WALES 
 
 AND 
 
 THE WELSH CHURCH
 
 WALES 
 
 AND 
 
 THE WELSH CHURCH 
 
 PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY T. EDWARDS, M.A. 
 
 LATE DEAN OF BANGOK 
 
 WITH A 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 " Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt " 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXX1X
 
 We pass ; the path that each man trod 
 Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : 
 What fame is left for human deeds 
 
 In endless age ? It rests with God. 
 
 In Memorieun,
 
 13 
 
 13 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 WHEN it was decided to publish a selection of the writings of my 
 brother-in-law, it was thought advisable to preface it by a short 
 biographical sketch, which has been kindly written by the Rev. 
 David Jones, Rector of Menai Bridge. It is, perhaps, necessary 
 to add that the Speech on Temperance has been inserted in this 
 volume by request. 
 
 M. K. J. 
 
 TREANNA, ANGLESEY, 
 October 12, 1 888.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ... ... ... i 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE CYMRY ... ... 94 
 
 WALES AND THE WELSH CHURCH ... ... 180 
 
 WHY ARE THE WELSH PEOPLE ALIENATED FROM THE 
 
 CHURCH? ... ... ... ... ... 288 
 
 THE PAST AND PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH IN 
 
 WALES ... ... ... 337 
 
 THE CALLING AND EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY FOR 
 
 THE CHURCH IN WALES ... ... ... 360 
 
 HOME REUNION ... ... ... ... ... 387 
 
 "STRIKE FOR THE KING!" ... ... ... 398
 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 IN response to inquiries from some of the friends of the 
 late Dean Edwards, it has been decided to issue the 
 present volume, containing a selection of essays and 
 addresses from his published and unpublished writings. 
 In making the present selection, we were principally 
 guided by the wish to put together in a convenient and 
 permanent form what appeared to us to embody his 
 maturest thoughts on some of the favourite subjects over 
 which he pondered deeply and patiently. It is unneces- 
 sary here to enter into a detailed and critical description 
 of the various papers which are presented in this collec- 
 tion. They are, perhaps, the best biography that could 
 be given of the author. The views propounded on the 
 various topics, as well as the peculiarities of style, the 
 masculine intellect, the bold utterance and the strength 
 of conviction with which those views are expressed, 
 summon before those who knew him, a personality 
 which it is impossible for them not to recognize. Nor 
 are they valuable merely as a record of the opinions of, 
 in some respects, the most remarkable Welshman of the 
 
 B
 
 2 Introductory. 
 
 present century ; they will also be welcomed as con- 
 tributions of substantial merit; to the solution of pro- 
 blems which bear immediate and important relation to 
 the highest interests of the Principality of Wales. 
 
 The Dean's ministerial life synchronized with an 
 intense activity, both within and without the Church 
 which he loved, and in the devoted service of which he 
 spent his short day. He witnessed an educational and 
 political crisis in the national life, a development of 
 spiritual and material resources in the Church, and he 
 promptly recognized their existence and significance. 
 Such lives as his are public property a legacy of 
 examples bequeathed to posterity for guidance and 
 instruction. Of the stirring events which agitated the 
 public mind in Wales during the last twenty years of 
 his life he could rightly say, " Quorum pars magna fui." 
 His history touches on all points the vital controversies 
 of that period. 
 
 In the present partial and fragmentary biographical 
 sketch, our endeavour has been to present the Dean, to 
 the best of our abilities, as he really was ; to place on 
 record, from our too scanty resources, a few thoughts 
 and quotations derived from some of the few private 
 letters that have come to our hands, and from the per- 
 sonal reminiscences of those who intimately knew him, 
 in order to enable our readers the better to understand 
 the man who speaks and lives in the addresses and 
 papers that follow. Our materials, as we have inti- 
 mated, are by no means abundant. The Dean was not 
 in the habit of keeping a private diary ; he did not
 
 Introductory. 3 
 
 record his views and impressions of men and move- 
 ments, further than in occasional and hurriedly written 
 letters. Nor is this, perhaps, to be altogether regretted, 
 as an eminent writer of the present day has said, that 
 " we know a man truly when we know him at his 
 greatest and his best ; we realize his significance, for 
 ourselves and for the world, when we see him in the 
 noblest activity of his career, on the loftiest summit, 
 or in the fullest glory of his life." 
 
 We cannot pretend to disguise that we are keenly 
 conscious of the delicacy and difficulty of the task we 
 have undertaken. The Dean was no ordinary man, nor 
 did he live in ordinary days. Being the most prominent 
 figure of his time in the Principality, he was exposed to 
 the closest scrutiny and the most unsparing criticism. 
 And though all would probably admit his striking 
 individuality, his intellectual strength, his power as a 
 controversialist, and his undoubted qualifications as a 
 leader of thought and action, there are, nevertheless, 
 many standpoints from which different observers would 
 form different estimates of his life and character. We 
 may, doubtless, stand in too close proximity to an 
 object to obtain an accurate view of its just propor- 
 tions. The burning controversies in which the Dean 
 was engaged, have not yet subsided ; the public ques- 
 tions which he discussed with comprehensive sweep 
 and acknowledged ability, have not yet been settled ; 
 his name is still too closely identified with the theo- 
 logical and political disputes that emphasize the rival 
 factions of our national life, to enable the world to do
 
 4 Introductory. 
 
 full and impartial justice to the soundness of his opinions 
 or the consistency of his conduct. His intense yearning 
 to discover a sound and broad basis for the ultimate 
 restoration of national and religious unity amongst his 
 countrymen, exposed him sometimes to the charge of 
 self-contradiction ; the impulsive frankness with which 
 he would express his opinions, brought upon him the 
 imputation of harshness ; his uncompromising attitude 
 of antagonism to the ruinous policy which he conceived 
 to have been mainly responsible for the alienation of 
 the masses from the Welsh Church during the last two 
 centuries, made him occasionally the object of unchari- 
 table and unjust insinuations of ambitious egotism. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that his life was always exposed 
 to the public gaze ; his character was singularly trans- 
 parent ; and he was, at all times, ready to communicate 
 to the press, unreservedly, his thoughts on the events 
 and controversies of the hour. But he also lived a 
 private life, full of charming simplicity, conversational 
 brilliancy, of unreserved communicativeness, of thought- 
 ful and affectionate tenderness a life broken into frag- 
 ments by sad and sudden vicissitudes, in which were 
 revealed, to their utmost depths, the sentiments and 
 the sympathies, the strength and the weakness, of his 
 impressible and impulsive nature. 
 
 While we do not affect to conceal our profound 
 admiration of his many sterling qualities, and our no 
 less profound gratitude for the noble services he was 
 permitted to render to the Church and nation, we will 
 endeavour to utilize our opportunity, and the materials
 
 Introductory. 5 
 
 that are at our disposal, to make the life of the Dean, 
 like those of all other men who have consecrated their 
 talents to the promotion of religion and the welfare of 
 humanity, to sound its notes of warning as well as of 
 encouragement.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 THE life of the subject of this memoir was an eventful 
 one. Though short and rapid in its course, it enriched 
 and fertilized the plain of human thought and life in 
 its progress. It left beh'ind conspicuous examples of 
 Churchmanship and patriotism. We do not assert that 
 the Dean conceived or carried out those examples to 
 an ideal perfection ; but no one who has studied his 
 career with impartiality will deny that the great effort 
 of his life was the realization of a position where the 
 true patriot and the consistent Churchman could be 
 reconciled. The Anglicizing policy, which has wrought 
 such disasters for the Church, has too often looked with 
 suspicion on our national movements and time-honoured 
 social institutions, and has, not seldom, surrendered 
 them into the hands of sectarianism ; whereas the better 
 and juster policy would have been, to enter into the 
 true spirit of our national history and traditions, and, 
 through the instrumentality of a cultured ministry, 
 thoroughly imbued with the national spirit, and in full 
 sympathy with the ineradicable peculiarities of the Celtic 
 temperament, seek to employ the sacred ministrations
 
 His Claims to our Gratitude. 7 
 
 of the Church in directing, purifying, and consolidating 
 the national life and character. The Church, it must 
 be confessed, has forfeited incalculable advantages. It 
 is the oldest institution in the country, and is almost 
 coeval with the growth of the nation. If the sources 
 of our information were confined to the modern voice 
 of Wales, we should almost conclude that true religion 
 and national emancipation were born in the Principality 
 less than a century and a half ago, and that the Church 
 is an intruder. But the life of the Church and nation 
 were practically identical for many centuries before the 
 sound of the modern voice was heard. In close union 
 did they resist both national and ecclesiastical encroach- 
 ments. This is an historical fact of immense value, and 
 is fraught with lessons, which it behoves us to ponder 
 over, in the present state of national strife and con- 
 fusion. After a period of fifteen hundred years of a 
 close and almost undisturbed wedded life between the 
 Church and nation, during which time they had 
 sympathized and co-operated in the struggle for liberty 
 and independence, great indeed must have been the 
 causes which could have resulted in a divorce at the 
 end of last century, and great have been the consequent 
 calamities of that divorce. The Church became an 
 alien, not indeed in her polity, or her doctrines, but in 
 her chief shepherds, whose voice the people knew not. 
 Dean Edwards saw all this ; and, as a Church dignitary, 
 did what he could to atone for the past. In taking a 
 survey of his public career and the services he rendered 
 to the Church, his chief claims to our gratitude rest,
 
 8 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 not so much upon the ability and thoroughness with 
 which he contributed towards the solution of questions 
 that absorbed his interest and consumed his energies, 
 as upon his courage and candour in exposing what lies 
 at the root of all our national dissensions, namely, the 
 attempt to Anglicize the nation through the Church, 
 and the persevering efforts with which he used the 
 influence of his position and talents for the discourage- 
 ment and discontinuance of that policy. The great 
 aim of his life was the reconciliation of the Welsh 
 Church and nation. He had satisfied himself as to 
 the main cause of their estrangement ; he never ceased 
 to deplore it, or warn our rulers against its perpetuation ; 
 he pleaded vehemently and unceasingly for the prompt 
 and complete reversal of the policy that created the 
 separation, and for a renewal of that which alone can 
 lead to the return of the Cymry to their Church. The 
 central idea of his public utterances was the religious 
 reunion of his countrymen, and the last word of his 
 last paper is " unity." There is a melancholy interest 
 connected with this paper, that, when engaged in its 
 composition, the Dean was haunted by the foreboding 
 that the work of his life had been accomplished. 
 
 Henry Thomas Edwards was born on September 6, 
 1837, an d was the third son of the Rev. William 
 Edwards, then Vicar of Llanymawddwy, in the diocese 
 of St. Asaph. Four brothers, who are all in the ministry, 
 and two sisters, complete the family circle. His mother 
 still survives, and in her advanced years, takes as keen
 
 Early Life and Education. 9 
 
 an interest as ever in her numerous family, with whom, 
 especially with her grandchildren, she delights to carry 
 on a regular correspondence. Her maiden name was 
 Wood. She is descended from a Gloucestershire family 
 of that name, to which family belonged also the late Lord 
 Chancellor Hatherley, as well as some other names of 
 literary celebrity. His father had received his education 
 for the ministry at Ystradmeurig Grammar School, in his 
 native county of Cardiganshire, and had two brothers 
 in the ministry the late Rev. John Edwards, Vicar 
 of Llanfihangel-ar-Arth ; and the late Rev. Ebenezer 
 Edwards, the sweet evangelist of Mallwyd, and after- 
 wards of Llanfechell. Mr. George Borrow, in his " Wild 
 Wales," makes the following observations on the 
 occasion of his visit to the vicarage of Llangollen, of 
 which parish the Rev. William Edwards was then 
 incumbent. " During tea, Mr. Edwards and I had a 
 great deal of discourse. I found him to be a first-rate 
 Greek and Latin scholar, and also a proficient in the 
 literature of his own country. In the course of dis- 
 course, he repeated some noble lines of Evan Evans, the 
 unfortunate and eccentric Prydydd Hir, or 'tall poet,' 
 the friend and correspondent of Gray, for whom he made 
 literal translations from the Welsh, which the great 
 English genius afterwards wrote into immortal verse." 
 
 From his father Henry received his training in the 
 rudiments of the classical languages, as well as in the 
 elements of mathematics. In the remote vicarage of 
 Llanymawddwy he also received his first lessons of 
 life, its pleasures and its possibilities ; surrounded by a
 
 io Biographical Sketch. 
 
 varied scenery of mountains, cataracts, and gorges, he 
 received his first impressions of external nature ; and if 
 we are to credit the theories of life's development pro- 
 pounded by poets and professional delineators of human 
 character, his early associations must have contributed 
 to stimulate his youthful imagination, and to give 
 definiteness and direction to his genius. 
 
 In the year 1849, when Henry was twelve years of 
 age, his father was promoted to the living of Llangollen, 
 where he continued for some time to superintend the 
 education of his younger boys, in conjunction with a few 
 other outside pupils. Two years later, it was decided 
 that Henry should compete for an exhibition at West- 
 minster School, and his success at the examination led 
 to his entering that school. His progress there was 
 rapid, and he soon convinced his masters that he 
 possessed abilities of no ordinary merit. But his stay 
 at Westminster was cut short, as, owing to res angnsta 
 domi, he was recalled at the age of sixteen, and was 
 thus inevitably deprived of the manifest advantages 
 which the thorough and systematic training of a 
 public school would have secured him. Shortly after 
 this, he was placed under the care of the Rev. F. E. 
 Gretton, for whom he ever after entertained the 
 profoundest respect, and to whom he was proud to 
 acknowledge his indebtedness for having given impulse 
 and direction to his mind. Mr. Gretton says of him, 
 " When I had him in hand, I very soon discovered that 
 he was full of talent, and a great amount of nervous 
 excitability. I had a very strong affection for him.
 
 College Life. 1 1 
 
 We got on together without a hitch ; as master and 
 pupil, we enjoyed our work ; as host and inmate, all went 
 towardly. He left me for Oxford with my sure fore- 
 boding that he must achieve something. I had a strong 
 conviction of his manifest abilities." Shortly after his 
 return from Westminster, Henry turned his mind to the 
 army, to which he seems to have had a strong inclina- 
 tion ; but an effort to obtain for him a cadetship having 
 proved unsuccessful, cut short his hopes. But as was 
 said of another, whose early natural bias was similarly 
 thwarted, so it may of him, " We trace the music of war 
 and chivalry in all his utterances ; and though he 
 adorned a peaceful profession, there is discernible his 
 old passion for the discipline and devotion of a soldier ; 
 ' we smell the battle afar off, and hear the shouting of 
 the captains.' " 
 
 This disappointment led to a temporary unsettle- 
 ment of his mind for reading. But a determination to 
 enter the lists for the Powis examination caused him to 
 renew his studies with zest and earnestness. The con- 
 test between him and Mr. Nicholas, subsequently Fellow 
 of St. John's College, Cambridge, was unusually close, 
 and the examiners, the late Dr. Rowland Williams and 
 the present Bishop of St. David's, not being able to 
 agree, resolved on a re-examination. The decision 
 ultimately resulted in favour of Mr. Nicholas, who, it 
 seemed, displayed a more accurate knowledge of the 
 rules and rudiments of Welsh grammar. An exhibition, 
 however, was awarded to Mr. Edwards, in recognition of 
 his general proficiency.
 
 12 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 In the year 1857, Mr. Edwards matriculated at 
 Jesus College, Oxford, and entered upon his University 
 career, which, however, owing to the indifferent state of 
 his health, which had never been robust, was not as 
 successful as his talents promised or his friends antici- 
 pated. The second class which he took at moderations 
 was a keen disappointment to him, and may have 
 tended to discourage him from preparing for honours in 
 the final schools. It is, however, only just to remark, 
 that his medical advisers strongly dissuaded him from 
 that close application to reading which a distinguished 
 position in the schools imperatively demands, but which 
 might have inflicted a lifelong injury on his already too 
 delicate constitution. He often expressed his regret in 
 after-life that it was his misfortune to be debarred from 
 reading for honours in the final schools. But in forming 
 an opinion of his abilities, or his scholarship, based upon 
 his achievements at the examinations, it must be borne 
 in mind that his preparatory training, desultory, and 
 frequently interrupted as it was, as well as the mental 
 prostration and the physical debility which hard study 
 entailed upon him during his academical course, could 
 hardly justify very sanguine expectations for high 
 results in the schools. It was said by Conington, the 
 eminent annotator and translator of Virgil, that he 
 was the best writer of Latin verses of his time at 
 Oxford no small commendation from so competent an 
 authority. During his residence at the University, he 
 took an active part in the established sports and recrea- 
 tions, and ranked high amongst the athletes.
 
 Ordination and First Curacy. 1 3 
 
 He took his degree in 1861 ; was elected Assistant- 
 Master at Llandovery College, and was ordained deacon 
 by Dr. Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David's, obtaining his 
 Title from the curacy of the neighbouring parish of 
 Llansadwrn. Here he preached his first sermon, which, 
 it seems, was chiefly characterized by the amount of 
 matter it contained. He would often relate how he had 
 managed to cram into that single discourse all the 
 theology he knew, and had so completely exhausted his 
 limited store at the first discharge, as to occasion a 
 serious dearth of homiletic ideas for months after. 
 
 His father's increasing years and failing health caused 
 him to renounce his sphere of work at Llandovery ; and, 
 after a few months' experience of teaching, he was ap- 
 pointed curate of Llangollen. He was admitted to priest's 
 orders by Bishop Short, at St. Asaph, December 21, 1862. 
 Here he commenced his ministerial career, began to 
 develop those powers and gain that experience which 
 combined to make him so conspicuous as a clergyman 
 during the twenty years he was destined to serve the 
 Welsh Church. He had now bidden a final farewell to 
 the dreams of his youthful ambition ; he had relinquished 
 for ever the abortive projects and prospects which 
 boyish enthusiasm had doubtless painted in fascinating 
 colours to his active and fertile imagination ; he had 
 also experienced the beneficial discipline of the dis- 
 appointments, the toils, and the pleasures of an educa- 
 tional career. He had entered irrevocably on a life of 
 definite duty, with its stern realities and weighty re- 
 sponsibilities. We could have wished for an authentic
 
 14 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 record of his feelings as he reviewed at this juncture 
 the vanished dreams of his earlier days, as 
 
 " Back on the past he turns his eye, 
 Remembering, with an envious sigh, 
 The happy dreams of youth ; " 
 
 (Southey.) 
 
 the hopes which swelled in his bosom, as his active 
 mind scanned the present aspect and the future prospect 
 of that Church, to which he had dedicated his talents, 
 and pledged his faith, and which, during the remainder 
 of his days, he served with unswerving fidelity. 
 
 The curacy of Llangollen afforded an admirable 
 sphere for the development of the varied capacities 
 which are pre-eminently required to lay the foundation 
 of a career of ministerial usefulness and success. His 
 father's enfeebled health left him virtually in sole charge 
 of a population of five thousand souls. The parish is 
 bilingual, and demanded full services in both languages. 
 The increase in the congregations which followed his 
 advent to the parish, and rewarded his faithful efforts, 
 and those of his energetic fellow-curate, pointed to the 
 necessity of enlarging and restoring the parish church. 
 He no sooner settled down in his new field of duty 
 than he surveyed the position, and took his estimate of 
 what was required to render the ministrations of the 
 Church more generally efficient and available. With 
 characteristic ardour and enthusiasm, he set about the 
 work of restoration. With the view of obtaining the 
 necessary funds to carry out his plan, an influential 
 and thoroughly representative committee was formed,
 
 His Ideal of Church Reform. 15 
 
 and a well-conceived circular was drawn up by him and 
 printed. In 'this circular, he says, " During the last 
 thirty years, the parish of Llangollen has undergone 
 a great change. Within that period the village has 
 become a town, and the population has been more 
 than trebled ; and thus the church, which was adequate 
 to the want of the parishioners at the beginning of 
 the century, no longer affords the necessary accom- 
 modation ; for, while the district for which it provides 
 contains nearly 5000 inhabitants, the present edifice 
 accommodates only 350." The plan of restoration 
 provided for an " increase of 300 sittings by the reseat- 
 ing of the present building, and the addition of the 
 south aisle, chancel, organ-chamber, and vestry-room, 
 at an estimated cost of ^"2950. The church, as enlarged 
 according to these plans, will be a commodious and 
 beautiful structure ; and the preservation of the ancient 
 and elaborately carved oak roof, and the other dis- 
 tinctive features of the present edifice, is ensured." 
 There is, perhaps, nothing in these details to justify 
 us in calling special attention to them, as hundreds of 
 churches in the Principality have happily been similarly 
 restored during the last forty years ; but they seem to 
 us to supply a striking prophecy and parable of what 
 the Dean in subsequent life consistently advocated, and 
 strenuously promoted, as a policy for the resuscitation 
 of the Church in Wales. In what he successfully did 
 for the outward structure of his father's church at Llan- 
 gollen, may be recognized his ideal conception of what 
 should be universally effected in the Church of his
 
 1 6 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 fathers, not only in material, but also in intellectual 
 and spiritual, reform. That conception was "not merely 
 leaving things as they were the too-prevalent notion 
 of former generations ; there was nothing more abhor- 
 rent to his active mind than stagnation, whilst every- 
 thing around was moving and progressing. Nor was 
 it the destruction of what remained, on the plausible 
 pretence of past failure the policy of Liberationism, 
 which he ever opposed with all the force of his intellect, 
 and with all the earnestness of his soul. It was neither 
 of these ; but it was restoration, and enlargement, ac- 
 cording to plans which adequately met and satisfied the 
 requirements of a progressive age. Such was his con- 
 ception ; and it will be freely confessed that it em- 
 bodied the principles, and laid down the limitations, of 
 the extensive reforms which he never ceased to advocate 
 in all departments of Church life. 
 
 Here he laid the foundation of that pulpit power 
 and efficiency for which he became celebrated in after- 
 years. The bilingual nature of the parish afforded him 
 favourable opportunities for the development of his 
 talents in both languages. Amidst the multiplicity of 
 duties which the charge of a populous parish and the 
 work of restoration entailed upon him, he found time 
 for elaborate preparation of sermons, which were cha- 
 racterized with freshness and originality. He always 
 entertained the highest conception of the influence and 
 responsibilities of the pulpit, and said on one occasion 
 that he " never heard any one underrating the power 
 of preaching, except those who neglected its cultiva-
 
 "Eight Days in the Camp" 17 
 
 tion." His discourses were generally delivered without 
 the manuscript, though they did not involve less, but 
 rather more, labour on that account. " Careful and 
 painstaking study of the subject, enables the preacher 
 to produce his best and maturest thoughts ; whilst 
 the extemporaneous delivery is the most effectual for 
 presenting them in an impressive style." Such was 
 his ideal of preaching, from the human side. Nor must 
 we omit to record, what is well known to those who 
 were intimate with his private life, that it was his 
 habitual custom to retire to a private room before the 
 commencement of the service at which he was to preach, 
 to hold communion with God in prayer ; and he seldom 
 entered the pulpit without thus earnestly seeking the 
 presence of his Master to go with him. 
 
 We have before us a printed sermon, entitled " Eight 
 Days in the Camp," which, as far as we know, is the first 
 production of his pen given to the press. It was preached 
 on Sunday morning, June 4, 1865, before the Denbigh- 
 shire Yeomanry Cavalry, and published by request. It 
 is full of noble sentiment on the duties and privileges 
 of the military profession, expressed in chaste but 
 powerful language ; and it doubtless embodies some of 
 those ideas on "the calling of the soldier" which had 
 worked on his mind, and led him to form the resolution 
 of adopting that calling as his own. This sermon is 
 characterized by a lucidity of arrangement, masterly 
 analysis of the subject, descriptive power, fulness of 
 treatment, and directness of application, such as he 
 seldom surpassed in his later days. We will give one 
 
 C
 
 1 8 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 quotation, not so much as exhibiting a specimen of his 
 style, as constituting a sound basis of ministerial teach- 
 ing, thus laid down at the commencement of his career : 
 " From the ruin of eternal unrest, man is saved by 
 Divine grace, through faith in the Name and power of 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 The four years he spent as curate of Llangollen 
 came to an end, but not before he had left indelible 
 marks of his vigorous mind and talents on the outward 
 organization, and the inward life of the Church in the 
 parish. By the strong individuality of his character, 
 the intensity of his enthusiasm, the originality of his 
 thoughts, the impressiveness of his delivery, the charm 
 of his presence, and the peculiar felicity he possessed 
 of imparting the spirit and purposes of his own life to 
 that of others who came within the magic circle of his 
 influence, he was enabled to achieve during what may 
 be described as the probationary period of ministerial 
 life, what he afterwards did more conspicuously, and 
 extensively, when elevated to more responsible positions, 
 and when the sphere of his labours became wider. The 
 effects of his ministrations in Llangollen were seen, not 
 only in the material work of restoration, not only in 
 the increase of congregations and improvement in the 
 services, but also in the warm place he secured in 
 the affections of the people, which he never forfeited. 
 On his promotion to Aberdare, a considerable sum was 
 subscribed in the parish, and presented to him. This 
 sum, with characteristically impulsive generosity, and, 
 we may add, with filial tenderness, he returned to be
 
 His Interest in the Working Men. 19 
 
 expended in repairing the national schools a work 
 much needed at the time of his departure. 
 
 His preferment to the important living of Aberdare 
 in the year 1866, with the comparatively short experience 
 of four years as curate, might have been deemed a bold 
 stroke ; but the results amply justified the wisdom and 
 foresight of the trustees. Here he threw himself at 
 once with characteristic ardour into the many-sided 
 work of his onerous charge. Such a centre of industry, 
 then in the heyday of its prosperity, gave him abundant 
 opportunities for varied ministerial experience, and the 
 further development of his capacities for parochial 
 organization and pulpit efficiency. Here, in the fullest 
 sense, he came in contact with the masses of his country- 
 men, whom he always respected, but never flattered. 
 F. W. Robertson, a man of kindred spirit with his own, 
 said once, that " the people of this country stood in 
 danger from two classes from those who fear them, and 
 from those who flatter them." Dean Edwards belonged 
 to neither of these classes. Throughout his life he had 
 the highest regard for the truest welfare of the working 
 people, and never blushed to claim affinity with them. 
 His highest ambition was to see them returning to the 
 Church of their forefathers, where he was profoundly 
 convinced they could, under favourable circumstances, 
 receive the richest and amplest spiritual nurture. He 
 sought to elevate their social and moral condition, by 
 his eloquent and vigorous advocacy of temperance. He 
 used the influence of his position and talent to secure 
 for them the priceless blessings of higher education.
 
 2O Biographical Sketch. 
 
 He interposed the powerful aegis of his polemical skill 
 to protect their character from what he honestly believed 
 were the unjust aspersions of those who were not un- 
 naturally provoked to charge the many with the base- 
 ness of the few, who sought to elude the grasp of justice 
 by artful and systematic perjury. But if he was jealous 
 of the people's honour, he was neither blind to their 
 faults nor insensible to their dangers. With candid 
 bluntness, he would often warn them against the perilous 
 experiment of declaring war against capital, and thus 
 " killing the goose that lays the golden eggs." In a 
 speech which he delivered at Llangollen, in January, 
 1872, on "The Dangers of Political Pilatism," he lays 
 down with fearless impartiality the respective duties 
 and obligations of capitalists and labourers, their mutual 
 dependence, and the essential necessity of close sympathy 
 and co-operation between them, for the internal prosperity 
 of the country. In this address he boldly denounces 
 the ambitious recklessness of political aspirants, who 
 scruple not to excite the envy of the working classes 
 against their employers ; and, regardless of the risk of 
 paralyzing the trades and industries on which the life 
 of the nation thrives, aim at the prizes of parliamentary 
 honours. If he disdained to flatter the people in this 
 great speech, it was because he respected their man- 
 hood ; if he warned them somewhat plainly against 
 possible catastrophes, events have unfortunately hap- 
 pened since its delivery which sadly prove that the 
 warning was not wholly needless. 
 
 At the time of his institution, the parish of Aberdare,
 
 Church Extension at Aberdare. 21 
 
 embracing within its limits no less than thirty thousand 
 souls, was a centre of industry, where working men and 
 their families had migrated from all parts of Wales. 
 His intense energy, his great capacity for work, his 
 intellectual activity, and his genuine national sympa- 
 thies, found here a wide and congenial field of useful- 
 ness. A careful estimate of the situation revealed to 
 him the utter inadequacy of Church accommodation to 
 meet the spiritual requirements of the teeming popu- 
 lation. This he could not endure ; and his first move 
 was to set about to do what in him lay to supply the 
 deficiencies. In April, 1867, he printed and circulated 
 a letter to the " landowners, ironmasters, colliery pro- 
 prietors, and other wealthy Churchmen, interested in the 
 parish," in which, with clearness, force, and fulness, he 
 lays down the needs of the districts, the duties of those 
 entrusted with wealth, and his own responsibilities. 
 " To me," he says, " the National Church has committed 
 the chief place in the ministry of the Word and Sacra- 
 ments in the parish of Aberdare. I hardly need state 
 that, in those districts in which wealth has been created, 
 the population by an inseparable consequence increases. 
 It is essential to the highest welfare of society that 
 the influence of the Church should advance in parallel 
 progress with the growth of the population." By a 
 masterful analysis of the population, ratable value of 
 the parish, and the deficient Church accommodation 
 in the various outlying districts, he marshals his argu- 
 ments, and lays down the details of his plan with con- 
 summate ability and with telling earnestness. He pro-
 
 22 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 poses to establish a Church Extension Association for 
 the parish of Aberdare, the object of which was to be 
 twofold: (i) "To provide the annual revenue for the 
 maintenance "of a body of clergy adequate to the wants 
 of the population," and (2) "the formation of a per- 
 manent fund for the promotion of church-building in 
 the parish." The result of this appeal was the restora- 
 tion of the chancel of St. Elvan's Church, the erection 
 of a new boys' school, and a new church at Cwmam- 
 man. As the outcome of this movement, may also be 
 mentioned another church at Aberaman, which was 
 subsequently erected by the munificence of Sir George 
 Elliot. An addition to the living agencies was also 
 made, to supply the needs necessarily created by these 
 new arrangements. 
 
 In the year 1867, Mr. Edwards was married to Mary, 
 the eldest daughter of Mr. David Davis, a leading 
 colliery proprietor in the neighbourhood. She was a 
 lady of a remarkably amiable disposition, but loved a 
 quiet, retiring life, and in this presented a striking con- 
 trast to her active husband. Their wedded life, how- 
 ever, was brief, as Mrs. Edwards succumbed, under a 
 somewhat prolonged illness, in August, 1871, at the 
 Vicarage of Carnarvon, leaving an infant daughter only 
 five months old at the death of her mother. 
 
 The Dean's life at Aberdare was one of unremitting 
 toil and activity. In addition to the labour which 
 Church extension and preparation for the pulpit entailed 
 upon him, he now began to apply himself strenuously 
 to the study of the past history of the Church in Wales,
 
 Stiidy of Welsk Church History. 23 
 
 and its bearing on her present condition. The aggressive 
 attitude of the Liberation Society, which about that 
 time began to draw special attention to the Principality, 
 induced him to enter on a careful examination of the 
 causes which led to the partial failure of the Church, 
 and to discover remedies for the efficient removal of 
 those causes. To this investigation, which had been 
 hitherto grievously neglected by those who were respon- 
 sible for the administration of the Church, he brought 
 many qualifications which eminently fitted him for the 
 task. Genuine national sympathies, a keen insight into 
 the peculiarities of the Celtic temperament, of which 
 his own nature largely participated, sincere attachment 
 to the doctrines and constitution of the Church, and, 
 withal, a clear and vigorous intellect, an independence 
 of mind to form his own opinions, and courage to main- 
 tain them at all hazards, all this marked him out as 
 specially endowed to bear an important part in guiding 
 the destinies of the Church through the important crisis 
 which seemed then imminent. The course which he 
 thus early himself took, and recommended to others, 
 was, as we have already indicated, the twofold policy 
 of defence and reform. The former was rendered neces- 
 sary by the persistent clamour of those who demanded 
 the overthrow of the Church as a national establishment, 
 and the confiscation of her revenues, while the latter 
 was no less called for by the internal abuses and anoma- 
 lies which generations of neglect had allowed to creep 
 in, and which paralyzed her influence and impeded her 
 progress. He saw threatening clouds gathering thick
 
 24 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 on the horizon, and began to feel that he was entrusted 
 with a mission to awaken the slumbers of friends, and 
 to repel the assaults of foes. The firstfruits of his 
 study of this question appeared at the time, in a sermon 
 " printed for private circulation," and entitled " The 
 Natural and Supernatural Church Endowments." It 
 is. based on St. Matt. v. 14-16, and contains the key- 
 note of his defence. In the exordium, he traces the 
 argument to the ultimate sources of all obligations ; 
 and here we discover the basis of his theology, which 
 he constantly reproduces in his subsequent writings. 
 Indeed, it is a peculiar characteristic of his pulpit dis- 
 courses, that he almost invariably commences them by 
 establishing the connection that subsists between the 
 lesson enforced by his text and the fundamental truths 
 of revealed religion. " To manifest in our human lives 
 the likeness of the Divine life is the end of our being, 
 in the fulfilment of which alone we find the satisfaction 
 and harmony of our nature." In this quotation we 
 have, from the standpoint of human observation, the 
 objective source and pattern of the renewed life, and 
 its subjective realization and reproduction, as the author 
 conceived them. The sequel is a powerful exposition 
 of his theory on the duty and privilege of employing 
 the highest sanctions and influences of the common- 
 wealth, in its public and corporate capacity, for the 
 support and diffusion of the principles of the Gospel 
 through all the grades and departments of the national 
 life. In support of the dictum that "position has a 
 function in the diffusion of light," he adduces confirma-
 
 "The Victorious Life." 25 
 
 tory examples from different epochs in the history of 
 God's Church, and appeals to the common sense and 
 conscience of a Christian people, not to be deluded by 
 the fallacious reasoning of those who would persuade 
 them to embark on a policy of confiscation, on the 
 specious pretence of making the Church less worldly. 
 "A great and an understanding people will never dream 
 that it can banish worldliness by confiscation. The 
 power of God's quickening Spirit alone can banish the 
 worldly disposition." 
 
 About this time he also published his first volume 
 of sermons, " The Victorious Life," the proof-sheets of 
 which he corrected during his recovery from a severe 
 illness. It is not our intention to offer an elaborate 
 criticism of this volume ; but we may say, en passant, 
 that, while the twenty discourses of which it consists 
 exhibit traces of imperfect treatment, occasional crude- 
 ness and redundancy of expression, they are, neverthe- 
 less, full of brilliant flashes of thought, and display 
 analytical powers, and a fertility of imagination, of no 
 ordinary merit. They fairly establish his reputation 
 as an original expounder of the Word of God, and as 
 one who had profoundly studied the apostasies of fallen 
 humanity, and the provisions of the Gospel for its final 
 redemption and restoration. 
 
 The results of his study of the Church's past history 
 in Wales were given in a powerful letter addressed to 
 Mr. Gladstone, as first minister of the Crown, in 1869. 
 It has been said that this pamphlet supplied the then 
 Prime Minister with much of the materials for his
 
 26 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 conclusive and crushing reply to the late Sir Watkin 
 Williams, who, encouraged by the fate of the Irish 
 Church, brought forward a motion in the House of 
 Commons for the disestablishment and disendowment 
 of the Welsh Church. Be this as it may, it is a fairly 
 exhaustive analysis of the causes that were responsible 
 for the alienation of the masses from the Church's fold, 
 and a spirited vindication of her right to be governed 
 by chief pastors who are thoroughly conversant with 
 the language, and in full sympathy with the tempera- 
 ment and legitimate aspirations, of the people. In 
 common with all those who are acquainted with the 
 inner life of the Welsh nation, and are anxious for the 
 removal of all impediments to the solid and healthy 
 progress of the Church in Wales, he maintained that 
 a return to the administrative policy which promoted 
 such men as Bishops Morgan and Davies to preside 
 over the Welsh sees, can alone lead to a resumption by 
 the Church of her legitimate position and influence in 
 the Principality. 
 
 Under the severe strain of his multifarious engage- 
 ments, his health gave way, and forced him to seek 
 temporary retirement and rest abroad. When we 
 consider the weight of care and anxieties that pressed 
 upon a mind naturally sensitive, and a physical frame 
 always liable to nervous prostration, we can hardly 
 wonder that the pressure of excessive mental and bodily 
 toil threatened serious consequences. Whatever he 
 undertook, he employed his whole energies in its 
 execution. When he had any work on hand, he would
 
 His Appointment to Carnarvon. 27 
 
 not economize his resources till he saw it accomplished, 
 or was forced by the utter collapse of his powers to 
 abandon it. It would be an accurate description of his 
 life to say that he lived and thought and worked 
 intensely. He drew on precious capital with reckless 
 temerity, and gave little chance to his recuperative 
 powers. His life at Aberdare was prophetic of his 
 future career, both in its triumphs and in its disasters. 
 It was here that he commenced to pursue with pains- 
 taking assiduity the study of those questions which 
 he treated with such conspicuous ability, and which 
 brought him fame and popularity in after-years ; it was 
 here also that he sowed the seeds of those constitutional 
 maladies which ever afterwards haunted him, grew part 
 passu with the development of his capacities for useful- 
 ness, and dogged his footsteps in his progress to dis- 
 tinction, till at last they triumphed over him, and cut 
 him off in the flower of life. 
 
 In 1869, Mr. Edwards' tenure of the incumbency of 
 Aberdare terminated. The prominent living of Car- 
 narvon became vacant by the death of the Rev. James 
 Crawley Vincent, who was removed from the midst of 
 his labours when the sun of his popularity was at its 
 meridian height. The vacancy was offered to Mr. 
 Edwards by the Bishop of Chester in the following 
 terms, contained in a letter dated October 4, 1869: 
 "After anxious deliberation, I have come to the con- 
 clusion that my duty, as patron of the Vicarage of 
 Carnarvon, cannot, according to the light that I have, 
 be better discharged than by asking you to become the
 
 28 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 successor of one who seems to have won the confidence, 
 love, and reverence of his parishioners in an extra- 
 ordinary degree." Mr. Edwards accepted the offer, and 
 Carnarvon seemed to present a sphere more congenial 
 to his talents, and was situated in a climate more con- 
 ducive to the restoration of his health, which, as we 
 have seen, had seriously threatened to give way. The 
 parish of Llanbeblig, with its eleven thousand inhabit- 
 ants, is, in some respects, the most important ministerial 
 charge in North Wales, with one possible exception. 
 Considering the nature of the population, the prominent 
 position of the town, and, we may add, its historical 
 associations, it may be fairly presumed that he who 
 deliberately comes to the decision of undertaking so 
 important a charge, especially at a time when the 
 Church is passing through the agonies of her severest 
 trials, accepts his responsibilities as a matter of duty 
 rather than of choice. Carnarvon is the head-quarters 
 of some of the chief actors in a drama, the aims of 
 which are directed to paralyze and thwart the efforts of 
 the Church in extending her labours, and whose plot is 
 intended to culminate in her overthrow. The choice 
 of Bishop Jacobson was a specially happy one. A 
 young clergyman of thirty-two, with a ministerial 
 experience of seven years in populous districts, was 
 appointed to preside over a parish which was the chief 
 provincial centre of the Liberationist and secularist 
 agitators. Carnarvon and North Wales were singularly 
 favoured by the accession of one who had the courage 
 and ability to vindicate the rights and position of the
 
 " Church of the Cymry" 29 
 
 Church, and repel the hostile advances of those who had 
 entered on a crusade against her. But if North Wales 
 had reason to rejoice at his appointment, South Wales 
 felt and acknowledged the heavy loss it sustained ; and 
 the Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Ollivant), in reply to Mr. 
 Edwards' letter, in which he communicated his decision 
 to his lordship, frankly admitted that he wished very 
 much " that circumstances had been such as to make it 
 possible for you to come to a different conclusion to the 
 one at which you have arrived. For I feel unfeignedly," 
 adds the Bishop, "that this diocese, and your parish 
 especially, will sustain a great loss at your departure." 
 
 As we have seen, the same year that saw his pro- 
 motion to Carnarvon, witnessed also the publication of 
 his " Church of the Cymry," which is headed by the 
 significant motto, " Hie jacet Arturus rex quondam, 
 rexque futurus," so indicative of his own conviction of 
 the Church's historical position, as well as of his 
 confidence in her future. This subject henceforth 
 absorbed much of his time and attention. "We want 
 public souls, we want them," says Bishop Racket ; 
 and Peter Bayne says, " Unless institutions are souled 
 by earnest and capable men, they have no more chance 
 of prosperous and beneficent activity, than dead bodies 
 have of climbing mountains." The Church in Wales 
 has grievously suffered during the last hundred and fifty 
 years of her history, from want of leaders who combine 
 thorough loyalty to her principles, and a genuine 
 sympathy with the national temperament, and legiti- 
 mate aspirations of the people. The Anglicizing policy
 
 30 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 of past generations, which has prevailed too largely in 
 the promotion of the higher dignitaries of the Church, 
 has tended to discourage the due cultivation of the 
 Welsh language, and to crush out the national senti- 
 ment from the heart of the ministry. The spectacle has 
 not seldom presented itself of men promoted to high 
 offices who could not minister with decent efficiency in 
 the vernacular. The result has been disastrous. A 
 prohibitory penalty was thus imposed on the healthy 
 development of the most marked characteristics of 
 Welsh individuality, by the uniform selection of men to 
 fill influential positions, who, however estimable and 
 eminent in other respects, were ignorant of the language, 
 literature, and national temperament of the people, and 
 utterly incapable of winning their confidence and sym- 
 pathy. The native ministry became largely discouraged 
 and demoralized, and the masses were alienated from 
 the Church. We do not, indeed, mean to affirm that 
 the Anglicizing policy is the only cause responsible 
 for the depression of the Welsh Church ; but no one 
 acquainted with the religious history of the Principality 
 during the last century, and the beginning of this, will 
 deny that it has been at least the main cause, and the 
 most fertile source of many other subordinate ones. 
 And we venture to say, that no measure of man's device 
 can be more conducive to the reinstitution of the 
 Church in her legitimate position, and her reinvestment 
 with her normal influence, than a full recognition of 
 her rights to have her ministrations performed by men 
 who are practically and profoundly acquainted with the
 
 Results of the Anglicizing Policy. 31 
 
 character, language, and religious tendencies of the 
 people. If she is to regain lost ground, and wield 
 successfully her own inherent power, she must proclaim 
 her truths in a style and garb which will recommend 
 them to the vivid imagination and impressible nature 
 of the Welsh Celt. She need not change a single article 
 of her creed, or a single clause of her constitution. 
 The men who seceded from, or, rather, were thrust out 
 of her, in the latter half of the last century and the 
 beginning of this, did not in a single instance express 
 their dissent from her fundamental principles and polity. 
 The Methodist revival, as it is called, broke out within 
 her sanctuaries ; the fire was first kindled in the breasts 
 of her own ordained ministers. And this is a sufficient 
 answer to those who insinuate sometimes that a religious 
 revival cannot originate in the Church. Under an 
 administrative policy which ignored the paramount 
 claims of the people to have their language cultivated, 
 and their national sympathies fostered, within the 
 Church of their fathers, their religious instincts were 
 frozen. When they began to melt and flow once more 
 under the vernal breezes of the powerful awakening 
 that broke out within her walls, the same policy with- 
 stood the movement, and blindly ejected those who 
 fostered it. The result was dissent, and confusion, and 
 the breaking up of the nation into religious fragments. 
 With the lapse of time, the movement which com- 
 menced in the Church, and was professedly designed by 
 its promoters as merely subordinate and supplementary 
 to her ministrations, became crystallized into a separate
 
 32 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 system. The influence of the venerable founders of 
 Welsh Methodism, who had uniformly maintained a 
 feeling of profound reverence for the Church, began to 
 wane in the second decade of this century, when the 
 last of them had been gathered to his fathers ; and after 
 the death, in the year 1841, of the Rev. John Elias, 
 who had always vigorously withstood the tendency to 
 oppose the Church in the body of which he was an 
 illustrious minister, his successors assumed an attitude 
 of more or less pronounced hostility, till, at the time 
 at which we have arrived in the life of the subject of 
 this memoir, they had cast off almost the last shred 
 of respect for the spiritual mother, to whom they were 
 indebted for their very existence. From the year 1868 
 may be dated the rise of aggressive political Methodism 
 in Wales ; it was then that this body broke loose from 
 their earlier traditions, and formally entered into an 
 alliance with the hereditary enemies of the Church, and 
 the subsequent years of Mr. Edwards' life were largely 
 spent in combating this combination of heterogeneous 
 foes to the life and prosperity of the National Church. 
 
 During the first few months of his incumbency at 
 Carnarvon, his attention was chiefly occupied in effecting 
 a readjustment of the income of the vicar, which was 
 rendered practicable by the fact that the rectorial tithes 
 had just then, by the expiry of a lease, fallen into the 
 hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. This work 
 proved to be of a somewhat delicate and complicated 
 nature, and he had the misfortune to differ from some 
 of the details contained in the scheme proposed by the
 
 His Work at Carnarvon. 33 
 
 Commissioners. After some negotiation, however, he 
 was enabled to fix on terms which ultimately met their 
 approval, and which placed the stipend of the vicar 
 on a basis more satisfactory, as being less liable to 
 fluctuation than it had hitherto been. By this arrange- 
 ment, provision was made for the district of Waunfawr, 
 which was subsequently constituted into a separate 
 incumbency, and annexed to the small parish of Bettws 
 Garmon. A church was also needed at Twthill, to 
 afford convenient accommodation for the substantial 
 and increasing congregation that had been gathered 
 in that part of the town by the combined exertions of 
 lay and clerical agencies. In a short time, St. David's 
 Church was built, and became the home and centre of 
 a flourishing cause. His work of Church extension 
 here and elsewhere involved much toil and anxiety, 
 as churches cannot be built, and living agencies cannot 
 be provided, without funds. To a man of comparatively 
 limited means, whose resources were constantly crippled 
 by such work with which his hands had been full almost 
 since the day of his Ordination, and to one who was 
 endowed with an intellectual and sensitive temperament, 
 the task of continually dabbling in bricks and mortar 
 was neither easy nor congenial. 
 
 Nothing is more essential to the. happiness and 
 mental repose, and, we may emphatically add, to the 
 ministerial efficiency, of men in such circumstances 
 than genuine sympathy, and ungrudging co-operation. 
 It increases their capacity for work, and inspires courage 
 and enthusiasm. Mr. Edwards was brought here into 
 
 D
 
 34 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 contact with some who did not understand him, and 
 occasionally into collision with others who could not 
 altogether sympathize with him. But he toiled on with 
 unflagging energy, and soon succeeded in completing 
 his arrangements, and in introducing method and 
 regularity into parochial work and organizations. 
 
 It was at this time that he became embroiled in con- 
 troversies, from which he was not wholly exempt during 
 the remainder of his life. His letter to Mr. Gladstone, 
 of which we have already spoken, drew forth much 
 criticism, both favourable and adverse. A hostile review 
 of it by a leading Welsh Calvinistic minister, in a weekly 
 periodical called Y Goleuad, was answered by him, 
 and gave rise to a correspondence of some length. Mr. 
 Edwards took his stand on the principle of Christian 
 unity, and called upon the reviewer and his co-religionists 
 to return to the Church, inasmuch as the internal 
 administrative causes which had occasioned the secession 
 of that denomination had been removed. The contro- 
 versy was conducted with great ability, courtesy, and 
 fairness, on both sides. The Dean insisted on outward 
 unity, on the broad basis of the doctrinal orthodoxy 
 and the Apostolical constitution of the Church ; his 
 opponent, while candidly admitting the Scriptural cha- 
 racter of the Creeds and Articles, was content with 
 asserting spiritual unity as essentially sufficient. Whilst 
 we fully admit that the spirit of arrogant pretensions, 
 misrule, and misconduct within, is often responsible for 
 outward schism and secession, and acknowledge the 
 precious reality of spiritual as distinguished from visible
 
 Ecclesiastical Reunion. 35 
 
 unity, we nevertheless find from experience, and from 
 the sad records of Christian history, that there is no 
 more fruitful source of spiritual disunion and discord, 
 no cause more fatal to the healthy and successful 
 development of victorious spiritual unity in 'the Church 
 of Christ, than the miserable rivalries, created, fostered, 
 and intensified by the interminable divisions by which 
 our outward Christianity has been rent and disfigured. 
 And no appreciable advance can be made towards the 
 attainment of that strong and healthy position of 
 spiritual union of hearts, sympathies, and aims, which 
 all confess to be ideally the best, until earnest souls 
 amongst the different sections of Christians, actively 
 and professedly yearn for the recovery of the priceless 
 blessings of outward unity. 
 
 The ecclesiastical reunion of his countrymen was 
 the great aim and aspiration of the Dean throughout 
 his public life. He often discussed the subject in a 
 spirit of candid earnestness. He saw and mourned the 
 infinite loss, both in outward resources and in spiritual 
 power, which Christianity suffers from the rampant spirit 
 of faction that prevails. The flippant sneer in which 
 the scoffer indulges at the expense of our " unhappy 
 divisions," and the unctuous self-complacency with 
 which the professional advocate of sectarianism glories 
 in them, were alike distressing to him ; they grieved 
 his heart, and crushed his hopes. He saw, as every 
 thoughtful observer sees, that there stand between us 
 and the initiatory step towards the restoration of Chris- 
 tian unity, a formidable combination of mixed interests,
 
 36 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 unrelieved and undisturbed by any appreciable aspiration 
 after a higher and better state of things. The last 
 paper he wrote, which is published in this volume, is an 
 honest and liberal attempt to lay down the principles 
 on which the religious wounds of generations may be 
 healed. Even in the din of controversy and the strife 
 of tongues, the contribution of an ardent patriot, 
 Churchman, and Christian, ought to speak to us with 
 authority, recognizing as he does, fully and frankly, 
 the benefits which Nonconformity has conferred on the 
 nation, whilst he does not abate one jot of the prescrip- 
 tive rights and inherent possibilities of the Church. 
 Surely there is pathos and power in the voice that thus 
 speaks to us as from the grave. 
 
 The passing of the late Mr. Forster's Act, in 1870, 
 brought the subject of elementary education very 
 prominently before the country. Churchmen had 
 hitherto borne a noble part in establishing parochial 
 schools in a large number of districts, and had main- 
 tained them at a heavy expenditure. The active part 
 which many of the clergy took in imparting religious 
 teaching, based upon Scripture and the Church Catechism, 
 and the influence they acquired thereby, had roused 
 the jealousy of the Nonconformists, who now began to 
 evince an unwonted interest in education, by setting 
 themselves in opposition to the existing voluntary 
 schools, and vigorously supporting a universally com- 
 pulsory scheme. Whilst the Education Bill was passing 
 through the House of Commons, they used their political 
 influence with the Government to the utmost of their
 
 Religious Education. 37 
 
 power, to secure a purely secular system. No sadder 
 example of the evil disposition of religious rivalries can 
 be conceived than this, and nothing can be advanced 
 in justification of the efforts the Nonconformists made 
 to extrude the Word of God from our elementary 
 schools. In the recent weighty words of Lord Selborne, 
 " One of the most deplorable effects of religious dis- 
 union at the present day is leaving out the teaching of 
 religion, the teaching even of the Bible which, if you 
 were to look at it even from a purely secular point of 
 view, is one of the most important and interesting books 
 that could be imagined, even if one did not believe in 
 it, but which from my heart and soul I do. If one did 
 not believe in it, to leave it out of the system of educa- 
 tion would be like leaving out the principal part from 
 the great drama of life. But these miserable religious 
 dissensions, these odious jealousies, excommunicate the 
 Bible from that thorough teaching in schools which 
 other books taught there are expected to receive." 
 The attitude which the Nonconformists assumed towards 
 the Bible in its relation to the education of the country, 
 is painfully anomalous. They have been credited with 
 a jealous regard for the Word of God, as the sole rule 
 of faith and conduct. In 1870 they practically forfeited 
 their claim to this distinction. The religious Dissenter 
 had gained a high reputation as a man of " one Book ; " 
 in the education controversy he damaged that reputation 
 irreparably. We have had some few expressions of 
 regret since ; but they have proved unavailing, and the 
 Dissenting bodies stand to this day virtually committed
 
 38 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 to the principle of secular education. It is difficult 
 to discover any very commendable motives for their 
 conduct in this. Those motives probably lie, as we 
 have before intimated, partly in the jealousy they felt 
 at the zeal which the clergy evinced in promoting the 
 religious education of the children, and partly in their 
 eagerness to save their logical consistency as Libera- 
 tionists, even at the expense of sacrificing their reputation 
 as advocates of the Word of God. Be this as it may, 
 the side they took in this controversy, and the alliance 
 they formed with the avowed enemies of revealed 
 religion, constituted a serious and startling departure 
 in their religious history, and forced them to support a 
 policy of elementary education little in consonance with 
 their traditionary attachment to the Bible. Events 
 have transpired since in the Principality, which justify 
 the suspicion that the policy so rashly advocated then, 
 has already produced an injurious reflexive influence on 
 themselves, and a baleful effect on the life of the nation. 
 It would be an insult to the position of the leading 
 accredited teachers of a large portion of the country, 
 to say that their advocacy of a system of education 
 from which the Bible was to be excluded as a text- 
 book, did not seriously lower the character of the sacred 
 volume, and impair its authority in the eyes of the 
 people. In a speech delivered in Bangor, May, 1883, 
 the late Mr. Forster, when speaking of this controversy, 
 used the following significant words, with special 
 reference to Wales : " As to secular education in schools 
 without religious teaching, he thought that a mistake.
 
 Controversial Disadvantages. 39 
 
 He thought that this would be found hereafter to be a 
 mistake." 
 
 The then Vicar of Carnarvon was the first and fore- 
 most in the campaign, which the friends of voluntary 
 schools and a religious system of education entered 
 upon, in opposition to the advocates of compulsory 
 secularism. He met his opponents on every platform, 
 and, in the stirring meetings of that period, he held his 
 own wherever he went. In most of the controversies 
 of his life, it must never be forgotten that he always 
 laboured under two heavy disadvantages. The first that 
 he had to oppose men who attacked the existing state 
 of things, whereas he had " not only to strive with a 
 number of heavy prejudices, deeply rooted in the hearts 
 of men, who think that herein we serve the time, and 
 speak in favour of the present state, because thereby we 
 either hold or seek preferment ; but also to bear such 
 exceptions as minds so averted beforehand usually take 
 against that which they are loth should be poured into 
 them." " He that goeth about to persuade a multitude 
 that they are not so well governed as they ought to 
 be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers, 
 because they know the manifold defects whereunto 
 every kind of regiment is subject ; but the secret lets 
 and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumer- 
 able and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judg- 
 ment to consider. And because such as openly reprove 
 supposed disorders of state are taken for principal friends 
 to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry 
 singular freedom of mind ; under this fair and plausible
 
 40 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and 
 current. That which wanteth in the weight of their 
 speech, is supplied in the aptness of men's minds to 
 accept and believe it " (Hooker). The other disadvantage 
 he laboured under was that he had to speak often before 
 a hostile audience. But he shrank not from duty. He 
 found, and others found, that the Dissenting orators 
 were not such formidable antagonists as many had 
 imagined them to be. Those orators had a ready 
 tongue, a large amount of self-assurance, and a fund of 
 stale anecdotes, which they had learnt to relate with 
 dramatic skill ; but when their arguments were subjected 
 to a tolerably close analysis, they were found to be 
 pitiably incoherent and inconclusive. They made the 
 most astounding assertions about what they were pleased 
 to call the trifling cost of Board Schools, which can only 
 be said, on any charitable hypothesis, to have been due 
 to their no less astounding ignorance. 
 
 This controversy entailed much labour on Mr. 
 Edwards, and overwhelmed him with obloquy, on the 
 platform and in the press. He was constantly exposed 
 to the most virulent attacks ; but this was a necessity of 
 his position. " Censure, says an ingenious writer, is the 
 tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. . . . 
 All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of 
 every age in the world, have passed through this fiery 
 persecution. There is no defence against reproach but 
 obscurity ; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as 
 satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman 
 triumph " (Addison). In this controversy he proved
 
 The Welsh Church Press, 41 
 
 himself a ready debater, a formidable antagonist, a 
 master of sarcasm and invective. He would discern at 
 a glance the weakness of his opponent's armour, and 
 unerringly direct his dart into the joints. He raised the 
 Church in the estimation of the public, inspired her 
 friends with courage and her enemies with dread. He 
 was nobly assisted by his brethren, and 'notably by 
 Canon Evans, his successor at Carnarvon. They had 
 the satisfaction to find that the Education Act, as it 
 emerged from the Legislature, aimed at supplement- 
 ing, and not at supplanting, the voluntary schools ; that 
 religious education was retained in these by the insertion 
 of a conscience clause, and that the exclusion or admis- 
 sion of the Bible into Board Schools was made dependent 
 on the vote of the majority of the ratepayers. 
 
 Mr. Edwards' growing fame and popularity added 
 greatly to his labours. He was now called upon every- 
 where to do battle for the cause of religious education, 
 to defend the Church from the organized attacks of her 
 assailants, and to occupy her pulpits on all important 
 occasions. In addition to this, and to the care of a 
 populous parish, he became a constant contributor to 
 the Welsh Church press. He believed in the power of 
 the press ; he longed to see it employed in the service 
 of the Church, and strenuously advocated the policy of 
 securing the co-operation of men of talent and educa- 
 tion in its support. And he was not one to advance a 
 theory without acting upon it. He entered into the 
 arena of the public controversies of that time with all 
 the enthusiasm and intrepidity of his soul, and, utterly
 
 4 2 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 heedless of the storm of abuse that raged around him, 
 he charged men who had inherited from their religious 
 ancestors the precious legacy of a reputation for 
 exceptional piety and sanctity, with the guilt of 
 advocating a godless system of education, and the 
 spoliation of the sanctuary from mere jealousy at the 
 progress which the Church was making in the country. 
 He wrote leading articles in the weekly organ of the 
 Church in Wales, edited and wrote the major part of 
 the Amddiffynydd for two years, and often carried the 
 war into the enemy's camp, by defending the Church 
 from the calumnies and misrepresentations of hostile 
 critics on the pages of the Dissenting newspapers. 
 His success as a leading-article writer was unques- 
 tionable. His contributions to the Dywysogaeth and 
 Amddiffynydd at this time made the Church press 
 a greater power in Wales than it had probably ever 
 been before. The productions of his facile and prolific 
 pen, though anonymous, could hardly be mistaken. The 
 elaborate introduction, the wealth and brilliancy of 
 illustration, the satirical humour, the lucid and masterful 
 treatment of the subject ; the frequent occurrence of 
 the double negative and the periphrastic form of the 
 verb ; the diction powerful, but not always classical ; 
 the style soul-stirring, but not elegant ; all this ren- 
 dered the paternity of his anonymous contributions to 
 the Welsh press easily recognizable. 
 
 About this time he also gave to the world two other 
 volumes of sermons, entitled respectively "The Exile and 
 Return," and "The Babel of the Sects," the latter of which 
 was published in both English and Welsh. These
 
 Sound National Education. 43 
 
 volumes exhibit all the peculiarities of his style, and 
 drew forth high commendation from the reviewers. 
 The following quotation from "The Exile and Return" 
 will supply us with a specimen of his thoughts on the 
 momentous question of national education, which he 
 had profoundly studied, and elaborately discussed on 
 the platform and in the press at this time. " The nation 
 which banishes the Name of God from the schools of its 
 youth, and from its organism of government, in the hope 
 of increasing human happiness and power, has no pro- 
 mise. That liberty which expresses the love of our 
 neighbours, has its root in the love of God. National 
 religion is the guardian of national liberty. Until the 
 nation has learnt to obey the command of Religion, 
 enjoining self-denial and self-sacrifice, saying, ' Take 
 thy growing life, and offer it unto me,' it can never hear 
 the true charter of Liberty, ' Lay not thine hand upon 
 the lad.' " To those who recognize the paramount 
 authority of the Christian religion, and the supremacy 
 of its claims as the Divine guide and guardian of life, 
 these truths appear so axiomatic and incontrovertible, 
 that it awakens sad reflections, when they are forced to 
 observe that the combination of sectarian rivalry and 
 political exigencies render necessary their inculcation 
 and defence, in a country whose people have been 
 credited with an intense reverence for the Gospel, and 
 with an unusual degree of proficiency in practical religion. 
 Is it another instance of " Corruptio optimi pessima " ? 
 The admission of a false principle opens the doors for 
 others of a kindred nature.
 
 44 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 In the year 1874, Mr. Edwards sought to represent 
 the clergy of the diocese as their proctor in Convoca- 
 tion, and was elected without opposition, which shows 
 that his brethren appreciated the great services he had 
 already done to the Church. In a letter he says, " My 
 views upon the ecclesiastical questions of the day are not 
 unknown to my fellow-clergy. If elected, I will offer at 
 all times a conscientious opposition to those who would 
 either add to or take from the Book of Common Prayer, 
 a loyal allegiance to the authority of which I regard as 
 the best basis of unity amongst Churchmen." This is 
 sound policy. At a time when the country is passing 
 through a crisis of educational and intellectual trans- 
 formation, when secularists and socialists, rationalists 
 and Romanists, are greedily seizing the opportunity 
 for propagating their theories amongst the masses, and 
 when sectarian animosities and political expediency 
 have entered into an alliance for the overthrow of the 
 National Church by the destruction of her organizations 
 and the crippling of her resources, we can hardly offer 
 better or more reasonable advice to all loyal Church- 
 men than that contained in the above extract. To 
 stsfnd firmly and unitedly by the Prayer-book and the 
 principles of the Reformation seems our best, if not 
 our only, chance of successfully repelling the hostile 
 advances of our foes, and avert disasters. In his short 
 preface to " The Exile and Return," the author says that 
 he " believes that their teaching is drawn from the study 
 of Holy Scripture, as interpreted for English Churchmen 
 by the Book of Common Prayer. He has endeavoured
 
 Second Marriage. 45 
 
 to stand loyally on the undebatable ground of the 
 Church of England, without crossing her borders in any 
 direction whatever." His theological views were some- 
 what broader than those of the ordinary High Church- 
 man; while, on the Ministry and Sacraments, he differed 
 from those held by the typical Evangelical. He did not 
 speak often in Convocation ; but, whenever he did, he 
 did not fail to impress his audience with his striking 
 individuality and independence of mind. 
 
