meeting?" He said, “There is a meeting in Roath Road Chapel.” “Oh,” I said, “I would rather have a meeting than home,” We went. The meeting had been going on an hour and a half when we got there, and we stayed for two hours and a half, and went home, and the meeting was still going on, and I had not then touched what is spoken of as—it is not my phrase, but it is expressive—the “fire zone.” I was on the outskirts of the work. It was a wonderful night, utterly without order, characterized from first to last by the orderliness of the Spirit of God.

But it is of Tuesday that I would specially speak. I was the whole of that day in Clydach Vale, spending eight hours in the actual meetings and the rest of the time in the company of Evan Roberts, whom God has so wonderfully raised up. When I had been to the evening meeting on Tuesday I told him I would not come back on Wednesday, for reasons to be stated here after. Let me only say now in passing that I am perfectly convinced that we had better keep our hands off this work. I will explain that more fully presently. On Wednesday we returned to Cardiff and, in answer to an invitation, Mr. Gregory Mantle and I took a meeting in this Roath Road Wesleyan Chapel, and on Thursday we took three meetings, spending seven hours there.

I want to speak of the Tuesday only. It was my holy privilege to come into the centre of this wonderful work and movement. Arriving in the morning in the village, everything seemed quiet, and we wended our way to the place where a group of chapels stood. Oh, these chapels through Wales! Thank God for them! And everything was so quiet and orderly that we had to ask where the meeting was. And a lad, pointing to a chapel, said, “In there.” Not a single person outside. Everything was quiet. We made our way through the open door, and just managed to get inside and found the chapel crowded from floor to ceiling with a great mass of people. What was the occupation of the service? It is impossible for me to tell you finally and fully. Suffice it to say that throughout that service there was singing and praying, and personal testimony, but no preaching. The only break in upon the evidently powerful continuity of the service was when some one in time meeting, who happened to know me, said that they would like to hear me speak. And that is:

WHY I DECIDED NEVER TO GO AGAIN

into these meetings. For the moment the thoughts of the meeting were turned toward me. There was a break in the continuity and the power. If it were possible for me in any way to disguise myself I would go back again, and get back into the middle of the movement, but I am afraid it is a little too late in the day for that. Of course I did not move to speak, but when, presently, it was evident that there was this break, I rose and spoke a few words, urging them not to allow the presence of any stranger to divert their attention, and the meeting moved on, and I was allowed to hide myself again. It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order. You say, “How do you reconcile these things?” I do not reconcile them. They are both there. I leave you to reconcile them. If you put a man into the midst of one of these meetings who knows nothing of the language of the Spirit, and nothing of the life of the Spirit, one of two things will happen to him. He will either pass out saying, “These men are drunk,” or he himself will be swept up by the fire into the Kingdom of God. If you put a man down who knows the language of the Spirit, he will be struck by this most peculiar thing. I am speaking with diffidence, for I have never seen anything like it in my life; while a man praying is disturbed by the breaking out of song, there is no sense of disorder, and the prayer merges into song, and back into testimony, and back again into song for hour after hour, without guidance. These are the three occupations—singing, prayer, testimony. Evan Roberts was not present. There was no human leader.

Mr. Mantle was with me, and spoke a word or two, when a man in the gallery rose and said to him in broken English, “Is your work in London near Greenwich?” “Yes,” said Mr. Mantle, “close to Greenwich.” “Take this address down,” said the man, “my brother is there. He is drinking and a skeptic. I am praying for him.” Mr. Mantle pulled out his note-book and said, “Give me the address,” and he dictated it to him, and then they started singing “Songs of Praises,” and the man prayed, and Mr. Mantle is on his track today. That is an incident. A most disorderly proceeding, you say? I will be very glad when that happens here, when you will break through all conventionalities. When a man is in agony about the soul of his brother, he will dare to ask. But it must only be as the spontaneous answer of the soul to the Spirit of God.

In the afternoon we were at another chapel, and another meeting, equally full, and this time:

EVAN ROBERTS WAS PRESENT.

He came into the meeting when it had been on for an hour and a half. I went with him, and with the utmost difficulty we reached the platform. I took absolutely no part, and he took very little part. He spoke, but his address—if it could be called an address—was punctuated perpetually by song and prayer and testimony. And Evan Roberts works on that plan, never hindering anyone. As the result of that afternoon I venture to say that if that address Evan Roberts gave in broken fragments had been reported, the whole of it could have been read in six or seven minutes. As the meeting went on, a man rose in the gallery and said, “So and So,” naming some man, “has decided for Christ,” and then in a moment the song began. They did not sing “Songs of Praises,” they sang “Diolch Iddo,” and the weirdness and beauty of it swept over the audience. It was a song of praise because that man was born again. There are no enquiry rooms, no penitent forms, but some worker announces, or an enquirer openly confesses Christ, the name is registered, and the song breaks out, and they go back to testimony and prayer.

In the evening exactly the same thing. I can tell you no more, save that I personally stood for three solid hours wedged so that I could not lift my hands at all. That which impressed me most was the congregation. I looked along the gallery of the chapel on my right, and there were three women, and the rest were men packed solidly in. If you could but for once have seen the men, evidently colliers, with the blue seam that told of their work on their faces, clean and beautiful. Beautiful, did I say? Many of them lit with heaven’s own light, radiant with the light that never was on sea and land. Great rough, magnificent, poetic men by nature, but the nature had slumbered long. Today it is awakened, and I looked on many a face, and I knew that men did not see me, did not see Evan Roberts, but they saw the face of God and the eternities. I left that evening, after having been in the meeting three hours, at 10:30, and it swept on, packed as it was, until an early hour next morning, song and prayer and testimony and conversion and confession of sin by leading church members publicly, and the putting of it away, mind all the while no human leader, no one indicating the next thing to do, no one checking the spontaneous movement.

Now, for one moment let me go a step further and speak just a word or two about:

THE MAN HIMSELF.

Evan Roberts is hardly more than a boy, simple and natural, no orator, no leader of men; nothing of the masterfulness that characterized such men as Wesley, and Whitefield, and Moody; no leader of men. One of the most brilliant writers in one of our morning papers said of Evan Roberts, in a tone of sorrow, that he lacked the qualities of leadership, and the writer said if but some prophet did now arise he could sweep everything before him. God has not chosen that a prophet shall arise. It is quite true. Evan Roberts is no orator, no leader. What is he? I mean now with regard to this great movement. He is the mouthpiece of the fact that there is no human guidance as to man or organization.

The burden of what he says to the people is this: It is not man, do not wait for me, depend on God, obey the Spirit, limit whenever moved to do so, he speaks under the guidance of the Spirit. His work is not that of appealing to men so much as that of creating an atmosphere by calling men to follow the guidance of the Spirit in whatever the Spirit shall say to them.

I do not hesitate to say that God has set His hand upon the lad, beautiful in simplicity, ordained in his devotion, lacking all the qualities that we have looked for in preacher, and prophets, and leaders. He has put him in the forefront of this movement that the world may see that He does choose the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are, the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; a man who lacks all the essential qualities which we say make for greatness, in order that through him in simplicity and power He may move to victory.

For a moment let us stand back, and look at the whole thing more generally. Let me speak of some of the incidental:

PECULIARITIES OF THE MOVEMENT

as I saw it, and gathered information concerning it on the ground. In connection with the Welsh revival there is no preaching, no order, no hymnbooks, no choirs, no organs, no collections, and, finally, no advertising. Now, think of that for a moment, again, will you? Think of all our work. I am not saying these things are wrong. I simply want you to see what God is doing. There were the organs, but silent; the ministers, but among the rest of the people, rejoicing and prophesying with the rest, only there was no preaching. Yet the Welsh revival is the revival of preaching to Wales. Everybody is preaching. No order, and yet it moves from day to day, week to week, county to county, with matchless precision, with the order of an attacking force. No books, but, ah me, I nearly wept tonight over the singing of our last hymn. Mr. Stead was asked if he thought the revival would spread to London, and he said, “It depends upon whether you can sing.” He was not so wide of the mark. When these Welshmen sing, they sing the words like men who believe them. They abandon themselves to their singing. We sing as though we thought it would not be respectable to be heard by the man next to us. No choir, did I say? It was all choir. And hymns! I stood and listened in wonder and amazement as that congregation on that night sang hymn after hymn, long hymns, sung through without hymnbooks. Oh, don’t you see it? The Sunday school is having its harvest now. The family altar is having its harvest now. The teaching of hymns and the Bible among those Welsh hills and valleys is having its harvest now. No advertising. the whole thing advertises itself. You tell me the Press is advertising it. I tell you they did not begin advertising until the thing caught fire and spread. And let mime say to you, one of the most remarkable timings is the attitude of the Welsh Press. I come across instance after instance of men converted by reading the story of the revival in the Western Mail and the South Wales Daily News.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE MOVEMENT?

In the name of God let us all cease trying to find it. At least let us cease trying to trace it to truly one man or convention. You cannot trace it, and yet I will trace it to-night. Whence has it come? All over Wales—I am giving you roughly the result of the questioning of fifty or more persons at random in the week—a praying remnant have been agonizing before God about the state of the beloved land, and it is through that the answer of fire has come. You tell me that the revival originates with Roberts. I tell you that Roberts is a product of the revival. You tell me that it began in an Endeavour meeting where a dear girl bore testimony. I tell you that was part of the result of a revival breaking out everywhere. If you and 1 could stand above Wales, looking at it, you would see fire breaking out here, and there, and yonder, and somewhere else, without any collusion or prearrangement. It is a Divine visitation in which God—let me say this reverently—in which God is saying to us: See what I can do without the things you are depending on; see what I can do in answer to a praying people; see what I can do through the simplest, who are ready to fall in line, and depend wholly and absolutely upon me.

What is the character of this revival? It is a Church revival. I do not mean by that merely a revival among church members. It is that, but it is held in church buildings. Now, you may look astonished, but I have been saying for a long time that the revival which is to be permanent in the life of a nation must be associated with the life of the churches. What I am looking for is that there shall come a revival breaking out in all our regular church life. The meetings are held in the chapels, all up and down the valleys, and it began among church members, and when it touches the outside man it makes him into a church member at once. I am tremendously suspicious of any mission or revival movement that treats with contempt the Church of Christ, and affects to despise the churches. Within five weeks:

20,000 HAVE JOINED THE CHURCHES.

I think more than that have been converted, but the churches in Wales have enrolled during the last five weeks 20,000 new members. It is a movement in the Church, and of the Church, a movement in which the true functions and forces of the Church are being exercised and filled.

