Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Christmas Evans – Sinners Converted
PART FIVE of TEN
In his twenty-third year he attended an association meeting at Maesyberllan in Breconshire, where he met several ministers from North Wales, and especially Messrs. Thomas Morris and John R. Jones of Ramoth. These brethren represented to him the great necessity there was for additional preachers in the north, and earnestly besought him to accompany them thither. This, with much fear he consented to do; and behold him leaving his native district for the first time, and “going forth, not knowing whither he went.” “I went,” he says, “with them through Merionethshire, and then proceeded into Caernarvonshire, and preached wherever I might, till I got down into the extreme corner of the country called Lleyn.
The Baptists there were few and poor; they, however, besought me to spend some time amongst them, which I did. Immediately I experienced a remarkable change in my views and feelings: this referred to these particulars—confidence in prayer; a care for the cause of Christ; and new or additional light on the plan of salvation.”
In a note on the margin of his MS. he adds, exegetically, “I then felt that I died to the law; abandoned all hope of preparing myself to apply to the Redeemer; and realized the life of faith and dependence on the righteousness of Christ for my justification.” The happy consequence was that he experienced a strange facility and power in his ministry, while his own doubts and fears were dispersed, giving way to repose and assurance, and finding “peace and joy in believing.”
He found it difficult to believe the testimony of those who applied for membership when they attributed their conversion to his ministry, “because,” he observes, “I had been for three years preaching and had never received any intimation that one sinner had been converted, and also on account of the old feelings of despondence and fear which yet occasionally troubled me; still I was obliged to believe, and it was wondrous in my eyes.”
Thomas E. Kresal from: The Baptist Magazine, February, 1847 pg. 73
