Enwogion Cymru entry

This entry is from the Enwogion Cymru "a biographical dictionary of eminent Welshmen, from the earliest times to the present, and including every name connected with the ancient history of Wales".

JOHN ELIAS One of the most eminent men that have distinguished themselves among the Welsh in late years, was born in the parish of Abererch, near Pwllheli, Caernarvonshire, in 1774. His parents though in humble circumstances lived comfortably and respectably, and from his earliest youth he was trained up in the path of religion. He joined the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists when a young man, and although he had no opportunity of receiving the advantages of a school education, yet so much had his zeal and promising abilities recommended him, that when he was about twenty years of age he was appointed an itinerant preacher. In 1799, he removed into Anglesey, where he resided during the rest of his life, but his ministry was not confined to his immediate neighbourhood, for according to the system of his connexion, he constantly itinerated through every county in the principality, and visited the large towns in England, where thousands of Welshmen resided without any spiritual provision whatever, and once in every three years he went to London. In 1811, when the Methodists resolved to ordain their own ministers, he was among the first who were ordained according to the new system. His biographer, from personal acquaintance, says of his remarkable powers in preaching "that he was a man of very acute, as well as vigorous and sublime genius. His mind was most penetrating, piercing like his eye. He exercised his great powers with much delight, in the field of the Scriptures. His strong intellect and solid judgment were clearly developed in his compositions, speeches, and sermons. Perhaps no mathematician could arrange his ideas better, and no logician could draw more correct and proper inferences from them, and no orator could bring them to bear on the people in a more commanding and influential manner, by the instrumentality of voice, manner, and eloquence. One might think, by his eloquent manner of speaking, that he was well acquainted with these arts and sciences. His discourses possessed amazing depth, solidity, and power. There was no lightness and superficiality in them." He was twice married, to his first wife in 1799, by whom he had a family, two of whom survived him, and

secondly in 1830, he married the widow of Sir John Bulkeley, knt. of Presaddved. He died June 8, 1841, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was buried at Llanvaes, near Beaumaris, and as a proof of the respect and esteem in which he was universally held by his countrymen of every persuasion, it may be recorded that above ten thousand persons followed his remains to the grave. An interesting memoir of John Elias has been lately published by the Rev E Morgan, vicar of Syston, Leicestershire, 12mo. Liverpool, 1844, which contains many personal anecdotes, and much valuable information, respecting the extraordinary influence which his ministry has had on the social state of the Welsh, since the commencement of the present century.