Evan Roberts was born at Loughor in 1878; he is the fifth in a family of eight, four sons and four daughters. His father is a collier, the mother a simple, honest housewife: neither the parents nor their forebears have been people of unusual ability or mark. Evan attended the Church School of the upper village until he was 12 years of age and, although diligent and regular in school-life, showed no capacity that distinguished him from other lads; in ordinary work he was just the average, healthy, play-loving boy, cheerful and willing. Between 11 and 12 years of age he had a slight accident to his face, after which as a consequence he showed symptoms of a nervous shock. I refer to this later on. The incident has not been related elsewhere and may be denied by some of his friends, but I have good reason for thinking there is truth in the story. From his earliest days Evan had a strong bias towards religion, but I learn on good authority that not much reliance can be placed on the statement which has found its way into print to the effect that the mother destined her newly born child for the ministry. Most Welsh mothers desire to see at least one son in the ministry, but there is no evidence that I can discover of Mrs. Roberts having had an unusual desire of this kind. Roberts spent most of his time in Bible reading, both as a boy and as a collier, and he may almost be described as a man of one book. At the same time, the catalogue of his modest library, which has been read to me by one who obtained it from Evan, shows that he paid more than usual attention to general culture, especially in Welsh books of reference. He wrote poetry, some of which was published in newspapers, and is a fair performer on three or four musical instruments. I am assured by a scholar who has tested his knowledge that Evan Roberts has a better literary equipment than most Welsh colliers and that is saying a great deal, for many of them read widely. When he became a collier at the age of 12, and during his blacksmith period in his 25th year, the Bible was his constant companion, prayer the ever-sought recreation. Every interval in his working days and many of his night hours he spent in earnest prayer. At the Chapel he was an active partaker in all the various exercises and classes. The one testimony borne by every person who came into contact with Evan in whatever capacity, is that his life, conduct, and profession were and are absolutely consistent. I have rarely found such unanimous witness to any good man. His talk in private for many years was on revivals, he read all he could find on the subject, and his prayers were for a revival. The idea possessed him night and day. A few weeks ago he told one of my informants, a pressman who has been in close touch with the revivalist, that on one occasion, four years before the Revival, he had suggested to a young preacher a sermon on 2 Chron. vii. 14. The verse seemed to him to furnish the programme of a revival. To it he has certainly been most loyal. I give these details because without them it is impossible to form a proper estimate of the man or of his position. We can easily understand from them that if the working, active consciousness of this lad was mainly occupied with this one absorbing idea, how richly stored his sub-consciousness became with the materials on which he is now making heavy drafts.

After a year at the forge, Roberts determined to prepare for the ministry in the Calvinistic Methodist Body, and he entered the preparatory school at Newcastle Emlyn in the middle of September, 1904. The head-master (see (3) Appendix) says of him that during the few weeks he was at school he betrayed a capacity and aptitude for work considerably above the average. On the fifth Sunday of his residence a missioner named Seth Joshua came to the village on a mission, and on the following Tuesday some of the young women from New Quay came over to help. Evan Roberts was present, much to the regret of the head-master, as the pupil had been in bed with a cold. On the Wednesday night the master saw Evan in the Chapel standing up to confess Christ,” then kneeling in prayer and going through a most agonising soul-struggle. This however was overshadowed by what happened next day at Blaenanerch, where, as he said, he was “bent” (see Western Mail reprint). After this Roberts was at Newcastle Emlyn for about three weeks, but not in school. The master, being totally unable to appreciate the mighty force at work in one who spent all day and most of the night in prayer and meditation, tried to get Evan to study some simple task, but the young man declared that as soon as he touched a book he felt the spirit crushing him, and it was only by putting the book on one side that he could obtain relief. As he said this a tremor ran through him, and his face and neck were observed to quiver in a remarkable way. To most of the people around him he was then an enigma; only two or three persons had any suspicion of what these paroxysms and visions meant. On a certain Sunday night he heard a voice bidding him go home to Loughor and speak to the young people of his own Chapel: the following day he went. Permission having been obtained to hold services, the work began on October 31st; before many evenings Loughor was on fire and thence the flame spread.

Evan Roberts is a mystic, and to understand his place in humanity we must study the lives and writings of Eckhart, Tauler, Hylton, St. John of the Cross, and especially Juliana of Norwich, persons whose names, I suspect, were unknown to Roberts until recently. His teaching is limited in scope, but so far has been more in accordance with the Spanish than with the German mystics. Is this due to racial affinity? Roberts is probably of Iberian stock.