Now, what effect is this work producing upon men? First of all, it is turning Christians everywhere into evangelists. There is nothing more remarkable about it than that, I think. People you never expected to see doing this kind of thing are becoming definite personal workers. Let me give you an illustration. A friend of mine went to one of the meetings, and he walked down to the meeting with an old friend of his, a deacon of the Congregational Church, a man whose piety no one doubted, a man who for long years had worked in the life of the Church in some of its departments, but a man who never would think of speaking to men about their souls, although he would not have objected to some one else doing it. As my friend walked down with the deacon, the deacon said to him, “I have eighteen young men in an athletic class of which I am president. I hope some of them will be in the meeting tonight.” There was a new manifestation. Within fifteen minutes he left his seat by my friend and was seen talking to a young man down in front of him. Presently the deacon rose and said, “Thank God for So and So,” giving his name, “he has given his heart to Christ right here.” In a moment or two he left him, and was with another young man. Before that meeting closed that deacon had led every one of those eighteen young men to Jesus Christ, who never before thought of speaking to men about their souls.

My own friend, with whom I stayed, who has always been reticent of speaking to men, told the how, sitting in his office, there surged upon him the great conviction that he ought to go and speak to another man with whom he had done business for long years. My friend suddenly put down his pen, and left his office, and went on ‘Change, and there he saw the very man, and going up to him, passing the time of day to him, the man said to him, “What do you think of this Revival?” And my friend looked him squarely in the eye and said, “How is it with your own soul?” The man looked back at him, and said, “Last night at twelve, for some unknown reason, I had to get out of bed and give myself to Jesus Christ, and I was hungering for some one to come and talk to me.” Here is a man turned into an evangelist by supernatural means. If this is emotional, then God send us more of it! Here is a cool, calculating business ship-owner, that I have known all my life, leaving his office to go on ‘Change and ask a man about his soul.

Another characteristic is that you never know just where this fire is going to break out next. A preacher in one of the towns down there said, “I have got a sermon in my pocket. It has been there for three weeks. I went down to my church three Sundays ago with a sermon prepared, my notes in my pocket, and that morning some man broke out in testimony, and it was followed by prayer and singing, and it has never ceased, but two hundred people have joined the church.” He said, “I am keeping that sermon!”

The other day,

DOWN IN ONE OF THE MINES

—and I hope you understand I am only repeating to you the instances that came under my personal observation the other day in one of the mines, a collier was walking along, and he came, to his great surprise, to where one of the principal officials in the mine was standing. The official said, “Jim, I have been waiting two hours here for you.” “Have you, sir?” said Jim. “What do you want?” “I want to be saved, Jim.” The man said, “Let us get right down here,” and there in the mine the colliery official, instructed by the collier, passed into the Kingdom of God. When he got up he said, “Tell all the men, tell everybody you meet, I am converted.” Straightway confession.

The horses are terribly puzzled. A manager said to me, “The haulers are some of the very lowest. They have driven their horses by obscenity and kicks. Now they can hardly persuade the horses to start working, because there is no obscenity and no kicks.” The movement is characterized by the most remarkable confessions of sin, confessions that must be costly. I heard some of them, men rising who have been members of the church, and officers of the church, confessing hidden sin in their heart, impurity committed and condoned, and seeking prayer for its putting away. The whole movement is marvelously characterized by a confession of Jesus Christ, testimony to His power, to His goodness, to His beneficence, and testimony merging for evermore into outbursts of singing.

New let us stand back a little further and speak of:

THE ESSENTIAL NOTES

as I have noticed some of the incidental peculiarities. I say to you today, beloved, without any hesitation, that this whole thing is of God, that it is a visitation in which he is making men conscious of Himself, without any human agency. The Revival is far more widespread than the fire zone. In this sense you may understand that the fire zone is where the meetings are actually held, and where you feel the flame that burns. But even when you come out of it, and go into railway trains, or into a shop, a bank, anywhere, men everywhere are talking of God. Whether they obey or not is another matter. There are thousands who have not yielded to the constraint of God, but God has given Wales in these days a new conviction and consciousness of Himself. That is the profound thing, the underlying truth.

And then another essential note to be remembered is this. I have already said that it is essentially a Church Revival in the broadest sense of that word. What is the Church doing? If you go to Wales and get near this work you will see the Church returning to the true functions of her priesthood. What are the functions of the Christian priesthood? Of course I need hardly stay to say that I am referring to the priesthood of the Church, for there is no priesthood in the Church separated from the Church; and I am not at all sure that God is not restoring to Wales the true functions of priesthood, partly because she refuses to be dominated by any false system of priesthood. There are two essential functions to the Christian priesthood: The first is eucharistic, the giving of thanks; the other is intercessory, praying. That is all. That is going on. The Church everywhere singing and praying and offering praise, and pleading with God. Every meeting is made up almost exclusively of these things. Evan Roberts, and those who sing with him, and those who are speaking in other parts, are urging the people to praise, to pray, and the Church everywhere is doing it; and while the Church is praising, singing plaintively in Welsh such songs as

“Oh, the Lamb, the gentle Lamb,

The Lamb of Calvary,”

or while the Church is singing of the love of God, men and women are coming down broken-hearted, sin-convicted, yielding themselves to Jesus Christ. It is a great return on the part of the Church, under the inspired touch of the Spirit of God, to the exercise of its priestly functions—giving praise and interceding.

And then it is a great recognition of the presence and power of the Spirit manifesting itself in the glorification of Christ. What are the:

EFFECTS PRODUCED UPON THE CONVERTS?

Again I am taking the largest outlook. Two words, I think, cover the whole thing—vision and virtue. Men are seeing things! Oh, yes, it is quite cheap and easy to stay at a distance and smile. It is intensely easy for the Lancet to predict insanity. I will tell you something in passing. The insanity that will be produced in Wales by this Welsh Revival will be as nothing to the insanity from drink which it will cure.

It is intensely cheap and easy for cold-blooded men at a distance, who know nothing of Celtic fire or spiritual fire, to smile at this whole thing, this seeing of visions. But while you smile, these men are seeing visions. They will tell you crudely of them, perhaps, but it is one of those strange things that no man can ever tell of a vision when he sees it really. They are seeing God. Well, but you say that will pass. It is passing. The vision is passing out into virtue, and men are paying their debts, and abandoning the public-house, and treating their horses well. Oh, my masters! Did you say the next Revival would be ethical? It is that, because it is spiritual, and you will never get an ethical revival except in this way. Vision is merging into virtue, and theatrical companies are packing up and going back because there are no houses, and on every hand there is sweeping down these Welsh valleys a great clean river. It is the river of God, and men are being cleansed in it, in personal and civic relationships. We are quite willing to appeal to the coming years about this work, but the evidences are already present on every hand. Tradesmen are being startled by men paying debts even though the statute of limitations has run out. Tradesmen, you know what that means! An emotion that will make a man do that is worth cultivating, and it is good all the way through.

This is very fragmentary, but it must be if a man talks of these things. No man ever yet could describe a burning bush, and I know I have not described this to you.

Will you let me hold you while I say something to you about:

OUR OWN LESSONS?

First of all as to Wales itself, and especially to this great district. I am perfectly sure that it will be a good thing for us if we let it alone. By that I mean that General Booth never manifested his wisdom more than when he packed up and came home. And I love him, and have for years. Any of us that go down there with any thought in our heart we can help, we had better leave the thing in God’s hand. To me it is so sacred a manifestation and glorious that I became frightened, as it wore on, lest my presence, without any desire that it should be so, should check the great movement. That was why I said to Evan Roberts, “I am going away, man, because I will not, so help me God, hinder by five minutes this great work.” I feel we had better let that thing run. We did not originate it anywhere, and—forgive the Americanism—we cannot run it. We had better stand aside and pray, and get ready for what God means to do for us.

What are:

THE GREAT VALUES OF THIS MOVEMENT

in Wales? First, the reaffirmation of the spiritual. Secondly, this marvelous union of the spiritual with the practical, this manifestation of an ethical result from a spiritual renewal. Let me say it. I am not at all sure that God is not rebuking our over-organization. We certainly have been in danger of thinking there could not be a Revival, or any work done for God, unless we had prepared everywhere. I am the last man to speak against organization in its proper place, but I am inclined to think God is saying to us, Your organizations are right providing you do not live in them, and end in them. But here, apart from all of them, setting them almost ruthlessly on one side, Pentecostal power and fire are being manifested.

What shall we do in the presence of this great movement? Imitate it? Imitation will be fatal. Let no man come back and attempt to start anywhere in London meetings on the lines of those held in Wales, and for this simple reason: that no man started them there. If somewhere here there should break out some great manifestation such as this, then God grant we be ready to fall in line. You cannot imitate this kind of thing. What shall we do? If we cannot imitate, we can discover the principles. What are they? Let us listen for the Spirit, confess Christ, be absolutely at His disposal. Oh, but you say to me, Are not we all that? Well, I do not know. God help us to find out for ourselves. I think we are in terrible danger of listening to the Spirit, and when His voice speaks to us, quenching Him. You say, Something moved me to speak to that man about his soul, but I did not like to. That is how Revival is stopped. Speak to him. Listening to the Spirit, confessing Christ openly; absolutely at His disposal.

Let us in our Church work, not attempt to imitate the thing afar, but let us prayerfully take hold of every organization and every method, and strengthen it. Strengthen it how? By seeing to it that through the organization the Spirit of God has right of way; by bringing your Sunday-school class, dear teacher, into a new realm, and instead of treating it as a company of boys and girls you care for very much, that you teach and interest on Sunday afternoons, treat it as a company of souls to be saved. Begin to try and teach along that line; instead of treating our congregations as congregations to be instructed ever in holy things, treat them as men and women that are to be persuaded to holy things, and consecration, and Jesus Christ. And in order to the doing of all this, what we supremely need is that we ourselves should be at the end of ourselves, that we should dare to abandon ourselves with some amount of passion to our work. Oh, we have been too:

“Icily regular, faultily faultless, Splendidly null.”

What we do need is the abandonment of ourselves to the great truths we know so well, to the great forces that indwell. Let us “strengthen the things that remain.”

And so—now forgive me if I address myself to my own people—shall we not turn ourselves—ministers and staff and officers, and all the members, and shall we not say, at least we can now take up this work and make it instinct with new devotion and life, at least we can take hold of the thing that lies closest, and put into it the passion of a great devotion. We can begin there. The

CHURCH OF GOD NEEDS THREE THINGS.

It needs first to set itself to get things out of the way for God. I appreciate the almost puzzled look upon some of your faces. What things? I do not know. All, the things that are in His way: Your habit that you know is unholy; your method of business that will not bear the light of day; your unforgiving heart towards a Church member. Oh, God forgive me that I mention anything! You know, you know. They are in God’s way, these things. They must be cleared out. That is the first thing. There may be other things in God’s way. Any organization in Church life that does not make for the salvation of men is a fungous growth, and time sooner we drop it off the better. Oh, I know churches where classrooms are so tremendously full there is no room for a prayer meeting. Are we ready to put things out of the way for God? I think we are. I think that if God manifests Himself, and men begin to be saved, I do not think there is a Guild Social we will keep. I do not think there is any bazaar coming on that will hinder it! Oh, if there is anything, we must be prepared to sweep everything out for God to have highway. That is the attitude the Church must be prepared to take.

