"Can our people sing? That is the question to be answered before you can decide that. Hitherto the revival has not strayed beyond the track of the singing people. It has followed the line of song, not of preaching. It has sung its way from one end of South Wales to the other. But then the Welsh are a nation of singing birds."

Wales Revival Report of 1905

by William T. Stead

Among those who have gone to see for themselves what is going on in Wales, is Mr. William T. Stead, the famous London editor, a man of quick insight and about as little likely to mistake mere excitement or fanaticism for spiritual power as anyone could well be.

The London Methodist Times says that this was Mr. Stead's first visit to the scene of a religious revival, and one of its representatives interviewed him about it on his return. Here is the interview—

"Well, Mr. Stead, you've been to the revival. What do you think of it?"

"Sir," said Mr. Stead, "the question is not what I think of it, but what it thinks of me, of you, and all the rest of us. For it is a very real thing, this revival, a live thing that seems to have a power and a grip that may get hold of a good many of us who at present are mere spectators."

"You think is on the march, then?"

"A revival is something like a revolution. It is apt to be wonderfully catching. But you can never say. Look at the way the revolutionary tempest swept over Europe in 1848. But since then revolutions have not spread much beyond the border of the state in which they break out. We may have become immune to revivals, gospel hardened, or totally indifferent. I don't think so. But I would not like to prophesy."

"But in South Wales the revival is moving?"

"It reminded me," said Mr. Stead, "of the effect that travelers say is produced on the deserts by the winds that propel the sandstorms, beneath which whole caravans have been engulfed. The wind springs up, no one knows from where. Its eddying gust lick up the sand, and soon the whole desert is filled with moving columns of sand, swaying and dancing and whirling as if they were instinct with life. Woe be to the unprotected traveler whose path the sandstone traverses."

"Then you do feel that we are in the track of the storm?"

"Can our people sing? That is the question to be answered before you can decide that. Hitherto the revival has not strayed beyond the track of the singing people. It has followed the line of song, not of preaching. It has sung its way from one end of South Wales to the other. But then the Welsh are a nation of singing birds."

"You speak as if you dreaded the revival coming your way."

"No, that is not so. Dread is not the right word. Awe expresses my sentiment better. For you are in the presence of the unknown. I tell you it is a live thing this revival, and if it gets hold of the people in London, for instance, it will make a pretty considerable shaking up."

"But surely it will be all to the good?"

"Yes, for the good, or for those who are all good. But what about those who are not good, or who, like the most of us, are a pretty mixed lot? Henry Ward Beecher used to say that of God were to answer the Lord's prayer, and cause His will to be done in earth as in heaven, there were streets in New York that would be wrecked as if they had been struck by a tornado.

"Of course, it may be all to the good that we should all be shaken up; and tornadoes clear the air, and earthquakes are wholesome, but they are not particularly welcome to those who are at ease in Zion."

"Sandstorms of the desert, tornadoes, earthquakes: really, Mr. Stead, your metaphors would imply that your experiences in South Wales have been pretty bad?"

"No," said Mr. Stead. "Not bad at all. Do you remember what the little Quaker child said, when the Scottish express rushed at full speed through the station, next to the platform on which he was standing? 'Where you not frightened, my boy?' said his father. 'Oh, no,' said the little chap, 'a feeling of sweet peace stole into my mind.' I felt like that, rather. But the thing is awesome. You don't believed in ghosts?"

"Not much. I'll believed them when I see one."

"Well you have read ghost stories, and can imagine what you would feel if you were alone at midnight in the haunted chamber of some old castle, and you heard the slow and stealthy step stealing along the corridor where the visitant from the other world was said to walk. If you go South Wales and watch the revival you will feel pretty much like that.

"There is something there from the other world. You cannot say from were it came, or where it is going, but it moves and lives and reaches for you all the time. You see men and women go down in sobbing agony before your eyes as the invisible Hand clutches at their heart. And you shudder. It’s pretty grim, I tell you. If you are afraid of strong emotions, you’d better give the revival a wide berth."

"But is it all emotion? Is there no teaching?"

"Precious little. Do you think teaching is what people want in a revival? These people, all the people in a land like ours, are taught to death, preached to insensibility. They all know the essential truths. They know that they are not living as they ought to live, and no amount of teaching will add anything to that conviction.

"To hear some people talk you would imagine that the best way to get a sluggard out of bed is to send a tract on astronomy showing him that according to the fixed and eternal law the sun will rise at a certain hour in the morning. The sluggard does not deny it. He is entirely convinced of it. But what he knows is that it is precious cold at sunrise on a winter’s morning, and it is very snug and warm between the blankets. What the sluggard needs is to be well shaken—he needs to be snatched out of bed. ‘Roused,' the revival calls it. And the revival is a rouser rather than a teacher.

"And that is why I think those churches that want to go on dosing in the ancient ways had better hold a special series of prayer meetings that the revival may be prevented coming their way."

"Then I take it that your net impressions were favorable?"

"How could they be otherwise? Did I not feel the pull of that unseen Hand? And have I not heard the glad outburst of melody that hailed the confession of some who in very truth had found salvation?

"Of course, it is all very much like what I have seen in the Salvation Army. I was delighted to see that at last the Welsh churches are recognizing the equal ministry of men and women. The surging waters are right on the very beach of the movement. There is a wonderful spontaneity about it all, and so far its fruits have been good and only good."

"Will it last?"

"Nothing lasts forever in this mutable world. And the revival will no more last them the blossom lasted in the field in springtime. But if the blossom had not come and gone, that would be no bread in the world today. And as it is with the bread, so it is with that other bread that is the harvest that will be gathered in long after this revival has taken its place in history.

"But if the analogy of all previous revivals holds good, this religious awakening will be influencing for good the lives of numberless men and women who will be living and toiling and carrying on the work of this God's world of ours, long after you and I have been gathered to our fathers."

Can Our People Sing?