 In the year 1873, he had married the second time, to 
 Anne Dora, the daughter of Mr. John Jones, of Treanna, 
 Anglesey. She was possessed of a remarkably buoyant 
 nature, a vivacious and sympathetic temperament, a 
 quick and sensitive intuitiveness. With the affectionate 
 tenderness and never-failing resources of a true and 
 devoted helpmate, she strove to lighten the cares and 
 share the burdens of the life of arduous toil and incessant 
 controversies in which he was now engaged. During 
 the short three years of their marriage, he was at the 
 height of his public activities, and the domestic happi- 
 ness he then enjoyed doubtless contributed not a little 
 to the efficiency with which he discharged his duties 
 as a parochial clergyman, and defender of the Church. 
 The peaceful repose and harmony of a true home 
 must have afforded him refreshing solace, after the 
 tumultuous excitement of the frequent public meetings 
 he attended. He so fully enjoyed and appreciated the 
 blessings of domestic comforts at this time, that he 
 would often say it was too good to last. And the 
 melancholy presage was too true. At the close of the
 
 46 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 year 1875, his wife was struck with a fatal illness. 
 During the Christmas season with its hallowed associa- 
 tion of Christian joy, a heavy sorrow brooded over his 
 home. The letters which he wrote during the progress 
 of his wife's illness reveal the intensity of his affection, 
 and the strong desire of his heart to retain the precious 
 life which appeared essential to the happiness and use- 
 fulness of his own. How he agonized in prayer to God 
 to avert the threatening calamity ! How he alternated 
 between hope and fear ! How tenaciously his whole 
 soul clung to hope, on the appearance of the faintest 
 symptoms of recovering strength ! But his prayers were 
 answered otherwise than he wished ; the desire of his 
 eyes was snatched from him, and his domestic hearth 
 was once more mysteriously desolated. He was left to 
 mourn his loss with two infant daughters, the elder two 
 years, and the younger only ten months old at the time 
 of their mother's death. 
 
 When the dark moment of bereavement came upon 
 him, with a bruised, broken, and bleeding heart, he 
 resigned himself without a murmur to the wise but 
 inscrutable decree of God. In the following extracts 
 from a letter which he penned immediately after the sad 
 occurrence, we find some of the thoughts that struggled 
 for utterance, when he was bending under the terrible 
 ordeal that shook his being to its very centre, and tore 
 by the roots the living fibres that had grown deep into 
 his existence. 
 
 " I hoped as long as there was hope. We did all we 
 could, by the use of earthly means, to save the natural
 
 His Deep Sorrow and Resignation. 47 
 
 life of my darling Dora. An all- wise and all-loving God 
 has seen fit to take away from me the central joy of my 
 earthly life. His Will be done. ' If I could call her 
 back, against God's Will, I would not do it,' as Arch- 
 bishop Fenelon said in a similar hour of dark trial. 
 ' While the child was yet alive,' said David, ' I fasted 
 and wept ; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be 
 gracious to me, that the child may live ? But now he 
 is dead, wherefore should I fast ? Can I bring him back 
 again ? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.' 
 I am trying to realize the deep, solemn wisdom of those 
 inspired words. It is a hard task. She was as dear to 
 me as my own life-blood. We had no thought, no task, 
 no aim, no feeling, that we [did not share with each 
 other. Before we spoke, our hearts beat together ; our 
 minds worked in absolute domestic unison. I have 
 known the greatest joy that earth can give that of a 
 calm, bright home, and a deep, pure, real Iove 5 absorbing 
 all the powers of affection, going down to the roots of 
 my heart, growing up and branching out into every part 
 of my life. This earth has no illusions for me in the 
 future. It may have duties ; God grant that I may 
 have strength to perform them. I may be more fitted 
 than I have been, if God wills that I should live, to 
 exhort and console others with the authority of one who 
 has been in the furnace of affliction, and knows by per- 
 sonal experience the purifying power of its great, God- 
 kindled heat. A great preacher has said, ' He who has 
 been long under the rod of God, becomes in a peculiar 
 manner God's possession. He bears in his body marks,
 
 48 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 and has drops upon him that nature cannot provide. 
 He comforts and exhorts with authority. " He comes 
 from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah," and it is 
 easy to tell with whom he has been conversing.' " 
 
 He saw his earthly home once more ruthlessly shat- 
 tered. As he surveyed the wreckage, his bereaved and 
 bleeding heart felt the chill of desolation. He bravely 
 strove to resign himself to a lonely pilgrimage, and to 
 seek home, rest, and happiness only in the performance 
 of his duties. " It would be vain to keep up the fabric 
 of my earthly home, now when God has, in His wise 
 love, chosen to take away its chief corner-stone. I must 
 not rebel. I am only suffering what better men have 
 suffered before me, in that process of chastening by 
 which our Father disciplines and prepares us for rest in 
 the glorious, eternal home, where we shall meet beyond 
 the confines of time, and the reach of change, pain, and 
 sorrow ' for the former things are passed away.' . . . 
 What about the future ? It is in God's hands. \Ye 
 can only propose ; God will dispose. He is very 
 merciful, and good to us. He will not chasten for ever, 
 nor suffer all His anger to fall upon us." 
 
 Referring to his wife's personal religion, he says, 
 " She loved beauty and reverence in religion, and had a 
 strong faith in the mysterious workings of God's sacra- 
 mental grace. She was no formalist, but a deep, living 
 Christian, loving God's Word. The last sermon she 
 heard from me was about the call that God gives to us 
 to rise above the earthly, lower life, into the high, 
 heavenly life (Rev. iv. 1-3). The voice has said, ' Come
 
 Christian Consolations. 49 
 
 up hither.' She is gone up, free from the burden of 
 the flesh. We, as long as we live, must try to go up 
 heavenward, seeking those things which are above, 
 and having our conversation in heaven. . . . God com- 
 forts us all. If I live, He will give me work to be my 
 consolation." 
 
 He could not endure the idea of living at the vicar- 
 age, where he had experienced such crushing afflictions ; 
 the tender associations of the past harassed and haunted 
 him. He abandoned the scene of his sorrows, and 
 sought lodgings in the town. He writes, January 6, 
 1876, "I am feeling a little down to-day, but am wonder- 
 fully sustained, when the heaviness of the visitation is 
 considered. 'He uttered His voice, and the earth melted' 
 under my feet. I seem to have nothing to cling to, but 
 the hopes that are far above, coming down out of the 
 opened heaven. ... I hope I shall be able to go onwards 
 under my heavy burden, in the strength of God, better 
 than I anticipate." Three days after he writes, " I have 
 just been reading a sermon by a famous preacher. Its 
 subject is, ' The Cross of Christ the Measure of the 
 World.' There are high joys of being which cannot be 
 reached until we have been beneath the Cross. ' They 
 that sow in tears shall reap in joy.' Let us hope that 
 we shall have a rich harvest of joy after this tearful 
 season, which God has sent us. ... If it please God to 
 give me tolerable health, and to spare me from nervous 
 depression, which is my old enemy, I hope to be as 
 happy as I can be under the circumstances. ... It is 
 a great mercy that God has spared the dear children. 
 
 E
 
 50 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 May He continue to bless them in His goodness. They 
 will, if they live, be a comfort and brightness to us all." 
 Four days after this he writes again, "I have been dread- 
 ful lyxiepressed, last night and this morning. In spite of 
 all my efforts, memory is very busy, and my heart is 
 very desolate. I found a little comfort this morning in 
 reading the chapter in Bishop Butler's 'Analogy' on the 
 ' Future Life,' in which he argues that death is simply 
 that change of condition that enables the immortal soul 
 to enter upon a higher life, ' Thus, when we get out of 
 this world, we may pass into new scenes, and a new 
 state of life and action, just as naturally as we came into 
 the present. And this new state may naturally be a 
 social one.' To try to realize this truth is, really, the 
 only, or almost the only, efficient source of comfort in 
 the hours that have come upon me." 
 
 On February 24, 1 876, he writes from London, where 
 he had gone for a change, "Thank God, I feel physically 
 very well. I had a sorrowful night, lying awake long in 
 the early hours of the morning. In my sleeplessness, I 
 composed the sad little verses which you will find on 
 the other side. When a boy, I used to write verses 
 for my amusement. I have not written any before for 
 years." The verses alluded to in this letter are as 
 follows : 
 
 " IN MEMORIAM A. D. E. 
 
 " With her my life was full, deep, bright 
 My heart, my mind, my ear, my sight 
 All daily drank their dear delight 
 When she was here.
 
 Appointment to the Deanery. 5 r 
 
 The angel came ; a dreadful night 
 Quenched my best rays of earthly light, 
 Breathed o'er my Paradise a blight ; 
 She is not here. 
 
 " In heart and mind, we two were one, 
 This God's own Sacrament had done ;-?- 
 I'm broken now, for I'm alone ; 
 
 She is not here. 
 
 Homeless on earth, I stagger on ; 
 My step is short, my strength is gone ; 
 Too soon my day of joy is done, 
 She is not here. 
 
 " Shall I repine, rebel, curse God? 
 Shall I not rather kiss the rod, 
 And tread the path Himself hath trod, 
 
 With many a tear ? 
 
 Yes, yes ! Thank God ! I will not wail, 
 Now I've new hope within the vail ; 
 Christ grant in grace I may not fail 
 To join her there ! " 
 
 The dawn of the year 1876 had brought on a crisis 
 in Mr. Edwards' life. The heavy and incessant labours 
 of the past six years had caused an exhaustion of 
 physical and mental energy. The crushing sorrow 
 which had, for the second time, bereft him of the central 
 joy and support of home, had, as we have seen, been 
 followed by a depression of spirits, which made it 
 difficult for him to continue life's duties with the same 
 vigour and buoyancy as before. Mental and physical 
 nature loudly clamoured for change, and in the provi- 
 dence of God that change came. In the early part of 
 this year the genial Dean Vincent died, and Mr. Edwards 
 was appointed as his successor. The deanery afforded
 
 52 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 him timely rest from the constant cares of parochial 
 duties, while it left him more at liberty to prosecute 
 his favourite studies and pursuits. He was enabled 
 henceforth, both by the dignity of his position, and the 
 leisure it procured him, to employ his time and talents 
 more exclusively in the service of the Church and 
 nation at large. The great variety and amount of 
 work he did, the posts he filled, and the controversies 
 he engaged in during the subsequent years of his life, 
 prove how well he understood and recognized the 
 responsibilities involved in that position, and the value 
 of the opportunities it placed within his reach. And 
 while his promotion to Bangor brought him timely 
 relief from the depressing associations of a shattered 
 home, it was, at the same time, a well-merited recogni- 
 tion of his past great services. No appointment of 
 recent times in the Welsh Church was hailed with 
 more cordial and universal approbation ; letters of 
 congratulation poured in upon him from men of all 
 parties. His past labours and experience, as well as 
 his undoubted abilities, had justly earned for him, as 
 well as qualified him for, the conspicuous position he 
 was now called upon to occupy. He had proved him- 
 self to be essentially a man for the times. He had 
 already done work which no other representative of 
 the Welsh Church had done. He had raised the 
 drooping spirits of Welsh Churchmen, and inspired them 
 with confidence in their cause, when their assailants 
 were contemptuously threatening them all along the 
 line. We would almost say that, in the public con-
 
 His Services to the Welsh Church. 53 
 
 troversies carried on against the Church, so defiantly, 
 and with such self-confident dogmatism by the Dis- 
 senters and their political allies, the Church in Wales 
 would have allowed judgment against her to go by 
 default, had not the Vicar of Carnarvon taken up the 
 challenge. His powerful and well-sustained defence 
 created a public opinion amongst Churchmen, filled 
 many a shrinking heart with courage and enthusiasm, 
 and brought to light the positiveness and firmness of 
 the Church's position. It was no longer to continue 
 a mere passive or negative force in the country. A 
 Church which was nothing more than a negation, could 
 neither justify nor preserve its existence, in the face of 
 the severe scrutiny to which it was subjected. Mere 
 passivity could no more withstand the aggressive 
 phalanx of opponents that had conspired to overthrow 
 her, than untrained and unarmed battalions could resist 
 the assaults of experienced and well-organized veterans. 
 The Vicar of Carnarvon braced himself for the contest, 
 and led the army of defence with unwavering con- 
 fidence, both in himself and in his cause. He was, 
 indeed, well supported by a faithful band of fellow- 
 workers, and in this cause it may be remarked that 
 he suffered but little from the jealousy or apathy of 
 Churchmen. All cheerfully recognized his leadership. 
 He was applauded throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land, and though it may have been that com- 
 paratively few were thoughtful enough to express their 
 appreciation by a sympathizing letter, his name, never- 
 theless, had become a household word, and was cherished
 
 54 Biographical Sketch, 
 
 with unmixed feelings of affectionate gratitude and 
 admiration. He was known everywhere in the Princi- 
 pality as " the Vicar ; " and his brave words and noble 
 self-sacrifice, in those days of severe trials, were the 
 theme of laudatory comments, and have left indelible 
 marks on the life of the Church, and the minds and 
 hearts of Churchmen. His elevation to the deanery, 
 as we have said, was hailed as a well-merited tribute 
 to one who had rendered such valuable services to the 
 Church, and was looked upon as a sure precursor to 
 higher distinctions. We dare not speculate on what 
 might have been, had his life been prolonged ; it was 
 not to be so, and our duty is silent acquiescence in the 
 dark, inscrutable mysteries- of what has been. To most 
 of his fellow-countrymen, he seemed to have been 
 marked out, by special endowments and qualifications, 
 to lead and to govern. His commanding presence, his 
 undisguised and undaunted patriotism, his intense but 
 unaffected love for Wales and Welshmen, his unfeigned 
 partiality for our national institutions, his knowledge 
 of the language, history, and temperament of the race 
 from which he sprang, and, above all, his firm attach- 
 ment to the Cymric Church, rendered unquestionable 
 his claims to be raised in due time to the episcopal 
 throne- of one of our sees. But his sun set suddenly 
 and mysteriously, whilst life was yet in its noonday 
 splendour, and his name will go down to posterity as a 
 powerful controversialist, a defender of his Church and 
 nation, a leader of men and master of assemblies, rather 
 than as a great administrator and organizer, though
 
 His Character. 55 
 
 the Church in the diocese of Bangor is largely indebted 
 to his energy and inspiration for some of her most 
 beneficial and successful organizations. The Church 
 in Wales has not outlived her trials. She has not 
 conciliated or vanquished her foes, or surmounted her 
 difficulties. She is still in the throes of her conflicts, 
 but without the faithful and courageous defender that 
 so often stood in the forefront of her battles. He has 
 left her, indeed, but not before he had filled her quiver 
 with arrows, and bequeathed to her faithful sons the 
 rich and rare legacy of a conspicuous example of a life 
 consecrated to her service. We have no wish to paint 
 him as perfect. He partook to a considerable degree 
 of some of the faults and frailties, as well as many of 
 the virtues, of his countrymen. Some of those were 
 constitutional, others were excesses of virtues, and all 
 were aggravated by the constant frictions of his life. 
 He was impulsive and impatient of contradiction ; his 
 actions appeared at times tinged with too much self- 
 consciousness and self-assertion, and he was prone to 
 morbid and excessive habits of self-introspection. It 
 may, perhaps, be said that his want of self-restraint, 
 which, if more habitually maintained, would have enabled 
 him to husband his mental and physical resources, may 
 have been instrumental in accelerating the final collapse. 
 His fearless exposure of what he conceived to be the 
 errors, imperfections, or injustices, of systems and in- 
 stitutions which it was his duty to criticize, brought 
 upon him charges of harshness or indiscretion, from 
 those whose natural timidity shrank from drastic
 
 56 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 measures, or from those who felt the scathing severity 
 
 of his strictures. His life was largely spent in the 
 
 heated and turbulent atmosphere of public controversy, 
 
 which brought him into unhappy but inevitable collision 
 
 with the prejudices and prepossessions of many of his 
 
 countrymen, whilst it left him but little leisure for calm 
 
 reflection, and the cultivation of a judicial frame of 
 
 mind. Some of the few private papers he left behind 
 
 him, in the form of confessions, vows, and resolutions, 
 
 show how painfully conscious he was of these personal 
 
 weaknesses, how he strove and struggled to overcome, 
 
 and how earnestly he prayed to be delivered from them. 
 
 Nothing in the history of the human soul appears to 
 
 us nobler, nothing better proves the dire reality of the 
 
 spiritual combat within, than these records, drawn out 
 
 under the searching eye of God, in the sacred privacy 
 
 of self-examination and holy communings, where the 
 
 heart unreservedly spreads out its own failures before 
 
 its Maker and Judge, and, out of its deepest depths, 
 
 utters its fervent longings to rise victorious over them. 
 
 These records are to us invaluable. We read them 
 
 with living, sympathetic interest. Our own inner history 
 
 and experience enable us to understand and appreciate 
 
 them ; they reveal to us a life kindred to that with 
 
 which we have the profoundest acquaintance, struggling, 
 
 but not yet perfect. But we prefer to count the victories 
 
 rather than the defeats, and though the day closed 
 
 before, as we thought, the maturest and most precious 
 
 fruits were gathered for the Church below, nevertheless 
 
 the echoes of his voice, the influence of his life, and the
 
 Pressure of Work. 57 
 
 force of his example, will live on through many genera- 
 tions, in the grateful recollections, and, let us hope, in 
 the faithful imitation of Welsh Churchmen and patriots. 
 Mr. Edwards' installation as Dean of Bangor took 
 place on April 6, and in the evening he preached a 
 Welsh sermon in the cathedral for the occasion. 
 Though the promotion set him free from the definite 
 and rigid routine of parochial engagements, he did not 
 indulge in any prolonged relaxation. Work was a 
 necessity of his life. During the eight years he held 
 the deanery, his hands were always full, except, indeed, 
 when he was compelled to rest or go abroad, by illness 
 or physical prostration. The amount of work he did, 
 in lecturing, preaching, and writing, was prodigious. 
 Invitations to preach at harvest thanksgiving meet- 
 ings, choral festivals, Church anniversaries, and other 
 ordinary or special occasions, crowded upon him from 
 every part of Wales, and from many of the principal 
 centres of population in England. He preached in 
 secluded country churches as well as in large towns, 
 and always succeeded in drawing large congregations. 
 He has, indeed, been accused of sameness in his sermons ; 
 but the best answer to such criticism is that the people 
 everywhere thronged to hear him, and listened to his 
 discourses with rapt attention. He gave the best of 
 his time and thoughts to the study and treatment of his 
 subject. We find him again and again complaining in 
 his private letters that preparation for the pulpit, as well 
 as the delivery of his sermons, was followed by languor 
 and exhaustion. He did not content himself with
 
 58 Biographical Sketch* 
 
 scanning over his subject superficially in a twenty 
 minutes' sermon, as is too often the fashion in these 
 days of self-indulgent ease, but he dug deep into the 
 foundation of his text, and enforced its lessons with 
 eloquence and exhaustiveness. If we may select one 
 characteristic of his discourses, which, perhaps more than 
 others, shows at once the strength and the weakness of his 
 style, it would be his fondness for illustrations. Whether 
 we read his sermons, his speeches, or his leading articles, 
 we cannot fail to observe that what gives that peculiar 
 charm which is scarcely ever absent from his productions, 
 in his fertility of illustrations. It however, led him 
 sometimes to place undue weight upon them, and to 
 force them to perform the function of analogy. The 
 legitimate use of an illustration is, not to supply proofs 
 of a proposition, but merely the elucidation of truth. 
 It cannot be denied that the Dean occasionally over- 
 stepped these limits in the employment of his favourite 
 figures of speech,, which in the main, however, he used 
 with exceptional power and legitimate effects. 
 
 The originality which has often, and, as we think, 
 rightly been attributed to him, consisted not so much in 
 the discovery of what is new, or in bringing to light 
 of what lies hidden in the deep, inexhaustible wells 
 of Divine revelation, as in his presentment of what is 
 already known. We can hardly take up a sermon of 
 his without noticing some striking originality of this 
 kind. He was profoundly observant of the currents 
 of thoughts and actions that surged around him, and 
 he seldom failed to adapt and apply the lessons of his
 
 Originality and Style. 59 
 
 text to the condition of contemporary society. All 
 Scripture was to him the living and authoritative voice 
 of God, replete with messages to us of the present day, 
 as to those who first received them. He saw types in, 
 and drew forth less-ons on some Gospel truth, or on the 
 providential dealings of God, from passages in the Old 
 Testament, where few would have found them. For 
 this he was sometimes severely criticized ; but if in error, 
 he erred on the safer side, especially in days when the 
 critical spirit betrays tendencies to eliminate the typical, 
 the prophetic, and the supernatural from the older 
 Scriptures. It no doubt requires the faculties well 
 disciplined to draw the limits between what are historical 
 types and what are mere history, between mere temporary 
 details, and facts or events which contain in them the 
 germs of lessons designed for permanent and ever- 
 recurring application. As we have observed, the Dean 
 was fond of drawing out theological and practical lessons 
 from Old Testament events where few would have 
 discovered them, and it may be remarked that he 
 preached oftener from the older than from the later 
 Scriptures. This may be regarded as a legitimate and 
 timely protest against the too liberal and rationalizing 
 spirit which would relegate the Hebrew records to the 
 position of mere ancient history, and would eviscerate 
 them of all higher and permanent ethical teaching and 
 spiritual edification. Old Testament revelation, besides 
 its typical and prophetic import, contains an authentic 
 record of God's providential dealings with nations and 
 individuals. The veil is drawn aside by the Divine
 
 60 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 hand ; the plan and principles whereby God rules the 
 world are laid bare ; the events are, so to speak, 
 specimen events in which are revealed the relation of 
 the Supreme Ruler to earthly powers, and the laws of 
 His universal government over His responsible subjects. 
 The Gospel dispensation of the New Testament has not 
 altered, or modified, or annulled the foundation principles 
 of the economy of God's Providence, as revealed and 
 exemplified in the Old. The laws of that Providence 
 are still operative. The only difference is, that their 
 operations are not directly authenticated by supernatural 
 communications or interpositions in our day ; we are 
 left to be guided in our interpretation of them by the 
 authoritative records of the Old Testament. The Gospel 
 dispensation left unaltered the laws of Providence, so 
 clearly revealed, so strikingly and profusely illustrated 
 under the old dispensation, and which were founded, not 
 on the temporary and transitory character of the Jewish 
 nation and polity, but on the immutable relation of God 
 to all nations, and communities, and ages, as consisting 
 of moral beings, accountable to Him for their actions, 
 and living before Him in a state of probation. We do 
 not, indeed, affirm that Dean Edwards was not sometimes 
 fanciful in his interpretation of particular passages ; but 
 we do maintain that his application of the historical 
 truths and typical lessons of the Old Testament to the 
 condition of society in our own times, is based on sound 
 principles, and is a seasonable protest against the 
 pernicious tendency of modern neology, which, by an 
 exhaustive process of elimination, seeks to divest the older
 
 Theological Views. 6 1 
 
 Scriptures of all permanent and moral teaching, leaving 
 us only the bare, empty historical shell just as the same 
 spirit of destructive criticism, advancing a step further 
 in its logical development, essays to abstract from the 
 Gospel narrative all the historical and miraculous 
 elements, allowing us only a dry, lifeless remnant of 
 ethical teaching. 
 
 The Dean's theological position has been described 
 as a broad High Churchman, and we recollect that, 
 on its being once mentioned to him, he did not re- 
 pudiate the designation. The fundamental articles of 
 his theology, those on which he laid the most pro- 
 minent stress in his discourses, were the loss of God's 
 image in the Fall, in consequence of which man in- 
 curred personal misery, and deserved eternal banish- 
 ment from the presence of his Maker ; man's restoration 
 to the favour of God, and his reinstitution in all the 
 privileges which he had forfeited, through the redemp- 
 tion and mediation of the Man-Christ, the Incarnate 
 Son of God. The conception of " law " runs through 
 all his writings. Law violated brings its punishment 
 in the derangement of the life or constitution, for the 
 well-being of which it exists. The law of selfishness, 
 isolation, and self-assertion, is death and bondage ; the 
 law of self-sacrifice, unity, and self-surrender, is life and 
 liberty. These primary laws he regards as supreme 
 and universal in their operation ; in their light he reads 
 the fate of individuals and communities. His system 
 may be sometimes too rigid and exclusive ; he may 
 not always take sufficient account of the modifying and
 
 62 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 remedial power of subordinate laws, which, through the 
 merciful and marvellous intervention of God, are, in 
 the moral and spiritual world, analogous in their bene- 
 ficent operations to what in the physical world is 
 termed vis medicatrix naturce. His belief in the in- 
 spiration of Scripture, as the revelation of God's Will, 
 was firm and implicit. Great controversialist as he 
 was, he rarely introduced controversy into the pulpit, 
 on the great and fundamental verities of the Christian 
 religion. Christ, as the eternal Son of God and the 
 Saviour of man, was the central Figure of his message 
 and ministry. It may be that he dwells oftener and 
 with greater emphasis on His example, than on the 
 culmination of His life in the vicarious death upon the 
 Cross, as the source of man's renewed life ; or the com- 
 pletion of His triumph in the resurrection from the 
 dead, as the pledge of the Church's final victory. It 
 may be, as a consequence to this, that he lays greater 
 stress on the Christian's duties than on the principle of 
 faith, whereby alone the life of God in Christ is appre- 
 hended and appropriated. But he never fails to point 
 the lost soul to the Saviour, both as the only Name 
 whereby we must be saved as the Incarnate Word in 
 Whom is revealed the fulness of the Father's love and 
 as the only Pattern of a life of holiness. 
 
 During the first three or four years of his occupation 
 of the deanery, his movements were rapid and almost 
 ubiquitous. He spoke, and preached, and lectured 
 incessantly. The imperfect records of his doings that 
 have been preserved to us in occasional private letters,
 
 Bible Classes and Saturday School. 63 
 
 show how varied and heavy his engagements were at 
 this time. He was called upon to preside at literary 
 meetings, at educational establishments, and other 
 movements of a national, ecclesiastical, or philanthropic 
 nature. Every week was crowded with work of a 
 diversified kind, which taxed his energies to the utmost. 
 In addition to outside engagements, was his work 
 in connection with his own cathedral. With all the 
 energies of his soul, he entered on the double task of 
 setting on foot the restoration of the outward fabric of 
 the " mother church of the diocese," and to initiate 
 movements for its utilization as the centre of diocesan 
 life, which was his ideal conception of what it ought 
 to be. He invited men from all parts of the diocese 
 to occupy its pulpit during the seasons of Advent and 
 Lent, and on special occasions secured the services 
 of preachers of distinction from England and Wales. 
 He conducted a Bible-class for Sunday school teachers 
 in the chapter-room, which was largely attended and 
 highly appreciated. Later on, he started a Saturday 
 " Sunday school," an experiment somewhat novel and 
 hazardous, but which turned out a decided success, and 
 which drew forth words of commendation from Arch- 
 bishop Tait. Children of all creeds and classes freely 
 and gratefully participated in the opportunity thus 
 afforded for instruction in the Scriptures, and the 
 number of attendances reached over six hundred. Un- 
 like some of our Church dignitaries, he did not consider 
 his position one of mere learned leisure, or dignified 
 ease a serene altitude, from which to look with silent
 
 64 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 sympathy and philosophic interest on those who are 
 engaged in the conflict below. He was as ready as ever 
 to offer his powerful aid in militant work. When the 
 Liberationists mustered in full force in the parish he 
 had just resigned, he disdained not to enter once more 
 into the arena of controversy, and lost no time in de- 
 livering an exhaustive and crushing reply. A few 
 months before his death, when a feeble attempt at 
 assailing the Church was made by some local repre- 
 sentatives of a moribund society, he again replied with 
 more than his wonted vigour, in a speech which bristles 
 with brilliant epigrams and playful repartees. These 
 two speeches fairly exhaust the whole subject, and form 
 a splendid repertory of Church Defence arguments. 
 He was called upon, moreover, to deliver temperance 
 lectures everywhere at this time, and he gained a high 
 reputation as an ardent and powerful advocate of this 
 cause. And whilst these heavy and numerous engage- 
 ments were pressing upon him, his powerful pen and 
 voice were incessantly employed in pleading for money 
 now for the Bangor Clerical Education Society, whose 
 income he raised to 700 a year ; now for the restoration 
 of the cathedral, which was completed, though not as 
 originally proposed and planned, at a cost of ;ii,ooo; 
 and again for the establishment of higher education in 
 North Wales. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1879, Dean Edwards was 
 invited to preach at a special English service in St. 
 David's Welsh Church in Liverpool, and in his intro- 
 duction to the second edition of this sermon, of which
 
 His Liverpool Sermon. 65 
 
 we give a reprint in this volume, the author says that 
 he deemed the occasion " not unfitting for briefly re- 
 viewing the past and present relation of the Church 
 to the Welsh-speaking population of Wales." Without 
 any comment of our own, we introduce an extract or 
 two, from a highly favourable review of this sermon, 
 which appeared in the Spectator for September 20, 1879. 
 " This is a very masterly discourse, which we cordially 
 recommend to the study of all statesmen and Church- 
 men. The sermon contains some passages of great 
 eloquence." After quoting an extract in illustration of 
 this remark, the reviewer goes on to say, " But it is 
 not as a piece of glowing oratory and Dean Edwards 
 is a Celt of the Celts that we value the present pulpit 
 utterance. It is because it supplies a lucid and con- 
 vincing answer to the question, Why are the Welsh of 
 to-day so largely lost to the National Church? while 
 the author is sanguine enough to believe, as we our- 
 selves also are, that when light shall have been thrown 
 upon the real state of the Welsh Church, when due 
 consideration shall have been given to the fact that 
 Welsh is still the mother-tongue of over a million souls 
 that is, of nearly five-sixths of the inhabitants of 
 Wales and that it is the language in which three- 
 fourths of them still worship God, efficacious remedies 
 may yet be found for the mitigation or general absorp- 
 tion of a dissidence which has been occasioned almost 
 entirely by English neglect of the needs and claims 
 of our Cymric brethren. Dean Edwards has suc- 
 ceeded in giving a luminous as well as a most pathetic 
 
 F
 
 66 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 narrative of the treatment to which the Welsh have 
 been subjected in spiritual matters since the days of 
 the Norman kings." After recapitulating briefly the 
 various fortunes which befell the Welsh Church under 
 a " Welsh dynasty " and the " House of Brunswick " 
 respectively, the reviewer concludes thus : " The story 
 needs no comments, and no subject could more worthily 
 occupy the attention of the forthcoming Church Con- 
 gress at Swansea, than that which is so ably discussed 
 by the Dean of Bangor in the present discourse. We 
 will only add that we can commend its theology and 
 spirituality, as much as its true patriotism." 
 
 When the arrangements for the Swansea Congress 
 of 1879 were made, "The Past and Present Position of 
 the Church in Wales " occupied a prominent place in 
 the programme, as suggested in the above extract. As 
 was to be expected, Dean Edwards was amongst those 
 selected to address the Congress on a subject which 
 he had made his own. His speech on that occasion 
 created a profound impression on the country. It was 
 an effort to rouse the responsible leaders of the Church 
 to a vivid realization of her position. It has been 
 thought to have exaggerated the failures of the Church ; 
 and this opinion was subsequently shared by him, as 
 he modified some of the views expressed then, in his 
 last and greatest speech delivered in Carnarvon in 1883, 
 to which we have already referred. But it was cha- 
 racteristic of the man. It bore the impress of his mind. 
 Its epigrammatic antitheses were brilliant ; its analyses 
 incisive ; its exposures unsparing ; its concessions were
 
 Seed-time and Harvest. 67 
 
 generous, and its candour almost severe. No other 
 living man could have either conceived or delivered it 
 It was a vivid panorama, covering a long but definite 
 period of history, crowded with details both pleasant 
 and painful, bristling with lessons both of encourage- 
 ment and of warning almost an illustration of his own 
 career, the varied events of which succeeded each other 
 with bewildering rapidity. We may be forgiven the 
 comparison, as he criticized the efforts of his own life 
 with the same unsparing severity as he did the adminis- 
 trative history of the Church in Wales, which, it is no 
 exaggeration to say, was equally dear to him. 
 
 Few lives of public service have compressed into 
 themselves so many sharp contrasts, so many events of 
 gloom and brightness, joys and sorrows, successes and 
 disappointments, during the short period of twenty 
 years. He used to complain sometimes that his life 
 was a failure. But this was when he brooded with 
 morbid despondency over disappointing results ; it was 
 when his analytic, restless mind took its estimate too 
 exclusively from separate facts or events. It is difficult 
 to define, and still moYe difficult, for earnest souls, to 
 preserve the golden mean between stoical indifference 
 to the results of our labours, and utter despair when 
 those results are found to betray our calculations. The 
 fields do not ripen immediately after the sowing. As 
 in the natural kingdom, so in the moral and spiritual, 
 the active combination of laws and forces, as well as 
 the revolution of the seasons, is necessary for the pro- 
 duction of the full harvest ; and much of the seed
 
 68 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 scattered by the most diligent and faithful hand is 
 destined, some never to cut the surface and see the 
 light, some never to reach maturity and to be gathered 
 to the granary. The Dean expected too much from 
 single efforts, into which he at least th/evv the whole 
 weight of his energies ; he had too little faith in a 
 continuous, well-sustained course of action. His im- 
 pulsive nature, ever anxious for immediate, palpable 
 results, commensurate with the labour and pain spent in 
 the sowing, could not be reconciled to the necessity of 
 waiting for the " due season." " Let us believe," says 
 Landor, " that there was never a right thing done, or 
 a wise one spoken in vain, although the fruit of them 
 may not spring up in the place designated, or at the 
 time spoken." And, says Kingsley 
 
 "What though thy seed shall fall by the wayside, 
 
 And the birds snatch it ? yet the birds are fed ; 
 Or they may bear it far across the tide, 
 To give rich harvest after thou art dead." 
 
 This lesson the Dean evermore needed, as a corrective 
 of his natural impulsiveness and impatience, which, 
 combined with the growing despondency that arose 
 from intense mental application, made him sometimes, 
 and notably in his Swansea speech, express strong 
 dissatisfaction at the progress of the Church in the 
 Principality. But he watched that progress with too 
 much jealous anxiety to be always a safe witness. He 
 lived too near the events he played too large a part 
 in them to estimate them always at their true value. 
 Moreover, his strong tendency for pungent, epigrammatic
 
 Controversial Style. 69 
 
 sentences led him occasionally to express truth in an 
 exaggerated form. In all his platform utterances, he 
 scarcely laid aside his controversial attitude. He had 
 a keen and ready mind for dissection and analysis ; and 
 whenever he detected a fault, or a weakness, he turned 
 upon it the concentrated light of his genius and all the 
 powers of his destructive criticism. To this, partly at 
 .least, must be attributed the apparent contradictions of 
 his public (utterances. They were not due, as sometimes 
 asserted, to capricious and arbitrary changes of opinion, 
 but to the exclusiveness with which he would deal with 
 his subject, from that point of view which he specially 
 wished to lay before his audience. His style was 
 adapted rather to convince or convict, than to persuade 
 or win. We may be obliged to disagree with him, but 
 we cannot fairly accuse him of inconsistency, before we 
 give due weight to the peculiarities of his style and 
 the necessities of his position. His strong attachment 
 to the constitution and doctrines of the Church, his 
 profound conviction of their historical and scriptural 
 orthodoxy, made him express himself all the more 
 vehemently on what he believed to be the miserable 
 shortcomings of her administration. It may be freely 
 admitted that he viewed those shortcomings too exclu- 
 sively from the standpoint of a patriotic Welshman ; he 
 fixed his eye and concentrated his attack too severely 
 on the tendency to Anglicize the Church, while a 
 broader and more accurate view of the question 
 demanded the ventilation of minor and collateral points 
 of defect. His intense faith in the vitality and vast
 
 jo Biographical Sketch. 
 
 possibilities of a Church possessed of such a noble 
 history and infinite resources, made him all the more 
 impatient at the too slow progress she appeared to him 
 to be making in winning back to her fold those that 
 had been forced to stray abroad. We may blame his 
 impatience, indeed, but we are compelled to admire his 
 zeal and candour. Whenever he attacked Noncon- 
 formity, in its polity or practice, he did so with the 
 same exclusiveness as he exposed the administrative 
 deficiencies of the Church, but he was foremost to 
 admit with gratitude the practical good that had 
 accrued from it. In these days of unreasoning bigotry, 
 the tribute of praise given by an opponent is apt to be 
 taken as unqualified justification, just as discriminating 
 censure, proceeding from a friend, is construed into a 
 wholesale condemnation. Nothing is more liable to 
 misconstruction than the praise of an antagonist, or the 
 blame of a friend. The Dean's impetuosity, his love 
 of epigram and invective, would sometimes carry him 
 beyond the dictates of his calmer judgment, and he 
 often freely expressed his regret at having wounded his 
 victim too severely ; for he possessed a nature which 
 was keenly sensitive to the feelings of others. Below 
 those manly features, so expressive of invincible purpose, 
 behind that resolute form, which stepped forward so 
 often to the battle-field as if determined never to 
 retreat till he could proclaim the word of victory, there 
 throbbed, nevertheless, a heart as tender as that of the 
 tenderest woman. It was finely susceptible of kindness, 
 which, with guileless trust and simplicity, it received
 
 The Jesus College Controversy. 7 1 
 
 and reciprocated. His controversial blows were heavy 
 and incisive, but when once delivered, he used to say 
 that he freely forgave and forgot all. Nothing pained 
 him more than the reluctance and refusal of a few 
 amongst those whose actions and opinions he was 
 obliged to criticize and controvert, who were unable to 
 rise above the influence of personal pique, to enter into 
 a renewal of friendly intercourse, when the dust of con- 
 troversy had subsided. 
 
 The Dean's position as a dignitary, as we have 
 already observed, gave him a vantage-ground, which he 
 sought to utilize on every opportunity for pleading the 
 cause and advancing the interests of the Welsh Church 
 and nation. When the authorities of Jesus College, 
 Oxford, resolved to throw open certain endowments 
 originally attached to that college for the exclusive 
 benefit of natives of the Principality, his patriotism was 
 thoroughly roused, and he used all the influence of his 
 position and polemical experience to frustrate the 
 scheme. In the sharp controversy to which the question 
 gave rise, it cannot be denied that the force of fair 
 argument was on the side of the Dean and those who 
 supported him ; but the spirit in which the public had 
 learnt to deal with ancient endowments, enabled the 
 originators of the project to sacrifice both the intentions 
 of donors and the advantages of Welshmen to a 
 possible improvement in the efficiency of an institution 
 a not unfrequent occurrence in these days of cold 
 utilitarianism. It was the Dean's ambition, on the one 
 hand, to be the means of opening the eyes of the
 
 72 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 generous English nation to the real grievances the 
 educational and other disadvantages, under which his 
 countrymen were heavily handicapped in the race of 
 life ; and, on the other, to be the instrument, as far as 
 he could, of bridging the gulf between the hierarchy of 
 the Church and the masses of the people. He saw, as 
 every impartial observer sees, that the religious disunion 
 of Wales has paralyzed the life of the nation, and has 
 inflicted upon it an injury which it is difficult to 
 exaggerate. It has torn society into fragments ; it 
 has created unwholesome rivalries, where the deepest 
 harmony ought to prevail ; it engenders and fosters 
 social strifes, and above all, in fact and in spirit, it is 
 a libel on the central principle and final aim of the 
 Christian religion ; it 
 
 " Wastes the spiritual strength 
 Within us, better offered up to Heaven. " 
 
 " Oh, shame to men ! devil with devil damned 
 Firm concord holds ; men only disagree 
 Of creatures rational." 
 
 The Dean believed that he was entrusted with a mission 
 to bring nearer the fragments into which his country- 
 men have been socially and ecclesiastically broken. 
 For the attainment of this, he was prepared, as a 
 Churchman, to sacrifice much even everything except 
 what he deemed to be essential principles. He con- 
 tended that the Church was the only true centre of 
 religious unity, both on account of her being the mother 
 from whom the sects had originally sprung, and also 
 because she is in possession of the Apostolic polity a
 
 His Example as a Dignitary. 73 
 
 broad but distinct basis of communion, and a fulness 
 of truth. Believing this, he felt keenly the want of 
 sympathy between the masses and the Church. He 
 acknowledged the partial justice of the charge that the 
 latter had neglected the means whereby that sympathy 
 could be generated and fostered, and did what he could 
 to wipe off the disgrace. He endeavoured to influence 
 the people through the press, the pulpit, and the plat- 
 form, andf threw himself heart and soul into popular 
 movements. His Welsh " Commentary on the Gospel 
 of St. Matthew," which he completed in a twelvemonth, 
 and published early in 1882, was an attempt to supply 
 the deficiency in modern Welsh Church exegetical 
 literature ; and though he wrote it in too short a time 
 to make it a work of lasting merit, there is much that 
 is highly valuable and useful, both in its critical and 
 homiletical sections. 
 
 It will be freely granted that the Dean's efforts, as 
 a dignitary of the Church, to bring her ministrations 
 to bear upon the masses, was a noble example, worthy 
 of more general imitation. The Church will never 
 wield the power she is inherently capable of; she will 
 never duly assert her privileges, and discharge her 
 duties ; she will never live down the prejudices that 
 have been so long cherished, nor successfully refute the 
 calumnies that are so assiduously disseminated against 
 her ; she will never regain her supremacy over the 
 conscience and affections of the people ; she will never 
 vindicate her claims, or effectually convince the nation 
 of the Divine authority of her commission, till the
 
 74 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 superior clergy, and those who hold her prominent 
 offices, are able to address the masses with fluent effi- 
 ciency in the vernacular. A feeble imitation of a foreign 
 accent, style, and phraseology, will never make an 
 impression on a Welsh audience, save one of disap- 
 pointment and dissatisfaction, which will inevitably per- 
 petuate the estrangement which all so deeply deplore. 
 We deem it our duty, in reviewing the life and work of 
 Dean Edwards, to speak with emphasis on this point. 
 No better use can be made of the opportunity, none 
 more in harmony with the aim of his life and the 
 influence of his work. We cannot disguise from our- 
 selves the fact that, with all the warnings and lessons 
 of past generations, we are only tardily awakening to 
 the realization of what appears to be an elementary 
 truth. The system of preparatory training for the 
 ministry has grievously neglected the cultivation of 
 Welsh habits of thought and expression, and has only 
 turned out Anglicized Welshmen a result most dis- 
 astrous both to themselves and to the Church. This 
 truth needs to hold a more prominent place in the 
 considerations and utterances of those who seek and 
 suggest remedies for the revival of the Welsh Church, 
 than it has hitherto held. The policy of Anglicizing 
 Welshmen, we repeat, has been as much, or more, the 
 bane of the Welsh Church, as the appointment of 
 Englishmen. It ruins the men, and it ruins the Church ; 
 but it is sanctioned and stereotyped, as an analysis of 
 those who occupy higher positions in the Welsh Church 
 at the present moment would disclose ; our dignitaries
 
 Patriotic Churchmanship. 75 
 
 are, as a matter of fact, either Englishmen or Anglicized 
 Welshmen, who, with a few exceptions, are incapable 
 of preaching a Welsh sermon with decent efficiency. 
 The appointment to high offices of men who possess 
 some formal claims to be considered Welshmen, but 
 whose knowledge of the language and the religious 
 temperament of the people is painfully limited, is only 
 an evasion, infinitely worse than an outspoken denial, of 
 the Church's rights. We do not want truths delivered 
 in English idioms from Welsh pulpits thoughts filtered 
 through English minds, and enfeebled in the process. 
 We want men to hold leading positions in the Welsh 
 Church who can feed the multitude through the pure 
 channel of their own expressive language. We profess 
 to have discovered one of the most grievous mistakes 
 of past administration, in the neglect of giving due scope 
 to the healthy development of Welsh sympathies ; we 
 affect to lament our shortcomings, and have expressed 
 our repentance ; let us beware of perpetuating the 
 anomaly. Dean Edwards was thoroughly patriotic, and 
 knew that without genuine patriotism the Church could 
 not successfully win her way. English mannerisms and 
 idioms will never restore the confidence of the nation 
 to the Church. We are convinced that the plain truth 
 has not even yet been realized on this important 
 question ; it is indisputable that we are still clinging 
 with fatal tenacity to old habits, in spite of the abundant 
 censures we are pleased to pass on the blindness and 
 stupidity of our predecessors. 
 
 The position and prospects of the Welsh Church
 
 76 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 were ever uppermost in the Dean's thoughts, and he 
 was never tired of adverting to or expatiating upon it. 
 He approached the question from every point of view, 
 and discussed it with absorbing interest, and with 
 astonishing familiarity with its different phases. We 
 remember a conversation we had with him on the 
 subject, on a fine August morning, during one of his 
 accustomed walks, outside the city of Bangor. He 
 plunged at once into his favourite topic. The burden 
 of the discussion turned upon the due preparation of 
 candidates for the ministry. He expressed his strong 
 dissatisfaction with the inadequate training for the 
 pulpit which the Church required and afforded in past 
 days, and mentioned various means whereby the defi- 
 ciency might be remedied. It was suggested to him 
 that the stiff, stereotyped, unanimated tone, acquired 
 during their academical training by many of our can- 
 didates, was unacceptable, and even offensive to a 
 Welsh audience, and had, in the past, done much to 
 estrange the Welsh people from the Church. He fully 
 endorsed this, and replied that he was then doing what 
 he could to instruct the exhibitioners of the Bangor 
 Clerical Education Society, who were under his care 
 during the vacations, in reading Welsh and in the 
 delivery of sermons, in a way that he thought would 
 be acceptable to the Welsh ear. We shall never forget 
 the earnestness with which he emphasized the necessity 
 of a thorough Welsh training for the ministry, in pro- 
 found sympathy with the Welsh mode of conceiving 
 and expressing their thoughts, and in the Celtic fervour
 
 The Church and the Age. 77 
 
 of diction and delivery. He had an uncompromising 
 contempt for the " Die Shon Dafydd " tendency, which 
 he never attempted to conceal. " In every position, it 
 is contemptible," he would say ; " in the ministry, it is 
 simply intolerable." And in this he was surely right. 
 
 In days when the Church is passing through new 
 and formidable trials ; when the sequence of events 
 discloses new difficulties ; when the rapid development 
 of the educational and political, the intellectual and 
 moral, condition of the people ever modifies the problem 
 in its social and religious aspects ; when the pernicious 
 tendency to intermingle religion and politics in the 
 pulpit, and on the hustings, is on the increase, and 
 seriously threatens to sap the very foundations of 
 Christian life ; when all this confronts us, it is the 
 urgent and paramount duty of those who are entrusted 
 with the government of the Church, to probe the disease 
 to the very root, and apply themselves with unwearied 
 diligence to the discovery of sound and effectual reme- 
 dies. The Church must adapt her ministrations to her 
 rapidly changing environments ; she must distinguish 
 between essentials and accidents, between what are 
 foundation-truths, never to be changed or tampered 
 with, and those modes of administration which may be 
 wisely and beneficially altered and adapted to meet 
 the requirements of the age. She must promptly 
 remove obsolete excrescences, which the neglect of 
 generations has allowed to fasten on her system, but 
 which sorely hinder the healthy extension of her in- 
 fluence and the consolidation of her work. Above all.
 
 78 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 she must strive to evoke and foster her own true vitality, 
 upon which alone she can rely for power to carry out 
 necessary reforms. Her standard must be the broad 
 but distinct ground of Christian truth ; her aim the 
 permeation of society by the living and life-giving 
 principles of Christianity. It cannot be denied that 
 she is confronted by powerful antagonistic forces ; these 
 she must fully recognize, and be prepared to meet, with 
 charity, but with firmness. The great danger that 
 threatens the purity and the power of our Christianity 
 is the tendency we have already adverted to, of making 
 religious questions the battle-ground between contend- 
 ing parties and rival political factions. The real issue 
 is obscured in the heat and dust of controversy ; 
 Christian charity is immolated ; the high ground of the 
 supremacy of the claims of Gospel truth and progress 
 is sacrificed to political expediency, or the temporary 
 triumph of political parties. This reckless bargaining 
 and bartering, in which the high interests of Christian 
 communities are often the proffered equivalents for 
 political support, evince an alarming degeneracy in the 
 public conception of the sacred character of religion, 
 and produce the effect of lowering it in the estimation 
 of the country. The leading journal was right when, 
 a few months ago, it described our age as one in which 
 a "cowardly fatalism and a base opportunism are 
 rampant ; " and the description receives no stronger con- 
 firmation than in the disgraceful bargaining that goes 
 on between religious and political leaders. The plague 
 spreads through all grades of society. The identifi-
 
 Typhoid Fever. 79 
 
 cation of politics and religion by those who are pledged 
 to the doctrine that they are separable and are to be 
 separated ; the novel practice of settling disputes, and 
 paying debts, by methods that are utterly subversive 
 of law and order, and that in the name of conscience 
 and religion, will inevitably result in moral confusion, 
 which will imperil the very essence of Christianity, as 
 well as the stability and efficiency of our national insti- 
 tutions. The restless spirit of political ambition, in 
 alliance, defensive and offensive, with religious bigotry, 
 is sweeping over the country like a noisome pestilence ; 
 and nothing but the true, self-sacrificing spirit of the 
 Cross will purify the atmosphere, and stay the plague. 
 In the cultivation of this spirit lies the safety, as well 
 as the duty, of the Church. 
 
 In the summer of 1882, the city of Bangor was 
 visited with typhoid fever of a malignant type, to 
 which the Dean fell a victim on August 4. The 
 incessant strain to which his constitution had been 
 subjected, the heavy sorrows of previous years, the 
 consumption of vital energies by these, and the mental 
 work and worry of controversy, and the steady progress 
 of nervous depression which, as we have seen, he calls 
 his "old enemy," in 1877 rendered him an easy prey 
 to this terrible epidemic. He was utterly prostrated ; 
 his life hung critically in the balance for days, and was 
 more than once despaired of. But his previous habits 
 of abstemiousness, careful nursing, and medical treat- 
 ment, enabled him to pull through successfully. He 
 recovered, indeed, but his emaciated form, and the utter
 
 8o Biographical Sketch. 
 
 prostration of his system, showed that the victory was 
 only partial. He never after regained his normal vigour 
 or capacity for work, though he rose on a few occasions 
 to the full measure of his former efforts. We find him 
 henceforth constantly complaining of being completely 
 done up, after any unusual exertion. He became more 
 restless, more despondent and dissatisfied with the work 
 of his life. Writing September 16, immediately after 
 his recovery, he says, " My spirits are very depressed, 
 and I am in that state in which difficulties assume large 
 proportions. Everything worries me." For the purpose 
 of recruiting his shattered constitution, and in obedience 
 to the recommendation of his physician, he paid a visit 
 to America and Canada, as soon as he could safely 
 leave home. Instead of resting, however, he preached 
 and lectured in several towns on the Western continent, 
 and employed his time in writing an account of his 
 voyage, and his impressions of America, which he 
 communicated to the Welsh press. After his return, 
 he threw himself with his accustomed energy to the 
 support of a movement which was then on foot, whose 
 object was the establishment of a university college 
 for North Wales ; and this cause owes his memory a 
 heavy debt for the invaluable services he rendered in 
 collecting its funds, in selecting its locale, and in framing 
 its constitution. His advocacy of a system of higher 
 education on a secular basis, exposed him to the charge 
 of inconsistency from many of those who had previously 
 co-operated with him in strenuously opposing a similar 
 system of elementary education. To this charge, he
 
 Secular College Education. 81 
 
 offered a reply in a speech delivered in Bangor, before 
 the members of the " Menai Literary Society," on 
 February 12, 1883 >' an d since those who accuse him 
 of inconsistency, when asked to substantiate their 
 charge, generally refer to his conduct on this question, 
 we offer no apology for the following somewhat lengthy 
 extract from that speech : 
 
 " Superficial critics have supposed that it is not con- 
 sistent for an opponent of secularism in the elementary 
 schools, to be an advocate of unsectarianism in colleges. 
 The two cases are not analogous. In the elementary 
 schools, thousands of children are gathered together 
 from houses in which negligent, ignorant, irreligious 
 parents may have neither the will nor the ability to 
 give them moral and spiritual instruction. If religious 
 knowledge is not offered them in the schools, there are 
 many who fear that they may never obtain it elsewhere. 
 It seems to many of us practically impossible to make 
 effectual provision for their religious instruction outside 
 the school. But the difficulty that we think insuperable 
 in the case of hundreds of thousands of children between 
 the age of five and thirteen, does not exist in the case of 
 a few hundreds of youths between seventeen and twenty. 
 To exclude religious instruction from the elementary 
 schools is, in the judgment of many of us, to endanger 
 the religious life of coming generations. To confine 
 the college to secular teaching, is practically compatible 
 with the fullest security for the religious training of the 
 students. 
 
 "I have not formed this view suddenly. Twelve 
 
 G
 
 82 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 years ago, I was invited to support the Aberystwith 
 College. I declined to do so, on the ground that it was 
 not a national and unsectarian institution, although its 
 promoters claimed for it those attributes. I explained 
 the conditions under which I considered it possible to 
 establish such an institution, in a letter published on 
 November 25, 1870, in the Western Mail. I used the 
 following words : ' All intelligent Welshmen must 
 sympathize with the promoters of this movement, in 
 their desire to obtain ample means of high education 
 for the middle classes of Wales, whose comparative 
 poverty excludes them from the advantages of Oxford 
 and Cambridge. If it were possible to induce the 
 various religious bodies in Wales to rebuild their 
 colleges in one central town, Wales might hope for the 
 advantages of a university. The lectures and examina- 
 tions of the university might well be confined to strictly 
 secular subjects, while the religious discipline and 
 teaching in the inner life of each college would be 
 regulated in accordance with the religious principles of 
 the society to which it belonged. Thus the fire of 
 religion on the domestic altar would burn unquenched. 
 At the same time, the intellectual life of the middle 
 classes of Wales would be quickened by the competitive 
 culture, in one centre, of the most gifted youths of 
 Wales all meeting in the unsectarian lecture-rooms, 
 and unsectarian examination-halls. Thus, gradually, 
 the intellectual powers, now grievously wasted, would 
 find their true exercise.' The views which I expressed 
 twelve years ago, are the views which I endeavoured
 
 Private Life. 83 
 
 to express at the Chester Conference, in the following 
 words of the amendment which I proposed : ' That the 
 buildings, in order to secure the unsectarian character 
 of the college, shall be strictly limited to the purposes 
 of secular teaching and examination, and to housing 
 the principal and professors, no students being permitted 
 to reside within the walls.' This principle is enforced 
 by the Departmental Committee (Report, page Ixvii.), in 
 their recommendation that, in the colleges, no provision 
 be made 'at the cost of the foundation for boarding 
 and lodging the students.' " 
 
 " Consistency is the bugbear of little minds," says 
 Emerson. Without, however, subscribing to this some- 
 what cynical dogma, it is impossible to deny that, in 
 practical life, especially in an age of endless conflicts 
 of opinion, the alternative often lies to practical men, 
 between incurring the charge of inconsistency and 
 retiring into sullen isolation between exercising a 
 modifying, salutary influence on popular movements, 
 and their total surrender into the hands of an opposing 
 faction. 
 
 The private life of the Dean was simplicity itself. 
 As a rule, he kept regular hours ; he lived on plain diet, 
 and was a most rigid total abstainer. In private con- 
 versation he was irresistibly fascinating, and communi- 
 cative to a fault. Even the most diffident could not 
 but feel at home in his company. He was fond and 
 full of anecdotes, which he would relate with unaffected 
 enjoyment. His abrupt and open manner, the sweet 
 smile that played on his lips, and the indefinable charm
 
 84 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 of his presence, never failed to impress deeply those 
 who came under his influence. He was a man of fre- 
 quent and fervent prayer. He used to speak in terms 
 of loving tenderness and appreciation of the simplicity, 
 comprehensiveness, and sweetness of the Church's 
 Liturgy, and he read the Morning Service in a railway 
 carriage when travelling. His extemporary family 
 prayers, says one who knew him well, were amongst the 
 best things he ever heard from him. A colonial arch- 
 deacon, who had joined in family worship at the deanery, 
 asked him for the manuscript of his prayer, and was 
 surprised to find that it was unwritten. A gentleman 
 whom the Dean visited during a severe and prolonged 
 illness, asked him some questions respecting God's 
 disciplinary chastisement of His people, and the mystery 
 of pain and suffering. " I was somewhat disappointed," 
 said his inquirer afterwards, " at the little help the 
 Dean was able to give me, as we talked together ; but 
 when he knelt to pray at my bedside, I found that he 
 had understood all my difficulties, and his prayer 
 brought me great relief." We find from his private 
 correspondence that his children were seldom absent 
 from his thoughts and prayers. When he sends a birth- 
 day or a new-year's gift, he adds, " I have not forgotten 
 to implore God's blessing to rest upon my darling." 
 As an instance of his tender thoughtfulness, we would 
 mention the fact that, for more than a twelvemonth 
 after the death of his wife, he never omitted to write 
 daily to her family, as she was in the habit of doing. 
 His gratitude to those who showed him kindness was
 
 Last Public Speech. 85 
 
 deep and sincere. His will, which is a perfect model 
 of brevity and clearness, is touchingly expressive of his 
 implicit confidence in the fidelity of those to whom he 
 commits its administration, and the guardianship of his 
 children. With a keen susceptibility, he enjoyed the 
 beauties and grandeur of external nature. He used 
 to say that the scenery around Bangor was to him the 
 loveliest on earth, and often, when overworn with the 
 languor and fatigue of the desk, he sought and found 
 reinvigoration and refreshment in a ramble over the 
 surrounding hills. And after his short but eventful day 
 of toil and suffering, he sleeps tranquilly in his favourite 
 spot, only a few yards from the beautiful church erected 
 to his memory, by the munificence of one who valued 
 his friendship, and appreciated his services to the Church 
 and nation. 
 
 On December 20, 1883, the Dean delivered his speech 
 against the Liberationists at the Guild Hall, Carnarvon, 
 under the presidency of Colonel the Hon. W. Sackville 
 West. With this, the public work of his life ended, if 
 we except the exhaustive essay he wrote during his last 
 voyage to the Mediterranean. The nervous depletion 
 caused by the fever of the previous year, his persistent 
 activities under physical exhaustion and mental depres- 
 sion, and the supreme effort he made in the preparation 
 of that speech, which took nearly three hours in delivery, 
 brought on an utter collapse of his powers. A terrible 
 gloom spread over him, which deepened as he found 
 himself unable to perform his work. Insomnia was the 
 consequence, which robbed him of the rest he so
 
 86 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 imperatively needed, and cut off from him the last 
 chance of restoring and replenishing nature's exhausted 
 resources. "There is no fact more clearly established 
 in the physiology of man than this," writes Dr. Forbes 
 Winslow, " that the brain expends its energies and itself 
 during the hours of wakefulness, and that these are 
 recuperated during sleep. If the recuperation does not 
 equal the expenditure, the brain withers." The Dean 
 went on a voyage to the Mediterranean in quest of 
 health. Even then he did not rest. He employed his 
 mind, weighted with depression and weary with toil as 
 it was, in writing an elaborate review of the causes that 
 led to the failure of the Church in Wales, the suggestion 
 of means of bringing it into harmony with the national 
 sentiments and sympathies, and of effecting the eccle- 
 siastical reunion of his countrymen. It illustrates his 
 morbid craving for work, and the unflagging interest he 
 felt to the last in the subject of this paper. But he was 
 taxing his overworked faculties, when they were demand- 
 ing complete rest. His letters during this voyage 
 alternate between hope and despondency ; but the 
 former diminishes and the latter grows as the days pass 
 by. Writing from Genoa, February 1 1, he says, " I have 
 had a very serious illness during the last six weeks. In 
 January, I was in great danger of paralysis, and I have 
 to thank God's mercy for my escape. I hope (D.V.) to 
 be fairly well, when I return in April. You imagine that 
 the cause of my illness was mental anxiety. But it was 
 not. I have been suffering from pure physical and nervous 
 exhaustion, brought on by overtaxing my system during
 
 Depression. 87 
 
 the year after the depletion caused by the fever." 
 Writing from Ancona, February 20, he again says, " I 
 have been and still am very, very ill. I have not much 
 hope that I shall be equal to any work for many long 
 months to come. I am prostrated quite in my nervous 
 system, and can only hope that God in His mercy will 
 give me relief in some form or other. But I must try 
 to bear my burden patiently." In similar strains are 
 letters of later dates, the despondency deepening till his 
 return. " I am returning now, very little improved in 
 health," he writes, March 19. "I sometimes feel that 
 I shall never again be the man I have been during the 
 last few years. But this I must leave in God's hands, 
 and must try to bear my lot with resignation." The 
 next two months have nothing but a record of gloom 
 and depression, occasionally relieved with noble expres- 
 sions of resignation to the Will of God, and culminating 
 on May 24, at his brother's house at Ruabon. So ended 
 a life which experienced the reality of Carlyle's aphorism, 
 reminding us that " every crown is, and on earth ever 
 will be, a crown of thorns ; " and the history of whose 
 quest after earthly bliss might well be given in the 
 words of Houssaye, " Happiness is always the inac- 
 cessible castle, which sinks in ruins when we set foot 
 ink" 
 
 "... a bubble on the stream, 
 That, in the act of seizing, shrinks to naught." 
 