Now let me say also to the other Churches, that is:

THE TRUE ATTITUDE.

There is nothing so important as the saving of men, and when the Church says that, and is ready, God will come. We need then to wait upon Him in earnest, constant prayer. Oh, brothers, sisters, pray, pray alone; pray in secret; pray together; and pray out of a sense of London’s sin and sorrow. It is so easy to be familiar with these things, until they have lost their power to touch us. Oh, the sin and the sorrow of London! May God lay it upon our hearts as a burden. And out of that agony let us begin to pray, and go forward the moment He opens the door, and indicates the way. I do not expect—and especially to young Christians do I say this—I do not expect just the same kind of manifestation. God always manifests Himself through the natural temperament, and you can never have the poetic fire and fervor of a Celtic Revival in London. But you can have a stern, hard, magnificent consecration, and results that characterize your own nationality. Are we ready for God? I feel like apologizing to you tonight for this broken talk. I have talked out of my heart. I have tried to talk of fire that cannot be described. I have tried to talk out of the tremendous sense that God is abroad, and I talk out of the desire that I cannot express—that somewhere, some when, somehow, He may put out his hand, and shake this city for the salvation of men.

Chapter 4 - Mr. Roberts

by W. T. Stead

Mr. EVAN ROBERTS is the central figure, so far as there is any central figure, of the religious awakening in Wales. The Revival is not like the Moody and Sankey awakening, or the Torrey and Alexander Mission, or the organized Revivalism of the Salvation Army, of any one man or one organization. Never in the history of Revivals has there been any Revival more spontaneous than this. It has burst out here, there, and everywhere, without leaders, or organization, or direction. Hence, if Mr. Evan Roberts is spoken of as the centre, it is only because it happens to be one of the few conspicuous figures in a movement which he neither organized nor controls.

I attended three meetings at Mardy in the Rhondda Valley on Sunday, sat beside him on the platform, and had tea with him at a friend’s house. After tea Mr. Roberts consented to an interview. He was simple and unaffected; absolutely free from any vanity or spiritual pride. He spoke in English with considerable ease, but his hearers’ say that it is only when he uses his Welsh tongue that they hear the melody of his voice.

“The movement is not of me,” said Mr. Roberts—”it is of God. I would not dare to try to direct it. Obey the Spirit, that is our word in everything. It is the Spirit alone which is leading us in our meetings and in all that is done.”

“You do not preach, or teach, or control the meetings?"

"Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? What need have these people to be told that they are sinners? What they need is salvation. Do they not know it? It is not knowledge that they lack, but decision—action. And why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.”

“You find the ministry of the Singing Sisters useful?”

“Most useful. They go with me wherever I go. I never part from them without feeling that something is absent if they are not there. The singing is very important, but not everything. No. The public confession is also important—more so than the speaking. True, I talk to them a little. But the meetings go of themselves.”

“Do you propose to go to England?”

“No. To North Wales next. They say North Wales is stony cold, but I believe the Holy Spirit will work there also. Oh, yes, God will move North Wales also.”

“Can you tell me how you began to take to this work?”

“Oh, yes, that I will,” said Mr. Roberts, “if you wish to hear of it. For a long, long time I was much troubled in my soul and my heart by thinking over the failure of Christianity. Oh! it seemed such a failure such a failure—and I prayed and prayed, but nothing seemed to give me any relief. But one night, after I had been in great distress praying about this, I went to sleep, and at one o’clock in the morning suddenly I was waked up out of my sleep, and I found myself with unspeakable joy and awe in the very presence of the Almighty God. And for the space of four hours I was privileged to speak face to face with Him as a man speaks face to face with a friend. At five o’clock it seemed to me as if I again returned to earth.”

“Were you not dreaming?” I asked.

“No, I was wide awake. And it was not only that morning, but every morning for three or four months. Always I enjoyed four hours of that wonderful communion with God. I cannot describe it. I felt it, and it seemed to change all my nature, and I saw things in a different light, and I knew that God was going to work in the land, and not this land only, but in all the world.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but, as an old interviewer, may I ask if, when the mystic ecstasy passed, you put on paper all that you remembered of these times of communion?”

“No, I write nothing at all,” said Mr. Roberts. “It went on all the time until I had to go to Newcastle Emlyn to the college to prepare for the ministry. I dreaded to go for fear I should lose these four hours with God every morning. But I had to go, and it happened as I feared. For a whole month He came no more, and I was in darkness. And my heart became as a stone. Even the sight of the Cross brought no tears to my eyes. So it continued until, to my great joy, He returned to me, and I had again the glorious communion. And He said I must go and speak to my people in my own village. But I did not go. I did not feel as if I could go to speak to my own people.”

“May I ask,” I said, “if He of whom you speak appeared to you as Jesus Christ?”

“No,” said Mr. Roberts, “not so; it was the personal God, not as Jesus.”

“As God the Father Almighty?” I said.

“Yes,” said Mr. Roberts, “and the Holy Spirit.”

“Pardon me,” I said, “but I interrupted you. Pray go on.”

“I did not go to my people, but I was troubled and ill at ease. And one Sunday, as I sat in the chapel, I could not fix my mind upon the service, for always before my eyes I saw, as in a vision, the schoolroom in Lougher, where I live. And there, sitting in rows before me, I saw my old companions and all the young people, and I saw myself addressing them. I shook my head impatiently, and strove to drive away this vision, but it always came back. And I heard a voice in my inward ear as plain as anything saying, ‘Go and speak to these people.’ And for a long time I would not. But the pressure became greater and greater, and I could hear nothing of the sermon. Then at last I could resist no longer, and I said, ‘Well, Lord, if it is Thy will, I will go.’ Then instantly the vision vanished, and the whole chapel became filled with light so dazzling that I could faintly see the minister in the pulpit, and between him and me the glory as of the light of the sun in Heaven.”

“And then you went home?”

“No; I went to my tutor and told him all things, and asked him if he believed that it was of God or of the devil? And he said the devil does not put good thoughts into the mind. I must go and obey the heavenly vision. So I went back to Lougher, and I saw my own minister, and him also I told. And he said that I might try and see what I could do, but that the ground was stony and the task would be hard.”

“Did you find it so?”

“I asked the young people to come together, for I wanted to talk to them. They came and I stood up to talk to them, and, behold, it was even as I had seen in the church at Newcastle Emlyn. The young people sat as I had seen them sitting all together in rows before me, and I was speaking to them even as it had been shown to me. At first they did not seem inclined to listen; but I went on, and at last the power of the Spirit came down and six came out for Jesus. But I was not satisfied. ‘Oh, Lord,’ I said, ‘give me six more—I must have six more!’ And we prayed together. At last the seventh came, and then the eighth and the ninth together, and after a time the tenth, and then the eleventh, and last of all came the twelfth also. But no more. And they saw that the Lord had given me the second six, and they began to believe in the power of prayer.”

“Then after that you went on?”

“First I tried to speak to some other young people in another church, and asked them to come. But the news had gone out, and the old people said, ‘May we not come too?’ And I could not refuse them. So they came, and they kept on coming. Now here, now there all the time, and I have never had time to go back to college.”

Not much chance, indeed, at present. Three meetings every day, lasting, with breaks for meals, from ten A. M. till twelve P. M., and sometimes later, leave scant leisure for studying elsewhere than in the hearts and souls of men. If only his body will hold out and his nervous system not give way, he will have time to study hereafter. At present he has other work in hand.

Chapter 5 - The Story of the Awakening

as seen by W. T. Stead

THE Revival in Wales began in Cardiganshire. For a long time past the Welsh Christians had been moved to pray specially for the quickening of religious life in their midst. The impulse appears to have been sporadic and spontaneous. In remote country hamlets, in mining villages buried in distant valleys, one man or one woman would have it laid upon his or her soul to pray that the Holy Spirit might be poured out upon the cause in which they were spiritually concerned. There does not seem to have been any organized effort anywhere. It was all individual, local, and strictly limited to the neighborhood. An old Salvationist, for instance, suddenly had it borne in upon him that he was nearing the bourne from which no traveler returns. Of his own future he had no doubt. But what of the future of the others whom he so soon must leave, and leave forever?

Spiritual life was languishing in his local corps. No one was being converted. So he determined to give himself to prayer and fasting, giving Heaven no peace or rest all day or all night until the blessing came. One whole day he fasted, and the whole of the following night he prayed. And lo! it seemed as if the windows of Heaven were opened and showers of blessing descended upon the dry parched ground. The Revival broke out in his corps and many souls were gathered in. A similar blessing was enjoyed by one of the churches in the village, but it passed over the rest. Some, like Gideon’s fleece, were drenched with dew, while all around the land was dry.

The story of the very first outbreak of the Revival traces it to the trembling utterance of a poor Welsh girl, who, at a meeting in a Cardigan village, was the first to rise and testify. “If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart.” The pathos and the passion of the avowal acted like an electric shock upon the congregation. One after another rose and made the full surrender, and the news spread like wildfire from place to place that the Revival had broken out, and that souls were being ingathered to the Lord. But the Revival was soon to find its focus in a young theological student of the name of Evan Roberts, who had abandoned his course at Newcastle Emlyn to carry on the work of the Revival throughout Wales. His own simple story of how he came to the work is told elsewhere in this booklet.

I went down to South Wales to see for myself what was going on. I described my impressions in the Daily Chronicle, the Christian World, and the Methodist Times. I cannot do better than reproduce my report:

“The British Empire,” as Admiral Fisher is never tired of repeating, “floats upon the British Navy.” But the British Navy steams on Welsh coal. The driving force of all our battleships is hewn from the mines of these Welsh valleys, by the men among whom this remarkable religious awakening has taken place. This morning, as the slow train crawled down the gloomy valleys—for there was the mirk of coming snow in the air, and there was no sun in the sky—I could not avoid the obvious and insistent suggestion of the thought that Welsh religious enthusiasm may be destined to impart as compelling an impulse to the churches of the world as Welsh coal supplies to its navies.

Nor was the force of the suggestion weakened when, after attending three prolonged services at Mardy, a village of 5,000 inhabitants lying on the other side of Pontypridd, I found the flame of Welsh religious enthusiasm as smokeless as its coal. There are no advertisements, no brass bands, no posters, no huge tents. All the paraphernalia of the got-up job are conspicuous by their absence.

Neither is there any organization, nor is there a director, at least none that is visible to human eye. In the crowded chapels they even dispense with instrumental music. On Sunday night no note issued from the organ pipes. There was no need of instruments, for in and around and above and beneath surged the all-pervading thrill and throb of a multitude praying, and singing as they prayed.

