Chapter IV · THE MINISTRY IN ANGLESEA (CONTINUED). (continued 2)

It is scarcely necessary to add, that the threat was never executed, nor did poor Christmas, apparently, hear anything further of the matter; but we have seen how great was the trouble, and agitation it caused him, while the fear was upon him. It is very affecting to find that this great, this saintly, and earnest minister, had upon his heart, and mind, the burden of all the chapel-debts connected with his denomination in Anglesea, while he was minister there.

It might have been thought that the ministerial course of Christmas Evans would close in Anglesea, where he had laboured so long, and so effectually. He was, now, about sixty years of age, but there was little light just now, in the evening-time of his life; indeed, clouds of trouble were thickening around him. It often seems that trouble, in the ministerial life, comes exactly at that moment when the life is least able to stand, with strength, against it; and, certainly, in the life of Christmas Evans, sorrows gathered, and multiplied at the close.

Chief among these must be mentioned, beyond any doubt, the death of the beloved companion of all the Anglesea life, his good wife, Catherine; she left him in 1823. She was eminently, and admirably fitted to be the wife of such a man as Christmas. Somewhat younger than her husband, she supplied many attributes of character, to him most helpful; she was not an enthusiast, but she was a Christian, with real, deep, and devout convictions. We have no lengthy accounts of her; but little side-lights, a kind of casemented window, reveal a character at once affectionate, beautiful, and strong.

We have seen that their home was the region of self-denial, and her husband long remembered, and used to tell, how “if there happened to be on our table one thing better than the other, she would, modestly, but cheerfully and earnestly, resist all importunity to partake of it until she ascertained that there was enough for both.” What a little candle such a sentence as this is, but what a light it sheds over the whole room! She did not pretend to be her husband; he filled his larger sphere, and she, in all her manifold, gentle ways, sought to give him rest. Surely she adds another name to the long catalogue of good wives. She reminds us of Lavater’s wife, and some little incidents in that Cildwrn cottage call up memories from the manse of St. Peter’s Church, and the shadows of the old Lindenhof of Zurich, where probably life did not put on a gayer apparel, or present more lavish and luxurious possibilities, than in the poor parsonage of Anglesea.

It is incredible, almost, to read what the good Catherine did, poor—to our thinking, miserable—as was the income of her husband. Her hand was most generous; how she did it, what committee of ways and means she called together, in her thoughtful mind, we do not know,—only, that she, constantly, found some food to give to poor children, and needy people; unblessed by children of her own, she employed her fingers in making clothes for the poor members, and families, of the Church. There was always help for the poor hungry labourer passing her cottage; the house was always open for the itinerant minister travelling on his way to some “publication,” and she was always ready to minister to his necessities with her own kind hands. Her husband often thought that the glance she gave upon a text shed light upon it. She never had robust health, but she accompanied her husband on several of his longer journeys through the greater part of Wales,—ah, and some of them in the winter, through storms of rain, and snow, and hail, along dangerous roads too, across difficult ferries; and she was uniformly cheerful! What an invaluable creature, what a blessed companion! A keener observer of character, probably, from what we can gather, than her husband; a sharper eye, in general, to detect the subterfuges of selfishness and conceit.

One mighty trial she had before she died; she had, in some way, been deeply wounded, grievously injured, and hurt, and she found it hard to forgive; she agonized, and prayed, and struggled; and before she was called to eternity, she was able to feel that she had forgiven, and buried the memory of the injuries in the love and compassion of the Redeemer. Her husband had to give her up, and at a time, perhaps, when he needed her most. The illness was long, but great strength was given to her, and at last the release came. There was mourning in the Cildwrn cottage. The last night of her life she repeated a beautiful, and comfortable Welsh hymn, and then, ejaculating three times, “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me!” she breathed forth her quiet, affectionate, and hopeful spirit, into her Saviour’s hands, and left her husband all alone, to bear the burden of her departure, and other griefs, and troubles which were crowding upon him.

Other troubles,—for, in what way we need not attempt too curiously to inquire,—the pastorate gave to the poor old pastor little, or no peace. There were strong Diotrephesian troubles agitating the great preacher’s life. The Churches, too, which Christmas Evans had raised, and to which, by his earnest eloquence, and active, organizing mind, he had given existence, grew restive, and self-willed beneath his guidance, refusing his advice with reference to ministers he suggested, and inviting others, whose appointment he thought unwise.

Poor Christmas! Did he ever ask himself, in these moments, when he thought of his lost Catherine, and felt the waves of trouble rising up, and beating all round him,—did he ever ask himself whether the game was worth the candle? whether he was a mere plaything in life, whom that arch old player, Death, had outplayed, and defeated? Did it ever seem to him that it was all a vanity, ending in vexation of spirit? The life most beloved had burnt out, the building he had spent long years to erect, seemed only to be furnished for discomfort, and distraction.

Did he begin to think that the wine of life was only turning into acrid vinegar, by-and-by to end with the long sleeping-draught? Of life’s good things, in the worldling’s sense of good, he had tasted few; most clearly he had never desired them. He had never the opportunity, nor had he ever desired to be like a Nebuchadnezzar, roaming the world like a beast, and pasturing at a dinner-table, as upon a sort of meadow-land of the stomach, sinking the soul to the cattle of the field; but he might have expected that his Church, and Churches, would be a joy, a rest, a pleasant meadow-land to him. The body was certainly crumbling to decay: would the ideas also prove like frescoes, which could be washed out by tears, or removed, and leave the soul only a desolate habitation, waiting for its doom of dust?

