Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales. Edwin Paxton Hood
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