The story of his visions will, I understand, be published. Here is one and it is typical of the rest. It occurred before he left home for the Grammar School. “One Friday night last spring when praying by my bedside before retiring, I was taken up into a great expanse without time or space—it was communion with God. Before this it was a far-off God that I had” (cp. Suso on his vision. “It was without form or mode, but contained within itself the most entrancing delight.” Suso died in 1365). “I was frightened that night but never since. So great was my shivering that I rocked the bed and my brother awakened, took hold of me, thinking I was ill. After that I was awakened every night a little after one. This was most strange, for through the years I slept like a rock and no disturbance in my room would arouse me. From that hour I was taken up into Divine fellowship for about four hours. What it was I cannot tell you, except that it was Divine. About five I was allowed to sleep until nine.”

Mr. Seth Joshua, before-mentioned, has said that for four years before meeting with Roberts in Cardiganshire, he had prayed for the raising up of a revivalist, not from Oxford or Cambridge, but rum the plough or the coalpit.” ( A paragraph also appeared in the South Wales Daily News, July 1st, 1905, to the effect that a deacon eight years ago offered a similar prayer.) Mr. Joshua was not alone in praying for a revival: I have evidence that many in all parts of Wales had been doing the same, and I suggest that if our theory of telepathic influence is true, it must some day be recognised as one at least of the elemental forces in what is called prayer. I am not, I think, going beyond the limits of our inquiry if I urge the examination of prayer as a psychic force on the attention of members. If the obsession of a particular idea in one mind is traceable to the intense energy exerted by some other mind at a distance, with a view to the obsession, is it contrary to reason to conclude that something of this kind takes place in a certain class of prayers? I am thinking now of only one branch of prayer action, the terrene; but it does seem probable that if a hundred or two hundred persons in Wales were for years desiring a particular line of action, and spent a great deal of time in expressing their desire, the force so generated and directed could hardly fail to reach and move some sympathetic minds within the same area. We are very far from understanding the laws of telepathy, but our limited knowledge, even of its facts points in the direction I have indicated. Finding in the course of my inquiry that the revival had ‘‘caught on” in some places, in others had but limited success, and elsewhere failed ignominiously, I tried to discover what prayer-preparation had taken place in the several localities, and no one in Wales will, I think, dispute my conclusion that speaking generally the results corresponded to the preparation. In one town the conversions in the chapels attended by Evan Roberts were fewer than in other’s where he was not present, and for the same reason—difference in the amount of preparation.

Whether by prayer or other means, the creation of expectancy would seem to be necessary to success. I attended Roberts’ services at Siloam, Swansea, for a whole Sunday. Meetings had been going on there daily for five weeks before his arrival (beginning nearly as soon as his meetings at Loughor), and I found in the packed mass of 800 or 900 people in the Chapel, exactly that air of feverish expectancy which made all present susceptible to the suggestion power of a man like the revivalist. It was a new experience to me to hear a large crowd sing over and over again for 15 or 20 minutes, without a moment’s pause, the refrain: Diolch iddo, diolch iddo, Byth am gofio llwch y llawr (Thanks to Him: always for remembering the dust of earth.)

One able correspondent whose name, were I allowed to give it, would carry great weight (he is a Welshman), says that some of the scenes witnessed are in part due to the hysterical excitement caused by expectation. I need not detain you with a description of a revival service: it must suffice to say that even in the most orderly meetings confusion reigns, yet there is no sense of confusion. Roberts generally preaches but little, sometimes not at all. His part is to ascertain at intervals the peculiar temperament present in the congregation as a whole, or in its parts, and then to guide it into correspondence with his own standard of what it ought to be. If you have watched a skilled workman bringing a lump of heated metal or other material into a required form, you can conceive what Roberts does with his meetings. One shrewd observer, a Welshman, writes to me thus: (The account which is given in full in the Appendix (4) is abridged here.) “The five meetings I attended were in different places, under different circumstances, and each meeting had a complexion entirely its own. But I detected a uniform method. Evan Roberts tests a meeting before he begins to speak. What provokes his hearers seems to be the clearest explanation of his success in bringing each meeting to a dramatic and successful climax. His apparent indifference and immobility, before he says anything, breaks up all the composure an audience can command. Add to this his habit of transfixing each and every person with his homage-compelling gaze. He reviews methodically the rows of faces; it is the look of a practised physician. By the time he speaks he has made a mental census of the audience. He knows who are ill at ease, he predicts conversions, he detects hindrances. A man of faith, doubtless, relying on the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but not neglectful of all the data available by human means. He makes the audience reveal itself, and then tells the people what they knew already, but they are puzzled and staggered by the fact that this meteoric stranger should know them so well. In three of his break-downs or nervous collapses that I witnessed, I was near enough to render first-aid if necessary, and could not believe that he was shamming. Twice I saw him place his hand on his neck, as if pressing something down. There was a jerking back of the head, such as I have noticed in persons whose nervous systems are somewhat deranged.”

