Christmas Evans Part 15

"In a garden the first of our race was deceived; In a garden the promise of grace was received; In a garden was Jesus betrayed to His doom; In a garden His body was laid in the tomb."

Such verses are very ill.u.s.trative of the alliterative character of the Welsh mind.

But Wales, in its way-and no cla.s.sical reader must smile at the a.s.sertion-was once quite as much the land of song as Italy. Among the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people was the singing of "Pennilion," a sort of epigrammatic poem, and of an improvisatorial character, testing the readiness of rural wit. With this exercise there came to be a.s.sociated, in later days, a sort of rude mystery, or comedy, performed in very much the same manner as the old monkish mysteries of the dark ages. These furnished an opportunity for satirizing any of the unpopular characters of the village, or the Princ.i.p.ality. Such mental characteristics, showing that there was a living mind in the country, must be remembered, when we attempt to estimate the power which extraordinary preachers soon attained, over the minds of their countrymen. Then, no doubt, although there might be exceptions, and a Welshman prove that he could be as stupid as anybody else, in general there was a keen love, and admiration of nature. The names of places show this. Mr. Borrow ill.u.s.trates both characters in an anecdote. He met an old man, and his son, at the foot of the great mountain, called Tap-Nyth-yr Eryri.

"Does not that mean," said Mr. Borrow, "the top nest of the eagles?"

"Ha!" said the old man, "I see you understand Welsh."

"A little. Are there eagles there now?"

"Oh, no! no eagle now; eagle left Tap-Nyth."

"Is that young man your son?" said Mr. Borrow, after a little pause.

"Yes, he my son."

"Has he any English?"

"No, he no English, but he plenty of Welsh; that is, if he see reason."

He spoke to the young man, in Welsh, asking him if he had ever been up to the Tap-Nyth; but he made no answer.

"He no care for your question," said the old man; "ask him price of pig."

"I asked the young fellow the price of hogs," says Mr. Borrow, "whereupon his face brightened up, and he not only answered my question, but told me that he had a fat hog to sell."

"Ha, ha!" said the old man, "he plenty of Welsh now, for he see reason; to other question he no Welsh at all, no more than English, for he see no reason. What business he on Tap-Nyth, with eagle? His business down below in sty with pig. Ah! he look lump, but he no fool. Know more about pig than you, or I, or anyone, 'twixt here and Machunleth."

It has been said, that the inhabitants of a mountainous country cannot be insensible to religion, and whether, or not this is universally true, it is, certainly, true of Wales. The magnificent scenery seems to create a pensive awe upon the spirit. Often the pedestrian, pa.s.sing along a piece of unsuggestive road, suddenly finds that the stupendous mountains have sloped down, to valleys of the wildest, and most picturesque beauty, valley opening into valley, in some instances; in others, as in the vale of Glamorgan, stretching along, for many miles, in plenteous fruitfulness, and beauty, illuminated by some river like the Tivy, the Towy, or the Llugg, some of these rivers sparkling, and flas.h.i.+ng with the glittering _gleisiad_, as an old Welsh song sings it-

"_Glan yw'r gleisiad yn y llyn_, Full fair the _gleisiad_ in the flood Which sparkles 'neath the summer's sun."

The_ gleisiad_ is the salmon. We have dwelt on the word here, for the purpose of calling the reader's attention to its beautiful expressiveness. It seems to convey the whole idea of the fish-its silvery splendour, gleaming, and glancing through the lynn.

It seems rather in the nature of the Welsh mind, to take instantly a pensive, and sombre idea of things. A traveller, walking beneath a fine row of elms, expressed his admiration of them to a Welsh companion. "Ay, sir," said the man; "they'll make fine chests for the dead!" It was very nationally characteristic, and hence, perhaps, it is that the owl (the _dylluan_) among birds, has received some of the most famous traditions of the Welsh language. Mr. Borrow thought there was no cry so wild, as the cry of the _dylluan_-"unlike any other sound in nature," he says, "a cry, which no combination of letters can give the slightest idea of;"

and, surely, that Welsh name far better realizes it, than the _tu whit tu whoo_ of our Shakespeare.

