Life
Harris was born at Talgarth in Brecknockshire in 1714. He underwent a religious conversion in 1735 while listening to a sermon by the Rev. Pryce Davies in the parish church on the necessity of partaking of Holy Communion. While listening to that sermon Harris came to the conviction that he had received mercy through the blood of Christ. He immediately began to tell others about this and to hold meetings in his own home encouraging others to seek the same assurance that he had of Christ's forgiveness.
Having failed to be accepted for ordination in the Church of England because of his "Methodist" views, he became a travelling preacher and was tireless in his determination to spread the word throughout Wales. His preaching often led him into personal danger, and he endured considerable persecution and hardship before gaining a following.
In 1750, having fallen out with Daniel Rowland, and having been the subject of a public scandal as a result of his close friendship with "Madam" Sidney Griffith, he retreated to his home at Trefeca, near Brecon. In 1752, inspired by the example of the Moravians, he founded a religious community there, known as Teulu Trefeca (=The Trefeca family) with himself as "father".
However, Harris had not given up preaching, and resumed his former activities in 1763, after reconciliation with Daniel Rowland. When he died, ten years later, and was buried close to his birthplace at Talgarth, twenty thousand people are said to have attended his funeral.
He was effectively the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist church.
Read more about this topic: Howell Harris
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They are girls. Green girls.
Death and life is their daily work.
Death seams up and down the leaf.
I call the leaves my death girls.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)