It is said that on one occasion not a single person passed by without contributing something: surely a most unusual circumstance, but it was the result of a manœuvre. It was in an obscure district, just then especially remarkable for sheep-stealing; indeed, it was quite notorious. The preacher was aware of this circumstance, and, when he stood up in the immense crowd to urge the people to liberality, he spoke of this crime of the neighbourhood; he supposed that amidst that large multitude it was impossible but that some of those sheep-stealers would be present: he addressed them solemnly, and implored them, if present, not to give anything to the collection about to be made. It was indeed a feat rather worthy of Rowland Hill than illustrative of Christmas Evans, but so it was; those who had no money upon them borrowed from those who had, and it is said that, upon that occasion, not a single person permitted himself to pass out without a contribution.
The good man, however, often felt that a burden was laid upon him, which scarcely belonged to the work to which he regarded himself as especially set apart. Perhaps he might have paraphrased the words of the Apostle, and said, “The Lord sent me not to attend to the affairs of your chapel-debts, but to preach the gospel.” There is not only pathos, but truth in the following words; he says, “I humbly think that no missionaries in India, or any other country, have had to bear such a burden as I have borne, because of chapel-debts, and they have not had besides to provide for their own support, as I have had to do through all my life in Anglesea; London committees have cared for them, while I, for many years, received but seventeen pounds per annum for all my services. The other preachers were young, and inexperienced, and the members threw all the responsibility upon me, as children do upon a father; my anxiety often moved me in the depths of the night to cry out unto God to preserve His cause from shame. God’s promises to sustain His cause in the world greatly comforted me. I would search for the Divine promises to this effect, and plead them in prayer, until I felt as confident as if every farthing had been paid. I laboured hard to institute weekly penny offerings, but was not very successful; and after every effort there remained large sums unpaid in connection with some of the chapels which had been built without my consent.”
Poor Christmas! As we read of him he excites our wonder.
“Passing rich with forty pounds a year.”
looks like positive wealth as compared with the emoluments of our poor preacher; and yet the record is that he was given to hospitality, and he contributed his sovereign, and half-sovereign, not only occasionally, but annually, where his richer neighbours satisfied their consciences with far inferior bequests. How did the man do it? He had not married a rich wife, and he did not, as many of his brethren, eke out his income by some farm, or secular pursuit; a very common, and a very necessary thing to do, we should say, in Wales.
But, no doubt, Catherine had much to do with his unburdened life of domestic quiet; perhaps,—it does not appear, but it seems probable—she had some little money of her own; she had what to her husband was incomparably more valuable, a clear practical mind, rich in faith, but a calm, quiet, household faith. Lonely indeed her life must often have been in the solitary cottage, into which, assuredly, nothing in the shape of a luxury ever intruded itself. It has been called, by a Welshman, a curious anomaly in Welsh life, the insatiable appetite for sermons, and the singular, even marvellous, disregard for the temporal comforts of the preacher. Christmas, it seems to us, was able to bear much very unrepiningly, but sometimes his righteous soul was vexed. Upon one occasion, when, after preaching from home, he not only received less for his expenses than he naturally expected, but even less than an ordinary itinerant fee, an old dame remarked to him, “Well, Christmas, bach, you have given us a wonderful sermon, and I hope you will be paid at the resurrection,” “Yes, yes, shan fach,” said the preacher, “no doubt of that, but what am I to do till I get there? And there’s the old white mare that carries me, what will she do? for her there will be no resurrection.”
Decidedly the Welsh of that day seemed to think that it was essential to the preservation of the purity of the Gospel that their ministers should be kept low. Mr. D. M. Evans, in his Life of Christmas Evans, gives us the anecdote of a worthy and popular minister of this time, who was in the receipt of exactly twenty pounds a year; he received an invitation from another Church, offering him three pounds ten a month. This miserable lover of filthy lucre, like another Demas, was tempted by the dazzling offer, and intimated his serious intention of accepting “the call.” There was a great commotion in the neighbourhood, where the poor man was exceedingly beloved; many of his people remonstrated with him on the sad exhibition he was giving of a guilty love of money; and, after much consideration, the leading deacon was appointed as a deputation to wait upon him, and to inform him, that rather than suffer the loss of his removal on account of money considerations, they had agreed to advance his salary to twenty guineas, or twenty-one pounds! Overcome by such an expression of his people’s attachment, says Mr. Evans, he repented of his incontinent love of money, and stayed.
A strange part-glimpse all this seems to give of Welsh clerical life, not calculated either to kindle, or to keep in a minister’s mind, the essential sense of self-respect. The brothers of La Trappe, St. Francis and his preaching friars, do not seem to us a more humiliated tribe than Christmas and his itinerating “little brethren of the poor.” We suppose that sometimes a farmer would send a cheese, and another a few pounds of butter, and another a flitch of bacon; and, perhaps, occasionally, in the course of his travels,—we do not know of any such instances, we only suppose it possible, and probable,—some rich man, after an eloquent sermon, would graciously patronize the illustrious preacher, by pressing a real golden sovereign into the apostle’s hand.
One wonders how clothes were provided. William Huntingdon’s “Bank of Faith” seems to us, in comparison with that of Christmas Evans, like the faith of a man who wakes every morning to the sense of the possession of a million sterling at his banker’s,—in comparison with his faith, who rises sensible that, from day to day, he has to live as on the assurance, and confidence of a child.
Certainly, Wales did not contain at that time a more unselfish, and divinely thoughtless creature than this Christmas Evans; and then he had no children. A man without children, without a child, can afford to be more careless and indifferent to the world’s gold and gear. The coat, no doubt, often got very shabby, and the mothers of Israel in Anglesea, let us hope, sometimes gathered together, and thought of pleasant surprises in the way of improving the personal appearance of their pastor; but indeed the man was ridiculous in his disregard to all the circumstances of dress and adornment. Once, when he was about to set forth on a preaching tour, Catherine had found her mind greatly exercised concerning her husband’s hat, and, with some difficulty, she had succeeded in equipping that noble head of his with a new one. But upon the journey there came a time when his horse needed to drink; at last he came to a clear, and pleasant pond, or brook, but he was at a loss for a pail; now what was to be done? Happy thought, equal to any of those of Mr. Barnand! he took the hat from off his head, and filled it with water for poor old Lemon. When he returned home, Catherine was amazed at the deterioration of the headgear, and he related to her the story. A man like this would not be likely to be greatly troubled by any defections in personal adornment.