It was a small fire that burnt at Loughor when the “Western Mail’ gave its first account of the revival, but it required no seer to perceive that in that bright flame were all the possibilities of a huge conflagration that would sooner or later affect the whole country The Loughor movement bore all the marks of a genuine and spontaneous revival, as anybody who tested it by the light of past awakenings in Wales might have seen. Such upheavals invariably spring from small beginnings, so small that for weeks; and sometimes months, they fail to arrest public attention.

The Welsh people have always been easily acted upon by religious influences. This is characteristic of the emotional Celtic race. In ancient and medieval Wales the people were often roused from spiritual sleep, now by a missionary saint, and again by some fiery preaching friar. The history of the pre-Reformation Church contains several notable instances of religious emotionalism. In the seventeenth century pulpit power was greatly in evidence in some parts of Wales.

One or two instances must suffice. The famous Vicar Prichard by his preaching attracted immense congregations everywhere, and made a deep impression upon the people. Revivals on many occasions broke out under the moving eloquence of Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror. Jones, in fact, was the precursor of the greatest revival Wales has ever experienced, that of 1755, of which the preaching of Howel Harris, of Treveeca, was the immediate cause. Almost simultaneously, however, with the Breconshire movement occurred that of Llangeitho. A notable fact in connection with both is that they originated in church. Harris felt himself endued with power from on high after partaking of the Holy Communion in Talgarth Church on Easter day, 1735, and Rowlands, whilst in the act of reading the Litany at Llangeitho Church, brought down the Divine spark which eventually grew into a consuming fire. In a few years’ time no fewer than ten ordained clergymen (Harris himself was a layman) were engaged in the work of preaching the Gospel in all sorts of places, both consecrated and unconsecrated, and of spreading the revival in Wales. Ecclesiastical authority interposed, but to no purpose. It was only a fighting against stronger odds.

The movement grew and developed despite all obstacles, until at length it touched Wales at all points. We are now able to realise that it was destined to change the whole course of Welsh history. Though, however, it began in church, it was carried on outside its pale, with disastrous results to the ‘Old Mother.’ We who live in these far-off days can form no adequate conception of the mighty influences that operated in those days in religious circles in Wales and the marvellous results which followed. The face of the whole country, morally speaking, was changed. A new and powerful denomination sprang up, and new life was breathed into those religious bodies which had previously existed, one only excepted—the National Church itself.

During the latter half of the eighteenth century several revivals were witnessed, but they were all more or less local. Seven revivals, it is said, broke out in Harris’s time at Liangeitho alone. The most notable of the awakenings was that which occurred during the last decade of the century (1791-2). It is difficult to form a correct estimate of its scope or its results, but we know that it was a very powerful upheaval, and produced marked effects upon young people of both sexes, thousands of whom abandoned their sports and amusements for religious exercises and the bidding and the shebeen for the chapel and the Sunday School.

North Wales was visited by a religious convulsion in 1839, and again the following year, and South Wales witnessed exciting scenes in 1841, 1842 and 1843 The late Dr. Tom Rees, of Swansea, in a letter to the “Christian Witness,” in 1843, states that the motive power in the revival of that year was the perusal of a Welsh version of Finney’s “Lectures,” issued by Mr. E. Griffiths, of Swansea. The effects produced, however, seem to have been transient. for Dr Rees states that the period from the end of 1843 so the summer of 1849 “was a season of almost universal declension.”

At the latter date another awakening was experienced in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, and also in parts of Brecknockshire and Carmarthenshire. It is stated that the terrible visitation of cholera was principally the means of arousing peoples attention in 1849. Fear seems to have had a most rating effect upon peoples minds, for conversions on that occasion were not accompanied by loud cries or promiscuous singing or jumping as had been the case in some former revivals.

We have no record of the number of converts made on that occasion; but Dr Rees gives a list of Congregational churches with the number of new members added. At Brynmawr there was an increase of 409, Beaufort 396, Alltwen and Pantteg 400, Neath 460, Aberavon and Carnarvon 650, Tredegar 250, and at Merthyr from 1,200 to 1,500. Other denominations, no doubt, counted similar gains. A great feature of the revival was the great number of converts ‘who pressed together at the same time to the meetings. At Dowlais 240 were given the right hand of fellowship the same Sunday, and at Beaufort 200.

We now come to the greatest shaking of the heavens and the earth the last century knew—that of 1859. Its pioneer was Humphrey Jones, a Wesleyan returned from the States, where a powerful awakening had broken out. Jones commenced his campaign at Treiddol, and his preaching soon attracted great attention. In due time Cardiganshire was deeply aroused, and eventually the adjoining counties and the whole of Wales felt the strange new power that was at work. The leading features of the revival were spontaneous prayer meetings among the masses, spirit of union among all religious bodies, and zeal for the conversion of the irreligious. The meetings almost everywhere were conducted just as “the Spirit moved without programme or method and without leader. Anybody prayed or gave out a hymn, and meetings generally terminated owing to the sheer physical exhaustion of the revivalists. In hundreds of places people were carried out of chapel unable to move hand or foot. Of an evening the revivalists would, perhaps, go the round of all the chapels in a town or a neighbourhood, and meetings often continued until daybreak. Open-air prayer meetings were frequently held, and ordinary men and women were endowed with a remarkable “gift of tongue,” and were unaccountably eloquent. Physical manifestations of feeling were very marked and people often became delirious, giving vent to their emotions by jumping and shouting “Hosannah,” “Hallelujah,” and such exclamations.

It is estimated that 100,000 new members— about a tenth of the population of Wales at the time—joined the several religious bodies. One important result of the movement was the improvement produced in the morals of the people. The cause of temperance and social purity was given a powerful stimulus; in fact, the social and religious life of Wales was altogether lifted on to a higher plane.

The 1859 revival also marks a new era in the history of Welsh sacred music. That date saw a revival quite as much in congregational singing as in religion. It was the year in which that landmark in Welsh singing appeared—“Ieuan Gwyllts” tune-book. The introduction of the tonic sol-fa system, also, is co-incident with that year, and it was now the singing festival began properly to be the great power we know it in Welsh religious circles to-day. During the past fifty years music has become of paramount importance in Welsh churches and chapels, and sacred song has been powerfully stimulated from outside by the eisteddfod and the concert. No wonder a master of song once observed that “the next revival in Wales would be a singing revival.” The remark was founded upon knowledge of the national character and experience of the past half-century. Events around us to-day establish its correctness, and the following pages would serve to illustrate its force.