Birth and Early Hardships—Early Church Fellowship—Beginning to Learn—Loses an Eye—A Singular Dream—Beginning to Preach—His First Sermon—Is Baptized—A New Church Fellowship—The Rev. Timothy Thomas—Anecdotes—A Long Season of Spiritual Depression—Is ordained as Home Missionary to Lleyn—Commencement of Success as a Preacher—Remarks on Success—Marries—Great Sermon at Velinvole—A Personal Reminiscence of Welsh Preaching.
Christmas Evans is not the first, in point of time, in the remarkable procession of those men whose names we might mention, and of whom we shall find occasion in this volume to speak, as the great Welsh preachers. And there may be some dispute as to whether he was the first in point of eminence; but he is certainly the one of the four whose name is something more than a tradition. John Elias, Williams of Wern, and Davies of Swansea, have left behind them little beside the legendary rumour of their immense and pathetic power. This is true, especially, of David Davies of Swansea; and yet, Dr. Rees, his successor, and a very competent authority, says: “In some respects he was superior to all his distinguished contemporaries.” But the name of Christmas Evans is, perhaps, the most extensively known of any,—just as the name of Bunyan has a far more extensive intimacy than the equally honourable names of Barrow and Butler; and there is a similar reason for this. Christmas Evans, in the pulpit, more nearly approached the great Dreamer than any pulpit master of whom we have heard; many of his sermons appear to have been long-sustained parables, and pictures alive with allegorical delineation of human character.
CHRISTMAS EVANS was born at a place called Esgairwen (Ysgarwen), in the parish of Llandysul, in Cardiganshire; he was born on Christmas Day—and hence his Christian name—in 1766. His parents, Samuel and Johanna Evans, were in the poorest circumstances; his father was a shoemaker, and although this profession has included such a number of men remarkable for their genius and high attainments, it has never found the masters of the craft greatly remarkable for the possession of gold or gear. His mother, by her maiden name Lewis, came from a respectable family of freeholders in the parish; but the father of Christmas died when he was a child,—and these were hard days of poverty, almost destitution, for the poor struggling widow and her family,—so her brother, James Lewis, of Bwlchog, in the parish of Llanfihangel-ar-Arth, took little Christmas home to his farm, engaging to feed and clothe him for such labour on the farm as the poor boy might be able to perform. Here he stayed six years,—six miserable years; his uncle was a hard, cruel man, a selfish drunkard. Christmas used to say of him, in after years, “It would be difficult to find a more unconscionable man than James Lewis in the whole course of a wicked world.” During these, which ought to have been the most valuable years of his life, no care was taken of his heart, his mind, or his morals; in fact, he had neither a friend nor a home. At the age of seventeen he could not read a word, he was surrounded by the worst of examples, and he became the subject of a number of serious accidents, through which he narrowly escaped with his life. Once he was stabbed in a quarrel, once he was nearly drowned, and with difficulty recovered; once he fell from a high tree with an open knife in his hand, and once a horse ran away with him, passing at full speed through a low and narrow passage. There is an erroneous impression that, in those days, he was a great boxer, and that he lost his eye in a fight; the truth is quite different; he was not a boxer, and never fought a battle in his life. He lost his eye after his conversion, when he and some other young men were attempting the work of mutual help, in making up for lost time, by evening meetings, for various works of instruction; a number of his former companions waylaid him at night, beat him unmercifully, and one struck him with a stick over the eye. In after years, when some one was jesting before Robert Hall at Welsh preachers, upon his mentioning Christmas Evans, the jester said, “And he only has one eye!” “Yes, sir,” he answered, “but that’s a piercer; an eye, sir, that could light an army through a wilderness in a dark night.” So that in his sightless eye, Christmas Evans, like the one-eyed Spiridion, the noble witness in the Nicean Council, really “bore in his body a mark of the Lord Jesus.” But we are anticipating.