WALES was a highly-favoured spot to which God time and again sent some of His true servants to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. And among these, not the least in abundant labours and striking success, was the Rev. Daniel Rowlands, Llangeitho, Cardiganshire. His biographer says:—”It is not too much to say that there never has been any single individual in Wales in any age who has contributed so much towards the promotion of true religion through the country as the late Daniel Rowlands of Llangeitho” (Memoir of the Rev. Daniel Rowlands, p. 44). Mr. Rowlands was the second son of the Rev. Daniel Rowlands, incumbent of Llanewwllle and Llangeitho, and was born at a place called Pantybeudy in the year 1713. His father was like so many of the clergymen of his time, and of our time also, altogether ignorant of what true religion meant. His son Daniel was trained for the ministry, but brought up in such a home and under such influences it is not to be expected that, as far as example was concerned, he had any ideas of the solemn responsibilities of the sacred office. He succeeded his father in the incumbency of Llangeitho, and began his dead ministry in a light and frivolous way. It is traditionally reported of him that he excelled in all kinds of sports, and that he was a ringleader in all the corrupting amusements of the age. “There was,” says his biographer, “commonly in every parish some place where the vain, the foolish, and the dissolute assembled; and there among them Rowlands, it is said, appeared the foremost, the liveliest, and the most active of the party, after having been in Church reading, praying, and preaching in the morning” (Memoirs, p. 48). The religious state of the parish, as might be expected from such a ministry, was deplorable. The following account will give a fair idea to the reader of how matters stood religiously about 1742 at Bala, which may be taken as typical of other parts of Wales:—”The common people,” says the Spiritual Treasury, “were more inclined to go to church on Sabbath mornings than the gentry; but in the afternoons they greedily followed their amusements. There was hardly a Sabbath afternoon on which they had not, in some part of the country, some place for sports. Here the youths exhibited their strength, and a great number of the people of the neighbourhood came together to look at them. On Saturday nights, especially in summer, the young people, both males and females, kept what was called singing nights, and amused themselves by singing with the harp and dancing till the dawn of the Sabbath. In Bala they were usually on the Sabbath afternoons singing and dancing in the public-houses, playing tennis under the Hall, bobbing, etc. There was in every corner of the town some sport going on until night. The interludes in summer were played in the loft of the hall on the afternoons of the Sabbath, and both the gentry and the common people thus amused themselves together, and profaned the Lord’s Day. There was also a great number of those called travelling people, who came occasionally to this town. These were wanderers who travelled the country for the sake of begging, if not for worse purposes. They were people of corrupt and depraved lives, an oppression on the country, and a shame to the magistrates who suffered them. This in part was the state of the country as to morals in the year 1742, and a good while after that. As to true religion and godliness, if by their fruits they are known, there was here but little of them, at least as things appeared to me.”
As already indicated, Rowlands began his ministry as an unconverted man, and God in judgment might have left him to perish for daringly entering the sacred office without the one qualification without which all other qualifications are vain. But God, who deals with men not according to their sins, but according to His great mercy, visited Daniel Rowlands in a very unexpected way. The subject of our sketch had gone with a number of his people to hear Griffith Jones, who was to preach at Llandewibrevi in the vicinity. So great was the crowd that gathered to hear this noted preacher that there was not sitting room for many who had come to hear him. Among these was Daniel Rowlands. Whatever may have been Rowlands’ motive in going we may safely say that he little anticipated what purposes the God of salvation had for him on this eventful day. He came to the preaching a proud, self-conceited man, but went home with his head bent to the ground. We leave his biographer to describe the incident which had such momentous consequences for Daniel Rowlands. “His appearance,” he says, “at this time was very vain, full of conceit and levity. So large was the assembly that there was no room for them to sit down; and in the midst of them, just opposite the preacher, stood Rowlands, evidently conceited and full of himself, and his countenance shewing no small measure of contempt. His appearance was such as to draw the attention of Mr. Jones while he was preaching, and so much so that he suspended his discourse, and offered up a very earnest and affecting prayer for the vain young man that stood before him, beseeching God in an especial manner to make him a suitable instrument for turning many from darkness into light. His prayer, it has been said, produced an amazing effect on the mind of Rowlands. His appearance when returning home was quite different from what it was when he went there. The proud gait had disappeared, and the vain talk was no longer heard. With the head and face towards the ground, he seemed very thoughtful. It was thus that the great change commenced.” From this day onwards he was a different man, and his preaching was also different. He began by preaching the law, pointing out its high and minute demands, and announcing its awful threatenings. “Awful and extremely terrifying was the message,” says his biographer, “nothing but the consuming flashes and dreadful thunders of the law, with hardly anything like the joyful sound of the gospel. Endless condemnation, deserved by sinners, was what he set forth with unusual power and energy. His own spirit seemed to have been filled with great and awful terror. He appeared as if he wished to kindle the fire of hell around the transgressors of God’s law that he might terrify them. He unfolded the indignation of heaven against sin with amazing clearness, earnestness, and vigour. But there was no harshness in his voice nor sternness in his countenance; but, on the contrary, the most melting tenderness. He spoke as one overflowing with compassion and under the deepest conviction of his own unworthiness.” His preaching was his actual experience, and wonderful effects followed it. Hundreds and thousands flocked to hear him. The most thoughtless were sobered as by death, and the hard-hearted, profane, and godless wept under the proclamation of the awful message of condemnation. But deep though the convictions were, those so affected were not brought into the liberty of the gospel. “Deep convictions,” says his biographer, referring to this period of his ministry, “and hardly anything else were produced. According to what the writer has heard from the oldest of Rowlands’ followers that he has consulted, those convictions lasted for some years—perhaps four or five, and he continued all that time in the same awful strain of preaching.”
