Welsh Revival Quotes

What we need is a fresh vision of the Cross. And may that mighty, all-embracing love of His be no longer a fitful, wavering influence in our lives, but the ruling passion of our souls.

for Roberts talks chiefly of God’s love and of the great joy of living in obedience to that love.

I have tried to talk out of the tremendous sense that God is abroad, and I talk out of the desire that I cannot express—that somewhere, some when, somehow, He may put out his hand, and shake this city for the salvation of men.

Begin to try and teach along that line; instead of treating our congregations as congregations to be instructed ever in holy things, treat them as men and women that are to be persuaded to holy things, and consecration, and Jesus Christ.

The vision is passing out into virtue, and men are paying their debts, and abandoning the public-house, and treating their horses well. Oh, my masters! Did you say the next Revival would be ethical? It is that, because it is spiritual, and you will never get an ethical revival except in this way.

Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? What need have these people to be told that they are sinners? What they need is salvation. Do they not know it? It is not knowledge that they lack, but decision—action. And why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.

I have found what I believe to be the highest kind of Christianity. I want to give my life, God helping me, to lead others, many others, to find it. Many have found it already, thank God, and they are doing what I am doing, in a large or little way, as God gives them light. And that is all there is to the revival, and all there is to me, my friend.

Now, what effect is this work producing upon men? First of all, it is turning Christians everywhere into evangelists.

The people are the meeting, not the preacher, once his short talk is ended, though his spirit remains to fire them to congregational rather than individual leadership.

We’ve prayed for this awakening,” cries a workman at one meeting. “We’ve seen the devils worst often; but now, at last, we are seeing Christ’s best.

There is in this revival a deep current of reality; when anything unreal creeps in, the power stops.

There are no advertisements, no brass bands, no posters, no huge tents.

The revival is borne along upon billowing waves of sacred song. It is the singing, not the preaching, that is the instrument which is most efficacious in striking the hearts of men.

None of the hundreds of dramatic scenes that have occurred in these meetings have come while Roberts has been talking. They have come afterwards and often a considerable time afterwards.

Personally, I think I have never met a man who appealed to me as being so completely consecrated to his cause as this young man of twenty-six years, trained in the colliery and at the “smithy.” When one thinks of it, no young man of his years and native environment could have endured against so strong a tide of personal success unless he had an enduring grip upon mighty moorings.

But one night, after I had been in great distress praying about this, I went to sleep, and at one o’clock in the morning suddenly I was waked up out of my sleep, and I found myself with unspeakable joy and awe in the very presence of the Almighty God. And for the space of four hours I was privileged to speak face to face with Him as a man speaks face to face with a friend. At five o’clock it seemed to me as if I again returned to earth.

And Evan Roberts, I believe, has said that he is glad that this is the case, for it proves that it is not Roberts, the man, his magnetism, or his personality that is so great an influence, but rather the Spirit at work in the meetings.

soul has been concerned with the spiritual condition of the believers present, in their relation to God. Get the Church right with God, and then He will work through the Church on the unsaved. “Bend the Church, and save the world,” is the watchword of this revival.

The story of the very first outbreak of the Revival traces it to the trembling utterance of a poor Welsh girl, who, at a meeting in a Cardigan village, was the first to rise and testify. “If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart.

There was absolutely nothing wild, violent, hysterical, unless it be hysterical for the laboring breast to heave with sobbing that cannot be repressed, and the throat to choke with emotion as a sense of the awful horror and shame of a wasted life suddenly bursts upon the soul.

What is the character of this revival? It is a Church revival. I do not mean by that merely a revival among church members. It is that, but it is held in church buildings. Now, you may look astonished, but I have been saying for a long time that the revival which is to be permanent in the life of a nation must be associated with the life of the churches.

There is nothing to which the most fastidious could object; men and women, old and young, take part, but there is no confusion, and when feeling is overpowering there is deep silence; but the tears are tears of joy, for it is of Calvary we sing and to Calvary we look. There are two things that used to be indispensable to us which we can do without now—a clock and an organ.

A cynical, indifferent critic watching any one of these meetings would be forced to admit that the young man is sincere to the core; that he descends to no trick of gesture or word or act; that he is straightforward and simple to the last degree; that he does not try to force people against their will, and yet that in some way he draws all before him, not to himself, but to the Spirit of Whom he is the avowed disciple.

There would be no more parades of that sort. Probably they would play some beastly yelping game...Like baseball or Association football...And heaven?...Oh, it would be a revival meeting on a Welsh hillside. Or Chautauqua, wherever that was...And God? A Real Estate Agent, with Marxist views...He hoped to be out of it before the cessation of hostilities, in which case he might be just in time for the last train to the old heaven...

