Perhaps in every truly great and apostolic preacher, the preaching power, although before men the most conspicuous, is really the smallest part of the preacher’s labour, and presents the fewest claims for homage and honour. We have very little, and know very little, of the Apostle Paul’s sermons and great orations, mighty as they unquestionably were; he lives to us most in his letters, in his life, and its many martyrdoms. Ah, we fancy, if Christmas Evans had but to preach, to stay at home and minister to his one congregation, what a serene and quiet life it would have been, and how happy in the humble obscurity of his Cildwrn cottage!
But all his life in Anglesea seems to have been worried with chapel-debts. Chapels rose,—it was necessary that they should rise; people in scattered villages thronged to hear the Word; many hundreds appear to have crowded into Church fellowship, chapels had to be multiplied and enlarged; but, so far as we are able to read his biography, Christmas appears to have been the only person on whom was laid the burden of paying for them. Certainly he had no money: his wealth was in his eloquence, and his fame; and the island of Anglesea appears to have been by no means indisposed to lay these under contribution. A chapel had to be raised, and Christmas Evans was the name upon which the money was very cheerfully lent for its erection; but by-and-by the interest pressed, or the debt had to be paid: what could be done then? He must go forth into the south, and beg from richer Churches, and from brethren who, with none of his gifts of genius or of holiness, occupied the higher places in the sanctuary.
Our heart is very much melted while we read of all the toils he accomplished in this way. Where were his sermons composed? Not so much in his lowly cottage home as in the long, lonely, toilsome travels on his horse through wild and unfrequented regions, where, throughout the long day’s journey, he perhaps, sometimes, never met a traveller on the solitary road. For many years, it is said, he went twice from his northern bishopric to the south, once to the great Association, wherever that might be, and where, of course, he was expected as the chief and most attractive star, but once also with some chapel case, a journey which always had to be undertaken in the winter, and which was always a painful journey. Let us think of him with affection as we see him wending on, he and his friendly horse, through wild snows, and rains, and bleak storms of mountain wind.
Scarcely do we need to say he had a highly nervous temperament. The dear man had a very capricious appetite, but who ever thought of that? He was thrown upon himself; but the testimony is that he was a man utterly regardless of his own health, ridiculously inattentive to his dress, and to all his travelling arrangements. These journeys with his chapel case would usually take some six weeks, or two months. It was no dainty tour in a railway train, with first-class travelling expenses paid for the best carriage, or the best hotel.
A man who was something like Christmas Evans, though still at an infinite remove from him in the grandeur of his genius, a great preacher, William Dawson—Billy Dawson, as he is still familiarly called—used to say, that in the course of his ministry he found himself in places where he was sometimes treated like a bishop, and sometimes like an apostle; sometimes a great man would receive, and make a great dinner for him, and invite celebrities to meet him, and give him the best entertainment, the best room in a large, well-furnished house, where a warm fire shed a glow over the apartment, and where he slept on a bed of down,—and this was what he called being entertained like a bishop; but in other places he would be received in a very humble home, coarse fare on the table, a mug of ale, a piece of oatmeal cake, perhaps a slice of meat, a poor, unfurnished chamber, a coarse bed, a cold room,—and this was what he called being entertained like an apostle.
We may be very sure that the apostolic entertainment was that which usually awaited Christmas Evans at the close of his long day’s journey. Not to be looked upon with contempt either,—hearty and free; and, perhaps, the conversation in the intervals between the puff of the pipe was what we should rather relish, than the more timorous and equable flow of speech in the finer mansion. This is certain, however, that the entertainment of Christmas Evans, in most of his excursions, would be of the coarsest kind.
And this was far from the worst of his afflictions; there were, in that day, persons of an order of character, unknown to our happier, more Christian, and enlightened times,—pert and conceited brethren, unworthy to unloose the latchet of the great man’s shoes, but who fancied themselves far above him, from their leading a town life, and being pastors over wealthier Churches. Well, they have gone, and we are not writing their lives, for they never had a life to write, only they were often annoying flies which teased the poor traveller on his way. On most of these he took his revenge, by fastening upon them some sobriquet, which he fetched out of that imaginative store-house of his,—from the closets of compound epithet; these often stuck like a burr to the coat of the character, and proved to be perhaps the best passport to its owner’s notoriety through the Principality. Further than this, we need not suppose they troubled the great man much; uncomplainingly he went on, for he loved his Master, and he loved his work. He only remembered that a certain sum must be found by such a day to pay off a certain portion of a chapel-debt; he had to meet the emergency, and he could only meet it by obtaining help from his brethren.
In this way he travelled from North to South Wales forty times; he preached always once every day in the week, and twice on the Lord’s Day. Of course, the congregations everywhere welcomed him; the collections usually would be but very small; ministers and officers, more usually, as far as was possible, somewhat resented these calls, as too frequent and irregular. He preached one of his own glorious sermons, and then—does it not seem shocking to us to know, that he usually stood at the door, as it were, hat in hand, to receive such contributions as the friends might give to him? And he did this for many years, until, at last, his frequent indisposition, in consequence of this severity of service, compelled him to ask some friend to take his place at the door; but in doing this he always apologised for his delegation of service to another, lest it should seem that he had treated with inattention and disrespect those who had contributed to him of their love and kindness.
And so a number of the Welsh Baptist chapels, in Anglesea and North Wales, rose. There was frequently a loud outcry among the ministers of the south, that he came too often; and certainly it was only the marvellous attractions of the preacher which saved him from the indignity of a refusal. His reply was always ready: “What can I do? the people crowd to hear us; it is our duty to accommodate them as well as we can; all we have we give; to you much is given, you can give much; it is more blessed to give than receive,” etc., etc. Then sometimes came more plaintive words; and so he won his way into the pulpit, and, once there, it was not difficult to win his way to the people’s hearts. It was what we suppose may be called the age of chapel cases. How many of our chapels in England have been erected by the humiliating travels of poor ministers?
Christmas Evans was saved from one greater indignity yet, the encountering the proud rich man, insolent, haughty, and arrogant. It is not a beautiful chapter in the history of voluntaryism. In the course of these excursions, he usually succeeded in accomplishing the purpose for which he set forth; probably the contributions were generally very small; but then, on many occasions, the preacher had so succeeded in putting himself on good terms with all his hearers that most of them gave something.