“AND how shall they preach except they be sent?” (Paul). The preacher is the ambassador of Eternity in the court of Time. In the court but not of it. His authority is eternity, his headquarters the realm of the eternal verities. His only concern is to permeate the court of time with the atmosphere of the eternal. He receives power and inspiration for his tremendous task from beyond the confines of the temporal. Is it meet to congratulate a preacher for a timely sermon? Ought not his messages to be as breezes from the eternal hills? All the great preachers of the church are the products of the spiritual realm, from John Chrysostom, Wycliffe, Savonarola, and Knox, down to our own day. When the church becomes enamoured of the Delilahs of time, and succumbs to the overtures of the temporal, then follows a period of spiritual stagnation and the desert wind withers her spiritual life. “Awake, O North wind and come thou South, blow upon my garden.” And with the winds of heaven comes the prophet. Spiritual revivals always produce men with the outstanding message.
The Reformation gave birth to Luther, Calvin and Knox whose message shook political and Papal thrones to their foundation. As the late Professor Richard Morris tersely put it— “Martin Luther with his clarion blast shook the Papacy to its very foundations.” The same sentiment was voiced by the late Rev. Joseph Jenkins concerning Calvin—“A man with eternity as his platform, and hell becoming pale before his message.” When the hour of God struck during the third decade of the eighteenth century, the trumpet blast of the Wesleys, Whitfield, Rowland, Harris, and Williams echoed through Great Britain and a nation changed in a day. The Church realised the inadequacy of the altar when the pulpit was devoid of the prophetic voice. During the absence of the prophet the people rise up to play and dance before the golden calf sponsored by the weakness of the priesthood. God speaks from the mount of His Revelation and then the prophet arrives. What is true of the church universal is true of the Church of God in our beloved Wales, a land exalted unto Heaven where great preaching is concerned. Of Wales it can be said as of Bethlehem—“And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah art not least among the princes of Judah.”
As we glance back across the centuries and retrace our meditations from the day of our patron saint, such names as Penry, Walter Caradog, Vavasor Powell, Wroth, Erbury, John Elias, Christmas Evans, and Williams y Wern, remind us as a nation of our terrific responsibility in the light of God’s gifts to us in saintly leaders. What thrills and pathos are ours when we read the heart-pleadings of the young John Penry for Welsh preachers, men who could help the people of Wales to explore the riches of God’s word in the vernacular! What a treasure he left to his four little daughters in bequeathing four New Testaments (his sole property)—what a gold mine! The only answer the church gave to Penry was the reading of homilies. But the eternal throne had greater blessings in preparation for Wales. Griffith Jones, Llanddowror with his evangelical preaching and his circulating schools may be regarded as the morning star of the eighteenth century revival in Wales.
“In the fullness of time, God sent His trumpeters through the land—Howell Harris of Trevecca saw his own sinful state and wonderful Saviour during Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday 1735.” After that wonderful vision which is the first and foremost equipment of a great preacher, the whole of Wales experienced his thunder and lightning. And what of Daniel Rowland, Llangeitho, who began his career as a curate to his elder brother and ended as a curate to his own son? In one feature he was different from his fellow revivalists. From the remotest parts of the Principality they flocked to Llangeitho year after year to the monthly communion, a congregation between 1500 and 2500. Rowland dwelt on the terrors of Sinai until people felt in their very bones their hopelessness. Then with angelic voice and countenance he would hold up the cross, and with tears of joy and repentance their jubilant notes would resound through the Vale of Aeron. One remarkable thing on the day of his funeral was the presence of 100 preachers who were his sons in the faith. The Reverend William Williams, the sweet singer of Wales, preserved the rich fruits of the great awakening in his wonderful hymns. Ben Bowen, the young poetic genius who died after crossing the threshold of the twentieth century, maintained that the flowers of the Vale of Towy were so soaked with the dew of hymnology that they would never wither.