We do not suppose that, amidst his depressing griefs, these desolating beliefs, or unbeliefs, had any mastery over him. What did the men who tormented him know of those mighty springs of comfort, which came from those covenants he had made with God, amidst the lonely solitudes of his journeyings among the wild Welsh hills? He had not built his home, or his hopes, on the faithfulness of men, or the vitality of Churches; the roots of his faith, as they had struck downward, were now to bear fruit upward.

There was a fine healthfulness in his spirit. There is nothing in his life to lead one to think that he had ever been much intoxicated by the fame which had attended him; he appears to have been always beneath the control of the great truths in which he believed, and it was not the seductive charms of popularity for which he cared, but the power of those truths to bring light, conviction, and rest, to human souls. All his sermons look that way; all that we know of his preaching, and experience, turns in that direction.

Rose-leaves are said to act as an emetic, and have much the same effect on the constitution as senna-leaves. It is so with those sweet things which fame offers to the imagination; the conserves of its fragrance, by-and-by, become sickening. So, the robust nature of our fine old friend had to rise over grief, and disappointment, and unfriendliness, and diaconal dictation and impertinence. Only one thing he remembered. He appears to have been sustained, even as Edward Irving was, in his conviction that the truth of his message, the lamp of the ministry which he carried, gave to him a right, and a prerogative which he was not to relinquish; he had proved himself, he had proved the Spirit of God to be in him of a truth. He was not a wrangler, not disposed to maintain debates as to his rights; nor was he disposed to yield to caprice, faction, and turbulence; and so, he began to think of retiring, old as he was, from the field, the fragrance of which had proclaimed that the Lord had blessed him there.

Christmas Evans, as he draws near to the close of his work in Anglesea, only illustrates what many a far greater, and many a lesser man than he, have alike illustrated. There is a fine word among the many fine words of that great, although eccentric teacher, John Ruskin:—“It is one of the appointed conditions of the labour of man, that in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the further off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be the witnesses of what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure of our success.” This was, no doubt, the consolation of Christmas; but as we look upon him, a friendly voice reminds us, that, as he leaves Anglesea, he realizes very much of Robert Browning’s soliloquy of the martyred patriot:—

“Thus I entered, and thus I go! In triumphs people have dropped down dead. Paid by the world,—what dost thou owe Me? God might question; now, instead, ’Tis God shall repay! I am safer so.”

So the candlestick was removed out of its place in Anglesea, and Anglesea soon, but too late, regretted the removal. Christmas Evans, however, seems to illustrate a truth, which may be announced almost as a general law, from the time of the Saviour and his Apostles down to our own, that those who have wrought most unselfishly, and serviceably for the cause of God, and the well-being of man, had to receive their payment in themselves, and in the life to come. In proportion to the greatness of their work was the smallness of their remuneration here.

If we refer to the painful circumstances in connection with the close of the ministry of Christmas Evans at Anglesea, it is, especially, to notice how his faith survived the shock of surrounding trouble. He himself writes: “Nothing could preserve me in cheerfulness and confidence under these afflictions, but the assurance of the faithfulness of Christ; I felt assured that I had much work yet to do, and that my ministry would be instrumental in bringing many sinners to God. This arose from my trust in God, and in the spirit of prayer that possessed me; I frequently arose above all my sorrows.”

And again he writes: “As soon as I went into the pulpit during this period, I forgot my troubles, and found my mountain strong; I was blessed with such heavenly unction, and longed so intensely for the salvation of men, and I felt the truth like a hammer in power, and the doctrine distilling like the honey-comb, and like unto the rarest wine, that I became most anxious that the ministers of the county should unite with me to plead the promise, ‘If any two of you agree touching anything,’ etc. Everything now conspired to induce my departure from the island: the unyielding spirit of those who had oppressed, and traduced me; and my own most courageous state of mind, fully believing that there was yet more work for me to do in the harvest of the Son of Man, my earnest prayers for Divine guidance, during one whole year, and the visions of my head at night, in my bed—all worked together towards this result.”

Few things we know of are more sad than this story. “It was an affecting sight,” says Mr. William Morgan, quoted by Mr. Rhys Stephen in his Memoir, “to see the aged man, who had laboured so long, and with such happy effects, leaving the sphere of his exertions under these circumstances; having laboured so much to pay for their meeting-houses, having performed so many journeys to South Wales for their benefit, having served them so diligently in the island, and passed through so many dangers; now some of the people withheld their contributions, to avenge themselves on their own father in the Gospel; others, while professing to be friends, did little more; while he, like David, was obliged to leave his city, not knowing whether he should ever return to see the ark of God, and his tabernacle in Anglesea again. Whatever misunderstanding there was between Mr. Evans, and some of his brethren, it is clear that his counsels ought to have been received with due acknowledgment of his age, and experience, and that his reputation should have been energetically vindicated. I am of opinion, I am quite convinced, that more strenuous exertions should have been made to defend his character, and to bear him, in the arms of love, through the archers, and not to have permitted him to fall in the street without an advocate.”

The whole aim of Mr. Evans’s life, as far as we have been able to read it, was to get good from heaven, in order that he might do good on earth. Clearly, he never worked with any hope of a great earthly reward for any personal worthiness; perhaps there arose a sense that he had always been unjustly remunerated, that burdens had been laid upon him he ought not to have been called upon to bear; and now the sense of injustice sought, as is so frequently the case, to vindicate itself by ingratitude. It seems so perpetually true, in the sad record of the story of human nature, that it is those who have injured us who seek yet further to hurt us.