CHAPTER XII

THE REVIVAL

In the making of modern Wales two men stand out pre-eminent, and without rivals--King Henry VIII, and the Revivalist Howel Harris. The former gave to Wales the opportunity of playing an equal part with England in the life of the Empire. The latter roused Wales from its mediæval lethargy into clear realization and appreciation of the opportunity which lay within its grasp. In the darkest hour of its history, in 1916, the British Empire entrusted its fortunes to the care of a Welshman. That Welshman had been made possible by Henry VIII: he was produced by Howel Harris.

Enough has been said already to prove that Nonconformity did not appear in Wales for the first time in the eighteenth century. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 occasioned the ejection from their livings of some two thousand clergy, more than a hundred of whom are said to {200} have been Welsh. Yet in spite of that, and in spite of the persecution made possible by the Clarendon Code, Dissent continued to exist. The Toleration Act of King William made matters easier; but even then Nonconformity did not thrive. There was nothing peculiarly Welsh about any of the sects; they were merely branches in Wales of bodies English or Continental in origin, thought, and outlook. Long before the time of the Methodist Revival these sects had ceased to be missionary enterprises. They had lost all their evangelical ardour, and were occupied mainly with rancorous disputations about recondite points of theology. For the moral and religious condition into which Wales had fallen, they were almost as much to blame as the Established Church. Even if we accept the most favourable accounts, the condition of the people must have been extremely bad. Few of the lower classes knew how to read. In many churches whole months would elapse without any sermon at all; while in others the parson would read a learned English discourse to a sparse congregation knowing nothing but Welsh. Wesley declared that the people were "as little versed in the principles of Christianity as a Creek or Cherokee {201} Indian." That the people were completely indifferent to any religious impulse, and that they lived, for the most part, the life of mere animals, is proved by an overwhelming mass of evidence. Of course too much must not be made of the testimony of extreme Puritans, who were scandalized by what they considered desecration of the Sabbath, and by such things as wrestling, dancing, cock-fighting, and drinking. But when all allowance has been made for this prejudice, a terrible indictment can still be drawn up; for the vast majority of the people must have been totally illiterate, extremely superstitious, and without a thought save for the gratification of their bodily needs and desires. North Wales was almost wholly Anglican, there being not more than ten small Nonconformist congregations. In the South Dissenters were more numerous. But at the highest computation we cannot put the total number of Nonconformists in Wales at more than an eighth of the total population.

The awakening came with Howel Harris, a man, like Luther, of tempestuous passions, strong character, wide vision, and magnetic personality. A clear hint had already been given by the Rev. Griffith Jones, Vicar of {202} Llanddowror, of the method which would have to be employed for the regeneration of Wales. In spite of every discouragement from his fellow clergymen, he had begun the practice of preaching, in a popular style, in the open air, at fairs and wakes and wherever people were gathered together for dissipation. Griffith Jones, however, was an educator rather than a revivalist, and as such we shall have more to say about him in another place. Of the Revival itself he was a precursor, rather than a leading figure.

Howel Harris was born in 1714, at Trevecka in Breconshire. He was educated at the Llwynllwyd Grammar School, and was intended for the Church. But the death of his father made it necessary that he should earn his own living; and for some years he became a schoolmaster. During this period he studied hard, and, what is of more importance in his case, pondered over the evil condition of the people among whom he dwelt. An intense desire was awakened within him to save souls. In 1735 he matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford; but his sojourn at the University was only a few weeks in duration, and he returned to his own home more eager than ever to preach the Gospel. He was {203} not ordained, neither was he a licensed preacher of any Nonconformist body. On the contrary he was then, and remained all through life, a member of the Church of England. But he began to go on preaching tours into every part of Wales; and this work he continued, without intermission, for the next sixteen years. The life was a strenuous, and even a dangerous, one. On one occasion he writes: "It is now nine weeks since I began to go round South and North Wales, and this week I came home. I have visited in that time thirteen counties, and travelled most of 150 miles every week and discoursed twice every day--sometimes three or four times a day. In this last journey I have not taken off my clothes for seven nights, travelling from one morning to the next evening without any rest above 100 miles, discoursing at midnight, or very early, on the mountains in order to avoid persecution." The closing words have a very modest sound; but it must not be thought that Harris fled from danger; on the contrary it would be nearer the truth to say that he wantonly incurred it. The "persecution" of which he speaks was no figurative expression, but a hard and stern reality. Indeed this period of his life is one {204} of the most wonderful romances of modern times.

