Critical review 02

This is the rest of the critical review of Morgan's biography from 1845:

Among the class some of whom we have thus briefly noted, John Elias stood forward in acknowledged, though by no means in such transcendent and indisputable pre-eminence as a preacher, as big exclusive fame in England would seem to imply. In other qualities of character, necessary for a leader and ruler of the people, he was greatly inferior to several of those whose names we have mentioned. We make these remarks, not to deprecate the worth of this great and good man, but to correct a misconception which this volume is adapted to create, - that Mr. Elias was a sort of giant among dwarfs, a solitary form of grandeur and devotion, around which all his brethren, - as if they were at best only men of clever mediocrity, are to be grouped and arranged, in a position of quite submissive and secondary importance. This error of the work has been already kindly rebuked, in an able Welsh periodical, conducted by a number of gentlemen exclusively connected with that body of Christians of which Mr. Elias was so conspicuous an ornament.

With this abatement, however, we have no exceptions to take to the language of eulogy and admiration, in which the subject of this memoir is spoken of throughout its pages. He was indeed a man of whom any country might well be proud - nor is it easy to overrate the importance of the services he rendered to his native land - a man whose name will long be a word of magic significance to the pious mountaineers of Wales. We must refer our readers to the volume before us, for a fuller account of his life and character.

The author of this memoir is a worthy and pious clergyman of the Established Church, whose great simplicity of mind, and catholic liberality of sentiment, cannot fail to commend his labours to our respectful estimation. The anxiety which Mr. Morgan has shown, to rescue the memory of several of his illustrious countrymen from obscurity, is deserving of all admiration; and the zeal, diligence, and conscientiousness, with which he has discharged his biographical duties, are everywhere obviously apparent. Nor can we overlook the utter absence of all sectarian bitterness or bigotry, by which he is distinguished, at a time when so many of his brethren are almost beside themselves with the intoxicating fumes of spiritual and official arrogance. Beyond this, however, our commendations cannot go. We should do violence to our own critical conscience, if we allowed it to be supposed, that Mr. Morgan's other qualifications for the task he has undertaken are equal to his pious ardour and good intentions. - But they are by no means so; and we sympathise, we confess, with the fears, which we know many of our Welsh brethren entertain, that this book will not only convey a very imperfect impression of Mr. Elias's character and preaching to the English public, but will also tend to perpetuate rather than correct the false conception as to the nature of Welsh preaching in general, which we apprehend prevails very extensively in this country. The fact is, that though Mr. Morgan is a most excellent man, and is actuated by the best motives and spirit, he seems to us singularly deficient in faculty, and especially that kind of faculty requisite to apprehend and delineate such a character as John Elias. To transfer to the pages of a book anything like a living picture of a great popular orator, is one of the most difficult of tasks, and rendered, of course, still more so, when it is to be done through the medium of another language. It requires that there should exist between the subject and his biographer at least such points of similarity, as would bring the two minds into some degree of sympathy. But Mr. Morgan's mind, on the contrary, appears to be, in almost all respects, the exact antipode of Mr. Elias's. The contrast, indeed, is almost ludicrous, between the tame, creeping, common-place style of the memoir, and the daring, vehement, fiery spirit of the man whom it professes to commemorate. It is as if one saw the patient, ponderous, slow-paced ox, yoked with the war-horse, whose neck is clothed with thunder, who paweth in the valley and saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha. Mr. Morgan's attempts, therefore, to describe Mr. Elias's preaching and character, consist of little more than vague and impotent exclamations of wonder and admiration, and the specimens he has given of his manner of speaking are both ill-chosen, and most imperfectly represented. As a sample, both of the style and strain of sentiment in which the work is written, we may take the first few sentences of the volume.

"I feel, in entering upon this very important work, my inadequacy and insufficiency. I have frequently, while composing it, sought the Lord's aid and direction. I trust that he has heard my petitions, and favoured me with the guidance of his Spirit, - a blessing which was so much enjoyed by the subject of this memoir. May the following pages be attended with the Divine blessing to the reader! Great and remarkable men have appeared in every period of the Christian church, filling important situations and becoming eminently useful. The Lord is sovereign in thus placing and endowing his servants, as well as in every other work. Very few have been so gifted by him as Elias. He was indeed a rare monument of the Lord's providential care; he was favoured with extraordinary qualifications for the ministry, and made very useful in his day and generation. The memory of the wise, the pious, and the useful, especially such a man as Elias, is truly blessed, and ought to be preserved and made known for the benefit of the present and future generations."

And so twaddles the good Mr. Morgan, through several pages of this book. Happily, however, the volume contains contributions from several pens far better qualified to do justice to the subject, than that of the worthy biographer himself. Especially is there a most spirited and graphic sketch by Mr. Thomas, a gentleman who has gained great celebrity, by winning several high prizes in the Bardic contests of his country.