 As soon as he lifted to his thirsting lips the cup of 
 earthly happiness, it was suddenly and inscrutably 
 snatched away, and dashed to the ground. Domestic
 
 88 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 comforts were no sooner bestowed, than they were with- 
 drawn ; bodily health was no sooner established, than 
 it was again ruthlessly shattered ; mental depression 
 was no sooner chased away by change of scenery, climate, 
 or occupation, than it returned with additional malignity. 
 The chastisements of God's hand were heavy upon him ; 
 the happiness that comes of earth, like the mirage of the 
 desert, appeared only to vanish away at the first approach, 
 and his experience, too, might have been sung 
 
 " But even while I drank the brook and ate 
 The goodly apples, all these things at once 
 Fell into dust, and I was left alone, 
 And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns." 
 
 We have often regretted, since his decease, that he could 
 not be induced to indulge longer and oftener in such 
 mental relaxation as would at the same time afford him 
 genuine pleasure, and also divert him from the stern 
 realities that occupied him almost without interruption, 
 and kept his faculties at full tension. It has been 
 observed that the mind which deals habitually with the 
 awful problems of the Christian ministry, and dwells 
 with concentrated reality on its practical issues, labours 
 under an absolute necessity of a regular and complete 
 relaxation, if it is to withstand successfully the double 
 pressure of anxiety from within, and labour from with- 
 out. The Dean seemed to have an innate antipathy to 
 a systematic rest. Whenever he was persuaded or 
 compelled to abandon for a time the sphere of his 
 activity, the restlessness of his mind absolutely forbade 
 him to enjoy the respite. Though he would change the
 
 Toil and Exhaustion. 89 
 
 scene, he could not be prevailed upon to lay down his 
 harness, even for a season. True it was of him 
 
 " Ccelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currant." 
 
 He had become so inured to a life of bustling activity, 
 that neither the dictates of reason, the advice of his 
 physicians, nor the entreaties of friends, could persuade 
 him to recruit nature, even when it had sunk almost to 
 an absolute state of exhaustion. So morbid had his 
 craving for work become, that, whether he could be tied 
 to bodily rest by the stern mandate of his medical 
 adviser, or allowed full freedom in the pursuit of his 
 favourite studies and occupations, it had become only 
 too evident, to those who intimately knew him, that his 
 constitution was being rapidly undermined. He had 
 so long and so persistently disregarded the faithful 
 monitions of nature, that his frail bark had gone beyond 
 his control. And while his noble activity and con- 
 scientiousness in the discharge of his duties furnish 
 those who come after him with a rare example of self- 
 dedication in the service of his Church and country, his 
 untimely end speaks with a terrible emphasis, to warn 
 those who may be rash enough to disregard the claims 
 of mental and physical nature. Whether we persist in 
 doing work whilst she is loudly clamouring for rest, or 
 deny the regular relaxation due to her when she is 
 faithfully and successfully discharging her functions, we 
 are simply exhausting precious capital, and labouring 
 to hasten on a state of confusion and derangement, 
 which will peremptorily decline any rest save that of 
 death and the grave.
 
 QO Biographical Sketch. 
 
 The widespread sorrow which the news of the Dean's 
 death evoked throughout the Principality, from men of 
 all creeds and parties ; the letters of sympathy which 
 his family received from persons of eminence, and from 
 public bodies in England and Wales; the tone of genuine 
 respect and appreciation of his talents, patriotism, and 
 services which pervaded the press of all shades of 
 opinions ; the pathetic references to the sorrowful 
 occurrence made in the pulpits of both churches and 
 chapels ; the vast concourse of people that had come 
 together from all parts of the country, to pay their last 
 tribute of respect on the day of his funeral ; these are 
 eloquent testimonies to the fact that his marked in- 
 dividuality, the efforts and achievements of his life, had 
 secured for him a strong and distinguished place in 
 the esteem and affections of his countrymen. For 
 the moment, all criticism was suspended, controversial 
 hostilities were forgotten ; there was but one feeling 
 predominant in the hearts of the vast multitude that 
 followed him to the grave ; there was but one sentiment 
 on their lips it was unfeigned sorrow at the irreparable 
 loss which the Church and nation had sustained. As 
 we joined the mournful procession, the mind irresistibly, 
 and almost unconsciously, fell into recounting our gains 
 and losses. The nation has lost in him a sincere patriot ; 
 the Welsh Church a devoted son, and her most valiant 
 defender ; the pulpit a bright ornament, and his friends 
 one whom they loved and admired. But though they 
 have lost him, they still love to think of him, as in 
 private conversation he discussed, with sparkling wit
 
 Gains and Losses. 9 1 
 
 and vivacity, those interesting subjects which occupied 
 his thoughts with unwearied interest ; or as he stood on 
 the platform to plead, with chivalrous enthusiasm, the 
 cause of the weak against the strong ; or in the pulpit, 
 as he delivered the message of the Gospel, with that 
 wealth of illustration and metaphor, in which lay much 
 of the secret of his power over assemblies, and the charm 
 of his style. They will never forget his powerful, if not 
 melodious voice, as he rang out with telling emphasis, 
 and sometimes with overwhelming force, the eternal 
 verities that had taken a firm grasp on his own soul. 
 They will recall, with tender feelings, the rapid glance 
 of his piercing eye, and the scathing irony that played 
 on his lips, as he proceeded, with terrible earnestness, to 
 depict and denounce the slavery of sin ; or the pleasant 
 smile that lit up his toilworn countenance, as he set forth 
 the attractiveness of virtue, or the greatness of God's 
 love. They will fondly call back to memory the hand 
 that played restlessly with the eye-glass, whilst the other 
 held the surplice with a firm grasp, indicating the severity 
 of the strain on mind and memory, as he marshalled 
 his arguments one by one, and with cumulative force 
 prepared for the final attack, or the closing appeal. 
 They will ever love to recall those manly features that 
 never quailed before a hostile audience, while supporting 
 an unpopular cause ; how he exercised his logical acumen 
 in analyzing the propositions, exposing the fallacies, 
 dissecting and shattering the arguments of an opponent, 
 with ruthless severity, and yet with perfect good-nature 
 and self-possession ; how he employed his rhetorical
 
 92 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 skill, as he prepared the way, now with generous com- 
 pliments, now with candid admissions, for the final 
 onslaught, which culminated in the complete discomfiture 
 of an unfortunate antagonist. Yes, they have lost him ; 
 but the work he did, the words he spoke, and the man 
 he was, will not allow the picture soon to fade from the 
 memory. Gratitude forbids us to forget his services, 
 wisdom his words. 
 
 Such, then, are the encouragements, such the warnings, 
 of the career whose outlines we have ventured feebly, 
 but lovingly and reverently, to trace. Human life is a 
 mighty force, or rather a combination of forces, whose 
 workings are only less mysterious to us than the 
 inscrutable decrees of God, and whose interactions are 
 often too subtle for our observation and analysis. As 
 we follow its development through shadow and sunshine ; 
 as we endeavour to estimate the various influences 
 that combine and co-operate to shape and control its 
 destinies ; as we gather together our impressions, and 
 attempt to arrange and reduce them into a living, 
 harmonious picture, we feel that they are, after all, but 
 a little more than a few shadowy generalizations, drawn 
 from the mere surface of that which we seek to portray. 
 The living, acting, thinking essence, is hidden beneath 
 and inaccessible ; the lineaments only, and the evanescent 
 colouring, are visible to us. Nevertheless, the words and 
 actions of life, and its purposes, as far as they are 
 discernible, reveal to us the strength of intellect, the 
 depths of convictions, and the nobility of soul, which 
 are expressive of its exalted origin ; its great achieve-
 
 Conclusion, 93 
 
 ments and greater aspirations reveal to us the grateful, 
 responsive efforts of man to cultivate and improve the 
 gifts of- God, and to give them back in faithful service 
 to Him Who has bestowed them. Nay, in the blurs and 
 blotches by which the picture is disfigured ; in the 
 failings and failures by which life is inevitably marred ; 
 here also we recognize the truth of God's revelation, 
 and the essential facts of human nature even the 
 imperfections it inherits at its entrance into the world, 
 as well as those it contracts in its onward passage 
 through the dusty road of life. As we take a final 
 survey of the record, from its commencement to its 
 close, our gratitude is kindled for its many brilliant 
 examples, and for the rest we are content to say 
 
 "Judge not ! the workings of his brain, 
 And of his heart, thou canst not see ; 
 What looks to thy dim eye a stain, 
 In God's pure light may only be 
 A scar brought from some well-won field, 
 Where thou wouldst only faint and yield."
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE CYMRY. 
 
 A LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLAD- 
 STONE, M.P. 
 
 Carnarvon, January 22, 1870. 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR, 
 
 I venture to address to you, as the First 
 Minister of the Crown, the following observations upon 
 the past history, the present state, and the future 
 prospects of the Church in the Principality of Wales. 
 
 I feel that the recent course of public events, and 
 the action which the representative of a Welsh con- 
 stituency has announced his intention of taking in the 
 next session of Parliament, render it unnecessary that 
 I should trouble you with any lengthened statement of 
 the reasons which induce me to invite your attention to 
 the subject. It is not unknown that the religious life 
 of the Cymric people of the Principality has for many 
 years presented peculiar aspects. But I am profoundly 
 convinced that the real causes which have produced in 
 that religious life those features which call forth the 
 regret of the well-wishers of my country, have never yet 
 become so fully and generally known, as to reach the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 95 
 
 heart and, I will add, the conscience of the noble, 
 generous, justice-loving people of England. It is true, 
 in 1834 those causes were unfolded in a work which, in 
 the fulness of its historical and statistical information, 
 in its just appreciation of the national temperament, 
 social conditions, and religious feelings of the Cymric 
 people, and also in its exhaustive review of ecclesiastical 
 patronage in Wales over a lengthened period, has left 
 but little to be desired. A generation has passed away 
 since that statement was made. 1 
 
 Many of the more flagrant abuses of the Church in 
 Wales have been swept away. But the more subtle 
 forces hostile to the life and growth of that Church are 
 still unremoved. The aspect under which they present 
 themselves to-day is in many ways changed. To call 
 your attention to the present operation of those causes, 
 and at the same time, as far as the space of a letter will 
 permit, to trace the effect of the same forces, as they 
 have appeared continuously, various in different ages as 
 to form, but ever identical in spirit, in the religious and 
 ecclesiastical history of this ancient people down a long 
 line of centuries, is the object which I have in view. 
 
 Now, there are but few, I think, who, knowing Wales 
 well, can venture to doubt that accurate statistics would 
 show that seven-tenths of the native Cymric population 
 of Wales are alienated from the Church of their fore- 
 fathers. At the same time, that Church, as existing in 
 Wales, inherits in a large measure the spiritual forces 
 
 1 An essay on "The Causes of Dissent in Wales," by Arthur J. Johns, 
 Barrister-at-Law.
 
 96 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 that have been found in all ages to exercise the most 
 authoritative influence over the souls of men. She is 
 strong in the undoubted inheritance of the spiritual 
 authority of original mission to the ancient people who 
 for more than two thousand years, with little admixture 
 of blood or change of characteristics, have inhabited the 
 valleys of Wales ; strong in the traditional glories of 
 that ancient British Church which, thirteen centuries 
 ago, in the restless audacity of Pelagius on the one 
 hand, and in the spiritual stature of her great patron 
 saint on the other, manifested within a century evidences 
 of the highest intellectual activity, and of the most 
 exalted saintliness of character ; strong (although the 
 southern dioceses have been sorely despoiled) in the 
 possession of no inconsiderable resources bequeathed 
 by the piety of our ancestors, and in the fact (usually 
 so conducive to the welfare of dioceses) that her benefices 
 are for the most part in the gift of her chief pastors 
 who have thus peculiar advantages for quickening the 
 pulsations of Church life in their ability to recompense 
 the merit of their clergy ; strong in all the power of 
 extending the range of her spiritual influence that belongs 
 to the high position of national establishment ; strong 
 in her claims to the gratitude of a people who owe 
 to the learning of the native Bishops the possession in 
 their own language of that version of the Holy Scriptures 
 which, in the judgment of no incompetent scholars, has 
 been pronounced to be among the finest versions of 
 Western Europe ; strong especially in the powerful forces 
 of reverential sentiment that attract towards her portals
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 97 
 
 the hearts of an imaginative and affectionate people, 
 whose holiest memories are linked with her history, and 
 whose ancestry through more than fifty generations 
 sleep beneath the shadows of her sanctuaries. 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding this august inheritance, 
 other forces have been at work sufficient to neutralize 
 its influence, and to alienate from her fold seven-tenths 
 of the Cymric population of Wales so completely that 
 they rarely seek her ministrations, rarely receive her 
 teaching of the true and lively Word, rarely bow before 
 the Divine Shechinah in her sanctuaries. 
 
 Whence has this grievous alienation of a deeply 
 religious people arisen ? To that inquiry I shall en- 
 deavour to give the true answer an answer the truth 
 of which is acknowledged by nine-tenths of the intelli- 
 gent inhabitants of Wales, and which, if her clergy had 
 not been overawed by powerful influences, would long 
 ago have been spoken in the ears of those who are 
 responsible for the direction of her destinies. 
 
 Can it be said that the Nonconformity of the Cymric 
 people is attributable to their unwillingness to accept 
 the dogmatic teaching of the Church ? It cannot. 
 There prevails among the Nonconformist societies of 
 Wales the utmost indifference, and, I may add, igno- 
 rance concerning systems of dogmatic teaching. Their 
 religion consists in a strong faith in rudimentary Chris- 
 tian morals, in the influences that flow from the ordi- 
 nances of prayer and praise, in the diligent reading of 
 the Scriptures, and in the frequent hearing of im- 
 passioned sermons which treat vaguely of the hidden 
 
 H
 
 98 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 spiritual life, but rarely contain any reference to ob- 
 jective truths. They have, as might be expected from 
 the semi-educated character of many of their religious 
 teachers, no knowledge of theological definitions, and 
 consequently no convictions upon them strong enough 
 to influence their lives, or their choice of religious 
 systems. The various Nonconforming religious societies 
 are regarded by the ordinary Welshman as merely rival 
 religious seminaries having equal authority to teach, 
 and advertising their educational programmes in the 
 hope of securing a share of that public patronage, which 
 is represented as having been too long the monopoly of 
 one ancient establishment. Of the higher mysteries of 
 sacramental grace, and of sacramental authority derived 
 in the lineage of Apostolical Orders, from organic con- 
 nection with the objective manifestation of the Divine 
 Humanity, they have rarely any conception. Conse- 
 quently, in reference to these truths, they have no 
 strong convictions either in a negative or positive 
 direction. 
 
 In the anarchy of unauthoritative ministrations, and 
 in the Babel of rival sects, the average Welshman is 
 guided very much by accidental influences in the choice 
 of his religion. The accidents of birth, association, and 
 locality have generally induced him to attach himself 
 to his favourite denomination. But so free is he from 
 the obligations of dogmatic conviction, that on migrating 
 into a different district in which some other sect is in 
 the ascendant, the change of place is not seldom accom- 
 panied by a change of religious profession. The Church
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 99 
 
 also to some extent shares this happy immunity from 
 the condemnation of her dogmatic principles. Her 
 shortcomings are, it is true, not unfrequently the theme 
 of Dissenting eloquence. But her revenues, her spiritual 
 sterility, and the social characteristics of her clergy, are 
 more frequently attacked than her spiritual principles. 
 All who have had any insight into the inner life of 
 Welsh Nonconformity, can bear unhesitating testimony 
 that the alienation of the people from the Church is not 
 due to any hostility to her dogmatic teaching. From 
 the first general rise of Welsh Nonconformity in the 
 eighteenth century, through all its variations, down to 
 the present day, its power has been the protest of the 
 Cymric people, not against the essential doctrines and 
 sacraments of the Church, but against the cold, alien, 
 mechanical forms of thought, feeling, and diction in 
 which those doctrines have been preached, and those 
 sacraments have been administered, to the souls of an 
 impassioned race. That such is the case, every ob- 
 server, qualified for judgment by knowledge of the 
 people and of their language, and unbiassed by par- 
 tiality towards an opposite conclusion, cannot fail to 
 testify. That such was the case in the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century, when the secession of the 
 Cymric people from the Church in any considerable 
 numbers originally began, is established by the testi- 
 mony of the Rev. Griffith Jones, Rector of Llanddowror, 
 one of the ablest and best clergymen who ever adorned 
 the Welsh Church, of whose widespread and lasting 
 influence upon the religious life of his country I shall
 
 TOO The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 hereafter write at greater length. Early in the last 
 century he wrote these words 
 
 " I must also do justice to the Dissenters in Wales, 
 and will appeal for the truth of it to all competent 
 judges, and to all those themselves who separate from 
 us (except only such who have hardly any more charity 
 for those they differ from than the Church of Rome), 
 that it was not any scruple of conscience about the 
 principles or orders of the Established Church that gave 
 occasion to scarce one in ten of the Dissenters in this 
 country to separate from us at first, whatever objections 
 they may afterwards imbibe against conforming. No, 
 Sir ! they generally dissent at first for no other reason 
 than for want of plain, practical, pressing, and zealous 
 preaching, in a language and dialect they are able to 
 understand ; and freedom of friendly access to advise 
 about their spiritual state. When they come (some 
 way or other) to be pricked in their hearts for their 
 sins, and find, perhaps, no seriousness in those about 
 them, none to unbosom their grief to, none that will 
 patiently hear their complaints, and deal tenderly by 
 their souls, and dress their wounds, they flee to other 
 people for relief, as dispossessed demoniacs will no 
 longer frequent the tombs of the dead. For though 
 the Church of England is allowed to be as sound and 
 healthful a part of the Catholic Church as any in the 
 world, yet when people are awakened from their 
 lethargy, and begin to perceive their danger, they will 
 not believe that there is anything in reason, law, or 
 gospel that should oblige them to starve their souls to
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 101 
 
 death for the sake of conforming, if their pastor (whose 
 voice, perhaps, they do not know, or who resides a great 
 way from them) will not vouchsafe to deal out unto 
 them the Bread of Life." x If, then, as this testimony 
 proves concerning the eighteenth century, and as the 
 testimony of every unbiassed witness will prove con- 
 cerning the present time, the Dissent of the Cymric 
 people is not an intellectual revolt against the doctrines 
 and sacraments of the Church, nor yet against the 
 forms and ceremonies of its liturgical worship, where 
 those doctrines are preached and worship is ordered 
 in a manner accordant with the natural temperament 
 of the people, in what direction are we to look for the 
 cause of their alienation ? Those causes, as I have 
 already intimated, will be found, not in the spiritual 
 treasures of the Church, but in the earthen vessels to 
 which they have been committed ; not in the doctrine 
 and ritual of the Church, but in the faltering accents, 
 and in the cold, heartless, unimpassioned forms of 
 thought, language, and gesture in which the true and 
 lively Word has been preached, and the sacraments and 
 other rites and ceremonies of the Church have been, not 
 duly and rightly administered, by an episcopate and 
 clergy whose speech in every act of ministration within 
 the sanctuaries of the Cymric Church bewrayeth them 
 as the agents of a worldly policy at variance with the 
 first dictators of that Spirit Whose mighty impulses 
 carried the life-giving inspiration of the infinite self- 
 sacrifice of Calvary home to the hearts of nationalities ; 
 1 " Welsh Piety " for 1841.
 
 IO2 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 whose alien forms of thought, feeling, and action bespeak 
 a presence vouchsafed not "in the fulness of the blessing 
 of the Gospel of Christ," but in pursuance of an earthly 
 policy which, instead of blessings, has breathed upon the 
 Cymric Church the deadly breath that has left it well- 
 nigh empty and waste, a wilderness and a desolation. 
 To minister with authority, the heralds of the Divine 
 self-sacrifice must not make their advent among a 
 people as the avowed agents of the policy of selfishness. 
 
 In order fully to understand the nature of those 
 forces which have produced this great desolation, it is 
 necessary to review the national history of this ancient 
 people, and to trace under different forms of national 
 life, in different ages, the operation of the influences 
 which on the one hand have cherished, and on the other 
 have enfeebled, the spiritual life of the Cymric Church. 
 
 For two thousand years the Cymry of Wales, in 
 identity of language and race, have been in possession 
 of their poor but beautiful country. It is true that 
 some of our more modern neighbours have sought to 
 deprive us even of lineage and history. But fortunately 
 these are beyond the reach of the most vigorous rapacity. 
 In every age of their history, this ancient people have 
 presented the same national character, identical in its 
 genius through all the variations in the fluctuating forms 
 of the outward life and manners. In every age of their 
 history they have loved poetry, music, and social 
 communion ; and in every age they have submitted 
 themselves to the supreme domination of the noblest 
 religious ideas of the time, and have recognized in the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 103 
 
 prophet and priest of religion the highest guidance of 
 the human life. In the first century, when the waves 
 of Roman conquest first broke upon their shores, they 
 displayed the same characteristics that we witness 
 to-day. They were a brave and warlike people, 
 national gifts that enabled their Silurian king, Carac- 
 tacus, to withstand for nine years the forces of the 
 greatest military power of the ancient world. But they 
 were then, as now, pre-eminently a religious people. 
 The Druidical creed and cultus, received throughout 
 Britain, found its most enlightened professors and its 
 most devout votaries among the Cymry of Wales, and 
 built its Jerusalem in the Cymric island of Anglesea. 
 The exact nature of the ethical teaching and religious 
 faith of the Druids can be hardly seen clearly in all its 
 lines through the mists of antiquity. But enough is 
 known to indicate that Druidism was among the highest 
 of the Gentile religious systems, and retained no incon- 
 siderable measure of the primeval truth. 
 
 Where history is silent, the ancient Cymric language 
 speaks. In that language are found, as the fossilized 
 forms of the intellectual life of a distant age, terms 
 which recall many of the ethical and metaphysical ideas 
 of the Druidical system. A scholar of some reputation 
 has, in an elaborate essay, 1 demonstrated that these 
 terms are in singular harmony with the terminology of 
 that " Philosophy of the Conditioned," which finds a 
 reception in the philosophical faith of the most reverent 
 and not least profound thinkers of this age. In a 
 1 " Gomer," by John Williams, late Archdeacon of Cardigan.
 
 IO4 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 system which taught that man has in his being a trinity 
 of natures animal, intellectual, and spiritual in accord- 
 ance with the Pauline " body, soul, and spirit ; " that 
 man born in the consciousness of his lowest nature is 
 destined to rise through a succession of transmigrations 
 into the consciousness of a higher and immortal life, 
 by losing the image of the earthy to bear the image of 
 the heavenly ; that the most comprehensive purpose of 
 the Creator is the good of all His creatures, and there- 
 fore His highest Name, Love ; that suffering and death, 
 by the virtue of their moral discipline, work together for 
 man's highest good by hastening his transmigration into 
 the higher forms of life ; that, although absolute truth 
 is not attainable by him until he shall have transmi- 
 grated through all the intermediate forms of life, man is 
 ever bound to seek truth and hold it against the world, 
 a doctrine extant in the old Cymric proverb, "Y gwir 
 yn erbyn y byd ; " was the system of a people who were 
 in an eminent degree "seeking the Lord, if haply they 
 might feel after Him, and find Him," a system which 
 dimly and imperfectly revealed to human souls not a 
 few nor the least important of those truths, which only 
 found their perfect manifestation in the Divine-human 
 life of Him, " in Whom are hid all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge." 
 
 What, then, was the attitude of the Cymry towards 
 their most authoritative religious system in that age ? 
 They were its most loyal, faithful votaries. We read of 
 no dissent from Cymric Druidism. The Romans were 
 not tempted to thrust upon the people " alien " pro-
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 105 
 
 fessors of Druidism, and its ethical teaching and religious 
 rites were administered in a tongue "understanded of the 
 people." The same Cymric island of Anglesea, which 
 in this century has produced the most powerful and 
 influential preacher of Welsh Methodism, was also the 
 most venerated sanctuary of Druidism. In that early 
 age the masses of my countrymen received with enthusi- 
 astic reverence the teaching of their religious instructors, 
 and yielded themselves with loyal devotion to their 
 guidance and inspiration. So in their political and 
 social life to-day the Cymric people regard their 
 religious teachers as their true and natural guides, and 
 recognize in their counsels their highest inspiration. 
 Events have shown that the influence of the Noncon- 
 formist preachers in our own day is great, and I am 
 bound to express my belief that, in the main, it is based 
 upon the grounds of instruction and moral authority. 
 
 In the day when he sought the subjugation of the 
 warlike national spirit of the ancient Cymry, Paulinus 
 attacked the centre of their inspiration their religious 
 system but he carried out his policy wisely and well ; 
 he adopted no half-measures ; he did not enfeeble the 
 Druidical system by thrusting into its hierarchy Roman 
 aliens. The massacre of the Druids on the shores of the 
 Menai was the logical development of the policy that 
 seeks to destroy the life of a nationality through the 
 religion of its people. To-day the teacher of religion 
 wields over the minds of the Cymry an influence as 
 paramount as ever. For ages English rulers, in that 
 insularity of spirit which makes them intolerant of the
 
 io6 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 existence of any nationality but their own, have recog- 
 nized the wisdom of Paulinus, but have not been so 
 " thorough " in the execution of his policy. They have 
 not massacred the religious teachers of Wales, but they 
 have driven them out of the Church of their forefathers. 
 Beholding the miracles which the religious influence has 
 effected among the Cymry, they have sought to wield 
 that influence for the destruction of the Cymric nation- 
 ality, by sending into Wales alien Bishops and clergy 
 who have enjoyed the revenues, but have not wielded 
 the influence of the religious system. The revenues and 
 the influence are not indissolubly united. That religious 
 influence which finds the sources of its power in the 
 deepest affections and national sympathies of a people, 
 is a Divine gift which cannot be bought for money or 
 secured by statecraft. To-day Providence, in the cry 
 for disendowment of the Welsh Church, is dispelling the 
 Simonian delusions of those who, in the pursuit of a 
 selfish policy, dared to tamper with the spiritual rights 
 of the Church, by the stern rebuke, " Thy money perish 
 with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of 
 God may be purchased for money." That the alien 
 Episcopate would perish with the revenues of the Cymric 
 Church, is a probability upon which I think it unneces- 
 sary to enlarge. 
 
 How devout was the loyalty of the Cymric people to 
 the influence of their native instructors, the priests and 
 teachers of Druidism, the pages of Tacitus abundantly 
 demonstrate. How, then, did a people, who had been 
 so full of enthusiastic devotion to the highest form of
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 107 
 
 religion previously revealed to them, subsequently bear 
 themselves towards the earliest heralds of the perfect 
 manifestation of the mystery of the Divine Life, which 
 had been hid from ages and generations ? The concur- 
 rence of historical records, ancient tradition, and pro- 
 bability leads us to the conclusion that the Name of 
 Jesus Christ was preached among the Britons in the 
 earliest decade of the second half of the first century ; 
 and that the progress of Christianity in supplanting the 
 old faith was rapid and decisive. The Silurian king, 
 Caradog (Caractacus), after his nine years' contest, was 
 finally conquered about the year A.D. 57, and, with a 
 large number of his more distinguished subjects, was 
 taken captive to Rome. In the workings of overruling 
 Providence, the Apostle of the Gentiles, present in the 
 great imperial city, into which then ran the conflux of 
 all nations, was with all the might of his inspired genius 
 extending among the various classes of Roman society 
 the knowledge of the faith. That some of the British 
 captives, with that eagerness for the knowledge of 
 spiritual truths which has ever marked their race, 
 embraced the doctrines of Christianity, and became on 
 their return the missionaries of its truths to their 
 countrymen, seems to be fairly established. 1 The high 
 authority of Stillingfleet and Burgess may also be 
 quoted in support of the tradition that, on their return, 
 they were accompanied by Aristobulus, mentioned in 
 the sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 This tradition is confirmed by the record in the Greek 
 1 Vide " History of Wales," by Jane Williams.
 
 io8 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 martyrology that Aristobulus was ordained by St. Paul 
 as a Bishop of the Britons. It is even said that his 
 name in its British form survives in the Deanery of 
 " Arwystli " in North Wales. But whether we accept 
 these traditions and historical conjectures or not, there 
 can be little doubt that before the close of the first 
 century, or at an early date in the second, Christianity 
 had made very considerable progress among the Britons. 
 The high ethical teaching of the Druids transmitted 
 orally by that mnemonic system of which the most 
 ancient "Triads " are said to be remains, combined with 
 their dogmatic assertion of the future existence of the 
 soul, had doubtless made the ever-religious Cymric 
 mind eagerly receptive of the tidings of the life of Him 
 Who had " brought life and immortality to light." That 
 the power of the Divine Kingdom had penetrated into 
 the unconquerable recesses of Cymric independence 
 before the close of the second century, the correspon- 
 dence of Lleurwg (Lucius), King of Gwent and Mor- 
 ganwg, with the Bishop of Rome, as recorded by Bede, 
 is sufficient proof, when confirmed by that sublimely 
 terse testimony of Tertullian : " Britannorum inaccessa 
 Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita." 
 
 During the third and fourth centuries the Church 
 seems to have had absolute sway over the religious 
 mind of the Cymric people, and Wales became of Chris- 
 tianity, as it had been of Druidism, the chosen sanctuary. 
 The Romans, who, when the necessities of war were 
 past, never in heathen times offered unnecessarily vio- 
 lence to the religious sentiments of subject races, but
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 109 
 
 rather adopted their divinities, extended the same wise 
 policy towards the Cymry as soon as they were finally 
 conquered, and permitted the free development of 
 the Cymric Church into the forms of life suited to its 
 nationality. There is no trace of an alien Roman 
 Episcopate having been forced by imperial authority 
 upon the ancient British Church. It is possible that the 
 scantiness of her early endowments secured to her this 
 freedom, and enabled her, in the presence of rapacity, to 
 sing the thankful songs of spiritual liberty in her ancient 
 .language, and in a voice free from the foreign accents 
 of intruded ecclesiastics. 
 
 That the Cymric Church in that early age had no 
 inconsiderable development of intellectual activity and 
 of moral culture, is evident even to a superficial student 
 of her history. In the economy of the Divine Provi- 
 dence, the wilful, self-assertive spirit of a restless subjec- 
 tive individualism has in various ages been a sign of 
 intellectual movements, and its cyclical manifestations 
 seem to recur by a hidden law through the workings of 
 which the clearing of the ecclesiastical atmosphere, and 
 the quickening in the grasp of a stronger consciousness 
 of the Church's life and truth, are secured. " For there 
 must be also heresies among you, that they which are 
 approved may be made manifest among you." From 
 this point of view, the Pelagian controversy, which had 
 its origin in the subtle and daring intellect of the Cymro, 
 Morgan, is no mean evidence of the life of the Cymric 
 Church. The intellectual force and persuasiveness with 
 which his opinions were asserted, had so far extended
 
 1 1 o The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 their influence throughout Christendom in the second 
 decade of the fifth century as to call forth the contro- 
 versial energies of St. Augustine, and to require for their 
 suppression the formal condemnation of the Council of 
 Carthage. The energy with which this great contro- 
 versy was carried on for more than a century, until the 
 Pelagian tenets, condemned at the Synod of Llanddewi 
 Brefi in A.D. 519, were finally exploded out of the 
 Cymric Church at the " Synod of Victory " at Caerleon 
 in A.D. 529, is no insufficient proof of the intellectual 
 freedom of the Cymric mind, and its activity in the 
 sphere of theological science, in an age when the Saxons 
 were still groping in the darkness of heathenism. The 
 colleges of Henllan, Mochros, Caerleon ar Wysg, Llan- 
 carfan, and Caerworgan (now Lantwit Major), founded 
 by Archbishop Dyfrig (Dubritius) in the fifth century, 
 still in their ruins bear eloquent testimony to the thirst 
 for intellectual culture that characterized the ancient 
 Cymry. How little they have been permitted to gain 
 in this respect, since their destinies have been merged 
 in the composite national life of other races, the miser- 
 able destitution of Wales as regards the means of the 
 higher education, and the cold repulse of her late ap- 
 peals for the advantages of an university, are a painful 
 evidence. 
 
 If the mental activity of the Cymric Church of the 
 fifth century is evident in the misdirected subtlety of 
 the renowned heretic whose intellectual brilliancy caused 
 no slight perturbation in the religious atmosphere of 
 Christendom, moral grandeur, and allegiance to the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 1 1 1 
 
 eternal supremacy of the spiritual life, are not less 
 strikingly represented in the historic figure of her 
 greatest Archbishop and patron saint, whose graces have 
 cast their sweetness down the centuries. In the tradi- 
 tional glories of the Cymric Church under the then 
 uninvaded primacy of St. David's, nourished by the 
 ministrations of her native clergy, and illuminated by 
 the influence of those ancient seats of learning whose 
 ruins are still the most interesting scenes of Gwent and 
 Morganwg, the Cymric Churchman of the present day 
 thinks that he beholds the lineaments of the higher and 
 holier forms of Church life, which the enthusiastic faith 
 of his race (now running wild in the spiritual anarchy of 
 religious dissensions) might, under the happier auspices 
 -of ecclesiastical truth and justice, and in the free energy 
 of native development, have presented as a noble 
 spiritual fabric pointing heavenwards amid the earthly 
 tendencies of the materialistic age in which we live. 
 
 In the earlier part of the sixth century the darkness 
 which had been casting its shadows over the closing 
 decades of the fifth, began to thicken around the Cymric 
 Church, and to dim the brightness of its early rising. A 
 long period of war, tumult, and desolation was at hand ; 
 and the vision of peace and spiritual freedom that had 
 blessed the early Christianity of Wales, was about to 
 give place to scenes of civil servitude and ecclesiastical 
 oppression. The Saxon invasions, and the wars destined 
 to last over 136 years, and to result in the conquest 
 and absorption of the Loegrian Britons of England, 
 had begun ; and although the waves of conquest sub-
 
 ii2 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 merged not the Highlands of Wales, they soon began 
 to cast a poisonous spray over the life of the Cymric 
 Church. The influence of the heathen grossness of 
 the Saxons an influence strengthened by their earthly 
 successes had doubtless a deadening effect upon the 
 spiritual life of Wales. They who have lived in dis- 
 tricts in which secular success is represented in the 
 earthly energy of social leaders, powerful in the pos- 
 session of wealth and the employment of material 
 resources, but groping in the darkness of a godless 
 animalism, and have watched the extent to which the 
 withering influence of their immorality projects itself, as 
 marked by the lowered tone and degraded tastes of the 
 district that lies beneath their shadow, will be able to 
 realize the debasing effects upon the life of the Cymric 
 Church wrought by the wassail-loving brutishness of 
 Saxon heathenism. The direct effects of this violence 
 of Saxon warfare as witnessed in the destruction of the 
 monastery of Bangor-is-Coed, and the massacre of its 
 monks, were great ; but it is probable that the indirect 
 effect of those projected shadows of Saxon heathenism 
 were even greater. Hence in the records of Gildas that 
 period in the life of the Cymric Church is described as a 
 time of spiritual desolation. At the same time, the 
 testimony of that monk, who wrote in a spirit hostile to 
 the independence of the Cymric Church, and in support 
 of the pretensions'of Augustine and of that papal usur- 
 pation which the Cymric clergy resisted with so much 
 steadfastness, is to be interpreted in the light of our 
 knowledge of his animus.
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 113 
 
 Very soon after his arrival for the conversion of the 
 Saxons, Augustine sought that renowned interview with 
 the seven Cymric Bishops, at which, with true Romish 
 arrogance, he ignored the primacy of the British see of 
 St. David's, and demanded submission to the authority 
 of the Roman Church. The attitude of Augustine was 
 also held by Laurentius his successor in the see of 
 Canterbury, whose demands for spiritual submission the 
 Cymry met with a firm refusal. Having thus had its 
 origin in the beginning of the seventh century, the 
 struggle for the primacy of the Cymric Church between 
 the then rival sees of St. David's and Canterbury con- 
 tinued with varying and indecisive results until the 
 twelfth century. The demands of Augustine and Lau- 
 rentius were the first germs of that policy of ecclesias- 
 tical aggression and Episcopal intrusion, which has but 
 too faithfully been pursued through twelve centuries, and 
 the fruits of which are visible in the religious anarchy 
 of Wales, and the present prostration of its ancient 
 Church. 
 
 When we pass on to the period of the Norman con- 
 quest, we find that the same policy of subordinating the 
 spiritual vitality of the Cymric Church to a political 
 purpose was carried out with all the fierce energy of the 
 Norman princes. The bishoprics, deaneries, canonries, 
 archdeaconries, and wealthier benefices of the Cymric 
 Church were rapidly filled by Norman ecclesiastics whose 
 avowed mission in Wales was not to cast out the spirit 
 of sin, but to extinguish the spirit of the Cymric nation- 
 ality ; not " to banish and drive away all erroneous and 
 
 I
 
 1 1 4 The Church of the Cymry, 
 
 strange doctrines," but to use all diligence, by means 
 of blasphemous anathemas and excommunications, in 
 hastening the extinction of the Cymric language. The 
 people of Wales heard these new apostles, not speaking 
 in their tongue the wonderful works of God, but by a 
 blasphemous hypocrisy trying to use the ordinances of 
 the Church as a means for the extinction of that ancient 
 tongue. So strenuously was this policy pursued, that 
 in 1 107 three out of the four Cymric sees were occu- 
 pied by Norman ecclesiastics, while Gruffydd, Bishop of 
 St. David's, the only Cymro upon the Episcopal Bench, 
 was deprived of the privileges and authority pertaining 
 to the primacy of the Cymric Church. Then, as in our 
 day, the ministrations of aliens in language and blood 
 were regarded by the Cymry as an outrage upon their 
 national self-respect, and a violation of their national 
 rights. It is recorded in the pages of Giraldus and 
 Roger of Hoveden, that Hervey, the Norman Bishop of 
 Bangor, could only maintain his Episcopal position by 
 surrounding himself with a body of armed retainers to 
 defend him against the sheep of his pasture ; and that 
 finally the popular indignation became so strong that he 
 was compelled to resign his see, and to take refuge in 
 England. So true was it, even in that age, that the peer 
 must bow to the popular will " Trech gwlad nag Ar- 
 glwydd." During- all this time, the object of these ecclesi- 
 astical aggressions, in the Norman as in the Saxon period, 
 was to subjugate the Cymric Church to the authority of 
 the see of Canterbury, and to deprive the see of St. 
 David's of those ancient rights which had pertained to
 
 The Chiirch of the Cymry. 1 1 5 
 
 it as the oldest of the three archbishoprics created in 
 the Roman provinces of Britain. The object was at last 
 accomplished by a gross act of ecclesiastical jobbery. 
 In 1115, Gruffydd, Bishop of St. David's, died, and 
 in September of that year King Henry appointed his 
 Chancellor, Bernard, to fill the vacant see, who was 
 ordained priest on the i8th, and the following day con- 
 secrated Bishop of St. David's. The express object of 
 this appointment was the introduction into the citadel 
 of the Cymric Church of an ecclesiastical Sinon, who 
 should facilitate its subjugation by accepting the juris- 
 diction of Canterbury, and subjecting the see of St. 
 David's to the Primate of the English Church. These 
 acts of aggression, however, though carried out by the 
 overwhelming superiority of English power, were not 
 borne by the Cymry with that long-suffering meekness 
 which has characterized their demeanour under a long 
 series of national insults in later generations. In 1237, 
 Prince Owain ap Gruffydd ap Cynan led the men 
 of Gwynedd in a successful attack upon the Flemish 
 settlements in the south. The first result of that Cymric 
 victory, and the revival of national spirit, was the instant 
 expulsion of the Norman intruders from the bishoprics 
 and other ecclesiastical offices in the Cymric Church. 
 But the policy of usurpation, though checked for a 
 time, was by no means relinquished. In 1 176, the 
 bishopric of St. David's again became vacant, and the 
 canons of Mynyw nominated Gerald de Barri (Giraldus 
 Cambrensis), of Cymric blood, to the vacant- see ; but 
 the king, true to the vain policy of trying to crush the
 
 1 1 6 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 national spirit of Wales through its Church, obstinately 
 refused to sanction the appointment. Finally, a Norman 
 dignitary, Peter de Leia, was consecrated Bishop of St. 
 David's ; but after four years his Episcopate became so 
 intolerable to the people of his diocese, that he was 
 compelled to seek refuge in England. In 1196, Giraldus 
 was again elected by the chapter to the bishopric of St. 
 David's; but again the Archbishop of Canterbury refused 
 to sanction their choice. This election of Giraldus is 
 memorable in the annals of the Cymric Church, as 
 having called forth from the Welsh princes a powerful 
 and eloquent appeal to the Pope in demand of a national 
 Episcopate, and against the intrusion of alien ecclesiastics, 
 which for centuries has been working the ruin of their 
 Church, from which I venture to quote the following 
 extract: 1 " The Archbishops of Canterbury, as if it were 
 a matter of course, send among us English Bishops, 
 ignorant alike of both our customs and language, and 
 who can neither preach the Word of God to the people, 
 nor receive their confessions except through interpreters. 
 These Bishops arriving from England, love neither our- 
 selves nor our country ; but, on the contrary, vex and 
 persecute us with a hatred rooted and national ; they 
 seek not the good of our souls, but only aspire to rule 
 over, and not to benefit us. For which reason they do 
 not often labour among us in discharge of their minis- 
 terial functions, but whatever they can lay hold of, or 
 obtain from us, whether justly or unjustly, they take 
 away to England, and there live luxuriantly and waste- 
 
 1 Vide " The Literature of the Cymry," by Thomas Stephens.
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 117 
 
 fully upon wealth derived from the monasteries and lands 
 given to them by the kings of England. From thence, 
 like the Parthians who discharge their arrows while 
 flying, and at a distance, they excommunicate us as 
 they are desired to do so. Whenever an expedition is 
 preparing against us in England, the Primate of Canter- 
 bury suddenly lays under an interdict that part of the 
 country which it is proposed to invade. Our Bishops, 
 who are his creatures, hurl their anathemas against the 
 people collectively, and by name against the chiefs who 
 take up arms to lead them to the combat. So that 
 .whenever we take up arms to defend our native land 
 against a foreign enemy, such of us as fall in battle die 
 under ban of excommunication." 
 
 This touching appeal reveals (in addition to the 
 outrageous wickedness of their excommunication) the 
 inability of the alien dignitaries of the Cymric Church 
 in that age to deal directly and personally with the 
 sorrows and yearnings of the soul ; the inability " to 
 patiently hear the complaints " of the penitent " and 
 deal tenderly by their souls and dress their wounds," of 
 which Gruffydd Jones wrote in the eighteenth century. 
 These direct ministrations of personal communion are 
 in a peculiar degree a spiritual necessity of the Cymric 
 temperament ; and the want of them in later times, as I 
 shall hereafter show, has had a powerful influence in 
 alienating the people of Wales from the Church. 
 
 The Pope, however, was either unable or unwilling to 
 afford any deliverance to the Cymric Church from the 
 oppressions which it suffered. Fresh acts of aggression
 
 1 1 8 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 were continually repeated, in order finally to crush out 
 of that Church, as far as possible, every recollection of 
 its ancient independence. Every influence was employed, 
 every opportunity was craftily seized, to accomplish this 
 result. In 1188, Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 with great pomp, made a solemn progress throughout 
 the four Welsh dioceses, for the alleged purpose of 
 preaching the Crusade and inciting the Cymry to enrol 
 themselves among the soldiers of the Cross. But in 
 addition to the object of enlisting military votaries, it is 
 probable that the object of gaining access to all the 
 principal Welsh churches, and celebrating Mass with 
 solemn state in such a manner as to impress practically 
 upon the minds of clergy and people the reality of his 
 ecclesiastical supremacy, had no slight influence in 
 inducing his visit. His preaching was attended with 
 great success. That the Cymric people in that age were 
 animated by all that religious ardour which character- 
 ized the race in Druidical times, in the early brightness 
 of the Primitive Church, and which in all its ancient fire 
 survives to-day in the misdirected enthusiasm of the 
 numerous sects into which the misgovernment of the 
 Church has divided my countrymen, is significantly 
 demonstrated by the fact that the white Cross, as the 
 earnest of enlistment, was accepted from the hands of 
 an alien Archbishop by not less than three thousand 
 Cymric warriors. Not in one day, nor in one age, did 
 the cruel policy of ecclesiastical intrusion succeed in 
 quenching the light of the ancient British Church, and 
 alienating the ardent devotion of a religiously enthu-
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 119 
 
 siastic race. But there are manifest indications that, 
 even in that early age, all their devotion to the Divine 
 attributes of the Church was insufficient to enable them 
 to regard with respect her greedy representatives, who, 
 under the pretence of leading souls to feed upon the 
 pastures of the Word and Sacraments, came as wolves 
 in sheep's clothing, to batten upon the revenues that the 
 piety of the ancient Cymric princes had bequeathed. 
 Those who can read the pages of lonas Athraw, Sion 
 Cent, Lewis Glyn Cothi, Dafydd ap Gwilym, and other 
 writers who have revealed the inner mind of the Cymry 
 between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, will find 
 that the clergy did not possess over the minds of the 
 people that influence which a religious system in accord- 
 ance with their sympathies could not have failed to 
 exercise. It is recorded that in the twelfth century 
 the ministrations of the Church were so unpopular, that 
 the bards endeavoured, not without some success, to 
 supplant her teachings by the propagation of a kind of 
 anti-Christian natural theosophy which was virtually 
 a revival of the old Druidic tenets. But the influence 
 of this movement does not seem to have been of long 
 continuance. The mighty verities and Sacraments of 
 the Church still found in the people earnest votaries, 
 while the alien Norman clergy were evidently the objects 
 of general and not undeserved contempt. That para- 
 mount influence over the Cymric race, which has in 
 every age been wielded by some recognized body of 
 popular teachers ; which in pre-Christian times was 
 wielded by the Druids ; which in the first five centuries,
 
 I2O The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 and more or less during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, seems to have been in the hand of the Church ; 
 and which is now in no small measure enjoyed by the 
 ministers of the various Nonconforming societies, was 
 during a lengthened period, and especially in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the hands of the 
 bards. During those times this popular class, being in 
 the ascendant, exercised so potent an influence in arous- 
 ing the national spirit of their countrymen, and in 
 directing their policy in aggression and defence, that 
 in order to ensure the subjugation of the country, the 
 English monarch was compelled to resort to measures 
 hardly less ruthless than those which his Roman proto- 
 type twelve centuries before had adopted towards their 
 ancestors on the banks of the Menai. The cruel policy 
 of Edward I. towards the bards is but one of the cyclical 
 repetitions of the massacre of the Druids a policy that 
 survives (milder in form but identical in spirit) to-day 
 in the efforts with which, in this money-worshipping 
 age, all the coarse forces of social scorn, literary ridicule, 
 and ecclesiastical aggression are seeking to destroy the 
 inextinguishable characteristics of the ancient and un- 
 dying nationality of the Cymry. That the persistent 
 efforts of injustice are about to work out their own 
 punishment ; that Canterbury is about to suffer the 
 penalties of its ancient injustice to St. David's, those 
 seers who foresee the course of ecclesiastical events in the 
 coming years will perhaps be able to predict. That the 
 forces which have long been dormant in the religious 
 attitude of the Cymric people, are destined to exercise
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 121 
 
 a commanding influence in shaping those events, and are 
 at present threatening to be no slight source of weakness 
 to the English Establishment, is certain. The influence 
 of the religious genius of the Cymric race, crushed by 
 long oppression, retired into its own wild fastnesses ; 
 but to-day it is rising from the tomb that recalls the 
 epitaph, " Hie jacet Arturus rex quondam, rexque 
 futurus " words significant of the imperishable spirit 
 of Cymric nationality. 
 
 As it indirectly bears upon the ecclesiastical treat- 
 ment of the Cymric Church, I cannot refrain from 
 alluding to the scornful and depreciatory language which 
 the English press habitually applies to the literary and 
 intellectual capacities of my countrymen language 
 which I regret to know has occasionally fallen from the 
 lips of statesmen. This estimate of Cymric intellect has 
 perhaps found its most offensive expression in the plea 
 justificatory of English ecclesiastical intrusion, that the 
 Cymric people does not produce men who rise to the 
 Episcopal height of intellectual and moral stature. Here- 
 after I shall illustrate the motive of that assertion by 
 evidence abundantly sufficient. I have no intention of 
 penning a florid eulogy upon the intellectual merits of 
 my race. But scorn unmerited provokes self-assertion 
 otherwise unnecessary. We have no reason to complain 
 of any judgment that has been passed upon us by learned 
 philologists who have studied our ancient language. The 
 language that we deprecate is that of flippant writers in 
 the " press," whose ephemeral lucubrations would be of 
 small importance, did they not contribute to form thnt
 
 122 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 public opinion to the imperial control of which our 
 destinies in Church and State are now subject. Such an 
 assertion as the declaration recently made in a weekly 
 Review, that the ancient language of Wales is but a 
 " barbarous language, more like the cries of brute beasts 
 than the speech of reasonable men," is of course utterly 
 unworthy of an educated writer, and unlikely to deceive 
 an educated reader. But such declarations pass for 
 truth among classes not powerless, and contribute to 
 form that public opinion which rules the empire, and of 
 which statesmen do but fulfil the dictates. We are quite 
 willing to leave the intellectual claims of our race to the 
 judgment of men of wide culture who have learnt our 
 language. The wealth of that language in ethical and 
 metaphysical terms cannot be denied, a wealth not 
 improbably due to the philosophical speculations of the 
 Druids. Undoubtedly the works of Aristotle and Plato 
 can be adequately rendered in the Cymric tongue, with- 
 out borrowing many foreign words. Can that be said of 
 the language of those who scorn my countrymen ? Are 
 not English writers compelled to express ethical and 
 metaphysical ideas in the borrowed terms of Greece and 
 Rome ? The modern poverty of a language that only 
 enabled the translators of the English Authorized Version 
 to translate terms so different in significance as <U<T<'KOC 
 and ^VXIKOQ by the same word " natural," and which 
 compelled them to render Trvtw/uartKoc by a word of Latin 
 origin, because their own native word " ghostly " was so 
 stained by the earthy associations of Saxon superstition 
 as to be incapable of expressing the highest conception
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 123 
 
 of life, should silence the voice of English scorn concern- 
 ing a language which is unusually rich in the capacity 
 of expressing moral and spiritual ideas. 
 
 The English language seems to reveal the truth that 
 the genius of the English race is more practical than 
 spiritual, more prone to dwell upon the natural than the 
 supernatural life, more energetic in the domain of phy- 
 sical than of metaphysical truth. 
 
 On the other hand, the Cymric language proves that 
 the Cymric people for long ages, and especially in the 
 ages when the development of their native life was 
 unrestrained, have been a people habitually capable of 
 grasping moral and metaphysical conceptions. 
 
 For five centuries before the oldest of modern Euro- 
 pean languages was sufficiently formed to be capable 
 of a literature, there existed in the Cymric language a 
 literature which, when the number of the people is con- 
 sidered, will be despised by none but those daily and 
 weekly scribes who evolve their estimate of it out of 
 their own consciousness. German scholars have within 
 the last few years made the intellectual activity of the 
 Cymric race, of Wales and Brittany, in the Middle Ages, 
 a field of research. No man of Cymric blood need be 
 ashamed of the result of their investigations. The Arthu- 
 rian legends, which, by the force of the eternal truths of 
 humanity embodied in them, gave the most powerful 
 impulse to that awakening of the European intellect 
 which expressed itself in the Romance Literature, are 
 pronounced to have been the creations of the imaginative 
 genius of the Cymric people. Those legends, as has been
 
 124 The Church of -the Cymry. 
 
 observed by a recent writer, are the earliest expression 
 among modern nations of man's yearning after ideal great- 
 ness which afterwards breathed so strongly in the spirit 
 of chivalry. Found in the earliest efforts of almost every 
 European nation, they effected a literary conquest of the 
 West not less complete than the religious conquest which 
 the genius of Mohammed effected in the East. The names 
 of the heroes, the names of places, in those legends bear 
 testimony to their Cymric origin. Around the Cymric 
 names, Arthur, Merlin, Caerleon, Caerdigan, Caerdual, 
 the imagination of Cymric genius has thrown an impe- 
 rishable halo. In all the literatures of Europe, Arthurian 
 allusions are found ; Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Par- 
 nell, Gray, all show traces ; and the greatest living 
 English poet has sought the inspiration of his muse 
 at this fountain. I may, then, use the words of Alain 
 de L'Isle in 1181, and ask, "Quousque Christianum 
 pertingit imperium, quis, inquam, Arturum Britonem 
 non Loquitur ? " 
 
 The Cymric origin of these legends will also be in 
 harmony with the experience of those minds who can 
 take a generous view of the modern characteristics of 
 the Cymric race. The imaginative genius of the Cymric 
 people of Wales and Brittany between the sixth and 
 twelfth centuries found expression in the efforts of 
 bardic rhapsodists who created the " Mabinogion," and 
 in them gave birth to the Arthurian legends. The same 
 imaginative genius in this prosaic work-a-day nineteenth 
 century finds its expression, with an imperishable 
 identity, in the somewhat too copious effusions of the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 125 
 
 bards of the modern Eisteddfod. The ancient bardic 
 " Session " has afforded a favourite topic for the ridicule 
 of a press that makes Mammon a divinity, but so orders 
 his worship as to exercise a large toleration towards 
 the villanies of the turf and the brutalities of the prize- 
 ring. But surely a mind of classic culture can view 
 the Eisteddfod with other feelings than those of prosaic 
 ridicule. He will feel in its presence as he would 
 feel in sight of Helicon or Castalia. While the typical 
 English " Philistine " would doubtless seek to learn the 
 value of those classic fountains by making a chemical 
 analysis of their waters, and, finding in them neither 
 iron, nor sulphur, nor saline, would self-complacently 
 pronounce them worthless, the cultivated spiritual mind 
 takes another estimate. To the money-making nine- 
 teenth-century utilitarian, the Eisteddfod seems con- 
 temptible in the aspect of its objective homeliness. But 
 more cultivated spirits will, at the least, regard it as the 
 memorial that marks in the history of genius the holy 
 place at which that fountain of Cymric imagination 
 bursts forth, which, afterwards gathering tributary forces 
 in the minds of every land, flowed on to fertilize and 
 beautify the intellectual wilderness of mediaeval Europe. 
 In the recollection of their past history, it is more than 
 the patience of a people less choleric than the Cymry 
 could endure, to be told, when the intellectual standard 
 of their native clergy has, by long and systematic pro- 
 scription, been somewhat depressed, that they are 
 incapable of producing men who can rise to the Epis- 
 copal stature.
 
 126 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 After gallantly struggling for more than two hundred 
 years against the overwhelming power of the Norman 
 kings, Wales, on the death of Prince Llewelyn ap 
 Gruffydd, and the capture of his brother, Prince David, 
 was finally subjugated to the English Crown. In 
 1283, Edward I., true to the ancient policy of making 
 the religion of the Cymry an instrument for ensuring 
 their political subjection, caused that, simultaneously 
 with his own triumphant progress as secular conqueror 
 throughout the Principality, Archbishop Peckham should 
 make a solemn visitation of the Cymric dioceses, and 
 formally take ecclesiastical possession of the vanquished 
 territory. Throughout the greater portion of the four- 
 teenth century, the Cymry, exhausted by their long 
 struggles and their intestine feuds, seem to have settled 
 down into quiet submission to the authority of the 
 English Crown. For a short time only, during the 
 Scotch wars of Edward II., the men of Gwynedd, pro- 
 voked by the tyrannous exactions of the Lord Justiciary, 
 arose in arms under Sir Gruffydd Llwyd ; but the insur- 
 rection, being merely local, was soon quelled, and the 
 land enjoyed comparative rest for eighty years. In 
 1399, on the accession of King Henry IV., began 
 that feud between Reginald Lord Grey de Ruthin and 
 Owain Glyndwr, which once more plunged Cymru into 
 the miseries of sanguinary border warfare and tumultuous 
 unrest. The English king and nobles were warned 
 against offering provocation, by tyrannous injustice, to 
 a chieftain w r hose personal qualities gave him so great 
 an influence over the minds and hearts of his country-
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 127 
 
 men. But they despised the counsel of conciliation, and, 
 haughtily answering that they were not " afraid of those 
 barefooted scrubs," entailed upon themselves a harassing 
 border warfare, which the intrepid Cymric chieftain, by 
 dint of bravery in the field, and skilful combinations in 
 council, maintained for sixteen years, and at its close 
 died in his daughter's house, defiant to the last and 
 unsubdued. During this struggle the English Parlia- 
 ment passed a series of laws against the people of Wales, 
 the effects of which, as recorded in Rymer's " Fcedera," 
 are summarized by a most accurate and painstaking 
 writer l in her newly published " History of Wales." 
 " The Parliament which met in January, 1401, passed 
 a series of the most oppressive and cruel ordinances 
 ever enacted against any people ; prohibiting the Welsh 
 from purchasing lands, from holding any corporate 
 office, and from bearing arms within any city, borough, 
 or market town ; ordering that in lawsuits between an. 
 Englishman and a Welshman the former should be con- 
 victed only by the judgment of English justices, or the 
 verdict of all the English burgesses, or by inquests of 
 English boroughs and towns of the Lordships, in which 
 the respective suits lay ; disfranchising all English 
 burgesses who were married to Welsh women, and for- 
 bidding Welshmen to assemble together for conference 
 without licence from the local authorities and in their 
 presence. No provisions or arms were to be received 
 into Wales without special permission from the king or 
 his council. No Welshman was allowed to have the 
 
 1 Jane Williams (Publishers : Longman and Co.).
 
 128 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 charge of any castle, fortress, or place of defence, even 
 though he might be its owner, nor to execute the offices 
 of lieutenant, justice, chancellor, treasurer, chamberlain, 
 sheriff, steward, coroner, or any other office of trust, 
 notwithstanding any patent or licence to the contrary. 
 These tyrannous statutes likewise forbade Welshmen 
 to bring up their children as scholars, or to apprentice 
 them to any occupation within any town or borough 
 of the realm." 
 
 It is of interest, in considering the present state of 
 the Cymric Church, to note how, in this last struggle of 
 the nationality for political independence, the spiritual 
 officers of that Church were made instrumental in sub- 
 duing the national spirit. The burning of the cathedral 
 at Bangor, and of the cathedral, Episcopal palace, and 
 canons' houses at St. Asaph, in North Wales ; and the 
 destruction in the same year (1402) of the castle of 
 the Bishop of Llandaff, and of the house of his arch- 
 deacon in the south, were indications of the popular 
 hatred of the Cymric people towards a system which 
 degraded the spiritual officers of the Church into in- 
 struments for the accomplishment of a selfish earthly 
 policy. The writ of Henry IV., addressed to Guy de 
 Mona, Bishop of St. David's, commending to him and 
 other English noblemen the charge of the various castles 
 erected throughout the country to frown down the 
 national aspirations of my countrymen, is an historical 
 record of Episcopal subserviency to that exaggerated 
 anti-national policy which has succeeded in alienating 
 from their ancient Church one of the most religious of
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 129 
 
 European peoples. Before the close of the fifteenth 
 century, a virtual change of dynasty brought with it to 
 the Cymric people the dawn of happier days, in the 
 accession of a sovereign whose rise was the resurrection 
 of Cymric kingship. On August 22, 1485, on the field 
 of Bosworth, through the valour of his Cymric levies, 
 aided by the timely defection of the Stanleys, the grand- 
 son of Owain ap Maredudd ap Tewdwr ascended the 
 throne of England, and became the founder of a dynasty 
 not the least distinguished in English annals for intel- 
 lectual capacity and imperial strength of will. For 
 several centuries the Cymric people and the Cymric 
 Church had been subjected to political treatment, the 
 cruel injustice and the short-sighted oppressiveness of 
 which the most judicial of English historians has thus 
 described : " As to the Welsh frontier, it was constantly 
 almost in a state of war, which a very little good sense 
 and benevolence in any one of our shepherds would have 
 easily prevented by admitting the conquered people to 
 partake in equal privileges with their fellow-subjects. 
 Instead of this, they satisfied themselves with aggravating 
 the mischief by granting legal reprisals upon English- 
 men." 
 
 During the reigns of the Tudor princes, the Cymric 
 people for the first time began to experience in the 
 affairs of the Church and State some taste of that " fair 
 play " of which Englishmen are always boasting, in 
 language that amounts to something like national cant, 
 but which they have by no means always exhibited in 
 their appreciation of the natural rights and sensitive 
 
 K
 
 130 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 national feelings of the Celtic races who have been 
 united to their destiny. That the Cymric people in the 
 sixteenth century, under fair and generous treatment, 
 evinced that same order-loving loyalty which marks 
 them in these days, may be gathered from the testimony 
 of Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord President of Wales, 
 who, in a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, dated 
 March i, 1583, speaks of his presidency as his "great 
 and high office in Wales, 1 a happy place of government ; 
 for a better people to govern, or better subjects, Europe 
 holdeth not." 
 
