RELIGIOUS REVIVAL

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 65

RELIGIOUS REVIVAL

RESULTS OF THE WELSH MOVEMENT . LONDON, January 10. There has been a considerable increase of religious mania patients in the Denbigh Asylum. For the first time for eighteen years there have been no cases at the Newport Police Court. Both of these facts are attributed to the religious revival movement led by Evan Roberts.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing and at the present time “gallant little Wales" is suffering badly from an overdose of religion (says our London correspondent writing on December 2nd). The first dose was administered by that highly emotional young revivalist preacher Evan Roberts, a couple of weeks ago, and to-day a large part of the community seems to be on the verge of a sort of religions delirium tremens. Thousands are neglecting their daily duties in their efforts to “bring God more closely into their lives," to which end they spend a great part of their time praying for themselves, preaching at their neighbours, throwing themselves into paroxj-sms of singing and sobbing devotion, or of howling self-condemnation. Gigantic prayermeetings are being held all over the country. In some cases they last for hours on end, and only cease when the participators are exhausted through the excess of their emotions, and the lack of physical sustenance. Men and women drop down on their knees in the snowdriven streets and fields to prav, rough miners abandon their picks and shovels to pay adoration to the Most High in the inky darkness of coal galleries, brickmakers folloAv their example in the yellow dirt of their trade, and crowds gather daily in village road or c-ity street to chorus God's goodness, and their own unworthiness. In some places public-houses have been invaded by bands of ecstatic men and women who have dragged forth the drinkers and conveyed them by main force to meeting-houses with their beermugs and cans still in their hands. The revival may do much good, but the first fruits are not good to contemplate. An orgie of spiritual emotion is as bad for some people as a drinking bout is to others, and Nature is exacting from tide Welsh revivalists much the same #*enaliy as she exacts from those who give way to the demon Alcohol. Many of the “converts” have commenced to “see things" —not pink rats with blue eyes or multicoloured snakes, but visions of the Mpfsiah, the Virgin Mary, and otlm j - Scriptural characters suitably chu\ r_ white, aind some have gone stark mad. Insanity, indeed* has increased alarm imilv in

some quarters of Wales. One of ihe first victims Avas a highly respectable chapel deacon, who, after a long bout of pray 7 er, suddenly de\’eloped symptoms of insanity, and a feAV hours later was discovered lying naked as a neAv-born babe under his bed and shouting “Salvation !” He has been removed to an asylum. At Llanc-lly the police ran in a man who Avas lound raving in the streets, his chief offence being that he obstructed the traffic by ever and anon falling on his knees in the roadivay to offer up grotesque prayers for the salvation of some very worthy local deacons Avho he alleged were “filthy drunkards." On his release he Avent to the office of the Avorks at Avhich he is employed, and dropping to his knees prayed fervently for the manager and directors of the concern. Then he Avent abroad again, telling the wondering toAvnsfolk of visions seen in the night, and shrieking forth messages he alleged he had received from the Almighty. Finally he became so violent that he had to be removed to an asylum, and thither, in the course of a, few days, his Avife had to be taken also. These are not isolated cases, for dozens of people have got “religion" so badly that they ha\ 7 e to be kept under restraint, and hundreds of Avomen are in the doctor’s hands undergoing treatment for nervous prostration following a period of spiritual hysteria.