movement on the other side of the Atlantic in 1840, and began a moral reformation in the county of Merioneth that resulted in a spiritual one, and added to the churches several thousand converts, scarcely any of whom fell away. The revival of 1851-2 was a local one, but was believed by many to have been inspired by a celestial antiphony. The remarkable sounds were either a miracle or a psychic wonder born of the intense imagination of a sensitive race. A few pious people in a small village of Montgomeryshire had been making special prayer for an outpouring of the spirit, but after a week of meetings with no sign of the result hoped for, they were returning to their homes, discouraged, when they heard strains of sweet music in the sky. They stopped in amazement, but the beautiful singing went on-voices as of a choir invisible, indistinct but melodious, in the air far above the roof of the chapel they had just left. Next day, when the astonished worshippers told the story, numbers in the district said they had heard the same sounds. Some had gone out at eleven o'clock to listen, and thought that angels must be singing. Whatever the music meant, the good brethren's and sisters' little meetings became crowded very soon after, and the longed-for out-pouring came mightily upon the neighborhood. Hundreds from all parts flocked to the churches, all ages joining in the prayers and hymns and testimonies, and a harvest of glad believers followed a series of meetings "led by the Holy Ghost." The sounds in the sky were never explained; but the belief that God sent His angels to sing an answer to the anxious prayers of those pious brethren and sisters did no one any harm. Whether this event in Montgomeryshire was a preparation for what took place six or seven years later is a suggestive question only, but when the wave of spiritual power from the great American revival of 1857-8 reached England, its first messenger to Wales, Rev. H. R. Jones, a Wesleyan, had only to drop the spark that "lit a prairie fire." The reformation, chiefly under the leadership of Mr. Jones and Rev. David Morgan, a Presbyterian, with their singing bands, was general and lasting, hundreds of still robust and active Christians today dating their new birth from the Pentecost of 1859 and its ingathering of eighty thousand souls. A favorite hymn of that revival was the penitential cry, O'th flaem, O Dduw! 'r wy'n dyfod, -in the seven-six metre so much k ved in Wales. Unto Thy presence coming, O God, far off I stand: "A sinner" is my title, No other I demand. For mercy I am seeking I heard of old that Jesus, Who still abides the same, And sinners deep in shame. Oh God! receive me with them, And pardon my transgression, The author of the hymn was Thomas Williams of Glamorganshire, born 1761; died 1844. He published a volume of hymns, Waters of Bethesda in 1823. The Welsh minor tune of "Clwyd" may appropriately have been the music to express the contrite prayer of the words. The living composer, John Jones, has several tunes in the Welsh revival manual of melodies, Ail Attodiad. The unparalled religious movement of 1904-5 was a praying and singing revival. The apostle and spiritual prompter of that unbroken campaign of Christian victories-so far as any single human agency counted-was Evan Roberts, of Laughor, a humble young worker in the mines, who had prayed thirteen years for a mighty descent of the heavenly blessing on his country and for a clear indication of his own mission. His convictions naturally led him to the ministry, and he went to Newcastle Emlyn to study. Evangelical work had been done by two societies, made up of earnest Christians, and known as the "Forward Movement" and the "Simultaneous Mission." Beginnings of a special season of interest as a result of their efforts, appeared in the young people's prayer meetings in February, 1904, at New Quay, Cardiganshire. The interest increased, and when branchwork was organized a young praying and singing band visited Newcastle Emlyn in the course of one of their tours, and held a rally meeting. Evan Roberts went to the meeting and found his own mission. He left his studies and consecrated himself, soul and body, to revival work. In every spiritual and mental quality he was surpassingly well-equipped. To the quick sensibility of his poetic nature he added the inspiration of a seer and the zeal of a devotee. Like Moses, Elijah, and Paul in Arabian solitudes, and John in the Dead Sea wilds, he had prepared himself in silence and alone with God; and though, on occasion, he could use effectively his gift of words, he stood distinct in a land of matchless pulpit orators as "the silent leader.". Without preaching he dominated the mood of his meetings, and without dictating he could change the trend of a service and shape the next song or prayer on the intuition of a moment. In fact, judged by its results, it was God Himself who directed the revival, only He endowed His minister with the power of divination to watch its progress and take the stumbling-blocks out of the way. By a kind of hallowed psychomancy, that humble man would detect a discordant presence, and hush the voices of a congregation till the stubborn soul felt God in the stillness, and penitently surrendered. Many tones of the great awakening of 1859 were heard again in 1904-5,-the harvest season without a precedent, when men, women and children numbering ten per cent of the whole population of a province were gathered into the membership of the church of Christ But there were tones a century older heard in the devotions of that harvesthome in Wales. A New England Christian would have felt at home, with the tuneful assemblies at Laughor, Trencynon, Bangor, Bethesda, Wrexham, Cardiff, or Liverpool, singing Lowell Mason's "Meribah" or the clarion melody of Edson's "Lenox" to Wesley's— Blow ye the trumpet, blow, The gladly solemn sound; -or to his other well-known in Arise my soul, arise, Shake off thy guilty fears, The bleeding Sacrifice In thy behalf appear. In short, the flood tide of 1904 and 1905 brought very little new music and very few new hymns. "Aberystwyth" and "Tanymarian," the minor harmonies of Joseph Parry and Stephens; E. M. Price's "St. Garmon;" R. M. Pritchard's, "Hyfrydol," and a few others, were choral favorites, but their composers were all dead, and the congregations loved the still older singers who had found familiar welcome at their altars and firesides. The most cherished and oftenest chosen hymns |