 At this period a mighty force called into existence, 
 in the moral and spiritual life of the nation by the 
 invention of the art of printing, was beginning to pro- 
 duce powerful effects. Through that force and the 
 consequent multiplication of books, the masses were 
 gradually growing up into full possession of those 
 treasures of the written Word, which in previous ages 
 had been dealt out to them by the then monopolists of 
 learning, their " tutors and governors " in the Church. 
 That new force gradually led to the reconstruction in 
 its outward aspects of the Church in this land. In the 
 previous generations the clergy had been engaged as 
 priests in the administration of the Sacraments and other 
 rites and ceremonies of the Church more conspicuously 
 than as prophets or public teachers in the preaching of 
 the Word. The multiplication of the Scriptures wrought 
 gradually in the sixteenth century a mighty change by 
 
 1 Vide Churchyard's testimony to the integrity of the Welsh of the 
 sixteenth century.
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 131 
 
 which the prophetical office became so prominent as to 
 obscure the functions of the priestly office, by which 
 the Sacraments were almost forgotten in the absorbing 
 study of the newly opened Word, by which the pulpit 
 became so enlarged in the reformation of the Christian 
 temple as partially to exclude from view the eternal 
 witness of the Altar. In our own day we are beholding 
 a reaction the force of which, while it dims no single 
 ray of the enlightenment diffused by the opening of the 
 written Word, promises, when the wine of a new religious 
 movement shall have passed through its period of 
 fermentation, to exhibit gladdening results in a nobler, 
 fuller, higher Church life, by unveiling to this generation 
 the long-hidden soul-subduing glory of the Shechinah 
 of the Altar, and multiplying once more the Divine 
 Bread of sacramental grace. In the times of the world 
 the darkest hour precedes each new dawn. In the 
 generation immediately preceding the new light of the 
 Reformation, the religious state of the Cymric people 
 seems to have been devoid of intelligence and low in 
 moral tone. A celebrated enthusiast of the period, John 
 ap Henry or John Penry (who suffered in Smithfield), 
 in " His Exhortation unto the people and Governours 
 of Her Majesty's people in Wales," speaks of the same 
 people, whom Sir Henry Sidney at the same time was 
 eulogizing as second to none in Europe, as sunk in 
 grossest ignorance and barbarous irreligion. But his 
 exaggerated language must be received with a due 
 allowance for the extravagance that characterized the 
 utterances of the Puritan preachers, whose minds, coming
 
 132 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 into the new light of the written Word after the dark- 
 ness of ages, seem to have been unable to bear its 
 brightness, and to have been excited into a mania of 
 enthusiasm that disturbed the balance of the moral 
 judgment, and caused them in their vituperations to 
 lose sight of charity, and in their fierce callings down 
 of fire from heaven to forget what manner of spirit they 
 were of. A sour-minded Puritan, recognizing no truth 
 save in his own interpretations of the written Word, 
 hearing no music save in the repetition of his own 
 shibboleth, and seeing no beauty or comeliness that he 
 could desire except in the reflection of his own morbid 
 mental and emotional states, would in our own age, 
 while fixing his eye exclusively upon the drunkenness, 
 worldliness, and scepticism that are its worst features, 
 doubtless be able to write in terms equally bitter and 
 sweeping of its low estate. But such men are the cari- 
 caturists the weeping, not the laughing, caricaturists 
 of their times. The Cymric Church, which in that 
 age produced, among its laymen, Sir John Pryce, of 
 Brecon, who first translated into Welsh the Lord's 
 Prayer, Decalogue, and Creed ; William Salesbury, who 
 produced the first Welsh translation of the Psalms 
 and Gospels and Epistles (as used in the Communion 
 Office), and afterwards of the entire New Testament ; 
 and Rowland Heylin, and Sir Thomas Middleton, 
 who in 1630 published the portable Welsh Bible 
 for private use among their countrymen ; and on the 
 other hand, among its native clergy, such men as 
 Bishop Morgan, who in 1588 completed a translation
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 133 
 
 of the entire Bible from the Hebrew and Greek ; and 
 Bishop Parry, who in 1620 revised it as it now exists 
 one of the noblest versions in any living language ; 
 and Vicar Prichard, who will ever be remembered as 
 the author of that volume of sacred poetry, " The 
 Welshman's Candle," which for generations, side by 
 side with the Holy Volume, has been found on the 
 humble book-shelf of almost every Welsh cottage, 
 could not have been in that miserable state described 
 in the exaggerated caricatures of Puritan fanatics 
 caricatures which their more designing successors in 
 our own day find it profitable to reproduce for the 
 purpose of strengthening the anti-Church prejudices of 
 the ignorant. 
 
 One of the most important consequences of the 
 Reformation, in its bearing upon the Cymric Church, 
 was that for a time it rendered it impossible for the 
 Government to appoint to the Cymric sees alien Bishops 
 ignorant of the native language. If the desire had 
 existed (which did not exist in the Tudor times) to 
 remind the Cymry, through the Church, of their national 
 subjection, it would have been difficult, in an age when 
 the translation and exposition of the Scriptures was 
 so prominent a work, to have appointed to the Cymric 
 dioceses dignitaries contemptuously ignorant of the 
 Cymric language. It is probable that to these require- 
 ments of the time, combined with the Cymric sympathies 
 of the Tudor dynasty, the Welsh Church owed the 
 temporary removal during a hundred and fifty-six years 
 of that unfair proscription which before and since has
 
 134 
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 persistently excluded men of the Cymric race from the 
 Episcopal Bench. In the period between 1558 and 
 1715, forty-three native Welshmen rose to Episcopal 
 thrones, and seven more men of Cymric blood. 1 During 
 
 1 The following list of the forty-three prelates of Cymric blood and 
 birth, raised to the bench between 1558 and 1774, is due to the anti- 
 quarian research of the late Rev. Jenkins, of Kerry, and placed by 
 his representatives at the disposal of the learned author of the essay on 
 " The Causes of Dissent in Wales." 
 
 
 NAME. 
 
 SEE. 
 
 BIRTHPLACE. 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 I. 
 
 Thomas Gray 
 
 St. David's and York 
 
 Pembrokeshire . . 
 
 1568 
 
 2. 
 
 Richard Davies . . 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Denbighshire . . 
 
 1581 
 
 3- 
 
 Rowland Meyrick 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 1565 
 
 4- 
 
 Nicholas Robinson 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1584 
 
 5- 
 
 Thomas Davies . . 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1573 
 
 6. 
 
 Marmaduke Mid- 
 
 
 
 
 
 dleton 
 
 Lismore and St. David's 
 
 Cardiganshire . . 
 
 1592 
 
 7- 
 
 William Hughes . . 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1600 
 
 8. 
 
 William Morgan . . 
 
 Llandaff and St. Asaph 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 
 
 9- 
 
 Richard Parry 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Denbighshire 
 
 1623 
 
 10. 
 
 R. Vaughan 
 
 Bangor, Chester, and 
 
 
 
 
 
 London 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 
 
 ii. 
 
 Henry Rowland . . 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 1616 
 
 12. 
 
 Lewis Bailey 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Carmarthenshire 
 
 1631 
 
 13- 
 
 David Dolben 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Denbighshire 
 
 1633 
 
 14. 
 
 Edmund Griffiths 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1637 
 
 15- 
 
 Hugh Jones 
 
 Llandaff 
 
 
 
 1574 
 
 16. 
 
 William Blethin 
 
 
 
 ISQO 
 
 17- 
 
 Morgan Owen 
 
 
 Carmarthen 
 
 J S 
 
 1644 
 
 1 8. 
 
 Hugh Lloyd 
 
 Llandaff 
 
 Cardiganshire . . 
 
 1667 
 
 19- 
 
 Francis Davies . . 
 
 Llandaff 
 
 Glamorganshire 
 
 1674 
 
 20. 
 
 Godfrey Goodman 
 
 Gloucester 
 
 Denbighshire 
 
 1655 
 
 21. 
 
 John Williams 
 
 Lincoln and York 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1650 
 
 22. 
 
 Thomas Howell . . 
 
 Bristol 
 
 Carmarthenshire 
 
 1646 
 
 23- 
 
 George Griffiths . . 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1666 
 
 24. 
 
 Robert Morgan . . 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Montgomeryshire 
 
 1673 
 
 25. 
 
 Humphrey Lloyd 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Merionethshire . . 
 
 1688 
 
 26. 
 
 Humphry Hum- 
 
 
 
 
 
 phrys 
 
 Bangor and Hereford . . 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1712
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 '35 
 
 the subsequent hundred and fifty-five years, on the 
 contrary, hardly a single Welshman has been permitted 
 to rise to the Episcopal dignity. To what is this 
 exclusion attributable ? Are we to be told that the 
 native ability which claimed elevation so frequently 
 between 1558 and 1/14, has never manifested itself 
 between 1714 and 1869? The contrast establishes 
 unmistakable proof of a deliberately continued pro- 
 scription, which has produced a most depressing effect 
 upon the moral and intellectual calibre of the native 
 clergy, and which in its duration has been most 
 
 27. John Evans 
 
 Bangor and Meath 
 
 
 28. John Lloyd 
 
 St. David's 
 
 Carmarthenshire 
 
 29. Edward Jones 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Montgomeryshire 
 
 30. John Wynne 
 
 St. Asaph 
 
 Flintshire 
 
 31. Lancelot Bulkely 
 
 Dublin 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 32. Griffith Williams 
 
 Ossory 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 33. Lewis Jones 
 
 Killaloe 
 
 Merionethshire . . 
 
 34. Richard Meredith 
 
 Ferns and Leighlin 
 
 
 35. Robert Price 
 
 Ferns and Leighlin . . 
 
 Merionethshire . . 
 
 36. John Salesbury . . 
 
 Man 
 
 Denbighshire 
 
 37. John Meyrick 
 
 Man 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 38. George Lloyd 
 
 Man and Chester 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 39. John Phillips 
 
 Man -and Chester 
 
 
 
 (translator of Bible 
 
 
 
 into Manx) 
 
 Anglesey 
 
 40. Hugh Bellot 
 
 Bangor and Chester . . 
 
 Denbighshire . . 
 
 41. W. Lloyd.. 
 
 Llandaff, Peterbro', and 
 
 
 
 Norwich 
 
 Merionethshire . . 
 
 42. W. Glyn . . 
 
 Bangor 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 43. Maurice Griffith . . 
 
 Rochester 
 
 Carnarvonshire . . 
 
 1687 
 1703 
 
 1712 
 1650 
 1671 
 1646 
 
 1597 
 1665 
 
 1573 
 1599 
 1615 
 
 1663 
 
 1709 
 
 Seven other prelates of Cymric race and name, though born in England, 
 died between 1685 and 1717, amongst whom was William Lloyd, of St. 
 Asaph, one of the seven Bishops sent to the Tower.
 
 136 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 significantly coeval with the growth of Cymric Non- 
 conformity. 
 
 In the seventeenth century the religious state of 
 the Cymric Church was for a time disturbed by the 
 commotions of the revolutionary period. In 1650, 
 special commissioners were appointed to investigate 
 its condition, and to reform it upon the Puritan model. 
 These commissioners ejected from their benefices a 
 large number of the Royalist clergy, and proceeded to 
 realize the Puritan ideal of the perfect Church, by 
 making priests of the lowest of the people, and pro- 
 moting to the vacant benefices the noisy village 
 theologians who happened to be gifted with the power 
 of vociferous exhortation. Their efforts, however, did 
 not leave any very lasting impress on the Cymric 
 Church, and at the restoration of the monarchy, in 
 1660, the desirability of recognizing knowledge in 
 addition to zeal, as a qualification for the ministry of 
 the Church, was once more admitted. 
 
 At an earlier date in the century a Puritan clergyman, 
 named Wroth, a man of some earnestness and ability, 
 was ejected from his benefice for disobeying the com- 
 mands of his Ordinary, and became the original founder 
 of Nonconformity in Wales. His modern successors 
 have striven without success to prove that he was ejected 
 not so much for irregularity as for excess of religious 
 zeal. It is worthy of remark that a far abler and more 
 distinguished man (to whom I have already alluded), 
 Rhys Prichard, Vicar of Llandovery, and author of a 
 volume of poetry that will bear comparison with the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 137 
 
 very best efforts of George Herbert, evinced zeal as 
 great in the cause of religious revival, and exercised a 
 far wider religious influence than Wroth and his Puritan 
 brethren, and yet died a dignitary of the Church, and 
 so much venerated that Bishop Bull expressed a desire 
 to be buried by his side. That Wroth and his Puritan 
 fellows were infected with the licentious spirit of religious 
 disorder so prevalent in their times, and had no cause 
 to complain of the treatment they received, may be 
 inferred from the fact that the Nonconformity of which 
 they became the founders, representing no force but the 
 disorderly tendencies of a few earnest enthusiasts, made 
 no progress for two generations. In 1700, the Noncon- 
 forming religious societies of Wales were few in number, 
 and contemptible in influence. At that date the total 
 number of meeting-houses throughout Wales was but 
 thirty-six. 1 During the preceding hundred and fifty 
 years, that had witnessed the fierce growth of Puritanism, 
 which for a time despoiled the Church and overthrew 
 the throne, the Cymric Church, then mainly ruled by 
 native Bishops, had weathered the storm and retained 
 the affections of the people. At the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century Welsh Dissent was not only insig- 
 nificant in its extent, but very low in its spiritual vitality 
 a proof that independent religious societies enjoy no 
 immunity from those periods of depression that seem 
 to recur cyclically in all the spheres of human energy. 
 
 During a period of religious deadness and indifference, 
 it is quite possible that even under an alien Episcopate 
 
 1 Vide " History of Nonconformity in Wales," by Thomas Rees.
 
 138 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 the Church of Wales might have been so ruled as to 
 retain the nominal allegiance of the people. In calm 
 weather, under the government of an unqualified pilot, 
 whose experience is scanty, eye untrue, hand unsteady, 
 a vessel may escape wreck. But when the sleeping winds 
 and calm waves have been awakened out of their repose, 
 the wreck of the vessel, followed by the tossing hither 
 and thither of her disorganized fragments, will show the 
 nature of his pilotage. In the eighteenth century such 
 a change was about to disturb the surface of religious 
 indifferentism in Wales. In the annals of the Cymric 
 Church, the year 1709 is made memorable by the 
 ordination of Gruffydd Jones, afterwards Rector of 
 Llandowror, in Carmarthenshire. This remarkable 
 man was, in the order of Providence, destined to call 
 into action new forces in the religious state of the entire 
 Principality. Now, the calling forth of new religious 
 forces is always ordained for " the fall and rising of 
 many" for the bursting of the old bottles, and the 
 adaptation of new forms of religious habit capable of 
 giving expression to the energies of the quickened 
 spiritual vitality. To subject the machinery of an 
 engine, defective in construction, to the pressure of 
 increased steam by the addition of more stimulating 
 fuel, will end in its disruption. The same addition of 
 power in an engine of true construction, would only 
 give to it the propulsion of a nobler and more rapid 
 advancement. The first of these similes must be 
 employed to illustrate the state of the Cymric Church, 
 under the guidance of an ineffective alien Episcopate,
 
 The Church of the Cym-ry. 139 
 
 during the years of that eighteenth century which 
 witnessed so remarkable a revival of religious light and 
 warmth among the people of Wales. The close of the 
 seventeenth century left them devoid of the means of 
 education, unable to read, and therefore excluded from 
 that fountain of light which, in the study of the newly 
 opened Scriptures, had begun to diffuse its rays. 
 
 At an early date in the eighteenth century, Gruffydd 
 Jones, who was marked by the intense religious fervour 
 of his race, and by a high degree of intellectual power, 
 looked abroad, with the eye of a patriot, upon the 
 religious and social state of his countrymen. He found 
 that, notwithstanding all their earnestness, his minis- 
 trations produced no quickening, enlightening effect. 
 His experience taught him soon that mere preaching, 
 however eloquent and forcible, conveys to peasant minds 
 but vague notions, which produce no fruits ; that the 
 seed of the Word, falling on the uneducated mind, falls 
 on the hardened surface of the wayside, to be quickly 
 swallowed up by the absorbing influences of the lower 
 animal life. In the light of this experience he adopted 
 a system of catechetical instruction ; and at this day 
 several of the admirable manuals upon the Lord's 
 Prayer, Decalogue, and the Creed, of which he became 
 the author, are extensively used in the Principality. 
 But this was not his greatest work. Finding that his 
 countrymen were unable to read the Holy Scriptures 
 in their own language, he established by his own energy, 
 without the aid of the Bishops and dignitaries of his day, 
 a system of circulating schools.
 
 140 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 According to this system (a remnant of which still 
 survives in the Welsh Bevan Schools), a school was 
 maintained in one parish for a period of six months, 
 and then opened for a like period in another parish 
 destitute of educational means. This educational system, 
 founded and maintained by the unaided energy of a 
 simple Welsh clergyman, numbered at one time 200 
 schools, which contained an aggregate of 8687 con- 
 temporary scholars. It is recorded, on unquestionable 
 authority, that within a period of twenty-four years no 
 less than 150,212 of his countrymen (constituting more 
 than a fourth of the then population of Wales) were 
 taught to read the Scriptures in their native Cymric 
 language, in these schools established and maintained 
 by the unaided exertions of this native Cymric clergy- 
 man one of a body who are incapable of developing 
 such intellectual and administrative power, we are told, 
 as have adorned the Episcopal Bench in the Welsh 
 Church during the 150 years of its decline ! Few men, 
 in any age or country, in so humble a position, have 
 exercised a nobler or a wider influence. Few teachers 
 and philanthropists have passed away into eternity 
 cheered by the review of richer results of their life-work, 
 than the absolute certainty of having exercised an 
 enlightening and ennobling influence upon more than 
 fifteen myriads of souls. 
 
 The increase of knowledge was accompanied by an 
 increased warmth of religious zeal, expressing itself in 
 a greater hunger for ministrations of religion. These 
 effects are recorded in numberless letters of thankfulness,
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 141 
 
 addressed to Gruffydd Jones by the clergy from different 
 districts of Wales. An extract from a letter written 
 by the Rev. P. Thomas, curate of the large parish of 
 Gelligaer, will show the nature of results that were 
 general : " Our Churches in general in this neighbourhood 
 are now near as full again of auditors as they used to 
 be before the Welsh Charity Schools circulated about 
 the country. Their ministers endeavoured before, both 
 by fair and rough means, to bring the people under the 
 droppings of the sanctuary, but all in vain ; but now 
 (blessed be God) our solemn assemblies are thronged." 
 
 Throughout Wales in that generation there was a 
 rapid diffusion of religious knowledge, calling into action 
 new and strong spiritual forces in the awakened zeal 
 and earnestness of the ever-religious Cymric people. 
 Those forces could not have been quelled save by the 
 extermination of the people. They were destined to 
 seek expression in objective forms of religious habit 
 That was the time when native Bishops, able to take a 
 true view of their dioceses tTrto-icoTrot in power as well as 
 in name, " seers " taking the spiritual oversight as well 
 as enjoying the material revenues of their " sees," having 
 native sympathy with the fervour and zeal of the Cymric 
 religious temperament would have been able so to 
 order, renew, and enlarge the Church's machinery, as 
 to comprehend within her organization those newly 
 evoked spiritual forces, which, under the mechanical, 
 inelastic, routine government of Bishops alien in lan- 
 guage and feeling, and not seldom absent in body, 
 burst the Church's bounds, and are now threatening
 
 142 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 to return with Volscian allies to work her grievous 
 ruin. 
 
 Those blind " seers " were not left without warning. 
 The man who had the zeal and energy to call forth the 
 forces of religious revival (the true Cymric Archbishop 
 of his time) had also the genius to foresee the conditions 
 essential to their healthy and regular action. His 
 recorded words are these : " The poor have now in 
 many places a stirring among them ; they have a thirst 
 for knowledge, and if they have it not in the Church, 
 they will turn about and apply to some others. To 
 refuse the necessary means of instruction would tempt 
 them to look upon it as a step towards reducing them 
 again under the yoke of bondage, which their forefathers 
 had been some time subject to in former days, or as 
 the foreboding of threatening popish darkness." 
 
 When these dormant forces had been extended 
 throughout Wales by the schools and catechetical 
 instruction of Gruffydd Jones, awakening the spiritual 
 yearnings of an ever-religious people, the men who were 
 destined to fire the train, and to give expression to their 
 ardent religious emotions, were not long wanting. The 
 hour was come when a more earnest religious life was 
 to be quickened in Wales, and the men appeared. 
 In 1735, Howell Harris, a layman who had been edu- 
 cated for the ministry of the Church, began to preach 
 in his own neighbourhood, and after a time to visit 
 other districts throughout Wales, in which large con- 
 courses of people assembled to hear the appeals of his 
 impassioned eloquence. With a voice terrible in its
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 143 
 
 religious earnestness, from lips touched by the live coal 
 off the altar of supreme self-sacrifice, that sounded like 
 an echo of the Hebrew prophets or the Baptist's cry, he 
 called his countrymen out of the lethargy of sensuality 
 and worldliness into the consciousness of that eternal 
 spiritual life, in the communion of which alone man can 
 find the final rest of his being. The effect of his preaching 
 was very great. It attracted the eager attention of 
 thousands of his countrymen ; and in whatever district 
 he appeared, there " went out to him all the region round 
 about." 
 
 About the same date, a man still more remarkably 
 gifted with the attributes of the prophetical office ap- 
 peared, in the person of Daniel Rowlands, a clergyman 
 of the Church. Rarely, if ever, in modern times, has 
 there appeared a preacher of greater power, if power is 
 to be estimated by its effect in arousing the soul to a 
 consciousness of the frailty of the lower natural life, 
 " of the earth, earthy," and to an overwhelming convic- 
 tion of the supreme importance of the eternal spiritual 
 life manifested in the Divine-Humanity of Him Who 
 is "the Lord from Heaven." Whitefield and Wesley 
 attracted no greater crowds. In a remote village of 
 Cardiganshire, again and again on special occasions, 
 did twenty thousand people, many of whom came from 
 districts distant several days' journey, assemble to hear 
 his preaching. 
 
 These two men became the founders of Welsh 
 Methodism. In order to extend the revival of religious 
 earnestness among their countrymen, they trained a
 
 144 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 large number of lay-preachers, called " cynghorwyr," 
 i.e. exhorters, who itinerated throughout the country 
 delivering addresses, not essentially different from those 
 appeals which congregations in London have lately 
 heard from the lips of earnest clergymen. The effects 
 of this prophetic movement were great, rapid, and wide- 
 spread. What was the attitude of the alien Bishops ? 
 Utterly unable to sympathize with the un-English Celtic 
 fervour of the Cymric people, unable to appreciate the 
 necessity of satisfying the spiritual hunger of their 
 souls by more frequent preaching of the true and lively 
 Word, and more faithful ministration of the Bread of 
 Life, the Bishops and their several retinues of " alien " 
 clergy frowned upon the movement, and ultimately 
 expelled from their positions in the Church, Rowlands 
 and other clergymen who had joined it. 
 
 At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the 
 avowed object of Harris and Rowlands was not to 
 create a schismatical society, but to produce a revival 
 of religious life within the communion of the Church. 
 To the end of their days they retained feelings of 
 affectionate loyalty to the Church, which inherits the 
 Divinely given inalienable rights of original mission to 
 the people of this land. The dying request of Harris 
 was that he should be buried in the chancel of Talgarth 
 parish church, beneath the spot on which he stood 
 when he first realized the consciousness of intense faith 
 in that Life which he sought to reveal to others. Among 
 the last words of which there is authentic record, 
 uttered by Daniel Rowlands on his death-bed, were
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 145 
 
 these : " True religion has begun in the Church, and 
 into the Church it will ere long return." 
 
 The lasting influence which these two men produced 
 upon the religious mind of their country was great, but 
 not comparable either in value or extent to the influence 
 which Grufifydd Jones, without forfeiting his position in 
 the Church by ignoring Episcopal authority, exerted in 
 the work I have already described. His influence, in its 
 calm self-restraint and subjection to authority, was nobler 
 and higher than the excitement of the self-deceiving 
 enthusiasm, which degenerated into the assertion of a 
 lawless spiritual individualism. As the educator of his 
 countrymen, and as the preacher whose earnest appeal, 
 in the church of Llanddewi-Brefi, first called Rowlands 
 himself out of a life of irreligion, Grufifydd Jones must 
 be regarded as the creator of the religious movement 
 which Harris and Rowlands afterwards directed, and 
 which they will hardly escape the charge of having in 
 some degree misdirected. That they exerted an im- 
 mediate influence for good, no unbiassed mind can deny. 
 That their influence was unmixed with evil pregnant of 
 fatal after-results, and unstained by the taint of earthly 
 self-assertion, no calm judgment will pronounce. 
 
 Sixteen years had not elapsed after the date of their 
 first preaching, before those features of schismatic 
 religious energy, which contains the seeds of its ulti- 
 mate dissolution in the irresistible tendency to further 
 schismatical subdivisions, began to appear. In 1751 
 a bitter feud arose among their followers. For twenty 
 years they were internally divided into sections bitterly 
 
 L
 
 146 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 hostile, who were known as "Rowlands' people" and 
 " Harris' people." The " carnal " element in Non- 
 conforming religiosity viz. its invariable self-assertive- 
 ness, that ultimately leads its votaries to repeat in 
 various forms the tendencies of the Corinthian schis- 
 matics, who called down upon themselves the stern 
 Apostolic rebuke, by calling themselves " Paul's people," 
 and " Apollos' people " appeared among my fervid 
 countrymen (whose temperament has such especial 
 need of the sobering influence of healthy Church au- 
 thority) in virulent strength. It can hardly be doubted 
 that the experience of these self-destructive tendencies 
 in the spiritual life of their followers enabled Harris 
 and Rowlands to realize in Church authority the 
 Divinely appointed guardianship of unity a realization 
 which found expression in their last and most solemn 
 moments. 
 
 Early in the history of Welsh Methodism there also 
 appeared no slight symptoms of that impatience of the 
 supernatural, and that tendency to lose all vital grasp 
 of the living verities (the realization of which ever 
 accompanies full conception of the central truth of the 
 Incarnation), which sooner or later develops itself in all 
 religious societies ; that, denying the spiritual authority 
 of Apostolical Orders, and cutting themselves off from 
 the communion of the Church, lose sight of the truths 
 of sacramental doctrine, and the spiritual food (essential 
 to the highest development of spiritual life) of sacra- 
 mental grace. In 1771 the sect was openly divided 
 into Arians and Calvinists. Fortunately the Church,
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 147 
 
 in her Creeds, Formularies, and ministrations, although 
 causes entirely untheological have alienated the Cymric 
 masses for a time from her fold, still bears to the veri- 
 ties of the Incarnation a testimony sufficiently influential 
 to restrain the spread of Arianism, which now, in Wales, 
 exists overtly only in the very insignificant sect of the 
 Welsh Unitarians. Thus the candlestick of the Church, 
 although grievously impaired by the worldly policy of 
 her rulers, still retains its doctrinal stability (unlike 
 the movable tapers of schismatic teaching), and 
 " giveth light unto all that are in the house." That 
 the great body of Welsh Nonconformists (inheriting 
 the restless subtlety of Pelagius) still retain an implicit 
 faith in the doctrines of the Incarnation, to the explicit 
 denial of which their rejection of Apostolical Orders 
 and sacramental truth logically leads, is undoubtedly 
 due to the traditions of truth, which eighty years have 
 not sufficed to intermit, and still more to the indirect 
 influence of the Church's central light, which has never 
 failed, although her earthen vessels have often been 
 grievously defiled and marred by worldliness, to present 
 in them, through the Formularies, Creeds, and Sacra- 
 ments, the essential treasures of the primitive faith. 
 
 I must briefly notice the work of one of the most 
 remarkable men that have influenced the later life of 
 Methodism in Wales. Thomas Charles, a graduate of 
 Oxford, educated to Holy Orders, unable to distinguish 
 the eternal life of the Church that underlies the frail 
 forms in which it is presented on earth, unable to see 
 the spiritual life of the Church, except as embodied in
 
 148 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 ministers then often carnal and worldly, joined the 
 Methodist Society. He will be long remembered with 
 reverence in Wales as the founder of the Methodist 
 Sunday schools, which have imparted much scriptural 
 knowledge, and in which the strength of the Methodist 
 system, while devoid of Orders and Sacraments, mainly 
 consists. In a larger circle he will be known as the 
 original mover in the formation of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society. 
 
 What was the attitude during this time of the 
 Bishops towards these earnest, if .mistaken- men, and 
 the work which they were doing ? They failed to 
 recognize in it any elements of truth and good. They 
 attributed (with the miserable narrowness of those who 
 of old sat in the chair of authority and monopolized 
 the keys of knowledge) to the evil spirit of disorder 
 not only the divisions they threatened, but also the 
 undeniable good which they effected. Some of these 
 Bishops were personally good and earnest .men. Others 
 were like that notorious prelate (the Bishop of Bangor) 
 who for seven years never once entered the diocese. But 
 all of them, alike aliens in language and feeling, were 
 incapable of dealing with the difficulties of the crisis. 
 Religious forces that might have given a noble spiritual 
 vitality to the Church, revived the warmth of its early 
 love under the primacy of Dewi, and exalted, in the 
 power of a living organic religious unity, the whole 
 character of my countrymen, were lost to the Church, 
 and suffered to expend themselves in the wild gyrations 
 of endless schismatic divisions and subdivisions. It is
 
 The Chiirch of the Cymry. 149 
 
 difficult to resist a conviction that Bishops of Cymric 
 blood and temperament, having that mysterious power 
 of sympathy which identity of race alone can give, 
 partaking in some degree of that truly national fervour 
 which characterized the Methodist leaders and their 
 followers, might have developed a policy of conciliation 
 that would have retained Methodism within the com- 
 munion of the Church, and saved my country from 
 the social strife and envying, the sectarian bitterness 
 and hatred, that now poison its moral atmosphere. 
 
 Even as it was, the influence of the Episcopal office 
 long retained its hold upon the minds of the masses. 
 In 1739, at Machynlleth, and in 1741, at Bala (now 
 two strongholds of anti-Church feeling), this influence 
 subjected Harris to threats of personal violence, as a 
 schismatic transgressing Church order. So strong was 
 the traditional influence of Church order and authority 
 over the minds of the Methodists themselves, that for 
 sixty-eight years they steadfastly resisted every tempta- 
 tion to secede from her Communion, and never enter- 
 tained a thought about the possibility of the Blessed 
 Sacrament being validly consecrated by the hands of 
 ministers not authoritatively ordained to the functions 
 of the priesthood. Had the Bishops of the Church 
 possessed enough knowledge of, and sympathy with, the 
 fervid religious feeling of this society to discern the 
 signs of the times, the danger of the grievous schism 
 might have been averted. 
 
 During the first decade of the present century, when 
 Harris and Rowlands, and the clergy who had originally
 
 150 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 led the movement, were dead, the lay-preachers, or 
 " cynghorwyr," began to exhibit a more definitely 
 schismatical spirit, to clamour for formal secession from 
 the Church, and to assume authority to consecrate the 
 Sacrament. The proposal, first openly made at one 
 of the Associations or Quarterly Assemblies of the 
 Methodist congregations, was received with a feeling 
 akin to horror, and the ambitious descendant of Korah 
 was ordered by the chairman to leave the assembly. 
 But after a long agitation the " cynghorwyr," in 
 1811, succeeded in carrying the Methodist Society 
 into a schismatical position by a vote ordering that 
 lay-preachers should be permitted to consecrate the 
 Sacrament. Since that date the greater number of the 
 Welsh Methodists have continued to deprive themselves 
 of sacramental order, and to feed their souls upon 
 a religious rite, which, unconsciously testifying to the 
 truth, they describe as having no validity except as a 
 commemorative ceremony and a badge of membership. 
 There are few Welshmen who believe that this fatal 
 catastrophe in the religious history of my countrymen 
 would have happened if the Cymric Church had been 
 ruled by native Bishops. The grave responsibility must, 
 therefore, rest in no slight degree upon those statesmen 
 who insisted upon appointing to the Cymric sees prelates 
 unqualified for the discharge of their spiritual functions, 
 and whose political mission has egregiously failed. 
 
 It is true that English Bishops in England adopted 
 a policy equally fatal in dealing with the founder of 
 English Methodism. But surely it is no slight confirma-
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 1 5 1 
 
 tion of the view I have enunciated, that the head-quarters 
 of English Methodism are also found among the Celtic 
 population of Cornwall, long subjected to the Episcopal 
 supervision of the virtually alien Bishops of Exeter. If, 
 therefore, a bishopric of Cornwall is to be founded, as 
 an earnest Churchman I will venture to express a hope 
 that, upon the same principle, the application of which 
 I claim to Wales, a man of Cornish race and tempera- 
 ment may be appointed to guide the religious life of our 
 kinsmen. 
 
 During the last fifty years, that schismatic spirit 
 which led to the secession of the Methodists has been 
 acting as a powerful solvent upon all the larger fragments 
 of religious unity in Wales. At the present time my 
 countrymen are divided into a greater number of sects 
 than I am able to enumerate. Calvinistic Methodists, 
 Wesleyan Methodists, Baptists, Lesser Baptists, Inde- 
 pendents, Unitarians, Primitive Methodists, and even, 
 I regret to add, Mormons, have a share in the religious 
 allegiance of the people. That there is, however, a spirit 
 beginning to move upon the chaotic surface of this 
 religious anarchy a spirit destined, under favourable 
 circumstances, to give form and beauty to Cymric 
 religious life by the development of a strong Church 
 revival, is the conviction of many thoughtful far-seeing 
 men. An earnest Cymric Churchman can hardly fail 
 to weep in spirit over the present religious aspect of his 
 ancient country. Its people are torn by the evil spirit 
 of internecine division into hostile jealous sections. In 
 making a common assault upon the Church, these
 
 152 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 sections find it mutually convenient to affect a belief in 
 the existence among them of a unity of spirit underlying 
 the endless variety of their organic forms. The existence 
 of such a unity is imaginary. The religious aspect of 
 Wales to-day cannot be more clearly illustrated than by 
 recalling its political aspect in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries. On a few great occasions, in the prospect of 
 an English invasion, the Princes of Gwynedd, Powys, 
 Dyfed, Gwent, and Morganwg managed for a few weeks 
 to unite their forces. But no sooner was the object of 
 their common hostility withdrawn, than those fierce 
 chieftains devoted their warlike prowess with equal 
 energy to the destruction of each other, and the devasta- 
 tion of their common country. That such is the result 
 of Cymric schisms to-day, having no bond of union save 
 in destructive hostility towards the Church, and devas- 
 tating the nobler moral beauties, and laying waste the 
 higher fruits of the Spirit, no one who knows the inner 
 life of Wales can deny. True to the history of their 
 race, my countrymen still display strong religious yearn- 
 ings and great intellectual activity. They circulate in 
 the native language nine weekly papers, eighteen 
 monthly magazines, and two quarterlies, the majority 
 of which are almost exclusively read by the w r orking 
 classes. But it is no exaggeration to state that these 
 papers, although professedly religious organs, are, with 
 a few honourable exceptions, printed in the gall of 
 sectarian bitterness, and that their special mission at the 
 present time is to endeavour, under very discouraging 
 circumstances, to stir up a spasmodic agitation for the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 153 
 
 disestablishment and disendowment of the ancient 
 Church, to which, for seventeen centuries, my country 
 owed its knowledge of Christianity. To perpetuate a 
 policy that makes the removal of the Church's candle- 
 stick, by the destruction of her material organization, 
 even a distant possibility, involves a grave responsibility. 
 If the mission of the Church of Christ is to restore man 
 to the image and likeness of God's countenance, and if 
 unity be one feature in that eternal countenance, then 
 it follows that a people who have lost well-nigh all moral 
 consciousness of the obligations of religious unity, have, 
 notwithstanding their Bible-reading, one of the rudi- 
 mentary lessons of religious truth yet to learn. At 
 present the universal visible unity of Christendom seems 
 as far removed from the region of possibility as that 
 universal international peace for which the Peace Society 
 expresses its aspiration. But both these unities are 
 revealed ideals destined to be realized in the future of 
 humanity. The distance of that realization does not 
 lessen the necessity laid upon each individual of striving, 
 as far as in him lies, to hasten its fulfilment. The dis- 
 tance of the unity of Christendom no more justifies the 
 individual in habits of schism, than the distance of 
 universal peace justifies the individual in disregarding 
 the obligations that flow from the ideal, by breaking the 
 peace of his neighbourhood. 
 
 That the schism, finally consummated in 1811, has 
 had an injurious effect upon the spiritual life of the 
 Calvinistic Methodist Society (the most numerous of 
 the Welsh Nonconforming societies), although it has
 
 154 The C/mrck of the Cymry. 
 
 not as yet greatly lessened the number of its adherents, 
 can hardly be doubted by an unbiassed observer. The 
 prevailing tone of the Methodist congregations is less 
 distinctively religious and more political than in the 
 past generation. Twenty years ago no announcement 
 of a religious meeting failed to attract a large assemblage. 
 Now, throughout the Welsh towns, the annual meetings 
 of the Bible Society (proud as the Methodists are of 
 its Welsh origin) are attended by scanty numbers ; 
 harangues upon some social or political grievances have 
 a far greater fascination. This is one of many symptoms 
 indicative of the fact that the simple, fervent, unworldly 
 piety of the original Methodists has given place, in some 
 measure, to the partisan zeal of a jealous sectarianism. 
 
 At the same time, the influence of the Nonconformist 
 ministers is still very considerable. I will venture to 
 write a few words concerning a class of men who, since 
 the election of 1868, have been the objects of excessive 
 praise and of excessive depreciation. As a body of 
 public teachers they have faults and defects, not few, nor 
 difficult to perceive. Their knowledge is necessarily 
 partial and scanty ; their experience and views of life 
 narrow ; they almost always seem to regard the Incar- 
 nation as having first displayed its power in the sixteenth 
 century, and as having been virtually inoperative in 
 Wales until their own sect arose in the eighteenth ; 
 their feelings are strong, and their prejudices are suffi- 
 ciently violent to make their language and conduct at 
 times somewhat unscrupulous. But they have also 
 many great and admirable qualities. They are in-
 
 The Church, of the Cymry. 155 
 
 dustrious, zealous, generally moral, have a great thirst 
 for knowledge, and many of them are gifted with 
 abilities of a very high order. Their faults are in a great 
 measure attributable to the system upon which they 
 depend for maintenance. The author of the very able 
 essay on " The Causes of Dissent in Wales," wrote of 
 them thirty-five years ago in these words : " From the 
 days of the Sophists of Athens down to those of the 
 Mendicant Orders in the Romish Church, experience is 
 but little in favour of ethical teachers dependent on the 
 breath of popular favour. Instructors thus circum- 
 stanced have generally been found prone to sacrifice 
 truth to novelty, to the varying passions, the prejudices, 
 or the morbid ingenuity of their audience. The operation 
 of a similar influence is but too strongly apparent in the 
 religious economy of the Dissenters of our own times ; 
 ethical novelty was never more industriously pursued in 
 the schools of ancient Athens, than it is in our days in 
 the chapels of our modern separatists." 
 
 At one time the influence of the Dissenting teachers 
 in Wales was greater than it is now. In the earlier 
 part of the century they were regarded by a simple 
 peasantry with feelings of reverence and warm affection. 
 What was the source of those feelings ? I think their 
 poverty and humble social position gave them a great 
 measure of their influence. In those days that poverty 
 presented an honourable contrast to the worldliness of 
 many of the Bishops and higher clergy. To illustrate 
 the nature of this contrast, I must write a few lines 
 concerning some of the features of Church patronage
 
 156 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 in Wales. I shall not dwell at any length upon the 
 subject, as it has been exhausted in a work to which I 
 have more than once alluded. To give, however, to 
 those who are unacquainted with the subject some idea 
 of the extent to which native intellect and ability have 
 been proscribed during the last hundred and fifty years, 
 I will briefly state a few facts which cannot be questioned. 
 During a period of eighty-five years, throughout which 
 the Welsh sees were mainly filled by Welshmen, and 
 the Welsh people attached to the Church, the number 
 of native clergymen holding the higher preferments 
 was sixty. During a subsequent period of the same 
 length, in which Nonconformity reached its present 
 proportions, under English Bishops, the number of 
 natives holding any of the higher preferments was 
 only ten. As recently as in 1834, Church revenues in 
 the county of Montgomery, to the amount of 13,930 
 per annum, were enjoyed by sinecurists and absentees, 
 almost without an exception relatives of the alien 
 Bishops ; while the aggregate incomes of the working 
 resident clergy amounted to only 8511 per annum. 
 Early in the present century a Bishop of St. Asaph had 
 managed to confer upon himself and those of his own 
 household 23,679 per annum, while the entire body 
 of resident working clergy divided amongst them 
 j 18,391 per annum. This prelate was sent into Wales 
 to preach to its people the doctrines that flow from the 
 reality of the Divine-Human self-sacrifice of Calvary. 
 The law has now made these gross scandals impossible. 
 But sad it is to think that there have been Bishops who
 
 The Church of the Cymry.* 157 
 
 were not, in these matters, a law to themselves. The 
 secret is to be found, perhaps, in the nature of their 
 position. The position of a richly endowed Bishop, 
 having nominal oversight of a diocese, the language 
 and feelings of whose people he does not understand, 
 carries with it an influence deadening to the moral 
 sense, and especially to the higher impulses of the 
 spiritual life. Hence, doubtless, the gross exhibitions 
 of worldliness which I have described. 
 
 The eloquent denunciation of this worldliness of 
 Church dignitaries in a past generation, illustrated by 
 the poverty of their own lives, secured to the Dissenting 
 preachers that moral power which even the semblance 
 of self-sacrifice sometimes produces. These Church 
 abuses have been in later years removed ; and their 
 removal has proportionately lessened the influence of 
 those whose eloquence was employed in denouncing 
 them. But as long as the policy is maintained of 
 sending into Wales Bishops alien in language and 
 feeling, the Cymric people will not forget the wrongs 
 they have suffered, nor learn to regard the Church as 
 anything but an engine wielded, in the name of religion, 
 to crush out their national spirit, and to outrage their 
 national self-respect. 
 
 To return, however, to the Nonconformist ministers. 
 Although their influence in Wales is still great, there 
 are not wanting signs that they are destined to 
 experience the fate of their historical predecessors, the 
 itinerant preachers of the Mendicant Orders of the pre- 
 Reformation Church. The words in which Blunt has
 
 158 +The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 described the gradual wane of the influence which those 
 once powerful instructors exercised over the masses, are 
 not inapplicable to the growing experience of those 
 modern teachers, who, while professing a peculiar pride 
 in their dependence upon voluntary contributions, are 
 compelled to have recourse to concerts, tea-meetings, 
 lectures, lotteries, and other undignified sources of 
 revenue, to supplement the results of popular liberality. 
 " Indeed, the frailty of human nature soon found out 
 the weak places of the Mendicant system. Soon had 
 the primitive zeal of its founders burnt itself out ; and 
 then its censer was no longer lighted with fire from the 
 Altar ; a living was to be made ; the populace was to 
 be alarmed, or caressed, or cajoled out of a subsistence. 
 However humiliating may be the truth, experience has 
 sanctioned it as a truth, that an indigent Church makes 
 a corrupt clergy." 
 
 There is a very prevalent popular fallacy which 
 has in no slight degree conduced to the popularity of 
 the mendicant teachers of religion in all ages. The 
 populace, seeing their teacher poor, are apt to jump to 
 the conclusion that he must therefore be unworldly. 
 They forget that these professors of unworldliness are 
 almost invariably from the humblest ranks of life, and 
 that to them the position and emoluments of a preacher 
 afford a worldly rise, often greater than the highest 
 Church preferments afford to the educated members of 
 the wealthier classes. Hence worldliness gives the false 
 call into the ministry of the Dissenting societies no less 
 than of the Church. The only difference is a social, not
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 159 
 
 a moral one. The falsely called Dissenting minister is 
 usually a worldly peasant ; the falsely called clergy- 
 man a worldly gentleman. This fallacy runs through 
 all those superficial commonplaces talked about the 
 poverty of the Church in her origin. That kind of 
 language bespeaks a covertly Socinian conception of the 
 Person of our Blessed Lord. To many unconscious of 
 their Socinianism, He appears only as the poor Man, 
 known as the carpenter's Son. They forget the endow- 
 ment of infinite power manifested in the water made 
 wine, the bread multiplied, and the corpses reanimated. 
 In the combination in His Person of infinite command 
 of material wealth, with infinite unwillingness to use it 
 for selfish purposes, we find a guidance to a true con- 
 ception of the perfect state of the Church's organization. 
 The Church, which is the extension of the Incarnation, 
 is then in her true relation to matter when endowed 
 with the command of material resources, but also 
 animated, in the persons of her ministers, by that Divine 
 spirit of self-denial which teaches them not to use those 
 resources for their own physical aggrandizement or 
 indulgence, but for furthering the welfare of humanity, 
 so that men be constrained to say, " They save others ; 
 themselves they cannot save." Also in the ministry of 
 the Apostles, endowed as they were with supernatural 
 powers, we behold the Church placed in the same 
 position, rich, yet for others' sake making herself poor. 
 Very deeply, however, is this fallacy seated in the 
 popular mind. And so the populace are ever apt to 
 mistake poverty in circumstances, which ought not to
 
 160 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 be an attribute of the clergy, for that nobler attribute 
 poverty in spirit which no true clergyman can ever 
 fail to manifest. Hence, in different ages, the temporary 
 popularity of the teachers recommended by their 
 mendicant position. But fallacies are ever destined to 
 be refuted by the logic of experience. 
 
 This fallacy, however, as I have said, has, in its day, 
 contributed to the popular power of the Dissenting 
 preachers of Wales. I would not write harshly of a 
 class of men who have done much good, and exhibited 
 many noble qualities. To assert, however, that they 
 are free from the faults to which the system of main- 
 tenance upon which they depend exposes them ; to say 
 that they never cajole, never mislead their hearers, 
 never retain their allegiance and their contributions by 
 making exaggerated statements to perpetuate their 
 prejudice against the Church, from which they have 
 schismatically seceded, would not be true. But that 
 they also number among them many excellent men, 
 some of rare natural ability and of great oratorical 
 power, which, with due culture, would have made them 
 worthy of holding high places among the clergy of the 
 Church, is equally true. 
 
 Within the present year Welsh Calvinistic Methodism 
 has lost its greatest preacher 1 of this generation. The 
 leading representative of a sect which denies the ne- 
 cessity of Episcopacy, he was a witness to its truth by 
 exercising over his countrymen more than Episcopal 
 influence. Of humble parentage, owing all to self- 
 
 * Henry Rees.
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 1 6 1 
 
 culture, he was endowed with natural gifts that would 
 have made him remarkable in any assembly of men. 
 A head and face of Apostolic power ; a native dignity 
 of presence worthy of a prince of the Church ; a keen 
 analytical intellect, and a surpassing power of sacred 
 oratory combined with deep religious faith, and a 
 blameless life, secured to him an influence over the 
 minds of his countrymen that has fallen to the share 
 of no Bishop in Wales during the last hundred and fifty 
 years. He wore no mitre and enjoyed no revenue, but 
 he was, for all that, in his day the successor of St. David 
 in his authority over the religious mind of his country. 
 Had he, under happier auspices, received the culture of 
 a scientific theology, and the knowledge of sacramental 
 truth, he would have become a prelate whose eloquence 
 would have borne comparison with that of the most 
 gifted occupant of the Episcopal Bench. Through a 
 long life he held himself aloof, with a singular dignity 
 of character, from those paths of political agitation and 
 sectarian bitterness into which so many Nonconformist 
 ministers have wandered. Why was that man tempted 
 to feed his soul upon the half-truths of an obscure sect, 
 and his genius lost to the Church ? An Episcopate 
 alien in language and in feeling supplies the answer. 
 
 Although no candid clergyman can deny that, in the 
 presence of a Church organization defectively worked, 
 the Nonconforming societies have effected a valuable 
 supplementary work in the scriptural instruction of large 
 numbers of the Cymric people, it would be wrong to 
 attribute to their system a religious stability capable of 
 
 M
 
 1 62 The CJiurch of the Cymry. 
 
 resisting the strong earthward attraction that lowers in 
 all schismatic bodies the tenets of high spiritual truths. 
 If it were possible that the candlestick of the Church in 
 Wales should be removed, and the negative systems of 
 Nonconformity substituted, no sober man can doubt 
 that in a few generations the masses of this quick-witted 
 impulsive people would be in danger of sinking into 
 some of the various gradations of Socinianism, or even 
 into some of the lower stages of naturalism. The 
 position of Nonconformist faith is like "an inclined plane, 
 upon which individuals may make a safe stand, but 
 generations cannot." It is, therefore, of supreme impor- 
 tance to the welfare of my country that the causes which 
 alienate its people from the Church should be removed. 
 What are those causes ? The influences of an alien 
 Episcopate productive of a clergy in its own likeness. 
 
 The regeneration of the Church of the Cymry, by 
 the restoration of the masses into her fold, can assuredly 
 be effected by none other than native Bishops and native 
 clergy. I have already dwelt upon the marked differ- 
 ences of natural temperament that distinguish the Welsh 
 from their English neighbours differences requiring 
 corresponding differences in the modes of religious 
 teaching and ministration. It requires no arguments 
 to prove that the presence in Wales during a hundred 
 and fifty years of Bishops incapable of performing Epis- 
 copal functions in the language of the people, has been 
 an indecent violation of the principle of the twenty-fourth 
 Article, and an undeserved outrage upon the national 
 sensibilities of the Cymric people. If space allowed, I
 
 The Ch^lrch of the Cymry. 163 
 
 should have no difficulty in showing how signally these 
 " Fathers in God " have failed in creating an influential 
 clergy. Gruffydd Jones, early in the last century, wrote 
 of the gulf that separates them from the masses in these 
 words, "The common people being of a different language, 
 and unable to make known their grievances, their lord- 
 ships are therefore obliged to credit the testimonies and 
 to see with the eyes of others." Now, in such a countiy 
 as Wales, it always must be that a very large proportion 
 of the clergy will be drawn from the ranks of "the 
 people." Ignorance of the language and feelings of the 
 people, therefore, implies ignorance of the antecedent 
 associations of a large number of their clergy. To this 
 cause is it due that many young men from the lower 
 social strata, furthermore defective in natural abilities, 
 are not seldom admitted into Holy Orders. In a word, 
 the Bishops and pastors of the flock, ignorant of the 
 people and their language, instead of being able " faith- 
 fully and wisely to make choice of fit persons to serve 
 in the sacred ministry of the Church," are compelled to 
 lay hands suddenly upon unfit men. 
 
 But indirectly in their influence upon the clergy, the 
 withering effects of the "alien Episcopate" are painfully 
 apparent. The native clergy, subjected for generations 
 to systematic exclusion from the higher positions in 
 their profession, and depressed as ecclesiastical Helots, 
 have lost confidence, self-respect, and moral tone. Their 
 numbers are now but rarely recruited by the ablest and 
 most high-spirited of their countrymen. Knowing that 
 for the higher offices of his native Church no Welshman
 
 164 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 need apply, Welshmen of spirit have not failed to seek 
 professions in which their nationality is no barrier to 
 their honourable and legitimate advancement. 
 
 Furthermore, English dignitaries appointed to Cymric 
 sees, in entering (as in many cases) for the first time a 
 country virtually foreign to them, have generally brought 
 with them a retinue of English adherents. These 
 clergymen have, as a rule, been gradually placed in the 
 most commanding positions of the diocese. They 
 naturally have the reputation of being especially " in 
 the confidence of the Bishop." Each of them in his 
 sphere exercises a most painfully cowing influence upon 
 the surrounding native clergy, many of whom, being 
 poor men with families, have the best of reasons for 
 sinking all independence of spirit. These rectories and 
 vicarages (many of them occupied by excellent men, 
 who have every qualification for ministerial success, 
 save knowledge of the people and their language) are 
 centres of influence not dissimilar to the influence which 
 the Norman castles, whose ruins dot the country, were 
 erected to exercise in depressing the national spirit of 
 the native chieftains. The cowed spirit of the natives 
 has been abundantly evident in the patient endurance 
 of a proscription that has degraded them and ruined 
 the influence of the Church, and poisoned and embittered 
 the entire social atmosphere of Wales. They could not 
 venture to give expression to their feelings of indignation. 
 
 But in another way the effects of the " alien Episco- 
 pate" have tended to make the native clergy unin- 
 fluential. The " Father in God " in the course of time
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 165 
 
 moulds his clergy into his own image. Hence even the 
 native clergy, save a few stronger natures, gradually 
 lose their Celtic characteristics of manner and diction. 
 The Cymric fervour, indispensable to effectual ministra- 
 tions in Wales, is rarely found in the churches, but is 
 as rarely wanting in the chapels. The average Cymric 
 clergyman (especially if he is in the favour of his 
 Bishop), ministering in the native language, is not him- 
 self, but is a feeble imitation of an Englishman. The 
 native genius of every people must be developed in 
 freedom according to the law of its own individuality. 
 
 In another relation, also, the clergy lose their in^ 
 fluence in consequence of their denationalized sympathies 
 and Anglicized forms of thoughts and feelings. The 
 Cymry are a social, warm-hearted, affectionate people, 
 fond of the excitement of large assemblages and the 
 quickened sympathy of social gatherings. The cohesion 
 of the Dissenting congregations depends in no slight 
 degree upon the " Gyfeillach," the weekly reunion of 
 religious friends. A clergy affecting, in imitation of 
 their leading dignitaries, a contempt for the Cymric 
 language and people, and an indifference to Cymric 
 tastes, very soon lost their influence over a warm-hearted 
 people, who sought the satisfaction of their yearnings 
 in systems which extended to them a larger sympathy. 
 
 Moreover, not a few of the Anglicized clergy 
 (especially those most deficient in culture) have assumed 
 airs of social superiority, while at the same time losing 
 sight of the very real and inalienable ground of higher 
 authority which they possess. If the clergy have any
 
 1 66 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 claims to the allegiance of the people superior to those 
 of the Dissenting preachers, those claims rest not upon 
 their social distinctions, nor yet upon the establishment 
 of the Church, but upon the original mission of that 
 Church, and their own Apostolical Orders. Too 
 many Welsh clergymen, however, losing sight of these 
 momentous attributes, have preferred to regard them- 
 selves as better-paid, better-clad rivals of the sectarian 
 preachers. Naturally, therefore, do the masses fail to 
 realize in the clergy any greater difference than that 
 which distinguishes the workmen of a Government 
 dockyard from those of better-managed private yards. 
 This ignorance of fundamental Church truths, when 
 combined with social arrogance, and bitter, though 
 feeble, denunciations of Dissent, has contributed to 
 weaken the influence of the clergy in Wales. 
 
 I must briefly allude to a prevalent opinion concern- 
 ing the present weakness of the Church in Wales. The 
 Bishops and clergy, seeing the masses alienated from 
 her fold, generally attribute it to the want of material 
 resources for the erection of schools and churches, and 
 the provision of additional ministrations. They con- 
 clude, therefore, that the co-operation of the gentry and 
 landowners would, by the contribution of money on the 
 one hand, and by the exercise of social influence on the 
 other, conciliate the native population, and restore them 
 to the Church. Thus they too often put their trust in 
 princes, and confine their attention to the thin upper 
 crust of society in Wales. Not seldom has it occurred 
 that religious services in the parish church are provided
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 167 
 
 for a few English families, forming, perhaps, a fifth of 
 the population, while the four-fifths native Welsh are 
 entirely neglected. So much has this been the rule 
 among the higher clergy in Wales, that Mr. Gilbert 
 Scott, in his report upon the Cathedral of St. David, 
 thought it necessary to use these words : " God forbid 
 that in the Church of the patron saint of Wales the 
 Welsh should be neglected. Though an Englishman, I 
 am ready to cry heartily, " Wales for the Welsh ! " and 
 to add, "The Church of Wales for the Welsh, and 
 a fortiori the Cathedral of St. David's for the Welsh." 
 
 No.v, I would by no means underrate the valuable 
 influence for good of the higher classes in Wales. But 
 that influence can never restore to the Church the 
 affections of a people the cause of whose alienation is 
 to be found in the violation of their national sympathies. 
 On the other hand, if the Church can regain the attach- 
 ment of the religious Cymric masses by the efforts of 
 a native clergy and Episcopate, she will not want (all 
 experience teaches us) the support of the rich and noble, 
 who now make the estrangement of the people an 
 excuse for withholding their contributions from her 
 Altars. The Church, whenever it cannot be said that 
 the " common people hear her gladly," is not in her true 
 position. 
 
 At the same time, it is a great evil that the social 
 princes of a country should not worship at the same 
 Altars before which the masses adore the Life. That 
 separation destroys the health of the social system 
 which arises from the living mutual sympathy of all
 
 168 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 classes, and the performance by all, in the light of the 
 one faith, of their relative duties. Alienated in religion 
 from the masses, the social leaders forget the duties 
 of sacrifice, sympathy, and benevolence, and the great 
 verity of the essential equality and brotherhood of 
 humanity, that underlie the necessary distinctions of 
 social sphere and position. Alienated in religion from 
 their social leaders, the masses are apt to become 
 narrow, jealous, and discontented levellers. The Church, 
 when she becomes the representative of a class, is but 
 a mutilated form of the mystical Body of Christ. 
 
 The probability or improbability of the extinction of 
 the Cymric language as a living tongue does not affect 
 in any way the necessity of a native Episcopate and 
 clergy. I have already alluded to the differences of 
 temperament (requiring differences in the ministrations) 
 that mark the Welsh and the English. It is an acknow- 
 ledged maxim among the Welsh Nonconformists that 
 the pastorate of even an English-speaking congregation 
 of Welsh race cannot, with any hope of success, be con- 
 fided to an Englishman. Hence the question is not 
 seriously affected by the extinction or non-extinction 
 of the Welsh language. The national temperament will 
 survive if the national language becomes extinct. But 
 that extinction is not likely to be accomplished for some 
 generations. To-day the ancient tongue is the living 
 language of 700,000 Cymry. The policy hitherto em- 
 ployed to destroy it has assured its longer existence. 
 Nonconformity, the creation of that policy, is intensely 
 Celtic, and its influence tends to prolong the use of the
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 169 
 
 Welsh tongue. The irritation excited in its behalf by the 
 ungenerous means used to extinguish it, has only tended 
 to defer its extinction. 
 
 While no rational man can doubt the necessity of 
 extending universally the knowledge of the English 
 language among the Cymric people, the necessity of 
 quenching the national spirit may well be questioned. 
 Every respect has been studiously paid to the spirit of 
 Scotch nationality. Is it fair that the equally ancient 
 Cymric nationality, more strongly marked, as it is, by 
 the retention of its national language, should be crushed 
 out ? True sentiment and true expediency alike declare, 
 I believe, against a policy so ungenerous, so expressive 
 of the worst attributes of the English national temper 
 attributes which, above all others, have had the effect 
 of involving the empire in strife and perplexity. The 
 millionnaire who acquires an old estate, rinding upon it 
 a single tower, sole remnant of its ancient castle, does 
 not demolish that memorial of the past, but so arranges 
 his modern edifice as to bring it into harmonious rela- 
 tions with that time-honoured fabric that has weathered 
 the winds and rain of a thousand years. The Cymric 
 nationality is the oldest feature in the life of the British 
 people, connecting it with the annals of that ancient 
 race which inhabited this island before the Roman 
 empire had risen to its height. Surely every generous 
 sentiment (rarely at real variance with practical wisdom) 
 dictates that this ancient, loyal, industrious, and order- 
 loving people should, within the obvious limits com- 
 patible with the imperial welfare of the entire British
 
 1 70 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 people, be permitted to cherish the traditions and to 
 develop the free impulses of their distinct national 
 character. The truest utilitarianism will also be found 
 in harmony with the dictates of this sentiment. It is, I 
 believe, a maxim of modern strategy, that two or more 
 columns moving from different bases upon a common 
 centre, strike with a more irresistible impact than a com- 
 bined host moving in one body. This principle would 
 teach the wisdom of permitting the nationalities that form 
 the united people of the British Isles to develop, within 
 due limits, their own distinct, characteristic, national 
 energies. The fiery dash of the Irishman, the fierce per- 
 severance of the Caledonian, the strong, patient resolu- 
 tion of the Englishman, and the spiritual yearnings and 
 quick sensibilities of the Cymro, can all contribute dis- 
 tinct motive impulses that will enable the empire to move 
 onwards for the expulsion of the Canaanitish ignorance 
 and debasement that disfigure some scenes of its life, 
 and the development of a nobler religious spirit, and to 
 march into fuller possession of the promised land that 
 flows with the milk and honey of a healthier social 
 system, a more general enlightenment, and a more 
 harmonious national life. 
 
 The Scotch people are not unreasonably proud of 
 their strong national life. To what is their success in its 
 development attributable ? Dr. Chalmers has traced it 
 to three causes : The ecclesiastical endowments of Scot- 
 land have been enjoyed by a native clergy ; every parish 
 has had its parochial school ; the more gifted youths 
 have been able to obtain the benefits of a high education
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 1 7 1 
 
 in the three national Universities. The Cymric people 
 are only beginning to enjoy the second of these advan- 
 tages, while the first and the last have been persistently 
 withheld from them. 9 
 
 It has long been a maxim of statesmen to ignore the 
 distinct nationality of the Cymric people, and to treat 
 Wales as a part of England. This cannot be a wise 
 policy, based as it is upon a subjective figment. The 
 distinct national character of the Cymry is an objective 
 reality one of the living forces in the imperial life of 
 the British people ; and it is a force which cannot be 
 wisely ignored. The generous policy which recognizes 
 the wisdom of not ignoring Irish ideas in the govern- 
 ment of Ireland, encourages my more patient country- 
 men to hope that their modest demands for a national 
 Episcopate and a national University will not be long 
 refused. 
 
 Every principle of justice and truth dictates the 
 wisdom of appointing to the Cymric sees men of Cymric 
 race and language. That my countrymen could be 
 reconciled to the Church of their fathers by native 
 Bishops and clergy, cannot well be doubted by those 
 who have studied their history. The withdrawal of the 
 ban that has excluded the Welsh clergy from the higher 
 positions in their native Church, would rapidly have the 
 effect of raising their moral and intellectual standard, by 
 adding to their number some of the ablest and most 
 high-spirited of their countrymen. 
 