The vast congregations were as soberly sane, as orderly, and at least as reverent as any congregation I ever saw beneath the dome of St. Paul’s, when I used to go to hear Canon Liddon, the Chrysostom of the English pulpit. But it was aflame with a passionate religious enthusiasm, the like of which I have never seen in St. Paul’s. Tier above tier from the crowded aisles to the loftiest gallery sat or stood, as necessity dictated, eager hundreds of serious men and thoughtful women, their eyes riveted upon the platform or upon whatever other part of the building was the storm centre of the meeting.

There was absolutely nothing wild, violent, hysterical, unless it be hysterical for the laboring breast to heave with sobbing that cannot be repressed, and the throat to choke with emotion as a sense of the awful horror and shame of a wasted life suddenly bursts upon the soul. On all sides there was the solemn gladness of man and women upon whose eyes has dawned the splendor of a new day, the foretaste of whose glories they are enjoying in the quickened sense of human fellowship and a keen glad zest added to their own lives.

The most thorough-going materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected, they have drawn and are drawing a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.

Employers tell me that the quality of the work the miners are putting in has improved. Waste is less, men go to their daily toil with a new spirit of gladness in their labor. In the long, dim galleries of the mine, where once the haulers swore at their ponies in Weishified English terms of blasphemy, there is now but to be heard the haunting melody of the revival music. The pit ponies, like the American mules, having been driven by oaths and curses since they first bore the yoke, are being retrained to do their work without the incentive of profanity.

There is less drinking, less idleness, less gambling. Men record with almost incredulous amazement, how one football player after another has foresworn cards and drink and the gladiatorial games, and is living a sober and godly life, putting his energy into the revival. More wonderful still, and almost incredible to those who know how journalism lives and thrives upon gambling, is the fact that the most conservative daily paper of South Wales has devoted its columns day after day to reporting and defending the movement which declares war to the death against both gambling and drink.

How came this strange uplift of the earnestness of a whole community? Who can say? The wind bloweth where it listeth. Some tell you one thing, some another. All agree that it began some few months ago in Cardiganshire, eddied hither and thither, spreading like fire from valley to valley, until, as one observer said to me, “Wherever it came from, or however it began, all South Wales today is in a flame.”

However it began. So it is going on. “If no one else, then I must.” It is “Here am I, send me!” This public self-consecration, this definite and decisive avowal of a determination to put under their feet their dead past of vice and sin and indifference, and to reach out towards a higher ideal of human existence, is going on everywhere in South Wales. Nor, if we think of it sanely and look at it in the right perspective, is there a nobler spectacle appealing more directly to the highest instincts of our nature to be seen in all the world today.

At Mardy, where I spent Sunday, the miners are voluntarily taxing themselves to build an institute, public hall, library, and reading-room. By their express request the money is deducted from their wages on payday. They have created a library of 2,000 books, capitally selected and well used. They have about half a dozen chapels and churches, a co-operative society, and the usual appliances of civilizations. They have every outward and visible sign of industrial prosperity. It is a mining village pure and simple, industrial democracy in its nakedest primitive form.

In this village I attended three meetings on Sunday two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the afternoon, and two hours at night, when I had to leave to catch the train. At all these meetings the same kind of thing went on, the same kind of congregations assembled, the same strained, intense emotion was manifest. Aisles were crowded. Pulpit stairs were packed and, mirabile dictu! two-thirds of the congregation were men and at least one-half young men.

“There,” said one, “is the hope and the glory of the movement.” Here and there is a grey head. But the majority of the congregation were stalwart young miners, who gave the meeting all the fervor and swing and enthusiasm of youth. The revival had been going on in Mardy for a fortnight. All the churches had been holding services every night with great results. At the Baptist Church they had to report the addition of nearly fifty members, fifty were waiting for baptism, thirty-five backsliders had been reclaimed.

In Mardy the fortnight’s services had resulted in 500 conversions. And this, be it noted, when each place of worship was going “on its own.” Mr. Evan Roberts, the so-called boy preacher of the revival, and his singing sisterhood, did not reach Mardy until the Sunday of my visit.

I have called Evan Roberts the so-called boy preacher, because he is neither a boy nor a preacher. He is a tall, graceful, good-looking young man of twenty-six, with a pleading eye and a most winsome smile. If he is a boy, he is a six-foot boy, and six-footers are usually past their boyhood. As he is not a boy, neither is he a preacher. he talks simply, unaffectedly, earnestly now and then, but he makes no sermons, and preaching is emphatically not the note of this Revival in the west. If it has been by the foolishness of preaching that men have been saved heretofore, that agency seems as if it were destined to take a back seat in the present movement.

The revival is borne along upon billowing waves of sacred song. It is the singing, not the preaching, that is the instrument which is most efficacious in striking the hearts of men. In this respect these services in the Welsh chapel reminded me strangely of the beautiful liturgical services of the Greek church, notably in St. Isaac’s, of St. Petersburg, on Easter morn, and in the receptions of the pilgrims at the Troitski monastery, near Moscow.

The most extraordinary thing about the meetings which I attended was the extent to which they were absolutely without any human direction or leadership. “We must obey the Spirit,” is the watchword of Evan Roberts, and he is as obedient as the humblest of his followers. The meetings open—after any amount of preliminary singing while the congregation is assembling—by the reading of a chapter or a psalm. Then it is go as you please for two hours or more.

And the amazing thing is that it does go and does not get entangled in what might seem to be inevitable confusion. Three-fourths of the meeting consists of singing. No one uses a hymnbook. No one gives out a hymn. The last person to control the meeting in any way is Mr. Evan Roberts. People pray and sing, give testimony or exhort as the Spirit moves them. As a study of the psychology of crowds I have seen nothing like it. You feel that the thousand or fifteen hundred persons before you have become merged into one myriad-headed, but single-souled personality.

You can watch what they call the influence of the power of the Spirit playing over the crowded congregation as an eddying wind plays over the surface of a pond. If anyone carried away by his feelings prays too long, or if anyone when speaking fails to touch the right note, someone—it may be anybody—commences to sing. For a moment there is a hesitation as if the meeting were in doubt as to its decision, whether to hear the speaker or to continue to join in the prayer, or whether to sing. If it decides to hear and to pray the singing dies away. If, on the other hand, as usually happens, the people decide to sing, the chorus swells in volume until it drowns all other sound.

A very remarkable instance of this abandonment of the meeting to the spontaneous impulse, not merely of those within the walls, but of those crowded outside, who were unable to get in, occurred on Sunday night. Twice the order of proceeding, if order it can be called, was altered by the crowd outside, who, being moved by some mysterious impulse, started a hymn on their own account, which was at once taken up by the congregation within. On one of these occasions Evan Roberts was addressing the meeting. He at once gave way, and the singing became general.

The prayers are largely autobiographical, and some of them intensely dramatic. On one occasion an impassioned and moving appeal to the Deity was accompanied throughout by an exquisitely rendered hymn, sung by three of the Singing Sisters. It was like the undertone of the orchestra when some leading singer is holding the house.

The Singing Sisters—there are five of them, one, Mme. Morgan, who was a professional singer—are as conspicuous figures in the movement as Evan Roberts himself. Some of their solos are wonders of dramatic and musical appeal. Nor is the effect lessened by the fact that the singers, like the speakers, sometimes break down in sobs and tears. The meeting always breaks out into a passionate and consoling song, until the soloist having recovered her breath, rises from her knees and resumes her song.

The praying and singing are both wonderful, but more impressive than either are the breaks which occur when utterance can no more, and the sobbing in the silence, momentarily heard, is drowned in a tempest of melody. No need for an organ. The assembly was its own organ as a thousand sorrowing or rejoicing hearts found expression in the sacred psalmody of their native hills.

Repentance, open confession, intercessory prayer, and, above all else, this marvelous musical liturgy—a liturgy unwritten but heartfelt, a mighty chorus rising like the thunder of the surge on a rock-bound shore, ever and anon broken by the flutelike note of the Singing Sisters, whose melody was as sweet and as spontaneous as the music of the throstle in the grove or the lark in the sky. And all this vast quivering, throbbing, singing, praying, exultant multitude intensely conscious of the all-pervading influence of some invisible reality—now for the first time moving palpable though not tangible in their midst.

They called it the Spirit of God. Those who have not witnessed it may call it what they will; I am inclined to agree with those on the spot. For man, being according to the orthodox, evil, can do no good thing of himself, so, as Cardinal Manning used to say, “Wherever you behold a good thing, there you see the working of the Holy Ghost.” And the revival, as I saw it, was emphatically a good thing.

Chapter 6 - The Psychology of the Revival

by W. T. Stead

REVIVALISM is much decried among the superior persons who pride themselves upon their freedom from superstition, their detachment from the vulgarity of popular religion, their philosophic aloofness from the great emotions, the noble aspirations and the fiery enthusiasms of humanity. The purblind eunuchs! without vision or virility, what matters it what they say? Mr. Gladstone once defined radicalism as liberalism in earnest. Revivalism may be defined as Christianity in earnest—impatiently in earnest to produce an immediate impression on the heart and consciousness of men. Revivalism differs from the ordinary conventional methods of religious teaching in that it concentrates all its efforts upon the supreme point of inducing individuals to take, there and then, time fateful decision upon which their whole future depends. To rouse men from apathy and indifference, to compel them to face squarely the eternal alternative, to leave them no subterfuge or evasion, to bring to bear upon hesitating and doubting souls the pressure necessary to induce a definite acceptance of the service of Christ—this is revivalism. In one form or another it has always flourished, and will always flourish wherever there is a great difference of moral temperature among men. Mr. Gladstone in Midlothian affords a supreme type of the successful revivalist in politics. Peter the Hermit was a revivalist of another type. But for the most part revivalism means a spiritual awakening, the conversion of individuals who, from living in indifference or in vice, turn from their evil ways and lead new lives in which, however imperfectly, they endeavor consciously to follow Christ.