With all its imperfections, therefore, we venture to recommend the volume to our readers, as being the best because it is the only formal attempt made to convey to the English public some idea of the nature of Welsh eloquence. We trust, indeed, the time is not far distant, when some one competent to the task, will undertake to supply this desideratum, as we have a profound and deliberate conviction, that the art of popular preaching is incomparably better understood and practised among the Welsh, than among ourselves.

Critical review 01

This critical review of Morgan's book on Elias appeared in The Congregationalist in 1845. It begins

A Memoir of the Rev. John Elias. By the Rev. E. Morgan, A.M. Vicar of Apton, Leicestershire, and Author of the Life of the Rev. T. Charles, of Bala, fyc. With an Introductory Essay by the Rev. J. K. Foster, late President of Cheshunt College. 12mo. pp. 216. London: Hughes.

The subject of this memoir was, in many respects, a very remarkable man, and represents a class of remarkable men, with whom, we cannot help wishing, that the English churches had a more intimate and accurate acquaintance. We refer to the great Welsh preachers, the immediate successors of the early Methodists in Wales, whose ministry has, for the last sixty or seventy years, so powerfully stirred the national mind of the Principality, and wrought so extraordinary a change in the moral condition and aspect of their country. We know not, indeed, where to look, at least in modern times, for so convincing an illustration of the power of the pulpit, as an engine of influence over the popular mind, as is presented in the history of the labours and successes of these excellent men. And yet the names of most of them have never been heard in this country. Of those who were the means of commencing that happy reformation in Wales, such as Howel Harris, Rowlands of Llangeitho, Charles of Bala, and other pious clergymen of the Establishment, the English public has occasionally heard. But the permanence and extension of the movement which they originated were secured, not by successors of their own class, who, even when they were pious and evangelical men, rather employed their influence to repress and retard it, because they saw it was diverging at too acute an angle from that model of ecclesiastical decorum, and clerical supremacy, to which they were so fondly wedded, but by a body of men, "chosen out of the people," whose minds were more thoroughly in sympathy with the great bulk of the community, and who, in other respects, were admirably qualified to carry on and perfect the work so happily begun. Shaking themselves free from those trammels of official fastidiousness, to which the clerical leaders of Methodism clung to the last, and overleaping at a single hound the narrow pale of prejudice within which it was thought for a season to restrict their labours, they threw themselves, in perfect freedom of thought and action, and with the whole strength and energy of their character, into the great work of evangelising their country. They went forth into the highways and hedges, and their voices, proclaiming in clear, powerful, trumpet-tones, the message of truth and mercy, were every where heard awakening the echoes of their native mountains, while the people thronged in eager and excited multitudes to listen to that wild and thrilling eloquence. Results the most decisive and gratifying soon became apparent. Powerful revivals, not the product of forced, artificial, mechanical means, but springing from profound and spontaneous spiritual impulses, were seen to heave and agitate whole neighbourhoods, as if shaken with an earthquake. Large churches were gathered where none had previously existed. Rustic sanctuaries sprang up in every corner of the land. A great religious organisation was created, which spread itself over the whole country, and continues to this day to bless, with spiritual irrigation, the mountains and valleys of Wales. It need hardly be remarked that those who were instrumental in accomplishing such results as these, were no common men : we believe them, indeed, to have been most richly and rarely endowed with all qualifications - mental, moral, and spiritual - for the work they were appointed to fulfil: men of massive minds, of eminent piety, of transparent and irreproachable character, of undaunted zeal and courage; and moreover endowed with that contagious earnestness of soul, and commanding power of utterance, which so admirably fitted them to way the minds and thrill the hearts of the vast multitudinous assemblies which they were so often called to address. Such men were Robert Roberts, whose brief and brilliant career was prematurely quenched by an early death, but of whose singular and almost seraphic eloquence the elder people in the Principality still talk with an admiration amounting to rapture; David and Ebenezer Morris, father and son, men of lion hearts, whose presence and voices, even when they stood up amid turbulent and menacing crowds, "wielded at will that fierce democracy;" David Charles, a man of profound and original intellect, not possessing indeed such learning and extended reputation as his more illustrious brother of Bala, but admitted by all who knew them to be naturally of a much higher order of mind ; Ebenezer Richard, who, combining great powers of persuasive and pathetic eloquence, with that native authority of character, and aptitude for government, which give such ascendency over the minds of others, did perhaps more than any other man to organise and consolidate the great Methodist body in South Wales ; William Williams, the wise, large-hearted, noble-minded apostle of Independency in Wales; and Christmas Evans, whom our Baptist brethren had the honour of producing, with his rugged energy, and untamed imagination, weaving its materials sometimes into the wildest and most fantastic combinations, but withal "of wondrous power to chasten and subdue." These and others (a few still living) of scarcely inferior celebrity, have their memories embalmed in the profoundest veneration and gratitude of their countrymen, and their names throughout the whole extent of the Principality, are

"Familiar in men's mouths as household words."