He had in the Rev. Philip Pugh, a Presbyterian minister in the neighbourhood, at this time a true and judicious friend. When critics pointed Rowlands’ defects, his friend gently admonished them. “Let him alone,” he would say; “he is an instrument raised by God for some great work. He will improve in a short time. God will bring him right by degrees.”
A few years after Rowlands’ conversion a very remarkable change took place in his preaching. As his aged friend, Mr. Pugh, listened to the solemnising and awful truths declared with such power and deep conviction, he felt, notwithstanding the tremendous effect produced, there was something seriously lacking. And, acting the part of a true friend, he pointed out to Rowlands that something more was required in his preaching. “Preach the gospel to the people,” he said; “point them to the balm of Gilead and the blood of Christ.” Rowlands remonstrated with him, saying that he could only preach what he had experienced. “Yes! but tell the people that the gospel message is in the Bible though you do not yet feel its power; proclaim it on the authority of God’s Word.” It was advice given in love, and in love it was taken. And through the abundant mercy of God the “son of thunder” became also a “son of consolation.” The law was still proclaimed, but the gospel trumpet sounded its clear, sweet, and cheering message, gladdening the hearts of thousands as they listened to God’s messenger. His biographer has dealt with this notable change with spiritual insight and sober discrimination, as the following quotation will show:— “It was the Law he preached at first, and after some time he preached also the Gospel. He did not throughout his ministry leave off proclaiming the Law in its high demands and awful threatenings; but he proclaimed as fully, as often, and as clearly the unfathomable treasures of the Gospel. This was probably the reason that the deepest convictions were produced under his ministry, not only at first, but throughout the whole course of his life. . . . Breaking up the ground and harrowing was a very thorough work under his ministry. On this account probably it was that the religion of those who had been converted through him was purer, more serious, and more heavenly than I have observed in any other instances. There was something very tender and melting in their spirit, and their experience seemed deeper than what is found commonly in pious people. . . . The clearness and authority, the power and vigour, the sympathy and earnestness which he displayed before while preaching the law he displayed now while preaching the gospel, and that perhaps in a higher degree and to a greater extent. If he proclaimed before a righteous law, which required perfect obedience, and threatened eternal condemnation to its transgressors, he now proclaimed the complete obedience that was rendered to it by Him who came in the believer’s place as being fully sufficient for the justification of the worst and the most guilty of men who saw and bewailed their miserable condition. The fulness of Christ and His readiness to receive the vilest and the most wretched, and to forgive freely all their sins, he set forth with so much clearness and effect that those who were before wounded by the arrows of conviction were filled with amazement and with joy unspeakable.”
Christmas Evans, himself a prince of preachers, has left a description of Rowlands’ preaching. “While Rowlands was preaching,” he says, “the fashion of his countenance became altered; his voice became as if inspired; the worldly, dead, and careless spirit was cast out by his presence. The people, as it were, drew near to the cloud, towards Christ, and Moses, and Elijah. Eternity, with its realities, rushed upon their vision. These mighty influences were felt more or less for fifty years.”
There are one or two interesting incidents in connection with his preaching which are worthy of being noticed. On one occasion while he was preaching on the Lord’s Day a gentleman, who had been out hunting, dropped into the service on his way home with the intention of finishing off the day by making sport of the parson. The man at this time, though a gentleman in the eyes of the world, was not worthy of being reckoned among the lowest boors if his conduct were considered, as the following incident will indicate:—When Rowlands came in this sportsman stood up and made grimaces at the minister with the evident intention of disconcerting him. Nothing daunted, Rowlands went on with his preaching, and as he pointed out the claims of God’s law and the penalty that it exacted, the man, with those around him, was awed and trembled and wept. When the service was over the gentleman, now worthy of the name, came to Rowlands and asked him to stay with him, and during his lifetime gave abundant evidence of being a truly regenerated man.
In his own district the companions of the days of his ignorance and folly kept on their evil way spending the Lord’s Day in revelry and games. Rowlands’ spirit was stirred within him, and as he could not get them to come to the church services he determined to hold an open-air meeting at the Devil’s playground. He proclaimed God’s truth with great power and authority in their hearing, and from that day Satan lost his power in assembling these Sabbath profaners at the spot where so many were making a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
As he would not cease preaching wherever he had an opportunity he was cast out of the Established Church of England, but he had a higher commission than that of men for preaching the truths of God, and thousands rejoiced in the precious message that fell from his lips. The effect produced by his preaching at times was extraordinary. He preached with great feeling, and it is recorded that so solemnly impressed was he on one occasion that as he uttered the words referring to the Redeemer’s sufferings—”by thine agony and bloody sweat”—the vast congregation completely broke down.
As a true servant of Christ he fully recognised that conversion was not the work of man, but of God, as the following anecdote clearly shows:—”There is a man,” he said, “whom I converted.” “Very probably, sir,” was the reply, “but you have converted many besides him.” “Nay, friend,” he added, “you do not understand me; it was I, and not God, that converted him; for he is gone back, poor man, to the world; but it would have been otherwise had God converted him.”
He reached a great age, dying in his 77th year, on 16th October, 1790. He had served in the vineyard for fifty-three years with great activity and an abundant blessing resting on his labours. His removal caused great sorrow to thousands who had heard the gospel as glad tidings from his lips.