LIFE AND MINISTRY OF REV. MICAH THOMAS
1776-1853
Not the least remarkable feature in the history of Bristol College is the help which it has rendered to similar institutions by furnishing to them men capable of discharging tutorial duties, and who have done so with conspicuous efficiency and usefulness. Among such must be assigned a most honourable place to the Rev Micah Thomas, the founder and first president of the Baptist College now located at Pontypool. The history of this distinguished minister and educator during the earlier years of his life may be compressed into half a dozen sentences.
He was born in the parish of Whitstone, Monmouthshire, on the 19th of February, 1776. His parents were of the yeoman class. When he was seventeen years of age he was baptised at Glascoed, and subsequently united with the church at Pen-y-garn, near Pontypool. About a year and a half afterwards he began to preach, and was much engaged in supplying the neighbouring churches until in his twenty-third year, he entered the College, over which Dr. Ryland was presiding with so much ability and success.
In 1802 he received an invitation from the church at Ryeford, in the county of Hereford, which he accepted. Here he remained for several years, honoured and useful. While at Ryeford Mr Thomas was accustomed to visit friends of his at Abergavenny, whose ancestors had been among the most influential and honoured members of the Baptist community, and whose descendants have maintained their principles and illustrated their virtues. To these, and especially to a lady among them, Mrs John Harris, of Govilon, Mr Thomas seems to have suggested the idea of establishing a theological college. At this time there was no Baptist college in Wales, Trosnant Academy, founded 1732, having been closed in 1770, and no Baptist church at Abergavenny. These friends, and particularly the lady mentioned, entered very heartily into the views of Mr Thomas and the result was that in 1817 he removed to Abergavenny to undertake the pastorate of a church yet to be formed and the presidency of a college yet to be established.
Such a step required both courage and faith in God; for there were series obstacles to be met and overcome, not the least of these being the prejudice which prevailed in Wales at that time, as it had previously done in England, and did still more or less against an educated ministry. Mr Thomas, however, had through both good report and evil report pursued the even tenor of his way, assured that that way was the way of duty and of effective service for God. The institution, humble as was its origin, and unpretending as was its appearance, grew and prospered. until it became a fountain of light and influence to the Welsh people. For thirty years its founder presided over it, exercising a powerful and beneficent influence upon the ministry and churches of the Principality. At the end of that period it removed to what was considered a more eligible situation for it at Pontypool. The church which Thomas founded at Abergavenny originally consisted of six members, including the pastor and his wife. For several years they had no place of worship which they could call their own, but at length, in 1816. they were enabled to erect a chapel, which was frequently, during Mr Thomas's ministry, enlarged. To the welfare of the people whom he gathered about him there, including the young on in the College, he devoted all his life and powers. and many of those who waited upon his ministry will be his glory and joy at the coming of the Lord.
He died on the 28th of November, 1853, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, the fifty-sixth of his ministry, and the forty-seventh of his pastorate at Abergavenny. On the 5th of December his remains were committed to the earth in the burial-ground attached to the chapel in which for so many years he had preached the gospel and on the following Sunday the Rev. J. Jenkyn Brown at that time at Reading (a fellow student at Bristol) preached a funeral sermon to a crowded and deeply-affected congregation.
Mr Thomas was not a great author. He wrote the circular letter on one occasion for the Association he was connected with when at Ryeford, on Religious education as a Duty incumbent on Parents, he wrote also several of the annual epistles of the South Wales and Monmouthshire Associations. Engaging in the Calvinistic controversy to the extent of preaching on the subject of Salvation of Sovereign Grace, he was requested by his people to print it, and complied. On the baptismal controversy he published two sermons, one in 1841, and the other in 1842. In 1843 he published a message he had addressed to the students of the college he had founded.
His chief claim to remembrance and honour from the body to which he belonged is based upon the fact that he was the pioneer of ministerial education among the Welsh Baptists, founding the second oldest of our British Baptist colleges, and being for a lengthened period its founder and leader.
