Castro Myrrdin.

God has seen fit to give Wales a New Year’s gift in the shape of a great Religious Revival, which is destined not only to be of incalculable blessing to our own country, but to the whole world. It is a significant fact that some of the most prominent London dailies have already called it The Revival, and there is no reason why it should not be so. The Spirit of God is willing, if we but provide the conditions necessary for such work.

The genesis of this remarkable spiritual upheaval is already well known. The most prominent human personality connected with it is Mr. Evan Roberts, of Loughor, once a collier, and afterwards a blacksmith’s apprentice. He is of unblemished character, and of lofty aspirations and ideals, and he comes “rather as a wise and resourceful leader, to aid in the expression and development of the new life which had previously been spontaneously generated in scores of villages scattered over the hills and vales of Siluria.” It was, however, while at a ministerial preparatory school at Newcastle Emlyn that the young man had the grace to make a full, complete surrender to the call of God.

It will be unnecessary to dwell more on this human personality, for the Revival is pre-eminently the work of the Spirit. Suffice it to say that the religious life of Wales has been shaken to the foundations. There has been a reawakening of the national conscience. We are in the tide-way of a great spiritual movement, and the sublime effusion of Priscilla Leonard aptly describes the situation to-day:

“Though wrong may win, its victory is brief;
The tides of God at first no passage find;
Each surge breaks, shattered, on the sudden surf;
Yet still the infinite ocean comes behind.”

Up to the present the Rhondda valley has been the scene of the greatest spiritual activity. The life of the locality, once the blackest, not only atmospherically but morally, once the vilest and most abominable in the whole of Wales, has been changed, and instead there throbs in the heart and pulsates through the veins of thousands of our fellow countrymen a new life that is undoubtedly of God. Remarkable conversions have taken place. Some of the most depraved have been carried into the Kingdom of God on the wings of prayer contained in that well-known hymn —

“Pen Calfano
Nae ved kwnw byth o’m cof.”

The scenes at some of the meetings baffle description. The climax of spiritual fervour and joy is often reached before the arrival of the Missioner, and he, directed, as we believe, by God’s own Spirit, quietly withdraws if he finds that his presence damps the ardour and enthusiasm or diverts the attention of the meeting. Preachers, as preachers, are not wanted for the time being. The almost wholesale abandonment of simply hearing the sermon and nothing more, which was so characteristic of Welsh religious life in the past, has now disappeared. Men and women come to speak to God in His sanctuary. The meetings need no human conductor. God’s own Spirit leads and directs. There is a constant unbroken flow of spontaneous song, prayer, praise, and exhortation from young people. It is no uncommon sight to see two or three taking an active part in the meetings at the same time; and all this, it must he remembered, is purely spontaneous. There is no organisation or fixed system in these gatherings, and yet there is perfect harmony. All those who have witnessed these never-to-be-forgotten sights are convinced of the reality of the movement.

This Revival has been justly called an Ethical Revival. In other words, the transcendent power of the Cross has been translated into the “common round, the daily task,” of the people. It is not enough to see a man, declare openly that he is saved. Christ taught us above all to be eminently practical, and to so live that we should not be afraid to die. The real power of the Christ, who draws all men unto Himself, will be best revealed, not by mere lip service, but by carrying His precepts into practice. It means that men and women must work as hard in the absence of their employers as in their presence. It means that sobriety, conscience, chastity must dominate our lives, the outer as well as the inner life. And the Welsh Revival has revealed in no unmistakable manner that the people are more sober, old feuds are being healed, husbands and wives, being estranged from one another, find Christ at perhaps the same meeting, and there and then unite in a solemn compact of loyalty and devotion is re-established between them. Thousands of Welsh homes have been made happier during the Christmas of 1904 than ever they have been before. Benefit societies have had an abnormal increase of membership, and a new and generous devotion to the exalted ideals of life has been rekindled. Rescue work is proceeding apace among the fallen in Cardiff and elsewhere, and it is said that even the poor horses in the coal-pit do not now understand their drivers, whose language has changed from that of blasphemy to one of unusual kindness and gentleness. Old debts are being paid, and in one particular instance a debt of £40 or so, which had been wiped off the tradesman’s ledger as a “bad debt,” and as being hopelessly irrecoverable, has now been settled through religious conviction. The demand for Bibles now exceeds the supply, and its true value as the Book of Life, as the infinite answer to the deepest necessities of man’s immortal soul, is being steadily realised.

Of the lessons of the Revival, perhaps the greatest is that re-assurance in these materialistic and sceptical times that God is a living God, awake to man’s necessities and wants. It demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that God answers prayer. This mighty answer to prayer with which the January of 1905 has been ushered in reassures Christians of God’s compassion for the humanity He created and loves so abundantly.

In conclusion, it is not too much to say that thousands of London Welshmen are eager to catch up the flame of this religious movement, whose ramifications so vitally and so intensely and so materially affect family, social, commercial, industrial, educational, and Church life in the old homeland, We should be careful, however, not to create a Revival by noise and bustle; our manifest duty is to wait and obey the still small voice of God. There will have to be a confession of dryness and thirstiness, of humiliation and sincerity. Then must come the cultivation of prayer, of pleading more earnestly in private, in introducing more energy to our prayer meetings, in throwing our hearts and minds more fully into them, and God’s Spirit will assuredly be given. Lastly, there must be more personal effort, more personal dealing with those whom we know are not saved. Granted these conditions, the Spirit of God is ready to come, and coming, the age of miracle—for human conversion is a miracle—will not have ceased to exist.—W.R. GRIFFITHS, London Circulation Department.