 That native Bishops would be able to assume an 
 attitude of conciliation, and to organize a system of
 
 172 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 clerical education, by which the fine natural talents now 
 lost to her would be devoted to the service of the 
 Church, is equally certain. They would, in their public 
 utterances and ministrations, be able to strike with 
 effect the strong chords of national feeling ; and the 
 whole force of the powerful sentiment of nationality 
 would no longer be, as it now is, arrayed against the 
 life of the Church. I must add that I write concerning 
 a system. I would not pen a line that could reasonably 
 hurt the personal susceptibilities of the English prelates 
 who preside over the four Cymric dioceses. The prelate 
 appointed to the last vacant see in Wales, though not a 
 Cymro, is a Celt, and has consequently much more 
 sympathy with the Welsh temperament. His Celtic 
 sympathies, joined with the fact that he had acquired 
 the Welsh language, and laboured in one of the chief 
 parishes of Wales in such a manner as to win the 
 profound and affectionate regard of all classes, have 
 combined to render his appointment more popular and 
 his Episcopate more successful than it would otherwise 
 have been. Two other living prelates in Wales have 
 wisely shown a just regard for the national sentiments 
 of the people, and have endeavoured to qualify them- 
 selves for their positions as rulers of the Cymric Church, 
 by attempting to acquire the Cymric language. But 
 their meritorious efforts have not materially added to 
 their power of reaching the minds or influencing the 
 hearts of the people. The Cymric language is a language 
 of which the grammar, though difficult, is easier than 
 the pronunciation. For an adult to acquire that pro-
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 173 
 
 nunciation in such a degree as to enable him to address 
 a Cymric audience with fluency and authority, is almost 
 a physical impossibility. Now, the Cymry, like several 
 other Celtic tribes, have a great love of oratory, and are 
 gifted in a remarkable degree with the natural gifts of 
 the orator. Hence, to them, addresses entirely wanting 
 these attributes are peculiarly distasteful. The sermons, 
 however grammatically composed, which are read falter- 
 ingly, with a most unmistakable foreign accent, and 
 an utter want of native force and fire, are peculiarly 
 ineffective, fall on the ear without reaching the heart, 
 and have a tendency to alienate the people from a 
 Church which unnecessarily subjects them to the 
 necessity of hearing her most authoritative utterances 
 in foreign forms of thought, feeling, and diction. I 
 appeal to an Englishman, animated by the love of 
 justice, and ask him to imagine how the most illustrious 
 German or Frenchman, arriving in an English diocese, 
 and diligently studying grammar, dictionary, and 
 vocabulary, until able to perform the feat of reading in 
 broken English an address upon the subject that most 
 powerfully stirs the emotions of men, would be received. 
 Would a series of such arrivals, extending over a hun- 
 dred and fifty years, to the exclusion of all the native 
 clergy, be tolerated with patience ? No ! His success 
 would be no greater than that which has attended the 
 efforts of the English prelates in Wales. What that 
 success has been, the present position of the Church in 
 Wales abundantly testifies. The living Bishops of the 
 Welsh Church are prelates so illustrious in ability and
 
 1 74 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 character, that I cannot venture to praise, much less to 
 speak evil of them. That they would have eminently 
 adorned the highest position in the Church in their 
 native land, all Welshmen believe. But in Wales they 
 have signally failed. When such men have failed, there 
 are few Englishmen, I believe, who would presume to 
 hope for success. That native Welshmen of inferior 
 attainments would be incomparably more successful in 
 ruling the Welsh Church, is a conviction which few 
 Welshmen do not share. 
 
 It is sometimes asserted that the clergy of Wales do 
 not number men of sufficient attainments and ability 
 to fill the Cymric sees. That the general average of 
 intellectual culture among the Welsh clergy may be 
 lower than it ought to be, is perhaps true. But that 
 depression is obviously due to the effect of that long 
 proscription under which they have suffered. The race 
 which gave Dr. Owen to one side and Archbishop 
 Williams to the other, can hardly be said to want native 
 aptitude for theological science or ecclesiastical adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Indeed, for proof of Welsh administrative talent, I 
 venture to point with confidence to the admirable 
 organization of the most numerous of the Welsh 
 Nonconforming societies. When the materials at their 
 disposal are considered, the founder and present guardians 
 of that organization must be acknowledged to have 
 achieved no contemptible result. Within a very short 
 period, a single individual is known to have recently 
 collected for the erection of the Methodist College at
 
 The Church of the Cymry. 175 
 
 Bala, no less a sum than 25,000 a financial success 
 to which no diocese in Wales under an English Bishop 
 (especially if we bear in mind that the wealth of Wales 
 is mainly in the possession of Churchmen) can be said 
 to have presented any parallel. Welshmen, admitted 
 to the Episcopate of their native Church, will not be 
 found wanting in theological or administrative ability. 
 They have a right to demand a trial of their power. If 
 it is true that 'Apx*i TOV avSpa Saa', it is also true that 
 political and ecclesiastical oppression tends to conceal 
 the capacities of a people. 
 
 The depreciatory estimate which Englishmen are 
 sometimes pleased to express of Welsh qualities, is not, 
 I think, in a slight degree attributable to a strange 
 ignorance of the Welsh people. Throughout this letter, 
 I have frequently used the word " Cymry " in preference 
 to "Welsh." The name "Welsh," " Wealhas " (the 
 Anglo-Saxon equivalent to " strangers "), is singularly 
 significant of the attitude of Englishmen towards us 
 and our country. We are still -strangers. While 
 Englishmen study the language and customs of distant 
 nations, they have in their own island an ancient people 
 of whose inner life they know nothing. In the sixteenth 
 century a quaint writer protested against this attitude 
 towards Wales 
 
 " It is great blame, to writers of our daies, 
 That treates of world and gives to Wales no praise ; 
 They rather hyde in clowde (and cunning foyle) 
 That land than yeeld right glory to that soyle." 
 
 (Churchyard.) 
 
 May we hope that the day will come when this
 
 1 76 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 ignorance shall give way to a warmer appreciation ; 
 when my countrymen shall no longer be known to 
 their fellow-subjects as " Wealhas " by a name which 
 recalls English coldness and indifference but by the 
 name that recalls the significance of their ancient origin 
 and their national characteristics ? 
 
 The Cymry are proud of England proud of being 
 united to its august destinies. They demand in return 
 some degree of justice and consideration. They demand 
 that aliens in language and race be no longer appointed 
 to the sees of the Cymric Church. The selection of an 
 Englishman, who has had the industry to investigate 
 some of the mysteries of Welsh grammar, is not the 
 concession which they demand ; nor is it the concession 
 that will remove the causes that threaten to throw upon 
 the Cymric Church, in the present year, the fierce light 
 of Parliamentary discussion. They demand that men of 
 Cymric race and language be appointed to the Cymric 
 sees. They demand that the evil policy which for a 
 hundred and fifty 'years has degraded the Church in 
 their land from her high and holy mission into a mere 
 instrument for extinguishing their ancient national 
 spirit, be deliberately reversed. They demand that 
 within all the limits not incompatible with true imperial 
 interests and the welfare of the people, they shall be 
 permitted in Church and State to cherish the traditions 
 of their ancient race, and to develop the characteristic 
 gifts of their strong-featured nationality. They demand 
 that the temples of their religion, the influence ever 
 most dominant in their lives, be regarded as the holy
 
 The CJmrch of the Cymry. 177 
 
 places of prayer, truth, and love, and no longer defiled 
 by the unworthy associations of an ungenerous policy, 
 which, while it has signally failed in its earthly object, 
 has broken up the religious unity of their country, 
 disturbed the harmony of their social life, and, instead 
 of the genial concord of a religiously united people, has 
 created bitter envying and strife. 
 
 The Cymric clergy have heard of the tidings of 
 Parliamentary discussion upon the state of their Church 
 with feelings of pain not unmixed with satisfaction. 
 While feeling a painful apprehension that many short- 
 comings will be revealed, they rejoice in the prospect 
 that many grievous wrongs done in the ecclesiastical 
 obscurity of Wales will be brought at last to the light, 
 and judged by the generous English nation as they 
 deserve. They are not much moved by the dread of 
 disestablishment and disendowment. Bitter experience 
 has taught them that there are wrongs that wound the 
 spirit of a people more deeply, and paralyze the spiritual 
 vitality of a Church no less completely, than the loss of 
 ancient revenues. Proud of her august traditions in 
 the past, they have no fears for the destiny of their 
 Church in the future. At the same time, they feel 
 assured that, in an age of which a gross materialism is 
 the worst feature, nothing less than a supreme imperial 
 necessity could induce a wise statesman to devote 
 revenues bequeathed for the quickening and support 
 of the spiritual life, to material purposes, however noble, 
 that do not rise beyond the sphere of the lower physical 
 being of man. Whatever may be the events of the 
 
 N
 
 1 78 The Church of the Cymry. 
 
 future, the Cymric clergy, with strong feelings, in which 
 they are joined by not a few of the foremost Noncon- 
 forming teachers, demand that the justice so long denied 
 to the Cymric Church shall, in future appointments, not 
 be withheld. 
 
 Encouraged by their knowledge of the generosity 
 of your character and the breadth of your sympathies, 
 my countrymen venture to believe that your ears will 
 not be deaf to demands the justice of which cannot be 
 denied. 
 
 I have the honour to be your most obedient Servant, 
 HENRY T. EDWARDS.
 
 WALES AND THE WELSH CHURCH. 1 
 
 IT is not easy to understand the inner life of a people 
 distinct in race, traditions, and language. It is given 
 to some nations beyond others to go out of themselves, 
 and to occupy in thought and feeling the point of view 
 from which men of a different race regard life. The 
 imperial English race, among its many glorious gifts, 
 can hardly reckon this power of self-forgetting sym- 
 pathetic insight as its own. Some of its greatest diffi- 
 culties have their origin in this defect. The inner life 
 of the Celtic and Roman Catholic four millions of 
 Ireland has been a closed book, not only to the people 
 of England, but also, and perhaps in a greater degree, 
 to the million and a half of Teutonic race who have 
 formed the dominant class in Ireland. Social nearness 
 sometimes creates moral distance. There are probably 
 no people in the empire further removed from the 
 mind and heart of the Irish Celts than the Protestant 
 Teutons who have dwelt in local proximity to them, 
 while separated from them by the moral gulf of distinct 
 national temperament, traditions, and aspirations. How 
 
 1 This Essay was written in the spring of 1884.
 
 180 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 to bridge this gulf is the great problem of English 
 statesmanship to-day. The recognition of its existence 
 is pretty nearly all that has been accomplished. For 
 generations the English people were unable to realize 
 the existence of the Irish nature. But by much chas- 
 tening they have been taught that the national cha- 
 racter of the Celts of Ireland is a fact that cannot be 
 superciliously laughed out of existence a force that 
 statesmen must take into account unless they desire to 
 shatter the fabric of our imperial unity. 
 
 The educated Welshman, who has a real and not 
 a pretended mastery of the Welsh language, who by 
 reading the Welsh journals and literature, and con- 
 versing freely with the million of Welsh-speaking trades- 
 men, farmers, quarrymen, colliers, and labourers in the 
 language of their hearts and homes, can enter into their 
 thoughts and feelings, is continually reminded that the 
 inner life of Ireland is not the only mystery as yet 
 unmastered by the English mind. And as in Ireland, 
 so in Wales, the resident Anglicized classes, ignorant 
 of the native language and out of sympathy with the 
 people, are the greatest strangers, separated by the 
 deepest gulf of prejudice and dislike from that curious 
 survival the distinct inner national life of Wales. 
 
 In earlier ages the geographical features of Wales 
 were a mystery which the English rulers had not 
 mastered. In recording Archbishop Baldwin's progress 
 through Wales in 1188, to enlist soldiers for the 
 Crusade, Dean Hook has written 
 
 " The interior of Wales was as little known as the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 181 
 
 interior of Africa at the present time. It was a country 
 which had never been explored by Anglo-Saxons or 
 by Anglo-Normans. An opportunity for surveying the 
 country was now offered, which was not to be lost." 
 
 The interior topography of Wales is no longer 
 unknown to Englishmen. The geologists of England 
 have carefully surveyed its mountains, rocks, and vales. 
 The railway has revealed to the English tourist the 
 mysteries of the Wye, the Towy, the Tivy, the Dovey, 
 the Dee, and the Conway, and opened to his gaze the 
 secrets of Snowdonia. But it is still true that the more 
 important " interior of Wales," namely, the social and 
 religious life of the Welsh people, is as little, indeed often 
 less known, than the social and religious characteristics 
 of the Zulus, Basutos, and Bechuanos. But the veil 
 is about to be lifted. A crusade, different in aim from 
 that of the twelfth century, is about to offer " an oppor- 
 tunity for surveying the country . . . not to be lost." 
 
 The Liberationist agitation and the Parliamentary 
 discussion about to be turned upon Wales will throw 
 a somewhat fierce light upon the hitherto hidden life. 
 The unselfish Churchmen of Wales do not regret the 
 approach of that light. They know that, if it will dis- 
 close painful wounds and weaknesses, it will also expose 
 the false pretences and the self-interested shams by 
 which the ancient Church of Wales has been brought 
 to the verge of ruin. 
 
 Mr. Dillwyn, the respected member for Swansea, has 
 given notice that, in the next session of Parliament, he 
 will call attention to the anomalous position of the
 
 1 82 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 Church in Wales ; and it is understood that measures 
 are being taken by the Liberation Society to elicit, by 
 means of an organized agitation, an expression of 
 Welsh public opinion in favour of the motion. This 
 assault is regarded by some as peculiarly ominous. It 
 will be remembered that a similar motion, proposed 
 annually by the same honest and consistent politician, 
 preceded the disestablishment and disendowment of the 
 Church of Ireland in 1869. Mr. Dillwyn possibly hopes 
 to repeat the triumph of his earlier days, and to win 
 a success denied to Mr. Watkin Williams, when in 1870 
 he submitted a similar motion to the consideration of 
 the House of Commons. But it is difficult to suppose 
 that so experienced a politician can anticipate the pos- 
 sibility of dealing with the four Welsh dioceses, an 
 integral portion of the province of Canterbury, sepa- 
 rately from the Church of England. Although hardly 
 expecting any direct results from his movement, Mr. 
 Dillwyn may well believe that it will not be fruitless. 
 A skilful general often leads a portion of his forces out 
 of his camp, and feigns an attack upon some point in 
 the position of his adversary, though well aware that 
 he cannot by his partial movement occupy the ground 
 that he threatens. But the march has its uses. It 
 exercises the troops, increases their confidence, and 
 perhaps worries the enemy. These are solid advantages, 
 unless they happen to be counterbalanced by the fact 
 that, if there be a skilful leader in the opposite camp, 
 they put him upon his guard, and enable him to recog- 
 nize and to strengthen the weak points of his position.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 183 
 
 The analogy between the Welsh Church in 1883 and 
 the Church of Ireland in 1869 is more apparent than 
 real. It is true that in Ireland, during the existence of 
 the Established Church, the Roman Catholic Noncon- 
 formists outnumbered the members of that Church by 
 four to one. Those who assume to speak on behalf of 
 the Protestant Nonconformists of Wales claim for them 
 a similar majority. What the relative numbers of 
 Churchmen and Nonconformists in Wales really are, it 
 is very difficult to determine. No reliable statistics are 
 forthcoming. But it cannot be questioned that as the 
 Roman Catholics in Ireland, so the worshippers in the 
 Nonconformist chapels in Wales, form a very consider- 
 able majority of the entire population of Wales. But 
 there the analogy between Ireland and Wales ceases. 
 The Irish Roman Catholics were a homogeneous body 
 occupying the same position, and all separated from the 
 Established Church by the same deep gulf of conviction 
 and feeling. Very few ever crossed that gulf. But in 
 Wales the separation of the Nonconformists from the 
 Church is more apparent than real. There are thousands 
 who have departed, not from the Church, but from the 
 clergy. They object not to her creeds or her forms of 
 worship, but to the lifeless ministration of the clergy- 
 man by whose inefficiency they may happen to be 
 afflicted. They often avail themselves of the occasional 
 offices of the Church, though preferring to avail them- 
 selves of the eloquent preaching in the Nonconformist 
 chapels on the Sundays. Thousands who at one time 
 of life and in one place of residence are Nonconformists,
 
 184 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 when they move into another district blessed with a 
 more efficient parish priest, are found to conform. A 
 very large number of the Nonconformists in almost 
 every district of Wales are glad to attend their parish 
 church on the occasion of harvest festivals, choral fes- 
 tivals, or when some clergyman of special eminence 
 happens to occupy the pulpit. Such occasional con- 
 formity by no means proves that they do not value the 
 system and ministration of the chapels, which they 
 habitually attend, but it does prove that they are not 
 entirely alienated from the Church of their fathers. 
 
 So shrewd an observer as Mr. Dillwyn, therefore, can 
 hardly have failed to realize that the mental attitude 
 of the vast majority of Welsh Nonconformists towards 
 the Church is essentially different from that which the 
 Roman Catholics of Ireland occupied towards the 
 Church disestablished in 1869. There are some who 
 think that the wisdom of the Irish disestablishment has 
 hardly been conclusively demonstrated by the results. 
 Even those who most warmly commended the measure, 
 as an act of justice, must sorrowfully admit that the 
 beneficial fruits which they expected have been some- 
 what slow in ripening. The state of Ireland is hardly 
 such as to encourage those who propose to apply to 
 Wales, under conditions essentially different, that policy 
 which, when carried into effect under circumstances that 
 seemed to offer the fullest justification in theory, has 
 hardly been justified by the practical results. 
 
 But as the question of the Welsh Church has been 
 seriously raised, it is to be hoped that it will be dis-
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 185 
 
 cussed by all parties in a candid, earnest spirit, without 
 violent prejudice or unnecessary acrimony. It is a 
 question of momentous importance, not only to the 
 Welsh people of to-day, but to all coming generations. 
 It behoves all patriotic Welshmen to realize solemnly 
 the principle that ought to guide them, and the aim 
 that ought to inspire them in determining, as far as it 
 rests with them, the fate of the ancient Church of their 
 country. The highest and most lasting good of the 
 Welsh people is the object at which Churchmen and 
 Nonconformists alike ought to aim. If it can be shown 
 that the disestablishment and disendowment of their 
 Church will tend to promote the unity and happiness, 
 the intellectual enlightenment and moral elevation, of 
 the Welsh people, it will be the duty of Churchmen to 
 rise above the power of prejudice, to acquiesce in a 
 change which they have distrusted, and to adapt them- 
 selves with manful courage and self-sacrifice to the new 
 conditions. On the other hand, if there is reason to 
 believe that the Church, which is the oldest institution 
 of this ancient people, though unpopular and forsaken 
 by the masses during recent generations, still offers 
 noble possibilities of infinite good that no modern 
 system or combination of systems can give ; that the 
 grievous evils which have afflicted her, and made some 
 of the Welsh people impatient of her existence, are not 
 inherent in her system, but abuses which they have 
 power to remove ; that she is capable of a reform and 
 revival which, without impairing the noble energies 
 that have been developed by the free genius of Welsh
 
 i86 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 religion in the Nonconformist societies, will give to the 
 higher life of Wales a spiritual harmony, a moral ele- 
 vation, a social happiness, and an intellectual progress 
 that cannot be equally assured by any other influence, 
 then it is to be hoped that the patriotic Nonconformists 
 and earnest Liberals of Wales will resist the temptation 
 of yielding to the not unprovoked instincts of resentful 
 sectarian rivalry, and the not unnatural desire of a 
 party triumph. It is most earnestly to be desired that 
 violent, unreasoning declamation may be avoided on 
 both sides, and that this grave question may be con- 
 sidered by Welshmen in the calm, dispassionate spirit' 
 of unselfish religious patriotism. It will be the duty 
 of Churchmen freely to admit all the weaknesses and 
 shortcomings of the Church in the past, although 
 they may honestly believe that she has the capacity of 
 reform, and the power of conferring blessings that Wales 
 cannot afford to lose. It will also be their duty to 
 recognize candidly and unreservedly all the beneficent 
 service that the Nonconformist bodies during the last 
 hundred and fifty years have rendered, and to-day are 
 rendering, the Welsh people. At the same time, the 
 nobler sort of Nonconformists, while confidently assured 
 of the inestimable service which their systems have con- 
 ferred upon their country, will not fail to ask whether 
 those systems are qualified to render all the service that 
 is needed, and whether there may not be certain forms 
 of influence essential to the highest progress of the 
 Welsh people which the ancient Church, duly reformed, 
 is specially qualified to exercise, and which will be for
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 187 
 
 ever lost, in a great measure, if she is violently removed 
 from the position that she has inherited. 
 
 That the position of the Church in Wales is anoma- 
 lous at present, all honest men must admit. There are 
 two alternative policies offered for the removal of the 
 anomaly the policy of disestablishment and disendow- 
 ment, and the policy of reform and comprehensive 
 revival. In order to decide between these two methods, 
 it will be necessary to consider 
 
 I. The condition of the Welsh people. 
 
 (1) Their distinct nationality and language. 
 
 (2) Their religious life. 
 
 (3) Their social state. 
 
 (4) The average morality prevalent among them. 
 
 (5) Their educational state and intellectual develop- 
 ment 
 
 It will be necessary, also, to bear in mind 
 
 II. The governing influences that have long been, 
 and are still, moulding the character of the Welsh people. 
 
 (1) The pulpit and platform. 
 
 (2) The diaconate, or " Set Fawr," which may be 
 translated " the seat of the elders." 
 
 (3) The Sunday schools. 
 
 (4) The native press and literature. 
 
 (5) The Eisteddfod, or congress of bards and musi- 
 cians. 
 
 III. It will be necessary to consider what work the 
 Church of Wales, if efficient, ought to have done under 
 these conditions, and to trace the causes that have dis- 
 abled her from adapting herself to the genius of the
 
 1 88 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 Welsh people, and from wielding her share of the in- 
 fluences that dominate their life. 
 
 IV. After such an investigation, it will be possible 
 to consider more effectually the comparative advantages 
 that Church disestablishment and Church reform seem 
 to offer to the Welsh people. 
 
 It is natural to individuals of strong wills and firmly 
 fixed ideas to be impatient of other types of character, 
 and to think it desirable that men should be remodelled 
 after their own mould, and conformed to their own 
 image. This tendency also exists in powerful, strong- 
 willed nations. Perhaps there is no nation in which it 
 exists more strongly than in the English. A vigorous 
 Englishman, in his natural unchastened state, has a 
 noble contempt for types of life not exactly conformed 
 to his own, and judges without much delay that all 
 things un-English are unjustifiable. 
 
 The distinct nationality and language of Wales 
 have for centuries been a sore trial to the patience of 
 the English people. The Welsh national type is more 
 strongly marked and more tenacious of existence than 
 either the Irish or Scotch. The survival of the language 
 through so many centuries, within two hundred miles 
 of London, notwithstanding persistent efforts made by 
 the rulers in Church and State to consign it to death, 
 is a proof that Welsh nationality has an extraordinary 
 tenacity of life. The fact almost suffices, even in this 
 sceptical age, to win credence for the ancient prophecy 
 that has for centuries been on the lips of Welshmen in 
 the verse
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 189 
 
 "Eu Ner a folant, 
 Eu hiaith a gad want, 
 Eu tir a gollant, 
 
 Ond gwyllt Walia." 
 
 ' ' Their Lord they will worship, 
 Their language they will keep, 
 Their land they shall lose, 
 
 Except wild Wales." 
 
 This undying tenacity moved the admiration of the 
 French historian, Thierry, which he eloquently ex- 
 pressed in the well-known passage, " These feeble re- 
 mains of a great people had the glory of keeping 
 possession of their last corner of territory, against the 
 efforts of an enemy immensely superior in numbers and 
 resources often vanquished, but never subjugated, and 
 bearing through the course of ages the unshaken con- 
 viction of a mysterious eternity reserved for their name 
 and their language." 
 
 There are many who do not share the eloquent 
 Frenchman's admiration, but regard this national 
 tenacity as Welsh narrowness and obstinacy. It cannot 
 be denied that there are limits within which the culti- 
 vation of national peculiarities should be retained. The 
 national distinctions that lessen the usefulness of a 
 nation in the world, and cramp its power of contributing 
 to the universal weal of the human family, ought to be 
 cast away. But the distinct national gifts that form 
 the peculiar genius of a national character ought to be 
 retained and cultivated, for they increase the sum of 
 the moral and intellectual capital of mankind. The 
 brothers in a family are often variously gifted, and
 
 190 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 have distinct gifts of character. It is not well for the 
 family that the strong brother, exulting in his own gifts, 
 should despise and attempt to crush the weaker, whose 
 gifts, though of a different order, are no less real and 
 no less necessary, in their degree, to the full life of the 
 home. A man cannot change the nature he has re- 
 ceived, although he can develop and cultivate it. The 
 best of us must not expect our neighbours to transform 
 themselves into our image, however desirable we may 
 deem it. As in individuals, so in nationalities, there 
 are typical distinctions which are imperishable, and 
 which the will of man can no more change than he 
 can add a cubit to his stature. 
 
 The Welsh are conscious of a distinct and strongly 
 marked nationality. Any attempt to turn Welshmen 
 into Englishmen by Act of Parliament, or by a line of 
 civil or ecclesiastical administration, will be vain. But 
 the Welsh are a loyal, sensible, practical people. They 
 are impatient of arrogant dictation and patronizing 
 condescension, but they are eager for progress, and 
 ready to accept all reasonable counsels to aid them in 
 pursuing it. They are perfectly prepared to cast aside, 
 as soon as possible, all national peculiarities of which 
 it is possible for them to divest themselves, if it can be 
 shown that they can thereby become more useful and 
 honourable subjects of the Queen and citizens of the 
 world. But they feel that there are certain well-defined 
 limits, within which it will be for their own happiness 
 and for the advantage of the empire, that they should 
 cultivate their own special gifts and live their own life.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 191 
 
 It is well that upon this vexed question, so little under- 
 stood by the English public, some authority more con- 
 clusive than the testimony of an individual should be 
 cited. Such an authority is found in the " Report of 
 the Committee appointed to inquire into the Condition 
 of Intermediate and Higher Education in Wales," pub- 
 lished in 1 88 1. The Committee had for its chairman, 
 in Lord Aberdare, a nobleman of known ability, of 
 wide culture, of great social accomplishments, and sin- 
 gularly free (perhaps, some would say, excessively free) 
 from any partiality for Welsh peculiarities. It also 
 numbered among its members, in the late Canon 
 Robinson, one of the ablest and most enlightened 
 educationists of the day. As the members of the Com- 
 mittee traversed the whole of Wales, and examined 
 witnesses from all sections of the population in every 
 district concerning the religious, social, and intellectual 
 condition of Wales, their conclusions are entitled to 
 respect. Those who know well the inner life of Wales, 
 will gratefully acknowledge that juster and wiser 
 words have rarely been used upon the vexed subject 
 of Welsh nationality than in the following passage of 
 the valuable Report, to which, in the course of this 
 article, it will be necessary to refer again. 
 
 " In any recommendations to be made with re- 
 ference to intermediate and higher education in Wales, 
 it appears to us that account should be taken of the 
 particular circumstances and distinctive characteristics 
 of the country, and that it should be considered how 
 far these justify us in recommending the adoption of
 
 192 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 provisions for which there has hitherto been no actual 
 precedent. 
 
 " i. The first thing to be noted is that Wales has a 
 distinct nationality of its own. The fact that Welsh- 
 men are thoroughly loyal to the Government under 
 which they live, that they are satisfied to possess the 
 same institutions and be governed by the same laws 
 as Englishmen, that there is no agitation amongst them 
 for a separate political existence, though it tends to 
 make their nationality less obtrusive and exacting, in 
 no way destroys its reality. 
 
 " The spirit which elsewhere manifests itself in 
 struggles against the central authority, and in protests 
 against the supremacy of a dominant race, is in Wales 
 content with maintaining the continuity of the national 
 life, preserving the traditional sentiments of the race, 
 and fostering those ideas and usages which are dis- 
 tinctive and characteristic of the nation. 
 
 " The sentiment of nationality cannot be ignored, 
 and ought not, in our opinion, to be discouraged. 
 Some of the witnesses who gave evidence before us 
 expressed themselves strongly as to what they desig- 
 nated Welsh narrowness and provincialism, and seemed 
 to be of opinion that whatever is specially characteristic 
 of the people should be got rid of. To this end they 
 contended that Welshmen should, as much as possible, 
 be educated out of their own country, and that no en- 
 couragement should be given to institutions specially 
 adapted to the national characteristic of Wales, or likely 
 to perpetuate distinctively Welsh sentiments or ideas.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Chiirch. 193 
 
 " That narrowness or provincialism, whether Welsh 
 or English, should be corrected, and, as far as may be, 
 replaced by breadth of view and comprehensiveness 
 of thought, will probably be admitted without con- 
 troversy ; but this may be done without destroying the 
 Welsh type of character, or converting the people of 
 Wales into Englishmen. That system of education is 
 most desirable for Wales which, while preserving the 
 national type, improves and elevates it, and at the same 
 time gives opportunity for the development of any 
 literary tastes or intellectual aptitudes which may be 
 characteristic of the nation. 
 
 " The existence, therefore, of a distinct Welsh nation- 
 ality is, in our opinion, a reason for securing, within 
 the limits of Wales itself, a system of intermediate and 
 higher education in harmony with the distinctive pecu- 
 liarities of the country." x 
 
 These wise words, written by a man of singular 
 penetration, are inspired by a true knowledge of Wales, 
 and represent the spirit that ought to guide the edu- 
 cational policy of the future. Hitherto a very different 
 spirit has been dominant, and to its baneful influence 
 the educational backwardness of the people and the 
 decay of the Church are due. There is not a senti- 
 ment in the above passage which is not quite as 
 applicable to the ecclesiastical policy necessary to the 
 welfare of the Welsh Church, as to the educational 
 policy by which the intellectual progress of the people 
 is to be secured. Indeed, the Welsh Churchmen who 
 1 Chap. iv. p. xlvi. 
 
 O
 
 194 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 desire the progress of their country and the revival 
 of the Church, and who have something more than a 
 sham knowledge of Welsh, would desire no fuller or 
 more forcible statement of their views than is offered 
 by the closing words of the above passage, slightly 
 paraphrased : " The existence, therefore, of a distinct 
 Welsh nationality is, in our opinion, a reason for 
 securing, within the limits of Wales itself, a system of 
 ecclesiastical administration in harmony with the dis- 
 tinctive peculiarities of the country." 
 
 It is impossible to form true views concerning the 
 inner life of Wales and the position of the Welsh 
 Church without an accurate knowledge of the extent 
 to which the Welsh language still prevails as the only 
 organ by which the people can give effective expression 
 to their ideas and feelings, and live their mental life. 
 It is, therefore, highly necessary that the truth upon this 
 point, which, for reasons well known to Welshmen, has 
 been unhappily too long concealed in the high places 
 of English life, should be really known. 
 
 Before unfolding the facts, it will be well to guard 
 against the gross misinterpretation of their motives to 
 which Welsh Churchmen who have desired to make 
 known this truth for the good of the Church have been 
 exposed. They have been accused of a Celtomaniac 
 desire to exclude their countrymen from the knowledge 
 of English, and to imprison them in the isolation of 
 a language that cannot open to them the richest 
 treasures of literature and science, or enable them to 
 play their parts as citizens of the world. No accusation
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 195 
 
 could be more unjust The Welshmen of education, 
 who have exposed the ruinous inefficiency of the 
 dignitaries and clergy who have well-nigh destroyed 
 the Church by their ignorance of the people and their 
 language, desire the progress and highest good of their 
 country. They recognize fully that ignorance of the 
 English language is a grievous barrier to the progress 
 of Welshmen, and gladly welcome every instrument by 
 which that barrier can be removed. There are among 
 them those who believe that Welshmen can continue 
 permanently bilingual, and that English can become 
 universal without causing the extinction of the older 
 tongue. There are others who think that ultimately 
 English must become the only language of the country, 
 used not only in business and by the more educated 
 classes, but also in the home life and worship of rich 
 and poor. But all Welshmen are absolutely united in 
 the conviction that the universal knowledge of English 
 is essential to the welfare and progress of the people, 
 and that, if it is impossible for the two languages to 
 co-exist, Welsh must die and English take its place. 
 It would be impossible to find any Welshman who does 
 not share this conviction. 
 
 But it is more useful now to consider what is the 
 present state of Wales than to speculate as to its distant 
 future. It is important that the English people should 
 know the whole truth as to the prevalence of the Welsh 
 language in Wales, and its bearing upon the question 
 of the Welsh Church. 
 
 The facts ought to be known and faced. Very
 
 196 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 wrong impressions have long been general even among 
 well-informed English people. The belief has been 
 cherished that the Welsh language has rapidly receded, 
 that the knowledge of that language is unnecessary for 
 the exercise of social and religious influence over the 
 people, and that English is understood by all. This 
 belief is, unfortunately, unfounded. Its prevalence in 
 England is due to the evidence of two classes of most 
 unreliable witnesses. The tourist who passes, perhaps, 
 rapidly through Wales along the well-beaten routes, 
 travelling on coachroad or railroad, and sleeping at the 
 hotels, finds that railway porters, coachmen, guides, and 
 servants can speak English fluently ; and if he spends 
 a few weeks at Aberystwyth, Llandudno, or some other 
 Welsh watering-place, he finds that in all the Welsh 
 towns the lodging-house keeper, tradesmen, and servants 
 speak his own language well. He returns to England 
 with the full confidence that he knows the inner state 
 of Wales, and reports that the Welsh language is dead, 
 because he has everywhere found an understanding 
 people who could receive his orders, and tell him the 
 amount of his bill, and for a proper fee guide him upon 
 a mountain. If he had left the hotels and lodging- 
 houses and shops of the towns and entered the farm- 
 houses and cottages in which the masses of the Welsh 
 people live, he would have found that to the vast 
 majority he was a foreigner, with whom they could not 
 communicate except in broken sentences. 
 
 But there is another class who are still more 
 responsible for the ignorance that prevails as to the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 197 
 
 lingual condition of Wales. Clergymen who have 
 accepted Welsh preferment without any knowledge of 
 the Welsh language, or with only that command of 
 broken Welsh, known as "llediaith," acquired by an 
 adult, which is practically worthless for influencing the 
 people, and serves only, as was once observed, to enable 
 the promotion-seeker to read himself in and to read his 
 congregation out, are naturally desirous to persuade 
 themselves and others that effective command of the 
 Welsh language is not necessary for the highest service 
 of the Welsh Church. Unconsciously they have mis- 
 represented the facts, or at least have carefully sup- 
 pressed them. This class have done the Welsh Church 
 a deadly injury by misleading Church opinion in 
 England concerning the Welsh Church. Many of them 
 occupy high social and ecclesiastical position, although 
 personally very powerless among the Welsh people ; 
 have the entree into powerful circles in London, the 
 ear of the ruling class in Church and State, and are 
 able to poison the fountain of Church government in 
 Wales. It cannot be supposed that they wilfully mis- 
 represent facts. But the false position into which they 
 have been raised tempts them to blind themselves to 
 disagreeable facts, and they communicate their blindness 
 to others. These facts can no longer be concealed. 
 What are the facts as to the prevalence of the Welsh 
 language among the people ? To what extent is it the 
 language of their home-life and of worship, of their 
 habitual thoughts and affections, of their spiritual 
 emotions and aspirations ? How far is it necessary in
 
 198 Wales and the Wchh Church. 
 
 Wales that the religious teachers who are to influence 
 the people should have a real command of the Welsh 
 language ? To compel clergymen to have Welsh 
 services in parishes where they are not essential to the 
 spiritual welfare of the parishioners is an error. But it 
 is an error very seldom committed. The temptation 
 to err in the opposite direction is most general. The 
 fact is that in the four Welsh dioceses, Bangor, St. 
 Asaph, Llandaff, and St. David's, Welsh prevails far 
 more extensively than is generally believed among 
 English Churchmen, misled by the testimony which 
 has been described. Attempts have been made to 
 prove that in the two southern dioceses, Llandaff and 
 St. David's, the Welsh language has given place to 
 English. But the facts are as yet not favourable to 
 the efforts. It is true that in both dioceses there are 
 considerable tracts in which English prevails. In the 
 rural parishes and small towns of Monmouthshire, as 
 well as in the large town of Newport, English is general. 
 In the large town of Cardiff, and in some of the small 
 country parishes in the Vale of Glamorgan, Welsh is 
 not general. But in the populous hill districts of 
 Glamorgan and Monmouth, where the real battle of the 
 Church is to be fought, the vast majority of the people 
 are Welsh-speaking, It is in the Rhondda Valley, 
 Aberdare, Merthyr Tydvil, Dowlais, Rhymney, Sirhowy, 
 Tredegar, Ebbw Vale, that a population numbered by 
 hundreds of thousands is found. The masses in these 
 districts are Welsh-speaking. But these Welsh-speak- 
 ing parishes of the hills with their vast populations are
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 199 
 
 few in number. The clergy in them are also few in 
 number. The small rural parishes of Monmouthshire 
 and the Vale of Glamorgan, a hundred of which would . 
 hardly contain a population equal to that of the two 
 parishes of Aberdare and Merthyr Tydvil, vastly out- 
 number the populous parishes of the hills. In the 
 counsels of the diocese the numerous clergy of these 
 small English-speaking parishes outnumber and outvote 
 the few clergy who are leading the forlorn hope of the 
 Church among the alienated Welsh-speaking masses of 
 the hills. 
 
 In the diocese of St. David's also, although English 
 is very general in the towns in a part of Pembrokeshire, 
 in Radnorshire, and considerable districts of Breconshire, 
 a decided majority of the people are probably Welsh- 
 speaking. The same can be said of the two northern 
 dioceses. In Bangor, although in the towns and water- 
 ing-places English is general, Welsh is the language of 
 the masses, and Welsh services are required in all 
 the parishes, with two or three very doubtful excep- 
 tions. 
 
 The English-speaking districts in St. Asaph are 
 more extensive than in Bangor. In considerable dis- 
 tricts of Montgomeryshire and Flintshire English is 
 very general. But the most populous county of the 
 diocese, Denbighshire, is mainly Welsh-speaking, and 
 the old tongue still retains its hold up to that ancient 
 line of division, Offa's Dyke. 
 
 To this day the parish of Llangollen on one side, 
 with a population of six thousand, is mainly Welsh-
 
 2oo Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 speaking, and the adjoining parish on the other side 
 mainly English. 
 
 These statements will be questioned by the unre- 
 liable witnesses already described. But there is one 
 test by which the truth can be ascertained. The 
 religious ministrations for which the people pay are 
 offered to them in the language which they desire. If 
 each of the Bishops in Wales will ascertain accurately 
 what are the relative numbers of the Nonconformist 
 chapels in which Welsh and English services are held, 
 the facts so long concealed will be brought to light. It 
 will probably be found that in each of the four dioceses, 
 whatever may be the favourite language of its Church 
 dignitaries, the majority of the people who wield political 
 power and help to determine the fate of institutious 
 worship in the Welsh language. Until this test is 
 applied the truth will not be known. If it is not applied, 
 it will be difficult to acquit those who neglect its use of 
 a desire to conceal the facts that it would reveal. 
 
 In the mean time, perhaps, for those who are not 
 blinded by self-interest, such authoritative testimony as 
 the following passage in the Report of Lord Aberdare's 
 Committee will suffice : 
 
 " In close connection with the subject of Welsh 
 nationality are the existence and prevalence of the 
 Welsh language. 
 
 " The question of language is, and must be for a long 
 time to come, a very important factor in estimating the 
 condition, both social and educational, of the people of 
 Wales. To those who are resident in Wales, the pre-
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 20 1 
 
 valence of the Welsh language is a matter of daily 
 experience. According to calculations made after the 
 census of 1871 by Mr. Ravenstein, in his work on the 
 Celtic-speaking population of the British Isles, out of a 
 population of 1,426,514 in Wales and Monmouthshire, 
 no less than 1,006,100 habitually spoke Welsh. It has 
 also been stated that of the Nonconformist bodies of 
 Wales, 686,220, or, including children under ten years 
 of age, 870,220 used the Welsh language in worship, as 
 against 36,000 who worship in English. 
 
 "Twelve newspapers, with a weekly circulation of 
 74,500; eighteen magazines, with a circulation of 90,300; 
 and two quarterly publications, with a circulation of 
 3000, are published in Wales. A large number of useful 
 books, translations for the most part, are yearly pub- 
 lished in Welsh. We were told by one witness, that 
 in the year 1875 no less a sum than ^"100,000 was spent 
 in Welsh literature of all kinds. 
 
 "The fact being thus established, the question will 
 arise What effect does this prevalence of the Welsh 
 language produce upon the education of the Welsh 
 child?" 1 
 
 For the purpose at present in view it will only be 
 necessary to paraphrase one sentence in the above 
 passage, and to ask, "The fact being thus established, 
 the question will arise What effect does this prevalence 
 of the Welsh language produce upon the state of the 
 Welsh Church ? " To that question an answer will 
 hereafter be attempted. 
 
 1 Report, p. xtvii.
 
 2O2 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 This obstinate survival of the Welsh language, in 
 spite of the apparently overpowering forces that have 
 for many centuries been making for its extinction, seems 
 to many a mystery. What is the secret ? Why does 
 the language survive ? Some shallow observers attribute 
 the fact to Welsh obstinacy and a stubborn unwilling- 
 ness to learn English. No view could be more abso- 
 lutely false. Educated Welshmen, who have lived all 
 their days in Wales, and know their countrymen well, 
 will testify that they have never known a single mono- 
 glot Welshman who would not give a great deal to be 
 able to speak English. 
 
 Equally false and shallow is the assertion sometimes 
 heard, that Welshman who know English pretend to be 
 ignorant of it. The fact is, that pride in the knowledge 
 of English is so universal that it has become a recognized 
 form of vanity known as " Dic-sh6n-Dafyddiaeth." It 
 is true that as witnesses in courts of justice, or in the 
 transaction of any business that is of vital importance 
 to him, a Welshman who has a slight knowledge of 
 English demands to be examined in Welsh. This 
 demand is due partly to shyness and timidity, partly to 
 legitimate caution and self-defence. A man naturally 
 likes to wield the intellectual instrument which he 
 understands. An Englishman, who knows enough to 
 ask for his railway ticket and to order his dinner, if he 
 were asked to give evidence upon which his life or 
 interest depended, would decline to express himself in 
 a language of which he has but a smattering. A Welsh- 
 man is equally judicious.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 203 
 
 But although the fact of the prevalence of Welsh 
 has been established, there are sanguine people who 
 hope that a very few years will suffice to enrol it among 
 the dead languages. It becomes, therefore, an interest- 
 ing question how long it is likely to retain a degree of 
 vitality that will make it an influence of importance to 
 the Welsh Church. No more authoritative answer can 
 be given than in the following passage from the Report 
 of Lord Aberdare's Committee : 
 
 " It may be asked how far this state of things is 
 likely to be permanent ; and, in answer to this question, 
 we feel bound to say that, in spite of the progress which, 
 under the influence of the elementary schools, of rail- 
 ways, and other causes, the knowledge of English has 
 made and is making, such is the attachment of the 
 Welsh to their language and literature, so deeply inter- 
 woven are they with their daily life, their religious 
 worship, and even their amusements, that in dealing 
 with the subject of education, speculations as to the 
 probable duration or disappearance of their native 
 tongue are hardly of practical bearing. There is every 
 appearance that the Welsh language will long be 
 cherished by the large majority of the Welsh people, 
 and that its influence upon the progress of their educa- 
 tion, and upon them in competing with English-born 
 students, will be for an indefinite time but little less in 
 the future than it has been in the past." x 
 
 It is evident that the members of the Committee 
 have arrived at the conclusion that the Welsh language 
 1 Report, p. xlvii.
 
 204 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 has before it, if not immortality, an indefinitely long life. 
 There are now educated Welshmen knowing Wales as 
 well as any, and much better than some, members of the 
 Committee, who would hesitate to accept this conclu- 
 sion, and incline to the belief that before the end of the 
 next century the ancient language will have ceased to 
 be an important living force. It is exceedingly difficult 
 to decide whether its present vitality is due to the love 
 of Welshmen for the language of their ancestors, or 
 rather to their lack of opportunity for acquiring English. 
 Much may be said for both views. It is undoubtedly 
 true that even the most highly educated of genuinely 
 educated Welsh-speaking men find in the old tongue 
 an instrument subtly adapted to their nature, which 
 summons up trains of ideas and stirs deep emotions 
 that they cannot express in another language. There 
 is a distinct life of Welsh thought and feeling that is 
 untranslatable. But whether that life is of sufficient 
 value to secure the permanence of the language may 
 well be doubted. The Welshman is sentimental, but he 
 is also generally a utilitarian. The language will not 
 survive if the conviction becomes general that progress 
 in life is to be obtained by sacrificing it. 
 
 It is true that Welshmen who settle in English 
 towns retain the use of their language. Large com- 
 munities of Welsh settlers in America, also, have 
 numerous meeting-houses in which the ministrations 
 are in Welsh ; and a well-known Welsh weekly news- 
 paper, Y Drych, exists with no inconsiderable circula- 
 tion. But in the second and third generations the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church, 205 
 
 descendants become English-speaking. It may, there- 
 fore, be inferred that the language owes its vitality, not 
 so much to the love for it inherent in the race, but to 
 the power of early habit and the lack of opportunity. 
 
 On the other hand, there is much to restrain a 
 prudent man from prophesying confidently the extinc- 
 tion of the Welsh tongue. Those who have spoken it 
 in childhood, although unable to communicate the love 
 of it to their descendants, cling to it with strange affec- 
 tion. A clergyman of the Welsh Church, in passing 
 through one of the principal streets in Boston, Massa- 
 chussetts, entered a large assembly room attached to a 
 chapel, and was astonished to find a large number of 
 Welsh-American citizens gathered together, after the 
 manner of a Welsh Sunday school, to study the Bible 
 in their native tongue. The teacher of the principal 
 class, an old man, had been absent from Wales for 
 more than forty years. The late Bishop Ollivant was 
 wont to relate, in proof of the love of Welshmen for 
 their language, that he had met a learned Welsh 
 clergyman, resident nearly fifty years in England, who 
 confided to him that in his private devotions he 
 had never brought himself to use any language but 
 Welsh. 
 
 There is another caution to be given. Confident 
 predictions of the early extinction of the old language, 
 made long ago, are as yet very far from fulfilment. On 
 August 10, 1753, the chief Welsh bard of the eighteenth 
 century, in a letter addressed from Walton, in Lancashire, 
 to his friend Mr. Richard Morris, an ancestor of the
 
 206 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 author of the " Epic of Hades," records a conversation 
 in which a young Welshman, named Owen, imprudently 
 ventured upon prophecy. The bard writes 
 
 " When we were set, the pleasure I expressed at 
 seeing a countryman at this first interview turned the 
 topic of the discourse upon Wales and the Welsh tongue. 
 Mr. Owen, like an honest Welshman, owned that he was 
 a native of Montgomeryshire, which pleased me well 
 enough. But being asked by my patron who, though 
 an Englishman, has a few Welsh words which he is 
 fond of whether he could speak or read Welsh, I 
 found the young urchin was shy to own either, though 
 I was afterwards that same day convinced of the con- 
 trary. Then, when they alleged it was a dying language, 
 not worth cultivating, and so on, which I stiffly denied, 
 the wicked imp, with an air of complacency and satis- 
 faction, said there was nothing in it worth reading, and 
 that to his certain knowledge the English daily got 
 ground of it, and he doubted not but in a hundred years 
 it would be quite lost." 
 
 Upon this unfulfilled prediction, the biographer of 
 Goronwy Owen, in 1876, commented in the following 
 footnote : 
 
 "A century and a quarter has elapsed since this 
 prediction was delivered, and there is no sign of the 
 dissolution of the language. It is spoken by more 
 persons now than it was then. If we take into account 
 the great increase in the population of the country, 
 we might almost say that the number of the Welsh- 
 speaking population has doubled. For, be it remem-
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 207 
 
 bercd, it is spoken by thousands in the large city of 
 London, and in the towns of Liverpool, Chester, Man- 
 chester, and others. Nor is that all. If we cross the 
 Atlantic Ocean, it is spoken by -large communities on 
 the continent of America. A century ago there was no 
 newspaper, and scarcely a periodical of any kind, pub- 
 lished in the Welsh language. Now the Welsh press 
 teems with these publications. And what is stranger 
 still, a Welsh newspaper has been published for years 
 in America, and commands a large circulation. It is 
 called Y Drych. As yet there are no signs of the decay 
 of our Cymric tongue." 
 
 This impassioned Welshman, the late Rev. Robert 
 Jones, Vicar of All Saints', Rotherhithe, evidently shared 
 the belief in the immortality of the Welsh language, 
 which seems to have also almost found acceptance from 
 the soberer judgment of Lord Aberdare's Committee. 
 But other observers, who think they can see deeper 
 below the surface of appearances, are sceptical, and 
 inclined to believe that the survival of the language is 
 mainly due to the iniquitous efforts made to use the 
 Church as an instrument for its destruction. As will be 
 proved hereafter, the policy pursued has been to drive 
 the Welsh into the adoption of English by despising 
 and ignoring it in the high places of the Church. That 
 policy has failed. It has driven the Welsh people out 
 of the Church into the chapels, under the influence of 
 intensely national Welsh-speaking teachers, and has 
 prolonged the life of the language for many generations. 
 The survival, attributed by many to the love of the
 
 208 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 Welsh for their tongue, is more due to the hatred of its 
 enemies 
 
 " Via prima salutis, 
 Quod minima reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe." 
 
 But although the Welsh people could not be driven by 
 arrogant dictation and ecclesiastical oppression into the 
 abandonment of their language, it by no means follows 
 that they will not be led by sympathetic guides, and 
 through the aid of increased educational opportunities, 
 to that adoption of the English so essential to their 
 highest happiness and progress. 
 
 There is another characteristic of the Welsh people, 
 hardly less strongly marked than their nationality and 
 language, namely, their fervent religious feeling. As 
 among their kinsmen in Brittany and Cornwall, devotion 
 to the exercises of religion is the leading feature of the 
 Welsh people. An Englishman who successfully con- 
 tested a Welsh county in 1880, in entering upon his 
 electioneering campaign, asked his local adviser to tell 
 him what were the two subjects that would chiefly 
 interest the Welsh voters. The answer was, in the first 
 place, " religion," and in the second place, " foreign 
 policy." 
 
 It is well known that the proportion of the population 
 who attend public worship on Sundays in Wales is very 
 much larger than in other parts of the kingdom. This 
 religious earnestness and enthusiasm is not a new cha- 
 racteristic of the Welsh people. 
 
 In 1188, the imposing pomp of Archbishop Bald- 
 win's semi-military, semi-religious procession seems to
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 209 
 
 have moved them through the sight almost as power- 
 fully as the preaching of their modern orators affects 
 them through the hearing. Dean Hook, in his " Life of 
 Archbishop Baldwin," describes a somewhat amusing 
 exhibition of religious earnestness in the following 
 passage : 
 
 " As they passed through villages or encamped on 
 the river-side, they were heartily welcomed ; for they 
 came not as marauders, but as men abounding in alms- 
 deeds. ... So great was the enthusiasm excited, that 
 on one occasion the Archbishop enrolled, as soldiers of 
 the Cross, a number of persons who came to him in a 
 state of nudity ; their clothes having been secreted by 
 their loving wives, unwilling to part from their gallant 
 husbands." 
 
 In the early years of the eighteenth century, before 
 the rise of Methodism, the same religious fervour that 
 had marked their ancestors in the twelfth century, was 
 still found among the people of Wales. In his work, 
 "A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of 
 St. David's, about the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, with some account of the causes of its decay, 
 together with considerations of the reasonableness of 
 augmenting the revenues of impropriate churches," etc., 
 Dr. Erasmus Saunders has drawn a graphic picture 
 of the religious life of the Welsh peasantry. His book 
 was published in 1721, that is, fourteen years before 
 Howell Harris, the founder of Welsh Methodism, 
 began to preach, so that it enables us to realize the 
 religious disposition of the people in pre-Methodist 
 
 P
 
 2 1 o Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 days. After dwelling upon the abuses in the Church, 
 he writes 
 
 "Insomuch that it may be justly wondered at that 
 there are in some places any principles or observances 
 of revealed religion still remaining. 
 
 "Nor, indeed, could it reasonably be expected in 
 some places that there should be any, but for the extra- 
 ordinary disposition to religion which, a learned historian 
 observes, prevails among the people of this country : for 
 whether it be owing to our solitude, or our poverty, or 
 natural disposition, or to the extraordinary grace of God 
 given to us, I know not ; but so it is. There is, I believe, 
 no part of the nation more inclined to be religious, and 
 to be delighted with it, than the poor inhabitants of 
 these mountains. They do not think it too much, when 
 neither ways nor weather are inviting, over cold and 
 bleak hills to travel three or four miles, or more, on foot, 
 to attend the public prayers and sometimes as many 
 more, to hear a sermon ; and they seldom grudge many 
 times for several hours together, in their damp and cold 
 churches, to wait the coming of their minister, who 
 by occasional duties in his other curacies, or by other 
 accidents, may be obliged to disappoint them and to 
 be often variable in his hours of prayer. And then also, 
 to supply in some measure the want of a more regular 
 public service, there are many, even of the common 
 people, who gladly make use of what little knowledge 
 they have gained, and take the pains privately, by 
 reading or discoursing, to instruct one another in their 
 houses.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 2 1 1 
 
 "And it is not uncommon to see servants and 
 shepherds, as they have an opportunity, strive to do 
 these good offices to each other. It is by this means 
 that most or all of them do attain the knowledge of 
 reading and writing in their native language, without 
 which commendable industry it is not conceivable how 
 many of them should understand or know anything 
 of religion ; for there being no Welsh schools, and but 
 very rarely any English ones, except it be in market 
 towns, they must consequently be altogether ignorant 
 of letters, unless they make up their defect by the 
 aforesaid kind offices towards one another. But this 
 calamity is nowhere so very visible as in Cardiganshire, 
 where I can't be informed of any the least endowment 
 for as much as one charity school throughout that 
 county. 
 
 " But to proceed to make their private instructions 
 more agreeable and effectual, as they are naturally 
 addicted to poetry, so some of the more skilful and 
 knowing among them frequently compose a kind of 
 Divine hymns or songs, which they call ' Halsingod ' or 
 ' Carolion,' which generally consist either of the doctrinal 
 or historical parts of Scripture, or of the lives and 
 worthy acts of some eminent saints, whose extraordinary 
 piety and virtue they thereby endeavour to illustrate, 
 and recommend to themselves and others. It is not 
 to be expressed what a particular delight and pleasure 
 the young people take to get these hymns by heart, and 
 to sing them with a greal deal of emulation of excelling 
 each other. And this is a religious exercise they are
 
 212 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 used to, as well at home in their own houses as upon 
 some public occasions ; such as at their wakes, and 
 solemn festivals, and funerals, and very frequently in 
 their churches in the winter season, between All Saints 
 and Candlemas, at which times, before and after Divine 
 service upon Sundays or Holy Days, eight or ten will 
 divide themselves to four or five of a side, and so 
 forming themselves, as it were, into an imitation of our 
 cathedral or collegiate choirs, one party first begins, 
 and then, by way of alternate responses, the other 
 repeats the same stanza, and so proceed till they have 
 finished their ' Raising,' and then conclude with a 
 chorus." 
 
 Similar evidence is also forthcoming concerning the 
 state of North Wales in the same period. In a large 
 work lately published by Messrs. Blackie and Son, 
 entitled " Cymru yn Hanesyddol, Parthedigol, a Byw- 
 graphyddol," we have a concise and highly significant 
 description of the religious condition of Anglesey, 
 written in the year 1730 by John Evans, of Bala. His 
 words were, " Yr oedd holl wlad M6n o un grefydd ; 
 nid oedd yno ddim pleidiau, ond pawb yn cyrchu i 
 Eglwys ei blwyf yn o ddyfal, ac yr oeddynt yn rhagori 
 yn hyn ar drigolion llawer o barthau Cymru. Byddai 
 son mawr am bregeth, os dygvvyddai hynny fod, gan 
 mor anaml y byddai yr offeriaid yn pregethu." "All 
 Anglesey was of one religion, and there were no sects, 
 but every man attended his parish church with consider- 
 able regularity, and in this respect they surpassed the 
 inhabitants of many parts of Wales. Great was the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 213 
 
 interest excited by the announcement of a sermon, if 
 it happened to occur, so rarely were the clergy in the 
 habit of preaching." 
 
 There are not wanting indications that regularity of 
 attendance at the parish churches was not confined to 
 the people of Anglesey. In some of the parishes of 
 St. Asaph there are records to show that on Easter and 
 other great festivals of the Church an extraordinary 
 large proportion of the parishioners were wont to com- 
 municate. 
 
 The religious earnestness which found expression in 
 the worship and Sacraments of the Church in earlier 
 ages is still a marked characteristic of the Welsh people, 
 and gives to the Nonconformist societies that vigorous 
 life which enables them to maintain more than three 
 thousand chapels, and to raise annually not much less 
 than 300,000 for religious purposes. The island of 
 Anglesey, so unitedly church-going, is to-day largely 
 Nonconformist. But it still retains its religious earnest- 
 ness, as may be inferred from the fact that it contributes 
 to the Bible Society a larger sum in proportion to its 
 population than any other county in the kingdom. 
 
 It is a cause for thankfulness that, although the 
 religious unity of Wales has for a time been broken 
 up, its religious earnestness survives. Unhappily the 
 divisions are numerous. The 1,500,000 Welsh people 
 of Wales and Monmouthshire are mainly divided into 
 five religious bodies. The Church still retains a con- 
 siderable proportion of the population, though a very 
 decided minority. What the relative numbers of
 
 214 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 Churchmen and Nonconformists are it is impossible 
 to determine. But it must be freely admitted that 
 the Church, although probably more powerful than 
 any single Nonconformist body, is very largely out- 
 numbered by the combined denominations. Of these 
 denominations, the Calvinistic Methodists, Presbyterian 
 in creed and government, are probably the largest and 
 wealthiest body, and claim as adherents nearly a fourth 
 of the entire population. The Congregationalists and 
 Baptists are also powerful bodies. Wesleyan Methodism 
 has not been successful in obtaining any strong hold 
 upon the Welsh people, and has a far smaller number of 
 adherents than the three other denominations. Religious 
 disunion has great spiritual disadvantages. But it is 
 difficult to exaggerate the activity and energy of the 
 Welsh Nonconformist societies. In towns, villages, and 
 rural districts alike, the chapel is the centre of the social 
 and religious life of the people. There is hardly an 
 evening in the week on which the doors are not opened. 
 The " Cyfarfod Canu " (singing meeting), the " Cyfarfod 
 Plant" (children's service), the " Seiat neu Gyfeillach " 
 (that is, the esoteric meeting of chapel members, or 
 some other meeting), is held throughout the week. The 
 favourite meeting-place, where they can enjoy converse 
 with their fellows, found by an Englishman of the 
 upper class in their club, and of the humbler classes in 
 the public-houses, is found by the majority of Welsh- 
 men in the chapel. In the towns, and in many of the 
 wealthier country parishes, the chapels are often very 
 handsome and costly buildings, admirably adapted to
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 2 1 5 
 
 the purpose for which they are intended. The comfort 
 of the preacher and hearer is successfully assured. In 
 country villages, which have no suitable assembly 
 rooms, the chapels are very frequently used for secular 
 purposes, such as concerts, lectures, and political 
 addresses. 
 
 The social state of Wales does not differ much in its 
 outward aspects from districts of England, similar in 
 physical conditions ; but the direction of social influence 
 is considerably affected by the language and the 
 religious divisions of the country. The aristocracy of 
 Wales, consisting of a few noblemen, native squires, and 
 English settlers who have purchased estates or chosen 
 residences in the more attractive parts of the country, 
 is comparatively small. The upper middle class, con- 
 sisting of the professional men and those who have 
 been successful in business, is very similar to the same 
 in England. The mass of the population consists class 
 of the tradesmen, farmers, quarrymen, colliers, miners, 
 sailors, and labourers. The feeling that exists between 
 the different classes in Wales is generally good ; but 
 the difference of language and religious profession has 
 the effect of lessening social sympathy and communion 
 of thought. The aristocracy and the higher middle 
 class are almost without exception attached to the 
 Church, and have within the last forty years made very 
 generous sacrifices for the restoration of the cathedrals 
 and parish churches, and the erection of schools and 
 new churches. That show of progress which the Church 
 in Wales has been able to make has been mainly due
 
 2 1 6 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 to the liberality of many of the landowners and the 
 wealthy English residents in Wales. A very large 
 majority of the professional men, and a considerable 
 proportion, though by no means a majority, of the 
 tradesmen, adhere to the Church ; but of the farmers 
 and working classes a very large majority are Noncon- 
 formists. Of the less prosperous among the working 
 classes, it is often found that many, unable to meet the 
 heavy demands made upon them in the chapels, are glad 
 to find a quiet refuge in their parish church, where their 
 poverty will not expose them to the loss of considera- 
 tion that accompanies inability to contribute to the 
 " achos," the "cause." Thus in Wales, as in England, 
 the Church is often attractive to the highest and the 
 humblest class of society. But it must be admitted that 
 a far larger proportion of the working classes are Non- 
 conformists in Wales than in England. 
 
 On the other hand, the Church in Wales has by no 
 means a monopoly of wealth and social influence. The 
 leading Nonconformist societies comprise among them 
 a very considerable number of very wealthy men, who 
 have risen to riches and position by thrift and energy 
 in commercial pursuits or mining enterprises, as ship- 
 owners, coal-masters, and merchants. It is this class, 
 educating their sons in English schools, who have called 
 into existence that limited number of English Non- 
 conformist chapels in the towns of Wales, in which, 
 according to Sir Hussey Vivian, 36,000 out of the entire 
 number of 936,220 Nonconformist worshippers in Wales 
 and Monmouthshire are found to worship.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 1 1 7 
 
 The command of the Welsh language is almost 
 entirely confined to the middle and working classes. 
 There is not a single nobleman in Wales who can con- 
 verse in the language ; of the squires a few are able to 
 talk to their tenants in unidiomatic broken sentences. 
 But it would be difficult to find half a dozen squires in 
 the whole of Wales who can write a Welsh letter or 
 deliver a Welsh speech in such a manner as to win the 
 interest rather than excite the ridicule of their audience. 
 Among the native clergy, educated at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, not a few have but a very imperfect command of 
 the language of the masses. They are unable to express 
 themselves with freedom and power in it, and nine out 
 of ten are obliged to read their sermons instead of 
 delivering the extempore sermons which the Welsh love 
 of oratory so imperiously exacts. This inability to 
 speak the Welsh language freely and effectively, which 
 is found among the upper classes and in many of the 
 native clergy, is due to their English education and the 
 neglect of Welsh culture. It is impossible to speak 
 Welsh well without very frequent practice. A Welsh- 
 man who has known the language from childhood, if he 
 spends a few months in England, finds that his power 
 of speaking it with ease has been impaired, and is not 
 to be recovered without practice. 
 
