First-hand Report Of The Welsh Revival

By W. T. Stead (1849-1912)

W. T. Stead was one of the great newspaper reporters of his day. He died on board the Titanic. Here is an extract from his account of the Welsh Revival of 1904 in just one Welsh village: Mardy.

The revival had been going on in Mardy for a fortnight. All the churches had been holding services every night with great results. At the Baptist Church they had to report the addition of nearly fifty members, fifty were waiting for baptism, thirty-five backsliders had been reclaimed.

In Mardy the fortnight’s services had resulted in 500 conversions. The revival is borne along upon billowing waves of sacred song. It is the singing, not the preaching, that is the instrument which is most efficacious in striking the hearts of men.

The most extraordinary thing about the meetings which I attended was the extent to which they were absolutely without any human direction or leadership. The meetings open—after any amount of preliminary singing while the congregation is assembling—by the reading of a chapter or a psalm. Then it is go as you please for two hours or more.

And the amazing thing is that it does go and does not get entangled in what might seem to be inevitable confusion. Three-fourths of the meeting consists of singing. No one uses a hymnbook. No one gives out a hymn. As a study of the psychology of crowds I have seen nothing like it. You feel that the thousand or fifteen hundred persons before you have become merged into one myriad-headed, but single-souled personality.

A very remarkable instance of this abandonment of the meeting to the spontaneous impulse, not merely of those within the walls, but of those crowded outside, who were unable to get in, occurred on Sunday night. Twice, the order of proceeding, if order it can be called, was altered by the crowd outside, who, being moved by some mysterious impulse, started a hymn on their own account, which was at once taken up by the congregation within.

The prayers are largely autobiographical, and some of them intensely dramatic. Repentance, open confession, intercessory prayer, and, above all else, this marvellous musical liturgy—a liturgy unwritten but heartfelt, a mighty chorus rising like the thunder of the surge on a rock-bound shore. And all this vast quivering, throbbing, singing, praying, exultant multitude intensely conscious of the all-pervading influence of some invisible Reality—now for the first time moving palpably though not tangibly in their midst.

They called it the Spirit of God. Those who have not witnessed it may call it what they will; I am inclined to agree with those on the spot. For man, being according to the orthodox, evil, can do no good thing of himself, so, as Cardinal Manning used to say, “Wherever you behold a good thing, there you see the working of the Holy Ghost.” And the revival, as I saw it, was emphatically a good thing.