When he heard Robert Hall, the marvellous enchantment of that still, small voice, a kind of soprano in its sweet, and cleaving clearness, so overwhelmed him, that he longed to preach in that tone, and key; but the voices of the men were fitted to their words,—Hall’s to his own exquisitely-finished culture, and to the sustained, and elevated culture either of spirit, or intelligence of those whom he addressed; Evans’s words we suppose rolled like the thunder of a mighty sea, with all its amplitude of many-voiced waves. Singers differ, and, no doubt, while we are able to admire the evangelical force, and fervour, and even the fine pictorial imagery of the sermons of Christmas Evans, it is something like looking at the painting on the glass, which may be very pretty, and exquisite, but in order really to see it, it should be in the camera, with the magnifying lens, and the burning lamp behind it. Alas! it is so with all reported and written eloquence: the figures, and the words are almost as cold as the paper upon which they are printed, as they pass before the eye; they need the inspiration of the burning genius, and that inspired by a Divine affection, or afflatus, in their utterance, to give them a real effect.
And in the case of Christmas Evans’s sermons, this is not all: to us they are only translations,—translations from the difficult Welsh language,—translations without the wonderful atmospheric accent of the Welsh vowel; so that the very best translation of one of Christmas Evans’s performances can only be the skeleton of a sermon. We may admire the structure, the architecture of the edifice, but we can form little idea of the words which were said to have set Wales on fire.
We recur to the expression we used a few sentences since. We are able to appreciate the massive character of these sermons: it is very true they are cyclopean,—they have about them a primæval rudeness; but then the cyclopean architecture, although primitive, is massive. Here are huge thoughts, hewn out of the primæval, but ever-abiding instincts of our nature, or, which is much the same thing, from the ancient, and granite flooring of the Divine Word. We must make this allowance for our preacher: he took up his testimony from the grand initial letters of Faith; he knew something of the other side of thought; the belief of his country, in his time, in the earlier days of his ministry, had been very much vexed by Sabellianism.