Christmas Evans Part 2

Go, and sin no more."

But with all these marks of a strong character, the lines of Timothy Thomas's faith were clear and firm.

Such was the man who received Christmas Evans into the Church of which he became so bright and s.h.i.+ning an ornament. This n.o.ble man survived until his eighty-sixth year; he died at Cardigan, in 1840. He was asked, sometimes, how many he had baptized during his lifetime, and he would reply, brusquely, "About two thousand;" at other times, he would be more particular, and say, "I have baptized at least two thousand persons.

Yes," he would add tenderly, "and thirty of them have become ministers of the Gospel; and it was I who baptized Christmas Evans,"-sometimes adding navely, "I did it right, too,-according to the apostolic practice, you know."

Thus we are brought to the interesting and important turning-point in the life of Christmas Evans. He had united himself with the Baptist communion. Our readers will clearly perceive, that he was a young man who could not be hidden, and it was soon discovered that the work of the ministry was to be his destination. As to his internal state, upon which a ministerial character must always depend, these early years of his religious life were times and seasons of great spiritual depression.

Such frames of feeling depend, perhaps, not less, or more, upon certain aspects of religious truth, than they do upon the peculiarities of temperament; a nervous imagination is very exhausting, and brings the physical frame very low; moreover, exalted ideas, and ideals, produce very depressing appreciations of self. He thought himself a ma.s.s of ignorance and sin; he desired to preach, but he thought that such words as his must be useless to his hearers: then, as to the method of preaching, he was greatly troubled. He thought by committing his sermons to memory he forfeited the gift of the Holy Spirit; so he says he changed his method, took a text without any premeditation, and preached what occurred to him at the time; "but," he continues, "if it was bad before, it was worse now; so I thought G.o.d would have nothing to do with me as a preacher."

The young man was humbled; he entered every pulpit with dread; he thought that he was such an one that his mere appearance in the pulpit would be quite sufficient to becloud the hearts of his hearers, and to intercept the light from heaven. Then it seems he had no close friend to whom he could talk; he was afraid lest, if he laid bare the secrets of his heart, he should seem to be only a hypocrite; so he had to wrap up the bitter secrets of his soul in his own heart, and drink of his bitter cup alone.

Is this experience singular? Is not this the way in which all truly great, and original preachers have been made?-Luther, Bunyan, Dr. Payson, Robert Hall,-how many beside? Such men have attained high scholars.h.i.+ps, and fellows.h.i.+ps, in the great university of human nature; like Peter, pierced to the heart themselves, they have "p.r.i.c.ked" the hearts, the consciences, of the thousands who have heard them. Thus, more than from the lore of cla.s.sical literatures, they have had given to them "the tongue of the learned," which has enabled them to speak "a word in season to those who were wearied;" thus, "converted" themselves, they have been able to "strengthen their brethren."

Evans pa.s.sed through a painful experience; the young man was feeling his way. He was unconscious of the powers within him, although they were struggling for expression; and so, through his humility and lowly conceptions of himself, he was pa.s.sing on to future eminence and usefulness.

Lleyn was the first place where he appears to have felt his feet. Lleyn at that time had not even the dignity of being a village; it is a little inland hamlet out of Caernarvon Bay; Nevin is its princ.i.p.al village; perhaps if the reader should seek out Lleyn, even upon a tolerable map of Caernarvons.h.i.+re, he will have a difficulty in finding it. It seems to have been a hamlet of the promontory, on a grand coast, surrounded by magnificent hills, or overhanging mountains; we have never visited it, but those who have done so speak of it as possessing the charms of peculiar wildness: on the one side, precipitous ravines, shut in by the sea; on the other, walls of dark mountains,-forming the most complete picture of isolation possible to imagine. Here is said to be the last resting-place of Vortigern, who fled hither to escape the rage of his subjects, excited by his inviting the Saxons to Britain. A curious tradition holds that the mountains are magnetic, and masters of vessels are said to be careful not to approach too near the coast, fearing the effect upon their compa.s.ses; this is believed to be the effect of a strong undercurrent setting in all along the coast, dangerous to vessels, and apt to lead them out of their course. Such was Lleyn, the first field of labour on which this melancholy and brooding youth was to exercise his ministry.

Evans had attended the Baptist a.s.sociation at Maesyberllan in Brecknocks.h.i.+re, in 1790; he was persuaded there to enter upon the ministry in this very obscure district, and he was ordained as a missionary to work among the humble Churches in that vicinity. It does not appear that, in his own neighbourhood, he had as yet attained to any reputation for peculiar power, or that there were any apparent auguries and prognostications of his future usefulness. It is curious to notice, almost so soon as he began his work in this his first distinct field of labour, he appears like a man new made; for this seems to have been the place where the burden of which Bunyan speaks, rolled from this Christian's back; here a new life of faith began to glow in him, and he knew something of what it is to have the "oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness." A little success is very encouraging; depreciation is frequently the parent of depression; success is often a fine old strengthening wine; and how often we have had occasion to admire men who have wrought on at life's tasks bravely and cheerfully, although success never came and sat down by their side, to cheer and encourage them; one sometimes wonders what they would have done had their efforts and words received the garland and the crown.

