CHAPTER III.

_THE MINISTRY IN THE ISLAND OF ANGLESEA_.

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

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

“The way was long, the wind was cold.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very likely the slender accoutrements of his library would create a sneer upon the lips of most of the scholars of the modern pulpit: his lexicons did not rise above Parkhurst,—and _we_ will be bold to express gratitude to that forgotten and disregarded old scholar, too; Owen supplied him with the bones of theological thought, the framework of his systematic theology; and whatever readers may think of his taste, Dr. Gill largely drew upon his admiration and sympathy, in the method of his exposition. But, when all was said and done, he was the Vulcan himself, who wrought the splendid fancies of the Achilles’ shield,—say, rather, of the shield of Faith; he did not disdain books, but books with him were few, and his mind, experience, and observation were large.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The great man stood still; he threw a half-indignant and half-benignant glance upon his humble brother, and he said, “_I_ have no library, _I_ do not want books, _I_ am _the_ Book!”

Christmas Evans, so far as he could command the means,—but they were very few,—was a voracious reader; and most of the things he read were welded into material for the imagination; but much more truly might he have said, than the awful London dignitary and Doctor, “I have no books, I am the book.” His modesty would have prevented him from ever saying the last; but it was nevertheless eminently and especially true, he _was_ the book. There was a good deal in him of the self-contained, self-evolving character; and it is significant of this, that, while probably he knew little, or nothing, of our great English classical essayists, John Foster and his Essays were especially beloved by him; far asunder as were their spheres, and widely different their more obvious and manifested life, there was much exceedingly alike in the structure of their mental characters.

We have already alluded to the dream-life of Christmas Evans; we should say, that if dreams come from the multitude of business, the daily occupation, the ordinary life he lived was well calculated to foster in him the life of dreams. Here is one,—a strange piece, which shows the mind in which he lived:—“I found myself at the gate of hell, and, standing at the threshold, I saw an opening, beneath I which was a vast sea of fire, in wave-like motion. Looking at it, I said, ‘What infinite virtue there must have been in the blood of Christ to have quenched, for His people, these awful flames!’ Overcome with the feeling, I knelt down by the walls of hell, saying, ‘Thanks be unto Thee, O great and blessed Saviour, that Thou hast dried up this terrible sea of fire!’ Whereupon Christ addressed me: ‘Come this way, and I will show you how it was done.’ Looking back, I beheld that the whole sea had disappeared. Jesus passed over the place, and said: ‘Come, follow Me.’ By this time, I was within what I thought were the gates of hell, where there were many cells, out of which it was impossible to escape. I found myself within one of these, and anxious to make my way out. Still I felt wonderfully calm, as I had only just been conversing with Jesus, and because He had gone before me, although I had now lost sight of Him. I got hold of something, with which I struck the corner of the place in which I stood, saying, ‘In the name of Jesus, open!’ and it instantly gave way; so I did with all the enclosures, until I made my way out into the open field. Whom should I see there but brethren, none of whom, however, I knew, except a good old deacon, and their work was to attend to a nursery of trees; I joined them, and laid hold of a tree, saying, ‘In the name of Jesus, be thou plucked up by the root!’ And it came up as if it had been a rush. Hence I went forth, as I fancied, to work miracles, saying, ‘Now I know how the Apostles wrought miracles in the name of Christ!’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ye’re a’ wrang, and a’ wrang, And a’thegither a’ wrang; There’s no a man aboot the toon But’s a’thegither a’ wrang.”

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

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

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

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

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

The joy which Christmas Evans felt in his deliverance, realizes something of the warm words of the poet of the _Messiah_—

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

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

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

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

Covenant with God.

I. I give my soul and body unto Thee, Jesus, the true God, and everlasting life; deliver me from sin, and from eternal death, and bring me into life everlasting. Amen.—C. E.

II. I call the day, the sun, the earth, the trees, the stones, the bed, the table, and the books, to witness that I come unto Thee, Redeemer of sinners, that I may obtain rest for my soul from the thunders of guilt and the dread of eternity. Amen.—C. E.

III. I do, through confidence in Thy power, earnestly entreat Thee to take the work into Thine own hand, and give me a circumcised heart, that I may love Thee; and create in me a right spirit, that I may seek thy glory. Grant me that principle which Thou wilt own in the day of judgment, that I may not then assume pale-facedness, and find myself a hypocrite. Grant me this, for the sake of Thy most precious blood. Amen.—C. E.

IV. I entreat Thee, Jesus, the Son of God, in power grant me, for the sake of Thy agonizing death, a covenant interest in Thy blood which cleanseth; in Thy righteousness, which justifieth; and in Thy redemption, which delivereth. I entreat an interest in Thy blood, for Thy _blood’s_ sake, and a part in Thee, for Thy Name’s sake, which Thou hast given among men. Amen.—C. E.

V. O Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, take, for the sake of Thy cruel death, my time, and strength, and the gifts and talents I possess; which, with a full purpose of heart, I consecrate to Thy glory in the building up of Thy Church in the world, for Thou art worthy of the hearts and talents of all men. Amen.—C. E.

VI. I desire Thee, my great High Priest, to confirm, by Thy power from Thy High Court, my usefulness as a preacher, and my piety as a Christian, as two gardens nigh to each other; that sin may not have place in my heart to becloud my confidence in Thy righteousness, and that I may not be left to any foolish act that may occasion my gifts to wither, and I be rendered useless before my life ends. Keep Thy gracious eye upon me, and watch over me, O my Lord, and my God for ever! Amen.—C. E.

