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Revivals of Religion THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 18
Presbyterian ministry and in 1904 entered a preparatory school in Newcastle Emlyn, South Wales. Before this he had become subject to mystical experiences of a trance-like nature. He devoted many hours each day to prayer. He heard ".voices " and saw "visions"and felt himself caught up above the limitations of time and sense into the immediate presence of God. This last experience came to him twice a day at regular hours and continued for some time. He found himself unable to pursue his studies to his own satisfaction in Newcastle Emlyn. His text-books would seem, as he has expressed it, to be aflame in his hand, and he would be seized with violent physical pain until he would drop the book and take up his Bible. His friends feared for his mental condition. On Sept. 29, 1904, in Blaenanerch Calvinistic Methodist Chapel he passed through a spiritual crisis, in which, to use his own words, " Living Force " entered him with almost physical violence, imparting to him intense joy, bodily strength, and mental illumination, as well as spiritual earnestness and power.
On Oct. 31 he returned to his home in Loughor and began his work as revivalist-first among his own family and then in the church of which he was a member. At the beginning he was
5. Work regarded with suspicion and consid-in the ered demented, but the power of his Revival. meetings was irresistible and he quickly became a national figure as the torchbearer of the revival. In his meetings he confined himself almost exclusively to the Welsh language. He sometimes gave addresses of an hour or an hour and a half in duration, but usually he spoke for less than ten minutes at a time. His style was pithy and epigrammatic, abounding in quaint metaphor and homely illustration. He was ready-witted and often in the meetings indulged in dialogue and quick repartee. He is possessed of clairvoyant and clairaudient powers, and occasionally these were exercised in the meetings. Toward the close of the revival he cloistered himself in the home of a friend and observed a seven-days' silence, shutting himself away from the outside world, and refusing to communicate with any one except by writing. This he did, as he believed, in obedience to the divine voice. He emerged from this strange experience much stronger physically and in a state of great mental and spiritual exaltation. His only mission outside Wales was in Liverpool (where he was accorded a public banquet by the lord mayor, Apr. 7, 1905). In this mission he addressed himself mainly to the Welsh people and rarely spoke in English. When in Liverpool, in order to silence adverse criticism which had raised the question of his sanity, he was examined by five English specialists who issued a certificate of his mental soundness. In 1906, at the end of the revival, Roberts suffered a severe nervous collapse. He passed into retirement in the home of friends residing in Leicestershire, England, where, until Nov., 1910, he remained in comparative seclusion. His health has improved. From his retirement he has written one or two articles for the religious press, but they lack the brilliance of his extempore revival addresses. He is a good musician and a poet of some ability. Before the revival he
acquired an elementary knowledge of Greek and Latin and took up as a diversion the study of astronomy and some of the occult sciences.
The religious awakening has brought about in Wales a quickening of national spirit which is seeking expression in progressive legislation and general reform, and in this way it is still fulfilling itself. It has undoubtedly contributed to the movement for the political independence of Wales-the granting of a measure of autonomy by which the idealism of Welsh democracy can be given an adequate organ of expression.
Concerning the so-called occult phenomena of the revival much could be written. In almost every village within the revival zone testimony was given to the experience of mysterious psychical experiences. In Evan Roberts himself, the
6. Occult occult faculties are strongly developed Phenomena. (see § 4 above). He is (or was) subject to trance-like ecstasies. He claimed to be able to bear the prayers offered for him in far distant places; he was quick to detect any spirit of opposition or skepticism in his meetings and to trace it to its source; he was continually hearing " voices" and seeing visions. It must be added that in these matters the self-restraint of the re vivalist was as remarkable as the experiences themselves. They came to him unsought and were consistently subordinated to his Evangelical mes sage. The Rev. H. Elvet Lewis in his chronicles of the awakening (With Christ among the Miners, London, 1906) narrates many instances of signs and visions, the most noteworthy being the case of Mrs. Jones, a peasant woman of Egryn, Meri onethshire, whose evangelistic work during the re vival was largely influenced by the appearance of phenomenal lights (a record of her experiences is to be found in the Transactions of the British Psy chical Research Society for Dec., 1905). Mr. Lewis thus describes his meeting with her: " She made no reference to the signs until my friend and I asked her. She answered us simply as if she were speak ing about the fire on the hearth, that she had seen, almost from the first, each evening a fire or light between her and the hills which rise from the marshy shore-a quickly vibrating light, ` as though full of eyes,' so another described it. It had revealed to her what to expect at the meetings? Yes, without fail. One evening she had interpreted the sign to mean four converts. But only three responded when the test was made in the crowded little chapel. ` But there must be four,' she said. No, there could not be; all the rest, except the three who had de clared themselves that night, were already members. ` But there ought to be four to-night,' she repeated. No fourth could be found, until the door of the little vestibule was opened and one stood there halting between two opinions. The opening of the door and a kindly word of invitation brought the in quirer inside. And the four was completed. She had seen the light hovering over some houses on the hilltops; she was puzzled, for she thought there was no one in those houses unconverted, or at least out of church membership. But one day she was told by the Wesleyan minister at Barmouth and another friend who visited her, that there was one