 Among the Nonconformists* of Wales the native 
 language is carefully cultivated. Their ministers and 
 leading laymen read Welsh constantly, and speak it 
 with elegance, fluency, and power. It has not yet 
 become the fashion among them to despise the know-
 
 218 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 ledge of the popular tongue, or to regard it as an endow- 
 ment inconsistent with claims to social gentility. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate accurately the morality of 
 a population. It has been asserted that the morality of 
 Wales is by no means on a level with its high religious 
 profession. Unchastity, drunkenness, and deceit are 
 said to be very prevalent among a people who are 
 exemplary in their attendance at religious worship and 
 diligent in multiplying temples and teachers. These 
 charges were recently urged with vigour in an article 
 from the pen of a late ecclesiastic, who for many years 
 occupied a high position in the Welsh Church. It 
 cannot be doubted that he sincerely 'believed in the 
 correctness of the estimate of Welsh morality, which he 
 rather suggested than expressed. Those who knew him 
 will not doubt that he was fully convinced that he was 
 doing a good work in reducing what he regarded as the 
 swelling of Welsh self-complacency. But it must be 
 admitted that such serious charges against an entire 
 nation ought hardly to have been made upon such 
 evidence as was produced. The Welsh Nonconformists 
 were adroitly summoned to give evidence against them- 
 selves ; and, more strangely still, the witnesses who were 
 summoned were not produced until they had died. The 
 reviewer had given some attention more than thirty years 
 ago to the Welsh language. He had acquired such know- 
 ledge of it as enabled him to read the Welsh magazines 
 of the Nonconformist bodies. In these periodicals some 
 of the Nonconformist ministers of the day wrote articles, 
 in which gloomy views of the moral condition of their
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 219 
 
 flocks were set forth for the meritorious purpose of 
 inciting the careless and self-indulgent to a higher level 
 of living. The language of these impassioned appeals 
 to the conscience of their countrymen' was not always 
 measured and judicial. If posterity were to judge of 
 the morality of the masses of the English people by 
 quotations from temperance oratory and temperance 
 literature, they would be led to form an estimate hardly 
 justified by the facts. It is much to be regretted that, 
 in order to illustrate the moral condition of the Welsh 
 people in 1882, the reviewer should have been unable to 
 obtain more reliable materials than the heated utterance 
 and fervent ministerial remonstrances written in 1851. 
 The quotations were calculated to mislead the English 
 people as to the real state of Wales. The article of the 
 reviewer, as a whole, produced a false impression upon 
 the minds of the English reader who had no knowledge 
 of the subject. It excited among the more sensitive 
 classes of the Welsh people the same feeling that is 
 provoked in England sometimes by those curious cari- 
 catures that appear in France from the pen of French- 
 men, who pose as authorities upon the mysteries of 
 English political and social life. Impartial judges, who 
 know Wales well, will testify that the morality of the 
 Welsh people will bear a very favourable comparison 
 with that of any district of the United Kingdom. There 
 is no part of the kingdom in which life and property 
 are safer. The prevalence of unchastity has been enor- 
 mously exaggerated. Suits for divorce are exceedingly 
 rare. Reliable statistics prove that bastardy, though too
 
 220 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 frequent, is far less prevalent than in many parts of 
 England and Scotland. Among the working classes 
 drunkenness is in Wales, as in England, a besetting sin. 
 But that the conscience of the nation recognizes the 
 obligations of sobriety is proved by the fact that the 
 entire people of Wales with virtual unanimity asked for 
 a Sunday Closing Bill to lessen the temptations to vice. 
 Deceit and falsehood are freely attributed by a certain 
 class of English tourists to the Welsh people. English 
 travellers of the same spirit are wont in all parts of the 
 world to exalt their own virtues by depreciating the 
 people among whom they travel ; but more generous 
 and equitable judges form a more charitable estimate. 
 Imperfect knowledge of the English language, and per- 
 haps some consciousness of subjection, tend to create in 
 the Welsh people a diffidence, a nervous timidity and - 
 cautious reserve, which are mistaken for insincerity and 
 cunning. But those who are able to communicate freely 
 with % the people, and to learn their real thought and 
 feelings, know that they are most frank, sincere, and 
 warm-hearted. 
 
 The people have some right to complain that while 
 their vices are exaggerated their virtues are forgotten. 
 Their loyalty, obedience to the laws, peaceable industry, 
 freedom from crime, religious earnestness, are sometimes 
 lost sight of by writers, who, forgetting the statistics of 
 English crime, immorality, and irreligion, dwell rather 
 too much upon the infirmities found in the human 
 nature of the Welsh as of every other people. Their 
 very virtues have provoked this unjust criticism. Their
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 221 
 
 devotion to religion is so great as to excite expectations 
 of a spotless morality. 
 
 It can hardly have escaped thoughtful observers 
 that the Welsh people are characterized by greater 
 sadness of spirit than is found in England. The ex- 
 pression of the typical Welsh countenance is wanting 
 in the brightness of joy and confidence. This may be 
 due to natural temperament, and in some degree to 
 the influence of a stern and gloomy theology. It is 
 possible that the religious divisions, separating the 
 people into opposite camps, and introducing little 
 jealousies and rivalries, tend to quench the light that 
 has its origin in the charity of a religiously united 
 people. Whatever be the cause, sadness is a charac- 
 teristic of Welsh life. All the favourite tunes sung in 
 the great religious gatherings, and hummed in the 
 farmhouse and the cottage, are in the minor key. In 
 the words of an eloquent Welshman, " The sad minor 
 key of our song is that of a grave people standing 
 alone without sympathy." 
 
 It is probable that this short sentence contains the 
 true explanation. Isolation and lack of sympathy are 
 the burden that makes Wales sad. Both trials are due 
 to the existence of a distinct language, and educational 
 disadvantages. There is no part of the United King- 
 dom in which so large a proportion of the lower classes 
 are devoted to intellectual pursuits. The newspapers 
 of Wales, and its magazines, are almost entirely 
 written by members of the humbler classes. There are 
 thousands who practise for years the art of versifica-
 
 222 Wales and the Welsh CJmrch. 
 
 tion in the most elaborate metres. The number of 
 verses of all kinds and essays written for the " Estedd- 
 fodan," and almost countless " Cyfarfodydd Llenyddol " 
 (competitive literary meetings), is very large. Many of 
 the " Beirdd " and " Llenorion " (bards and literary men) 
 have great natural abilities. A working cooper, named 
 Owen Williams, was the author of a Welsh encyclo- 
 paedia in several volumes, which, if it had no other 
 value, served to illustrate the intellectual activity and 
 ambition of his class. He was gifted with a memory 
 of extraordinary power, and had amassed a vast amount 
 of ill-digested antiquarian lore. If he had been edu- 
 cated, he would have possibly been a renowned pro- 
 fessor in some University. But all this intellectual 
 activity, manifested in Wales, is to a great extent 
 fruitless, owing to the isolation created by the language. 
 Thousands of Welshmen are conscious of having in- 
 tellectual powers, and of having exercised them ; but 
 their exercise has been almost as barren as ploughing 
 the sand. 
 
 Hitherto the intellectual life of Wales has not only 
 been crippled by the difficulties of language, but also 
 by the want of educational opportunities. Lord Aber- 
 dare's Committee have revealed the destitution that 
 has starved the intelligence of Wales, in the following 
 pregnant passage : " In the Report of the Schools' 
 Inquiry Commissioners estimates are given which indi- 
 cate that about sixteen boys in every thousand of the 
 population should be receiving education higher than 
 elementary. Taking the population of Wales and
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 223 
 
 Monmouthshire to be about 1,570,000, and reducing 
 the estimate, in consideration of the exceptional con- 
 dition of Wales, from 16 to 10 per 1000, intermediate 
 school accommodation should be provided for 15,700 
 boys, and that number ought to be in attendance. In 
 contrast to this, our returns show accommodation in 
 the public schools for less than 3000, and that accom- 
 modation to a great extent unsatisfactory. They also 
 show an attendance of less than 1600." 
 
 There can be little doubt that the position of 
 Welshmen has been greatly depressed by this grievous 
 want of educational opportunities. It has often been 
 remarked that Wales has not produced any number of 
 distinguished men at all proportionate to the intel- 
 lectual activity claimed by its people. Welsh students 
 of brilliant distinction at the great Universities are rare. 
 But it is not difficult to account for this failure. The 
 reasons have been well stated in the paper read at the 
 Swansea Church Congress, in 1879, on "The Higher 
 and Intermediate Education in Wales," by the Rev. 
 D. J. Davies, Rector of North Benfleet, .late Fellow of 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge. " With regard to our 
 educational endowments, official statistics show that 
 the sum which is available for secondary instruction in 
 Wales, is barely one-third of what it is in England, in 
 proportion to population ; and even in England educa- 
 tional resources, though of late years greatly augmented, 
 are still acknowledged to be inadequate. What, then, 
 must be the case in Wales, with a much poorer popu- 
 lation ? . It should be borne in mind that Welsh
 
 224 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 youths are heavily handicapped in the race for intel- 
 lectual distinction. In many cases they have had to 
 conquer the difficulties of what was to them a foreign 
 tongue before they could fully profit by the instruc- 
 tion that was given them at school, while in most 
 cases these difficulties have been enhanced by want of 
 means." 
 
 By citing the comparative results attained in the 
 elementary schools, which are as efficient in Wales as 
 in England, Mr. Davies shows that in natural power 
 the Welsh youths are certainly not inferior. 
 
 " Since then the children of the poor have every- 
 where been placed on a footing of educational equality, 
 and Welsh children have shown themselves far superior 
 to English children in ability to acquire knowledge. 
 This, perhaps, is not the general impression, but it is a 
 fact. In its two last reports, the Committee of Council 
 on Education gives the proportions which the several 
 sources of income of rate-supported schools bear to the 
 total income for each of the four years, 1875-78. The 
 chief sources of income of Board Schools are the rates 
 and the Government grant, which varies with the pro- 
 ficiency of the children. Now, the average English 
 child earned, in 1875, 15-4 per cent, of the total cost 
 of its maintenance at school, while the average Welsh 
 child gained 22'6 per cent, of the cost of its mainte- 
 nance. In the following year, the percentages were 
 16 for England and 24-4 for Wales ; in 1877, i8\3 for 
 England and 29 for Wales ; and in 1878, 19-6 for Eng- 
 land and 31*2 for Wales. Thus it appears that as
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 225 
 
 soon as Welsh and English children had the same 
 advantages of education, the Welsh child soon out- 
 stripped its English brother, and is every year leaving 
 him further and further behind. Of course, the greater 
 the grant a child earns, the lighter the burden on the 
 ratepayers. So we find that school rates were \2\ per 
 cent, of the total cost of maintaining the schools less in 
 Wales than in England ; or, putting it in another way, 
 an English ratepayer who pays 5 towards his school 
 would have to pay only 4. js. 6d if all his geese were 
 swans if all his children were Welsh children ! Is the 
 inference unfair, if secondary education in Wales were 
 also placed on the same footing as it is in England, 
 that the children of our middle classes would exhibit a 
 similar aptitude for the acquisition of knowledge, and 
 in the course of time prove that the backwardness and 
 obscurity with which we are sometimes reproached are 
 rather to be attributed, not to want of mental ability, 
 but to enforced ignorance for many generations ? " 
 
 In England and in Scotland the Church has been 
 the Alma Mater of higher education. Dr. Chalmers 
 attributed the national prosperity of his countrymen to 
 three causes : The ecclesiastical endowments of Scot- 
 land have been enjoyed by a native clergy ; every 
 parish has had its parochial school ; the more gifted 
 youths have been able to obtain the benefits of a high 
 education in the three national Universities. These 
 blessings are correlated. For ages they were denied to 
 Wales. The starvation of her intellectual life, and the 
 consequent depression of her people, have been mainly 
 
 Q
 
 226 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 due to the fact that a higher clergy, ignorant of the 
 language, and out of sympathy with the people, occu- 
 pied ecclesiastical positions, the beneficent influence of 
 which they were but very imperfectly able to exercise 
 for the good of the national life. Within the last few 
 months the Welsh people have given proof of their 
 desire for higher education, and of their willingness to 
 make sacrifices for its attainment. In a few weeks the 
 people of North Wales contributed no less than 30,000 
 for the erection of a Welsh University College. Of this 
 sum, the small island of Anglesey contributed within 
 a few days more than 5000. The money did not all 
 come from the wealthy. Farmers, small tradesmen, 
 mechanics, labourers, servants, contributed freely, and 
 gave in the aggregate more than 2500. 
 
 After thus reviewing the present social, religious, 
 and intellectual condition of Wales, it will be well to 
 consider briefly the governing forces by which its inner 
 life for some generations has been, and at the present 
 time still is, moulded. 
 
 Foremost among these forces is that of sacred 
 oratory. The pulpit has for many generations been a 
 great power in Wales. An eloquent preacher will always 
 attract a large concourse. In the busiest hours of 
 harvest-tide, hundreds of people have been often seen 
 to leave the fields for two or three hours, in order to 
 listen to the sermon of some famous itinerant preacher 
 from a distant neighbourhood, who had sent before him 
 the " cyhoeddiad " the announcement of his intention 
 to preach. The orator would probably travel for a
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 227 
 
 month through a great part of Wales, preaching two or 
 three times a day, as he moved on from parish to parish, 
 and finding a cordial welcome and hospitality at the 
 house of a farmer or village shopkeeper. This power 
 of attracting was not confined to the Nonconformist 
 preachers. The few really powerful native preachers 
 in the Church few, unfortunately, and far between 
 exercised the same influence. The announcement that 
 Parry of Llywel, Jones of Vaynor, or Richards of 
 Caerwys was to preach, would have sufficed, thirty years 
 ago, to fill to overflow the largest parish church in any 
 district of Wales. 
 
 But for more than a century the Nonconformist 
 pulpit has been the home of Welsh oratory. The great 
 preachers, Howell Harris, Rowlands of Llangeitho, 
 Evans of New Inn, the Richardses of Tregaron, the 
 Joneses of Llanllyfni, Christmas Evans, Williams of 
 Wern, John Elias, and Henry Rees, have been the 
 heroes of the Welsh people. They are as well-known 
 names to Welshmen as Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and 
 Mendelssohn are to the musical people of the world. 
 
 The system of itinerating greatly multiplies the 
 preaching power of the largest Welsh denomination, 
 and enables the few really powerful preachers to extend 
 their influence over the whole country. It is probable 
 that there are very few members of the society who 
 have not again and again had an opportunity of 
 hearing the six leading preachers. They rarely preach 
 on two successive Sundays in the same neighbourhood. 
 Moreover, several times in the year the great open-air
 
 228 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 gathering, called the " Sassiwn," is held in different 
 parts of Wales, and many thousands assemble to hear 
 their most powerful ministers. 
 
 This system greatly lessons the labour of the preacher 
 in the preparation of sermons. A small number of 
 sermons, carefully written and committed to memory, 
 serve as the ministerial equipment of a popular preacher 
 for an entire year. Thus, while in the Church the 
 clergyman Sunday after Sunday addresses the same 
 congregation, the Methodist minister Sunday after 
 Sunday preaches the same sermon. The habit of 
 delivering none but carefully prepared, well-remembered 
 sermons gives to the preacher fluency and impressive- 
 ness. The rank and file of Methodist preachers, men 
 of very ordinary capacity, acquire the power of preach- 
 ing with such skill as to win and retain the attention 
 of a congregation. The leading preachers are masters 
 of the art of popular oratory, and on special occasions 
 are able to preach with much power. In past times 
 the most influential of the Welsh preachers were in the 
 habit of maintaining themselves by cultivating a farm 
 or keeping a village shop. In the intervals of business 
 they found time to read a good deal, and to prepare 
 their sermons. This system, while it greatly increased 
 and extended the preaching power of the Welsh Non- 
 conformist ministers, made it impossible for them to 
 discharge those pastoral duties that are expected from 
 a clergyman. 
 
 But the Nonconformist congregations of Wales are 
 by no means left destitute of pastoral attention. In
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 229 
 
 many cases a minister is engaged to reside in a district 
 for the purpose of visiting the sick and teaching the 
 young during the week, while at liberty to itinerate on 
 three out of four Sundays. In other districts where 
 no such arrangement has been made, the pastoral work 
 is often performed excellently by another body of men, 
 whose influence in Wales is greater even than that of 
 the preachers. Every chapel has its " blaenoriaid," the 
 deacons of the congregation. These officers are elected 
 by the congregation, not only to undertake the care of all 
 monetary affairs, but also to exercise discipline, to take a 
 leading part in prayer and exhortation, and to visit the 
 sick and poor. They often discharge these duties with 
 great ability and faithfulness. The " blaenoriaid " are 
 a most influential body of men. It would be difficult 
 to overestimate their religious, social, and political 
 influence. They are invariably men of some power 
 the natural leaders of their fellow-men. The most 
 active, energetic, and prosperous of the religious farmers 
 and shopkeepers, who are able to combine temporal 
 power with the influence of personal piety, are generally 
 raised to office. But it is also true that often a poor 
 artisan and labourer, if specially gifted in prayer or 
 power of exhortation, is also chosen by virtue of his 
 ability and piety. The position gives to a man power 
 and consideration in his class, and is an object of 
 ambition. It gives some worldly influence, sweetened by 
 the consciousness that it also leads to heavenly promo- 
 tion. There are in Wales probably not less than twenty- 
 thousand " blaenoriaid " the Mite of the middle and
 
 230 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 working classes, who find in the Nonconformist system 
 opportunities of doing religious work and exercising 
 religious influence not so easily found in the Church. 
 
 It must also be observed that in the Welsh 
 " blaenoriaid " and "diaconiaid" (elders and deacons) 
 temporal and spiritual influences are united, and act and 
 react upon each other. It is often the case that in the 
 towns, villages, and country parishes, the energetic and 
 strong-charactered tradesmen and farmers selected by 
 their fellows to act as elders and deacons are also the 
 largest employers of labour, and so wield the greatest 
 pecuniary and social influence on the people. That 
 influence naturally works in support of the religious 
 system which they represent. While it is an advantage 
 to the tradesmen to be prominent members of a large 
 congregation, all of whom may be his customers, it is 
 also a gain to the struggling mechanics and labourers 
 to have a " brother " in the person of the rich shop- 
 keeper or farmer who gives credit and employment. 
 The posts of local honour, such as seats on boards of 
 guardians, school boards, depend upon the suffrage of 
 the people, and office in the popular chapel is the 
 avenue for an ambitious man to reach these dignities. 
 These temporal influences, acting upon and wielded by 
 the chapel officials, are not, perhaps, used unfairly, but 
 they are constantly in operation for the maintenance 
 of the Nonconformist system, and are an obstacle to 
 the Church's recovery of power. 
 
 There is another great force, at work silently, and 
 constantly moulding the thoughts and feelings of the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 231 
 
 Welsh-speaking million, in the native press and literature. 
 Fifty years ago not a single weekly newspaper was 
 published in the Welsh language. The founder of the 
 Welsh weekly press was the veteran Dr. William Rees, 
 known by his countrymen by the name of " Gwilym 
 Hiraethog." He edited with much ability and vigour 
 the Amserau Cymru (Times of Wales), and in its pages 
 taught those principles of advanced Radicalism which 
 the Welsh people have so generally imbibed. He has 
 had many successors. The seed which he cast abroad 
 has borne, for good or evil, an abundant harvest. The 
 condition of the Welsh press was described in the follow- 
 ing words by the Rev. D. Williams, in his paper on 
 " The Welsh Church Press," at the Swansea Church 
 Congress in 1879: "Our Welsh publications number 
 twelve weekly, two quarterly, and eighteen monthly, 
 with a published price varying from one penny to one 
 shilling and sixpence. Out of this total the Noncon- 
 formists support two quarterlies, sixteen monthlies, and 
 ten weeklies, entirely dependent on peasant writers 
 and peasant readers, and, as might have been easily 
 anticipated, have made the Welsh people a nation of 
 political Dissenters." 
 
 It is probable that very few Englishmen realize the 
 extent of the literature that is published in the Welsh 
 language. Lord Aberdare's Committee, in their Report, 
 state that they had received evidence " that in the year 
 1875 no less a sum than ; 100,000 was spent in Welsh 
 literature of all kinds." In 1879, at the Swansea Church 
 Congress, in the discussion on "The Welsh Church
 
 232 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 Press," the following interesting description of the 
 extent and nature of the Welsh literature that finds 
 circulation was given, in his valuable paper, by the Rev. 
 D. W. Thomas : 
 
 " The Welsh is not like its sister Cornish, a language 
 whose Dolly Pentreaths have passed away. It is not 
 like its sisters Erse or Gaelic, a language with but little 
 current literature ; but it is a language with a good deal 
 of literature, and the medium of worship to more than 
 three quarters of a million of people, at the least com- 
 putation, in the Principality alone. Its permanence or 
 decadence, its beauty or ugliness, are no questions for 
 the Church. Let railways, schools, commerce, the 
 intermingling of races, accelerate its end ; but the 
 Church has to deal with it to-day as a living fact to 
 be used for its own high and holy purposes. If the 
 Church is the human instrumentality through which 
 saving knowledge is to be conveyed to the souls of men, 
 it must be done through the language which men 
 understand best in each country, and not through that 
 which they understand least. It would help us further 
 to realize the importance of dealing with the Welsh 
 language as a great factor in the religious life of Wales, 
 and would also help to indicate lines of future action, 
 if I point out one or two facts connected with the 
 extent and nature of current Welsh literature. Refer- 
 ence has already been made to the weeklies and 
 monthlies which exist, because of the demand for them, 
 and not because publishers are more benevolent and 
 patriotic than other people. I have looked over two
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 233 
 
 catalogues belonging respectively to two large publish- 
 ing firms in Wales, one located at Wrexham, the other 
 at Denbigh. I am afraid I could not describe them as 
 Church publishers. In the first catalogue I noticed, 
 amidst several works on Biblical Exegesis, Homiletic 
 Theology, Sunday School Aids, biographies of Non- 
 conformist ministers, Hymnals, and particularly a 
 volume of Essays by Dr. Edwards, of Bala, price icxy., 
 on subjects which those unacquainted with Welsh books 
 would suppose to be far above the comprehension of 
 any possible Welsh readers. The subjects are (they 
 may have an incongruous look, perhaps) the Works and 
 Lives of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Morgan 
 Lloyd, Gladstone, Goethe, Kant, Chalmers, Irving, 
 Arnold, Hamilton, Mill ; the periodicals of the Welsh ; 
 Logic; the poetry of Wales ; ' The Evangelical Alliance;' 
 ' The History of the Church in Geneva," etc. No one 
 has better opportunities of knowing whether these 
 articles, which (many of them) would not be out of 
 place in an English quarterly, are suited to his fellow- 
 countrymen, than Dr. Edwards, the leading minister of 
 the largest Welsh Dissenting denomination. In the 
 other catalogue, belonging to the Denbigh firm, I noticed 
 a series on the elements of mechanics, the Myvyrian 
 Archaeology, an English and Welsh Dictionary, Butler's 
 'Analogy,' Paley's ' Horae Paulinas;' but the most 
 striking book in the list is a Welsh Encyclopaedia (the 
 ' Gwyddionadur '), a work of unequal merit throughout, 
 but partaking of the nature of Smith's ' Dictionary of 
 the Bible,' and the ' Encyclopaedia Metropolitans' If
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 time permitted I would quote extracts from the articles 
 on ' St. Augustine ' and ' Philosophy/ which would serve 
 as specimens of the kind of writings which must be 
 finding readers. The publisher says that the venture 
 has cost him nearly 20,000, and that he hopes to be 
 reimbursed in time. I confess that there was a time 
 when, like most clergymen in Wales, I should not have 
 believed there would be readers and buyers of such 
 ambitious literature, but experience has taught me 
 otherwise ; and, by a just Nemesis, my incredulity has 
 been overcome by a residence of twenty years in a 
 purely monoglot Welsh parish. The copy I have of 
 ' Philosophy ' is a borrowed one, and that from a quarry- 
 man, who knows no English, and who is not unwilling 
 to supplement his wages by a trifle for looking after my 
 cow in his after-work hours. He is no exception to the 
 ordinary class of subscribers ; and only last week I saw 
 attention called by a correspondent in the columns of 
 the Western Mail, to the published list of subscribers, 
 which he says contains no less than ten from the small 
 and remote parish of Blaenpennal, in Cardiganshire, 
 which is occupied wholly by monoglot Welshmen of 
 small means, but evidently not of small intelligence. 
 Without referring to other catalogues, these two are suf- 
 ficient to show that, besides newspapers and periodicals, 
 a higher class of literature finds readers." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to observe that this large 
 number of weekly journals and periodicals, and the 
 considerable literature so generally read in Welsh houses, 
 is exercising a powerful influence upon the religious and
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 235 
 
 political opinion, and also upon the moral and intel- 
 lectual character of the people. 
 
 There is another institution peculiar to Wales that 
 exercises a considerable influence on its national life. 
 From very early times the bards, literary men, and 
 musicians of Wales have been wont to assemble in a 
 kind of congress for competition in the presence of the 
 multitude. This congress bears the name of" Eisteddfod," 
 or " Session." The name ought, perhaps, to be limited to 
 the principal gathering of the year, to which competitors 
 from the whole of Wales are attracted by the value of 
 the prizes, and which receives the name of the " National 
 Eisteddfod." But the numerous local gatherings are also 
 popularly called by the same name. The institution 
 has a twofold character. It is a popular festival and 
 an educational agency. As a festival of patriotic senti- 
 ment it appeals very strongly to the nature of Welsh- 
 men, recalling to their minds the romance, the poetry, 
 and the music of their country, preserving the continuity 
 of the national life, connecting the commonplace present 
 with the remote past, and reminding Welshmen of 
 to-day that they are the descendants of the Druids. 
 The choral singing and the evening concerts, at which 
 some of the leading artistes of the kingdom sing, are 
 at once a delight and a source of improvement to the 
 people. That the Eisteddfod is popular and a real 
 power in Wales, may be inferred from the fact that at 
 the great festival of the year sometimes 3000 or 4000 
 is received, mainly from the working classes, in payment 
 for admission.
 
 236 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 But the Eisteddfod is more than a popular festival. 
 Within certain modest limits, in the days of educational 
 destitution through which Wales has passed, it has been 
 an educational agency. Prizes of considerable value 
 are offered for poems, essays, musical compositions, and 
 other efforts of a humbler kind. For many months in 
 every year a number of Welsh youths are stimulated to 
 study and intellectual effort by the desire of winning 
 an Eisteddfod prize. The standard is not very high. 
 The composition of many thousands of second-rate 
 verses and countless very ordinary essays may not be 
 very profitable, and it is to be hoped that, when the 
 means of higher education are given to Wales, these 
 energies may be devoted to some more fruitful fields. 
 But the intellectual activity evoked by these primitive 
 compilations has tended to enlighten and elevate the 
 life of the people above the level of dull animalism. 
 The native ability lying hid in many poor Welsh 
 cottages has for centuries sorely lacked a patron. The 
 social separation of classes caused by difference of race 
 and language has prevented poor youths from finding 
 a friend in the squire and clergyman. Too often both 
 were unable to detect and slow to admire ability clothed 
 in Welsh garb. The Eisteddfod has been an Alma 
 Mater to many friendless youths. By the composition 
 of a poem or essay, many a young Welshman of ability, 
 born in the humblest position, has been first able to 
 make his merits known, and to rise out of his obscurity 
 into local usefulness and eminence. 
 
 Not a few of the ablest Nonconformist ministers and
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 237 
 
 Welsh journalists have risen from among the Eisteddfod 
 prizemen ; some of the ablest and most influential of 
 the native clergy, who have done most to preserve the 
 hold that the Church still retains upon the Welsh- 
 speaking people, such as Walter Davies (Gwallter 
 Mechain), John Blackwell (Alun), Evan Evans (leuan 
 Glan Geirionydd), Morris Williams (Nicander), are 
 indebted for aid to the Eisteddfod. It has been sup- 
 posed by English people that the Eisteddfod is an 
 instrument for the glorification of the Welsh language 
 and the exclusion of English. No idea could be more 
 baseless. The proceedings are conducted in the English 
 language to a considerable extent. This Welsh national 
 gathering has, like similar institutions among other 
 nations, certain features that present ludicrous aspects. 
 Like the Lord Mayor's Show ceremony, it appears to 
 many mere useless mummery. But as the Londoners 
 find in the city pageant a link that connects the citizen- 
 ship of to-day with the municipal life of distant centuries, 
 so the Welshman, in addition to advantages of a more 
 solid value, finds in his Eisteddfod a nursery of healthy 
 patriotic sentiment and of legitimate pride in the history 
 and traditions of his ancient race. 
 
 We have now reviewed the peculiar national life, 
 religious divisions, and social conditions of Wales, and 
 have considered the forces that are most powerfully 
 influencing the Welsh people of to-day. It becomes 
 necessary to inquire into the causes of the Church's 
 weakness in Wales. Why has the Church, that has 
 inherited the lineage of the ancient Bishops and saints
 
 238 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 of Britain, and the religious endowments of the country, 
 lost her hold of the majority of the Welsh people, so 
 attached to their old traditions and institutions? The 
 general alienation of the people dates from the eighteenth 
 century. That alienation has been gradually increasing 
 for a hundred and fifty years, and its progress can 
 hardly be said to have ceased. It is very essential to 
 the recovery of the Church that the causes of her decay 
 should be understood. 
 
 The causes may be divided into two kinds 
 
 1. Those that are common to England and Wales. 
 
 2. Those that are peculiar to Wales. 
 
 The chief of the causes common to England and 
 Wales was the poverty caused by lay impropriations 
 and pluralities. In his work upon the diocese of St. 
 David's, published in 1721, Dr. Erasmus Saunders dwelt 
 at length upon this evil, and its fatal effect in depriving 
 parishioners of the regular and effective ministrations 
 of a duly maintained clergy. In his able paper, read at 
 the Swansea Church Congress, Canon Bevan stated, 
 " Crushing poverty and the disorganization consequent 
 thereon were, in Dr. Saunders' view, at the bottom of 
 all the evils that then afflicted the Church in Wales." 
 After a careful perusal of Dr. Saunders' work, we are 
 unable to agree with Canon Bevan's estimate of his 
 view. It is true that Dr. Saunders exposed the spo- 
 liation to which the Church had been subjected, and 
 dwelt upon all the evils that followed her impoverish- 
 ment. But it is quite evident that Dr. Saunders looked 
 upon another abuse, to which we shall presently allude,
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 239 
 
 as the primary cause of her ruin. We are equally 
 unable to accept Canon Bevan's dictum as to the 
 present difficulty of the Church in Wales. He stated 
 at Swansea, " Poverty is still the besetting infirmity of 
 the Church in Wales. Poverty is still the main cause 
 of her existing inefficiency." 
 
 It is quite true that poverty does cripple the progress 
 of the Church. But it is not true that poverty is the 
 " main cause of her existing inefficiency," and " at the 
 bottom of all the evils." To those who know the Welsh 
 people it must be obvious that the poverty of the 
 Church is not so much a cause as an effect. The 
 systems that supplanted the Church, and occupied 
 the ground which she had once held, won their victories 
 without the aid of any endowments whatever. The 
 Church comparatively poor gave way before societies 
 absolutely penniless. Those societies at present raise 
 annually not less than ,300,000 for religious purposes 
 in Wales. It is obvious that, if the Church had retained 
 her hold of the affections of the people, this large 
 income would have been offered upon her altar, and 
 have enabled her to accomplish her mission without 
 lack of resources. The poverty of the Welsh Church, 
 therefore, is due to the alienation of the affections of the 
 Welsh people, and the radical cause of her decay must 
 be found in the influences that produced that alienation. 
 
 It may also be added that the spoliation of ecclesi- 
 astical revenues, so far as it was more general in Wales 
 than in England, must be traced to an influence peculiar 
 to the position of the country. That spoliation,
 
 240 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 especially in the southern counties, was most thorough. 
 In his essay on " The Causes which have produced 
 Dissent from the Established Church in Wales," Arthur 
 James Johnes, in 1831, writes the following words : "It 
 is impossible for the mind of man to conceive a more 
 appalling picture of devastation than is presented by a 
 mere muster-roll of the names of the present possessors 
 of Church property in many of the South Wales 
 counties. Opposite to the most valuable part of the 
 endowments of the most valuable benefices, we shall 
 generally find the name of some English nobleman or 
 gentleman, resident in London, in Devonshire, in the 
 most distant parts of the kingdom ; and again, in juxta- 
 position with the paltry pittances left to the clergy, we 
 shall continually meet with the name of some reverend 
 pluralist, living equally remote the incumbent, it may 
 be, of a rich benefice in Northamptonshire, or residing 
 free from all parochial duties in London ! Would that 
 this were an imaginary picture ; but alas ! it is but a 
 too literal description of the Church, as it exists in 
 Radnorshire and Cardiganshire, the two poorest counties 
 in South Wales." 
 
 The poverty of the Church in the two counties 
 named is undeniable, and, according to Canon Bevan's 
 view, the weakness of the Church in them ought to be 
 exceptional. But in Cardiganshire, where a native 
 clergy have always officiated, the Church is stronger 
 than in some districts whose richer endowments have 
 attracted the presence of strangers. 
 
 In many districts of England poverty has afflicted
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 241 
 
 the Church. In the new groups of population called 
 into existence by mining and manufacturing enterprise, 
 there has been a great want of resources to provide 
 churches and ministrations. In different forms, there- 
 fore, poverty has been a cause of depression common 
 to the Church in England and in Wales. 
 
 Another cause of Church weakness common to 
 England and Wales was the general religious apathy 
 and spiritual deadness that prevailed among clergy and 
 laity. There can be no doubt that Wales suffered her 
 full share from this cause. The spiritual tone of the 
 men who enjoyed the revenues, while unable or unwilling 
 to do the duties of the Church in Wales, must have had 
 a deadening influence upon the people. But there were 
 some lights in the darkness. Before the end of the 
 seventeenth century Thomas Gouge and his associates 
 had made a noble effort to spread religious knowledge 
 among the Welsh people. In 1709 Griffith Jones began 
 that ministerial career in which, by means of circulating 
 schools, he taught 150,000 of his countrymen to read 
 the Scriptures in their own language. His influence 
 upon Wales has been profound and permanent. His 
 Catechetical Manual upon the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, 
 and the Ten Commandments is one of the very best 
 that exists, either in Welsh or English. From it the 
 Calvinistic Methodists have drawn all that is best in 
 the teaching of their denominational manual, the 
 " Hyfforddwr." Griffith Jones, who did more, probably, 
 for the religious life of Wales than any other man in 
 the eighteenth century, lived and died in the communion 
 
 R
 
 242 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 of the Church, but never received any high dignity or 
 emolument in recognition of his magnificent services. 
 In the "Welsh Piety" for 1741, p. 29, a letter is extant 
 in which he complains that the Bishops of Wales did 
 not countenance his labour. But he was loved and 
 respected by the common people, who crowded to hear 
 him preach. Dr. Erasmus Saunders, in a passage 
 already quoted, has described the eagerness with which 
 the Welsh peasantry sought religious instruction, and 
 the delight with which they engaged in psalmody and 
 worship. It is, therefore, clear that religious apathy 
 and deadness did not exist in an exceptional degree in 
 Wales. Before the rise of Howell Harris and Rowlands, 
 the founders of Methodism, there was one religious 
 leader in the Church of extraordinary influence, and the 
 masses of the people manifested, in the words of 
 Saunders, written in 1721, an "extraordinary disposition 
 to religion." 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be said that religious apathy 
 existed in Wales to a greater extent than in England. 
 But Nonconformity has obtained an ascendancy in 
 Wales far greater than it has reached in any district 
 of England. 
 
 It is, therefore, necessary to look for the secret of its 
 vigour in some cause peculiar to the country. 
 
 That cause will be found in the influence of race. 
 It is natural that a dominant race should endeavour 
 to seize every vantage-ground. The higher offices of 
 the Church, carrying with them temporal power and 
 social influence, have always been an object of ambition.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 243 
 
 The rulers of the State at one time, and the social 
 leaders of a diocese at another time, have naturally 
 sought to strengthen their position by placing their 
 adherents and kinsmen in the high places of the Church. 
 Promotion in obedience to worldly motives has always 
 had a deadening effect. But when such promotion 
 involved, as in Wales, the intrusion, among a deeply 
 religious, sensitive people, of ecclesiastics unsympathetic 
 and ignorant of their language, the deadly effect was 
 greatly increased. This evil has existed from the 
 twelfth century, and has not yet entirely disappeared. 
 In 1196 the Welsh princes, in a petition to the Pope, 
 used the following strong language : " The Archbishops 
 of Canterbury, as if it were a matter of course, send 
 among us English Bishops, ignorant alike of both our 
 customs and language, and who can neither preach the 
 Word of God to the people, nor receive their confessions 
 except through interpreters. These Bishops, arriving 
 from England, love neither ourselves nor our country ; 
 but, on the contrary, vex and persecute us with a hatred 
 rooted and national ; they seek not the good of our 
 souls, but only desire to rule over us, and not to 
 benefit us." 
 
 That this anti-national policy was deliberately 
 adopted, is proved by a few extracts from the docu- 
 ments collected by Spelman and Wilkins, and edited 
 by Arthur West Haddan. The mind of Richard I. 
 is expressed in the following words : " Rex nullum 
 Walensem, prassertim autem-illum, qui principes Walliae 
 sanguine contingeret, episcopum in Wallia habere vole-
 
 244 Wales and the Welsli Church. 
 
 bat." The Archiepiscopal mind in the reign of King 
 John is described in these words of the chapter of 
 St. David's: " Praedictus Archiepiscopus cum regis offici- 
 alibus nobis extraneum aliquem, linguae nostrae et morum 
 patriae prorsus ignarum, contra electionem nostram et 
 privilegia nostra violentia intrusione praeficere volebat." 
 
 " The contest," wrote Mr. Haddan, " between Chapter, 
 Crown, and Pope for the right of nomination to 
 bishoprics a contest complicated in Wales by questions 
 of race and of English domination, .... the freedom 
 and self-government accorded to the National Church 
 of almost all dates, and diminished gradually as 
 Henry III. and Edward I. brought English law to bear 
 upon the subject, part passu with their gradual and 
 attempted Anglicizing of Wales, and tJie commencement 
 of that bane of the Welsh Church, the imposing upon it 
 of a clergy that could not speak Welsh, and the treating 
 its sees as mere pieces of preferment, all these are 
 surely subjects which have a living interest, and belong 
 to questions of which the moving forces are active in 
 the present day." 
 
 The Tudor dynasty, being of Welsh origin, adopted 
 a wiser and a juster course. Elizabeth adopted the 
 policy of a Welsh Episcopate ; and of sixteen Bishops 
 appointed in her reign, thirteen were Welsh. The same 
 policy gave to the Welsh people that noble version of 
 the Scriptures, from the pen of Bishop Morgan, pub- 
 lished in 1588. That policy, undoubtedly, secured the 
 reception of the reformed faith in Wales. For had the 
 Scriptures been withheld from the Welsh as they were
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 245 
 
 from the Irish, there can be little doubt that Wales 
 would have been to this day no less ultramontane than 
 Ireland and Brittany. But after the close of the Tudor 
 dynasty, the old anti-national policy was gradually 
 revived, until at last, from 1700 to 1870, the Bishops of 
 Wales were almost exclusively Englishmen. In every 
 generation this fatal policy called forth " protests " from 
 those who loved the Church. In 1721, the third 
 section of Dr. Erasmus Saunders' work, to which allu- 
 sion has already been made, headed, " Wherein are 
 considered the injuries occasioned to religion by pastors 
 that neglect the use of our language, by non-residence," 
 etc., contains the following passages : 
 
 " This is a part very disagreeable, and what I wish 
 my subject would permit me to overlook and pass by ; 
 and so to prevent the angry resentments which (I am 
 sensible) the telling of unacceptable truths must expect 
 to meet with. But since I have gone so far, it will, I 
 think, be necessary to proceed a little further, and to 
 point out the causes that mostly seem to have con- 
 tributed to the desolations I have been describing ; and 
 this I shall endeavour to do, without regard to any 
 other view or interest but that of truth." 
 
 This passage, and what follows, is quite inconsistent 
 with Canon Bevan's opinion that poverty was, in Dr. 
 Saunders' view, at the bottom of all the evils that 
 afflicted the Church in Wales. Dr. Saunders proceeds 
 to add 
 
 " First, then, if it was not an opinion that did not 
 seem very well to comport and bear with the sense and
 
 246 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 practice of many learned and eminent men, I could not 
 forbear thinking that the disposing of Welsh prefer- 
 ments, I mean those especially that are attended with 
 the cure of souls, to such as are wholly ignorant of that 
 language, to be a practice that has contributed not a 
 little to the decay and desolation of our religion. . . . 
 What benefits are the people to expect, as to knowledge 
 or information, from the ministry of such, who can 
 neither preach nor pray so as to be understood by 
 them ? . . . Again, it was upon the same principle (as 
 I am informed) that the present worthy and learned 
 Bishop of Carlisle, though there were many motives to 
 induce him to it, did yet decline accepting of a bishopric 
 in Wales, namely, because he was a stranger to the 
 language, and that he therefore conscientiously feared 
 he should not be able to be so useful to his diocese, 
 nor so capable of edifying and instructing them, as he 
 thought himself obliged to be. But all are not of his 
 opinion ; some have greater courage, and undoubtedly 
 don't want their reasons." 
 
 The protest against this unjust policy, uttered in 
 such strong language by Dr. Erasmus Saunders in 1721, 
 was renewed fifty years later on a memorable occasion. 
 In the year 1766, Dr. Bowles, an Englishman, utterly 
 ignorant of the Welsh language, was presented by the 
 Bishop of Bangor to the living of Trefdraeth, in Angle- 
 sey, a parish which was then, and is still, entirely 
 Welsh-speaking. The patriotic Welsh baronet, Sir 
 Watkin Williams Wynn, and the Cymrodorion Society, 
 assisted the churchwardens in bringing an action to
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 247* 
 
 prove the illegality of the presentation. The action 
 was tried before the Worshipful G. Hay, LL.D., Dean 
 of the Arches, and a full report of the depositions, 
 arguments, and judgment is extant in the British 
 Museum, bearing on its title-page the significant motto, 
 " Cwn mudion ydynt, heb fedru cyfarth " (Esay) " They 
 are dumb dogs that cannot bark " (Isaiah). Some of 
 the evidence was most painful. But inasmuch as the 
 evil which it exposes has not yet entirely disappeared, 
 it will be well to reproduce some passages. It is per- 
 fectly well known among Welshmen that no man, who 
 has only acquired Welsh as an adult, has ever been able 
 to master the pronunciation so as to be able to address 
 a Welsh audience without producing some jar on their 
 ears. The late Mr. George Borrow, an accomplished 
 linguist, who claimed to understand twenty-eight lan- 
 guages, acquired a thorough knowledge of Welsh, and 
 was deeply read in its literature, but he could never 
 speak it with any approach to the correct accent, though 
 he lived some time in Wales, and endeavoured to con- 
 verse daily with the peasantry. He was in the habit 
 of saying that it was the most difficult language in the 
 west of Europe. Poor Dr. Bowles seems to have been 
 but an indifferent linguist, if we may judge from the 
 evidence of Richard Williams, of Tre-ddafydd, Tref- 
 draeth, who deposed " That the first Sunday he (Dr. 
 Bowles) officiated in the said church, as rector of the 
 said rectory, he read or performed Divine service in the 
 English language, and brought one Robert Edwards, 
 of Llandegfan, with him, to give the necessary answers
 
 248 Wales and the Welsh Church, 
 
 in the different parts of the service, as the greatest part 
 of the inhabitants and parishioners who composed the 
 congregation that Sunday, of whom the deponent was 
 one, did not, as he verily believes, understand a single 
 word that was said ; . . . that he soon afterwards, on a 
 Sunday, preached a sermon in the said parish church 
 in the English language, when the deponent was 
 present, the text to which sermon the said Thomas 
 Bowles attempted to give out in the Welsh language, 
 but both the sermon in the English and the text in 
 the Welsh language were totally unintelligible to the 
 whole congregation ; . . . that he afterwards attempted 
 to administer the Sacrament to such of the parishioners 
 as chose to attend ; that a great number of them at- 
 tended accordingly, among whom was the deponent, 
 but the said Thomas Bowles could not then make him- 
 self understood to any of the communicants, and so 
 ridiculous was the attempt, that many of them burst 
 out into loud laughter, while others were holding their 
 hands before their mouths, to prevent the like irregu- 
 larities on so solemn an occasion." 
 
 Dr. Bowies' morality seems to have been quite as 
 defective as his Welsh pronunciation. In order to 
 prove his ability to pronounce Welsh intelligibly, he 
 produced a certificate, showing that he had satisfactorily 
 performed Divine service in that language, and signed 
 by his own son-in-kw and by two Welsh parishioners. 
 In court one of the witnesses, John Thomas, of Tanylan, 
 deposed that the signature of the two parishioners were 
 not honestly obtained. " He verily believes the said
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 249 
 
 signatures to the said certificates were, so far as relates 
 to Hugh Williams and Richard Williams, obtained by 
 fraud and imposition ; that Richard Williams signed the 
 same without being at all acquainted with the contents, 
 and that Dr. Bowles obtained Hugh Williams's signa- 
 ture by a stratagem, in the manner following, as the 
 said Hugh Williams informed the said respondent. 
 The said Hugh Williams is by trade a shoemaker, and 
 Dr. Bowles went to him to bespeak a pair of shoes, 
 at which time he asked the said Hugh Williams what 
 his name was, and producing a sheet of white paper, 
 without any writing upon it whatever, desired the said 
 Hugh Williams to write his name upon it, in order that 
 he might know his name properly in case he should 
 want it ; that the said Hugh Williams accordingly 
 wrote his name upon such sheet of paper and delivered 
 it to Dr. Bowles, and that the said Hugh Williams was 
 afterwards informed that he had signed a certificate of 
 Dr. Bowies' having performed Divine service in the 
 Welsh language, which alarmed him very much, and 
 knowing he had not signed any paper for Dr. Bowles 
 except as before mentioned, he, the said Hugh Wil- 
 liams, went before a justice of the peace, and made an 
 affidavit of the whole transaction, and such certificate 
 has been the general talk of the whole parish ever since." 
 
 Concerning this unworthy artifice, significant of the 
 moral condition of men who seek ecclesiastical pro- 
 motion on false pretences, the judge of the court ex- 
 pressed himself in these severe words 
 
 " Dr. Bowles appears before me in a very unfavour-
 
 250 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 able light, on account of the manner of obtaining this 
 certificate, which almost destroys the very end for 
 which it was produced." 
 
 It has been alleged by some that the appointment 
 of Englishmen to the Welsh sees, and of clergy ignorant 
 of the language to Welsh parishes, were simply errors 
 in judgment and acts of carelessness, not measures 
 dictated by a deliberate policy. But this theory is in- 
 consistent with the language of the advocate employed 
 to defend Dr. Bowies' position, and to justify the presen- 
 tation of the Bishop. It must be supposed that he had 
 received instructions, and that his argument expressed 
 the views of his clients. His reasoning, therefore, is 
 interesting. He said, in the course of his speech 
 
 "Wales is a conquered country. It is proper to 
 introduce the English language, and it is the duty of 
 the Bishops to endeavour to promote the English in 
 order to introduce the language. ... It is the most 
 effectual way to bring about so desirable a change. The 
 confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel was 
 revealed to us as a curse from heaven." 
 
 These words clearly indicate that such appointments 
 were made in pursuance of a deliberate policy. The 
 advocate for the churchwardens, whose words are pro- 
 phetic of the utter failure that has attended that policy 
 in the last hundred and ten years, made the following 
 sensible reply 
 
 " We may admit that it would be to the advantage 
 of the country if the Welsh language was entirely 
 abolished, and only one language to be used in every
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 251 
 
 part of the kingdom. But this is not the method of 
 doing it, neither will it attain that end." 
 
 The verdict of the court justified the action of the 
 churchwardens. It did not deprive Dr. Bowles, but it 
 guarded Welsh parishes against the repetition of such 
 appointments. The judge ruled 
 
 " It is proper that the Bishops in Wales should take 
 such order for the cure of souls, as to appoint pastors 
 that are acquainted with the language of the country. 
 It is the primitive law of the Church, and it is law at 
 this time." 
 
 Iniquitous appointments, such as that of Dr. Bowles, 
 have not been unknown or, indeed, unfrequent in the 
 last hundred years. But if the churchwardens of Tref- 
 draeth had not brought their action, such abuses would 
 have been more frequent. The parishes were protected 
 by the decision. But the dioceses unfortunately derived 
 no such benefit from the case. It must be confessed 
 with sorrow that men have been advanced to the highest 
 position in the Welsh Church who have not shrunk from 
 officiating in Welsh in such a manner as to excite the 
 ridicule rather than to edify the souls of their hearers, 
 and who must be pronounced guilty of having, whether 
 consciously or unconsciously, in the words of the advocate 
 for the Trefdraeth churchwardens, "burlesqued Divine 
 service, and profaned the ordinances." 
 
 From the twelfth century to the present time there 
 have not been wanting in any generation some intrepid 
 Welshmen to protest against the unjust policy that has 
 destroyed the spiritual efficiency of the Church in their
 
 252 Wales and the Welsh CJnirch. 
 
 country. But the most powerful protest against the 
 system, and the most exhaustive statement of the evils 
 that have arisen from it that has ever been made, is 
 contained in the able and learned essay from the pen 
 of the late Arthur James Johnes, "one of Her Majesty's 
 Judges of the County Court of Record," first published 
 in 1832, and republished by him in his old age, in 1870. 
 It is a work that ought to be read by all who desire to 
 understand the inner life of Wales, and the present 
 position of the Welsh Church. As a highly educated 
 Welsh layman, a zealous Churchman, and an able 
 lawyer, Judge Johnes was peculiarly qualified to state 
 the case fully and powerfully, and to marshal the 
 evidence against the system which he so mercilessly 
 condemned. A Welsh clergyman, writing upon the 
 subject, exposes himself to the poisoned arrows of those 
 who seek to defend an iniquity by imputing to its 
 assailants selfish motives. The testimony of a layman 
 is not open to such imputations. It is, therefore, well 
 that the strong language employed by Mr. Johnes in 
 1832, and deliberately repeated in 1870, should be 
 known to the English public, who are so often misin- 
 formed by interested witnesses upon this question. 
 From the second chapter of his essay, headed " The 
 unpopularity of the Episcopal clergy ascribable to two 
 causes: I. Their want of sympathy with the feelings 
 and tastes of the people. 2. Their neglect of the 
 language of the people. Both these causes themselves 
 the effects of an English hierarchy," we take the 
 following extracts :
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 253 
 
 "The unpopularity of the Church in Wales has a 
 deeper cause than is generally imagined. There are 
 certain differences in the characters of nations that resist 
 all attempts at perfect assimilation. ... In accounting 
 for this spread of Dissent in Wales, in my humble 
 opinion, too much stress has generally been laid on the 
 neglect of the Welsh language, and too little on the 
 peculiarities of the Welsh character. I cannot help 
 thinking that if the Cambro-British dialect could be 
 annihilated in a day, the want of sympathy between the 
 clergy and their flocks would still continue to alienate 
 the hearts of the people from the Establishment. . . . 
 It is with the greatest reluctance that I feel myself 
 bound to state a conviction that may at first sight seem 
 to savour of an ungracious national jealousy ; yet, after 
 the most anxious and careful consideration of the 
 subject, I feel that I owe it to truth to state my per- 
 suasion that the crying abuse of the Church in Wales, 
 and the fundamental cause of all the defects peculiar to 
 the Church in that country, is the system of conferring 
 her bishoprics on Englishmen. . . . No one would 
 protest more strongly than I should against a puerile 
 clamour at an Englishman holding a high office in 
 Wales, merely because he was an Englishman ; my 
 objection is founded purely on the broad Protestant 
 principles of the Church of England. . . . If the principle 
 was emancipation from a slavery to mere superstitious 
 sounds, and its object to give religion once more to the 
 hearts and language of the people, I cannot perceive 
 any real distinction between the present ecclesiastical
 
 254 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 government of Wales and a recurrence to the worst 
 practices of popery. . . . 
 
 " What are we to say of the mode in which the rite 
 of Confirmation was administered in Wales ? It cannot, 
 in this case, be said that the responsibility rests with 
 the parochial clergy, and attaches but in a slight degree 
 to the Bishop ; for in this instance a duty arises attach- 
 ing primarily, solely, and exclusively to the Bishop a 
 duty which cannot be performed in any other language 
 than that of the nation to whom it is administered, 
 without a complete mockery of the very nature of the 
 ordinance, and of every principle of the Church of 
 England. Yet it is thus administered ! . . . 
 
 "An English Bishop, in discharging the duties of 
 a Welsh see, labours under every possible embarrass- 
 ment. To distribute patronage so as best to provide 
 for the religious wants of the community, requires a 
 knowledge of the peculiar talents of the clergy and of 
 the various local exigencies of a diocese. Now, an 
 English Bishop in Wales has in this respect everything 
 to learn. From his ignorance of the language, he must 
 judge of circumstances at second hand ; from his want 
 of sympathy with the temperament of the people, he 
 cannot rightly appreciate even the information he may 
 receive. . . . Hence the Bishops in Wales generally 
 abandon after a time that line of policy which at first 
 appeared indisputable ; and thus it is that, often with 
 the best intentions on their part, their conduct is a series 
 of vacillations. . . . 
 
 "When the mainspring is not right, the whole
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 255 
 
 machinery must necessarily go wrong. I do not, of 
 course, mean to affirm that the English spirit of the 
 Welsh Bishops operates as a positive discouragement 
 to preaching and instruction in the Welsh language ; 
 but it withdraws from these practices that encourage- 
 ment which it is the object of their office to afford. 
 Even should they feel desirous of rewarding merit of 
 this kind, they cannot do it satisfactorily, as they can- 
 not detect or appreciate it ; much less can they prevent 
 the more worldly and narrow-minded part of the inferior 
 clergy from entertaining the notion that a neglect of 
 their native language is likely to recommend them to 
 the favour of their English diocesan. 
 
 " But perhaps in no respect are the evils of the 
 system more apparent than in their ill effect on the 
 higher ranks in Wales. The clergy ought to be, and 
 generally are, the link of intelligence between the aris- 
 tocracy and the lower and middle ranks ; but in Wales, 
 the clergy being all either strangers or men of humble 
 rank, this link is broken, and what is the consequence ? 
 Why, that the higher classes, though in other respects 
 often highly gifted and well disposed, will frequently 
 be found ignorant of all that is going on in their own 
 country, of the very rudiments of her literature, and even 
 of her language ! It is deeply to be regretted that the 
 aristocracy of Wales should have allowed their Church 
 thus to grow up into a prescriptive abuse ; it has been 
 the means of weakening that attachment which the 
 people once felt to them and their fathers." 
 
 But it will be said, by those who have no knowledge
 
 256 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 of the inner state of the Welsh Church, that the long- 
 lived abuse which has alienated the Welsh people and 
 weakened the Church has ceased to exist, inasmuch 
 as the present Bishops in Wales have some knowledge 
 of the Welsh language. It is true that in 1870 Mr. 
 Gladstone reversed this anti-national policy by the 
 appointment of a Welshman to the see of St. Asaph, 
 and that two natives of Wales have since been appointed 
 to Welsh sees. But the abuse, that has been at last 
 condemned and removed, has left behind it evils that 
 still exist, " testa diu," etc. 
 
 The neglect of the Welsh language and national 
 jealousy of Welsh preaching and literature, which were 
 inevitably produced by the example and influence of 
 the English Episcopate, has left consequences that will 
 not disappear in one generation. The tone and spirit 
 of the old regime still survives in a large number of the 
 clergy. Welsh preaching, speaking, and writing are 
 still considered vulgar, and left by the superior clergy 
 to the Nonconformists. The inferior clergy naturally 
 imitate the mental habits of their superiors. Conse- 
 quently the agencies that mould the life of the Welsh- 
 speaking million of Wales are too often neglected by 
 the Church, and the higher clergy are content to be 
 apostles to the genteel. 
 
 An examination of the professional qualifications 
 and performances of the leading clergy of Wales will 
 confirm this statement. There are twenty-eight leading 
 dignitaries in the four Welsh dioceses, in each of which, 
 as has been shown, a majority of the population, if
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 257 
 
 Sir Hussey Vivian's testimony is correct, must be 
 supposed to worship in the Welsh language. Of the 
 twenty-eight dignitaries, there are thirteen who cannot 
 be said to have any command of the Welsh language. 
 Of the thirteen, ten are absolutely ignorant of it, and 
 three, being only able to read or recite it with very 
 great difficulty, and a most imperfect accent, are quite 
 unable to converse in it. Out of the remaining fifteen, 
 not more than four have any power as Welsh preachers 
 and not more than three have ever attempted to con- 
 tribute to the religious or secular literature of Wales. 
 The result of this state of things is that those forces 
 which have been described as most potent in influencing 
 the Welsh people of to-day are not wielded by the 
 Church. 
 
 1. The gift of oratory, to which the Welsh people 
 are perhaps more subject than any other section of 
 her Majesty's subjects, has not yet been cultivated by 
 any considerable number of the clergy. Seeing that 
 the places of dignity are attained by men utterly devoid 
 of Welsh oratorical power, the younger clergy have 
 been tempted to think that broken Welsh and faltering 
 utterance are at least not incompatible with the highest 
 promotion. The practical result may easily be imagined. 
 
 2. The peculiar influence that belongs to Bardism 
 and the Eisteddfod, which, if duly guided, might have 
 been made powerful for good, has been lost to the 
 Church by the unpatriotic spirit dominant in its high 
 places. It is remembered with bitterness throughout 
 Wales that clergymen who were also eminent as bards, 
 
 S
 
 258 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 such as Walter Davies (Gwallter Mechain), Evan Evans 
 (leuan Glan Geirionydd) and others, who might have 
 done the Church immense service, were treated by the 
 Bishops of the day with long-continued neglect. 
 
 Another evil common to the Church in England and 
 Wales has been greatly aggravated in the Principality 
 by the separation of the higher clergy and of the squires 
 from the middle and working classes, through ignorance 
 of the language and want of social sympathy. The 
 Welsh people have, in the Nonconformist societies, been 
 accustomed to self-government. The more intelligent 
 farmer and tradesman, if a Nonconformist, takes an 
 active part in the government of the chapel. At the 
 great meetings he is brought into association with his 
 fellows of similar position throughout the denomination, 
 and his desire for activity and his love of society are 
 at once gratified. The Church layman in Wales is 
 doomed to inaction and isolation. The autocracy of 
 the Bishop in the diocese and the autocracy of the 
 clergyman in the parish leave very little room for the 
 activity of laymen. They may be consulted, but they 
 have no recognized place or functions in Church work 
 except as churchwardens. If the Bishop, before making 
 an appointment to a benefice, visited the parish and 
 met the principal parishioners and landowners in con- 
 sultation, it would be a step towards the limitation 
 of Episcopal autocracy and the ecclesiastical enfran- 
 chisement of the laity. It could be done voluntarily 
 without legislation. In past times a Bishop ignorant 
 of the language and of the people could not have
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 259 
 
 ventured to draw near to a laity with whom he would 
 have been unable to deal with the authority that is 
 given by superior knowledge and sympathy. He was 
 obliged to entrench himself in the solitary dignity of an 
 unapproachable autocracy, in order to conceal his real 
 weakness as an overseer of souls whom he could not 
 understand. Native Bishops, masters of the language 
 and in sympathy with the people, can venture to lay 
 aside autocracy, and to take the laity into their counsels, 
 so as to gain for their Episcopate the strength which 
 it cannot have without the support and concurrence of 
 the laymen of the diocese. 
 
 In parishes, clergymen unable to guide their flocks 
 could not venture to take the laymen of their parishes 
 into consultation. But every parish priest, who knows 
 the language and feelings of his people, would find 
 strength by voluntarily forming a parochial council to 
 consider all parochial matters, and to aid him in ensuring 
 the progress of the Church. 
 
 These measures would gradually attract into the 
 Church that admirable and influential class of men 
 who now find work as " blaenoriaid " and " diaconiaid " 
 in the chapels, by giving them a sphere for the exercise 
 of their religious zeal and energy, and a field for the 
 attainment of social power. In the past, inefficient and 
 unsympathetic Bishops and clergy, unable to attract 
 to their aid a laity whom they did not understand, 
 weakened the Church by sending into Nonconformity 
 the pillars that would have been its most powerful 
 supporters among the population.
 
 260 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 But it is when we regard the condition of the Welsh 
 press and literature that the ruin of Church influence, 
 wrought by an Episcopate and clergy negligent of the 
 Welsh language, becomes most apparent. The terrible 
 losses inflicted upon the Church by the want of a 
 friendly and by the attacks of a hostile press are 
 vigorously set forth by the Rev. D. Williams, in his 
 paper read at the Swansea Church Congress. 
 
 "The Church cannot exist, as a living body demand- 
 ing recognition, appreciation, and reverence at the 
 hands of the people, without a powerful and adequate 
 representation in the press. It is upon the press we 
 must depend to reach the masses. There are scores of 
 Welsh parishes where Dissent could not coexist with 
 the kindness, ability, and devotion of the clergy, only 
 for the dissemination of the distinctive doctrines of 
 secularism and disestablishment by means of the 
 Dissenting press. The good work of the clergy is more 
 than counterbalanced by the Dissenting newspapers. 
 The press of Saturday is more than a match for the 
 pulpit of Sunday. They read the Dissenting publica- 
 tions, and will not come to church. There is not a 
 chapel throughout the length and breadth of the land 
 without its newspaper correspondent and distributor, 
 and to the enormous power they exercise many a 
 clergyman can bear abundant testimony. . . . Now, 
 what has the Church Welsh press produced in books 
 or pamphlets, in literature, in theology, in physics, by 
 way of travels, commentaries, manuals, etc., for the 
 enlightenment of the Welsh nation ? What has come
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 261 
 
 from our grammar schools, colleges, cathedrals, and 
 Episcopal palaces ? There is only one sad, monotonous, 
 melancholy cry, ' Nothing, nothing ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Williams, in language which may appear to 
 some to -be irreverently plain-spoken, gives his view of 
 the cause to which the weakness, or rather the non- 
 existence, of a Welsh Church press and literature is due. 
 
