It is impossible at this distance of time to appreciate either the difficulties which he had to encounter or the influence which he has exercised. As the president of a college and as the pastor of a church he had serious obstacles to overcome. He was the pioneer of an educated ministry in Wales. It is not alone in the secluded valleys or on the bleak hills of the Principality that prejudices against a liberal education for the Christian ministry have been found. In England as well as in Wales there existed at that period the utmost indifference if not positive antagonism to learning as a qualification for the ministry. We know that apart from the spiritual and moral qualifications which the gospel demands no learning can avail but we know equally well that where these qualifications are found the value of a sound intellectual training is unspeakable. It was probably a sense of the early disadvantages under which he had laboured and a right appreciation of the value of those which he had enjoyed in Bristol College that led him to contemplate a similar institution for his native land. How highly he valued learning may be concluded from the manner in which he overcame obstacles which would have crushed weaker and less determined spirits from his mastering a language by no means the most facile and tractable so that few would have suspected that Welsh was his native tongue and English an acquired speech and from the conscientious care elaborate and fastidious perhaps to a fault with which he prepared for the discharge of his pastoral duties. It is no small honour to his enlightened and comprehensive views to the largeness of his heart and desires that he should have been the first to suggest and the first to preside over the second institution for training young men for the Christian ministry which the baptist denomination established in Great Britain. Through good report and through evil report he pursued the even tenor of his way. Amid misapprehension discouragement and opposition he was faithful to his trust. Sustained and cheered by the love and fidelity of those who understood and appreciated him he was unmoved by prejudice and opposition. Humble in its origin, slow in its growth, unpretending in its appearance that institution has been a fountain of light and influence to the Welsh people. It is not very easy to estimate the influence which Mr Thomas thus exercised upon the ministry in the Principality. Many doubtless never caught his spirit or reflected his mind. They could neither sympathize with his intellect nor with his heart. The one was too massive and elevated the other too large and catholic for them to comprehend. But there were not a few who did sympathize with him and who reflected in other localities and in milder beams the light which he had shed
It was not simply as a tutor nor merely in the discharge of his duties as a pastor at home that the influence of Mr Thomas was felt. In his general ministry he was eminently distinguished for the maintenance and propagation of and just views of divine truth. The period when he entered upon his ministerial studies in Bristol College is in the annals of religion and especially in the history of the baptist denomination. There existed in close intimacy and in loving action a body and whose names will be had in everlasting remembrance Ryland and Hall and Fuller and their fellow labourers had given an impulse to practical godliness which it had not received since the early days of Wesley and Whitefield. The writings of some, the tuition of others and the preaching of all had tended to awaken the church to a sense of its responsibility and duty. The Baptist Mission to the heathen had just been established and in its reflex influence began to act upon the churches at home. Into the spirit of these eminent men Mr Thomas fully drank. The comprehensive views which they held of the great doctrines of the gospel were embraced with singular clearness and preached with unfaltering confidence by him. While holding as fully and firmly as any man to what are generally recognized as the doctrines of grace he did not hesitate to insist with all solemnity upon the responsibilities and obligations of men. In his mind there was no contrariety between the duty of man and the grace of God. While he preached Christ as the only foundation of human faith and hope he did so "Warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that he might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus". He did not permit human theories to cramp his free utterance of the gospel message. The fullest and freest invitations of mercy to sinners were consistent in his theology with the highest conceptions of divine sovereignty and the purest views of the graciousness of salvation. With these views matured by a comprehensive and most conscientious study of the sacred oracles he entered upon his duties as tutor and pastor at Abergavenny. It is unnecessary to enter into the controversies which arose on these points and which greatly disturbed his peace but the writer would be wanting in his duty to the departed and in fidelity to the living and in the unspeakable gratitude we owe to the pioneers of free thought and free speech did he not advert to this phase of his life and influence. He broke down the human trammels that bound the free utterance of Christ's message. He cast in a leaven of truth which has well nigh leavened the whole lump. Gradually and silently with ebbs as well as flows but as certainly progressive as the motion of the tides his views have pervaded nearly the whole of South Wales. Where there has been no conscious renunciation of old sentiments and no avowed and formal adoption of new, there has been a silent though perhaps unconscious modification of those long held. It was at the close of his labours as president of the college that he could gratefully record that "both teachers and the taught began freely to breathe the universally benign atmosphere of that blessed economy which is alike and without difference good tidings of great joy to all people; on earth peace and good will toward men". He has laboured, others have entered into his labours. "With a great price" he purchased his freedom others have been "born free" through his fidelity labours and sacrifices.