Innumerable examples could be given of the things which Harris endured at the hands of his opponents; and it must be confessed that his own aggressiveness, and the unseasonable moment selected by him for delivering his message, make one feel that his sufferings were, at times, almost deserved. On one occasion a Justice of the Peace, one Marmaduke Gwynn by name, came to hear him, armed with a copy of the Riot Act, but was so impressed with what he heard that he invited him to be a guest at his house. Sometimes his success was complete. "Yesterday," he writes, "was a glorious day: I was at a great feast, and chose to oppose the devil on his own ground; and we discoursed within a few yards of a public house, where diversion was to be. I never tasted more power. I believe some were cut through; many wept, and one fainted; others felt a great trembling, and all were filled with awe." His enemies did not hesitate to issue false reports about him. "Last night and to-day," he says, "I met with no opposition; many are deterred from coming to hear by a report passing for truth, that I really correspond {205} with the King of Spain, and that £40 are offered for taking me." At Llanbrynmair he finds the people living "like brutes, knowing nothing"; yet so convincing was the message which he delivered, that he left behind him there the nucleus of one of the first and strongest Methodist congregations. On the road from Cemmaes he was roughly hustled and beaten, and followed by a gang of men who cried, "Down with the Roundheads." A woman threw mud at him, calling him a "damned devil"; and he was hounded out of the parish with dogs. At Machynlleth he was beset by an infuriated rabble, headed by an attorney's clerk with mouth "so full of the language of hell as if his name had been legion"; and with him a gentleman and a clergyman whose language was, apparently, in no wise different from that of the clerk! Some years later this same clerk relented; but the parson, to the end of his days, never ceased to allude to the new preachers, in his sermons, as "those wicked Methodists." At Crickhowell Harris was so roughly handled that he was obliged to seek refuge in a friend's house, his clothes torn, his face covered with blood, his head cut in thirteen places, and his body bruised. South Wales seems to {206} have been decidedly more wicked than the North, and Glamorgan worst of all. An attempt to shoot Harris was made at Swansea and Llandilo; and at Carmarthen a man drew a sword, with the intention of killing him. But the North was bad enough. At Bala (so soon afterwards to become the Oxford of Welsh Nonconformity) he had a very unpleasant time on his second visit to the place. The Vicar raised a great club which he was carrying, and threatened to strike him with it. Not content with that, the reverend man caused a barrel of beer to be placed in the open street, where all comers might freely drink, in order that their will to harm the Revivalist might be strengthened, and their valour enhanced at the cost of their discretion. Nevertheless, in spite of all persecution, the whole country was soon ablaze with the Revival; and people came in hundreds and thousands to hear the preachers. Howel Harris was not alone in the field. About the same time, and quite independently of him, Daniel Rowlands, the eloquent curate of Llangeitho, had begun to preach, and a warm friendship was struck between the two men. Griffith Jones gave the new movement encouraging recognition; and Whitefield who, {207} by his intense ardour and matchless eloquence, was infusing new life into the religion of England extended the right hand of fellowship. In 1740 Harris made an invaluable convert in the person of William Williams of Pantycelyn, in all probability the greatest hymn writer the world has ever seen, a man who gave imperishable expression to the theology, the ethics, and the ideals of the Revival. Williams was ordained by the Bishop of St. David's; and became curate to that charming and picturesque Welsh historian, Theophilus Evans. But the learned author of _Drych y Prif Oesoedd_ had no liking for his curate's superabundant zeal; and when restraint was put upon his preaching, Williams joined the Methodists.

In 1743 was held at Watford what was probably the first Welsh Methodist Association; and, in the same year, another at Carmarthen. During the first few years there was active partnership between the Welsh Methodists and those of England; and plans were discussed for their unification. Fortunately these plans always failed to commend themselves to the majority, and the two bodies remained apart. By degrees Harris became estranged from all his early {208} friends and coadjutors. For this he himself was, no doubt, chiefly to blame. He was not an easy man to work with, being jealous, obstinate, and masterful. Furthermore, his theological opinions were undergoing a change, and he had become subject to frequent ecstasies and visions, all of which he regarded as special revelations and tokens of Divine favour. The upshot of it all was that Howel Harris decided to live a life apart, and to form at Trevecka a sort of religious community which he called a Family. Something must be said about this scheme, which engrossed the last twenty-two years of his life (1751-1773) before we return to follow the growth of Methodism in general.