VII. I give myself in a particular manner to Thee, O Jesus Christ the Saviour, to be preserved from the falls into which many stumble, that Thy name (in Thy cause) may not be blasphemed or wounded, that my peace may not be injured, that Thy people may not be grieved, and that Thine enemies may not be hardened. Amen.—C. E.

VIII. I come unto Thee, beseeching Thee to be in covenant with me in my ministry. As Thou didst prosper Bunyan, Vavasor Powell, Howell Harris, Rowlands, and Whitfield, O do Thou prosper me. Whatsoever things are opposed to my prosperity, remove them out of the way. Work in me everything approved of God for the attainment of this. Give me a heart “sick of love” to Thyself, and to the souls of men. Grant that I may experience the power of Thy Word before I deliver it, as Moses felt the power of his own rod, before he saw it on the land and waters of Egypt. Grant this, for the sake of Thine infinitely precious blood, O Jesus, my hope, and my all in all. Amen.—C. E.

IX. Search me now, and lead me into plain paths of judgment. Let me discover in this life what I am before Thee, that I may not find myself of another character when I am shown in the light of the immortal world, and open my eyes in all the brightness of eternity. Wash me in Thy redeeming blood. Amen.—C. E.

X. Grant me strength to depend upon Thee for food and raiment, and to make known my requests. O let Thy care be over me as a covenant-privilege betwixt Thee and myself, and not like a general care to feed the ravens that perish, and clothe the lily that is cast into the oven; but let Thy care be over me as one of Thy family, as one of Thine unworthy brethren. Amen.—C. E.

XI. Grant, O Jesus, and take upon Thyself the preparing of me for death, for Thou art God; there is no need but for Thee to speak the word. If possible, Thy will be done; leave me not long in affliction, nor to die suddenly, without bidding adieu to my brethren, and let me die in their sight, after a short illness. Let all things be ordered against the day of removing from one world to another, that there be no confusion nor disorder, but a quiet discharge in peace. O grant me this, for the sake of Thine agony in the garden. Amen.—C. E.

XII. Grant, O blessed Lord, that nothing may grow and be matured in me to occasion Thee to cast me off from the service of the sanctuary, like the sons of Eli; and for the sake of Thine unbounded merit, let not my days be longer than my usefulness. O let me not be like lumber in a house in the end of my days, in the way of others to work. Amen.—C. E.

XIII. I beseech Thee, O Redeemer, to present these my supplications before the Father; and oh, inscribe them in Thy Book with Thine own immortal pen, while I am writing them with my mortal hand in my book on earth. According to the depths of Thy merit, Thine undiminished grace, and Thy compassion, and Thy manner unto Thy people, O attach Thy Name in Thine Upper Court to these unworthy petitions; and set Thine Amen to them, as I do on my part of the covenant. Amen.—CHRISTMAS EVANS, _Llangevni_, _Anglesea_, _April_ 10, 18—.

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

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

Probably, Christmas Evans’s name had been scarcely announced, or read, in England, until his great Graveyard Sermon was introduced to a company of friends, by the then celebrated preacher, Dr. Raffles, of Liverpool. As the story has been related, some persons present had affected contempt for Welsh preaching. “Listen to me,” said Raffles, “and I will give to you a specimen of Welsh eloquence.” Upon those present, the effect was, we suppose, electrical. He was requested to put it in print; and so the sermon became very extensively known, and has been regarded, by many, as the preacher’s most astonishing piece.

To what exact period of Evans’s history it is to be assigned cannot be very well ascertained, but it is probably nearly sixty years since Raffles first recited it; so that it belongs, beyond a doubt, to the early Anglesea days. It was, most likely, prepared as a great bardic or dramatic chant for some vast Association meeting, and was, no doubt, repeated several times, for it became very famous. It mingles something of the life of an old Mystery Play, or Ober-Ammergau performance; but as to any adequate rendering of it, we apprehend that to be quite impossible. Raffles was a rhetorician, and famous as his version became, the good Doctor knew little or nothing of Welsh, nor was the order of his mind likely very accurately to render either the Welsh picture or the Welsh accent. His periods were too rounded, the language too fine, and the pictures too highly coloured.

It was about the same time that, far away from Anglesea, among the remote, unheard-of German mountains of Baireuth, a dreamer of a very different kind was visited by some such vision of the world, regarded as a great churchyard. Jean Paul Richter’s churchyard, visited by the dead Christ, was written in Siebinckas, for the purpose of presenting the misty, starless, cheerless, and spectral outlook of the French atheism, which was then spreading out, noxious and baleful, over Europe.

Very different were the two men, their spheres, and their avocations; overwhelming, solemn, and impressive as is the vision of Jean Paul, it certainly would have said little to a vast Welsh congregation among the dark hills. Christmas Evans’s piece is dramatic; his power of impersonation and colloquy in the pulpit was very great; and the reader has to conceive all this, while on these colder pages the scenes and the conversations go on. It appears to have been first preached in a small dell among the mountains of Carnarvonshire. The spot was exquisitely romantic; it was a summer’s season, the grass was in its rich green, brooks were purling round, and the spot hemmed in by jagged crags and the cliffs of tall mountains; a beautiful spot, but an Englishman spoke of it as “beauty sleeping on the lap of terror.”

