THE REVIVAL IN WALES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13209, 16 February 1905, Page 8

THE REVIVAL IN WALES.

Sth,—Tlio world's work, lam (old, could not go on if such physical and psychological manifestations us ha.ve occurred in Wales were to continue indefinitely. Perhaps; but they will not so continue. The same experience which enables us to explain theso phenomena, in so far as they are explainable, equally warrants us in holding that in due time they will disappear. When tain large operations have advanced to a given stage, the preliminaries which attended their origin are dispensed with. " God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." It niny be doubted whether the preaching of John, that mighty son of the desert, emerging from his solitary and unknown dwelling, clothed in bis camel's hair tunic and "a lcathorn girdle about his loins," would have l>con half as icfTectivo if he had come in the phylacteries of the ordinary Jewish teaehcr. As tho heart and head get stored with sacrcd truth, the believer settles down into judicial sobriety and genial religious sympathies. So at least I understand it. The three thousaud converts on the day of Pentecost gradually worked oil the excitement of that ever-memorable occasion, and the next wo hear of them is that they wori a settled Christian community, "of one heart and of one soul, neither said any of them that ought of tho things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common." This was the nearest approach, so far as I am aware, to the simple integrity of social Christian lifo which tho world has ever seen—a n'erfcct communism with the finest of aspirations; not enforced by State enactment, which must fter prove a failure, but voluntarily earric<l@Tut as a matter of joyful privilege to the 'enrichment of hum,in nature and the enlarging of its capacities,— the same men and women as ever, with minds to learn and much to overcome— following their daily avocations, some as masters and soinc as servants, with a. fresh impulse of self-reliance and self-restraint,— and always with a vivid remembrance of the claims ol brotherhood. The Welsh revivalists have not reached any such exalted plane as this, but I read that the.Policc Courts in tho district more partcularly affected arc shut up; that drunkenness has entrely disappeared; and that not an oath or improper word is heard among a people who were much addicted to profane swearing. Not a bad beginning of tho new life. There is surely here tho germ of eternal progress, and, presumably, it will grow. If real, it . must grow—a new and vital forcc in the world,—and without any unreasonable optiiSism we may well be content to abide the issue. I venture to think that in this revival there is a lesson for Christian people everywhere. Evidently our religion is not intended to enthrone itself far away among principalities and powers, like a .heathen pontifex, watching at a safe distance the struggles of the gladiators in .the nrena the every-dav world. No. it must come down amid the dust and din of labour and business and politics. Slnll I be pardoned if I say that professing Christian men and women must get rid of their intense rcspfcetability and conventionalism, must think less of "tea-fights" and their too often uncharitable gossip, of their little (alphabetical) varieties, and their love o( petty oihcialdom, and make less of dependences on churchgoing and sewing "bees"? These are veritable . trifles j it is life the Church needslife full and strong—pulsing through cvorv ■ spiritual vein. The world grows old and the night is far spent.—what of the morninz?—l am, etc., 'William Hutchison. / /February 10.