I first heard of the Revival at the beginning of October 1904, when a vivid account was given to me viva voce (since then written for me, see (2) Appendix) of the outbreak of fervour amongst some young women at New Quay, in Cardiganshire, who had been stirred to deeper thought some months previously. The part played by the sex whose most valuable mental endowment is intuition forms a marked feature of the whole movement, whether seen in leadership or in subordination. These young women were in the opinion of some persons, the initiators of the Revival in South Wales, but the movement soon became more prominently associated with a young man named Evan Roberts, and it was his efforts at his native place, Loughor, that first attracted the interest of the newspapers. Reporters and editors saw their opportunity and used it to the full. Without doubt they fostered the Revival, and their papers suffered no diminution of circulation in consequence. To the columns of vigorous and fairly accurate matter provided day by day by the two leading journals of South Wales, describing the services from November 10th onward for five months, much of the rapid development of excitement over the Revival was certainly due. (Reprints of these are in the S.P.R. Library.) But if the spread of the mysterious atmosphere from village to village and town to town was encouraged by the newspapers, it was not caused by them. Press influence is great, but it has its limitations. No amount of sensational writing could have enkindled the tremendous enthusiasm, with its resulting mass of converts, which characterised the Revival in some districts; those who claim that it did must show why the same influence utterly failed in other places. For one of the curiosities of the movement has been its very unequal operation. This is to be accounted for, as I shall presently prove, but it has nothing to do with the newspapers.

From Loughor the Revival spread to Trecynon, near Aberdare, thence to the Garw and Llynfi Valleys, on to Mountain Ash, and then to the Rhondda Valley, and elsewhere. Meanwhile a series of outbreaks was taking place in Merionethshire. This had no ostensible connection with the southern Revival, neither had it material support from the press until the appearance of the curious lights, to which I shall refer later, caused remark and attracted an army of reporters and investigators, much to the alarm and, in some cases, disgust of the peaceful inhabitants.

Although Evan Roberts’ name is the most prominent in the Revival, he neither created nor sustained it for the most part. He is the embodiment of the Spirit of the Revival, the most striking manifestation of the force that caused it, and to a very great extent its leader and director, but he did not produce the Revival, nor did the Revival produce him.