So far from revivalism being opposed to the teaching of modern science, it is nothing more or less than the practical application to the human heart of principles set forth by the latest psychological science. Professor William James’s book on “The Varieties of Religious Experience” contains two chapters on “Conversion” which should be attentively studied by all who are anxious to understand the rationale of revivalism, the psychological law which is seen in operation in conversion. According to Professor James, the unconverted man is like a capsized boat which is floating bottom upwards on the sea of life. All the beneficent influences and ethical agencies which collectively are lumped together by religious folk as the grace of God, are ceaselessly employed in endeavoring to shift the centre of gravity, so as to enable the boat to right herself. They operate in many ways—sometimes by pumping out the water, at other times by forcing in air; but always their aim and object is to so change her equilibrium as to enable her to get upon her keel again. Professor James points out that in the subliminal mind, in the human soul that lies beneath the active consciousness, in the vast region in which are stored all the latent memories and the automatic instincts of the mind, there may be going on, during periods in which the man is apparently utterly indifferent to anything but sensual indulgence, a process analogous to that in which, even in the depths of winter, the plants are preparing for the leaves and flowers of spring. Or to return to the original metaphor—which is my own, although suggested by Professor James’s lectures—the capsized ship while floating bottom upwards may all the while be experiencing a steady increase in her buoyancy caused by the pumping in of air and the consequent expulsion of water. This process, invisible to the observer, will at a given moment achieve such results that a mere push from the outside will cause the ship to right herself, because the conditions of equilibrium have been supplied, and all that was needed was an impetus from without. Just so it is with the unconverted man in times of revival. The revivalist or the contagious emotion of a great popular enthusiasm administers the thrust that alone is needed to secure the outward and visible manifestation of the long preceding growth of the grace of God in the soul. Who can tell how many millions there are in the land at the present time who are only waiting the push that revivalism gives, as in windy March the crocuses but wait a gleam of sunshine to put forth their blossoms? The instantaneous nature of the conversions effected in revivals merely shows that souls, like ships, are capable of righting themselves in a moment, when the proper conditions of a stable right-side-up equilibrium have been achieved. It is an awe-inspiring thought that there may be millions of our English folk who are at this moment in a condition of such unstable equilibrium that a word, a touch, may turn them over. They are ready for conversion. Their subliminal self all unconsciously is charged with the Divine Spirit which at the slightest outer impact may astonish everyone, themselves most of all, by presenting to the world what the theologians call “a new creature in Christ Jesus.” But although that new creature may be born in a day, he was conceived long ago, and the gestation of the soul of a Christian often lasts more years than his body took months.

However we may explain it, the veriest skeptic must admit that what the revivalist seeks to effect is of all things the most important object of human endeavor. No political or social change can be regarded as having any serious importance, excepting so far as it tends to facilitate indirectly the achievement of the same result which the revivalist seeks directly. The aim of all reformers is the regeneration of the individual. To make a bad man good, a cruel man merciful, a lazy man industrious, a drunkard sober, and to substitute selfless struggle to help others for a selfish scramble to seize everything for oneself—that is the aim-all, the be-all and the end-all of all those who seek the improvement of society and the progress of the world. It makes no difference whether the reformer is called Blatchford or Liddon, Bradlaugh or Price Hughes, John Morley or General Booth, Frederic Harrison or the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President of the Free Thinkers’ Congress or the Pope of Rome—that is what they are all after—that, and in the ultimate, nothing but that. And when it comes to be looked at scientifically, there is none of the whole diversified multitude of social, religious and political reformers who can deny that a great religious revival does succeed in achieving the results which they desire more rapidly, more decisively, and in a greater number of cases than any other agency known to mankind. We may discount it as much as we like. But the facts are there. It is not necessary to credit the revival with all the results which it reveals, any more than we may credit a day’s sunshine in spring with all the flowers it brings to birth. But it brings them out. So does a revival. And if there had been no revival, the latent sainthood of multitudes would never have been born, just as the flowers would never come out in May if there were no sun.

It is often argued that revivalism is ephemeral. So are apple blossoms. But apples are born of them. And as the brief historical retrospect shows, the fruits of revivals are among the most permanent things in history. People who sneer at the backsliders after a revival forget that it is a good thing for a man to have quit drinking, and dog-fighting, and wife-beating for a week or a month, even if after that period during which he struggled to live a human life he returns like a sow to wallowing in the mire. But, as a matter of fact, while some undoubtedly fall away, and very few indeed ever permanently retain the ecstasy and the vision of the moment of their conversion, the majority of converts made in times of revival remain steadfast. There were, no doubt, a good many who fell away among the thousands added to the early Christian Church after the Day of Pentecost, but those who remained formed the Church which turned the world into Christendom. Professor Starbuck, who, in his “Psychology of Religion,” made a minute analysis of one hundred cases of conversion, reports that while 93 percent of the women and 77 percent of the men bewailed their own backsliding, he found on examination that only 6 percent had really relapsed; the backsliding of the others was only a change in the ardor of sentiment. His conclusion is notable. Conversion, he says, brings with it a changed attitude towards life which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate. In other words, the persons who have passed through conversion, having once taken a stand for the religious life, tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much their religious enthusiasm declines.

Chapter 7 - The Teaching of the Revival

by Evan H Hopkins

It is important that, as intelligent Christians, we should seek to know the meaning of God’s working, in the wonderful religious awakening now going on in Wales. We may be occupied too exclusively with the mere incidents of the movement—deeply impressive, thrilling, and important as they are. We may be taken up with the effects, without sufficiently recognizing the cause. Again, we may have our attention concentrated on what are the mere accidents of the movement—the noise, excitement, and intense emotionalism manifested at the meetings; and we may be led to suppose that if only all these phenomena can be reproduced in other places, the same blessed results will follow that are being realized in Wales. We may be tempted to imitate what are only the mere accidents of a real and divine working in the hearts of the people. All such attempts must end in failure, producing a reaction of unbelief in the imitators, and bringing dishonor on God’s gracious awakening. May we be kept from all human efforts to “get up a revival.”

Let us endeavourer to learn what God is teaching us in this movement. If we are taught of Him He will show us the meaning of His working. He will enable us to distinguish between that which is merely accidental and that which is essential. We shall be enabled to look beneath the surface of this Divine visitation.

This revival is in some respects unlike those that have preceded it. God is showing us today what He can do, not so much through the individual missioner as through the whole company of believing people assembled together in His name. We have been accustomed to the Holy Spirit working through the pastor, or evangelist, directly upon the unconverted. But what we are witnessing today is the same Divine power working through the Church in its corporate capacity on those who are unsaved.

It is deeply instructive to see how God is using Evan Roberts in this movement. Crowds come from long distances to learn the secret of the wonderful power manifested at his meetings. They come often expecting to hear powerful addresses. Many have been surprised and disappointed to find that the evangelist has often remained silent for long intervals. But he has been occupied with something far more important than interesting them with an address. His soul has been concerned with the spiritual condition of the believers present, in their relation to God. Get the Church right with God, and then He will work through the Church on the unsaved. “Bend the Church, and save the world,” is the watchword of this revival.

There are two things that impress one in Evan Roberts—the grace of self-effacement and the gift of spiritual discernment.

He will not gratify the spirit of curiosity. He will not receive honor from men. He knows that his place is in the background. His one desire in the meetings is to lead God’s children into a condition of soul-harmony with Him. This thought seems to be deep1y embedded in his being, that is: Let believers be as one before God in unity of life and love—in oneness of purpose and desire—and then the Holy Ghost, who is present, will put forth His power; God’s children will be filled with the Spirit, and the unconverted will be saved.

Very solemn and searching are the words he addresses to the Christians present. It is to them, and not to the unsaved, that his words are chiefly directed. The effect is a brokenness of heart, a tenderness of spirit. But until the hindrances that may be in the hearts of God’s children present are removed the power is lacking in the meeting. To this servant of God the gift of spiritual discernment seems to have been given in such a way that he is used chiefly in bringing God’s children, by means of heart-searching confession and full consecration, into that spiritual condition in which the Holy Ghost can work with unhindered sway. It is through the Church that the Holy Ghost is working amongst the unconverted in this revival.

Oh, for this grace of self-effacement in all who have been called to occupy prominent positions in Christian work! How very few there are who are willing to be passed over, or lost sight of by the crowd! How much there is of self-advertisement even amongst the best of us. Let all so-called “leaders” in Christian work get down in the dust before God, and be ready, not only to say of themselves that they are empty, and helpless, and nothing, but be willing to accept that verdict when the same is said of them by others.

It is to the man who has the grace of self-effacement that God can add the gift of spiritual discernment. It is only such a one who is really equipped for the special work to which Evan Roberts has been called. Let us not cease to pray for him, that he may be kept thus humble and dependent upon God. He is at this time especially exposed to the danger that comes from well-meaning, but ill advised, Christians, who would tempt him to leave the work in which he is engaged to take the lead in some great campaign.

EXPERIENCE OF A VISITOR FROM LONDON

BEING assured, the morning after our arrival in Swansea, that in order to obtain a seat for the 2 P. M. meeting we must not be later than 11:30 at Ebenezer Chapel, we arrived at that hour, and found the place fast filling. In a few minutes an earnest English prayer from someone in the gallery started the meeting, which went on without a break for five and a half hours. The great preponderance of men, which had struck us on our former visit in the Rhondda Valley, was not so conspicuous here. There were a large number of women, and of children, too, and the markedly Welsh faces were interspersed with English residents and visitors.

But the same power from above was working. Prayer which was not for the ear of man, but of God, singing which was unto the Lord, testimony which the bursting gladness of a new life impelled, were the same here as in Ferndale.

Two distinguished clergymen of the Church of England—the Rev. and Hon. Talbot Rice, Vicar of Swansea, and the Rev. Barnes Lawrence, Vicar of Blackheath, one of the Keswick Committee—sat with several “Nonconformists” in the “big pew.” But these well-known teachers took no prominent part in the proceedings; man was at a discount, and all were there to deal with God. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17) was fully exemplified in the gathering; men, women, English. Welsh, prayed or sang as they believed they were led of the Spirit. One was reminded of some of the more deeply spiritual meetings of the Society of Friends. Mr. Evan Roberts possesses, by God’s grace, a remarkable spiritual discernment. Recently, on entering a meeting, he said: “You are singing, but you are not worshipping; this is not singing unto the Lord.” How one thought of the choirs in so many churches in which the singing always gives the impression that it is directed to the ears of the audience, not to the ear of God! There is in this revival a deep current of reality; when anything unreal creeps in, the power stops.

There was an earnest lad of sixteen years who came up into the “big pew,” Bible in hand, but no break occurred for some time; he stood silent with a rapt expression, and when he read a portion in Welsh he just slipped away—he had obeyed the Spirit.

The following morning we started early to attend the services at Abertillery, a Monmouthshire colliery town, where 1,000 souls were reported as having found the Lord during the past few weeks; the whole population of the place is 15,000. Here Mr. Sidney Evans was expected. We needed no such efforts to secure seats as at Swansea. The meeting began just as elsewhere, by some full heart running over, and we were struck by the great spirit of prayer in this place. Being in English, we could join intelligently as well as spiritually.

There was an intense consciousness of the presence of God, and though some turned to look at the two very young men, Mr. Sidney Evans and his singing friend Mr. Samuel Jenkins, yet it was some little time before the prayer and singing ceased for them to take part. Mr. Evans can hardly be more than eighteen; he has a pure, earnest, happy face, not so intense as his friend Mr. Evan Roberts. He said of himself, “Don’t look to me for anything; I have nothing to give you; look to Jesus.” He made some simple but striking remarks, and was most anxious that the whole company should look off unto Jesus.

