The Welsh Revival: Its Origin and Development

This rare book- published in 1860 as the first comprehensive account of the 1859 revival in Wales- holds a primary place in the authentic records of periods of remarkable spiritual recovery and growth. The author was an eye witness of much that he records, and he also gives the testimony of other contemporary observers from all parts of Wales. They all shared the conviction that the Almighty is opening the sluices of grace and pouring out streams of blessings on the churches of all denominations . 1859 was unmistakeably a time of profound emotion and of extraordinary numbers of professed converts but the author is not pre-occupied with these things. His greater concern is to show the marks of true Christianity in a time of revival and, pre-eminently, the moral change which is to be found in every true convert: They are told that excitement is not conversion and that whatever confidence they may have it is a delusion unless it is accompanied by hatred of sin, and a renunciation of it in every shape and form .

Thomas Phillips (1806-1870) was a Calvinistic Methodist minister and Welsh secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Phillips was born in March 1806 at Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Influenced by the revival of 1819, he began preaching two years later. He had intended to become a missionary abroad, and had already arranged to be trained at Cheshunt, when in 1825 he was invited to become a Calvinistic Methodist missioner at Hay. He remained there for ten years, preaching and keeping school. Early in 1836, however, he was appointed by the Bible Society to be its secretary for Wales, and removed to Hereford. He was a great success in his new sphere, and was the Society s oldest servant at the time of his death. The celebration of the Society s jubilee (1853 ) was placed in his charge. He published in Welsh Llyfr y Jubili (1854), a catechism on Protestantism (which went through several editions), and in English The Welsh Revival (1860; republished by the Trust in 1989). Phillips was a good organizer, and took a prominent part in the founding (in 1864) of the Calvinistic Methodist General Assembly, becoming, in 1865, its second moderator. He died at Hereford in October 1870.