Striking evidence of the effect of the revival in the villages surrounding Wrexham was given at the Wrexham County Petty Sessions last week, when the magistrates, who generally sit for two or three hours, concluded their business in an hour. There was not a single case of drunkenness to be tried. The coal miners working in the Rhosddu colliery sing hymns in descending the pit, and in ascending after their work. They also spend part of the time allowed for meals in prayer.

He has something of the same feeling about the hymn singing, I am told. Much as he loves it himself, and music is in him to his very fingertips, be feels—I judge both from the hearsay and from watching him break into the midst of the singing when, in a way they have in Wales, they repeat over and over the same stirring melody—that too much singing moves only surface emotions and takes the congregations’ mind from the deeper influence of prayer and close communion with God. He believes completely in the efficacy of prayer, and he has for many years spent a considerable amount of time daily upon his knees.

Evan Roberts speaks: “Let us see what God’s Spirit will do for us in a quiet meeting. It did wonderful things at Lougher when no one sung or spoke.” A few moments later all are kneeling in five minutes of silent prayer. The crowded room is still except for quick gasps of sobbing breath from those who are deeply moved. Here and there a half audible voice is mumbling inarticulate prayer. Deeper yet grows time silence and more impressive. Wrinkled faces are upturned, and unseeing eyes look upward. Heads are bowed in folded hands. Shoulders are convulsed with emotion, and lips are moving from which no sound comes. Still the preacher gives no sign. Gradually a single low voice is heard in all parts of the chapel, singing sweetly the hymn, “Have you seen Him?” in Welsh. For an instant there is time stillness of listening with bated breath; then slowly other voices join in singing until the building rings with thrilling melody. It is as if they have burst from prayer into song. And this is a scene of the revival which so respected a paper as the Lancet, evidently without investigating it except through time reports of the sensational papers and its own prejudice, calls “a debauch of emotionalism,” “a hysterical outburst,” marked with “scenes of disorder.

I have called Evan Roberts the so-called boy preacher, because he is neither a boy nor a preacher. He is a tall, graceful, good-looking young man of twenty-six, with a pleading eye and a most winsome smile. If he is a boy, he is a six-foot boy, and six-footers are usually past their boyhood. As he is not a boy, neither is he a preacher. he talks simply, unaffectedly, earnestly now and then, but he makes no sermons, and preaching is emphatically not the note of this Revival in the west. If it has been by the foolishness of preaching that men have been saved heretofore, that agency seems as if it were destined to take a back seat in the present movement.

By June the revival began to wane. But Roberts’s vision had been realized. An estimated 100,000 confessed Christ. The Congregationalists added 26,500 members. Another 24,000 Welsh joined the Calvinist Methodist Church. About 4,000 opted for the Wesleyan Church. The remainder were split between the Anglicans and several Baptist groups.13 The effect on Welsh society was undeniable. Output from the coal mines famously slowed because the horses wouldn’t move. Miners converted in the revival no longer kicked or swore at the horses, so the horses didn’t know what to do.14 Judges closed their courtrooms with nothing to judge. Christians wielded the revival as apologetic against the growing number of skeptics who derided religion. Stead argued: The most thoroughgoing materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected they have drawn, and are drawing, a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.15

It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order.

It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order. You say, “How do you reconcile these things?” I do not reconcile them. They are both there. I leave you to reconcile them. If you put a man

and natural, no orator, no leader of men; nothing of the masterfulness that characterized such men as Wesley, and Whitefield, and Moody; no leader of men. One of the most brilliant writers in one of our morning papers said of Evan Roberts, in a tone of sorrow, that he lacked the qualities of leadership, and the writer said if but some prophet did now arise he could sweep everything before him. God has not chosen that a prophet shall arise. It is quite true. Evan Roberts is no orator, no leader. What is he? I mean now with regard to this great movement. He is the mouthpiece of the fact that there is no human guidance as to man or organization.

In connection with the Welsh revival there is no preaching, no order, no hymnbooks, no choirs, no organs, no collections, and, finally, no advertising.

Whence has it come? All over Wales—I am giving you roughly the result of the questioning of fifty or more persons at random in the week—a praying remnant have been agonizing before God about the state of the beloved land, and it is through that the answer of fire has come.

The horses are terribly puzzled. A manager said to me, “The haulers are some of the very lowest. They have driven their horses by obscenity and kicks. Now they can hardly persuade the horses to start working, because there is no obscenity and no kicks.” The movement is characterized by the most remarkable confessions of sin, confessions that must be costly.

There are two essential functions to the Christian priesthood: The first is eucharistic, the giving of thanks; the other is intercessory, praying. That is all. That is going on. The Church everywhere singing and praying and offering praise, and pleading with God. Every meeting is made up almost exclusively of these things.

