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17 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Revivals of Religion

eleven countries, spoke in sixty cities-in Australia, China, Japan, and England. Late in the winter of 1910-11 he resumed work in Brooklyn, N. Y.

The period of Mills, Torrey, and Chapman has been the most fruitful in the history of revivals in American Christianity. Those named have had as associates and imitators men like A. C. Dixon, H. M. Wharton, Major Whittle, J. Arthur Smith, and others; and so their methods have been adopted in many places with greater or less effect.

S. B. DUNN.

IV. The Welsh Revival of :goo-rgo6: Wales is well known as the land of revivals. Owing to the intense national spirit of the Welsh people these awakenings possess characteristics

t. The which distinguish them from the gen- Welah eral religious movements of Great People. Britain as a whole. Through the long centuries of Saxon domination the in habitants of Wales-who number, all told, less than one-half of the population of London-have pre served their independence in language, literature, and national consciousness. A fiery and imagina tive race of mountaineers, imbued with a strong religious spirit, they have from time to time ex perienced great spiritual upheavals which have proved epochal in the life of the nation. Thus the revival of the eighteenth century under Daniel Rowlands and Howel Harris was a national renais sance which liberated the f orees of Christian do mocracy in the principality and introduced a new era of progress and education.

The religious movement known as " The Great Welsh Revival " is the latest and most widely known of these national awakenings.

s. The This revival covers a period of two Revival years-from the early part of 1904 to

Described. the beginning of 1906. During that time it is estimated that over 100,900 professed conversion. Of this number some 60,000 can be accounted for as being in 1910 members in good standing in the Protestant churches of Wales. The immediate ethical results of the movement were remarkable. A great wave of sobriety overswept the country so that the liquor trade suffered enormous financial losses; the decrease in criminal cases was no less remarkable; hundreds of outlawed debts were settled; goods atoien fifteen or twenty years before were returned to their owners; a phenomenal increase was recorded in the demand for good literature; feuds of long standing were healed; and sectarianism, a great curse of Welsh national life, vas softened by a larger charity and a deeper consciousness of an underlying unity. The movement must not be confused with the organized missions that were held about this time in various parts of Great Britain. The genius of the Welsh revival was quite distinct from that of any of these missions. It was spontaneous, unconventional, and without organization of any sort. None of its " leaders " was over thirty years of age, and none was a great preacher. Most of the workers were from the humble walks of life and were comparatively uneducated. Some of the most successful were young girls, under twenty, who assisted at the meetings with exhortation and song. In X.-2

method-or its absence-the services have been termed a triumph for Quakerism; " obedience to the Spirit " was the only condition insisted upon. Only very rarely was a sermon attempted; the meetings were devoted to prayer, song, testimony, and exhortation, and seldom concluded before the small hours of the morning. They were characterized by far less violent demonstrations than previous revivals in the principality. The burden of the revival-message was the love of God. As is usually the case in Wales, there were many apparently occult phenomena-visions, voices, and signs in the heavens (see § 6, below).

So far as the origin of the movement can be traced at all, it appears to have begun in Feb., 1904, in New Quay, Carmarthensbire, South Wales. Revival manifestations were first noticed in the local Calvinistic Methodist Church, of

3. Its which Joseph Jenkins was pastor. Origin. Later, a convention was held in Blaen a,nereh where there were many indi cations of a spiritual awakening. This convention was attended by a young man who was to' , a known later as the " leader " of the revival-Evan John Roberts, at that time a candidate for the Welsh Presbyterian ministry and student. in a prepara tory school in Newcastle Emlyn, South Wales. In the autumn of the same year the revival flame that had been flickering obscurely in New Quay and other places, burst forth and quickly spread over the country, sweeping upward from the South to the mountainous extremities of northern Wales and subduing all before it. The remarkable scenes witnessed were reported in the English prc,ss and presently aroused the interest of the entire civil ized world. By this time Evan Roberts had be come the central figure of the awakening; still, to designate him the "leader" of the revival is to contradict the real genius of the movement, which, throughout, was without organization or executive direction. The revival was really begun before Rbberts started upon his apostolate; but undoubt edly he became the chief and most honored repre sentative of the movement.

Evan John Roberts was born on July $, 1878. He is of humble parentage and is the ninth of a family of fourteen children; of these, two sisters are living in the United States. His birth-

4. Evan place is Bwlchymynydd, Loughor, John South Wades, a small mining town of

Roberts; 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants. He was Early Life. brought up in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church (see PRESBYTERIANS. IV.), of which his parents are members and which he himself joined at the age of thirteen. When eleven years old Roberts left school and went to work as door-boy in a local coal mine where his father also labored. Here he narrowly escaped death in a coal-truck accident, and, later on, in a colliery explosion A third narrow escape happened toward the end of the revival when, a few yards from a steep precipice, he was thrown from a carriage drawn by a runaway team. At twenty-four Evan Roberts left the mines and apprenticed himself to the trade of his uncle, Evan Edwards, a blacksmith. A year later he was accepted as candidate for the Welsh