The singing of Mr. Sam Jenkins was unique. With a face like a seraph, lit up from above, it was easy to see that he was occupied not with setting off his very fine voice, but in conveying a message from his Lord in song. His songs were in English, sometimes repeated afterwards in Welsh in the next meeting, but the appeal did its work, and many souls responded. There was one thing in this meeting which left a lasting impression upon us. The minister of the chapel, evidently an earnest soul-winner, did not seem to understand “the way of the Spirit” as all the ministers we have seen did, standing aside until the Holy Spirit should need them. This good man seemed to think he must test the meeting himself. Consequently he stopped the proceedings and commenced to urge souls to come to Christ in the way so well known to us. This may have been used much and often, but God is doing a new thing now. The whole meeting fell flat, and without anything to account for it the people began to go out in hundreds. Then Mr. Sidney Evans said how God was not working, and only those who meant definite work were to stay. The minister left the pulpit, and the power of God returned. A way of working which may be Divine at one time, may not be the way of the Spirit at a time like this.

The fourth and last meeting we attended in Abertillery was in a Welsh chapel, almost wholly in Welsh, but full of holy unction and heavenly fire. The consciousness of God’s presence was overwhelming, and there was no need to press souls forward, they shouted out from different parts of the chapel, “I will come to Jesus,” and gave name and address out loud, which the minister wrote down. God had the complete control. Next day we went to Newport, Monmouthshire, and there attended a precious meeting in a Welsh chapel, where the same spirit breathed. We were now in England, and there was a good deal of English in the meeting. We heard in shops, in the streets, etc., of the blessing which God is pouring out in Newport. Lacking something of the Welsh emotionalism, the prayer-spirit which was in evidence quite made up for it, and the cry that God will bless England, and especially London, went up from many. In several places in Newport a continuous work of soul-saving is going on. It was very striking on Sunday to see the quietude of the streets; this is the same wherever the revival has fully taken hold. O God, pour out Thy Spirit upon all flesh, for His sake who so loved the world! Amen.

Chapter 8 - What I Saw and Heard in Wales

by E. W. Moore

"When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, then were we like unto them that dream.” — Psalm 126:1

If the Psalmist had penned this verse in South Wales today, it could not be more appropriate to the state of things around us. The awakening in these quite valleys and hills must be seen to be realized, and when seen it seems too good to be the sober fact it really is. How shall I attempt in a few lines to describe what I have seen during the last three days?

The very first thing that strikes one is the absolute “liberty of prophesying” which characterizes the meetings. There is no leader, and yet there is an unseen control. “The clock,” says Evan Roberts, “no longer determines the time of the meetings.” It is quite true they may be announced to begin at a certain hour, but it would be almost true to say they have no beginning and no end. The meeting is in full swing with prayer, praise, and testimony, hours before Mr. Roberts arrives; and if another meeting is to follow in the evening, it frequently continues after he has left. No one is asked to speak, sing, or pray; all are invited to follow the guidance of the Spirit. The missioner himself is constantly interrupted in the course of his address. Sometimes his words are drowned in a chorus of song, sometimes by the liquid notes of one of the soloists accompanying him. But there is no sense of discord, no break in the harmony. It is like the progress of a stream, now gliding peacefully through the pastures, now thrown into living disorder in the rapids, but whether in storm or calm, still flowing always to the sea.

In Wales nearly everyone knows how to sing. Children of nine and ten frequently can read music. The singing in these meetings is phenomenal. Choir? No doubt there are choirs, but in these gatherings the whole congregation is the choir. If one ventured a criticism at all, perhaps it would be that there is almost too much singing. There was not so much exposition of Scripture as we are accustomed to in England, yet the Scripture was never omitted, and its truths were the burden of every song.

Another most remarkable feature in these meetings is the number of men who attend them. By far the greater proportion of the audience are men, and most of them young men. No doubt the youth of the missioner and the fact that he is one of themselves, is a powerful attraction. But it would need something more than human attraction to draw from the lips of young men the public confessions of sin, the passionate cries for mercy, the open avowals of dedication to Christ, which I have heard and seen during the last few days.

Wonderful transformations have been wrought in these meetings. I have myself witnessed scenes of which I can only say that they reminded me of the accounts of apostolic days. In fact, I cannot, and do not, doubt that this Revival is one of the many fulfillments of the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:16, 17); and who can tell what it presages for the world?

But what, asks some one, are the practical results of the revival? Praying, and singing, and testifying are well; but does the work end there? Let me give in reply one or two incidents which have come under my personal notice.

Only yesterday a gentleman known to me told me that the doctor of the little village in which our conversation was taking place had surprised him by saying: “Well, the revival is doing me good, anyway.” In what way?” asked my informant. “Do you mean that you have more patients?” “Not at all,” was the reply; “but £23 due to me, which I had written off my books as hopelessly bad debts, have been paid to me since the revival began.”

Take another instance: The traveler of a certain firm in South Wales had ten years ago a grudge against his employers, because expenses incurred, as he maintained, on their behalf, amounting to £5, had not been paid him. Some months after a mistake was made in a balance sheet issued by the firm, which put £3 more than he was entitled to receive into his pocket. He saw the mistake at once, but he argued: “No, they owe me £5 really. I shall let this £3 go against it.” This was ten years ago. He was a professing Christian at the time, but ever since then, whenever he attempted any Christian work that £3 came up before him, and he could not do it. A short time back the revival came to his church. He was acting as sidesman, or in some similar capacity, and be asked a passer-by to come in and attend the service. “Not I,” said the other. “The people inside are no better than I am.” It was a common taunt, but it went to his heart. It was true the man was no worse than himself at any rate. For was not he a thief? He could get no sleep that night, and the next day he opened communication with the firm which he had long since left. The money was repaid, and a breach between himself and his former employers, which had lasted all these years, was finally healed.

Such evidences of the reality of this work could be multiplied indefinitely; all Wales is ringing with them. There is no question as to it being a work of God. The question is, How is it going to affect ourselves? What blessing, it may be asked, does it bring with it to those who are already Christians? What supreme lesson does it teach? I have no hesitation in giving one answer, at any rate, to such questions. This revival furnishes an illustration of the constraining power of the love of Christ. The young man whose name is on every lip, and who, though on this dizzy pinnacle of notoriety, has not only not lost his balance, but is thus far, at any rate, safe hidden in his Master’s shadow, what is his secret? I believe if he were asked he would answer in the words of St. Paul: “The love of Christ constraineth me.” He has had a vision of Calvary—interpret the words as you will He has seen:

One hanging on a tree,

In agonies and blood,

and the sight has enthralled him.

He can see nothing else in comparison with this sight. And the Spirit, the Spirit of Calvary, the Spirit of the Divine Love, has descended upon him, and has made that young man what he is today—a transparency through which Christ shines upon souls around. If we as teachers and workers are to learn an abiding lesson from this revival, it is here: What we need is a fresh vision of the Cross. And may that mighty, all-embracing love of His be no longer a fitful, wavering influence in our lives, but the ruling passion of our souls.

Chapter 9 - Striking Testimony of Eyewitnesses

* * * *

A CHRISTLY CHRISTMAS

A correspondent writes of what he saw at Christmas-tide:

“It can truly be said that the Christmas of 1904 was the first real Christmas many children—yea, men and women—of Wales ever had. Money usually spent in the public-house has purchased groceries and Christmas toys; and where in previous years there has been poverty, with its concomitant misery, this year there was plenty and joyfulness. The Light of the World had entered over twenty thousand homes of fair Cambria and had illumined them with His gracious presence.

“On Christmas Day practically the whole of Wales was on its knees. Probably every chapel in the principality was open, and was filled. In some towns which I visited there were monster demonstrations. Certain churches had combined for united processions, and in some cases the paraders marched the whole night long.

“Inquiries of the police showed that not a single prisoner was detained throughout the holidays. The officer in charge of the Miskin district, a large and populous portion of the Mountain Ash area, said that he had been stationed there for the past ten years, and that this Christmas time was the quietest he had ever experienced.

“In a small colliery in the neighborhood an official said that on several occasions, from the time he entered the workings in the morning until he left in the evening, he did not hear a single oath uttered by any of the workmen at Nazareth English Baptist Chapel, Mountain.

"Ash, 100 young men and women converts of the revival were baptized on Thursday and Sunday. At Aberavon remarkable meetings were held during the festive season. When the pastor of Tabernacle (Congregational) Chapel asked some one to step forward and read a portion of Scripture at one of the services in that chapel a deacon walked to the front and read the parable of the Prodigal Son. ‘That parable was fulfilled in my own home yesterday,’ he said. ‘My own son, of whose whereabouts I have not known anything for the past six months, came home to beg my forgiveness,’ And as the venerable deacon told of the welcome home of the son tears trickled down his face.”

MR. ROBERTS AND THE INFIDEL

The Rev. D. M. Phillips, of Tylorstown, writing to the British Weekly (London), describes a scene in which Evan Roberts himself figured:

“The evening service at Ebenezer (Congregational) was a never-to-be-forgotten one. Every corner is filled, and the audience is at least 1,000; and three other chapels are packed at the same time. Now, fancy Evan Roberts, a young man twenty-six years of age, facing this audience! He has only an ordinary education, has not a melodious voice, has but very few strains of oratory, and is far from aiming at creating any sensation. When an ebullition of emotion is manifested he does not take the least advantage of that, and keeps his mental and emotional equilibrium perfectly balanced in the greatest excitement. This meeting, however, is the greatest test on him in the whole series. But he is a complete master of his position. At the end an infidel was discovered in the audience, but he did not wish to own that publicly. This was communicated to the revivalist by a young man who spoke to the infidel in the seat. In an instant Roberts was on his feet, and asked the atheist to stand up to express his unbelief in God’s existence. For some time he refused, but Roberts in a firm manner and in the best feeling insisted that he should. At last he reluctantly got up and said, ‘I believe in my heart there is no God.’ In a moment a voice from the gallery shouted, ‘Out with him,’ and there were scores ready to obey the voice; but no sooner had the words dropped from the lips of those in the gallery than the revivalist said in a firm, loving voice, ‘No, let us pray for him.’ In less than a minute more than thirty were on their knees on behalf of the poor atheist. This was the most dramatic scene that I have ever witnessed in a place of worship. A young man followed the denier of God, and he promised, with tears in his eyes, to take the Bible with him to bed that night to try and get the light. In another ten minutes two other incidents similar to this occurred, with regard to the Deity of Christ and the atonement. These were cogently dealt with in less than five minutes by the young revivalist in such a Christian spirit that I shall never forget it. When these oppositions began to pour in a number of us ministers were trembling, but seeing them disposed of in such a masterly way we ‘praised God, from whom all blessings flow.’”

NO NEED FOR CLOCK OR ORGAN

The Rev. Thomas Davies, of Pontypridd, puts the situation in his church in a few striking words:

“To my church and congregation and the neighborhood the revival has been and still is a great blessing. It is difficult to write about it—the tears come and one has to stop. The church has been thoroughly revived; we have prayer meetings every evening, and these last from two to three hours. I generally give out a hymn to begin; then the meeting conducts itself. There is nothing to which the most fastidious could object; men and women, old and young, take part, but there is no confusion, and when feeling is overpowering there is deep silence; but the tears are tears of joy, for it is of Calvary we sing and to Calvary we look. There are two things that used to be indispensable to us which we can do without now—a clock and an organ. The hours slip by without knowing to us. We generally leave the chapel about 10 P. M., but we carry the meeting with us to our respective homes, and on many a hearth there is prayer, Bible reading, and hushed singing going on until the small hours of the morning.

“At Cardiff a young man, who had been lost to his parents for three years, turned up at the very service where his father (a county magistrate) and his mother were praying for him. His father knelt at his side to help him to Jesus, but the son did not recognize him till they both rose to give praise. They then went together to find the mother, who in another part of the chapel was earnestly praying for her lost boy, and who was totally oblivious of anything and anyone around her. The scene was indescribably pathetic, and the joy of all was ecstatic.

“At one of Evan Roberts’s meetings a young man told how he spent his early years at Oxford in training for a monk. He ran away to sea, and was absent for twelve years. He settled in Wales, and spent all his leisure in drinking clubs and similar resorts. A month ago, when on his way to his club, he was pressed to go to chapel by a friend. He absolutely refused, but on repeated pressure by his friend he said: ‘I’ll toss for it. Heads, I go to the chapel; tails, I go to the club.’ He tossed, and it came heads. He went to chapel, and he was there and then converted. This was a man well known in his own town.

“In the Coegnant colliery 200 haulers and miners joined in prayer and praise. Those who desired to confess Christ were asked to signify the fact by holding their lamps aloft, Lamps went up by the score.”

STRIKING INCIDENT AT BANGOR COLLEGE

In the course of a smoke-room conversation at Bangor University college last week, among half a dozen of the students, one of them touched on the subject of the revival, expressing the opinion that it was a real thing. A second student thereupon started a hymn tune, another prayed, and ere long hymns and prayers were in full swing. The singing attracted other students, and presently the smoke-room was crowded to its utmost capacity. The students “cut” lectures, and remained in this impromptu prayer meeting from 11 to 1:30. In the afternoon from 300 to 400 of the students attended a prayer meeting at one of the chapel schoolrooms, at which five lady students in turn engaged in prayer. At night the students formed a procession and marched, singing, through the streets to the Tabernacle, the largest chapel in the town, which was soon filled with a fervent crowd of worshippers. The interest of the students is remarkable, as hitherto they have, as a body, manifested no particular interest in the revival.

NO DRUNKENNESS CASES FOR TRIAL

Striking evidence of the effect of the revival in the villages surrounding Wrexham was given at the Wrexham County Petty Sessions last week, when the magistrates, who generally sit for two or three hours, concluded their business in an hour. There was not a single case of drunkenness to be tried. The coal miners working in the Rhosddu colliery sing hymns in descending the pit, and in ascending after their work. They also spend part of the time allowed for meals in prayer.

CONFESSION OF A DESERTER

A Welsh convert induced an English friend to accompany him to a revival meeting at Ammanford. The Englishman ultimately rose and thanked God that his eyes had been opened. The following Sunday he went to the English Wesleyan Chapel, and, to the surprise of all, declared that, seven months before, he had deserted from his Majesty’s Navy. He afterwards gave himself up to Police Inspector Davies, and was taken to Llandilo to await an escort. The churches at Ammanford offered prayer on his behalf. The deserter has since been pardoned and a discharge granted.

LECTURE CHANGED TO A REVIVAL MEETING

The Rev. D. Stanley Jones, of Caernarvon, has had a totally unique experience. Mr. Jones is well known as a preacher and public lecturer, occupying what is regarded as the leading pastorate of his denomination in North Wales. He had a long-standing lecturing engagement at Abergynolwyn, a slate quarry district in Merionethshire. The subject of the lecture was a celebrated Nonconformist worthy, and the proceeds were in aid of the chapel funds, everything, in fact, being in the strictest harmony with the religious views of the community. When, however, the lecturer arrived at the chapel, which was densely crowded with an audience of ticket-holders, he was informed that it was the wish of the audience that he should preach, not lecture. And this he did, the occasion being probably the first on record where an audience had purchased tickets for a sermon. The sermon itself was brief, but the meeting itself lasted for five hours, being transformed into a typical revival meeting.

AMMAN VALLEY CHANGED

Never have such scenes been witnessed in the Amman Valley as those now daily seen in connection with the revival movement. At Bethel Chapel on Sunday 150 new members have been received into church membership, and at the Baptist Church, Bethesda, over fifty converts. At Gwauncaegurwen the church at Carmel, which seats about a thousand persons, has been repeatedly packed on the occasion of prayer meetings, and 120 converts have been made, including many who had never before attended a place of worship. Here the women have been conducting special prayer meetings, and the young people also have been very active, holding outdoor meetings. Here also a great change in the daily life of the people is noticeable. The owners of drinking houses at this place say their business has been reduced by one-third.

A railway employee testified at Holyhead that it was most delightful to travel along the road now. Everywhere he met evidence of the revival, and the moral tone was altered. Men buttonholed him at every station in regard to his soul’s salvation. At Amlwch, at a single service, as many as seventy-five conversions were recorded.

* * * *

A party of half a dozen Bangor Baptist and other students visited Llangefni on Thursday last. It was market day. They started a prayer meeting in the centre of the crowded market, and the marketing was instantly abandoned, the people enthusiastically joining in the religious service. Mr. William Jones, M. P., associated himself with the proceedings.

* * * *

Mr. John Williams, one of the South Wales miners’ agents, states that the present revival is one of the most remarkable in the history of reform, both in the industrial and the religious world. He has observed a great change in the manner in which the workmen he represents deal with their industrial affairs. He was deeply struck by the spiritual tone of the last district meeting, the climax being reached when one of the delegates arose and, with arms extended, led the meeting in prayer. A thrill of surprise and ecstasy filled all.

* * * *

At Stow Hill Wesleyan Church, Newport, the Rev. Sylvester Whitehead, president of the Wesleyan Conference, thanked God for the revival, and prayed that it might spread over the whole land. He read of drunkards and blasphemers praising the name of God, of fraudulent men paying their debts, of men who had been separated by long years of estrangement clasping hands in reconciliation, with tears of joy running down their cheeks.

* * * *

At the annual Congregational Conference in Wales, the Rev. J. W. Price in his presidential address took for his subject, “The duty of the Churches in view of the great harvest gathered in through the present revival movement.” He said the churches of Wales today had 40,000 converts. What were they going to do with and for these souls? Were the churches alive to their responsibility in this matter? They would probably never again have such an opportunity.

* * * *

At one place there was a most dramatic incident. All day in the chapel a man of seventy had hardly ceased his prayers that his father, an old man of nearly one hundred, should be converted. Late in the evening, while he was making the final appeal, and was nearly insensible from exhaustion, an aged man, with hair of snowy whiteness, tottered up the stairs of the gallery and was assisted trembling to the front. The offerer of prayer looked up. “Father!” he exclaimed clasping his hand. Silence as of death fell on the congregation. Slowly the penitent raised his head. “All my life,” he cried, “I have lived in sin, but at last the Light has come.” A shout like a clap of thunder shook the building, and spontaneously the vast audience broke forth into thankful praise.

* * * *

Two evangelists from London went to the locality where Mr. Evan Roberts was present. The Spirit of God was manifested in a marked degree. Then, traveling many miles away, where Mr. Roberts had not been, they found similar deeply spiritual manifestations. Unable to get lodgings at a private house, they reluctantly took up their abode at an hotel, where drinking was going on in a bar at the front of the house. “We had better stay,” said one of the visitors; “perhaps God has sent us here.” The chapels in the district were densely crowded, and the meetings prolonged to a very late hour. It was past midnight before the party returned to the hotel.

About two o’clock in the morning one of the visitors was aroused from his sleep with a message that the landlord urgently desired to see him. The proprietor of the hotel was in his room in deep agony of mind, and exclamations such as “Oh, I’m a great sinner,” “Tell me how I can be saved,” came from his lips. “If you are in earnest,” replied the evangelist, “you will cry to God.” The man did so, and while the Gospel was being simply and lovingly spoken, he rose from his knees and declared that, great sinner as he had been (“ I’ve been on the drink,” he added, “for weeks,”) he knew he had now received the Lord Jesus as his Savior. The next day he made an open confession of Christ, and two men in his employment, who had also been great drunkards, went down on their knees confessing their sins, and professed to find the Lord.

* * * *

At a meeting at Ponkey, North Wales, an interesting incident took place. In the school room a children’s prayer meeting was being held while the adults met in the chapel. A little boy prayed to God to save his father, who happened to be at the meeting in the chapel, and later the father was found to be among the converts. Hardly a meeting passes at Rhos without a number of conversions, and the approximate number of converts in Rhos, Penycae, Ponkey, and Johnstown up to last week was over 1,200.

* * * *

Rev. T. Charles Williams, Menai Bridge, says:

“The meetings are characterized by much spiritual fervor, and many dozens have taken part in public worship for the first time. There are over sixty converts. The prayers of the children in some of the meetings have been remarkable in their effect. The revival broke out in this place without any visible human agency, and the movement is not directly guided by anyone. The ministers have thrown themselves heart and soul into it. Prayer meetings are to be held every evening this week, and the Welsh Methodist Chapel, the largest building in the place, has on more than one occasion proved too small. The force and reality of the movement here is not challenged by anyone, and there can be no doubt that its effect will be lasting and beneficial.”

* * * *

The movement is making great progress at Risca and district, and many conversions are reported: Bethany (Baptist), 130; Glyn (Congregational), 150; Primitive Methodist, 15; Wesleyan, 14; Moriah (Baptist), 300. At Cross Keys: Hope (Baptist), 165; Trinity (Congregational), 280; Primitive Methodist, 130; Wesleyan, 40.

* * * *

Mr. David Davies, Justice of the Peace and chairman of the Maesteg Council, says: “As regards sobriety, there is a remarkable improvement throughout the district. A brewer’s traveler admitted to a friend of mine that his returns had fallen seventy-five per cent. The ‘tone’ of the district has undergone a great change, the street language being much improved. The stillness of the early morning is broken by the hymn singing of the colliers going to and returning from work, and late at night the air is full of the singing of revivalists going home. There is practically no police work now, as quarrelling and drunkenness seem to be almost at an end. The chapels were never so well attended. I know dozens of men who had previously simply squandered their money, but who are now spending it on food and clothing for their families. Children who before could not attend Sunday school for the want of decent clothing and cleanly attention are now flocking to the schools, well shod, neatly clothed, and with clean hands and faces. I have lived here all my life, but have never seen the houses and the children so well cared for.”