A preliminary service, of course, went on,—hymns, the sounding of the slow, plaintive minor melody from thousands of tongues, rising and loitering, and lingering among the neighbouring acclivities, before they finally fade off into silence; then there is reading, and prayer, singing again, and a short sermon before Christmas Evans comes. He has not attained to the full height of his great national fame as yet; he is before the people, however, “the one-eyed man of Anglesea,”—the designation by which he was to be known for many years to come. He stands six feet high, his face very expressive, but very calm and quiet; but a great fire was burning within the man. He gave out some verses of a well-known Welsh hymn, and while it was being sung took out a small phial from his waistcoat-pocket, wetting the tips of his fingers and drawing them over his blind eye; it was laudanum, used to deaden the excruciating pain which upon some occasions possessed him.

He gave out his text from Romans v. 15: “If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” Naturally, he does not begin at once, but spends a little time, in clearly-enunciated words, in announcing two things,—the universal depravity and sinfulness of men, and the sighing after propitiation. _Mene_! _Tekel_! he says, is written on every human heart; wanting, wanting, is inscribed on heathen fanes and altars, on the laws, customs, and institutions of every nation, and on the universal consciousness of mankind; and bloody sacrifices among pagan nations show the handwriting of remorse upon the conscience,—a sense of guilt, and a dread of punishment, and a fear which hath torment.

As he goes on the people draw nearer, become more intense in their earnest listening; they are rising from their seats, their temporary forms. Some are in carriages; there is a lady leaning on her husband’s shoulder, he still sitting, she with outstretched neck gazing with obviously strange emotion at the preacher; some of the people are beginning to weep. There is an old evangelical clergyman who has always preached the Gospel, although laughed at by his squire, and quite unknown by his Bishop; he is rejoicing with a great joy to hear his old loved truths set forth in such a manner; he is weeping profusely.

Christmas Evans, meantime, is pursuing his way, lost in his theme. Now his eye lights up, says one who knew him, like a brilliantly-flashing star, his clear forehead expands, his form dilates in majestic dignity; and all that has gone before will be lost in the white-heat passion with which he prepares to sing of Paradise lost, and Paradise regained. One of his Welsh critics says: “All the stores of his energy, and the resources of his voice, which was one of great compass, depth, and sweetness, seemed reserved for the closing portions of the picture, when he represented the routed and battered hosts of evil retreating from the cross, where they anticipated a triumph, and met a signal, and irretrievable overthrow.” Thus prepared, he presented to his hearers the picture of

“THE WORLD AS A GRAVEYARD.”

“Methinks,” exclaimed the impassioned preacher, “I find myself standing upon the summit of one of the highest of the everlasting hills, permitted from thence to take a survey of the whole earth; and all before me I see a wide and far-spread burial-ground, a graveyard, over which lie scattered the countless multitudes of the wretched and perishing children of Adam! The ground is full of hollows, the yawning caverns of death; and over the whole scene broods a thick cloud of darkness: no light from above shines upon it, there is no ray of sun or moon, there is no beam, even of a little candle, seen through all its borders. It is walled all around, but it has gates, large and massive, ten thousand times stronger than all the gates of brass forged among men; they are one and all safely locked,—the hand of Divine Law has locked them; and so firmly secured are the strong bolts, that all the created powers even of the heavenly world, were they to labour to all eternity, could not drive so much as one of them back. How hopeless is the wretchedness to which the race is doomed! into what irrecoverable depths of ruin has sin plunged the people who sit there in darkness, and in the shadow of death, while there, by the brazen gates, stands the inflexible guard, brandishing the flaming sword of undeviating Law!

“But see! In the cool of the day, there is one descending from the eternal hills in the distance: it is Mercy! the radiant form of Mercy, seated in the chariot of Divine Promise. She comes through the worlds of the universe; she pauses here to mark the imprisoned and grave-like aspect of our once fair world; her eye affected her heart as she beheld the misery, and heard the cry of despair, borne upon the four winds of heaven; she could not pass by, nor pass on; she wept over the melancholy scene, and she said, ‘Oh that I might enter! I would bind up their wounds, I would relieve their sorrows, I would save their souls!’ An embassy of angels, commissioned from Heaven to some other world, paused at the sight; and Heaven forgave that pause. They saw Mercy standing by the gate, and they cried, ‘Mercy, canst thou not enter? Canst thou look upon that world and not pity? Canst thou pity and not relieve?’ And Mercy, in tears, replied, ‘I can see, and I can pity, but I cannot relieve.’ ‘Why dost thou not enter?’ inquired the heavenly host. ‘Oh,’ said Mercy, ‘Law has barred the gate against me, and I must not, and I cannot unbar it.’ And Law stood there watching the gate, and the angels asked of him, ‘Why wilt thou not suffer Mercy to enter?’ And he said, ‘No one can enter here and live;’ and the thunder of his voice outspoke the wailings within. Then again I heard Mercy cry, ‘Is there no entrance for me into this field of death? may I not visit these caverns of the grave; and seek, if it may be, to raise some at least of these children of destruction, and bring them to the light of day? Open, Justice, Open! drive back these iron bolts, and let me in, that I may proclaim the jubilee of redemption to the children of the dust!’ And then I heard Justice reply, ‘Mercy! surely thou lovest Justice too well to wish to burst these gates by force of arm, and thus to obtain entrance by lawless violence. I cannot open the door: I am not angry with these unhappy, I have no delight in their death, or in hearing their cries, as they lie upon the burning hearth of the great fire, kindled by the wrath of God, in the land that is lower than the grave. But _without shedding of blood there is no remission_.’

“So Mercy expanded her wings, splendid beyond the brightness of the morning when its rays are seen shooting over mountains of pearl,—and Mercy renewed her flight amongst the unfallen worlds; she re-ascended into the mid air, but could not proceed far, because she could not forget the sad sight of the Graveyard-World, the melancholy prison. She returned to her native throne in the Heaven of heavens; it was a glorious high throne, unshaken and untarnished by the fallen fate of man and angels. Even there she could not forget what she had witnessed, and wept over, and she weighed the woes of the sad world against the doom of eternal Law; she could not forget the prison and the graveyard, and she re-descended with a more rapid and radiant flight, and she stood again by the gate, but again was denied admission. And the two stood there together, Justice and Mercy; and Justice dropped his brandishing sword while they held converse together; and while they talked, there was silence in heaven.

“‘Is there then no admission on any terms whatever?’ she said. ‘Ah, yes,’ said Justice; ‘but then they are terms which no created being can fulfil. I demand atoning death for the Eternal life of those who lie in this Graveyard; I demand Divine life for their ransom.’ And while they were talking, behold there stood by them a third Form, fairer than the children of men, radiant with the glory of heaven. He cast a look upon the graveyard. And He said to Mercy, ‘Accept the terms.’ ‘Where is the security?’ said Justice. ‘Here,’ said Mercy, pointing to the radiant Stranger, ‘is my bond. Four thousand years from hence, demand its payment on Calvary. To redeem men,’ said Mercy, ‘I will be incarnate in the Son of God, I will be the Lamb slain for the life of this Graveyard World.’

“The bond was accepted, and Mercy entered the graveyard leaning on the arm of Justice. She spoke to the prisoners. Centuries rolled by. So went on the gathering of the firstfruits in the field of redemption. Still ages passed away, and at last the clock of prophecy struck the fulness of time. The bond, which had been committed to patriarchs and prophets, had to be redeemed; a long series of rites and ceremonies, sacrifices and oblations, had been instituted to perpetuate the memory of that solemn deed.

“At the close of the four thousandth year, when Daniel’s seventy weeks were accomplished, Justice and Mercy appeared on the hill of Calvary; angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, principalities and powers, left their thrones and mansions of glory, and bent over the battlements of heaven, gazing in mute amazement and breathless suspense upon the solemn scene. At the foot of Calvary’s hill was beheld the Son of God. ‘Lo, I come,’ He said; ‘in the bond it is written of me.’ He appeared without the gates of Jerusalem, crowned with thorns, and followed by the weeping Church. It was with Him the hour and the power of darkness; above Him were all the vials of Divine wrath, and the thunders of the eternal Law; round Him were all the powers of darkness,—the monsters of the pit, huge, fierce and relentless, were there; the lions as a great army, gnashing their teeth ready to tear him in pieces; the unicorns, a countless host, were rushing onwards to thrust him through; and there were the bulls of Bashan roaring terribly; the dragons of the pit unfolding themselves, and shooting out their stings; and dogs, many, all round the mountain.

“And He passed through this dense array, an unresisting victim led as a lamb to the slaughter. He took the bond from the hand of Justice, and, as He was nailed to the cross, He nailed it to the cross; and all the hosts of hell, though invisible to man, had formed a ring around it. The rocks rent, the sun shrank from the scene, as Justice lifted his right hand to the throne, exclaiming, ‘Fires of heaven, descend and consume this sacrifice!’ The fires of heaven, animated with living spirit, answered the call, ‘We come! we come! and, when we have consumed that victim, we will burn the world.’ They burst, blazed, devoured; the blood of the victim was fast dropping; the hosts of hell were shouting, until the humanity of Emmanuel gave up the ghost. The fire went on burning until the ninth hour of the day, but when it touched the Deity of the Son of God it expired; Justice dropped the fiery sword at the foot of the cross; and the Law joined with the prophets in witnessing to the righteousness which is by faith in the Son of God, for all had heard the dying Redeemer exclaim, ‘It is finished!’ The weeping Church heard it, and lifting up her head cried too, ‘It is finished!’ Attending angels hovering near heard it, and, winging their flight, they sang, ‘It is finished!’ The powers of darkness heard the acclamations of the universe, and hurried away from the scene in death-like feebleness. He triumphed over them openly. The graves of the old Burial-ground have been thrown open, and gales of life have blown over the valley of dry bones, and an exceeding great army has already been sealed to our God as among the living in Zion; for so the Bond was paid and eternal redemption secured.”

This was certainly singular preaching; it reads like a leaf or two from Klopstock. We may believe that the enjoyment with which it was heard was rich and great, but we suppose that the taste of our time would regard it as almost intolerable. Still, there are left among us some who can enjoy the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, and the _Fairy Queen_, and we do not see how, in the presence of those pieces, a very arrogant exception can be taken to this extraordinary sermon.

A more serious objection, perhaps, will be taken to the nomenclature, the symbolic language in which the preacher expressed his theology. It literally represented the theology of Wales at the time when it was delivered; the theology was stern and awful; the features of God were those of a stern and inflexible Judge; nature presented few relieving lights, and man was not regarded as pleasant to look upon. Let the reader remember all this, and perhaps he will be more tolerant to the stern outline of this allegory; it is pleasant, now, to know that we have changed all that, and that everywhere, and all around us, God, and nature, and man are presented in rose-hued lights, and all conditions of being are washed by rosy and pacific seas; we see nothing stern or awful now, either in nature or in grace, in natural or in supernatural things; Justice has become gentlemanly, and Law, instead of being stern and terrible, is bland, and graceful, and beautiful as a woman’s smile!