 " I unhesitatingly aver, without fear of contradiction, 
 that the true cause does not lie in the apathetic ignorance 
 of the Welsh mind, or in the want of appreciation of 
 true talent, or in the absence of literary culture in the 
 Church. It lies at the door of the Welsh Bishops and 
 the dignified clergy, who have for generations sneered 
 at the Welsh language and the Welsh press. This 
 cause lies deep in the history of the Welsh Church. . . , 
 It is supposed to be a genteel thing in Episcopal palaces 
 to throw cold water on literary efforts and tendencies. 
 . . . The decadence of Church literature in Wales is 
 directly traceable to an unsympathetic Episcopate." 
 
 This clergyman may be thought to have given way 
 to strong feeling, and under the influence of national 
 sentiment to have exaggerated the shortcomings of the 
 Welsh Church's rulers. It will, therefore, be well to 
 cite the testimony of an able Welsh layman, selected 
 by the late Bishop of Llandafif as the most competent 
 in his diocese to speak with authority concerning the 
 Welsh press. Mr. Titus Lewis, F.S.A., an able and 
 energetic man of business, well known throughout South 
 Wales, which his commercial avocation compels him to 
 traverse frequently from year to year, and therefore
 
 262 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 thoroughly qualified by personal observation to speak 
 of the religious and social life of the country, used the 
 following language in a paper read at Swansea on the 
 same occasion : 
 
 " Let us, then, even if the avowal bring shame with 
 it, acknowledge that the press, the most powerful engine, 
 under God, to propagate her principles and to defend 
 her rights, has in a great measure been neglected by 
 the Welsh Church. It is not to the point that this 
 failure to turn such an engine, now an enemy on the 
 whole, into an ally, may have been brought about by 
 the apathy of Churchmen. It matters not that the 
 clergy, whose lead the laity follow, may have made no 
 effort to circulate among their flocks those Church 
 periodicals already existing. It may be true, as I have 
 heard asserted, that there are scores of parishes in South 
 Wales and Monmouthshire in which not a single Church 
 periodical is ever seen. The fact remains that the press, 
 as an exponent of Church views, has no hold on the 
 Welsh people. On the contrary, it is said that the 
 people of Wales, far from deriving their knowledge of 
 the religious world from Church sources, are ripe for 
 disestablishment. If it be true, the reason is obvious ; 
 they are being educated by the Dissenting press, and 
 the Church sits still, and, on the whole, makes no effort 
 to let her children hear both sides of the question. 
 While this is the state of things, it is worse than useless 
 to talk of organization and co-operation. 
 
 " These terms imply material to organize and co- 
 operate on. While the Nonconformists have their
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 263 
 
 organization complete, with a staff of agents in every 
 parish and village to distribute their periodicals, of the 
 Church it has been said, ' The only reward a man will 
 have for defending her in Wales, will be a pauper's 
 funeral, and a costly tomb.' . . . These are bitter truths, 
 and you may think, from what I have already said, 
 my attitude, instead of being that of a faithful Welsh 
 Churchman, is one of Dissenting partisanship. But, as I 
 have said, we must face the bitter ere we can create the 
 sweet. Now, it is essential to reform in this matter that 
 the people be appealed to in the vernacular. English- 
 men say, ' Why, railroads have so far Anglicized the 
 country that it is a rare thing to meet a native who 
 does not speak and read English, and therefore the high- 
 toned religious press of England is at his disposal.' 
 This is the argument which presents young Englishmen 
 to Welsh livings, provided they possess such a qualifica- 
 tion as a smattering of Rowlands' Welsh Grammar and 
 an indulgent examining chaplain may secure to them, 
 when a thorough hearty conversation of five minutes' 
 duration would thoroughly unmask their radical ignor- 
 ance. This is the policy which has thrust on us men, 
 clever enough indeed to learn our tongue, but never to 
 feel it, or for the people who speak it. Our tongue 
 cannot be learned by a stranger ; ' its fire burns only in 
 the native breast.' " 
 
 These testimonies, of a representative Welsh clergy- 
 man and of a representative Welsh Church layman, 
 selected to speak for their class, will enable the English 
 public to understand why that instrument, which during
 
 264 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 the last thirty years has been most powerfully influencing 
 the Welsh-speaking people, has not been wielded in 
 support of the Church, but virtually handed over to 
 those who have left her. It is to be hoped that Mr. 
 Williams's warning and appeal uttered on the same 
 occasion will not be in vain. " The same blind and 
 suicidal policy is now pursued by our Church dignitaries 
 towards the Welsh press as was pursued by their 
 ancestors towards the preaching of Daniel Rowlands 
 of Llangeitho, and Charles of Bala. It was not genteel 
 then to preach to the masses ; it is not genteel now to 
 write to the Welsh press. But if a fatal mistake is 
 acknowledged on all hands to have been committed in 
 the past as to Welsh preaching, in God's Name let us 
 not repeat it in our day towards the press." 
 
 Native Bishops, understanding the language and 
 people, able to appreciate literary ability in Welsh 
 clergymen and laymen, will have no difficulty in gradu- 
 ally creating a Welsh Church press and literature that 
 will extend her influence among the masses. They 
 will realize the importance of the work, and take counsel 
 with each other, and summon to their aid from the 
 four dioceses the clergymen and laymen most capable 
 of aiding, by advice, literary service, and pecuniary 
 resources, in removing a dangerous source of weakness, 
 and supplying that instrument of strength, the need of 
 which has been so vigorously and vehemently set forth 
 in the above extracts. 
 
 It may well be asked why the clergy and Churchmen 
 of Wales have not raised louder protests against the
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 265 
 
 system of appointments that has produced results so 
 disastrous. The answer is not difficult to find. In 
 Wales it has been true in a peculiar sense that " Ecclesia 
 est in Episcopo." A very large proportion of all the 
 benefices and all the cathedral stalls are in the gift of 
 the Bishops. Many of the Welsh clergy are poor men, 
 and those who are not poor have the natural desire to 
 win their share of professional success. Poverty and 
 professional failure would have been the inevitable 
 lot of any clergyman who, in the last hundred and 
 eighty years, had ventured to protest against the mis- 
 government of the Bishops, who, although not masters 
 of the language or affections of the people, had the chief 
 command of all their ecclesiastical endowments and 
 dignities. The squires, being themselves ignorant of 
 the language, were unable to realize the evil. The 
 masses of the Welsh-speaking people made their protest 
 by seceding from the worship of the Church of their 
 fathers. Up to 1867, under a restricted suffrage, political 
 power in Wales was largely in the hands of the non- 
 Welsh-speaking landowners, whose tenants formed the 
 county electorate, and voted as they were told. At the 
 general election of 1868 political power passed into other 
 hands ; many of the former representatives, both Whig 
 and Tory, who were not in sympathy with the people, 
 gave place to men who, though owning little land, could 
 command popular sympathies. The expression of 
 Welsh national feeling by the previously unenfranchised 
 classes in 1868 was so decided, that the election has been 
 humorously called the " Revolt of the Welsh." The
 
 266 Wales and the Welsh CJmrch. 
 
 old landowners of Wales are themselves, upon the whole, 
 generous and benevolent, and enjoy a large measure of 
 popular good will. Their loss of political influence is 
 mainly due to the unpopularity of the Bishops and 
 higher clergy, with whom they were associated in the 
 popular mind, and from whom they derived their social 
 tone and their habit of ignoring the Welsh language. 
 It is noteworthy that the enfranchisement of the Welsh 
 masses in 1868 was almost immediately followed by the 
 elevation to the Episcopal Bench, on the nomination of 
 the great Liberal statesman, whose ear has never been 
 deaf to the cry for liberty and justice, of the first Welsh- 
 man mitred in a hundred and fifty years. 
 
 It has, then, been honestly admitted that the Welsh 
 Church is in an anomalous position, as asserted by Mr. 
 Dillvvyn in his notice of motion, inasmuch as a majority 
 of the Welsh people have ceased to worship habitually 
 in her sanctuaries, although they have by no means 
 altogether deserted them. But that anomaly is due to no 
 causes inherent in the position of the Established Church, 
 but to abuses which have been partially removed, and 
 against the recurrence of which the Welsh people have 
 in their own hands effective safeguards. A system of 
 Episcopal appointments, anti-national and unjust, made 
 in obedience to the dictates of a false policy that has 
 proved a failure, and in defiance of the wishes of the 
 then unenfranchised Welsh masses, has produced the 
 Church's depression and created the anomaly that exists. 
 But for the future the Welsh people will have the 
 virtual power of appointing the prelates that will occupy
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 267 
 
 their sees. No Premier, under the present political 
 condition, will ever have any other object in view, when 
 appointing to the Welsh sees, than to give legitimate 
 satisfaction to the people of the Welsh dioceses. 
 
 But it can excite no surprise that a system of 
 ecclesiastical misgovernment so glaring, and obstinately 
 maintained until it was destroyed by the emancipated 
 popular voice, should have left upon the mind of the 
 Welsh people a painful impression, and created a pro- 
 found prejudice against a Church presented to them in 
 so odious a light. Many of the Welsh people are unable 
 to think of the Church except as " Yr Eglwys Wladol," 
 a State Church using religion as an instrument for ful- 
 filling the purposes of a short-sighted statecraft. The 
 Liberation Society at one time found eager hearers and 
 warm adherents in Wales. A cry for the disestablish- 
 ment and disendowment of the Welsh Church was heard 
 in 1870, and found expression in Mr. Watkin Williams's 
 motion on the floor of the House of Commons. 
 
 But there is some reason to think that, since that 
 date, Welshmen, who are a thoughtful and cautious race, 
 have learnt to look at the matter more calmly ; to 
 remember not only the past abuses in the Church, but 
 also its future possibilities of usefulness, and to ask 
 themselves whether it would be wise to avenge an old 
 wrong wrought by strangers at the expense of inflicting 
 upon their country a lasting injury. The arguments 
 against the destructive Liberationist policy commend 
 themselves to the sober-minded, thoughtful, and unpre- 
 judiced men, who can emancipate themselves from that
 
 268 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 narrowness of view from which neither Churchmen nor 
 Nonconformists are always free. The Liberationist 
 arguments, on the other hand, are plausible, and appeal 
 at once to such natural, but not very noble, passions 
 as social jealousy, pecuniary cupidity, and the love of 
 novelty. But there are also nobler motives and aspira- 
 tions working on the same side, such as the love of fair 
 play, and the hope of greater religious unity. Many 
 honest Welshmen firmly believe that disestablishment 
 and disendowment would put an end to a social in- 
 equality of an arbitrary kind now existing between the 
 clergy and Nonconformist ministers, and to the apparent 
 injustice that now obliges a Nonconformist farmer to 
 pay tithe-rent charge for the support of clergy whose 
 ministrations he does not often seek ; that the voluntary 
 system would suffice to maintain a sufficient and well- 
 qualified body of religious teachers ; that ministerial 
 discipline and efficiency would be more easily maintained ; 
 that all religious denominations in Wales would be 
 drawn into more harmonious relations ; and that the 
 tithe-rent charges, by which the clergy are now main- 
 tained, might be more usefully devoted to the payment 
 of the education rate or some other object of secular 
 utility. 
 
 In considering the attractions of the Liberationist 
 programme, Jt will be well for Welshmen to realize as 
 clearly as may be the losses that will also be inseparable 
 from any gains that may accompany its realization. 
 One serious loss will be the partial destruction of the 
 only really ancient institution that belongs to the Welsh
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 269 
 
 nation. The Church which it is proposed to destroy 
 existed before the Saxon invasion. Its ancient churches 
 are mostly dedicated to the saints who adorned the 
 earliest ages of British Christianity, and connect the 
 Welshmen of to-day with ancestors who were Christian 
 Churchmen while the Anglo-Saxons were still in the 
 darkness of heathenism. Around their walls countless 
 generations of their forefathers are sleeping. To destroy 
 the ancient parish churches of Wales will be to break 
 the objective link that connects the Wales of to-day 
 with that antiquity of which it is so justly proud. 
 
 Now, it is inevitable that, if the endowments of the 
 Church are secularized, a very large number of the 
 churches in country districts must fall into ruins. A 
 still larger number will be virtually lost to the Welsh 
 people, and be handed over to the exclusive use of the 
 English-speaking upper class, who, having wealth, will 
 be the chief supporters of the few clergy that will 
 remain. Thus the Welsh people will suffer grievous 
 loss, and the Welsh Church a sad degradation. The 
 people will lose their ancient Church, and that 
 Church will be degraded into a little Church of the 
 lairds. 
 
 The clergy are at present bound to minister to all 
 classes alike, in sickness and in health, if they choose to 
 avail themselves of their services. If they are not 
 always eloquent popular preachers, they are generally 
 philanthropic men of high character, always ready to 
 visit the sick, to relieve the poor, to console the sorrowful, 
 and to perform those occasional offices, baptism, marriage,
 
 270 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 and burial. Throughout Wales the Nonconformists 
 still continue to avail themselves largely of the services 
 of the clergy on such occasions. There are scores of 
 Welsh parishes, inhabited by a majority of Noncon- 
 formists, in which the services of the parish clergyman 
 are still almost invariably required at the burial of the 
 dead. The devoted earnest Welsh clergyman, in the 
 quiet sequestered country parish or lovely mountain 
 vale, living the life of an unpretending student and an 
 unambitious philanthropist, eschewing controversy and 
 bickerings, patiently teaching the doctrines and adminis- 
 tering the Sacraments of the Church, giving the example 
 of a high-toned innocent life, is still a powerful agent 
 of Christianity and civilization, whose value perhaps 
 will never be fully realized until it has been forfeited 
 for ever. Although, in consequence of forces already 
 described, all the results, literary and social, that might 
 have been expected have not come forth from it, the 
 Welsh parsonage is still a centre of enlightenment and 
 gentle beneficent influence. The parishioners who do 
 not profess to be his disciples are not uninfluenced by 
 the daily presence of the clergyman. 
 
 At the same time, it can hardly be doubted that the 
 services of the Church have an indirect influence upon 
 the faith of the Nonconformist societies. The creeds 
 and formularies afford a doctrinal standard which tends 
 to repress the wild exuberant novelties that crop up 
 in the countless sects and disfigure the religious life 
 of America, where such restraining influence is less 
 uniformly present. The truth of this view is strongly
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 271 
 
 supported by the fact that in Wales the Church and 
 Nonconformity are often found to exercise a beneficial 
 influence upon each other. It has been observed, by 
 those who know the country well, that Nonconformity 
 is more spiritually healthy and vigorous in districts 
 where the Church is active, than where her influence 
 is virtually non-existent. In the hills of Glamorgan 
 the Church is feebly represented. The population has 
 outgrown her resources. Nonconformity has an un- 
 challenged predominance. What is the result ? The 
 Nonconformist denominations have conferred inesti- 
 mable benefits upon the masses, who must have other- 
 wise been left in a state of heathenism. But their own 
 inner life has suffered from the absence of the Church's 
 modifying influence. It is notorious that discipline is 
 more lax, the standard of morality lower, and the tone 
 of some of the preachers less satisfactory among the 
 Nonconformist bodies in the great mining districts, 
 where the Church is so weak, than in any other parts 
 of Wales. It is from these districts that Mormonism 
 drew its Welsh recruits, the number of which Lord 
 Aberdare, at the Swansea Church Congress, dwelt upon 
 as a proof that the Welsh are addicted to religious 
 extremes. The Mormon perverts of the South Wales 
 mining districts are now witnesses to the spiritual loss 
 entailed upon districts which are spiritually bereft of 
 the Church's sobering influence, working jointly with 
 the energy and freedom of Nonconformist enthusiasm. 
 
 There is another attraction offered by the Libera- 
 tionist programme to the natural thrift of Welsh tithe-
 
 272 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 payers. The Nonconformist farmers are led to believe 
 that they now pay out of their own resources for the 
 maintenance of the Church to which they do not con- 
 form, and that disendowment will relieve them of that 
 burden. But it is obvious that the farmers and peasants 
 of Wales will not gain anything, but lose much, by the 
 alienation of the Church's resources. It is often 
 suggested that the tithes might well be devoted to the 
 payment of the education rate that now presses heavily, 
 or to the removal of some other burden. The education 
 rate, and all public burdens of the same kind, are 
 burdens that press ultimately, not on the cultivators, but 
 on the owners of the soil. The landowner who finds 
 that his tenant no longer pays $ a year in School 
 Board rate, will not hesitate in arriving at the conclusion 
 that the farm is by that sum more valuable than it was, 
 and will raise the rent accordingly. Thus the tithes, 
 to whatever public purpose they may be applied, must 
 inevitably add to the wealth, not of the masses, but of 
 the landowning ratepayers, or of the wealthier tax-paying 
 classes. The landowners of Wales, who are the real 
 though not often the direct tithe-payers, deprecate the 
 disendowment by which they would pecuniarily profit, 
 because they well know that no personal or social bless- 
 ings would in the long run accompany their advantage. 
 The church, the parsonage, the clergyman, now exist 
 for the parishioners, rich and poor. They are in an 
 especial sense the patrimony of the poor, which they 
 have inherited from the religious zeal of their Christian 
 ancestry. To disendow the Church will be to deprive
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 273 
 
 the poor parishioners of their patrimony in order to 
 lighten the burdens of the rich, and to give to land- 
 owners wealth which they neither want nor desire. 
 
 The spoliation of the Church will also be the aliena^ 
 tion from many parishes of some portion of the wealth 
 expended within their limits. The clergyman is the 
 only landowner who is always resident, and who expends 
 his rent-charge among those who till the soil upon which 
 it is paid. When the Church tithes are alienated from 
 religious purposes, and find their way, as they ultimately 
 must do, into the coffers of landowners, who are fre- 
 quently non-residents, as to large portions of their 
 property, the parish will find that it has lessened by 
 some hundreds a year the amount of money expended 
 within its boundaries. 
 
 But these material and sublunary considerations, that 
 tell against the destructive policy of the Liberationists, 
 might well-be disregarded if moral and spiritual advan- 
 tages could be secured by it. All must allow that it 
 is essential to the welfare of Wales, as of every other 
 country, that its people should have among them 
 a highly educated, duly qualified body of religious 
 teachers. The labourer is worthy of his hire. A 
 highly educated ministry cannot be secured, under 
 the economical laws that God has ordained, unless 
 an adequate maintenance is offered to them. Self- 
 sacrificing martyrs and heroes will arise and give them- 
 selves to the service of their fellow-men. But the world 
 has been so ordered that the people, who set so low 
 a value upon religious teaching that they will not 
 
 T
 
 274 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 provide adequate maintenance for religious teachers, 
 will be left destitute of the spiritual privileges that they 
 despise. A peasant ministry is a very useful element 
 in the religious organization of a country, but other 
 elements are necessary. The religious tone of a country 
 suffers, and religion loses power, if its representatives 
 are insufficiently educated, or engaged in menial and 
 worldly occupations. The Aristotelian maxim 
 
 ovTf yftapyov ov-rt Qdvavaov fopeo 
 KaTaffrdrtov, viro ykp Ttav noKnSiv irpeirei 
 Tiyiiocrflcu rovs Qeovs (" Pol.," lib. vii. i. 9) 
 
 is still true, and reverence for Divine Majesty will 
 undoubtedly be impaired in this country if ever the 
 ministrations of religion are left entirely to the voluntary 
 efforts of the farmer or artisan. 
 
 Now, it is assumed by the advocate of disendowment 
 that because the Welsh Nonconformists have built a 
 very large number of chapels, and contribute noble 
 sums annually to religious purposes, the voluntary 
 system will suffice to secure an educated and duly 
 maintained ministry. But the facts are not favourable 
 to this assumption. The Nonconformist ministers of 
 Wales as a body are very popular, and among them 
 are some men of considerable acquirements and great 
 eloquence. But it cannot be denied that the remune- 
 ration received by them is entirely inadequate. The 
 average ministerial income of the Welsh Nonconformist 
 minister is probably not more than 60 per annum. 
 The number who receive more than 200 is exceedingly 
 small. There are many who do not receive more than
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 275 
 
 a few pounds. A really able and eloquent man has 
 been known to ride thirty miles in order to officiate at 
 a chapel, and to have half-a-crown offered to him as 
 the hire of which he was worthy. It is hardly necessary 
 to add that ministers so miserably paid are in most 
 cases obliged to combine their ministerial labour with 
 some more lucrative calling. Not a few of the most 
 powerful preachers have been shopkeepers and farmers, 
 who, attending to their business during the week, 
 travelled on Saturday to deliver sermons in some 
 distant neighbourhood, which were delivered in other 
 districts again and again in the course of the year. 
 The itinerant system, as it relieves the preacher from 
 the necessity of preparing fresh sermons for every 
 Sunday, leaves him at liberty to till the soil or to sell 
 his wares during the week. The results attained by 
 the system in the past have been wonderful. But it 
 has lived its day, and is doomed ere long to diappear. 
 The Calvinistic Methodists, amongst whom it chiefly 
 prevailed, are endeavouring to substitute for it the 
 resident pastorate of men entirely devoted to the 
 ministry. But only the wealthiest congregations are 
 able to maintain a " bugail," or pastor. The poor 
 people in the congregations of thickly populated country 
 districts, who perhaps more than any others need the 
 continual help of ministerial guides, are unable to secure 
 the privilege. It is in such districts that the loss of 
 the pastoral care of the parochial clergyman would be 
 severely felt in the course of time by many who prefer 
 the preaching in the chapel.
 
 276 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 The voluntary system of the Nonconformist bodies, 
 with its freedom and elasticity, and the ready avenues 
 to success and influence that it offers to men endowed 
 with popular gifts, is admirably suited to develop 
 preaching power, and to secure a number of attractive 
 pulpit orators. But it is not adapted to provide for the 
 permanent spiritual needs of a population, by maintain- 
 ing through the country an adequate number of qualified 
 pastors, ever at hand and able, if not to dazzle on 
 the Sunday, to guide, console, instruct, and advise their 
 parishioners in their daily life. 
 
 The Nonconformist ministers have often great secular 
 advantages over the clergy. The eloquent preacher, 
 who in the course of a year probably preaches on the 
 Sundays in all the principal chapels of his country, wins 
 for himself fame and exercises great influence over his 
 fellow-men. At the same time, he not unfrequently 
 becomes a rich man in the successful pursuit of his 
 week-day business. He thus combines ecclesiastical 
 status and no small social influence and spiritual authority 
 with a very fair degree of worldly wealth. Thus it 
 happens that not a few of the Methodist preachers die 
 in possession of riches which a fairly beneficed clergy- 
 man could never hope to acquire. A voluntary system 
 which produces these results is admirably fitted to sup- 
 plement, but not to supplant, that parochial system which 
 extends to the whole country the benefits of regular and 
 equable religious ministrations. 
 
 There is another consideration which ought not to 
 escape the attention of patriotic Welshmen. Wales is
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 277 
 
 about to enjoy the long-denied blessings of higher educa- 
 tion. A large number of its gifted youth will acquire 
 knowledge and be fitted for an intellectual career. 
 There are very few openings for the energies of educated 
 and studious Welshmen in their own country. The 
 legal and medical professions are crowded. There is no 
 career more worthy of a noble ambition than that which 
 makes a man the guide of his brethren in life, the 
 consoler in sorrow, and their enlightener in the dark- 
 ness of coming dissolution. The ministry of their 
 ancient Church ought to afford to the noblest youths of 
 Wales a happy and honourable calling. Hitherto the 
 Heaven-born teachers of Wales have been excluded by 
 educational disadvantages and ecclesiastical abuses from 
 their own place in the sanctuaries of their country. A 
 better day is dawning. If Welshmen disendow their 
 Church, instead of reforming and reviving it, they will 
 deprive their most gifted countrymen in the future of 
 a career suited to their genius a career in which they 
 can confer inestimable blessings upon their country. 
 
 The manse of the minister has been in every gene- 
 ration the nursery of some of Scotland's noblest sons, 
 foremost in intellect and moral power. The Welsh 
 parsonage might be equally prolific of intellectual power 
 and moral virtue in Wales, if it had enjoyed that bless- 
 ing which was one of the three providential mercies to 
 which Dr. Chalmers attributed the greatness of Scot- 
 land, viz. ecclesiastical endowments enjoyed by a native 
 clergy. But, even under the disadvantages that have 
 existed, the Welsh parsonage has not seldom been the
 
 278 Wales and the Welsh Church, 
 
 birthplace of the most eminent Welshmen in every 
 generation. 
 
 It is well known that in Wales, as in Scotland and 
 England, not a few men of natural gifts have risen, 
 through the ministry of the Church, out of obscurity 
 into high and honourable positions. To disendow the 
 Church is to close one of the few avenues by which the 
 intellect and moral force of men born in poverty can 
 attain their due rank among men. In the words which 
 a great statesman put into the mouth of an ardent young 
 reformer, " The estate of the Church is the estate of 
 the people, so long as the Church is governed on its 
 real principles. The Church is the medium by which 
 the despised and degraded classes assert the native 
 equality of man, and vindicate the rights and power of 
 intellect. It made, in the darkest hour of Norman rule, 
 the son of a Saxon pedlar Primate of England, and 
 placed Nicholas Breakspear, a Hertfordshire peasant, 
 on the throne of the Csesars." It will be the wisdom 
 of patriotic Welshmen not to destroy their ancient 
 Church, but to see that she " is governed on its real 
 principles." 
 
 The most honourable motive alleged by the Libera- 
 tionists of Wales, as instigating them to seek the dis- 
 establishment and disendowment of the Welsh Church, 
 is the desire of restoring some degree of religious 
 harmony to a people now distracted by divisions. This 
 is an object worthy of a noble ambition, and its attain- 
 ment would repay very great sacrifices. It is easy to 
 exaggerate, but easy also to underrate, the evils of
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 279 
 
 religious disunion. It has very disastrous effects, and 
 greatly lessens the sum total of human happiness in 
 the country where it prevails. There is no deep gulf 
 of separation and no serious animosity between the 
 Churchmen and Dissenters of Wales. But still there 
 is everywhere and always present a heavy atmosphere, 
 clouded by the consciousness of antagonism, and charged 
 with some degree of controversial bitterness that every 
 now and then breaks out into showers of abuse. There 
 is a strong feeling of jealous rivalry between the various 
 Nonconformist bodies. They build chapels that are 
 hardly needed in order to supplant each other, or at 
 least to guard against being outstripped. There is 
 much strain and financial exhaustion in consequence. 
 
 In many neighbourhoods the various bodies, in this 
 race of rival chapel-building, are much in the same 
 position as the Continental nations that are exhausting 
 themselves in the maintenance of bloated armaments. 
 But the antagonism between the Church and the Non- 
 conformist bodies is keener. On account of the Church's 
 supposed position, all the sects, though not otherwise 
 united, will sometimes combine against her influence. 
 These jealousies, rivalries, and petty animosities poison 
 the social atmosphere. In every local election, when 
 members have to be chosen for school boards, boards 
 of health, boards of guardians, burial boards, and town 
 councils, too frequently the contest is degraded by 
 sectarian spirit, and both Churchmen and Nonconfor- 
 mists are guilty of asking concerning a candidate, not 
 whether he is best qualified for a public duty, but
 
 280 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 whether he attends church or chapel. The local news- 
 papers, again, are sometimes filled with the utterances 
 of this wretched sectarian bitterness. In the pulpit, 
 also, though not very frequently, violent denunciations 
 are sometimes heard. There is everywhere a spirit of 
 controversy, that to some extent sours that milk of 
 human kindness which naturally flows very abundantly 
 in the genial population of Wales. In every district 
 there is some degree of social estrangement. Instead 
 of being a united body, the community is divided into 
 two camps, that watch each other with jealous, restless, 
 sleepless rivalry. 
 
 These evils have an unfavourable effect upon charac- 
 ter, and are injurious to the human spirit. Happiness 
 is lessened by them. No evil comes except as the 
 result of a violated law. Religious unity is a law. 
 Disunion never fails to bring with it pains and losses. 
 The responsibility for disunion is heavy. Wherever 
 that responsibility lies, those who are burdened by it 
 are bound to do all they can to remove it from them- 
 selves, by fulfilling on their part the law of unity. 
 
 Before there can be any hope of religious reunion in 
 Wales, it will be necessary that Churchmen and Non- 
 conformists should lay aside many prejudices and tradi- 
 tions of antagonism, and recognize the real forces that 
 exist on both sides. Any reunion that is to be realized 
 must be secured, not by the destruction of vital forces, 
 but by bringing them into harmonious operation. When 
 Nonconformists realize that the Church has within her 
 a Divine principle and power, the loss of which would
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 281 
 
 entail impoverishment, if not ultimate deadness, upon 
 the nation ; and when Churchmen, on their part, admit 
 that there are forces in Nonconformity working for the 
 good of the national weal, the restriction and fettering 
 of which by an iron uniformity would be a grievous 
 spiritual injury, it may be possible to recreate by degrees 
 a practical harmony that will give to Wales the unspeak- 
 able blessings that will flow from unity of spirit. 
 
 The real contest during the last hundred and fifty 
 years has been not between Churchmen and Noncon- 
 formists, but rather between Uniformists and Non- 
 uniformists. The masses, who have separated themselves 
 in some degree from the Church, have not been induced 
 to do so by disbelief of her doctrines, but by the 
 insufficiency of her ministrations. In the eighteenth 
 century the most powerful and popular ecclesiastic in 
 Wales, if power be estimated by influence over souls, 
 and not by command of outward rank and endowments, 
 was Griffith Jones, who wrote concerning the motives 
 that led to Nonconformity as follows : " I must also 
 do justice to the Dissenters in Wales, and will appeal 
 for the truth of it to all competent judges, and to all 
 those themselves who separate from us (except only 
 such who have hardly any more charity for those they 
 differ from than the Church of Rome), that it was not 
 any scruple of conscience about the principles or orders 
 of the Established Church that gave occasion to scare 
 one in ten of the Dissenters in this country to separate 
 from us at first, whatever objections they may after- 
 wards imbibe against conforming. No, Sir ! they gene-
 
 282 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 rally dissent at first for no other reason than for want 
 of plain, practical, pressing, and zealous preaching, in a 
 language and dialect they are able to understand ; and 
 freedom of friendly access to advise about their spiritual 
 state." 
 
 This account of the origin of Welsh Dissent is true 
 of its continuance. The causes that gave it birth still 
 continue to feed it. The want of powerful preaching 
 and of spiritual association is the great weakness of the 
 Church. It is necessary to acknowledge this weakness, 
 and to realize that to some extent it is inherent in the 
 Church's system. The good preachers of the Church 
 are restricted mainly to their own parishes. Their 
 influence is limited. The good preachers of Noncon- 
 formity circulate continually, and have consequently 
 a wider field of influence. The Church can never 
 satisfy all the spiritual needs of Wales, by the ministra- 
 tions of her stationary parochial clergy. 
 
 But there can be no religious unity except through 
 the Church. She is clearly the only possible centre of 
 unity in Wales. The great question is How can the 
 unity that the Church alone can give be reconciled 
 with the freedom and power that are found in Noncon- 
 formity ? 
 
 Perhaps the best means of recovering religious unity 
 will be by realizing the causes that led to its being for 
 a time lost. In order to preserve unity, no conditions 
 should be imposed except those that are essentially 
 necessary. Every unnecessary restriction upon liberty 
 endangers unity. The Act of Uniformity, which was
 
 Wales aud the Welsh Church. 283 
 
 intended to secure for the nation the blessings of 
 religious unity, was framed to perpetuate Common 
 Prayer, the due administrations of the Sacraments, and 
 frequent preaching of the Gospel. Its authors tried to 
 do too much. They restricted liberty of prophesying 
 and of praying far beyond the point that was essential 
 to unity. Dissent in Wales has been a revolt against 
 the system that restricted the freedom of preaching. 
 The liberty of preaching is a spiritual right that ortho- 
 dox Nonconformity "cannot, will not, and ought not to 
 sacrifice. 
 
 But the Church, on her part, has committed to her a 
 mission that she must fulfil. The unity of the spiritual 
 kingdom is a truth to which she must testify. That 
 unity can only be preserved by order. The functions 
 of the central government must be restricted to those 
 who have authority to discharge them, in order to save 
 a nation from anarchy. Those central functions should 
 be as few as possible, in order that liberty may not be 
 restricted. But liberty cannot exist without order, and 
 order is, in the long run, destroyed by the want of 
 liberty. 
 
 The administration of the Holy Communion, in all 
 ages of the Church, has been restricted to those officers 
 who have been authorized to perform that function on 
 behalf of the congregation. The Holy Communion, 
 therefore, is the true centre of unity. Those who can 
 recite conscientiously the articles of the Nicene Creed 
 are, as far as their belief goes, able to conform to the 
 one condition necessary to the unity of the Church.
 
 284 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 For two generations in Wales, the Calvinistic Me- 
 thodists were very generally in the habit of commu- 
 nicating in the parish churches. It was not until 1811 
 that the denomination ceased to regard the ministra- 
 tions of the clergy, authorized by the Apostolical 
 Commission, as essential to the due celebration of the 
 Sacrament of Unity. It is difficult not to look back 
 with regret to the early days of Welsh Methodism, and 
 with an earnest wish that the state of things that 
 terminated in 1811 might be restored. 
 
 There must be in all the orthodox Nonconformist 
 bodies thousands of earnest souls who yearn for unity, 
 and would rejoice to partake once more of that one 
 communion which would bring them into direct spiritual 
 fellowship with their fathers in the ages that are gone. 
 There are thousands of earnest Churchmen who would 
 rejoice to be free to avail themselves occasionally of the 
 privilege of hearing the more powerful preachers of the 
 Nonconformist bodies. It would be well if Noncon- 
 formists could come to their parish churches three times 
 in the year to receive the Sacrament of unity. It would 
 also be well if, in parishes where feeble preaching is 
 starving the souls of the parishioners, the Church-people 
 were at liberty to hear sermons in the meeting-house. 
 
 But this practical reunion cannot be brought about 
 by any formal agreement. The Nonconformist denomi- 
 nations have their chapels, their organization, and vested 
 interests. These must remain. The Church cannot 
 absorb them. She cannot do the work which is done 
 by them without great changes in her system.
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 285 
 
 On the other hand, there seems no prospect what- 
 ever of any unity among the Nonconformist bodies. 
 They cannot supersede the Church. The restoration of 
 unity is hopeless, unless Nonconformists can gradually 
 be brought to see the duty of communicating in the 
 parish churches, and Churchmen to recognize heartily 
 the liberty of prophesying as a right that belongs to 
 the Nonconformists. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the vast majority of the 
 Welsh Nonconformists are, in their acceptance of the 
 central truth of the Incarnation, more orthodox than a 
 large number of men who worship and even minister in 
 the Church. It is sad that those who are one in faith 
 should not be one in communion. If all the orthodox 
 Nonconformists in the parishes, worshipping in their 
 own synagogues and hearing their own prophets at 
 other times, came up to the Jerusalem of the parish 
 church three times a year to receive the Holy Com- 
 munion, it cannot be doubted that the Divine Spirit 
 of unity would drive out of the land the wretched 
 jealousies, rivalries, and social divisions that now mar 
 its life. 
 
 There is much in the tendencies of the present age 
 to make such a reconciliation possible. The religious 
 Liberalism, if it has endangered the hold of some 
 ancient truths that must not be sacrificed, has also 
 banished many prejudices and much narrow ignorant 
 bigotry that made reunion more difficult than it now is. 
 
 The Bishops and clergy of the Church were very 
 willing to enter into relations with the Salvation Army,
 
 286 Wales and the Welsh Church. 
 
 as long as it seemed possible that its operations would 
 be restricted to evangelizing the masses. It is, surely, 
 far more desirable to keep in view, as an object of true 
 ecclesiastical wisdom, the desirability of re-establishing 
 communion with those great orthodox Nonconformist 
 bodies who have done and are doing so much to 
 Christianize millions of the people of this country. 
 
 If relations of sympathy could be informally renewed 
 between the Church and the denominations, the passage 
 from the Nonconformist preaching ministry into the 
 priesthood of the Church ought to be made easy. 
 There are many men who know that their gift is that 
 of the preacher. They would lose influence if they 
 became parish priests. The wealthiest benefice would 
 not tempt a great preacher to settle down in one limited 
 sphere as a parochial minister. In early life especially 
 the ministry of preaching would be more attractive to 
 such men, who would not be happy if unable to exercise 
 their gift and to wield that widespread influence which 
 a leading Nonconformist teacher acquires in every dis- 
 trict of Wales. But there are among the Nonconformist 
 ministers many who feel, especially as they advance in 
 life, that the quiet labours of the priesthood would be 
 more in accordance with their taste, and that they 
 would be glad to retire from the excitement of great 
 assemblies into the calm of pastoral work. 
 
 If such a unity of spirit, with liberty of multiform 
 operations, could be restored in Wales, the power of 
 Christianity would be enormously increased. The 
 denominations would lose none of their spiritual energy,
 
 Wales and the Welsh Church. 287 
 
 the Church none of its spiritual stability. All earnest 
 men, now separated by sectarian jealousies, would be 
 able to consult and work together for the common good. 
 Social life would be far happier. The grace of unity 
 would be diffused on the whole body, from the head 
 even to the skirts of the garment. For this end Church- 
 men must recognize the liberty of prophesying, and 
 Nonconformists must recognize the Sacrament of unity.
 
 WHY ARE THE WELSH PEOPLE 
 ALIENATED FROM THE CHURCH? 1 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 HAVING been requested more than nine months ago by 
 the Welsh Churchmen of Liverpool to preach at their 
 annual festival in St. David's Church in Welsh, and 
 also to deliver a sermon at a special English service, 
 in the hope of exciting on their behalf the generous 
 sympathy of their English fellow-Churchmen, the author 
 deemed it a not unfitting occasion for briefly reviewing 
 the past and present relations of the Church to the 
 Welsh-speaking population of Wales. The views which 
 he has formed concerning the cause that has mainly 
 provoked the alienation from the Church of three-fourths 
 of the religious people of Wales, were fully set forth 
 nine years ago in a letter, entitled " The Church of the 
 Cymry," addressed to the Right Hon. W. Ewart 
 Gladstone, a statesman who knows and loves the Welsh 
 people. Those views may be thought by some to be 
 
 1 Preached in St. David's fWelsh) Church, Liverpool, at a special 
 English service, attended by the Worshipful the Mayor and the Corpora- 
 tion, on Sunday, May 25, 1879.
 
 Why are the Welsh People alienated, etc. ? 289 
 
 erroneous, but the author can claim the credit of having 
 held them with consistency. Longer and wider expe- 
 rience has only served to confirm in him the conviction 
 that the serious decay of the Welsh Church, since 
 1700, has been mainly due to the fact that the clergy 
 in its chief places have ignored the maxims of that 
 Apostolical spirit, which constrains the true ministers 
 of Christ to adapt their ministrations to the spiritual 
 needs of every nationality. 
 
 He is firmly convinced that the correctness of his 
 conclusions will be questioned by no one who is qualified, 
 by a knowledge of the Welsh language and of the inner 
 life of Wales, to form a judgment. The author is aware 
 that this sermon contains admissions that may be pain- 
 ful to Churchmen, but believes that the truth should be 
 known. He ventures to express a strong hope that an 
 accurate return may soon be published in each of the 
 four dioceses of Wales, showing the number of congrega- 
 tions, and of the worshippers in them, both conforming 
 and non-conforming, that worship in the Welsh language, 
 in order that the ignorance of the lingual and religious 
 condition of Wales, which so extensively prevails, may 
 be dispelled by reliable information. He is sanguine 
 that, when light shall have been thrown upon the real 
 state of the Welsh Church, efficacious remedies may yet 
 be found for a sickness which is not beyond the hope of 
 gradual recovery. 
 
 u
 
 290 
 
 " I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save 
 some. And this I do for the Gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof 
 with you." I COR. ix. 22, 23. 
 
 IN this chapter St. Paul reveals the spirit of his own 
 ministry. The leading characteristic which he claims 
 for it is unselfishness. He tells the Corinthians that 
 the ministerial office, by the very nature of things, has 
 rights. One of those rights he declares to be that of 
 maintenance : " Even so hath the Lord ordained that 
 they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel." 
 
 By a providential law, in the economy of God, all 
 who do true work have a right to eat, or, in other 
 words, all who enrich society have a right to share its 
 riches. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that, although the minister of 
 religion is not directly occupied either in the production 
 or distribution of wealth, his work goes down to the 
 very root of material prosperity, and fosters the growth 
 of social riches, though more indirectly, not less really 
 than does the energy of agriculturist, manufacturer, or 
 merchant. It is easy to illustrate this truth. 
 
 The wealth of this great town, in which we are 
 assembled, is known in all the world. What is the root 
 of that prosperity ? Is it due entirely to your noble 
 river, and your position on the shores of the highway 
 of nations ? No ; the Mersey flowed, and the paths of 
 ocean were as wide, in the days when naked savages
 
 alienated from the Church? 291 
 
 fed their flocks in the wild forests, and looked abroad 
 over the waste of waters on which the great leviathans 
 of your commerce are floating to-day. Natural advan- 
 tages climate, position, soil, mineral resources are all 
 God's gifts for the wealth of society. But there is one 
 force without which these are vain. That force is the 
 spirit of man. If truth, integrity, industry, and purity 
 were wanting, no outward gifts could save a people from 
 material decay. The virtues of a community are the 
 first of the forces that create its wealth. 
 
 It is the function of the minister of religion to call 
 into play the spiritual motives that produce the virtues 
 of a community, and thereby give to it wealth, honour, 
 peace, and happiness. Happy is the people who have 
 moral power ; their garners will be full, affording all 
 manner of store : there will be no complaining in their 
 streets ; " Yea, happy is that people whose God is the 
 Lord." 
 
 It follows, as St. Paul teaches in this chapter, that 
 the minister of religion, being a promoter of wealth, has 
 as good a right to share it as the cultivator who produces 
 or the soldier who guards it. 
 
 But while asserting this right as a general principle, 
 St. Paul tells us that for special reasons he thought well 
 not to avail himself of it. It was his lot, not to labour 
 among Christians enlightened in an organized Church, 
 but rather to organize Churches by bringing men out 
 of darkness into the light of those Divine truths upon 
 which the wealth of society is based. As a stranger 
 he went forth to various nations to teach truths that
 
 292 
 
 were new to them. He had to gain a hearing from 
 them, and, if possible, to win their confidence and 
 sympathy. For that end it was all-important that they 
 should know him to be disinterested. It is obvious that 
 in our own day a missionary, who sought to maintain 
 himself at the expense of his hearers in a heathen 
 country, would labour under disadvantages as one who 
 came seeking his own gain. A missionary of Christ, the 
 King of sacrifice, if he does not show the credentials 
 of disinterestedness, is powerless. He must be able to 
 say to those whom he would save, "We would not be 
 chargeable to any of you." Among the ignorant and 
 uninstructed, no ministry that seeks payment from them 
 can succeed in winning influence. 
 
 But if in the moral weakness of an infant Church 
 an unpaid ministry was essential, at all times, in all 
 places, and among all men every ministry that will be 
 spiritually powerful must be unselfish. If it could be 
 shown that the Christian ministry afforded worldly 
 advantages beyond other callings, so that an able man 
 could make more money as a clergyman than he could 
 by devoting the same talents and industry to the work 
 of a physician, a lawyer, or a merchant, it would be 
 disastrous to his spiritual power. In this country, 
 however, in our days, it will, I think, be acknowledged 
 that the power of the Christian ministry is not generally 
 exposed to these dangers. 
 
 But to minister without payment is not the only 
 form of ministerial unselfishness. Indeed, a man may 
 minister without pecuniary reward, and yet be moved
 
 alienated from the Church? 293 
 
 by very selfish aims. Therefore, in the text, the Apostle 
 holds before the Christian ministry of all ages the 
 example of unselfishness in a much higher and nobler 
 form. 
 
 Pecuniary disinterestedness is a great power, but 
 living sympathy is infinitely greater. 
 
 The truth declared in these words, to which I wish 
 to direct your attention, is that in order to save souls 
 in the Church of God a ministry infinitely sympathetic 
 is essential. 
 
 Let us consider 
 
 I. The ruling motive of the Apostolic ministry as 
 declared in the words, " For the Gospel's sake, that 
 I might be joint partaker of it." 
 
 II. The consequent course of action and its aim : 
 " I am made all things to all men, that I might by all 
 means save some." 
 
 I. The informing motive that gave to the Apostolic 
 ministry its impulse and shaped its course is declared 
 in the words, " This I do for the Gospel's sake." Now 
 let us try to realize how the central truth of the Gospel 
 bears upon those duties of the Apostolic ministry of 
 which St. Paul speaks. How does the Gospel make 
 every true Christian ministry self-denying and sympa- 
 thetic? In order to understand this, we must have a 
 clear view of the living power of the Gospel. We know 
 that the Gospel means glad tidings. But what are the 
 tidings ? And why do they gladden the being of man 
 when he receives them ? 
 
 These are questions which a thoughtful and inquiring
 
 294 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 human soul must solve before it can find peace. We 
 cannot answer the question, "What is the Gospel?" 
 unless we can answer that other inquiry, "What is 
 man ? " For the Gospel is that revelation of truth that 
 tells us the nature and destiny of man, and enables us 
 to find our full human life and to attain the inheritance 
 of wealth and dignity that belongs to it. It is revealed 
 that man was created to be partaker of the Divine life, 
 to bear God's image, to be changed into the same image 
 from glory to glory through all the stages of growth in 
 spiritual enlightenment and power. Therefore the great 
 question for the soul is this : " What is the image, or, as 
 we should say, the character of God ? " The answer 
 to that question of humanity is the Gospel. Such is the 
 teaching of the Apostle as summarized by him in this 
 Epistle : " I came to you . . . declaring unto you the 
 testimony of God. For I determined not to know 
 anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him 
 crucified." 
 
 The career of Jesus Christ is the revelation or 
 testimony of God. In his Epistle St. John tells us that 
 " God is love," and that " he that dwelleth in love 
 dwelleth in God." But when St. John sums up the 
 power of the Gospel in the brief formula, " God is love," 
 his teaching is identical with that of St. Paul, when he 
 comprehends all in the words "Jesus Christ, and Him 
 crucified ; " for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Divine 
 Man omnipotent, is the one infinite expression of the 
 Divine love. To act, therefore, as the Apostle professes 
 to act, under the power of the Gospel, is to live under
 
 alienated from the Church f 295 
 
 the guidance of the Divine Spirit of Christ, in obedience 
 to the promptings of eternal love. 
 
 That power which in the New Testament is called, 
 sometimes " love " and sometimes " charity," is the 
 spring that quickens all moral life. Wherever there is 
 goodness, even in a heathen, it has its origin in the 
 omnipresent infinite love. But as there are many who 
 breathe the air of physical life and are strong, and yet 
 are unable to explain the chemical elements that form 
 it, so are there many in the east and in the west, in the 
 north and in the south, who personally act upon the 
 principle of love, while unable to name its constituent 
 elements or to define its relation to other spiritual forces. 
 There is a Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world, and the world knoweth it not. To know 
 Jesus Christ is to know that mystery, and to receive 
 that power which makes us sons of God. 
 
 The Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of 
 Jesus Christ unfold to the human spirit the mystery of 
 Divine love. Can we define the nature of that love ? 
 We can only try to understand it by gazing for ever at 
 the career of Jesus. 
 
 The feature that first strikes us in that career is power 
 the miracles, the storm calmed, the sea subdued, the 
 bread multiplied, the sick healed, the dead raised. In life, 
 power is the attribute that first attracts and awes the 
 natural man material, intellectual, social power. The 
 career of Jesus reveals to us One endued with infinite 
 power over nature, over men, over the wealth of the 
 universe. The fact that Jesus had all power implies
 
 296 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 that power is good ; that man is justified in striving 
 to subdue nature, to grow in intellectual energy, and to 
 add to his material wealth in that social struggle and 
 competition that are going on around us in the world's 
 life. The energy and business of the world are simply 
 the travail that God hath given to the sons of man to 
 be exercised therewith, the effort that man is impelled 
 to make in search of that power which is an attribute 
 of Jesus. 
 
 But the revelation of power in Christ is not the 
 Gospel, so the attainment of power by man is not his 
 salvation. The moral value of power depends upon the 
 motives by which it is directed. Power is good or evil, 
 as it is used for base or noble ends. The muscular 
 force of a giant may be used to save life or to murder ; 
 so the power of intellect, of rank, of riches, or any other 
 power, may be used for evil as well as for good. Power 
 may fly to and fro as a fallen angel, spreading gloom 
 and misery as it expands its wings, or may reign as an 
 angel of light and blessedness. 
 
 In Jesus Christ we see perfect power directed by the 
 perfect motive. What is that motive? It is the prin- 
 ciple called love and charity, and the highest attribute 
 in the nature of God. It is the eternal motive that, as it 
 were, impels God to give life and blessedness out of His 
 own fulness to the greatest possible number of creatures. 
 In His eternal existence God is giving Himself, pouring 
 forth the wealth of His own Being in order to give life 
 to those whom He has called out of nothingness. 
 
 So in Jesus Christ human nature, while wielding the
 
 alienated from the Church? 297 
 
 power of Godhead, sacrificed its vital energies in the 
 flow of redeeming blood, in order to give to the world 
 moral and spiritual life. The great lesson of the Cross 
 is, that to use power unselfishly, for the good of others, 
 is to live in the life of God. 
 
 But the natural man will say, "These are no glad 
 tidings. There is no gladness in checking personal 
 inclinations, in enduring pain, in crucifying the flesh 
 and its impulses." 
 
 It is quite true that they who follow Christ afar 
 off, and see Him on the Cross and go no further, miss 
 the gladness of Christianity. Had the career of Jesus 
 ended in the self-renunciation of the Cross, His mission 
 would not have brought glad tidings. But the Cross 
 was only a short though bitter passage leading on to 
 the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the endless life of 
 triumphant glory. Hence the manifestation of Jesus 
 Christ in all its fulness gives to man infinite gladness, 
 through the assurance it brings that pain, suffering, and 
 self-sacrifice lead to the eternal elevation of the human 
 being. 
 
 It is obvious that this principle of Divine love 
 working in the nature of man has an infinite power 
 both negative and active. He who loves God with all 
 the energies of his being, and his fellow-man as himself, 
 and has learnt to devote himself to the good of others 
 and the glory or manifestation of God, has in him the 
 spirit which destroys all vice and creates all virtue. 
 Love, both negatively and positively, is, in St. Paul's 
 words, " the fulfilling of the Law,"
 
 298 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 Every human vice and sin has its origin in the 
 power of personal selfishness that isolates the man 
 from the corporate life of humanity. The man who 
 has crucified his self-will is free from the bondage of 
 sin. Why does the sensualist yield to the temptations 
 that debase his being ? Because he has not learnt to 
 sacrifice selfish passion. Why does the dishonest man 
 defraud society ? Because he has not been inspired by 
 that spirit of the Cross which teaches man to sacrifice 
 himself for the good of others, and to lose his lower 
 life that he may find the higher life risen out of its 
 grave. 
 
 But this principle is not merely negative ; it not 
 only restrains from vice, but impels to virtue. It not 
 only creates the pale holiness of the hermit who has 
 tamed the passions and renounced the world, but it 
 also fosters the noblest activities of robust virtue in all 
 its social modern forms. The untiring philanthropist, 
 the ardent prophet of religious truth, the brave soldier 
 and sailor, the generous honourable merchant, the large- 
 minded and large-hearted statesman, the good energetic 
 honest citizen whatever be his calling, all, whether 
 knowing it or not, draw their virtues from that inex- 
 haustible fountain opened upon the Cross ; for instead 
 of living the life of selfish indulgence and shutting up 
 the energies of his life-blood in himself, each of them, 
 as the ordinary phrase so simply and yet so deeply 
 expresses it, " devotes himself." Hence, the more com- 
 pletely a man is able to go out of himself, to forget his 
 lower self, to pour out himself, and to throw himself in
 
 alienated from the Church? 299 
 
 a stream of thought and will into his true life-work, 
 which God shows to all who inquire aright for their 
 calling, so much does he become a nobler, happier, and 
 more exalted man. This life of self-devotion was the 
 life of St. Paul, as he tells us in another Epistle : " I am 
 crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live." 
 
 So in this passage, after saying that the Gospel was 
 the ruling principle of his life, he declares that he strives 
 to be not merely a teacher of its doctrines, but also a 
 sharer of its power. It is possible for a man to be a 
 teacher of the truths and a minister of the rites of 
 religion without being a partaker of its life. That is 
 the fate which St. Paul strove to escape by practising 
 self-devotion as well as preaching it. " I keep under my 
 body, and bring it into subjection : lest that by any 
 means, when I have preached to others, I myself should 
 be a castaway." 
 
 The significance of the Apostle's expression, " par- 
 taker thereof," is very full and deep. It is not difficult 
 to illustrate the meaning of that Greek compound 
 which he used. It is a word that would represent 
 partnership. Now, if I were to ask some ardent youth 
 beginning his career in this great emporium of com- 
 merce, " What is your animating motive ? To what 
 do you look forward ? You work hard ; you practise 
 self-denial, from early morn till dewy eve : ' through 
 dusky lane and wrangling mart' you devote yourself 
 to business, and if you lie awake in the watches of the 
 night, your mind is full of your vocation. Why do you 
 find pleasure in giving up yourself so absorbedly to it ? "
 
 300 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 he would probably answer, " The glory of commerce 
 has fired the imagination of the thoughts of my heart. 
 This great mercantile city in which I serve is as Tyre, 
 one of the queens of the ocean has a high name and 
 boundless resources ; from every clime her ships bring 
 earth's products to enrich human society ; and they 
 spread their wings before every breeze to bear to dis- 
 tant nations goods that add to the beauty and comfort 
 of life. The vision of some future commercial glories 
 has fired my soul. I am to-day but a humble worker 
 in the life of this great community ; but some day I 
 hope to become myself a partaker of the honour and 
 wealth of successful commerce." 
 
 Such is the Apostle's thought. " The Church of 
 Christ, of which on earth I am a minister, is an eternal 
 city of splendour and wealth, into which the kings of 
 the earth do bring their honour and glory ; in which the 
 merchantmen seeking goodly pearls are ever at work in 
 the fields and marts of eternity ; in which the unsearch- 
 able riches of Christ are found. I intend not to be a 
 mere mechanical agent of its blessings to other, but to 
 be myself a full partaker of its glory and its weal." 
 
 Such ought to be the spirit and language of the 
 Church's Apostolic ministry in every age and land. We 
 are called not only to preach the truths of the Cross, but 
 to live them ; not only to be ministers of the Gospel, but 
 also partakers. 
 
 II. Let us pass on to consider the practical effects of 
 this principle upon St. Paul's ministry. 
 
 It impelled him to adapt himself to all kinds of men.
 
 alienated from the Church ? 301 
 
 What enabled him to practise that self-adaptation ? His 
 large knowledge of human nature, joined to his intense 
 unselfishness that impelled him to influence other for 
 their good, as he expresses it " that I might by all 
 means save some." 
 
 His one aim among men was to win influence for 
 good. Now we see how a man acts when he desires to 
 influence another. When we seek to obtain anything 
 from a man, we try to know him thoroughly; we consult 
 his wishes and study his tastes. We take care not to 
 run counter to his ideas, and respect even his prejudices. 
 We try to look at things from his point of view, and to 
 win his confidence by sympathy. Thus men act when 
 they would gain from another some earthly advantage. 
 Thus St. Paul acted when he wished to gain his fellow- 
 men. He did not want their money, but he wanted 
 their hearts. He wante.d them to entrust their lives to 
 him, to be moulded by the Divine truths which he had 
 to teach ; his own words were, " I seek not yours, but 
 you." 
 
 Acting upon this spirit, he tells us that, in dealing 
 with the Jews, he did not run against their national 
 ideas, but looked upon life from their point of view 
 dwelt upon the truths that he held in common with 
 them, and spoke as one who knew and loved their Law 
 and their prophets ; when addressing Greeks, who had 
 received no Divine written Law, he appealed to natural 
 reason, and enforced his teaching by reference to their 
 national poets and philosophers ; and when face to face 
 with peasants like the islanders of Malta, who were
 
 302 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 intellectually weak, he used words and figures suited to 
 their capacities. " To the Jews," he says, " I became as 
 a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them that are 
 under the Law, as under the Law, that I might gain 
 them that are under the Law ; to them that are without 
 Law, as without Law (being not without Law to God, 
 but under the Law to Christ), that I might gain them 
 that are without Law. To the weak became I as weak, 
 that I might gain the weak." 
 
 The man who has this power of insight into men of 
 various natures, and can understand them and sympa- 
 thize with them, is the man who will have the widest 
 influence. He is like the trained diplomatist, at home 
 in all lands, speaking the tongues of many races, know- 
 ing the customs of many peoples, the etiquette of many 
 courts, and able to win the ear and the confidence of 
 men everywhere. 
 
 What gives that power of sympathetic self-adapta- 
 tion ? It is light tempered by love, knowledge of 
 human nature imparted by the spirit of unselfishness. 
 The selfish man thinks so much of himself, that he con- 
 siders it only due that all men should enter into his 
 feelings and study his tastes, and not he theirs. The 
 hard, proud, vain, conceited, narrow-minded man wants 
 that subtle power of sympathy, that delicate tact, by 
 which soul touches soul, and feels as it feels, in the 
 moment of contact. When he deals with men of dif- 
 ferent associations to his own, he is like a man handling 
 an instrument that he cannot play. Under his rough 
 hand it gives forth no harmonious sounds ; and he, in
 
 alienated from the Church ? 303 
 
 his narrow self-complacency, thinks that there is no 
 music in it, because he knows not how to draw it forth. 
 
 St. Paul tells us that he had acquired the power of 
 all-embracing sympathy ; and he says that it was the 
 teaching of the Gospel, the Divine Spirit of love, destroy- 
 ing selfishness, that had given it to him. 
 
 Now, I need not remind you that few barriers sepa- 
 rate men from each other more than a distinction of 
 nationality. We know, by familiar experience of the 
 composite population of these islands, the subtle but 
 imperishable differences by which nationality distin- 
 guishes men. The physical frame, countenance, temper, 
 language, and even, when language has ceased to be 
 different, pronunciation, tone of voice, rhythm, and 
 accent, all these proclaim the difference of race. Eng- 
 lishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, even when 
 they speak the same language, are yet different in 
 countenance, in voice, and accent. 
 
 As in the outward man, so undoubtedly in the" 
 inward man, there are distinctions arising from nation- 
 ality that are indelible. St. Paul, in his sermon at 
 Athens, speaks of these distinctions of nationality as 
 ordained by God. He declares that all men are of one 
 blood, that the principle of life is identical in them all, 
 but that they are separated into nations, for whom God 
 "hath determined the times before appointed, and the 
 bounds of their habitation." x 
 
 In Jesus Christ's human nature every national tem- 
 perament is represented. He knows the language of all 
 1 Acts xvii. 26.
 
 304 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 human souls, and can feel with every human heart. 
 " He knew what was in man " not merely in the Jewish 
 or the Greek man, but in " man." Therefore, as the 
 Head of human nature and the countryman of all men, 
 He is called "the Son of Man." In Him, Greek, 
 Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, find their country and their 
 home. 
 
 This Divine cosmopolitanism of the God-Man, in- 
 spiring a sympathy of humanity as wide as the world, 
 is also given by the Holy Spirit to the Church. In the 
 city of God, no preference is to be given to any man on 
 account of his nationality. On the Day of Pentecost 
 the Church spoke all languages, so as to reach all 
 hearts : " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the 
 dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappa- 
 docia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in 
 Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and 
 strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and 
 Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the 
 wonderful works of God." It is also revealed that 
 the Church of the redeemed will embrace in itself the 
 features of all nationalities in the " multitude, which no 
 man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and 
 people, and tongues." 
 
 This Divine Spirit of Pentecost, that constrains the 
 Church to adapt her ministrations to the peculiar needs 
 of every people, must be present in her government 
 before the saving power of eternal love will operate in 
 her Apostolic ministry. This truth is so obvious that in 
 those fields of her action, where the eyes are not blinded
 
 alienated from the Church f 305 
 
 by the film of prejudice and the cataract of self-interest, 
 it is recognized by all. 
 
 In the fields of her foreign missions, the Church of 
 England adapts herself, as rapidly as she can, to the 
 peculiar needs of the various nationalities, to whom she 
 offers the saving influence of Christianity. In Africa, in 
 India, and in all the mission field, it is acknowledged 
 that a native ministry must be created before the masses 
 of the people can be won. The Hindoo and the negro 
 alike must hear the words of eternal truth in their own 
 tongue, from the lips of men to whom God has given 
 the stamp of the same national features, and the emo- 
 tions of the same national temperament, before they can 
 be moved to acknowledge the wonderful works of God, 
 and to partake of the salvation in Christ. In order to 
 save them, the Apostolic ministry must become " all 
 things to all men." 
 