Certainly, it is not in a page, or two, that we can give anything like an adequate idea of that compacted poetry, which meets us in Wales, whether we think of the varied scenery of the country, of the nervous, and descriptive language, or of its race of people, so imaginative, and speculative.

It ought to be mentioned, also, as quite as distinctly characteristic, that there is an intense clannishness prevalent throughout the Princ.i.p.ality. Communication between the people has no doubt somewhat modified this; but, usually, an Englishman resident in Wales, and especially in the more sequestered regions, has seldom found himself in very comfortable circ.u.mstances. The Welsh have a suspicion that there are precious secrets in their land, and language, of which the English are desirous to avail themselves. And, perhaps, there is some extenuation in the recollection that we, as their conquerors, have seldom given them reason to think well of us.

CHAPTER IX.

_CHRISTMAS EVANS CONTINUED-HIS MINISTRY AT CAERPHILLY_.

Caerphilly and its a.s.sociations-"Christmas Evans is come!"-A Housekeeper-His Characteristic Second Marriage-A Great Sermon, The Trial of the Witnesses-The Tall Soldier-Extracts from Sermons-The Bible a Stone with Seven Eyes-"Their Works do Follow them"-A Second Covenant with G.o.d-Friends at Cardiff-J. P. Davies-Reads Pye Smith's "Scripture Testimony to the Messiah"-Beattie on Truth-The Edwards Family-Requested to Publish a Volume of Sermons, and his Serious Thoughts upon the Subject.

It was in the year 1826 that Christmas Evans, now sixty-two years of age, left Anglesea, accepting an invitation to the Baptist Church at Tonyvelin, in Caerphilly. His ministry at Anglesea had been long, affectionate, and very successful; but, dear as Anglesea was to him, he had to leave it, and he left it, as we have seen, under circ.u.mstances not honourable to the neighbouring ministers, or the churches of which he had been the patriarchal pastor. Little doubt can there be, that even he suffered from the jealousy of inferior minds, and characters; so old as he was, so venerable, and such a household name as his had become, throughout all Wales, it might have been thought that he would not have been permitted to depart. He left the dust of his beloved wife, the long companion of his Cildwrn cottage, behind him, and commenced his tedious journey to his new home. He had about two hundred miles to travel, and the travelling was not easy; travelling in Wales was altogether unrelated to the more comfortable, and commodious modes of conveyance in England, even in that day; and now he would have to cross a dangerous ferry, and now to mount a rugged, and toilsome hill, to wind slowly along by the foot of some gigantic mountain, to wend through a long, winding valley, or across an extensive plain. As the old man pa.s.sed along, he says he experienced great tenderness of mind, and the presence of Christ by his side. A long, solitary journey! he says, he was enabled to entrust the care of his ministry to Jesus Christ, with the confidence that He would deliver him from all his afflictions; he says, "I again made a covenant with G.o.d which I never wrote."

Caerphilly would seem a very singular spot in which to settle one of the most remarkable men, if not the most remarkable, in the pulpit of his country, and his time,-beyond all question, the most distinguished in his own denomination, there, and then. Even now, probably, very few of our readers have ever heard of Caerphilly; it is nearly forty years since the writer of the present pages was there, and there, in a Welsh cottage, heard from the lips of an old Welsh dame the most graphic outlines he has ever heard, or read, of some of the sermons of Christmas Evans. Since that day, we suppose Caerphilly may have grown nearer to the dignity of a little town, sharing some of the honours which have so lavishly fallen upon its great, and prosperous neighbour, Cardiff.