In Christmas Evans’s day, it was not quite so. As to objections to the mode of preaching, as in contrast with that style which adopts only the sustained argument, and the rhetorical climax and relation, we have already said that Christmas must be tried by quite another standard; we have already said that he was a bard among preachers, and belonged to a nation of bards. It was a kind of primeval song, addressed to people of primeval instincts; but, whatever its merits or demerits may be, it fairly represents the man and his preaching. It does not, indeed, reflect the style of the modern mind; but, there are many writers, and readers at present, who are carrying us back to the mediæval times, and the monastic preachers of those ages, and among them we find innumerable pieces of the same order of sustained allegory which we have just quoted from Christmas Evans. What is it but to say, that the simple mind is charmed with pictures,—it must have them; and such sermons as abound in them, have power over it?

We believe we have rendered this singular passage with such fairness that the reader may be enabled to form some idea of its splendour. When it was repeated to Robert Hall, he pronounced it one of the finest allegories in the language. When Christmas Evans was on a visit to Dr. Raffles, the Doctor recited to him his own version, and, apparently with some amazement, said, “Did you actually say all that?” “Oh, yes,” said Christmas, “I did say all that, but I could never have put it into such English.” And this we are greatly disposed to regard as impairing the bold grandeur and strength of the piece; any rendering of it into English must, as it seems to us, add to its prettiness, and therefore divest it of its power.

Probably to the same period of the preacher’s history belongs another sermon, which has always seemed to us a piece of undoubted greatness. It is upon the same subject, the Crucifixion of Christ. We should think that its delivery would, at any time, from such lips as his, produce equally pathetic emotions. The allegory is not so sustained, but it is still full of allegorical allusions derived from Scriptural expression.

“THE HIND OF THE MORNING.

“It is generally admitted that the twenty-second Psalm has particular reference to Christ. This is evident from His own appropriation of the first verse upon the cross: ‘My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ The title of that Psalm is ‘_Aijeleth Shahar_,’ which signifies ‘A Hart, or the Hind of the Morning.’ The striking metaphors which it contains are descriptive of Messiah’s peculiar sufferings. He is the Hart, or the Hind of the Morning, hunted by the Black Prince, with his hell-hounds—by Satan, and all his allies. The ‘dogs,’ the ‘lions,’ the ‘unicorns,’ and the ‘strong bulls of Bashan,’ with their devouring teeth, and their terrible horns, pursued Him from Bethlehem to Calvary. They beset Him in the manger, gnashed upon Him in the garden, and well-nigh tore Him to pieces upon the cross. And still they persecute Him in His cause, and in the persons and interests of His people.

“The faith of the Church anticipated the coming of Christ, ‘like a roe or a young hart,’ with the dawn of the day promised in Eden; and we hear her exclaiming in the Canticles—‘The voice of my beloved! behold, He cometh, leaping upon the mountains, and skipping upon the hills!’ She heard Him announce His advent in the promise, ‘Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God!’ and with prophetic eye, saw Him leaping from the mountains of eternity to the mountains of time, and skipping from hill to hill throughout the land of Palestine, going about doing good. In the various types and shadows of the law, she beheld Him ‘standing by the wall, looking forth at the windows, showing Himself through the lattice;’ and then she sang—‘Until the day break and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like the roe or the young hart upon the mountains of Bether!’ Bloody sacrifices revealed Him to her view, going down to the ‘vineyards of red wine;’ whence she traced Him to the meadows of Gospel ordinances, where ‘He feedeth among the lilies’—to ‘the gardens of cucumbers,’ and ‘the beds of spices;’ and then she sang to Him again—‘Make haste’—or, flee away—‘my beloved! be thou like the roe or the young hart among the mountains of spices.’

“Thus she longed to see Him, first ‘on the mountain of Bether,’ and then ‘on the mountain of spices.’ On both mountains she saw Him eighteen hundred years ago, and on both she may still trace the footsteps of His majesty, and His mercy. The former, He hath tracked with His own blood, and His path upon the latter is redolent of frankincense and myrrh.

“Bether signifies division. This is the craggy mountain of Calvary; whither the ‘Hind of the Morning’ fled, followed by all the wild beasts of the forest, and the bloodhounds of hell; summoned to the pursuit, and urged on, by the prince of perdition; till the victim, in His agony, sweat great drops of blood—where He was terribly crushed between the cliffs, and dreadfully mangled by sharp and ragged rocks—where He was seized by Death, the great Bloodhound of the bottomless pit—whence He leaped the precipice, without breaking a bone; and sunk in the dead sea, sunk to its utmost depth, and saw no corruption.

“Behold the ‘Hind of the Morning’ on that dreadful mountain! It is the place of skulls, where Death holds his carnival in companionship with worms, and hell laughs in the face of heaven. Dark storms are gathering there—convolving clouds, charged with no common wrath. Terrors set themselves in battle-array before the Son of God; and tempests burst upon Him which might sweep all mankind in a moment to eternal ruin. Hark! hear ye not the subterranean thunder? Feel ye not the tremor of the mountain? It is the shock of Satan’s artillery, playing upon the Captain of our Salvation. It is the explosion of the magazine of vengeance. Lo, the earth is quaking, the rocks are rending, the graves are opening, the dead are rising, and all nature stands aghast at the conflict of Divine mercy with the powers of darkness. One dread convulsion more, one cry of desperate agony, and Jesus dies—an arrow has entered into His heart. Now leap the lions, roaring, upon their prey; and the bulls of Bashan are bellowing; and the dogs of perdition are barking; and the unicorns toss their horns on high; and the devil, dancing with exultant joy, clanks his iron chains, and thrusts up his fettered hands in defiance towards the face of Jehovah!