My correspondent knew nothing of the accident in Roberts’ boyhood; his idea of a physical cause for the nervous tremors is therefore all the more noteworthy. The followers of Evan attribute these mild tremors to Divine influence, and I think he shares their belief, but true to our line, we must exhaust the nearer probabilities before going elsewhere.

Roberts certainly possesses a strong power of suggestion, is very sensitive to a certain class of telepathic influences, and has a genius for religion, but has not, by any sign that I can read, a trace of multiple personality in active operation.

Some account must be taken of the inner voice he claims as his guide. We are all familiar with what Mr. Myers wrote on Socrates and his Daemon in Hamart Personality, Vol. II., sects. 812 et seqq., and the parallel between the philosopher and the revivalist is on some points remarkably complete. In Roberts’ case the Spirit tells him when to speak and when to be silent, to whom he may grant an audience and whom he must refuse, what places to visit and the places he must avoid. Without any previous warning the inner voice compelled him to remain silent for seven days from February 23rd to March 1st. On the 22nd he was preparing to go from Neath to Briton Ferry when suddenly the voice said: “Don’t go.” He obeyed, and remained in one room for the seven days without uttering a word even to the girl revivalist who took his frugal meals to him. The few communications that passed were made in writing. I have ascertained front the people in whose house he was staying that they never heard him once praying or reading aloud. The story of’ those seven days is given in full in the Western Mail reprint for March 3rd, 1905, and I quote extracts from these in (5). He had one vision during this period, a revelation of the imperfect spiritual condition of a certain group of people. If you read the accounts of all that he went through in public from September 1904, to February 20th, 1905, you will not be surprised that tired nature asserted itself and demanded rest. Not all of us have the courage to obey nature’s warnings so implicitly and immediately.

The short pithy messages that Roberts gives his friends and audiences as from the Spirit are, so far us can be discerned, not more remarkable than might be expected from a man whose mind is saturated with Biblical knowledge, and who possesses great native shrewdness and penetration. It is right to mention that few men have more resolutely withstood the temptation to be lionised. Whatever may happen, he will not be the idol of the hour, and people who have crossed Continents to see in private have had to return unsatisfied.

A great deal has been said of his power of predictions. It appears to be exercised chiefly in pointing out where coming converts are to be found in this or that part of a chapel meeting. He is nearly always found to be right at the time, and, if his statement is not verified or justified immediately, it has bean afterwards. Numerous as such instances are, we may not be disposed to attach much weight to this feature of his work, since it is obvious that in a huge gathering of the kind many are present who are susceptible to a “converting” influence. But one case of prediction deserves notice. At Liverpool (6) on one occasion Roberts refused to leave the building, when the service had been declared closed by the ministers, because he said that one man in an indicated gallery, a Welshman, he was certain had not confessed Christ as he ought to have done. The minister in charge of that gallery “tested” the people and reported that every one had confessed Christ. Roberts was not satisfied: six times was the appeal made during the next 25 minutes and not until the sixth test did a man come forward and admit that he had not been sincere in professing as a convert with the rest. Roberts directed the minister to speak to the man, and after a short talk he too gave in. We can only assume that Roberts’ sensitiveness to deceptive, hostile, or sympathetic thoughts is abnormally developed. Many public speakers are aware of the temper or attitude of an audience before any outward sign of it has been given.

Amongst the records in the Appendix (7) will be found two cases of possibly telepathic influence.

Evan Roberts has not escaped criticism as to his predictions and declarations of hostile influence. What one critic at Dowlais and others at Liverpool said may be read in the reprints.