Caerphilly, however insignificant, as it lies in its mountain valley, a poor little village when Christmas Evans was there, has its own eminent claims to renown: tradition says-and, in this instance, tradition is, probably, correct-that it was once the seat of a large town. There, certainly, still stands the vast ruins of Caerphilly Castle, once the largest in all Great Britain next to Windsor, and still the most extensive ruin; here was the retreat of the ill-fated Edward II.; here was that great siege, during which the King escaped in the depth of a dark, and stormy night, in the disguise of a Welsh peasant, flying to the parish of Llangonoyd, twenty miles to the west, where he hired himself at a farm, which, it is said, is still pointed out, or the spot where once it stood, the site made memorable, through all these ages, by so singular a circ.u.mstance. This was the siege in which that grand, and ma.s.sive tower was rent, and which still so singularly leans, and hangs there,-the leaning tower of Caerphilly, as wonderful an object as the leaning tower of Pisa, a wonder in Wales which few have visited.

After this period, it was occupied by Glendower; gradually, however, it became only famous for the rapacity of its lords, the Spencers, who plundered their va.s.sals, and the inhabitants of the region in general, so that from this circ.u.mstance arose a Welsh proverb, "It is gone to Caerphilly,"-signifying, says Malkin, that a thing is irrecoverably lost, and used on occasions when an Englishman, not very nice, and select in his language, would say, "It is gone to the devil." Gloomy ideas were a.s.sociated for long ages with Caerphilly, as the seat of horror, and rapacity; it had an awful tower for prisoners, its ruinous walls were of wondrous thickness, and it was set amidst desolate marshes.

And this was the spot to which Christmas Evans was consigned for some of the closing years of his life; but, perhaps, our readers can have no idea of the immense excitement his transit thither caused to the good people of the village, and its neighbourhood. Our readers will remember, what we have already said, that a small village by no means implied a small congregation. His arrival at Caerphilly was looked upon as an event in the history of the region round about; for until he was actually there, it was believed that his heart would fail him at last, and that he would never be able to leave Anglesea.

It is said that all denominations, and all conditions of people, caught up, and propagated the report, "CHRISTMAS EVANS IS COME!" "_Are you sure of it_?" "YES, _quite sure of it_; _he preached at Caerphilly last Sunday_! I know a friend who was there." These poor scattered villagers, how foolish, to us, seems their enthusiasm, and frantic joy, because they had their country's great preaching bard in their midst; almost as foolish as those insane Florentines, who burst into tears and acclamations as they greeted one of the great pictures of Cimabue, and reverently thronged round it in a kind of triumphal procession. What makes it more remarkable, is that they should love a man as poor, as he was old. If they could revere him as, wearied and dusty, he came along after his tedious two hundred miles' journey, spent, and exhausted, what an affluence of affection they would have poured forth had he rode into Caerphilly, as the old satirist has it, in a coach, and six!

Well, he was settled in the chapel-house, and a housekeeper was provided for him. In domestic matters, however, he did not seem to get on very well. North, and South Wales appeared different to him, and he said to a friend, he must get a servant from the north. It was suggested to him, that he might do better than that, that he had better marry again, and the name of an excellent woman was mentioned, who would have been probably not unwilling; and she had wealth, so that he might have bettered his entire worldly circ.u.mstances by the alliance, and have made himself pleasantly independent of churches, and deacons, and county a.s.sociations; and when it was first suggested to him, he seemed to think for a moment, and then broke out into a cheerful laugh. "Ho! ho!" he said, "I tell you, brother, it is my firm opinion that I am never to have any property in the soil of this world, until I have a grave;" and he would talk no more on the subject, but he took a good brother minister of the neighbourhood into his counsel, Mr. Davies, of Argoed, and he persuaded him to take his horse, and to go for him to Anglesea, and to bring back with him the old, and faithful servant of himself, and his departed wife, Mary Evans; and, in a short time, he married her, and she paid him every tribute of untiring, and devoted affection, to the last moment of his life. A really foolish man, you see, this Christmas Evans, and, as many no doubt said, old as he was, he might have done so much better for himself. It is not uninteresting to notice a circ.u.mstance, which Mr. Rhys Stephen discovered, that Christmas Evans was married the second time in the same parish of Eglwysilian, in Glamorgans.h.i.+re, the church in which George Whitefield was married: the parish register contains both their names.

