A. M. Hodgkin

Three days is a short time to watch a movement which has touched the Welsh nation to the core, but we saw and heard more during that time than can he described on a page of THE QUARTERLY MAIL. Space fails to tell of the Sunday at Neath, preceded by a lively Testimony Meeting on Saturday night, when three or four hundred were present, mostly of the roughest type, the chief burden of their testimony being how glad they were to be spending a Saturday evening thus instead of drinking at the public-house. On Sunday we were greeted with a chorus of hearty “Good-mornings” as we entered the vestry, soon after eight o’clock, where a prayer meeting was being held. The meeting became so crowded that we had to adjourn to the large hall but it did not abate at all in fervour, many prayers ascending simultaneously, together with melodious song. During ten weeks 1,100 have been brought to the Saviour in this hall alone,

On Monday we proceeded to a little town in the Rhondda valley, where the Revival is still going on warmly in five or six big square chapels and in the church. Slowly the train wound up the narrow valley of the Afon between steep hill-sides, with the streams all flowing towards us. At the head of the valley we plunged into a tunnel, and emerged in a perfect amphitheatre of mountains at the head of the Rhondda valley, and at once noticed all the streams flowing away from us. The natural scenery of both these valleys is still beautiful, though defiled by pit-villages and smoke; the very streams were black, and we encountered seas of black mud everywhere.

The town we stayed at was almost entirely composed of miners’ cottages, like the row in our picture, at one of which we stayed, and received every kindness from the miner and his wife, and they would not hear of any payment for our lodging. Our other picture shows the back of the theatre of the place— a building which holds 2,000, and used to be packed. The day of our visit there was an announcement in the local paper that it would shortly be closed for an indefinite period. The night before the audience was reduced to ten, one of whom had got in without paying! As the theatres empty, so the chapels fill. When we were there, early in February, there were still services being held three times a day, as well as a large gathering every morning in the coal-pit before beginning the day’s work. At one of the meetings in this subterranean cathedral we were told 600 men gathered, arid about 400 lamps were raised when this signal was asked for from those on the Lord’s side.

The evening meetings we attended were held in the schoolroom of the chapel, as they feel they have warmer times of blessing there. The low underground room, the bright gaslight, and the closely-packed congregation made it warm physically, and there was no doubt about the heat of the spiritual atmosphere. The meetings here were altogether simpler and less conducted than at Neath and would naturally have been almost entirely in Welsh, only that, finding we had come among them, these people, with characteristic eagerness to share their spiritual as well as physical blessings with us, often spoke and sang in our tongue, one or two praying in halting English for the first time, which greatly touched us. We felt at home at once among them, realising the Spirit’s power and our oneness in Christ. One or two Englishmen gave their testimony— a soldier who had been right through the South African campaign, and said he had about gone to the length of his tether when he came into this chapel and found the Saviour. His wife had also been converted, and prayed with much emotion. Another was a butcher from Manchester. Drink had been his curse. He had “swallowed five shops of his own,” and had been dismissed from the management of one store after another, till now he was serving as a butcher’s man. One morning, when going his round for orders, a lady asked him to come into the house and spoke to him about his soul. His little girl having prayed for him that morning, his heart was already touched, but he was sure he was too great a sinner to be saved. The lady set before him Jesus as an Almighty Savour, and told him of others who had been saved. He handed her his membership ticket in a low drinking club and asked her to burn it, and now he could tell us of the Lord’s wonderful deliverance from the power of sin.

God has been manifestly working among the children in Wales. An elderly man at Neath told us a touching story of three little boys who agreed to pray for the drunken father of one of them, with the result that he was converted the next night. “And so the lambs get their prayers answered,” said the old man.

We had hoped to hear Evan Roberts, but God willed otherwise. Though we missed witnessing the intense fervour of those meetings where he is used by God to kindle the Revival flame, we had the privilege, in the two centres we visited, of seeing how steadily the light burned ten or twelve weeks after it had been lit.