And yet those who know the language say that he has said nothing that is extraordinary; that there has been little brilliancy of phrase; that he has talked simply and cheerfully of his own experience, and has asked those who are not Christians to give themselves to God. Certainly it has all been very quiet. There has been no loud rantings, nor spectacular displays, nor open appeals to the emotions. But what is happening?

Listen to these two confessions at Ammanford. The first is from a middle-aged man holding a baby in his arms: “I used to spend three or four pounds in a single evening at the bar. I’d give my wife and children a few stray shillings now and then. I’d steal coppers from my child’s money-box and spend them for beer. I was seldom sober. But, thank God, that’s done with.

And they do say that the publicans (saloon keepers) are closing,” says a bent little man with a black beard, in a train to Landore, and certainly many drinking places that were crowded are empty,

The most extraordinary thing about the meetings which I attended was the extent to which they were absolutely without any human direction or leadership. “We must obey the Spirit,” is the watchword of Evan Roberts, and he is as obedient as the humblest of his followers. The meetings open—after any amount of preliminary singing while the congregation is assembling—by the reading of a chapter or a psalm. Then it is go as you please for two hours or more.   And the amazing thing is that it does go and does not get entangled in what might seem to be inevitable confusion. Three-fourths of the meeting consists of singing. No one uses a hymnbook. No one gives out a hymn. The last person to control the meeting in any way is Mr. Evan Roberts. People pray and sing, give testimony or exhort as the Spirit moves them. As a study of the psychology of crowds I have seen nothing like it. You feel that the thousand or fifteen hundred persons before you have become merged into one myriad-headed, but single-souled personality.   You can watch what they call the influence of the power of the Spirit playing over the crowded congregation as an eddying wind plays over the surface of a pond. If anyone carried away by his feelings prays too long, or if anyone when speaking fails to touch the right note, someone—it may be anybody—commences to sing. For a moment there is a hesitation as if the meeting were in doubt as to its decision, whether to hear the speaker or to continue to join in the prayer, or whether to sing. If it decides to hear and to pray the singing dies away. If, on the other hand, as usually happens, the people decide to sing, the chorus swells in volume until it drowns all other sound.

The impulse appears to have been sporadic and spontaneous. In remote country hamlets, in mining villages buried in distant valleys, one man or one woman would have it laid upon his or her soul to pray that the Holy Spirit might be poured out upon the cause in which they were spiritually concerned. There does not seem to have been any organized effort anywhere.

The vast congregations were as soberly sane, as orderly, and at least as reverent as any congregation I ever saw

The pit ponies, like the American mules, having been driven by oaths and curses since they first bore the yoke, are being retrained to do their work without the incentive of profanity.

There is less drinking, less idleness, less gambling. Men record with almost incredulous amazement, how one football player after another has foresworn cards and drink and the gladiatorial games, and is living a sober and godly life, putting his energy into the revival.

In this village I attended three meetings on Sunday two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the afternoon, and two hours at night, when I had to leave to catch the train. At all these meetings the same kind of thing went on, the same kind of congregations assembled, the same strained, intense emotion was manifest. Aisles were crowded. Pulpit stairs were packed and, mirabile dictu! two-thirds of the congregation were men and at least one-half young men.

But for the most part revivalism means a spiritual awakening, the conversion of individuals who, from living in indifference or in vice, turn from their evil ways and lead new lives in which, however imperfectly, they endeavor consciously to follow Christ.

Neither does He call man to observe Sabbaths simply for a cessation of labor, but rather for the purpose of drawing near to Him from whom our true sustenance comes.

The recorded history of the early Britons was to remain in oblivion for the five hundred years that followed the massacre at Bangor. But then an incident occurred that ensured its revival and survival to the present day, even though that revival was itself to last only a matter of a further five hundred years or so. The incident, which occurred sometime in the 1130s, was the presentation of a certain book to a British (i.e. Welsh) monk by an archdeacon of Oxford. The monk's name was Geoffrey of Monmouth, the archdeacon was Walter of Oxford, and the book was a very ancient, possibly unique, copy of the recorded history of the early Britons, written in language so archaic that it needed to be translated quickly into Latin before either the book perished or the language was forgotten.

The western seaboard was, in part, settled by migrants from Iberia and south-western France and they often came by sea. There is a clear set of staging posts marked by a shared lexicon. Celtic languages were once spoken in Spain and are still whispered in Galicia, Breton clings on in Brittany, Cornish is being revived, Welsh thrives, Manx survives, Irish is constitutionally enshrined and Scots Gaelic hangs on, just.