As early as 1736 Harris seems to have cherished the desire to found at Trevecka a community, after the pattern of that of Frank at Halle, or of the Moravians at Herrnhut and Fulneck; but for several years he was altogether absorbed in the work of evangelization. Now, however, he took up the idea with renewed zest. In preparing the house at Trevecka for the reception of the Community, he had the assistance of his friend and adviser Madame Griffith. Residents began to arrive in 1752, and continued to do so, {209} from time to time, for many years. But the average membership remained throughout somewhere near a hundred. Every member was expected to put all his worldly possessions into a common fund. The concerns of the Family were both religious and industrial. Three services were held every day, and on Sundays four. But industry held almost as important a place in the scheme as religion; and it is this that makes Harris so prominent a figure in the economic and social, as well as in the religious, life of Wales. The first faint indications of the coming Industrial Revolution were beginning to be descried in England; but as yet Wales was almost wholly agricultural and pastoral; and, of course, what industries there were, were carried on in the cottages of the people. In a few short years the enormous mineral wealth of the country would be discovered; and the introduction of the factory system, and the construction of turnpike roads, would alter the whole face of society. More than a century earlier, an Industrial Community had been founded by the Vaughans of Bredwardine, but that had long sunk into oblivion: it was the Trevecka Family that really brought the main ideas of the Industrial Revolution to the doors of {210} the Welsh people. The industrial pursuits of the new Community were interesting and varied. They picked wool, carded flax, and knitted. A woollen factory was instituted, and a printing-press installed. Harris and his followers were equally interested in the development of the land. He introduced new, and better, methods of growing turnips and corn, and also an improved system of crop rotation.

Our account of this versatile man would not be complete without a word about a most curious, and wholly unexpected, episode in his life. In 1756 the Seven Years' War broke out, and a French invasion of England was deemed to be imminent. Loyal citizens everywhere rushed to arms; and the Breconshire Agricultural Society, with which Harris was intimately connected, offered to form themselves into a troop of light horse. Five members of the Family joined the regular army. They served in Nova Scotia, besieged Louisberg, and fought with Wolfe at Quebec. Four were killed, or died of fever, and one only lived to return to Trevecka. In 1759 Harris joined the local militia; and was made, first an Ensign, and soon afterwards a Captain-Lieutenant. In this capacity he accompanied {211} the troops to Yarmouth; and he did not return home until 1763, when the Peace of Paris put an end to all danger of invasion.

The last ten years of his life Harris spent quietly with the Family, his calm existence varied only by the assistance which he gave to Lady Huntingdon in founding her Methodist College at Trevecka Isaf. To the end he remained a member of the Episcopal Church; and at his funeral, in July 1773, fifteen clergymen administered the Sacrament to a multitude of twenty thousand people, who had come to show their affection and respect.

By this time congregations of Methodists had grown very numerous in Wales, and the problem of administering to their spiritual needs was becoming a difficult and a pressing one. It was obvious that the few clergy who had joined the Association could not cope with the situation. Large numbers of lay preachers had arisen; but none of them were ordained, nor did they claim the right to administer the Sacraments. The English Church was confronted with the alternative of either making its doors wider, so as to make it possible for the newly converted multitudes to find a congenial home within it; or of keeping its doors rigidly narrow, and so {212} keeping the people out. The latter course was the one adopted. The leaders of the Church remained stiff, unsympathetic, and aloof. For years the small band of Methodist clergy strove hard to obtain recognition, having to perform the difficult task of restraining the eagerness of their own more extreme followers. To most of them, if not to all, the thought of a break with the Church was extremely repugnant; and they were prepared to go great lengths to make such a thing unnecessary. But on one point they remained firm: the people must have the preaching, and the religious services which they found to be of most spiritual value to them. If the Church could provide this, so much the better; if it refused, then secession must be bravely faced. In 1802 the Rev. Thomas Charles (better known as Charles o'r Bala) issued his _Vindication_, in which he repudiated the name "Dissenter," proved the absolute identity of the Methodists with the Church in creed, and made a last appeal for recognition. The appeal met with no response; and at the Association which met at Bala in 1811 Charles himself, while still protesting his preference for episcopal ordination, ordained eight preachers, of whom the great John Elias was {213} one. This implied a definite breach with the Church. The great body of Methodists formed themselves into a new Church, with its own constitution and its own Confession of Faith. It became known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church. But even then six Methodist clergymen refused to quit the Establishment.

