Such was Thomas Charles. Wales lost him at the age of sixty—a short life, if we number it by years; a long life, if we consider all he accomplished in it; and, to this day, his name is one of the most revered throughout the Principality.
It is impossible to do the justice even of mentioning the names of many of those men, who “served their generation” so well, “according to the will of God, and then fell asleep.” And it is as necessary, as it is interesting, to notice how the various men, moved by the Spirit of God, found Him leading, and guiding them in the path of labour, their instincts chose.
In the history of preaching, we believe there is no more curious chapter than this, of these strange preachers in Wales. They have an idiosyncrasy as entirely, and peculiarly, their own, as is that of the country in which they carried on their ministrations. The preaching friars of the times we call the dark, or middle ages, are very remarkable, from the occasional glimpses we are able to obtain of them. Very remarkable the band of men, evoked by the rise of Methodism in England,—those who spread out all over the land, treading the paths indicated by the voice, and finger of Whitfield, or Wesley. Very entertaining are the stories of the preachers of the backwoods of America, the sappers, and miners, who cleared a way for the planting of the Word among the wild forests of the Far West.
These Welsh preachers were unlike any of them,—they had a character altogether their own. A great many of them were men of eminent genius, glowing with feeling, and fancy; never having known college training, or culture, they were very often men who had, somehow, attained a singular variety of knowledge, lore, and learning, which, perhaps, would be despised as unscientific, and unclassified, by the schools, but which was not the less curious, and, to the Celtic mind, enchanting.
They all lived, and fared hard; all their thoughts, and fancies were high. If they marched before us now, the nineteenth century would, very likely, regard them as a set of very rough tykes. Perhaps the nineteenth century would regard Elijah, Amos, and Nahum, and sundry other equally respectable persons, in much the same manner. Rude, and rough in gait, and attire, the rudeness, and the roughness would, perhaps, be forgotten by us, if we could interpret the torrent, and the wail of their speech, and be, for a short time, beneath the power of the visions, of which they were the rapt seers, and unveilers. We wonder that no enthusiastic Welshman has used an English pen to pourtray the lives, and portraits of a number of these Welsh worthies; to us, several of them—notably, John Elias, and Christmas Evans—seem to realize the idea of the Ancient Mariner,—