“Go a little farther upon the mountain, and you come to ‘a new tomb hewn out of the rock.’ There lies a dead body. It is the body of Jesus. His disciples have laid it down in sorrow, and returned, weeping, to the city. Mary’s heart is broken, Peter’s zeal is quenched in tears, and John would fain lie down and die in his Master’s grave. The sepulchre is closed up, and sealed, and a Roman sentry placed at its entrance. On the morning of the third day, while it is yet dark, two or three women come to anoint the body. They are debating about the great stone at the mouth of the cave. ‘Who shall roll it away?’ says one of them. ‘Pity we did not bring Peter, or John with us.’ But, arriving, they find the stone already rolled away, and one sitting upon it, whose countenance is like lightning, and whose garments are white as the light. The steel-clad, iron-hearted soldiers lie around him, like men slain in battle, having swooned with terror. He speaks: ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen; He is gone forth from this cave victoriously.’

“It is even so! For there are the shroud, and the napkin, and the heavenly watchers; and when He awoke, and cast off His grave-clothes, the earthquake was felt in the city, and jarred the gates of hell. ‘The Hind of the Morning’ is up earlier than any of His pursuers, ‘leaping upon the mountains, and skipping upon the hills.’ He is seen first with Mary at the tomb; then with the disciples in Jerusalem; then with two of them on the way to Emmaus; then going before His brethren into Galilee; and, finally, leaping upon the top of Olivet to the hills of Paradise; fleeing away to ‘the mountain of spices,’ where He shall never more be hunted by the Black Prince and his hounds.

“Christ is perfect master of gravitation, and all the laws of nature are obedient to His will. Once He walked upon the water, as if it were marble beneath His feet; and now, as He stands blessing His people, the glorious Form, so recently nailed to the cross, and still more recently cold in the grave, begins to ascend like ‘the living creature’ in Ezekiel’s vision, ‘lifted up from the earth,’ till nearly out of sight; when ‘the chariots of God, even thousands of angels,’ receive Him, and haste to the celestial city, waking the thrones of eternity with this jubilant chorus—‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors! and the King of glory shall come in!’

“Christ might have rode in a chariot of fire all the way from Bethlehem to Calvary; but he preferred riding in a chariot of mercy, whose lining was crimson, and whose ornament the malefactor’s cross. How rapidly rolled his wheels over the hills and the plains of Palestine, gathering up everywhere the children of affliction, and scattering blessings like the beams of the morning! Now we find Him in Cana of Galilee, turning water into wine; then treading the waves of the sea, and hushing the roar of the tempest; then delivering the demoniac of Gadara from the fury of a legion of fiends; then healing the nobleman’s son at Capernaum; raising the daughter of Jairus, and the young man of Nain; writing upon the grave of Bethany, ‘I am the resurrection and the life;’ curing the invalid at the pool of Bethesda; feeding the five thousand in the wilderness; preaching to the woman by Jacob’s well, acquitting the adulteress, and shaming her accusers; and exercising everywhere, in all his travels, the three offices of Physician, Prophet, and Saviour, as he drove on towards the place of skulls.

“Now we see the chariot surrounded with enemies—Herod, and Pilate, and Caiaphas, and the Roman soldiers, and the populace of Jerusalem, and thousands of Jews who have come up to keep the Passover, led on by Judas and the devil. See how they rage and curse, as if they would tear him from his chariot of mercy! But Jesus maintains his seat, and holds fast the reins, and drives right on through the angry crowd, without shooting an arrow, or lifting a spear upon his foes. For in that chariot the King must ride to Calvary—Calvary must be consecrated to mercy for ever. He sees the cross planted upon the brow of the hill, and hastens forward to embrace it. No sacrifice shall be offered to Justice on this day, but the one sacrifice which reconciles heaven and earth. None of these children of Belial shall suffer to-day. The bribed witnesses, and clamorous murderers, shall be spared—the smiters, the scourgers, the spitters, the thorn-plaiters, the nail drivers, the head-shakers—for Jesus pleads on their behalf: ‘Father, forgive them! they know not what they do. They are ignorant of Thy grace and truth. They are not aware of whom they are crucifying. Oh, spare them! Let Death know that he shall have enough to do with _me_ to-day! Let him open all his batteries upon _me_! _My_ bosom is bare to the stroke. _I_ will gather all the lances of hell in _my_ heart!’

“Still the chariot rushes on, and ‘fiery darts’ are thick and fast, like a shower of meteors, on Messiah’s head, till He is covered with wounds, and the blood flows down His garments, and leaves a crimson track behind Him. As He passes, He casts at the dying malefactor a glance of benignity, and throws him a passport into Paradise, written with His own blood; stretches forth His sceptre, and touches the prison-door of death, and many of the prisoners came forth, and the tyrant shall never regain his dominion over them; rides triumphant over thrones and principalities, and crushes beneath his wheels the last enemy himself, and leaves the memorial of his march engraven on the rocks of Golgotha!

“Christ is everywhere in the Scriptures spoken of as a Blessing; and whether we contemplate His advent, His ministry, His miracles, His agony, His crucifixion, His interment, His resurrection, or His ascension, we may truly say, ‘All His paths drop fatness.’ All His travels were on the road of mercy; and trees are growing up in His footsteps, whose fruit is delicious food, and ‘whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.’ He walketh upon the south winds, causing propitious gales to blow upon the wilderness till songs of joy awake in the solitary place, and the desert blossoms as the rose.