And what will our readers think, when they find that those who knew Christmas Evans, both at this, and previous periods of his history, declare that his preaching now surpa.s.sed that of any previous period?

Certainly, his ministry was gloriously successful at Caerphilly.

Caerphilly, the village in the valley, became like a city set upon a hill; every Sabbath, mult.i.tudes might be seen, wending their way across the surrounding hills, in all directions. The homes of the neighbourhood rang, and re-echoed with Christmas Evans's sermons; his morning sermon, especially, would be the subject of conversation, in hundreds of homes, many miles away, that evening. The old dame with whom we drank our cup of tea, in her pleasant cottage at Caerphilly, near forty years since, talked, with tears, of those old days. She said, "We used to reckon things as they happened, by Christmas Evans's sermons; people used to say, 'It must have happened then, because that was the time when Christmas Evans preached The Wedding Ring,' or The Seven Eyes, or some other sermon which had been quite a book-mark in the memory."

No doubt, many grand sermons belong to the Caerphilly period: there is one which reads, to us, like an especial triumph; it was preached some time after he settled in the south; the subject was, "G.o.d manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit." The grand drama in this sermon was the examination of the evidences of Christ's resurrection:-

"THE TRIAL OF THE WITNESSES.

"The enemies of Christ, after His death, applied for a military guard to watch at His tomb, and this application for a military guard was rested on the fact, that the 'impostor' had said, in His lifetime, that He would rise again on the third day. Without a doubt, had they found His body in the grave, when the time had transpired, they would have torn it from the sepulchre, exhibited it through the streets of Jerusalem, where Jesus had preached, where He had been despitefully used, and scourged; they would have shouted forth with triumph, 'This is the body of the impostor!' But He had left the grave, that morning, too early for them. The soldiers came back to the city, and they went to the leaders of the people who had employed them, and the leaders exclaimed, 'Here is the watch! What is the matter? What is that dread settled in their faces? Come in here, and we charge you to tell the truth.' 'You have no need to charge us, for the fright, the terror of it, is still upon us.' 'How? What has happened at the grave? Did His disciples come, and take Him away?' 'They! no; but if they had, our spears would have sufficed for them.' 'Well, but how was it? What has taken place?' 'Well, see; while we were on the watch, and early, in the dawn of the morning, a great earthquake, like to that one that took place on Friday afternoon, _when He died_, and we all fell powerless to the ground; and we saw angels, bright, like the lightning; we were not able to bear the sight; we looked down at once; we endeavoured, again, to raise our eyes, and we beheld One coming out of the grave, but He pa.s.sed by the first angel we saw, who now was sitting on the removed stone; but He who came out of the grave! we never saw one like unto Him before,-truly He was like unto the Son of G.o.d.' 'What, then, became of the angel?' 'Oh, a legion of them came down, and one of them, very fair, like a young man, entered the grave, and sat where the head of Jesus had lain; and, immediately, another, also, very fair, and beautiful, sat where His feet had rested.' 'And did the angels say nothing to you?' 'No, but they looked with eyes of lightning.' 'Saw you not His friends, the women?' 'Oh, yes; they came there, but He had left the tomb before their arrival.' 'Talked the angels to the women?' 'Yes; they seemed to be of one family, and very well acquainted with one another.' 'Do you remember anything of the conversation?' 'Yes; they said, "Fear you not! let the Pharisees, and Darkness fear to-day! You seek Jesus! He is not here, for He is risen indeed; He is alive, and lives for ever. He has gone before you to Galilee." We heard one angel say, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay." Another angel spoke to a woman called Mary, and said, "Why weepest _thou_, while thy Lord is risen indeed, and is alive, so near unto thee? _let His enemies weep to-day_!"' 'WHAT!' exclaimed the leader of those priests, and of the council, who had asked for the guard,-'What! how say you? _Close that door_! You, _tall_ soldier, approach: was it not you who pierced His side?' 'Yes, it was I; but all that these soldiers have said is all true; oh, alas! it is all true! He must have been the Son of G.o.d.' The Pharisees lost their cause, on the day of their appeal; they gave the soldiers money, to say that His disciples had stolen the body while they slept! _If they were asleep_, _how did they know in what manner He had left the grave_?

