“During a revival which took place in the Church under the care of Mr. David Davies, many young people united themselves with that people, and I amongst them. What became of the major part of these young converts, I have never known; but I hope God’s grace followed them as it did me, the meanest of the whole. One of the fruits of this awakening was the desire for religious knowledge that fell upon us. Scarcely one person out of ten could, at this time, and in those neighbourhoods, read at all, even in the language of the country. We bought Bibles and candles, and were accustomed to meet together in the evening, in the barn of Penyralltfawr; and thus, in about one month, I was able to read the Bible in my mother tongue. I was vastly delighted with so much learning. This, however, did not satisfy me, but I borrowed books, and learnt a little English. Mr. Davies, my pastor, understood that I thirsted for knowledge, and took me to his school, where I stayed for six months. Here I went through the Latin Grammar; but so low were my circumstances that I could stay there no longer.”
To preach, as we all know, has often been an object of ambition with young converts, and the novices in the vestibule of knowledge of the spiritual life; such an ambition seems very early to have stirred in the heart of young Christmas. We have already mentioned how it was that he so cruelly lost the use of an eye; it illustrates the singular brutality of the time and neighbourhood; an inoffensive lad, simply because he renounced the society of profane drunkards, and was laudably busying himself with the affairs of a higher life, was set upon in the darkness of the night by six young ruffians, unmercifully beaten with sticks, and the sight of an eye destroyed. It was the night after this calamity that he had a dream; and the dream of the night reveals the bent of his day dreams. He dreamt that the Day of Judgment was come, that he saw the world in a blaze; with great confidence he called out, “Jesus, save me!” And he thought he saw the Lord turn towards him and say, “It was thy intention to preach the Gospel, but it is now too late, for the Day of Judgment is come.” But this vision of the night clung to him when he awoke; perhaps he feared that the loss of the eye would interfere with his acceptance as a minister. Certainly the dream had an influence on his future career,—so had many other dreams. It was always his belief that he had received some of his most important impressions from dreams: nothing, apparently, no amount of reason or argument, could persuade him to the contrary. To preach the Gospel became an ardent desire now with this passionately imaginative and earnest youth; but there were serious hindrances in the way. There appears to have been a kind of law in the Church with which he was connected at Llwynrhydowain, that no member of the Church should be permitted to preach until he had passed through a college course. It is very remarkable that two of the greatest preachers who have adorned the pulpit of Wales should have been admitted into Church fellowship together on the same evening,—David Davies, afterwards of Swansea, whose name we have already mentioned, and Christmas Evans. It was always the regret and complaint of their first pastor, that the Church law to which we have referred, deprived his Church of the two most eminent men it had ever produced. There were, no doubt, other reasons; but it is singular, now, to notice the parallelism of the gifted pair, for they also preached their first sermon, within a week of each other, in the same cottage. Cottage preaching was then of much more importance than it now seems to our ecclesiastical and æsthetic apprehensions; and the congregations which assembled in those old Welsh cottages were such as to try the mental and spiritual strength of a young preacher. How Davies acquitted himself, and how he ran his course, we may notice by-and-bye; our present concern is with Christmas Evans. Perhaps our readers will not entertain a depreciating opinion of the youth, when they hear him very candidly confess that the substance of his first sermon was taken from Beveridge’s “Thesaurus Theologicus,” a book borrowed, probably, from his pastor. But a Mr. Davies, who must have been a reading man although a farmer, heard it, was very much impressed by it, but went home and found it; so that the poor boy’s reputation as a preacher seemed gone.