So, along all the roads, there presses an untiring crowd, showing that something unusual is going on somewhere. The roads are all picturesque and lively with all sorts of people, on foot, on horseback, in old farm carts, and even in carriages; all wending their way to the largest and most central chapel of the neighbourhood. It is the chief service. It is a Sabbath evening; the congregation is wedged together in the spacious house of God; it becomes almost insupportable, but the Welsh like it. The service has not commenced, and a cry is already raised that it had better be held in an adjoining field; but it is said this would be inconvenient. The doors, the windows, are all thrown open; and so the time goes on, and the hour for the commencement of the service arrives. All eyes are strained as the door opens beneath the pulpit, and the minister of the congregation comes in, and makes his way, as well as he can, for himself and his friend, the great preacher—there he is! that tall, commanding figure,—that is he, the “one-eyed man of Anglesea.”
A murmur of joy, whisperings of glad congratulation, which almost want to burst into acclamations, pass over the multitude. And the service commences with prayer, singing, reading a chapter, and a short sermon,—a very short one, only twenty minutes. There are crowds of preachers sitting beneath the pulpit, but they, and all, have come to hear the mighty minstrel—and the moment is here. A few more verses of a hymn, during which there is no little commotion, in order that there may be none by-and-bye, those who have been long standing changing places with those who had been sitting. There, he is up! he is before the people! And in some such circumstances he seems to have first sung that wonderful song or sermon,
The text he announced was—“_Jesus said unto him_, _Go home unto thy friends_, _and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee_, _and hath had compassion on thee_.”
The introduction was very simple and brief; but, before long, the preacher broke loose from all relations of mere comment and explanation, and seemed to revel in dramatic scenery, and pictorial imagination, and, as was so usual with him in such descriptions, increasing, heightening, and intensifying the picture, by making each picture, each scene, to live even in the kind of enchantment of a present demoniacal possession. He began by describing the demoniac as a castle garrisoned with a legion of fiends, towards which the great Conqueror was approaching over the Sea of Tiberias, the winds hushing at His word, the sea growing calm at His bidding. Already He had acquired among the devils a terrible fame, and His name shook the garrison of the entire man, and the infernal legion within, with confusion and horror.