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)