Such power there is in human words when divinely wielded; such was the spiritual power of Daniel Rowlands. Well does one writer say, the story of Llangeitho, well written, would read like a chapter in religious romance. It is very doubtful whether we have the record of any other man who drew such numbers to the immediate circle of his ministry, as Rowlands. He did not itinerate so largely as most of the great Welsh preachers. In an obscure spot in the interior of Cardiganshire, in an age of bad roads, and in a neighbourhood where the roads were especially bad, he addressed his immense concourses of people. His monthly communion was sometimes attended by as many as three thousand communicants, of whom, often, many were clergymen. Upwards of a hundred ministers ascribe to him the means of their conversion. Thus, in his day, it was a place of pilgrimages; and even now, there are not a few who turn aside, to stand, with wonder, upon the spot where Rowlands exercised his marvellous ministry.
The four great Welsh preachers, Christmas Evans, John Elias, Williams of Wern, and Davies of Swansea, on whose pulpit powers, and method, we have more distinctly dilated, may be styled the tetrarchs of the pulpit of Wild Wales of these later times. Their eminence was single, and singular. Their immense powers unquestioned: rivals, never, apparently, by their own selection, the great Welsh religious mind only rivalled them with each other. After them it might be said, “Great was the company of preachers,”—great, not merely in number, carrying also influence, and usefulness of another kind; perhaps even superior to those honoured names.
How, for instance, can we do sufficient honour to the labours of CHARLES OF BALA? This truly apostolic man was born at Llanvihangel, in 1755. While yet a boy, he managed to introduce family worship into his father’s house; but it was in his eighteenth year that he heard the great Daniel Rowlands preach, and he says: “From that day I found a new heaven, and a new earth, to enjoy; the change experienced by a blind man, on receiving his sight, is not greater than that which I felt on that day.” In his twentieth year he went to Oxford, and received Deacon’s orders, and was appointed to a curacy in Somersetshire; he took his degree at his University, but he could never obtain priest’s orders; in every instance objection was made to what was called his Methodism.