Camaes - Evan Roberts (1905)



Every Cemaes villager attending the meeting brought his or her own chair or camp stool. At 5.00pm fully 2,000 people had assembled and their voices raised to hymns of thanksgiving and intercession must have been heard through all the countryside.

There is no lack of preachers. Every man in the crowd seems burning with eloquence and hwyl…

“The Amwlch meetings” declared Rev John Williams, “have been absolutely unprecedented in the history of the island.” This I find is the view taken by pretty well all North Wallans who were present. That the Amwlch meetings have spread the fire is unmistakably demonstrated tonight at this magnificent meeting. There is here less shouting than was heard last night, but the intensity is great and there is no mistaking the glowing fervency.

“We have met in the fields” are the revivalists opening words, "in the fields, the great temple of nature. What kind of service is this to be? We must not depend upon the vastness of the audience or the variety of the talents displayed. We must rely on the immortal God. Others have been in the fields. Some were in the in the dead of night, and to them the angels came. They were men at the post of duty. Let us do our duty, and the angels will come down, but if heaven were emptied of all its angels, archangels, and cherubims, and they came to us we would be no better off. They, with all their glory, cannot satisfy the wants of a thirsty soul. We want the Spirit of God here, the Lord of the angels. What kind of service is this to be? It weighs heavily upon me." The speaker looks anxiously around, and then, unable longer to suppress his emotion, bursts into a paroxysm of grief, throwing himself on the table before him with a great cry of, “O God, come to the meeting."

Rev John Williams tests the meeting, and the responses come in confusing numbers from every section of the concourse. Some of those that yield are it seems, men and women for whose conversion many intercessions have been offered during the past few weeks. Now that their surrender is announced their friends can scarcely contain themselves with joy. They cry, then weep, then shout, not a few leapt ecstatically into the air. "Diolch Iddo" is sung in half a dozen different keys and in varying tunes, by as many sections. Here and there, in different parts of the field, each section apparently rejoices over its own converts, utterly regardless of what is proceeding elsewhere.

From, 'The South Wales Daily News', 10th June 1905.

Additional Information

I do not know which field the meeting took place in.


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