In this amazing quickening of the religious life of the nation, Welsh Hymnody came to its own. At its best, it is a vast, solemn, deliberate torrent of majestic melody, enriched by strong, vigorous and beautiful hannony: very often, these harmonies, combined with noble counterpoint, are made by the people themselves at the time! But it is true to say that such improvisations differ very little from the harmonizations of the composers of the hymn tunes.

In the innumerable addresses that one heard, one recalls that no particular views of the Bible were insisted on; the main doctrinal themes were the nature and character of God — his awefulness and his mercy: the revelation of his love and grace as revealed supremely in Jesus Christ and notably in his Cross. A great deal was said about the Holy Spirit, as Person and Power. In the prayers, the dominant note was one of thanksgiving.

In this mighty awakening of 1904/1905, the fact of “re-birth,” which term is perhaps the religious technical term for the reorientation of life under the stimulus of an external power, was strongly emphasized. For some time previous to 1904, in Wales, as in other countries probably, in ethical and religious circles, the direct and definite insistence on what was called the “New Birth” had gone much into disuse; the discussion of the problem was more or less left to certain people who emphasized nothing else. Surely, if there is one irrefutable human fact, denied by none of any faith, it is that it must be right and saving, in every sense, to turn, with repentance and full purpose of heart to God and to that which is good. And literally, by the thousands, that is what people were doing in this little land amid extraordinary fervor and activity.

Of course, there were critics. There were those who declared that the people were caught in the toils of “religious madness.” They deliberately refused to see that it was a madness that transformed and ennobled character. For here were people of all ages who had been blind but whose eyes were now opened! They were beholding Jesus Christ for the first time! They were seeing him in his wondrous glory and grandeur! They were realizing, albeit vaguely, the agony and suffering of Christ for a world of sinful men and women; for the first time they were seeing themselves as part of that world that Christ had come to save. More, they were seeing the Redeemer of the world victorious over all of his enemies and they felt something of his unconquerable resurrection power in their lives! Religious madness? Glorious madness!

As those silversmiths in Ephesus in the first century, who made idols of Diana, rose up against the Apostle Paul when he came to the city proclaiming the transforming and regenerative Gospel of Christ, so there were public-house keepers and gambling bookies and others of like ilk who saw in the Welsh Revival the hope of their ill-gotten gains departing, and who, therefore, tried to place all kinds of obstacles in the way of the Movement; in some cases, they gave free beer to those who set themselves to disturb and upset the meetings. But paradoxically enough, many of these public-house keepers and their following were themselves converted, and at once, and frequently at great financial sacrifice, they sought some other means of making a livelihood! So mightily did the Spirit of God work.