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PROFILES
OF
CHRISTIAN MINISTERS
A pulpit giant: Rev Dr Owen Thomas (1812-1891)
by Rev Dr D Ben Rees
Thirty years ago I wrote in Welsh a
substantial biography on this pulpit giant, a scholarly Welsh
Calvinistic Methodist minister and theologian and a supporter of
every missionary effort in his church. He was born on 15
December 1812 in Holyhead, the son of Owen and Mary Thomas and a
brother to Josiah Thomas. Dr John Thomas and William Thomas, all
heavily involved in evangelical witness. He did not receive very
much early education but overcame this disadvantage and was
among the earliest students to enter Bala College in 1838, and
thence to the University of Edinburgh, where his horizons were
enlarged. Ordained in September 1844, he ministered to
pastorates in Pwllheli and Newtown. At the end of 1851 he
received a call to minister to Jewin Crescent, a Welsh-language
chapel in London. In 1865 he moved to Liverpool, firstly to
Netherfield Road and then in 1871 to Princes Road Welsh
Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Toxteth. He had great enthusiasm
for missionary work and in 1865 his brother Josiah Thomas moved
to Liverpool as Secretary of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist
Mission work in India and Brittany. Throughout the years he took
a great deal of interest in the Khasia Hills and refers to them
in some of the letters to his mother and other members of his
family which are kept in his archives in the National Library of
Wales, Aberystwyth.
Owen Thomas was one
of the outstanding pulpit giants of the 19th century and the
young evangelist U Larsing from India hears him preaching in
August 1861 on his visit to the Association meetings held at
Newcastle Emlyn on the borders of Cardiganshire and
Carmarthenshire. U Larsing wrote in his diary: I saw 220
ministers seated on a platform… There were about 10,000 people
listening to the Revd O Thomas and the Revd L Edwards, DD, Bala,
who preached after him. There is some mysterious power in God’s
word to make the hearers cry out together as of one heart, Amen!
Amen! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Owen Thomas wrote
biographies of some of the great Welsh pulpit giants whom he had
heard in his young – such as John Jones, of Talysarn (1796-1857)
and Henry Rees of Liverpool. He died in the midst of his
activity on 2 August 1891 and was buried at Anfield Cemetery,
Liverpool. His grave is near to the graves of other notable
preachers such as the Wesleyan Methodist pulpit giant, John
Evans, Eglwysbach (1840-1897) and Griffith Ellis the saintly
minister in Bootle. On the centenary of his death I brought out
a study of him in English under the title of The life and
work of Owen Thomas, 1812-1891: a Welsh preacher in Liverpool,
published by The Edwin Mellen Press. You can find a great deal
more about this pulpit giant in this biography.
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