Let not our readers smile to hear men thus spoken of, whose names may perhaps now for the first time meet their eye. Let them believe that wide-spread fame is a matter of accident, at least quite as much as of desert. And if we do not absolutely accept the dictum of the poet that " the world knows nothing of its greatest men," certain it is that in all ages there have been men far more worthy of perennial commemoration than many who have contrived to perk their small reputation into the face of the world, whose names have been hid in comparative obscurity and neglect, carent quia vale sacro.

(To be continued)

Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales

The Banner of Truth have now published the never before translated Tadau Methodistaidd. These two massive volumes narrate the wonderful story of the amazing spiritual transformation that affected Wales between 1735 and 1850. Of particular value is the use the authors make of eye-witness accounts preserved in contemporary diaries, journals and letters. A truly exhilarating read!

The dust wrapper reads:

It was the French novelist Anatole France who, when feeling tired and discouraged, said, “I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday. I always go instead into the 18th Century.” For an entirely different purpose, the great Welsh preacher, Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, frequently borrowed France’s words when speaking to his fellow Gospel preachers: “Go to the 18th Century! In other words read the stories of the great tides and movements of the Spirit experienced in that century. It is the most exhilarating experience, the finest tonic you will ever know. For a preacher it is absolutely invaluable … There is nothing more important for preaching than the reading of Church history and biographies.” His own biographer, Iain Murray, says that for “sheer stimulus and enjoyment there were no volumes which he prized more than Tadau Methodistiaid … the lives of the fathers of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism. They were constantly in his hands.”

These stimulating and enjoyable volumes narrate the exciting story of how Wales was spiritually transformed and the men whom God used to accomplish that great work. “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it” (Ps 68:11). In this first volume, which focuses on the revivals experienced in South Wales, we meet the well-known figures of Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris, William Williams of Pantycelyn; but within these wonderful pages are portraits of many lesser-known preachers such as Griffith Jones of Llanddowror, Howell Davies, Peter Williams, and David Jones of Llan-gan. What soon becomes evident in reading this fascinating history is the power of the Holy Spirit over congregations. From small beginnings in homes and farmhouses to great open-air gatherings of many thousands, the sermon became the foremost influence in the life of the nation. Whole neighbourhoods were turned upside-down and whole towns were subdued by the sense of God’s presence. The greatest concern of all at that time was the state of one’s soul before God. The great value of these volumes is the way they take up the words of those most involved in these remarkable events. In journals, diaries, letters and Association minutes they describe a wide range of Christian experience – conviction, repentance, faith and assurance, joy in the Holy Spirit, witness and testimony, conflict with sin and backsliding, restoration and perseverance – all are encountered and described with transparent honesty and humility. Preachers will also greatly value the many experiences here recounted in the work of preaching the gospel – above all the “demonstration of the Spirit and power”.

The first volume deals with South Wales and the second North Wales. In the Second volume two chapters (41 and 42, see pages 633-753) are given over to Elias. There are also a number of illustrations.

The English speaking world is indebted to John Aaron for his massive efforts in translating these fascinating volumes.

Hymn Ai am fy meiau i

I discovered the following hymn here. At first I thought it was by Elias himself and then by a namesake but having looked again I think it is by the man himself. I have attempted a translation. The tune recommended is Cranbrook. it is under the section of the hymn book considering "Angau Crist a'i effeithiau" - Christ's death and its effects.

Ai am fy meiau i
Dioddefodd Iesu mawr,
Pan ddaeth yn ngrym ei gariad Ef
O entrych nef i lawr?

Cyflawnai 'r gyfraith bur,
Cyfiawnder gafodd iawn;
A'r ddyled fawr, er cymaint oedd,
A dalodd Ef yn llawn.

Dioddefodd angau loes,
Yn ufudd ar y bryn;
A'i waed a ylch yr Ethiop du,
Yn làn fel eira gwyn.

Bu 'n angau i'n hangau ni,
Wrth farw ar y pren;
A thrwy ei waed y dygir llu,
Trwy angau, i'r nefoedd wen.

Pan grymodd Iesu ei ben,
Wrth farw yn ein lle,
Agorodd ffordd, pan rwygai 'r llen,
I bur drigfannau 'r ne'.

Gorchfygodd uffern ddu,
Gwnaeth ben y sarph yn friw;
O'r carchar caeth y dygir llu,
Trwy ras, i deulu Duw.

Did he for my mistakes,
Great Jesus, face such plight,
When, in power, his love came down
To earth from heaven's height?

The law so pure he kept
To justice true he stayed;
The massive debt, although so great,
In full he now has paid.

Obedient on the hill,
He suffered death in woe;
His blood the black Eth-iop-ian cleans
As pure as pure white snow.

His death it is our death,
Through his work on the cross;
A legion, because of his blood,
Through death to glory pass.

When dying in our place
He, Jesus, bowed his head,
A way he made, through the rent veil,
To heaven's pure abode.

He conquered a black hell,
The serpent's head he bruised;
Through grace, from jail, to join God's own,
He brought a legion loosed.