Thus their sermons became a sort of inspired song, full of imagination—imagination very often, and usually, deriving its imagery from no far-off and recondite allusions, never losing itself in a flowery wilderness of expressions, but homely illustrations, ministered to by the things and affairs of ordinary life, and, therefore, instantly preacher and people in emotion were one.
It is indeed true that many of their great preachers repeated the same sermon many times. Why not? So did Whitfield, so did Wesley, so have most eminent preachers done; but this need in no way interfere with—it did not interfere with—the felt necessity for unction on the part of the minister; and as to the people they liked to hear an old favourite again, or a sermon, which they had never heard although they had heard much about it. We believe it was to Christmas Evans a pert young preacher said, “Well, you have given us an old sermon again to-day.”
“What then, my boy?” said the Master of Assemblies; “had you a new one?”
“Well, but look you,” said the unblushing old culprit, “I would not take a dozen new sermons like yours for this one old sermon of mine.”
“No, nor I,” chimed in a gruff old deacon. “Oh yes, and look you, I should like to hear it again; but as for _yours_, I never heard it before, and I do not want to hear it again.”
But then the _Language_! Of course the language had a great deal to do with this preaching power, we do not mean generally, but particularly; on all hands the Welsh is acknowledged to be a wonderful language. A Welshman will tell you that there is no language like it on the face of the earth, but that is a testimony borne by many scholars who are not Welshmen; perhaps there is no other language which so instantly conveys a meaning and at the same time touches emotion to the quick. True, like the Welshman himself, it is bony, and strangers to its power laugh somewhat ignorantly at its never-ending succession of consonants. Somebody has said that the whole language is as if it were made up of such words as our word “_strength_,” and if the reader will compare in his mind the effect of the word _power_ as contrasted with the word _strength_, he will feel something of the force of the language, and its fitness for the purposes of impression; but still this conveys but a poor idea of its great attributes.