“If we will consider what the prophets wrote of the Messiah, in connection with the evangelical history, we shall be satisfied that none like Him, either before or since, ever entered our world, or departed from it. Both God and man—at once the Father of eternity and the Son of time, He filled the universe, while He was embodied upon earth, and ruled the celestial principalities and powers, while He wandered, a persecuted stranger, in Judea. ‘No man,’ saith He, ‘hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven.’

“Heaven was no strange place to Jesus. He talks of the mansions in His Father’s house as familiarly as one of the royal family would talk of Windsor Castle where he was born; and saith to His disciples, ‘I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am there ye may be also.’ The glory into which He entered was His own glory—the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He had an original and supreme right to the celestial mansions; and He acquired a new and additional claim by His office as Mediator. Having suffered for our sins, He ‘ought to enter into His glory.’ He ought, because He is ‘God, blessed for ever;’ He ought, because He is the representative of His redeemed people. He has taken possession of the kingdom in our behalf, and left on record for our encouragement this cheering promise, ‘To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne; even as I also have overcome, and am set down with my Father in His throne.’

“The departure of God from Eden, and the departure of Christ from the earth, were two of the sublimest events that ever occurred, and fraught with immense consequences to our race. When Jehovah went out from Eden, He left a curse upon the place for man’s sake, and drove out man before him into an accursed earth. But when Jesus descended from Olivet, He lifted the curse with Him, and left a blessing behind Him—sowed the world with the seed of eternal blessings; ‘and instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, and an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off.’ He ascended to intercede for sinners, and reopen Paradise to His people; and when He shall come the second time, according to the promise, with all His holy angels, then shall we be ‘caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’

“‘The Lord is gone up with a shout!’ and has taken our redeemed nature with Him. He is the Head of the Church, and is the representative at the right hand of the Father. ‘He hath ascended on high; He hath led captivity captive; He hath received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that God may dwell among them.’ ‘Him hath God exalted, with His own right hand, to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins.’ This is the Father’s recognition of His ‘Beloved Son,’ and significant acceptance of his sacrifice. ‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in the earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

“The evidence of our Lord’s ascension is ample. He ascended in the presence of many witnesses, who stood gazing after Him till a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, two angels appeared to them, and talked with them of what they had seen. Soon afterward, on the day of Pentecost, He fulfilled, in a remarkable manner, the promise which He had made to His people: ‘If I go away I will send you another Comforter, who shall abide with you for ever.’ Stephen, the first of His disciples that glorified the Master by martyrdom, testified to his murderers, ‘Lo, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God!’ And John, the ‘beloved disciple,’ while an exile ‘in Patmos, for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ,’ beheld Him ‘in the midst of the throne, as a Lamb that had been slain!’ These are the evidences that our Lord is in heaven; these are our consolations in the house of our pilgrimage.

“The Apostle speaks of the _necessity_ of this event, ‘Whom the heaven _must_ receive.’

“Divine necessity is a golden chain reaching from eternity to eternity, and encircling all the events of time. It consists of many links all hanging upon each other; and not one of them can be broken without destroying the support of the whole. The first link is in God, ‘before the world was;’ and the last is in heaven, when the world shall be no more. Christ is its Alpha, and Omega, and Christ constitutes all its intervenient links. Christ in the bosom of the Father, receiving the promise of eternal life, before the foundation of the world, is the beginning; Christ in His sacrificial blood, atoning for our sins, and pardoning and sanctifying all them that believe, is the middle; and Christ in heaven, pleading the merit of His vicarious sufferings, making intercession for the transgressors, drawing all men unto Himself, presenting the prayers of His people, and preparing their mansions, is the end.

“There is a necessity in all that Christ has done as our Mediator, in all that He is doing on our behalf, and all that he has engaged to do—the necessity of Divine love manifested, of Divine mercy exercised, of Divine purposes accomplished, of Divine covenants fulfilled, of Divine faithfulness maintained, of Divine justice satisfied, of Divine holiness vindicated, and of Divine power displayed. Christ felt this necessity while He tabernacled among us, often declared it to His disciples, and acknowledged it to the Father in the agony in the Garden.

“Behold Him wrestling in prayer, with strong crying and tears: ‘Father, save me from this hour! If it be possible, let this cup pass from me!’ Now the Father reads to Him His covenant engagement, which He signed and sealed with His own hand before the foundation of the world. The glorious Sufferer replies, ‘Thy will be done! For this cause came I unto this hour. I will drink the cup which Thou hast mingled, and not a dreg of any of its ingredients shall be left for my people. I will pass through the approaching dreadful night, under the hidings of Thy countenance, bearing away the curse from my beloved. Henceforth repentance is hidden from my eyes!’ Now, on His knees, He reads the covenant engagements of the Father, and adds, ‘I have glorified Thee on the earth. I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. Now glorify Thou Me, according to Thy promise, with Thine own Self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. Father, I will also that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory. Thine they were, and Thou hast given them to Me, on condition of My pouring out My soul unto death. Thou hast promised them, through My righteousness and meritorious sacrifice, the kingdom of heaven, which I now claim on their behalf. Father, glorify My people, with Him whom Thou lovedst before the foundation of the world!’