They, however, suffered themselves to be suborned, and for money lied, and, to this hour, the kingdom of Satan hangs upon that lie!"

This sermon produced a profound impression. We have said, to render the sermons of Christmas Evans in print, or by description, is impossible,-as impossible as to paint tones, and accents, or the varying expressions which pa.s.s over eye, and face, and lip. He was entreated to publish this sermon, but he could only write out something like an outline of it, and when it appeared in print, those who had been enraptured with it, in its delivery, declared that it was not the same sermon; so he was entreated to preach the sermon again. He made a humorous remark, on the strangeness of a man preaching his own printed sermon; still, he complied. His accomplished biographer, Rhys Stephen, heard it then, and says of it, "While I have the faintest trace of memory, as to sermons I have heard, this must always be pre-eminent, and distinct; in its oratorical eminence, it stands alone, even among his great achievements.

One of the most striking parts of the sermon, was in the examination of the Roman guard, the report of the soldiers to the authorities." Mr.

Stephens continues, "We heard them talk, had a clear perception of the difference of the tone, and more especially, when one of the chief priests, in an anxious, agonizing whisper, said, '_Shut the door_!' And then, 'You, tall soldier, approach: was it not you who pierced His side?'

'Yes, it was I.' When Christmas Evans simulated the chief priest, and singled out the tall soldier, and the conversation went on between the two, such a combined triumph of sanctified fancy, and perfect oratory, I never expect to witness again." We may, also, say, that it ill.u.s.trates wherein, very greatly, lay the preacher's power,-seizing some little circ.u.mstance, and, by its homeliness, or aptness, giving reality, and vivacity to the whole picture.

It must be said, his are very great sermons; the present writer is almost disposed to be bold enough to describe them, as the grandest Gospel sermons of the last hundred years. Not one, or two, but several, are especially n.o.ble. One of these we have, already, given: the splendid embodiment, and personification of the twenty-second Psalm, _The Hind of the Morning_, from the singular, and most significant designation, or t.i.tle of the Psalm itself.

Another sermon which, probably, belongs to this period is

"THE BIBLE REGARDED AS A STONE WITH SEVEN EYES,"

evidently from Zech. iii. 9, "_Upon one stone shall be seven eyes_."

It was, in fact, a review of

"_The Internal Evidences which prove the Gospel to be of G.o.d_.

"G.o.d's perfections are, in some sort, to be seen in all He has done, and in all He has spoken. He imprints some indication of His character, on everything that His hand forms, and that His mouth utters, so that there might be a sufficient difference between the work, and the speech of G.o.d, and those of man. The Bible is the Book of books, a book breathed out of heaven. It was easy enough for John to determine, when he saw the Lamb, with the seven horns, and the seven eyes, in the midst of the throne, that the G.o.dhead was there, and that such a Lamb was not to be found amongst creatures. When one saw a stone, with seven eyes, before Zerubbabel, it was not difficult to conclude that it was a stone from some unusual mine. In looking at the page of the starry sky, the work of the fingers of the Everlasting Power is traced in the sun, and moon, and stars; all proclaim His name, and tell His glory. I am very thankful for books written by man, but it is G.o.d's book that sheds the light of the life everlasting on all other books. I cannot often read it, hear it, or reflect upon it, but I see-