Throughout the nineteenth century Nonconformity flourished abundantly in Wales. The Revival had not only produced the Calvinistic Methodists, but had given a new and powerful impetus to the older sects; and between them they claimed the allegiance of the vast majority of Welsh people. The young Welshman, and even more so the foreigner, finds it a little difficult to understand the enormous place which the Chapel filled in the life of Wales during the greater part of the century. Those little plain square buildings, scattered so profusely all over Wales, so ugly in the eyes of the tourist, yet so sacred to those who dwell around them; what was the secret of their power and their charm? To-day there are many competing institutions--the school, the college, the club, and the library; but in those days the chapel was everything. In the pulpit the artistic soul of Wales found its full expression, as it {214} has never quite succeeded in doing anywhere else. Its poetry (if we except its hymns), good as much of it is, never even approaches the very best. Its painting and its sculpture are almost non-existent. Even in music Wales has not given to the world anything of real distinction, and of abiding value. But between 1780 and 1880 it produced successive generations of preachers, who brought pulpit oratory to a point that has never been surpassed, even if it has been equalled, by any other nation before or since. Even to-day, when oratory has declined, and when there are so many competing attractions, there is nothing that the Welshman loves so well as a Preaching Meeting. Five thousand people will still come together eagerly to the village green on one of these great occasions. At six o'clock in the morning two sermons, averaging each an hour in length, will be delivered. These will be followed, at ten o'clock, by two others of the same length. In the afternoon two more will be delivered. The day will close with yet another two, or sometimes three, such sermons; and the multitude will disperse over hill and moor to their scattered homes, discussing the great feats of oratory to which they have {215} listened, quoting and conferring with discrimination, and singing, for the twentieth time that day, some favourite hymn.

The accounts which we possess, written by eyewitnesses, of some of the effects produced by the great preachers make marvellous reading. In the hands of a John Elias, a Henry Rees, or a John Jones, the vast congregation, standing before them throughout the long summer hours, would be like clay. From tears to laughter, from ecstatic joy to the profoundest sorrow and the most poignant terror, it would be moved by a word, or even a gesture. So realistic and dramatic was the preaching of John Elias that, on one occasion when he was describing the Almighty letting the arrow fly from his bow, the whole vast audience parted in two in order to allow passage for the shaft. So powerful was the voice of Owen Thomas that, preaching at Bangor his accents could be distinctly heard in Anglesey across the Menai Straits. Needless to say, scenes of the most uncontrolled enthusiasm would prevail. Fear of Hell, and hope of Heaven would alternate in the hearts of the congregation; but in all the utterances of the greatest preachers the dominant note was the compelling love of God in Christ.

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In the chapel, and in the federation of chapels, the Welshman learnt the difficult art of self-government. The rule of the parson had been an autocratic one; that of the Nonconformist bodies was, from the first, democratic. Every official, including the Minister himself, was chosen by a direct vote of the whole congregation. Even in a further, and a different, sense Nonconformity was democratic. Its members were mainly drawn from the middle and lower classes; and its Ministers, until well advanced in life, were simple workmen--John Elias a weaver, Christmas Evans a farm servant, John Jones a quarryman, Williams o'r Wern a carpenter. The doors of the Universities were closed against them; and Glyndwr's University of Wales was still an unrealized dream. They were the poor preachers of a poor people.

Did Nonconformity justify its existence? Was the life of Wales cleansed and elevated? The answer of the impartial historian must surely be an emphatic affirmative. Between the itinerary of the preacher Giraldus Cambrensis, and that of the preacher Howel Harris, a period of some five hundred and fifty years intervened; but it is difficult to see that the Welsh people were at all higher, {217} mentally or morally, at the later date than they were at the earlier one. But add another hundred years, and no chance visitor would suppose that he was seeing the same people.

The indirect effects of Nonconformity were, in their own way, as important as the direct. The Welshman, hitherto so careless and docile in his politics, became thoughtful and independent, having accustomed himself to government by discussion and voting in his chapel. He had learned to read in the Sunday School; and it was not long before he added to his Bible and his commentary a newspaper and a literary and political magazine. Every chapel would have its Literary Society; and by that means new ideas in poetry and music, in science and in philosophy would slowly be disseminated among the people. A modern scholar probably did not go too far when he declared that "Nonconformity found Wales derelict; it has reared up a new nation. It found Wales pagan; it has made her one of the most religious countries in the world. It found Wales ignorant; it has so stimulated her energies that by to-day Welshmen, largely by their own self-sacrifice, have provided for themselves the most complete educational system in Europe."

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