This is immense praise. The Vision of the World, the first portion, leads the traveller down the streets of Pride, Pleasure, and Lucre; but in the distance is a cross street, little and mean, in comparison with the others, but clean, and neat, and on a higher foundation than the other streets; it runs upwards, towards the east; they sink downwards, towards the north—this is the street True Religion. This is very much in the style of Christmas Evans, and so also is the vision of Death, the vision of Perdition, and the vision of Hell. This singular poem appears to have been exceedingly popular in Wales when Christmas Evans was young.
But our preacher has often been called the Bunyan of Wales—the Bunyan of the pulpit. In some measure, the epithet does designate him; he was a great master of parabolic similitude, and comparison. This is a kind of preaching ever eminently popular with the multitude; it requires rather a redundancy of fancy, than imagination—perhaps a mind considerably disciplined, and educated would be unable to indulge in such exercises—a self-possession, balanced by ignorance of many of the canons of taste, or utterly oblivious, and careless of them; for this is a kind of teaching of which we hear very little. Now we have not one preacher in England who would, perhaps, dare to use, or who could use well, the parabolic style. This was the especial power of Christmas Evans. He excelled in personification; he would seem frequently to have been mastered by this faculty. The abstraction of thought, the disembodied phantoms of another world, came clothed in form, and feature, and colour; at his bidding they came—
“Ghostly shapes Met him at noontide; Fear, and trembling Hope, Silence, and Foresight; Death, the skeleton, And Time, the shadow.”
Thus, he frequently astounded his congregations, not merely by pouring round his subject the varied hues of light, or space, but by giving to the eye defined shapes, and realizations. We do not wonder to hear him say, “If I only entered the pulpit, I felt raised, as it were, to Paradise, above my afflictions, until I forgot my adversity; yea, I felt my mountain strong. I said to a brother once, ‘Brother, the doctrine, the confidence, and strength I feel, will make persons dance with joy in some parts of Wales.’ ‘Yea, brother,’ said he, with tears flowing from his eyes.” He was visited by remarkable dreams. Once, previous to a time of great refreshing, he dreamt:—