“This intercession of Christ for His saints, begun on earth, is continued in heaven. This is our confidence and joy in our journey through the wilderness. We know that our Joshua has gone over into the land of our inheritance, where He is preparing the place of our habitation for Israel; for it is His will that all whom He has redeemed should be with Him for ever!

“And there is a text which speaks of the period when the great purposes of our Lord’s ascension shall be fully accomplished: ‘Until the times of the restitution of all things.’

“The period here mentioned is ‘the dispensation of the fulness of time,’ when ‘the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in,’ and ‘the dispersed of Judah’ shall be restored, and Christ shall ‘gather together in Himself all things in heaven and in earth,’ overthrow his enemies, establish his everlasting kingdom, deliver the groaning creation from its bondage, glorify His people with Himself, imprison the devil with his angels in the bottomless pit, and punish with banishment from His presence them that obey not the Gospel.

“To this glorious consummation, the great travail of redemption, and all the events of time, are only preparatory. It was promised in Eden, and the promise was renewed and enlarged to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. It was described in gorgeous oriental imagery by Isaiah, and ‘the sweet Psalmist of Israel;’ and ‘spoken of by all the Prophets, since the world began.’ Christ came into the world to prepare the way for His future triumph—to lay on Calvary the ‘chief corner-stone’ of a temple, which shall be completed at the end of time, and endure through all eternity. He began the great restitution. He redeemed His people with a price, and gave them a pledge of redemption by power. He made an end of sin, abolished the Levitical priesthood, and swallowed up all the types and shadows in Himself. He sent home the beasts, overthrew the altars, and quenched the holy fire; and, upon the sanctifying altar of His own divinity, offered His own sinless humanity, which was consumed by fire from heaven. He removed the seat of government from Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, to Mount Zion above, where He sits—‘a Priest upon His throne,’ drawing heaven and earth together, and establishing ‘the covenant of peace between them both.’

“Blessed be God! we can now go to Jesus, the Mediator; passing by millions of angels, and all ‘the spirits of just men made perfect;’ till we ‘come to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel.’ And we look for that blessed day, when ‘this gospel of the kingdom’ shall be universally prevalent; ‘and all shall know the Lord, from the least even to the greatest;’ when there shall be a ‘new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;’ when both the political, and the moral aspects of our world shall be changed; and a happier state of things shall exist than has ever been known before,—when the pestilence, the famine, and the sword shall cease to destroy, and ‘the saints of the Most High shall possess the kingdom’ in ‘quietness, and assurance for ever.’ Then cometh the end, when Emmanuel ‘shall destroy in this mountain the veil of the covering cast over all people, and swallow up death in victory!’”

Such sermons as we have quoted surely convey a living and distinct idea of the kind of power which made the man remarkable. It is, from every aspect, very unlike the preaching to which we are now accustomed, and which, therefore, finds general favour with us; it is dogmatic in the last degree; nothing in it is tentative, or hypothetical, yet the dogmatism is not that of a schoolman, or a casuist; it is the dogmatism of burning conviction, of a profound and unquestioning faith in the veracity of New Testament truth, and the corresponding light and illustration from the Old. In these sermons, and others we shall place before our readers, there is nothing pretty, no nice metaphysical or critical analysis, no attempt to carve giants’ heads on cherry-stones. He realized his office as a preacher, not as one set apart to minister to intellectual luxury, or vanity, but to stand, announcing eternal truth. The people to whom he spoke were not _dilettantic_, he was no _dilettante_. We can quite conceive,—and therefore these remarks,—that the greater number even of the more eminent men in our modern pulpit will regard the style of Christmas Evans with contempt. We are only setting it forth in these pages. Evidently it told marvellously on the Principality; it “searched Jerusalem with candles;” those who despise it had better settle the question with Christmas Evans himself, and show the superiority of their method by their larger ministerial usefulness.

The worth and value of great preaching and great sermons must depend upon the measure to which they represent the preacher’s own familiarity with the truths he touches, and proclaims. The history of the mind of Christmas Evans is, from this point of view, very interesting. We can only get at it from the papers found after his death; but they reveal the story of the life, walk, and triumph of faith in his mind and heart. He kept no journal; but still we have the record of his communions with God amongst the mountains,—acts of consecration to God quite remarkable, which he had thought it well to commit to paper, that he might remind himself of the engagements he had made. It was after some such season that he said to a brother minister, “Brother, the doctrine, the confidence, and strength I feel will make people dance with joy in some parts of Wales;” and then, as the tears came into his eyes whilst he was speaking, he said again, “Yes, brother!”

Little idea can be formed of the Welsh preacher from the life of the minister in England. The congregations, we have seen, lay wide, and scattered far apart. Often, in Wales ourselves, we have met the minister pursuing his way on his horse, or pony, to his next “publication;” very often, his Bible in his hand, reading it as he slowly jogged along. So Christmas Evans passed his life, constantly, either on foot or on horseback, urging his way; sometimes through a country frowning as if smitten by a blow of desolation, and at others, laughing in loveliness and beauty; sometimes through the hot summer, when the burning beams poured from the craggy mountains; sometimes in winter, through the snow and rain and coldest inclemency, to fulfil his engagements. For the greater part of his life his income was never more than thirty pounds a year, and for the first part only about from ten to seventeen. It looks a wretched sum; but we may remember that Luther’s income was never much more; and, probably, what seems to us a miserable little income, was very much further removed from want, and even poverty, than in other, less primitive, circumstances is often an income of hundreds. Certainly, Christmas Evans was never in want; always, not only comfortable, but able even to spare, from his limited means, subscriptions to some of the great societies of the day.