The first few months of Roberts’s college days were uneventful, and his fellow-students, who were passionately fond of the future revivalist, could detect nothing very extraordinary about the young man. He never outshone his fellows, was never a recluse or bore, and entered into college life with customary life and spirit.
But what a struggle was going on within! “Something“ told him his studies were soon to he interrupted, that a vast field of labour spread itself before him. But, alas! he seemed to he losing his hold upon God! In the autumn of 1904 he contracted a severe chill, and had to spend four days in bed.
“The last night of the four,” he says. ‘‘ I was bathed in perspiration— the result of the cold, and communion with God.” That was on Saturday. On the following ‘Tuesday evening a fellow student, Sidney Evans—who is now a prominent revivalist—went to see him, and asked him to go to a prayer-meeting which was to be held in a neighbouring chapel. Although he had not made up his mind to go before his friend arrived, some mysterious power impelled him to go.
“At that moment,’’ he says, “I felt the Spirit coming upon me, and so irresistibly did he come that I rushed to the chapel without my top-coat.’’
While at that meeting the influence began. Roberts had “liberty before the Throne of Grace.’’ He was “ready to pray,” so he says, and he prayed specifically for some young women who were at the meeting from New Quay. Although by no means a sensational service, there was an influence there that quickened the young man’s life and feelings.
On the following evening he attended a prayer-meeting again; but this time he had become somewhat cold. He did not pray publicly, but silently he lifted up to heaven petitions for the removal of his indifference. His own words paint the picture: “I was hard. I could, look at the Cross without feeling, and I wept for the hardness of my heart, but could not weep for Christ. I loved the Father and the Spirit, but I did not love the Son.’’
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