Well, perhaps not so much; these things are more wisely ordered than we know. Only this also may be remarked, that, perhaps, the highest order of mind and heart can do almost as well without success as with it,-will behave beautifully if success should come, will behave no less beautifully even if success should never come.

At Lleyn, Christmas Evans tasted the first prelibations of a successful ministry; a wondrous power attended his preaching, numbers were gathered into the Church. "I could scarcely believe," he says, "the testimony of the people who came before the Church as candidates for members.h.i.+p, that they were converted through my ministry; yet I was obliged to believe, though it was marvellous in my eyes. This made me thankful to G.o.d, and increased my confidence in prayer; a delightful gale descended upon me as from the hill of the New Jerusalem, and I felt the three great things of the kingdom of heaven, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Indeed, very unusual powers seemed to attend him. He says, "I frequently preached out of doors at nightfall," and the singing, and the praising seem to have touched him very tenderly; he frequently found his congregations bathed in tears and weeping profusely. Preaching was now to him, as he testifies, a very great pleasure,-and no wonder; quite a remarkable revival of religious feeling woke up wherever he went. When he first entered Lleyn, the religious life was very cold and feeble; quite wonderful was the change.

After a time, exhausted with his work in these villages, he accepted an invitation to visit the more remote parts of South Wales. When ministers, like Christmas Evans, are enfeebled in health, they recreate themselves by preaching; the young man was enfeebled, but he started off on his preaching tour; he could not obtain a horse, so he walked the whole way, preaching in every village or town through which he pa.s.sed.

Very frequently large numbers of the same congregation would follow after him the next day, and attend the services fifteen or twenty times, although many miles apart. So he went through the counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, Caernarvon, Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecknock, stopping and holding services at the innumerable villages lying on his way. The fame that a wonderful man of G.o.d had appeared spread through South Wales on the wings of the wind, and an appointment for Christmas Evans to preach was sufficient to attract thousands to the place. While he yet continued at Lleyn as itinerant missionary, in that short time he had acquired perhaps a greater popularity than any other preacher of that day in Wales.

We have not said that, during the first years of his residence at Lleyn, he married Catherine Jones, a young lady a member of his own Church,-a pious girl, and regarded as in every way suitable for his companion. It will be seen that, so far from diminis.h.i.+ng, it seemed rather to increase his ardour; he frequently preached five times during the Sabbath, and walked twenty miles; his heart appeared to be full of love, he spoke as in the strains of a seraph. No wonder that such labour and incessant excitement told upon his health, it was feared even that he might sink into consumption; but surely it was a singular cure suggested for such a disease, to start off on the preaching tour we have described.

At last, however, in an unexpected moment, he became great. It was at one of those wonderful gatherings, an a.s.sociation meeting, held at Velinvoel, in the immediate neighbourhood of Llanelly. A great concourse of people were a.s.sembled in the open air. There was some hitch in the arrangements. Two great men were expected, but still some one or other was wanted to break the ice-to prepare the way. On so short a notice, notwithstanding the abundant preaching power, no one was found willing to take the vacant place. Christmas Evans was there, walking about on the edge of the crowd-a tall, bony, haggard young man, uncouth, and ill-dressed. The master of the ceremonies for the occasion, the pastor of the district, was in an agony of perplexity to find his man,-one who, if not equal to the mightiest, would yet be sufficient for the occasion.

In his despair, he went to our old friend, Timothy Thomas; but he, declining for himself, said abruptly, "Why not ask that one-eyed lad from the North? I hear that he preaches quite wonderfully." So the pastor went to him. He instantly consented. Many who were there afterwards expressed the surprise they felt at the communication going on between the pastor and the odd-looking youth. "Surely," they said, "he can never ask that absurdity to preach!" They felt that an egregious mistake was being committed; and some went away to refresh themselves, and others to rest beneath the hedges around, until the great men should come; and others, who stayed, comforted themselves with the a.s.surance that the "one-eyed lad" would have the good sense to be very short. But, for the young preacher, while he was musing, the fire was burning; he was now, for the first time, to front one of those grand Welsh audiences, the sacred _Eisteddfod_ of which we have spoken, and to be the preacher of an occasion, which, through all his life after, was to be his constant work.

Henceforth there was to be, perhaps, not an a.s.sociation meeting of his denomination, of which he was not to be the most attractive preacher, the most longed-for and brilliant star.

