It is now twenty-three years since Edmund Gurney asked me to join in the work of the S.P.R. My answer to his request was that I would do so on one condition, viz., that the Society would not attempt to prove the supernatural, by which I meant that I was willing to assist in the examination and classification of physical and psychical phenomena connected with ghosts, dreams, etc., solely as terrestrial events, and without reference to the ends such things may subserve in the spiritual sphere or the life beyond the grave. I maintained then, as I do now with even greater conviction, that whatever use individual members might make of the results of our inquiries, whatever inferences persons might draw from the verified stories collected by the Society, our work as a Society would be accomplished by that verification and tabulation. Gurney entirely assented to this view of our work, and the history of the S.P.R. is sufficient evidence of the loyalty which has been observed towards its first principles.

In dealing with the Welsh Revival in this paper, I desire to maintain exactly the same line, to relate events so far as one has been enabled to get at their truth, and to present the evidence in a more or less classified form.

In this work two difficulties arise : (i.) the inability of most persons to observe accurately the things passing under their very eyes; (ii.) the unwillingness of persons who have had abnormal experiences either to relate them or to submit to a mild cross-examination if they do relate them. Both difficulties are commonly found in S.P.R. work. The first is beyond our power to remove entirely, but as the Society’s methods become better known we may hope slowly to increase the now limited number of those who can observe accurately. The power of mental concentration so habitually exercised as to be ready at all moments to receive and retain impressions with precision is not common; we can do our best to encourage its growth.

The second difficulty is the greater one, particularly in the subject under discussion. Most of the persons whose experiences we desire to examine and record regard them as too sacred for any such process, and some have more than hinted that my inquiry is at least questionable, if not altogether profane. Argument avails but little with these good people, but my endeavour has been to suggest that as the Supreme Mind, to Whom they attribute the operations of which they have been the subjects, manifests in all His works law and order, there can be no more inherent profanity in trying to arrive at the particular laws or methods of the mental, psychical, or spiritual spheres than in investigating the physical side of His works.

Mr. Myers in his Human Personality, Vol. 11., p. 298, adopted a similar attitude. Prof. James, in Some Varieties of Regious Experience, follows the same line, and I may quote Dr. Starbuck’s introduction to his Psycholoqy of Religion where he says that “The student in the psychological laboratory meets with as much orderliness and sequence among the facts of emotion or memory or reasoning as the physicist in his laboratory. . . . It is scarcely questioned at the present time that all our mental processes follow an orderly sequence. We go one step further, and affirm that there is no event in the spiritual life which does not occur in accordance with immutable laws.”

I sincerely wish that my inquiry into revival phenomena could have been as full and detailed as Mr. Starbuck’s was in his researches into Conversion, but similar thoroughness required what was beyond my power to give,—many months of patient personal examination of witnesses, a mastery of the Welsh language, and sufficient acquaintance with the mental habits of the people to enable one to carry on the inquisition without arousing too much suspicion and distrust. I consented to write this paper only because no one else, so far as I know, has attempted to examine the Revival at all in detail, from our point of view, and because even a partial attempt of this sort may go a little way towards preventing the growth of a revival legend. I have attended revival services, heard Evan Roberts at three of his services, read most of the daily reports of meetings, corresponded with men and women of all sorts and conditions in various counties, and interviewed a fairly large number of people.