Читать книгу Sermons of Christmas Evans - Evans Christmas - Страница 12

In 1794, the South West Baptist Association was held at Velin Voel, in Caermarthenshire. Mr. Evans was invited, as one of the preachers on the occasion. It was a journey of about two hundred miles. He undertook it on foot, with his usual fortitude, preaching at different places as he went along. The meeting was to commence with three consecutive sermons, the last of which was to be preached by Mr. Evans. The service was out of doors, and the heat was very oppressive. The first and second sermons were rather tedious, and the hearers seemed almost stupefied. Mr. Evans arose and began his sermon. Before he had spoken fifteen minutes, scores of people were on their feet, some weeping, some praising, some leaping and clapping their hands for joy. Nor did the effect end with the discourse. Throughout the evening, and during the whole night, the voice of rejoicing and prayer was heard in every direction; and the dawning of the next day, awaking the few that had fallen asleep through fatigue, only renewed the heavenly rapture. “Job David, the Socinian,” said the preacher afterwards to a friend, “was highly displeased with this American gale.” But all the Socinians in Wales could not counteract its influence, or frustrate its happy effects.

Mr. Evans continued to visit the associations in South Wales for many years: and whenever he came, the people flocked by thousands to hear “the one-eyed man of Anglesea.” It was on one of those occasions, and under circumstances somewhat similar to the above, that he preached that singularly effective sermon on the demoniac of Gadara. The meeting had been in progress three days. Several discourses had been delivered with little or no effect. Christmas Evans took the stand, and announced as his text the evangelical account of the demoniac of Gadara. He described him as a naked man, with flaming eyes, and wild and fierce gesticulation; full of relentless anger, and subject to strange paroxysms of rage; the terror and pity of all the townsfolk. They had bound him with great chains, but he would break them as Samson broke the withes. They had tried to soothe him by kindness, but he would leap upon them like a furious wild beast, or burst away with the speed of a stag, his long hair streaming on the wind behind him. He inhabited the rocks of a Jewish cemetery; and when he slept, he laid down in a tomb. The place was a little out of town, and not far from the great turnpike road, so that people passing often saw him, and heard his dreadful lamentations and blasphemies. Nobody dared to cross his path unarmed, and all the women and children ran away as soon as they saw him coming. Sometimes he sallied forth from his dismal abode at midnight, like one risen from the dead, howling and cursing like a fiend, breaking into houses, frightening the inhabitants from their beds, and driving them to seek shelter in the streets and the fields. He had a broken-hearted wife, and five little children, living about a mile and a half distant. In his intervals of comparative calmness, he would set out to visit them. On his way, the evil spirit would come upon him, and transform the husband and father instantly into a fury. Then he would run toward the house, raving like a wounded tiger, and roaring like a lion upon his prey. He would spring against the door, and shatter it into fragments; while the poor wife and children fled through the back door to the neighbors, or concealed themselves in the cellar. Then he would spoil the furniture, and break all the dishes, and bound away howling again to his home in the cemetery. The report of this mysterious and terrible being had spread through all the surrounding region, and everybody dreaded and pitied the man among the tombs. Jesus came that way. The preacher described the interview, the miracle, the happy change in the sufferer, the transporting surprise of his long afflicted family. Then, shifting the scene, he showed his hearers the catastrophe of the swine, the flight of the affrighted herdsman, his amusing report to his master, and the effect of the whole upon the populace. All this was done with such dramatic effect, as to convulse his numerous hearers with alternate laughter and weeping for more than half an hour. Having thus elicited an intense interest in the subject, he proceeded to educe from the narrative several important doctrines, which he illustrated so forcibly, and urged so powerfully, that the people first became profoundly serious, then wept like mourners at a funeral, and finally threw themselves on the ground, and broke forth in loud prayers for mercy; and the preacher continued nearly three hours, the effect increasing till he closed. One who heard that wonderful sermon says, that, during the first half hour, the people seemed like an assembly in a theatre, delighted with an amusing play; after that, like a community in mourning, over some great and good man, cut off by a sudden calamity; and at last, like the inhabitants of a city shaken by an earthquake, rushing into the streets, falling upon the earth, and screaming and calling upon God!2