The good man, however, often felt that a burden was laid upon him, which scarcely belonged to the work to which he regarded himself as especially set apart. Perhaps he might have paraphrased the words of the Apostle, and said, “The Lord sent me not to attend to the affairs of your chapel-debts, but to preach the gospel.” There is not only pathos, but truth in the following words; he says, “I humbly think that no missionaries in India, or any other country, have had to bear such a burden as I have borne, because of chapel-debts, and _they_ have not had besides to provide for their own support, as I have had to do through all my life in Anglesea; London committees have cared for _them_, while I, for many years, received but seventeen pounds per annum for all my services. The other preachers were young, and inexperienced, and the members threw all the responsibility upon me, as children do upon a father; my anxiety often moved me in the depths of the night to cry out unto God to preserve His cause from shame. God’s promises to sustain His cause in the world greatly comforted me. I would search for the Divine promises to this effect, and plead them in prayer, until I felt as confident as if every farthing had been paid. I laboured hard to institute weekly penny offerings, but was not very successful; and after every effort there remained large sums unpaid in connection with some of the chapels which had been built without my consent.”
Poor Christmas! As we read of him he excites our wonder.
looks like positive wealth as compared with the emoluments of our poor preacher; and yet the record is that he was given to hospitality, and he contributed his sovereign, and half-sovereign, not only occasionally, but annually, where his richer neighbours satisfied their consciences with far inferior bequests. How did the man do it? He had not married a rich wife, and he did not, as many of his brethren, eke out his income by some farm, or secular pursuit; a very common, and a very necessary thing to do, we should say, in Wales.
But, no doubt, Catherine had much to do with his unburdened life of domestic quiet; perhaps,—it does not appear, but it seems probable—she had some little money of her own; she had what to her husband was incomparably more valuable, a clear practical mind, rich in faith, but a calm, quiet, household faith. Lonely indeed her life must often have been in the solitary cottage, into which, assuredly, nothing in the shape of a luxury ever intruded itself. It has been called, by a Welshman, a curious anomaly in Welsh life, the insatiable appetite for sermons, and the singular, even marvellous, disregard for the temporal comforts of the preacher. Christmas, it seems to us, was able to bear much very unrepiningly, but sometimes his righteous soul was vexed. Upon one occasion, when, after preaching from home, he not only received less for his expenses than he naturally expected, but even less than an ordinary itinerant fee, an old dame remarked to him, “Well, Christmas, _bach_, you have given us a wonderful sermon, and I hope you will be paid at the resurrection,” “Yes, yes, _shan fach_,” said the preacher, “no doubt of that, but what am I to do till I get there? And there’s the old white mare that carries me, what will she do? for her there will be no resurrection.”