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