* * * *

Ystalyfera has been strongly influenced by the movement. Prayer meetings are held nightly at all the chapels, and between two and three hundred converts are reported. The scene on Sunday at a communion service at Wern Chapel was striking. First the women, then the young lads, and then the elderly people marched up the aisles of Wern Chapel to be accepted into church membership. The large congregation burst forth into praise, and many wept with joy. A converted driver, asked why he looked on so patiently at the breakdown of his cart, said: “If this had taken place a fortnight ago I would have cursed enough to set every lump of coal afire, but that is now stopped by another fire burning within me.”

Incidents without number might be added, but these, thus hastily gathered together, sufficiently indicate the remarkable character of this most impressive movement. Christian people in America will pray that the divine fire may spread not only throughout other sections of Great Britain, but, crossing the sea, may awaken the churches of our own land, leading forth a mighty host of the Lord’s people “willing to bend” (to use one of Evan Roberts’ favorite expressions) to their Master’s will and be “obedient to the voice of the Spirit.”

Bonus Chapter - After the Year of Blessing. Stories of the Welsh Revival.

by Howell Elvet Lewis

PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY IN THE QUIVER FOR 1905. pp. 595-597.

While it is too early to audit the results of the Revival in Wales, it may not be amiss to give a few selected cases of remarkable conversions and experiences in differrent parts; and to furnish some evidence of how the converts stand at the end of twelve or fifteen months of the new life. It is not wise to parade names, lest too public prominence should in any way lead to spiritual disaster. It will be sufficient to say that the writer has come again into personal contact with most of them within a weeks - in some instances a few days - of writing, or else has direct testimony from those who know them best.

I. In the Valley of Achor.

He had been a soldier; he had served in India; he had been through the Transvaal War. He was not devoid of either religious knowledge or religious inclinations; he had strayed into "the far country," and dwelt there. One evening, sitting in the public-house, he heard the others discuss the one topic of interest in every locality in Wales during the winter of 1904-5 – the Revival. As he listened, although he was already under the influence of drink, he was increasingly disturbed, and at last could stay there no longer. On his way he met a prominent member of one of the churches, and told him he wished join the church. "But you must mend your ways before you can do that," said the other, as he saw in what state he was. He went home, and spent a sleepless night of misery, until, as the dawn drew nigh, a glimmering sense of pardon touched the gray depths of his soul. He found his way to Christ and His church, and his life became one unbroken prayer for help to overcome; he prayed in words whenever he had the chance, alone or in company, and the prayer without words filled in the spaces between, He had gone on for months, successfully baffling the tempter, when one night he dreamt that he had fallen back again into the pit of drunkenness; and he heard a voice saying, "You have gone away from God - for ever - for ever - for ever!" It was all so actual to him that he sobbed and shook in in his sleep, so frightening his wife that she woke him. The first moment of full awakening, and of finding that it was but a dream, he leapt out of bed, and on his knees thanked God, in broken, rapturous phrases, that he was still in the kingdom of grace. But all the terror of the dream returned to him when next day an old comrade unexpectedly called to see him, and asked him to accompany him. The hour of temptation had come with this sudden upthrow from the old life. What could he do? For a moment he felt utter despair. But he recovered himself, told his comrade he would be ready in a moment, and then retired - to pray for strength. Who but those who know the sting of old sins can realize his anguish? He returned, but with a new light in his soul. While on his knees, he remembered that there was a way of reaching the place where his friend wished to go, a path through the woods - without passing a public-house. So they started; but they had not gone far before his friend began to explain that many things had changed since they used to soldier it together. And, little by little, with shyness at first, he told his story, and said at last, "And do you know that I have found Christ, and that makes all the difference?" There was an indescribable moment in that wood, when the haunting sense of fear and peril gave way to the common rapture of two saved souls. "And I will give . . . the valley of Achor for a door of hope."

II. Adding to Virtue, Knowledge.

It was a weekday evening service - the last of three that day - in the early weeks of the Revival, towards the close of 1904. The whole three services were intense, but not marked with much outward excitement. The address given that night was ethical rather than evangelical - or, more properly, the substance was ethical and the spirit of it evangelical. When it was over, spontaneous prayer flowered as a meadow in a warm spring shower. When the meeting came to be tested, a man was seen to rise, and then move forward through the crowded aisle. Who but knew him? When had there been an election fight, or a Saturday night row, and he not foremost in it? What has he, the reckless pugilist, to do with these children of prayer, in these dewy airs from celestial hills? He sobs forth his confession, tells them in what precincts of hell he has spent the last two hours; how it seemed as if his head must literally burst but for the gracious relief of tears. "None of you will ever know what I have gone through here tonight." And as his confession dies away into a sob, half of anguish, half of redemptive joy, the congregation carries him upward and onward on a swelling tide of thanksgiving. Next morning there is no name oftener than his in everybody's mouth - in the coal mine, in the shop, on the street, among the school-children even. And the day of his new birth was the first of his missionary days. He literally prayed one after another of his old gang to Christ. How can I forget, one night in an English city a month or so later, when a young man from the neighborhood came forward at the close of a service and said, with such a rejoicing accent, "You remember the night at ---, when --- came in? The last of the gang was last week brought in!"

And now, after twelve months, the minister of the church which he joined, writing to me, refers to a devotional paper just read by this same man, and remarks, "You would be surprised at the spiritual keenness and thoughtfulness of many of his observations."

III. In White Raiment

Last Christmas twelvemonths there was many a happy home for the first time, almost, since the wedding day. The shadow of poverty still hung over them; but it was the outer fringe of the shadow. Into one of these homes a miner came a few days before Christmas, and astonished his wife by saying that he must have a white linen shirt - an article unknown in that drink-stricken wardrobe. He had been asked to assist at the chapel tea-meeting, and "flannel was not good enough to cut cake for Jesus Christ in." It was the faint dawning of reverence in a redeemed soul. A few weeks ago he was asked to lay one of the foundation stones of new English chapel in connection the church he had joined, and the gift laid on the stone proved that "walking in white" makes in every way the better life.

IV. Whosoever Cometh.

Expectancy grew with the growth of the Revival. There were certain men and women in every congregation that might be expected with the first rise of the tide. But very soon this quiet expectancy was startled by God's surprises, until at last there was no case to be despaired of. Still, when it was suggested that C---, notorious prize-fighter, leader of riotous living, known and feared near and far - that C--- might find his way to the prayer meeting, it was too much even for disciplined faith. But he gave his promise to come one night; and he came - too drunk, almost, to walk down the aisle. He took his seat where the deacons usually sit in Welsh churches, just in front of the pulpit. For a moment the meeting was too disturbed with astonishment to proceed, but the astonishment soon melted into fervent hymn and intercession. The minister went and sat beside him, and spoke a gentle word to help to quiet him. He replied that he meant to “stick” - that is, to try his best; and kept repeating the word in drunken fashion. Later, he went on his knees and made some kind of a prayer. Before leaving he promised to come again - a promise that caused almost as much anxiety as joy. For what if he made a habit of coming in the same disconcerting state? Happily, it was a growing atmosphere for faith, and ministers and deacons went home to pray and trust. The following evening came, and with it the prayer meeting; and, true to his promise, he came too, as sober as anyone there. He took his place again where he had sat the night before - the senior deacon's seat! And in that prayer meeting he gave himself to Christ - the long-lost prodigal son of a praying mother. He prayed his first prayer for many a long year; and from that night no one has worked harder than he in the cause of the revival. N early a year had passed between that first prayer and a prayer on a week-day morning, simple and childlike, which I heard him pray, and which returns this moment as the memory of some grand sunset, with a sense of something beyond the circling of day and night.

V. A Little Child shall Lead Them.

He came in, trembling and afraid. He knew how sharp the struggle would be; he concealed neither from others nor from himself the force of the temptation to drink. And the public-house which he had mostly frequented lay between his home and the chapel. When he yielded to the Savior's call, he prayed for strength, and begged for a share in the prayer of others. And light came - surely from Him "Who sheweth Himself through the lattice" of prayer! He took his little girl to accompany him each night - past the door of temptation. She, probably, little knew the worth of her hand. For the months have gone, and he still remains true. Within a brief while of writing this I held his hand in mine; I was sorry not to have the privilege of holding the other, smaller hand, as well!

VI. Nearing Home, and Still Singing.

The last incident will be of a different kind. At the close of a preaching service in the first week of 1905, a lifelong Christian - now several years past eighty - rose to give out a hymn. He prefaced it by an outburst of thanksgiving; he had seen the revival of 1839, of 1849, of 1859; and he had been permitted to see this before going home. Then he came to his verse - well-known in many a mission service for a century or more - of which the following is a free translation:

"Hark! what trumpet now resoundeth?

'Tis the King of Shiloh's call:

Who are to the feast invited?

Mortal sinners, one and all!

Turn, ye wanderers, from your folly,

Leave the husks, and turn ye home;

Still the King is calling, calling -

From His love no longer roam!”

In giving it out he commented on each line. After the first line, he recalled the use of the trumpet in Bible phrases. But there was present in the congregation a true mother in Israel, of about his age. She was too impatient, in the fervency of her spirit, to let the question hang. So, while he was commenting, she repeated aloud the second line - which, through slight deafness, he did not hear. He repeated the third line, and again expounded; and once more she anticipated him with "Mortal sinners, one and all!” Then, somehow, the two joined, in thrilling duet, to repeat the rest of the verse. It was all so unexpected, so spontaneous, that the audience, in smiles and tears, were wholly carried away with the scene of these two far-faring pilgrims, almost on the threshold, turning round, as it were, to call God's wandering children home.

Almost on the threshold - yes! For one of the two has already passed through the sunlit door. Her death-bed last summer was a festival of holy song. Her voice rang clear and fresh, as though her youth were restored; and in the stillness of the hills some of the triumphant strains could be heard from afar. For it is not only that the prodigals have returned, but the children of the home have learnt a new song. "And no man could learn that song but" those "which were redeemed from the earth."

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Table of Contents

The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

Chapter 1-A Message to the World

Chapter 2 -The Story of the Welsh Revival

Chapter 3 -The Lesson of the Revival

Chapter 4 -Mr. Roberts

Chapter 5 -The Story of the Awakening

Chapter 6 -The Psychology of the Revival

Chapter 7 -The Teaching of the Revival

Chapter 8 -What I Saw and Heard in Wales

Chapter 9 -Striking Testimony of Eyewitnesses

Bonus Chapter -After the Year of Blessing. Stories of the Welsh Revival.