It was a strange scene; but as he went on, in quaint, but terribly earnest strain, anger passed into awe, and mute astonishment into rapt attention. No one, who heard the words, could ever again hear them unheeded, nor think lightly of the doom of the unbelieving. The anecdote is worth being laid to heart, in these days, when there is too often a reserve in declaring the whole counsel of God.
After service, in the vestry, the deacons were in great anger with the blunt preacher; and one, a well-known religious man in Bristol, exclaimed, “Mr. Breeze, you have strangely forgotten yourself to-night, sir. We did not expect that you would have behaved in this way. We have always been very glad to see you in our pulpit, but your sermon to-night, sir, has been most insolent, shameful!” He wound up a pretty sharp condemnation by saying, “In short, I don’t understand you!”
“Ho! ho!” exclaimed Sammy. “You say you do not understand me? Eh! look you then, I will tell you; I do understand you! Up in our mountains, we have one man there, we do call him exciseman; he comes along to our shops and stores, and says, ‘What have you here? Anything contraband here?’ And if it is all right, the good man says, ‘Step in, Mr. Exciseman, come in, look you.’ He is all fair, open, and above-board. But if he has anything secreted there, he does draw back surprised, and he makes a fine face, and says, ‘Sir, I do not understand you.’ Now, you do tell me that you don’t understand me, but I do understand you, gentlemen, I do; and I do fear you have something contraband here; and I will say good-night to you; but I must tell you one little word; that is: ‘He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned,’ and I begs no pardons.”
But, with these simple illustrations, we have not exhausted the number of noticeable names. In connection with every name as it occurs, some interesting anecdote meets the memory. There was Robert Lloyd, the shoemaker, and Thomas the turner, and Robert Roberts, of whom, from the stories before us, we do not find it difficult to believe, that he had the power to describe things in such a vivid, and graphic manner, as to make his hearers feel as if the scenes were passing before their eyes. Then there were David Evans of Aberayron, and Ebenezer Richard of Tregaron, and William Morris of St. David’s, whose every sermon was said to be a string of sparkling gems; John Jones of Talysarn, and his brother, David Jones; John Hughes; the seraphic Henry Rees, and Thomas Philips, and many another name, concerning whom an illustration might be furnished, of their powers of wit, wisdom, or eloquence. England, itself, has been indebted, in many a circle, to eminent Welsh preachers, who have stimulated thought, created the sphere of holy usefulness, moved over the minds of cultivated members with the freshness of a mountain wind, or a mountain stream. It would be invidious to mention their names—many are yet living; and some, who have not long quitted the Church on earth, have still left behind them the fragrance of loved, and honoured names, and exalted, and earnest labours.
Few of our readers, we may suppose, can be unacquainted with the name, and memory of “The Man of Ross,” so famous through the verses of Pope. Ross is a well-known little town in Monmouthshire, on the banks of the Wye, on the borders of Wales. There, in the parish church, in the pew in which John Kyrle, the Man of Ross, sat, more than a hundred years since, a curious sight may be seen: two elm-trees rise, and spread out their arms, and flourish within the church; especially during the spring, and summer months, they form a singular adornment to the sacred edifice. The tradition is, that they are suckers from a tree planted by the “Man of Ross,” outside the church; but it was cut down by a certain rector, because it excluded the light; the consequence was that they forced their way inside, where they had continued to grow, and flourish. As we have looked upon the singular sight of those trees, in the Man of Ross’s pew, we have often thought of those who, in Wales, planted in the house of the Lord, flourish in sacred, and sainted memories, in the courts of our God. Although all that was mortal of them has passed away, they still bring forth fruit, and flourish in the grateful recollections of the country, they were permitted to bless, and adorn.
Yes, it is very singular to think of many of these men of Wild Wales. Even those who were counted heretical, were more than extraordinary men; they were, perhaps, men who, in our day, would seem rather remarkable for their orthodoxy of sentiment. Rhys Stephen, in an extended note in his Memoirs of Christmas Evans, refers to the influence of discussions, in the Principality, raised by the Rev. William Richards, LL.D. A large portion of the ministerial life of this distinguished man, was passed in England; he was educated for the ministry at the Baptist Academy in Bristol, for some time co-pastor with Dr. Ash, author of the Dictionary, and then became the minister of the Baptist Church at Lynn, in Norfolk, where he remained for twenty years. He always continued, however, in every sense of the word, a Welshman, and, notwithstanding his English pastorates, his residences in Wales were frequent and long.
He was born at Pen-hydd, in Pembrokeshire, in 1749. He published a Welsh-English dictionary, and his services to Welsh literature were eminent. But he was regarded as a heretic; his temperament, singular as it seems in a Welshman, was almost purely philosophic, and neither imaginative, nor emotional; he disliked the great annual religious gatherings of his countrymen, and called them fairs, and the preachers, upon these occasions, he sometimes described in epithets, which were not complimentary. Naturally, his brethren paid him back; they called him a heretic,—which is also an exceedingly convenient, and not unusual method of revenge. Dr. Richards’s influence, however, in Wales, at the beginning of this century, appears to have been very great; the charges against him, he does not appear to have been very mindful to disprove, and it is exceedingly likely that a different, or more guarded mode of expression, was the height of his offending. Who can fathom, or delineate, all the fine shades and divergencies of the Arian controversy?—men whose perfect soundness, in evangelical doctrine, was utterly undisputed, talked with Dr. Richards, and said, that they could not discover that he held opinions different from their own. In a letter, dated December 7th, 1804, when grave charges had been urged against him, and all the religious mischiefs throughout the Principality ascribed to him, he writes as follows, to a friend:—
“I think I may safely say, that no great change, of any kind, has taken place in my sentiments since I knew you. You must know, surely, that I did not use to be an Athanasian, or even a Waterlandian. Such views of the Deity always appeared to me too Tritheistical. I have been used to think, and do so still, that there is a particular meaning in such words as these of the Apostle’s, ‘To us there is but one God, the Father;’ but I never could say, or think, with the Socinians, that Jesus Christ is no more than a man, like ourselves. I believe, indeed, that He is a Man; but I, also, believe that He is ‘Emmanuel, God with us’—that he is ‘the form of God’—‘the image of the invisible God’—an object of Divine worship, so that we should ‘honour the Son as we honour the Father’—‘that all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily,’ or substantially. In short, I believe everything of the dignity, and glory of Christ’s character, that does not divide the Deity, or land in Tritheism.”
Again, to another correspondent: “I believe, also, in the doctrine of the atonement, or sacrifice, of Christ, in the virtue of His blood, and in the prevalence of His mediation.”
Something of the same order of man, so far as sentiment, and knowledge are indications, but possessed of more wit, imagination, and emotion, was Davies, of Castell Hywel, the first pastor of Christmas Evans, and of Daniel Davies, of Swansea. He was, in his day, a man of many-sided reputation, but of suspicious doctrinal relations. He was so eminent a classical scholar, and so many of the Welsh clergy had received their education from him, that when Dr. Horsley was appointed Bishop of St. David’s, he expressed, in his usual passionate manner, his irritation that the most distinguished tutor in South Wales was a Nonconformist, and gave out that he would not ordain any of Mr. Davies’ pupils. Davies was a great bard; and Welshmen who know both languages, say that his translation of Gray’s “Elegy” is, in force, and pathos, superior to the original. This will scarcely seem strange, if the deep pathos of the Welsh language be taken into account. His epitaph on Dr. Priestley—satirizing, of course, the materialism of Priestley—illustrates, at once, his humour, and versification: