The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 56

_Gwaed Dy groes sy'n c' odi fyny_

Calvary's blood the weak exalteth More than conquerors to be,[38]

--and followed the player note for note, singing the sacred words in her sweet, clear voice, till he stopped ashamed, and took himself off with all his gang.

[Footnote 38: A less literal but more hymn-like translation is: Jesu's blood can raise the feeble As a conqueror to stand; Jesu's blood is all-prevailing O'er the mighty of the land: Let the breezes Blow from Calvary on me.

Says the author of _Sweet Singers of Wales_, "This refrain has been the pa.s.sword of many powerful revivals."]

Another hymn--

_O' Llefara! addfwyn Jesu_,

Speak, O speak, thou gentle Jesus,

--recalls the well-known verse of Newton, "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds." Like many of Williams' hymns, it was prompted by occasion. Some converts suffered for lack of a "clear experience" and complained to him. They were like the disciples in the s.h.i.+p, "It was dark, and Jesus had not yet come unto them." The poet-preacher immediately made this hymn-prayer for all souls similarly tried. Edward Griffiths translates it thus:

Speak, I pray Thee, gentle Jesus, O how pa.s.sing sweet Thy words, Breathing o'er my troubled spirit, Peace which never earth affords, All the world's distracting voices, All th' enticing tones of ill, At Thy accents, mild, melodious Are subdued, and all is still.

Tell me Thou art mine, O Saviour Grant me an a.s.surance clear, Banish all my dark misgivings, Still my doubting, calm my fear.

Besides his Welsh hymns, published in the first and in the second and larger editions of his _Hallelujah_, and in two or three other collections, William Williams wrote and published two books of English hymns,[39] the _Hosanna_ (1759) and the _Gloria_ (1772). He fills so large a s.p.a.ce in the hymnology and religious history of Wales that he will necessarily reappear in other pages of this chapter.

[Footnote 39: Possibly they were written in Welsh, and translated into English by his friend and neighbor, Peter Williams.]

From the days of the early religious awakenings under the 16th century preachers, and after the ecclesiastical dynasty of Rome had been replaced by that of the Church of England, there were periods when the independent conscience of a few pious Welshmen rose against religious formalism, and the credal constraints of "established" teaching--and suffered for it. Burning heretics at the stake had ceased to be a church practice before the 1740's, but Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and the rest of the "Methodist Fathers," with their followers, were not only ostracised by society and haled before magistrates to be fined for preaching, and sometimes imprisoned, but they were chased and beaten by mobs, ducked in ponds and rivers, and pelted with mud and garbage when they tried to speak or sing. But they kept on talking and singing.

Harris (who had joined the army in 1760) owned a commission, and once he saved himself from the fury of a mob while preaching--with cloak over his ordinary dress--by lifting his cape and showing the star on his breast. No one dared molest an officer of His Britannic Majesty. But all were not able to use St. Paul's expedient in critical moments.[40]

[Footnote 40: Acts 22:25.]

William Williams often found immunity in his hymns, for like Luther--and like Charles Wesley among the Cornwall sea-robbers--he caught up the popular glees and ballad-refrains of the street and market and his wife sang their music to his words. It is true many of these old Welsh airs were minors, like "Elvy" and "Babel" (a significant name in English) and would not be cla.s.sed as "glees" in any other country--always excepting Scotland--but they had the _swing_, and their mode and style were catchy to a Welsh mult.i.tude. In fact many of these uncopyrighted bits of musical vernacular were appropriated by the hymnbook makers, and christened with such t.i.tles as "Pembroke," "Arabia," "Brymgfryd,"

"Cwyfan," "Thydian," and the two mentioned above.

It was the time when Whitefield and the Wesleys were sweeping the kingdom with their conquering eloquence, and Howell Harris (their fellow-student at Oxford) had sided with the conservative wing of the Gospel Reformation workers, and become a "Whitfield Methodist." The Welsh Methodists, _ad exemplum_, marched with this Calvinistic branch--as they do today. Each division had its Christian bard. Charles Wesley could put regenerating power into sweet, poetic hymns, and William Williams' lyrical preaching made the Bible a travelling pulpit.

The great "Beibl Peter Williams" with its commentaries in Welsh, since so long reverenced and cherished in provincial families, was not published till 1770, and for many the printed Word was far to seek.[41]

But the gospel minstrels carried the Word with them. Some of the long hymns contained nearly a whole body of divinity.

[Footnote 41: As an incident contributory to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the story has been often repeated of the little girl who wept when she missed her Catechism appointment, and told Thomas Charles of Bala that the bad weather was the cause of it, for she had to walk seven miles to find a Bible every time she prepared her lessons. See page 380.]

The Welsh learn their hymns by heart, as they do the Bible--a habit inherited from those old days of scarcity, when memory served pious people instead of print--so that a Welsh prayer-meeting is never embarra.s.sed by a lack of books. An anecdote ill.u.s.trates this characteristic readiness. In February, 1797, when Napoleon's name was a terror to England, the French landed some troops near Fishguard, Pembrokes.h.i.+re. Mounted heralds spread the news through Wales, and in the village of Rhydybont, Cardigans.h.i.+re, the fright nearly broke up a religious meeting; but one brave woman, Nancy Jones, stopped a panic by singing this stanza of one of Thomas Williams' hymns,--

_Diuw os wyt am ddylenu'r bya_

If Thou wouldst end the world, O Lord, Accomplish first Thy promised Word, And gather home with one accord From every part Thine own, Send out Thy Word from pole to pole, And with Thy blood make thousands whole, And, _after that come down_.

Nancy Jones would have been a useful member of the "Singing Sisters"

band, so efficient a century or more afterwards.

The _tunes_ of the Reformation under the "Methodist Fathers" continued far down the century to be the country airs of the nation, and reverberations of the great spiritual movement were heard in their rude music in the mountain-born revival led by Jack Edward Watkin in 1779 and in the local awakenings of 1791 and 1817. Later in the 19th century new hymns, and many of the old, found new tunes, made for their sake or imported from England and America.

The sanctified gift of song helped to make 1829 a year of jubilee in South Wales, nor was the same aid wanting during the plague in 1831, when the famous Presbyterian preacher, John Elias,[42] won nearly a whole county to Christ.

[Footnote 42: Those who read his biography will call him the "Seraphic John Elias."

His name was John Jones when he was admitted a member of the presbytery.

What followed is a commentary on the embarra.s.sing frequency of a common name, nowhere realized so universally as it is in Wales.

"What is his father's name?" asked the moderator when John Jones was announced.

"Elias Jones," was the answer.

"Then call the young man John Elias," said the speaker, "otherwise we shall by and by have n.o.body but John Joneses."

And "John Elias" it remained.]

An accession of temperance hymns in Wales followed the spread of the "Was.h.i.+ngtonian" movement on the other side of the Atlantic in 1840, and began a moral reformation in the county of Merioneth that resulted in a spiritual one, and added to the churches several thousand converts, scarcely any of whom fell away.

The revival of 1851-2 was a local one, but was believed by many to have been inspired by a celestial antiphony. The remarkable sounds were either a miracle or a psychic wonder born of the intense imagination of a sensitive race. A few pious people in a small village of Montgomerys.h.i.+re had been making special prayer for an outpouring of the spirit, but after a week of meetings with no sign of the result hoped for, they were returning to their homes, discouraged, when they heard strains of sweet music in the sky. They stopped in amazement, but the beautiful singing went on--voices as of a choir invisible, indistinct but melodious, in the air far above the roof of the chapel they had just left. Next day, when the astonished wors.h.i.+ppers told the story, numbers in the district said they had heard the same sounds. Some had gone out at eleven o'clock to listen, and thought that angels must be singing.

Whatever the music meant, the good brethren's and sisters' little meetings became crowded very soon after, and the longed-for out-pouring came mightily upon the neighborhood. Hundreds from all parts flocked to the churches, all ages joining in the prayers and hymns and testimonies, and a harvest of glad believers followed a series of meetings "led by the Holy Ghost."

The sounds in the sky were never explained; but the belief that G.o.d sent His angels to sing an answer to the anxious prayers of those pious brethren and sisters did no one any harm.

Whether this event in Montgomerys.h.i.+re was a preparation for what took place six or seven years later is a suggestive question only, but when the wave of spiritual power from the great American revival of 1857-8 reached England, its first messenger to Wales, Rev. H.R. Jones, a Wesleyan, had only to drop the spark that "lit a prairie fire." The reformation, chiefly under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mr. Jones and Rev. David Morgan, a Presbyterian, with their singing bands, was general and lasting, hundreds of still robust and active Christians today dating their new birth from the Pentecost of 1859 and its ingathering of eighty thousand souls.

A favorite hymn of that revival was the penitential cry,--

_O'th flaem, O Dduw! 'r wy'n dyfod_,

--in the seven-six metre so much loved in Wales.

Unto Thy presence coming, O G.o.d, far off I stand: "A sinner" is my t.i.tle, No other I demand.

For mercy I am seeking For mercy still shall cry; Deny me not Thy mercy; O grant it or I die!

I heard of old that Jesus, Who still abides the same, To publicans gave welcome, And sinners deep in shame.

Oh G.o.d! receive me with them, Me also welcome in, And pardon my transgression, Forgetting all my sin.

The author of the hymn was Thomas Williams of Glamorgans.h.i.+re, born 1761; died 1844. He published a volume of hymns, _Waters of Bethesda_ in 1823.

The Welsh minor tune of "Clwyd" may appropriately have been the music to express the contrite prayer of the words. The living composer, John Jones, has several tunes in the Welsh revival manual of melodies, _Ail Attodiad_.

The unparalleled religious movement of 1904-5 was a praying and singing revival. The apostle and spiritual prompter of that unbroken campaign of Christian victories--so far as any single human agency counted--was Evan Roberts, of Laughor, a humble young worker in the mines, who had prayed thirteen years for a mighty descent of the heavenly blessing on his country and for a clear indication of his own mission. His convictions naturally led him to the ministry, and he went to Newcastle Emlyn to study. Evangelical work had been done by two societies, made up of earnest Christians, and known as the "Forward Movement" and the "Simultaneous Mission." Beginnings of a special season of interest as a result of their efforts, appeared in the young people's prayer meetings in February, 1904, at New Quay, Cardigans.h.i.+re. The interest increased, and when branch-work was organized a young praying and singing band visited Newcastle Emlyn in the course of one of their tours, and held a rally meeting. Evan Roberts went to the meeting and found his own mission. He left his studies and consecrated himself, soul and body, to revival work. In every spiritual and mental quality he was surpa.s.singly well-equipped. To the quick sensibility of his poetic nature he added the inspiration of a seer and the zeal of a devotee. Like Moses, Elijah, and Paul in Arabian solitudes, and John in the Dead Sea wilds, he had prepared himself in silence and alone with G.o.d; and though, on occasion, he could use effectively his gift of words, he stood distinct in a land of matchless pulpit orators as "the silent leader." Without preaching he dominated the mood of his meetings, and without dictating he could change the trend of a service and shape the next song or prayer on the intuition of a moment. In fact, judged by its results, it was G.o.d Himself who directed the revival, only He endowed His minister with the power of divination to watch its progress and take the stumbling-blocks out of the way. By a kind of hallowed psychomancy, that humble man would detect a discordant presence, and hush the voices of a congregation till the stubborn soul felt G.o.d in the stillness, and penitently surrendered.

Many tones of the great awakening of 1859 heard again in 1904-5,--the harvest season without a precedent, when men, women and children numbering ten per cent of the whole population of a province were gathered into the members.h.i.+p of the church of Christ. But there were tones a century older heard in the devotions of that harvest-home in Wales. A New England Christian would have felt at home, with the tuneful a.s.semblies at Laughor, Trencynon, Bangor, Bethesda, Wrexham, Cardiff, or Liverpool, singing Lowell Mason's "Meribah" or the clarion melody of Edson's "Lenox" to Wesley's--

Blow ye the trumpet, blow, The gladly solemn sound;