He took a grand text: "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, in the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in His sight." Old men used to describe afterwards how he justified their first fears by his stiff, awkward movements; but the organ was, in those first moments, building, and soon it began to play.

He showed himself a master of the instrument of speech. Closer and closer the audience began to gather near him. They got up, and came in from the hedges. The crowd grew more and more dense with eager listeners; the sermon became alive with dramatic representation. The throng of preachers present confessed that they were dazzled with the brilliance of the language, and the imagery, falling from the lips of this altogether unknown and unexpected young prophet. Presently, beneath some appalling stroke of words, numbers started to their feet; and in the pauses-if pauses were permitted in the paragraphs-the question went, "Who is this? who have we here?" His words went rocking to and fro; he had caught the "_hwyl_,"-he had also caught the people in it; he went swelling along at full sail. The people began to cry, "_Gogoniant_!"

(Glory!) "_Bendigedig_!" (Blessed!) The excitement was at its highest when, amidst the weeping, and rejoicing of the mighty mult.i.tude, the preacher came to an end. Drawn together from all parts of Wales to the meeting, when they went their separate ways home they carried the memory of "the one-eyed lad" with them.

Christmas Evans was, from that moment, one of the most famous preachers in the Princ.i.p.ality. Lord Byron tells us how he woke up one morning and found himself famous. In those days, a new great Welsh preacher was quite as famous a birth in the little country of Wales as the most famous reputation could be in the literary world of England.

We can conceive it all; for, about thirty-five years since, we were spectators of some such scene. It was far in the depths of the dark mountains beyond Abersychan, that we were led to a large Welsh service; but it was in a great chapel, and it was on a winter's night. The place was dimly lit with candles. There were, we remember, three preachers.

But whilst the first were pursuing their way, or the occasional hymns were being chanted, our companion said to us, "But I want you to hear that little hump-backed man, behind there; he will come next." We could scarcely see the little hump-backed man, but what we saw of him did not predispose our minds to any very favourable impressions, or prophecies of great effects. In due time he came forward. Even as soon as he presented himself, however, there was an evident expectation. The people began more certainly to settle themselves; to crane their necks forward; to smile their loving smile, as upon a well-known friend, who would not disappoint them; and to utter their sighs and grunts of satisfaction. He was as uncouth a piece of humanity as we have ever seen, the little hump-backed man, thin and bony. His iron-grey hair fell over his forehead with no picturesque effect, nor did his eyes seem to give any indication of fire; and there was a shuffling and shambling in his gait, giving no sign of the grace of the orator. But, gradually, as he moved along, and before he had moved far, the whole of that audience was subject to his spell of speech. His hair was thrown back from his forehead; his features were lighted up. Hump-backed! You neither saw it, nor thought of it. His wiry movement seemed informed by dignity and grandeur. First, there came forth audible gaspings, and grunts of approval and pleasure. His very accent, whether you knew his language or not, compelled tears to start to the eyes. Forth came those devout gus.h.i.+ngs of speech we have mentioned, which, in Wales, are the acclamations which greet a preacher; and, like Christmas Evans with the close of his first grand sermon, the little hump-backed man sat down, victorious over all personal deformity, amidst the weeping and rejoicing of the people. We have always thought of that circ.u.mstance as a wonderful ill.u.s.tration of the power of the mind over the body.

Christmas returned to Lleyn, but not to remain there long. The period of his ministry in that neighbourhood was about two years, and during that time the religious spirit of the neighbourhood had been deeply stirred.

It is most likely that the immediate cause which led to his removal may be traced to the natural feeling that he was fitted for a much more obvious and extended field of labour. Lleyn was a kind of mission station, its churches were small, they had long been disorganised, and it was not likely that, even if they woke at once into newness of life, they could attain to ideas of liberality and Church order, on which the growth and advance and perpetuity of the Churches could alone be founded; and then it was very likely discovered that the man labouring among them would be demanded for labours very far afield; it is awkward when the gifts of a man make him eminently acceptable to s.h.i.+ne and move as an evangelist, and yet he is expected to fill the place, and be as steady in pastoral relations as a pole star!

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 G.o.d-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-Hards.h.i.+ps 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 unenc.u.mbered 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+eling; 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 n.o.ble ideas, images, words, which made Christmas Evans a household name throughout the entire Princ.i.p.ality. Here he, and his Catherine, pa.s.sed 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 Wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion.

During those years, in that poor Cildwrn room, he mastered some ways of scholars.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.sical 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 grat.i.tude 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' s.h.i.+eld,-say, rather, of the s.h.i.+eld 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 cla.s.sical 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 mult.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sed over the place, and said: 'Come, follow Me.' By this time, I was within what I thought were the gates of h.e.l.l, 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 Princ.i.p.ality; 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, G.o.d. 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."