A distinction must be drawn between Revivals and Missions. Revivals belong to the very nature of the Welsh people. Missions are a foreign importation from somewhere beyond the Welsh border.

Missions can be, and indeed are, organized; they can be brought about by the plans and efforts of men; their failure or success depend, in the main, on the Missioner; he has his system of mechanics. For instance, if the Missioner decided not to talk for four or five nights in succession when the people had come to hear him, there would be an end to the Mission. In the Welsh Revival, there were a great number of meetings in which Evan Roberts, though present, did not speak, and yet the meetings went on all the same. Again, with regard to the Mission, there is prodigious propaganda, all of which, without a doubt, tends to cheapen real religion.

A Revival, on the other hand, cannot be organized; it is not worked up by means of human plans and efforts; it comes down from above; it is not born of men but of God. (Once I was travelling through West Virginia and on the Notice Board outside of a Church, there was this announcement, “Revival every Friday.” Revival has little or nothing to do with mechanics, but it has a great deal to do with dynamics. The Divine Dynamic of the Holy Spirit of God stirs men to the depth of their nature; there is an invasion of tremendous, creative forces into the lives of men.

In 1904, in the words of a great Welsh hymn, we saw the Christ of God riding majestically and triumphantly through the valleys girding his sword for battle; and his power, like a mighty rushing wind clearing before it all kinds of filth and dross and refuse from the gutters of corruption. Men who had spent all their lives breaking the commandments of God rose into newness of life. Young people in particular became possessed with a strange and wonderful joy and manifested a unique quality of moral courage that they had never known before and at once were found bearing witness to Christ and the Kingdom in all sorts of places. Here are some of the things that the writer saw and experienced:

From the beginning of time, it has been true that one personality sets another on fire. Before the young people in the coal-mining village in which I was brought up quite knew what was happening, they found themselves in Church meetings and taking part in all kinds of religious services; they had never dared to open their mouths in any sort of public gathering before, except, maybe, in the Sunday School, and they were garrulous there because they enjoyed red-hot arguments about all kinds of moral and economic problems.

The meetings took on the strangest character, for while some people would be singing, others would be praying and others again would be on their feet giving expression to the profoundest and sublimest ideas. Young boys and girls of fifteen or sixteen years of age were doing this, making it plain that without their knowledge, some of the richest and grandest religious ideas had sunk into their subconsciousness and were now, under the stimulus of the Spirit, arising to the surface, thereby enriching, not only their own lives, but also the minds and hearts and lives of others. The amazing thing was this, that while all of these things were happening together, there seemed to be no incongruity at all; there was harmony and decorum of the highest order; and why not? Is not the Holy Spirit of God a superb artist?

The writer had the great privilege of “taking care of” a Meeting for Prayer and Praise and Testimony at a “double-parting” in a coal mine for over a year! The men stopped at the double-parting for ten to fifteen minutes every morning on their way to the coal-face. Another meeting that continued for over a year was held on Saturday nights at eleven o’clock P.M. . . a “stop-tap” meeting; that is, at the time when the public houses (saloons) closed and literally threw out their customers. To explain these things adequately is utterly impossible. Here were a number of young people, forty or fifty of them, who had never spoken a word in public in their lives, and had never dreamed of doing anything of the kind. Now, they step into the ring and either speak or pray or sing, and they do this work with a natural eloquence that was astonishing and with a humble assurance that captivated the listeners.