When about twenty-two years of age the young preacher removed to Brecon, with its towering beacons, pleasant streams, and still pleasanter societies of Christian people. Mr. Draper is still remembered there with affection, and many can call to mind his devotedness to Christ’s service, his love for the house of God, his familiarity with the Scriptures, and his attachment to the prayer-meeting. A favourite hymn with him in those days was the one in which this verse occurs:
“Happy, if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name,
Preach Him to all, and cry in death,
Behold, behold the Lamb!”
At Brecon he worked hard, both in the culture of his own mind as well as in the service of his Divine Master. He read good and solid books, and through his life long the substantial was always more attractive to him than the glittering and merely artistic; he had no relish for a literature that did not help him in his work, and all he acquired in study he gave out in effort for the good of those amongst whom he lived.
One can readily imagine his happy earnest life during those Brecon days, of dangerous mountain journeys to the stations where he preached; of open-air preaching by the river-side; of the welcome which the warm-hearted Welsh people gave everywhere to the young preacher, we can have no doubt. It was during this time that his sister, still living at Brecon, received the truth in Christ, through her brother’s instrumentality. He was destined, however, for a larger sphere of usefulness than any which his own land could furnish, wide and urgent as its claims were and are.
While he was at Brecon, his character and gifts had so generally impressed several ministers and friends of his fitness for the regular ministry, that he was recommended to the Wesleyan Conference as a minister; and in 1834 he was appointed to the Chatteris Circuit, in Cambridgeshire, and here the same energy and zeal characterized his efforts.
At this time, the attention of various Missionary Societies was being directed to the spiritual wants of those who were settling in the colonies. Emigration was becoming more and more popular, and every week multitudes were leaving our shores in search of the fabulous fortunes which the colonies held up temptingly to their view. Gold, it was hinted, would one day be found in any quantities by men who would only have to dig for it; riches incalculable might be obtained in an incredibly short space of time. The directors of Missionary Societies were keenly alive to the danger that would accrue to the thousands who were going away from the religious altars of their own land to find themselves in a strange country, where the means of religious instruction were of the most meagre description, and where there would be the most terrible scope for the unbridled exercise of unholy lusts and passions. They were therefore diligently on the look-out for men of strong nerve and character, who could speak the right word to their fellows, amid the fierce excitement which burned within them;—men who could remind them of the hallowed association of their old homes, consecrated as they had been by Sabbath and Bible, and, by the remembrance of these, woo them to an interest in those things which would be found important and lasting when all the gold of Australia should have lost its value. The directors found many such men;—men brave enough to remain poor, while thousands around them were becoming rich; men who, in their strong might of godliness, stood like so many breakwaters against the surging flood of sensuality, avarice, and full-blown pride, which, in the course of time, threatened to submerge the land.
Among the men to whom the attention of the Wesleyan Missionary Committee was directed was Daniel James Draper, whom they were told was well adapted for Missionary service.