CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | ||
| [The Welsh People] | 3 | ||
| I. | [Love and Hate] | 11 | |
| II. | [According to the Pattern] | 31 | |
| III. | [The Two Apostles] | 59 | |
| IV. | [Earthbred] | 81 | |
| V. | [For Better] | 99 | |
| VI. | [Treasure and Trouble] | 117 | |
| VII. | [Saint David and the Prophets] | 131 | |
| VIII. | [Joseph's House] | 155 | |
| IX. | [Like Brothers] | 173 | |
| X. | [A Widow Woman] | 187 | |
| XI. | [Unanswered Prayers] | 199 | |
| XII. | [Lost Treasure] | 215 | |
| XIII. | [Profit and Glory] | 231 |
THE WELSH PEOPLE
Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the congregation of Heaven.
Heaven is a Welsh chapel; but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls, pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock—which marks the days of the month as well as the hours of the day—are of glass. The inhabitants are clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.
Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish.
Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God; "I am the Big Man's photograph," the preacher shouts; and the child is brought up in the fear of the preacher.
Jealous of his trust, the preacher has made rules for the salvation of our bodies and souls. Temptations such as art, drama, dancing, and the study of folklore he has removed from our way. Those are vanities, which make men puffed up and vainglorious; and they are unsavory in the nostrils of the Big Man. And look you, the preacher asks, do they not cost money? Are they not time wasters? The capel needs your money, boys bach, that the light—the grand, religious light—shall shine in the pulpit.