 To-day we are all thinking of an ancient race, that 
 peopled this island thousands of years ago, before its 
 wonderful march of human progress had well begun ; 
 who have seen and survived as a distinct people all 
 the changes that have passed over it ; who were here, 
 speaking the same language as to-day, when Julius 
 Caesar landed his conquering legions on its shores ; 
 when your bold, strong, freedom-loving ancestors left 
 their homes in the depths of the wild forests of Ger- 
 many and Scandinavia ; when the chivalrous Norman, 
 strong in energy and organization, came and made a 
 realm and reigned. That ancient British race has the 
 strongly marked features of an indestructible nationality, 
 
 X
 
 306 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 some of which are likely to survive till the last day 
 has dawned in earth's history. They have a distinct 
 national language, the power and beauty of which are 
 denied by none except those who are ignorant of it. 
 The language is still spoken, as we have lately been 
 reminded on the authority of a great statistician, 1 by 
 1,006,100 souls, that is, by nearly five-sixths of the 
 people of Wales. It is the language in which three- 
 fourths of them still worship God. 2 In this great town 
 one denomination alone has more than twenty chapels 
 and preaching stations, and numbers no less than 13,000 
 Welsh-speaking communicants. 3 In London, Birming- 
 ham, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Chester, Manchester, 
 Barrow-in-Furness, Middlesborough, and all the great 
 centres of British industry, where Welshmen congregate, 
 as good quiet citizens, to do honest work, the old 
 language of the ancient Britons is heard, and, from 
 fervent congregations, the pious strains of Williams of 
 Pantycelyn are wafted towards the eternal throne, upon 
 the wings of the plaintive minor tones of religious 
 Wales. The temperament of the people is even a more 
 
 1 Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S, "On the Geographical Distribution 
 of the Celtic-speaking Population of the British Isles." 
 
 2 "The Calvinistic Methodists, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, 
 and the Wesleyans in Wales numbered in their ranks 686,220 persons, 
 exclusive of children under the age of ten, and of that number only 
 36,000 worshipped in the English language. There was also a large 
 circulation of Welsh newspapers and magazines and of Welsh translations 
 of English books in Wales." Speech by Mr. Hussey Vivian in the House 
 of Commons, July I, 1879. 
 
 3 The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists in Liverpool, since 1826, have 
 expended ,130,000 in providing religious ministrations for the Welsh 
 settlers in the town.
 
 alienated from the Church ? 307 
 
 distinctive and, possibly, a more lasting characteristic 
 of their nationality than their language. National 
 temperament is difficult to define. But who does not 
 feel its power, when in its presence, although it eludes 
 description ? 
 
 The Welsh people have national traditions, reaching 
 back into the dim past peopled by the shades of the 
 Arthurian heroes. Their warm, eager, emotional, quick 
 temperament is known to all. Their shrinking sensitive- 
 ness, which is so easily wounded by a slight, that it 
 appears to the stranger to savour of morbid, proud, 
 touchiness, will not escape the close observer. 
 
 But most strongly marked of all their national 
 features, is their powerful religious sentiment. It 
 appears in all their literature, and is stamped upon 
 their social life. In America, where Welsh-speaking 
 settlers are said to be almost as numerous as those 
 whom they have left behind, they cling to their 
 language and their religion. The first public building 
 that rises, in a new Welsh village in America, as in 
 the mining districts of Wales, is the simple house of 
 prayer. 
 
 In every age of their history the Welsh people have 
 been moved, amid the struggles and disappointments 
 of this fading transitory life, by deep, eager, melancholy 
 yearnings after the Infinite and Eternal Good "Y mor 
 didrai o Hedd" the ebbless ocean of peace, as one of 
 their favourite hymn-writers has called it. 
 
 This characteristic of their nationality is as fresh 
 to-day as it was two thousand years ago. If any of my
 
 3 o8 
 
 hearers has ever listened to the outpourings of these 
 religious aspirations, as they surge forth, at one of their 
 open-air meetings, from ten thousand voices, swelling 
 into vast heaving tides of solemn song, in the deep roll 
 of their favourite tunes, Eifionydd, Diniweidnvydd, 
 Hyder, Dymuniad, at the moment when the strong 
 wind of some native prophet's fervent eloquence has 
 swept over their souls in rhythmic gusts, stirring to 
 their inmost recesses all the deeps of mystic emotion 
 in their being, he can hardly fail to have been borne 
 back in thought to the woodland shrines of their fore- 
 fathers ; and, in the gleams of severe joy breaking 
 through clouds and darkness, at once lighting up and 
 melting the melancholy features which, by long mental 
 gazing at the hard, gloomy, loveless image into which 
 ultra-Calvinism changes the glory of the Loving God, 
 have themselves been changed, from sadness to sadness, 
 into the same image of leaden gloom, he must have 
 recognized the spiritual successors of those natural 
 sunbeams * that pierced the shadows of the Druidical 
 groves, streaming as smiles from " the Face of the 
 Sun " 2 in the words of their ancient motto and as 
 glances from " the Eye of Light," to relieve the sombre 
 enthusiasm of an ever-devout, God-seeking race. 
 
 The temperament of this ancient nationality is distinct 
 and unquenchable. 
 
 1 " Yn ngwyneb Haul a Llygad goleuni." 
 
 2 " Soils nosse deos et cosli numina vobis, 
 
 Aut solis nescire datum. Nemora alta remotis 
 Incolitis lucis." 
 
 (Lucan, "Pharsal.," i. 452-454.)
 
 alienated from the Church ? 309 
 
 Let us briefly review the history of the Church's 
 dealings towards it. In ancient days, ere your Saxon 
 forefathers had yet become Christians, the Church 
 gained the Britons by becoming British. The records 
 of those old days are scanty and unreliable. But the 
 most ancient parish churches of Wales bring down to 
 us the names of the early British saints, who in their 
 day led its religious life. From the dawn of Christianity 
 down to the twelfth century, the British people seem 
 to have been religiously united under an Apostolic 
 ministry, that was of their own race and spoke their 
 own tongue. 
 
 But the days of Welsh independence passed away ; 
 and at once we trace, in her religious and ecclesiastical 
 affairs, the influence of the temporal power of the 
 dominant race. The temptation to avail itself of its 
 superior force to dictate, in religious matters, to a 
 weaker race that may be united with it, will always 
 beset a dominant people. At the same time, a nation 
 is, perhaps, peculiarly slow to receive spiritual influence 
 from a people that exercises over it temporal supremacy. 
 It may have been on this account that, in the order of 
 Divine Providence, the chosen race, which has exercised 
 supreme spiritual dominion over the chief races of men, 
 was, politically, among the feeblest of the nations. 
 
 The English race is a strong, dominant race. But 
 the English Church has failed to exercise spiritual 
 sway over other races. In the British Isles, the Irish, 
 Scotch, Welsh, and Cornish races have to a great 
 extent thrown off her authority. Why is this ? Can
 
 3io Why are the Welsh People 
 
 it be that the English Church has sometimes been 
 inelastic, hard, wanting in sympathy, and has failed to 
 become "all things to all men"? History will hardly 
 give a negative answer. The Norman kings used their 
 power to shape not only the political but also the 
 ecclesiastical destinies of the Welsh people. I cannot 
 dwell upon the details of the history to-day, but its 
 substance may be given in a few words. Ecclesiastics 
 were sent into Wales who had not the Apostolical 
 spirit and could not do Apostolical work. They came, 
 not to make themselves all things to their flocks, 
 but to make their flocks all things to them. The 
 high-handed intrusion of Chancellor Bernard, in 1116, 
 into the see of St. David, the expulsion of Bishop 
 Peter de Leia from St. David's, and of Harvey from 
 Bangor, by popular violence, and, notably, the long 
 struggle of Giraldus Cambrensis, were incidents that 
 marked the course of a policy which ruined the Church 
 in Wales for more than two centuries. The ministry 
 that had not the Apostolical spirit, that could not speak 
 the language, adapt itself to the spiritual needs, or 
 estimate the sympathies of the people, was powerless 
 to save them. So far had Christianity, as taught by 
 these unsympathetic guides, lost its hold over the 
 Welsh people in that age, that an attempt was made 
 to revive the Druidical theosophy as the national reli- 
 gion. 1 But the unjust policy long prevailed. Ambitious 
 
 1 "In primis hoc volunt persuadere, non interire animas, sed ab aliis 
 post mortem transire ad alios ; atque hoc maxima ad virtutem excitari 
 putant, metu mortis neglecto." Csesar, " De Bello Gall.," lib. vi. 14.
 
 alienated from the CJiurch ? 311 
 
 ecclesiastics, who had the ear of the court, were able 
 to persuade the temporal rulers that it was desirable 
 to permit them to rise upon the ruins of the Church 
 in Wales. 
 
 The injustice has left its mark upon the current of 
 Welsh history. In 1196, Llewelyn, Prince of Gwynedd, 
 Gwenwynwyn, and Madoc, Princes of Povvys ; Gruffydd, 
 Maelgwyn, Rhys, and Meredydd, sons of Rhys, Prince 
 of South Wales, addressed a petition to Pope Innocent 
 III. for deliverance from the wrong. " The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury," they said, " as a matter of course sends 
 us English Bishops, ignorant of the manners and lan- 
 guage of our land, who cannot preach the Word of 
 God to the people . . . they seek not the welfare of 
 souls ; their ambition is to rule over us, and not to 
 benefit us." 
 
 At the beginning of the fifteenth century the national 
 impatience of the people found a more violent ex- 
 pression. The national chieftain, Owain Glyndwr, in 
 1402 burnt the cathedral at Bangor; the cathedral, 
 Episcopal palace, and canons' houses at St. Asaph ; 
 and destroyed the castle of the Bishop of Llandaff, and 
 the house of his Archdeacon, as a protest against the 
 presence in Wales of pastors who came in the garb of 
 Apostles, but were devoid of the spirit that seeks to 
 adapt religion to the needs of the people. Four years 
 later Dafydd Daron, 1 Dean of Bangor, was outlawed by 
 
 1 Dafydd Daron was the original of Shakespeare's " Archdeacon," in 
 whose house Hotspur, Worcester, Mortimer, and Glendower met to discuss 
 their division of the kingdom. Vide " Henry IV.," Part I., act iii. sc. I.
 
 312 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 the English king for the part which he took in the 
 national rising. 
 
 At length, in the providence of God, a Welsh dynasty, 
 springing from the loins of Owain Tudor, the Anglesey 
 squire of Plas Penmynydd, rose to the throne of Britain. 
 In their days ecclesiastical justice was done to Wales. 
 From 1547 to 1700, the followers of the Apostles in 
 Wales were Apostles indeed. They became to the 
 Welsh people as Welsh. The most illustrious of them, 
 William Morgan, 1 gave to his countrymen their noble 
 version of Holy Scripture subsequently revised by 
 Bishop Parry and Dr. John Davies the words of which 
 have formed the life of millions of Welsh souls, and 
 will, in eternity, form a note in the concert of tongues 
 when the white-robed multitude are gathered before 
 the throne of God. In those days, led by the example 
 
 1 Wales is, to ordinary Englishmen, a terra incognita. The ignorance 
 of Welsh Church history that prevails is only equalled by the ignorance 
 of the social and religious features of the inner life of Wales, as it exists 
 to-day. Let one example of the former suffice. Bishop Morgan translated 
 the whole of the Bible into the Welsh language, finishing the task in 1588. 
 The version is a noble one. That translation was a great work, and surely 
 ought to have won for him a place in the roll of ecclesiastical worthies. 
 But so learned an English Churchman as Dean Hook seems never to 
 have heard of him. In his Ecclesiastical Biography, which occasionally 
 records the doings of obscure English divines, not a line is devoted to 
 recording the name or work of so great a Welshman. The leading bard 
 of Wales, a very learned clergyman, died a few years ago. His career at 
 Oxford was distinguished, and he rendered so many literary services to 
 his Church and country that his widow has received a literary pension from 
 the Premier. An English prelate, occupying at the time a Welsh see, 
 on being asked to contribute to a fund raised for the erection of a monument 
 in honour of this distinguished native clergyman, replied that he was not 
 aware that he had ever rendered any literary services. It seems that some 
 fate still keeps " Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos."
 
 alienated from the Church? 313 
 
 of their chief pastors, the laymen of Wales did their 
 part in the work of the Church. William Salesbury, 
 Rowland Heylin, and Sir Thomas Middleton, strove to 
 promote the religious enlightenment of their country- 
 men ; and the immortal parish priest and sacred poet, 
 Rhys Prichard, gave to them, in their own tongue, that 
 religious volume of didactic song, entitled " The Candle 
 of the Cymry," which for centuries has been read in 
 the homes of Wales, and has exercised an influence, 
 inferior only to that of Holy Scripture and the Book 
 of Common Prayer, in guiding Welsh souls through 
 the darkness of earth. In that period the Church 
 sought to save the Welsh people by agencies fitted 
 to influence the Welsh nationality. The result was 
 that her power in Wales was undisputed. In the 
 troubled times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, 
 when political discord and religious divisions were rife 
 in England, Wales remained undisturbed, undivided, 
 and unmoved, under the guidance of her native Apostolic 
 ministry. How fiercely Royalist and Anti-Puritan, 
 notwithstanding the efforts of Wroth, Penry, and a few 
 others, was the popular feeling of Wales in those days, 
 may be realized by any reader of the poems of the 
 farmer-poet, Hugh Morris, of Pontymeibion, in the 
 Vale of Ceiriog, who was a popular bard of his age. 
 In 1715, with the exception of thirty-five separatists' 
 congregations, the entire people of Wales adhered to 
 the Church. 
 
 But after that date, for more than a hundred and 
 fifty years, the rulers of the state, in pursuit of a worldly
 
 314 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 policy, sent into Wales chief pastors ignorant of its 
 language and traditions, and aliens in sympathy, to the 
 people. During that long period, the followers of the 
 Apostles came into Wales, not to accomplish the spiritual 
 work of saving souls, but as Government agents, to 
 destroy the language and quench the national spirit. 
 The fruits of this policy are known to you. The thirty- 
 five meeting-houses of 1715 have become, in 1879, 
 nearly three thousand. As long as the Apostolic spirit 
 was set at nought, the Church in Wales withered, and 
 from year to year her desolation increased, until well- 
 nigh three-fourths of the people left her sanctuaries, to 
 seek a saving power in forms of worship which, however 
 imperfect some of us may judge them, appeared to them 
 to be undefiled by worldly motives and unmarred by 
 the accent of the self-seeker. 1 
 
 1 English Churchmen, not knowing how extensively the Welsh language 
 still prevails in Wales, and how strong is the national feeling, are some- 
 times unable to sympathize with the objection made to the systematic 
 introduction of strangers into all the chief places of the Welsh Church. 
 They denounce that demand, which seeks ministerial efficiency, ecclesi- 
 astical justice, and an Apostolical ministry, as if it were a narrow cry of 
 " Wales for the Welsh!" 
 
 A more careful study of their own Church history would enable them 
 to take a truer and a more sympathetic view. When the feeblest of the 
 Plantagenets chose to surround himself with Poictevins, Gascons, Pro- 
 ven9als, Italians, and Savoyards, the English people did not bear it very 
 patiently. When the Pope tried to pension his favourites upon English 
 endowments, the Roman court was detested in England. " He sought," 
 writes Dean Hook, " through these iniquitous and unconstitutional means, 
 to pension non-resident foreigners, who, when they retired, did not, as a 
 general rule, return to their English benefices ; or who, if they resided for 
 a time in England, only did so to further some anti-English scheme of 
 policy. . . . The indignation of every true-hearted Englishman was aroused. 
 . . . The English and the Roman courts were thus both obnoxious, for
 
 alienated from the Church ? 315 
 
 It is, perhaps, well for Wales that this policy pre- 
 vailed in the eighteenth and not in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. There can be little doubt that the reception 
 of the truths of the Reformed Church by the Welsh- 
 speaking Celts was due to the sympathetic rule of the 
 great Tudor queen, that gave them native pastors and 
 the Scriptures and Liturgy in their own language. In 
 Ireland, at that critical period, a different policy was 
 followed. English prelates, English Bible and Liturgy, 
 were forced upon the Irish-speaking people. The 
 ministry of the Church did not adapt itself to the Irish 
 nationality. At times fitful efforts were made ; laymen 
 like Audley Mervin, and clergymen like Nicholas Brown, 
 Rector of Donacary, Dromore, and Rossory, and Walter 
 
 the same reason both tried to compel England to submit to be governed 
 by foreigners. The foreigners invaded both Church and State." 
 
 The remonstrances which have been uttered by patriotic Welsh Church- 
 men who have grieved to see three-fourths of their countrymen alienated 
 from the Church have their parallels in English Church history. With a 
 change of two or three words, the protest addressed by the English Arch- 
 bishop and his council to the king in 1234, against the promotion of 
 Peter des Roches and Peter de Rivaulx, might have been addressed 
 by Welsh Churchmen to their ecclesiastical rulers on many occasions : 
 " Lord King, we tell you, in the name of God, that the council you 
 receive, and act upon that, namely, of Peter, Bishop of Winchester, and 
 of Peter de Rivaulx is not only not wise or safe, but is ungenerous as 
 regards the realm of England, and dangerous to yourself. These men 
 hate and despise the English nation, and when the English assert their 
 rights they call them traitors. They estrange you from your people, and 
 alienate the affections of the people from their king." 
 
 If Englishmen will bear in mind that in that age the population of 
 England was not very much larger than that of Wales is to-day, they will 
 perceive that the analogy between the two situations is not unworthy of 
 their attention. Vide " Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," vol. iii. 
 pp. 167-170.
 
 316 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 Atkins, Vicar of Middleton, 1 early in the eighteenth 
 century, tried to gain the Irish people by approaching 
 them through the Irish language. But these were rare 
 exceptions. The treatment dealt to the Irish people 
 was as that afterwards given to the Welsh. In 1725 
 Jonathan Swift, the ablest Irishman of his day, wrote to 
 the Lord-Lieutenant these words that might have been 
 written by any Welshman who loved his country "The 
 misfortune of having Bishops perpetually from England, 
 as it must needs quench the spirit of emulation amongst 
 us to excel in learning and the study of divinity, so it 
 produces another great discouragement, that those pre- 
 lates usually draw after them colonies of sons, nephews, 
 cousins, or old college companions to whom they bestow 
 the best preferments in their gifts. ... I believe your 
 Excellency will agree, that there is not another kingdom 
 in Europe where the natives, even those descended from 
 the conquerors, have been treated as if they were almost 
 unqualified for any employment either in Church or 
 State." 
 
 1 Of the Rev. Walter Atkins' work it is recorded, " He proceeded 
 to perform the offices of religion for the natives in their own tongue. . . . 
 He buried the dead according to the Liturgy of the Church ; and gave 
 thereby so much satisfaction to the living, that they participated in the 
 service with great devotion, and joined audibly with their voices in the 
 Lord's Prayer, and the previous responses ; and on occasion of a burial in 
 the churchyard, one of them was heard to say, that ' if they could have 
 that service always, they would no more go to Mass.' In process of time 
 his ministerial labours became so acceptable to the natives, that they of 
 their own accord sent for him, from all parts of his parish, to baptize their 
 children, to solemnize matrimony, to church their women, to visit their 
 sick, and to bury their dead." Vide Mant's " History of the Church of 
 Ireland," vol. ii. pp. 165-168.
 
 alienated from the Church? 317 
 
 The result was that the Irish people were repelled 
 from the reformed religion, which came to them vested 
 in an anti-national garb, 1 and speaking the language of 
 conquest, and under the guidance of native teachers 
 became the most unswerving subjects that the Papacy 
 can boast in Europe. 2 Had the same policy been pur- 
 
 1 (i) "There are upwards of 800,000 persons in Ireland who speak 
 Irish, one-fourth of the number being under twenty years of age. (2) 
 There are upwards of 100,000 who cannot speak any language but Irish ; 
 and the minds of those persons can at present be reached only through the 
 medium of the one language which they understand, whilst the larger 
 number, above named, are more easily approached by reason of their attach- 
 ment to it as the national language. (3) There are various efforts being 
 now made to teach the people to read the Irish language. ... (5) The 
 literature generally circulated among the people by other agencies is partly 
 Roman Catholic, and partly disloyal and seditious." Vide Report (for this 
 year) of Irish Society for Promoting the Scriptural Education and Religious 
 Instruction of the Irish-speaking population, chiefly through the medium 
 of their own language. That the present rulers of the Irish Church are at 
 last alive to the long-forgotten necessity of becoming to the Irish as Irish, 
 may be gathered from the following extracts: " If patriotism can supply 
 such a motive-power for the stimulating of zeal and the preservation of 
 unity amongst Churchmen, how unspeakably important will be the asser- 
 tion of our nationality in our efforts to enlist the sympathies of those who 
 do not belong to our Communion, and who now, alas, stand aloof ! Oh ! 
 what a position may not our Church take up, no longer ... as the so- 
 called ' Church of the English foreigner,' but as the representative of the 
 ancient Church of St. Patrick, Irish to her very core, and thus possessing 
 claims upon Irish nationality ! . , . The method in which it is sought to 
 communicate the knowledge of these truths is, as you doubtless are aware, 
 through that medium which is most likely to win for them a ready welcome 
 even that familiar mother-tongue which is associated in the hearts of so 
 many of our Irish poor with their dearest sympathies," Sermon by the 
 Most Reverend Lord Plunket, Bishop of Meath, on St. Patrick's Day, 
 March, 1878. 
 
 2 The language of Swift concerning these abuses in the Church of Ire- 
 land is almost identical with that used by an able layman concerning the 
 treatment meted out to the Welsh Church. " On putting to a gentleman,"
 
 318 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 sued in Wales at the same period, it is almost certain 
 that the same results would have followed that the 
 Welsh, like their kinsmen in Brittany, would have been 
 fervent votaries of Romanism, and all Wales as that 
 little valley in Breconshire, the people of which are said 
 to have adhered to the Roman Church through all the 
 changes that have passed around them. But the policy 
 which arrayed all the forces of nationality 1 against 
 
 he writes, " upon whose accuracy I can rely, the following question, 
 ' What proportion of the collective income of the Welsh Church is held 
 by Englishmen?' I received the following answer: 'Four bishoprics, a 
 great portion of the deaneries, prebends, and sinecure rectories, and many, 
 if not most, of the canonries.' During the reign of the house of Tudor and 
 Stewart several Welshmen were mitred" (forty-three between 1558 and 
 1715), "but not one since the accession of the house of Brunswick. The 
 consequence was that the prelates brought into their respective dioceses their 
 sons, nephews and cousins to the ninth degree of consanguinity ; the next 
 consequence was a change of service (on the borders) from Welsh to 
 English ; and a third and important consequence was the desertion of the 
 Church. Dissenting places of worship were erected in every direction." 
 Writing of the attempts made by English incumbents to qualify themselves 
 for holding Welsh preferments, he adds, "His uncouth attempts to officiate 
 in his church in a tongue unintelligible to himself can be felt by his con- 
 gregation as nothing better than a profanation of the worship of God. . . . 
 The strangers, as a makeshift, underwent a lecture or two in the Welsh 
 language in order to be able to read in. But the voice of the strangers, 
 instead of collecting a flock, scattered the sheep." Vide essay by Judge 
 Johnes on " The Causes of Dissent in Wales," p. 65. Published in 1832, 
 and reprinted in 1870, by Houlston and Sons, 65, Paternoster Row ; and 
 John Pryse, Llanidloes. 
 
 1 In a speech delivered in the House of Commons in opposition to Mr. 
 Watkin Williams' motion for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, 
 the Right Hon. W. Ewart Gladstone, then Prime Minister, used these 
 words : " It has been no question of National Establishments that has 
 led to the growth of Welsh Dissent. In my opinion it is due to the 
 cruelly anti-national policy that was pursued. So long as the national 
 sympathies were cultivated, the Church of Wales was acceptable to the
 
 alienated from the Church ? 319 
 
 the Church was not adopted in Wales until the eigh- 
 teenth century. At that period its effect was to make 
 the Welsh people not Romanist, but Nonconformist. 
 
 Why was it then adopted ? Was there no Welsh 
 clergyman in that age fitted to be the chief pastor of his 
 countrymen ? It was adopted, as in Ireland, for purely 
 political purposes. The greatest Welshman of the 
 century was a clergyman. Griffith Jones, the founder 
 of the circulating schools, and educator of his country- 
 men, who taught by his system 158,237 souls to read 
 God's Word the author of the most admirable Cate- 
 chetical Manuals of scriptural instruction existing in 
 the language, and still used throughout Wales the 
 man who, above all others, influenced his country for 
 good, lived and died the rector of the little rural parishes 
 of Llandowror and Llandilo-Abercowin, on an income 
 of 226 per annum. He lived in no palace and enjoyed 
 no dignity, but he was the chief pastor of the souls 
 of his countrymen. In his day he raised his voice 
 against the grievous wrong by which the Church in 
 Wales was being ruined. Speaking of it, he said, 
 " It is not my present business to inquire who this is 
 owing to ; but be they who they will, and how little 
 soever they lay it to heart for the present, they will 
 hereafter find themselves answerable to a grievous 
 charge." For these brave, manly words he was probably 
 accused of seeking his own advancement. But a man 
 
 people of Wales. ... It is a fact of some interest that the people of Wales 
 were the stoutest Churchmen in the country as long as the Church was 
 administered in a spirit of sympathy, and in accordance with the national 
 feeling."
 
 320 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 who knows that he speaks words of truth and justice, 
 and denounces nothing but wrong, can afford to disre- 
 gard the sneers and false imputations aimed at him, 
 especially when they come from men who are content 
 to sit in blind self-complacency amid the ruins of a 
 Church which they have desolated, as long as they can 
 find any 1 polished fragment to afford them an elevated 
 
 1 The only section of society in Wales that gave its approval to the 
 system of appointing to the chief places in the Church men ignorant of the 
 language of the people, were the non-Welsh-speaking gentry, and the non- 
 Welsh-speaking clergy, many of whom were too like the mercenaries in the 
 garrison of a foreign conqueror. The former, non-resident during a great 
 part of the year, and devoted to field sports and secular business, were not 
 the best judges of the religious needs of the people. The small section of 
 anti-national, unpatriotic, non-Welsh-speaking clergy, introduced by the 
 English Bishops, were naturally in favour of a system which kept them in 
 countenance and concealed from themselves the anomaly of their own 
 position. What Dean Hook says of Henry III.'s anti-national patronage 
 in England might have been said for generations of the Bishop in a Welsh 
 diocese : " He became more and more alienated from the national party, 
 though occasionally his better nature prevailed. His chosen companions 
 were the Poictevins, Gascons, Provencals, Italians, and Savoyards. Their 
 refined tastes harmonized with his own. By them he was flattered and 
 caressed." These gentlemen, without flocks, and without influence among 
 the Welsh people, but placed in leading positions by their patron, assumed 
 the authority of leading clergy, and ventured to give their views freely to 
 Englishmen about the religious state of Wales, of which they had but the 
 most superficial knowledge. Ignorant of the language, the literature, and 
 the religious ideas of the people, they were not leading, but misleading, 
 clergy. Their opinions of tithes and church buildings would have been 
 entitled to weight ; but of Welsh thought, feeling, and character, they 
 were but sorry exponents. That any clergyman should venture to discourse 
 upon the Welsh Church, while ignorant of the language and literature of 
 the Welsh people, is certainly a great proof of his own courage, and of his 
 confidence in the patience of his hearers. English Churchmen, who desire 
 to know the real religious state of Wales, ought to be on their guard against 
 the misleading testimony of clergymen enjoying Welsh preferments, but 
 ignorant of Welsh language and life. What value would be attributed to
 
 alienated from the Church? 321 
 
 seat. He has a shelter in the Divine pavilion of con- 
 science from the strife of tongues, and replies to the 
 gainsayer, " I believed, therefore have I spoken." 
 
 In Ireland and in Wales alike, the lesson has been 
 taught by God, that the ministry which refuses to adapt 
 itself to national peculiarities, and provokes the forces 
 of nationality into antagonism, will lose all power of 
 gaining and saving the souls whom it professes to seek. 
 
 In Ireland the warning was too long disregarded, 
 and easy self-complacent ecclesiastics enjoyed their 
 comfortable preferments, until the forces of that nation- 
 ality, which they had despised, arose and demanded, 
 with power, that the crosier, which had been trans- 
 formed into the rod of the oppressor, should no longer 
 be gilded by the religious endowments of the nation. 
 
 Those who believe that the national life should be 
 sanctified by a national recognition of religion, will do 
 well to bear in mind the significance of the warning. 1 
 
 the judgment of an Englishman resident in France, but ignorant of French, 
 if he ventured to pose as an authority upon the problems and difficulties of 
 the French Church in its dealings with the French masses ? 
 
 1 It will be a serious source of weakness to the Establishment, if the 
 ablest and most high-spirited of the native Welsh-speaking clergy, who 
 alone among Churchmen have any influence over the Welsh masses, and 
 who have hitherto borne the brunt of Church Defence in Wales, are forced 
 to the painful conclusion that disestablishment offers the only way of 
 liberation from a system of high-handed anti-national appointments which 
 have alienated their countrymen by wounding their patriotism, as well as 
 by offering them, in high places, ministrations which they cannot under- 
 stand. There are unselfish Welsh clergymen whatever motives may be 
 sometimes attributed to them by the mercenaries of mercenaries whose 
 " hearts' desire and prayer to God for " Wales is that she may be restored 
 to the Church, and who, in order to secure that end, would gladly sacrifice, 
 if necessary, glebe, house, and benefice. It is significant that Glamorgan- 
 
 Y
 
 322 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 It is impossible to ignore the serious alienation of the 
 Welsh people from the Church. It is sad for a Church- 
 man to reflect that for a hundred and fifty years the 
 dignified clergy of the Church have given to them hardly 
 any literature in their own tongue. The literature of 
 Wales, though much of it is fugitive and perishable, 
 cannot be despised, for it influences a million of souls. 1 
 More than a dozen semi-religious weekly journals, a still 
 larger number of monthly periodicals, go forth to shape 
 the minds of the native population. No small number of 
 books of a more lasting character are published in the 
 language, year by year. Of this literature, five-sixths are 
 produced by those who do not conform to the Church. 2 
 For generations the dignified clergy of Wales were 
 above the work of enlightening the people whose reli- 
 gious endowments they enjoyed. Can it excite surprise 
 
 shire, the most important county in Wales, returns to Parliament six 
 members who, without exception, vote for Nonconformist measures, and 
 gives to the Liberation Society its Parliamentary leader. It is also ominous 
 that the rector of the most important parish in South Wales has publicly 
 declared himself in favour of disestablishment, on the ground that it affords 
 the only hope of winning back the alienated Welsh people. 
 
 1 " Of all the Celtic-speaking races in the United Kingdom, the Welsh 
 were the most important, and in the maintenance of their own language 
 they showed by far the greatest amount of vitality. " Pall Mall Gazette on 
 Ravenstein's Paper, 1879. 
 
 2 Within the last fifty years an English dignitary in a diocese, which 
 was at the time almost exclusively Welsh-speaking, expressed an opinion 
 that it was not necessary to provide religious ministration for the Welsh 
 people in their own language. The Church, he said, was for the upper 
 classes, while the conventicle was the proper place for the Welsh-speaking 
 masses. He was not alone in his opinion. The idea that the Church is 
 not to be the Church of the Welsh, but practically the Church of England 
 in Wales, is still prevalent and influential among some of the anti-national 
 clergy.
 
 alienated from the Church? 323 
 
 that the Welsh people have, to some extent, been alien- 
 ated from a Church that offered them such a ministry ? 
 No ; the cause for wonder is that, deep in their hearts, 
 there still survives a love for the Church of their 
 fathers. 
 
 If it is permitted to the departed spirits to behold 
 the scenes of their former career on earth, the long line 
 of anti-national pastors, under whose influence the Welsh 
 people were driven from the sanctuaries of their an- 
 cestors, have had to look down upon churches emptied, 
 a land saddened, and an affectionate people soured and 
 embittered by the divisions that arose out of their 
 ambition for the chief places of a temple in which they 
 could not effectually minister, and for the short-lived 
 advantages, that must now seem to them as dross, while 
 they hear the reproachful voice of the Eternal Spirit of 
 love and sympathy saying, " Where is the flock that 
 was given thee, thy beautiful flock ? " " My sheep wan- 
 dered through all the mountains, and upon every high 
 hill : yea, My flock was scattered. . . . Neither did My 
 shepherds search for My flock, but the shepherds fed 
 themselves, and fed not My flock. ... I will require 
 My flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from 
 feeding the flock ; neither shall they feed themselves 
 any more." 
 
 Although the ignorance that prevails in England 
 concerning the inner national life of Wales 1 is a darkness 
 
 1 Welsh Churchmen have had reason to complain that the English 
 press, including, with one or two honourable exceptions, the Church 
 papers, have steadfastly denied them the opportunity of stating Welsh
 
 324 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 that seems to be impenetrable, it is not unknown that 
 Dissent is dominant in all its counties. 
 
 The Welsh people are divided in their worship. I 
 would not exaggerate the evils of division, or forget who 
 really caused them. But all will acknowledge that the 
 Saviour desires that His people should be united. 
 Spiritual concord is the mother of numerous blessings. 
 To-day the life of Wales, though in many respects 
 prosperous and peaceful, is dwarfed by sectarian little- 
 ness, soured by petty distractions, and paralyzed in its 
 social and intellectual progress, because the classes are 
 separated in sympathy by divided worship. It is not 
 difficult to understand how this result has arisen. The 
 chief pastors of the Church mould its life. The cathe- 
 dral city is the capital of the diocese, and sets its fashion 
 of thought and feeling. As the prelate is, so will the 
 clergy be, and as the clergy are, so will be the people 
 who accept their influence. For a hundred and fifty 
 years the prelates of Wales were hostile to the nationality 
 of the people. The clergy and leading Church laity 
 imitated the tone of their ecclesiastical leaders, despised 
 the Welsh language, derided Welsh traditions, and while 
 learning the languages of Greece and Rome, of France 
 and Italy, in order to accomplish their social efficiency, 
 lived in ignorance of the living language of the people 
 amongst whom they dwelt, and whose social leaders 
 God had appointed them to be. 
 
 They were indignant because the humble peasantry 
 
 facts, and making known to the English public the real state of the Welsh 
 Church. English editors have more than once, of late, tempted Welshmen 
 to exclaim Where is the boasted English love of fair play ?
 
 alienated from the Chiirch? 325 
 
 had not learnt their language, forgetting that to learn 
 a language is not easy, and that they themselves had 
 not shown an example of triumphing over the difficulty, 
 although duty, interest, and honour alike called them 
 to do it ; for their ignorance of the language of the 
 people deprived them of political, social, and moral 
 influence. 1 They abdicated the leadership that God had 
 given them, and it fell into the hands of humbler men, 
 who, speaking the language of the masses, held the key 
 that opened their hearts, and won an influence that gold 
 cannot buy, and pride cannot command. 2 
 
 1 No intelligent man, who knows the country, can doubt that a real 
 command of the Welsh tongue adds greatly to the social and political 
 influence of its possessors in Wales. In 1868, when the extension of the 
 suffrage gave freer expression to the Welsh masses, one result of the change 
 was to increase very considerably the number of Welsh-speaking members 
 in the House of Commons. It is certain that, in seeking the suffrages of 
 a Welsh constituency, a Welsh-speaking candidate would, c&teris paribus, 
 have an easy victory over any opponent not so qualified. 
 
 2 It has been observed that the Welsh are sensitive almost to touchiness. 
 To ignore such a characteristic is not wise on the part of those who would 
 win them to the Church. Yet it is well known that an English prelate, 
 within the last fifty years, applied to a large body of his poorer native clergy 
 the opprobrious epithet "cart-horses." The insult has never been for- 
 gotten. He should have remembered that the Bishop is the ' ' Father in 
 God " of his clergy, and that, if they are deficient, their deficiencies may well 
 be partly attributed to the spiritual fatherhood of him who called them into 
 ministerial being. It will excite no surprise that he was unable to appre- 
 ciate Welsh ability. The ablest Welsh scholar in his diocese, author of a 
 Biblical commentary, the chief Welsh poet of his day, some of whose 
 hymns are among the best in the language, was permitted to die in a small 
 perpetual curacy that hardly afforded his maintenance, while English 
 clergymen, relatives of the Bishop, were transplanted from distant districts 
 into the richest benefices of the diocese. The poor Welsh may well say, 
 "Our soul is filled with the scornful reproof of the wealthy, and with the 
 despitefulness of the proud."
 
 326 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 It was grievous that, by losing the power of popular 
 sympathy, the social leaders forfeited the power of in- 
 fluencing the people for their good. It is true that the 
 people have done much for themselves ; but it is equally 
 true that they have been greatly injured and retarded 
 by the want of patriotic and enlightened social guides. 
 The opportunities offered to the youth of Wales for 
 obtaining higher education have been, and are still, 
 grievously deficient. It is said that the average Welsh 
 boy has only one-third of the educational endowments 
 that are offered to the average English boy, to enable 
 him to make the early steps in the path of enlighten- 
 ment. Why has the key of knowledge been thus with- 
 held from the Welsh people ? It is the mission of the 
 chief clergy of a country, especially a poor country like 
 mountainous Wales, to animate others, and to labour 
 themselves in the noble work of developing its intellec- 
 tual and spiritual energies. The pastors of the people 
 who do not find and develop the natural gifts of heart 
 and mind lying hid, as rich treasures, in the obscurity 
 of poor, friendless, but talented youth, are but sorry 
 promoters of a country's moral weal. 1 In Wales these 
 natural riches of intelligence and spirit are abundant. 
 In their primitive national competitions they glitter 
 through the rubbish that encircles them, as gold and 
 
 1 "The estate of the Church is the estate of the people, so long as the 
 Church is governed on its real principles. The Church is the medium by 
 which the despised and degraded classes assert the native equality of man, 
 and vindicate the rights and power of intellect. It made, in the darkest 
 hour of Norman rule, the son of a Saxon pedlar Primate of England, and 
 placed Nicholas Breakspear, a Hertfordshire peasant, on the throne of the 
 Caesars." Coningsby.
 
 alienated from the Church f 327 
 
 silver, embedded in the rocks of difficulty, unsought, 
 untrained, undeveloped. Sympathetic chief pastors 
 would have seen these treasures, and have developed 
 them by a system of higher education. As it is, they 
 have been too often lost to the Church, and employed 
 in antagonism to her, while her prelates have not seldom 
 been laying their hands on men who, in a haphazard 
 system of clerical supply, offered themselves, without 
 fitness for the priest's office, for the sake of the piece 
 of bread. 1 
 
 It is true that the College of St. David's was founded 
 a little more than fifty years ago. But for that founda- 
 tion little credit is due to those who were the rulers of 
 the Welsh Church. Writing of its creation, an able 
 Welsh Church layman has used these severe words : 
 " If ever there was a time when disinterestedness was 
 called for on the part of the rulers of the Welsh Church, 
 it was then. But how did they emulate the good 
 example that had been set them ? Did they sacrifice 
 
 1 This reproach no longer exists. Nearly ten years ago the Bishop of 
 Bangor invited the other Bishops of Wales, and leading laymen of their 
 dioceses, to attend a conference at Llanidloes, for the purpose of forming 
 a scheme to promote the education of gifted Welsh youths for the ministry 
 of the Church. This work has since been vigorously carried on in the 
 diocese of Bangor, and at this time nearly twenty yoiing men are being 
 educated at a cost of nearly ^1000 per annum, contributed by the liberal 
 laity of the diocese in voluntary subscriptions. These students are sent to 
 the English Universities, and are at the same time, by the cultivation of 
 their native language, and by experience of ministerial work, prepared to 
 minister efficiently both to the small English and large Welsh-speaking 
 classes of the diocese. [It may be mentioned that the Paper which gave 
 the first impetus and form to the scheme referred to in this note, is 
 published in this volume (see p. 360). En.J
 
 328 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 a sinecure rectory, a prebend, or any of those superfluous 
 revenues, which are professedly intended to provide 
 learning, though, in general, they are far otherwise 
 employed ? Alas ! no. The college was endowed with 
 a cluster of poor livings in the county of Cardigan, 
 which were in some instances so completely stripped 
 of their scanty revenues, that the parishioners were left 
 without funds to support a resident minister ! " x 
 
 1 Vide Judge Johnes' Essay, p. 115. Since the first edition of this 
 sermon was issued, the writer has been informed that the above statement, 
 made by Judge Johnes in 1832, and unchallenged for forty-seven years, 
 is not accurate. The livings with which the college was permanently 
 endowed were sinecure rectories in South Wales (one of them only being 
 in Cardiganshire) previously held by the Crown, but transferred, through 
 the influence of Bishop Burgess, to the support of the new institution in 
 which he was much interested. Judge Johnes' mistake seems to have 
 arisen from the fact that at the time when he wrote, in 1832, the principal 
 or some of the professors were permitted to hold some of the livings in 
 Cardiganshire for the augmentation of their own income rather than the 
 benefit of the parishioners. Dr. Burgess is entitled to credit for his well- 
 meaning and unselfish labours in establishing St. David's College. lie 
 was a kind and generous man, and being himself the son of a Hampshire 
 grocer, and having risen to a high position through those educational 
 advantages which are so far more liberally offered to poor and talented 
 youths in England than in Wales, he sympathized with the humbler 
 classes in their struggles for education. But, in common with the other 
 non-Welsh-speaking Bishops of Wales, he was unable to restrain his zeal 
 for the extinction of a language which he did not understand. His want 
 of sympathy with their national feelings excited the susceptibilities of some 
 of the most estimable of his clergy, as may be seen from the following 
 passage in the biography of the Rev. Eliezer Williams, Vicar of Lampeter 
 (p. 75) : " As to one point in the management of these schools (circulating 
 Welsh Charity Schools), the Bishop and my father were again unfortunately 
 at issue. His lordship felt anxious, as was certainly very natural, that 
 the schools should be organized on a plan that would tend to the ultimate 
 extinction of a language of which he himself was ignorant ; while my 
 father, being, as we have already seen, thoroughly acquainted with the 
 circumstances and habits of the flock under his care, knew by experience
 
 alienated from the Church? 329 
 
 It is well known that Dr. Chalmers attributed the 
 intellectual and moral advancement of Scotland to 
 three blessings, viz. 
 
 1. Ecclesiastical endowments devoted exclusively to 
 the maintenance of a native clergy. 1 
 
 2. Parochial schools to educate the natural intelli- 
 gence of the people. 
 
 3. National colleges, in which the ablest of the 
 Scotch youth could obtain higher education. 
 
 These blessings have not fallen to the lot of Wales. 2 
 
 that the people were not able to receive religious instruction in any other 
 tongue, and that to persist in such a scheme would drive away the Church 
 members that yet remained." Bishop Burgess's memory has found a 
 zealous, if not a temperate eulogist, in the Rev. F. Jayne, the recently 
 appointed Principal of $t. David's College. Mr. Jayne is a man of 
 scholarly acquirements, experienced in collegiate tuition, can speak with 
 authority on subjects in his own sphere, and will doubtless do good service 
 in Wales. But he would have been more able to estimate correctly the 
 official difficulties of a non-Welsh-speaking Bishop in Wales, if he had 
 himself possessed a knowledge of the Welsh language, and of the inner life 
 of the Welsh people. 
 
 1 It has often been observed that the condition into which the attitude 
 of the anti-national and non- Welsh-speaking clergy tends to reduce the 
 Church in Wales is that of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, a "little 
 Church of the lairds." As long as a few squires with their servants and 
 a few genteel English residents accept their ministrations, they are content 
 to see the main stream of Welsh life flowing far from them, and entirely 
 ignoring their presence in the country. They should remember that this 
 state of tilings cannot be permanent, and that Welsh religious endowments 
 must ultimately be devoted to the service of the Welsh people. 
 
 2 The educational benefactors of Wales have almost without exception 
 been patriotic natives, e.g. Hugh Prys, Leoline Jenkins, and Meyrick, the 
 founders and benefactors of the Welsh College at Oxford ; and Archbishop 
 Williams, who created exhibitions at Westminster School and at St. John's 
 College, Cambridge, in aid of poor Welsh scholars. David Hughes, the 
 founder of Beaumaris Grammar School ; Geoffrey Glynne, of Friars' 
 School, Bangor ; Godfrey Goodman, of Ruthin Grammar School ; Edward
 
 33 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 Eighty years have hardly passed away since one prelate, 
 in a Welsh diocese, absorbed for himself and family 
 more than half its revenue, and ran a career which, in 
 many points, may not inaptly be compared to that of 
 Verres in Sicily. 
 
 At the present time Wales, scantily endowed already, 
 is threatened with the further loss of no small portion 
 of the educational revenues provided for her sons, in 
 other days, by the patriot Welshmen Hugh Prys, 
 Leoline Jenkins, and Meyrick. For the purpose, as it 
 is alleged, of conferring some indirect and impalpable 
 advantages upon the Welsh people, it is proposed to 
 deprive them of their special interest in several thousands 
 of the annual revenue of the Welsh College at Oxford. 1 
 
 Richards, of Ystradmeurig ; Thomas Phillips, of Llandovery ; Leoline 
 Jenkins, of Cowbridge, were all native Welshmen. The long line of 
 English prelates and dignitaries, who during a hundred and fifty years 
 must have drawn from Wales several millions of money, have not, I 
 believe, left behind them a single educational institution created by their 
 bounty. Dean Hook, in contrasting the benefactions of native English 
 Bishops with the unsympathetic greed of the foreign ecclesiastics intruded 
 by Henry III. and the Pope, observes, "When the persons so employed 
 were Englishmen, they admitted the claim made upon them for local 
 purposes, and felt a peculiar attachment to the town or village from which 
 they derived their surname. When they retired from public life, they 
 returned to their respective dioceses, and by their munificence very 
 frequently became public benefactors. . . . The chroniclers and poets of 
 the period had a constant theme of invective in the swarms of Gascons, 
 Poictevins, Savoyards, and Proven9als, who, like locusts, arrived only to 
 devour ; and took flight, only when they saw no further prospect of satisfy- 
 ing their greed." For "chroniclers and poets" read "bards, preachers, 
 and ballad- writers " like Twm o'r Nant, and the analogy between Wales in 
 the eighteenth and England in the thirteenth century will be complete. 
 
 1 The decay of the Welsh College at Oxford has been a consequence 
 of the decay of the Church in Wales. The grammar schools have been
 
 alienated from the Church? 331 
 
 It is simply a repetition of the old plausible anti-national, 
 unsympathetic policy which has sought to transform 
 
 badly endowed, and, being under the influence of an unpopular clergy, 
 have failed during the last hundred and seventy years to attract the 
 youth of the middle and lower middle classes so generally alienated from 
 the Church. The college has, therefore, drawn its recruits, not from the 
 entire people of Wales, but from that minority which has adhered to the 
 Church. The most vigorous intellects and independent spirits, as might 
 have been expected under an anti-national Church regime, in Wales have 
 not seldom been Nonconformist. The college might be revived and made 
 a source of inestimable blessings to Wales, if the Meyrick Trust Fund 
 could be devoted mainly to the encouragement of intermediate education, 
 and the maintenance in the grammar schools of poor scholars of natural 
 ability. The minimum expenditure of a student has been estimated by the 
 new English principal at 120. This sum excludes a large number of 
 Welsh youths. It would seem desirable to adapt the college, as the 
 national college of Wales, to the social condition of its people, by reducing 
 the rate of expenditure to a much lower figure, and enlarging its accom- 
 modation. It seems strange that the governing body of a college, having 
 a net corporate income of .10,000 per annum, cannot provide education 
 at an even cheaper rate than the unendowed Keble College, where young 
 men of a much wealthier class than the average Welsh student are educated 
 for less than ;ioo per annum. But for the first time in its history the 
 Welsh college is under the influence of an English principal, who, not- 
 withstanding his many high qualities, lacks sympathetic insight into the 
 peculiar needs of Wales, and ignores its national rights. It is no secret 
 that, in approaching the, Oxford University Commission, now sitting, the 
 principal and fellows have used language implying that the Welsh endow- 
 ments of the college should no longer be necessarily confined to the 
 education of Welshmen. They generously ask the commissioners to give 
 them power in dealing with the scholarships "so long as they shall deem 
 it expedient for the interests of education in the Principality of Wales to 
 declare a certain number not exceeding two-thirds to be Welsh scholar- 
 ships " ! They make the same generous proposal with regard to the 
 fellowships ! The plain English of this proposal is that all the Welsh 
 endowments are to be alienated from Wales whenever the principal and 
 fellows, desiring more genteel pupils, shall think it expedient. Assuming 
 that the commissioners will, as a matter of course, deprive Wales of her 
 rights, they magnanimously ask that they, as the executioners of the decree, 
 may have power to spare some portion of them so kng as thcy]shall deem
 
 332 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 Wales by ignoring its national rights, and has resulted 
 in the shame of its authors and the injury of the 
 country. Let us hope that the social leaders of Wales 
 will defend their countrymen against this threatened 
 wrong, which is grievous, though it comes veiled in the 
 phrases of a pretentious reform. Had the people of 
 Scotland been threatened by such an injustice, its 
 leaders would ere this have raised a cry that could not 
 have been disregarded. 1 
 
 it expedient. It is difficult to believe that the commissioners will sanction 
 such a scheme, or permit endowments, intended to be the aids of poor 
 Welsh students, to become the prizes of wealthy English youths, expen- 
 sively trained at the English public schools. It will be another attempt 
 to cure a patient, fainting from loss of blood, by blood-letting. 
 
 1 Since the first edition of this sermon was issued, the writer's views 
 have been confirmed by the authoritative testimony of a great statesman, 
 whose residence in Wales has enabled him to form a correct estimate of 
 its ecclesiastical misgovernment, and of the evils which have flowed from 
 it. Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, July i, 1879, in 
 support of Mr. Hussey Vivian's motion concerning the deficiency of higher 
 education in Wales, the Right Hon. W. Ewart Gladstone expressed 
 himself in the following eloquent and generous language : "It was rarely 
 that Wales urged any local claim on the notice of Parliament. The noble 
 lord had most fairly compared the case of Wales with that of Scotland and 
 Ireland. But, although Wales had in many respects less of a historical 
 and political existence than Scotland, she had in many respects also a more 
 strongly marked nationality. Wales had a population of about a million 
 and a half; Scotland, a population of three and a half millions, and 
 Ireland a population of about five and a half millions. But in the popu- 
 lation of a million and a half in Wales there was a greater number who spoke 
 and clung to the national language than in the nine millions who inhabited 
 Scotland and Ireland. As to the Church, the National Church of Scotland 
 did immense service in fostering the national intelligence. The case was 
 the same in Wales until the unhappy system of proscribing the Welsh 
 tongue was established. Now the Welsh as a nation were a nation of 
 Nonconformists. Two hundred years ago they were, strictly speaking, a 
 nation of Churchmen. The old Puritanism, which was so powerful in
 
 alienated from the Church? 333 
 
 Why do I dwell upon these wrongs and weaknesses 
 of Wales ? Because I believe them to be mainly due 
 to the violation of that Apostolical principle declared in 
 the text, and the want of a ministry in living sympathy 
 with the people to whom they were sent. 
 
 Had the Church in Wales retained the national 
 sympathy, a patriotic clergy would have led the people 
 
 many parts of England, took no root whatever in Wales. After the 
 Revolution, English Bishops were appointed. Every living was given to 
 Englishmen ; the dregs were left to the people of Wales. The people of 
 Wales were driven out of connection with that great national institution 
 which in time would have afforded means for the cultivation of the national 
 intelligence, so that Parliament and the British Government had not only 
 done nothing for Wales, they had not only withheld from Wales the aid 
 that had been given, especially during the present century, to Scotland and 
 Ireland, with more or less liberality, according to the views they maintained, 
 but they positively drove the people of Wales out of the enjoyment of the 
 only institution which offered any means of fostering and educating the 
 national mind. Now, he contended that the condition and history of 
 Wales invested it with a claim that could not be much longer overlooked. 
 It was not the fault of the people of Wales that t^ ey did not find their way 
 to the enjoyment of higher education in the same proportion as the people 
 in the other divisions of the United Kingdom. They had shown quite as 
 great a disposition to profit by the advantages of education, whenever they 
 had access to it, as had been shown by the people of Scotland. The 
 Welsh cherished among" themselves a literature of their own, institutions 
 of their own. They kept alive their national traditions ; and the warmth 
 of feeling which they entertained on this subject, the affectionate manner 
 in which they clung to those recollections, must command respect. There 
 are many who thought the Welsh language was a calamity, and that the 
 sooner it was got rid of the better. It was not the abstract question they 
 had to consider whether one tongue in the whole of the United Kingdom 
 was desirable or not. Where you had a large population warmly and 
 closely attached to this tongue, and where that tongue had become the 
 emblem of the traditions they had received from their fathers, that attach- 
 ment should be respected ; and no measure should be taken by Parliament 
 under the supposition that they were to be weaned from their own 
 language. "
 
 334 Why are the Welsh People 
 
 onward in the march of progress, would have impelled 
 them to acquire the English language * without forget- 
 ting their own, and would have preserved for them 
 the priceless blessings of religious unity and social 
 concord. 
 
 To-day I plead before you on behalf of the Welsh 
 Church in this town. It has struggles and difficulties 
 and debt. Is its weakness attributable to any lack of 
 zeal or ability in those who have immediate charge of 
 its work ? No. The weakness of the Church among 
 the Welsh settlers in England and that it is weak no 
 one, who knows that there are more than a hundred 
 Nonconformist congregations, great and small, worship- 
 ping in Welsh in the towns of England, and only four 
 belonging to the Church, can deny is a consequence 
 of the general debility that has overtaken its entire 
 system in Wales, as the result of those abuses upon 
 which I have dwelt. For a hundred and fifty years 
 Welshmen were taught to regard the Church as hostile 
 to their nationality and alien to their hearts. They 
 bring those feelings with them when they settle in your 
 
 1 No educated Welshman desires that his countrymen should continue 
 in ignorance of the English language. He knows that the knowledge of 
 it is essential to their social and material advancement. He regrets the 
 anti-national policy that has been pursued, because it has retarded the 
 progress of the English language in Wales. Since 1700, the masses 
 of the population have been under the influence of native preachers, of 
 whom a majority, though often very able and intelligent men, have had 
 no command of the English tongue. As the teacher is, so will the taught 
 be. The anti-national policy, which was designed to kill the Welsh 
 language, has created Nonconformity, and Nonconformity has had the 
 practical effect of excluding the English language ! In this case the 
 wisdom of this world has proved to be also worldly foolishness.
 
 alienated from the Church? 335 
 
 great towns. Therefore the Church has a hard struggle 
 to win their confidence. 
 
 It is true that the evil anti-national policy has been 
 reversed (although there are some who still cling to the 
 superstition that the ministrations of clergy whom the 
 people will not hear, and cannot understand, have in 
 some mysterious way an elevating effect upon their 
 nature), and better days have dawned upon the Church 
 in Wales. But the wrongs of a hundred and fifty years 
 cannot be undone in a generation. Although the 
 Church is to-day gradually adapting herself to the 
 people, and becoming to the Welsh as Welsh, some 
 generations must pass before she can exert the saving 
 influence that will induce the whole people to accept 
 her as their spiritual mother. 
 
 In the day of her weakness I appeal to you, the 
 generous citizens of this great town, to aid this little 
 Welsh Church of St. David, struggling under a debt 
 of nearly ^100. The citizens of Liverpool are known 
 to be wealthy and liberal. You are not narrow in your 
 sympathies. You see among you men of all races, and 
 can sympathize with all. The presence of the chief 
 magistrate and the powerful municipality of this great 
 community equal in wealth to some ancient states 
 that have left their mark on history is a testimony that 
 Welsh Churchmen have' your good will. I have tried 
 to excite your interest and sympathy by unfolding to 
 you that tale of wrong by which the higher spirit of 
 Wales has suffered loss. 
 
 Will you show your sympathy with the weak by
 
 336 Why are the Welsh People alienated, etc. ? 
 
 giving to my countrymen here that aid which they 
 sorely need? The crambs that fall from the table of 
 the merchant princes of this great town would enable 
 this little Welsh congregation to do its work and to 
 go on its way with joy. Let me entreat you to help 
 them with that princely liberality for which many of . 
 you are famous, knowing that "the liberal soul shall 
 be made fat."
 
 THE PAST AND PRESENT POSITION 
 OF THE CHURCH IN WALES. 1 
 
 THE wording of this subject is significant. Till the 
 twelfth century, the Church was the Church of Wales. 
 Then Norman force, filling Welsh sees with strangers, 
 maintaining Harvey at Bangor by arms, subjecting 
 St. David's to Canterbury, banishing Gruffydd, reject- 
 ing Giraldus Cambrensis for Peter de Leia, provoking 
 the appeal of the Welsh princes to the Pope, changed 
 the Church of Wales into the Church in Wales. The 
 native Church seems to have been free from Roman 
 influence. The oldest parish churches are rarely dedi- 
 cated to the Virgin. The churches of St. Mary (Llan- 
 fair) are found under the shadows of the fortresses 
 built by the Normans. In Wales Mariolatry was a 
 Norman import. In the thirteenth century the bards, 
 impatient of an anti-national clergy, tried to supplant 
 the Church by theosophical Druidism. In 1402 
 Glyndwr burnt the cathedral at Bangor, the cathedral, 
 
 1 An address delivered at the Church Congress, Swansea, October 9, 
 1879 ; with Appendix. 
 
 Z
 
 338 The Past and Present Position 
 
 palace, and canons' houses at St. Asaph, and the 
 Bishop's castle and Archdeacon's house at Llandaff. 
 
 Eighty-three years later, a Welsh dynasty, indebted 
 to the Welsh soldiers of Bosworth, ushered in happier 
 days for Wales. In 1588 Bishop Morgan gave her his 
 version of the Bible, and Archdeacon Prys a metrical 
 psalter. In the seventeenth century, the Welsh Church, 
 tried by the blasts of Republican Puritanism, was not 
 moved ; for she was then, not a sickly exotic, but the 
 Church of the people. Native clergy ministered, scholars 
 like John Davies wrote for her, and Rhys Prichard sang 
 sacred songs still cherished in the homes of Wales. 
 Then the popular cry was "Church and King!" In 
 1715 there were but thirty-five Nonconformist chapels 
 in Wales. 
 
 At that date the Government, resenting Jacobite 
 sympathies, began to import ecclesiastics ignorant of 
 the language and manners of the people. The fountain- 
 heads of her ministry then froze in worldliness. In 
 dark days Gruffydd Jones taught 150,212 souls to read 
 the Welsh Bible. With intelligence came spiritual 
 thirst. A ministry frozen at the fountain could not 
 satisfy it- 
 Then Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands the 
 preachers, Peter Williams the commentator, and Williams 
 of Pantycelyn, the poet of Methodism, opened new 
 wells in the wilderness. In 1800 the thirty-five chapels 
 of 1715 had become well-nigh a thousand. Methodism, 
 long exposed to the outrages of mobs and to the frowns 
 of authority, grew ; for its roots were nourished by the
 
 of the Church in Wales. 339 
 
 waters that forced their way outward, when men had 
 choked their true channels in the Church. In 1879 it 
 has 1134 congregations, 116,016 communicants, 275,406 
 hearers, and raises 164,073 5^. 4d a year. The Welsh 
 Congregationalists have 983 chapels, more than 180,000 
 adherents, and raise more than 100,000 a year. The 
 Welsh Baptists have more than 600 chapels ; and the 
 Welsh Wesleyans are a considerable body. 
 
 The number of worshippers, above ten years of age, 
 adhering to these four bodies has been stated, on good 
 authority, to be 686,220, of whom 656,000 worship in 
 Welsh. Thus, out of 1,006,100 souls, who, according 
 to Mr. Ravenstein, speak Welsh, 800,000 are attached 
 more or less closely to the 3000 chapels. Statistical 
 apologists will hint that these Nonconformists exist 
 only on paper. Paper-adherents do not give money. 
 The Welsh Nonconformists give far more than 300,000 
 a year. 
 
 Now Wales, with the Welsh parts of Monmouthshire, 
 in 1871 had about 1,300,000 souls. Some 300,000 use 
 English only, and of them a majority, probably, con- 
 form. Thus some 400,000 souls may profess more or 
 less allegiance to the Church. But she has lost the 
 mass of the Welsh-speaking population, of whom 500,000 
 must be virtually monoglots. There are many proofs 
 that confirm this cohclusion. Twelve weekly journals, 
 eighteen magazines, and a large number of books are 
 published in Welsh. Of this literature more than five- 
 sixths are produced by Nonconformists for Nonconfor- 
 mists. Again, although the landlords of Wales are
 
 34-O The Past and Present Position 
 
 mainly Churchmen, at least two-thirds of the political 
 power of Wales are Nonconformist. 
 
 Such is the present position of the Church in Wales. 
 She has lost five-sixths of the Welsh-speaking people, 
 and her strength survives among the English-speaking 
 upper and upper middle classes. In 1715 she was 
 confronted by thirty-five Nonconformist chapels, in 
 1879 by more than three thousand. Then the Welsh 
 literature came almost entirely from the clergy ; now 
 it comes almost exclusively from Nonconformists. 
 
 These are facts which some would hide. The old 
 Welsh principle, " Truth against the world," will prove 
 to be the Welsh Church's best physician. To veil sores 
 is not to heal them. To conceal ailments is not to 
 cure but to perpetuate .them. To unfold the worst 
 symptoms is but to invite the remedies that will avail. 
 
 How has this exodus been provoked ? Let the 
 greatest Welsh pastor of the eighteenth century answer. 
 " I must do justice to the Dissenters in Wales," said 
 Gruffydd Jones, " that it was not any scruple of con- 
 science about the principles or orders of the Established 
 Church that gave occasion to scarce one in ten of the 
 Dissenters in this country to separate from us at the 
 first, whatever objections they may afterwards imbibe 
 against conforming. No, Sir ! they generally dissent at 
 first for no other reason than for want of plain, practical, 
 pressing, and zealous preaching, in a language and dialect 
 they are able to understand ; and freedom of access to 
 advise about their spiritual state." 
 
 That is true. None will deny it but those who,
 
 of the Ckurck in Wales. 341 
 
 being ignorant of the Welsh language, are unqualified 
 to judge of Welsh life. Other causes, common to 
 England, doubtless contributed. Some allege the 
 poverty of Welsh endowments, forgetting that where 
 the Church is poorest as in Cardiganshire, where the 
 tithes were small enough to be left to the natives 
 there among the Welsh she is strongest. The analogies 
 between English and Welsh Dissent are partial. Dissent 
 in England is sporadic, in Wales endemic ; local in 
 England, national in Wales ; stronger than the Church 
 in some English districts, in all Welsh. 
 
 In Ireland, Scotland, Wales among every Celtic 
 people the Anglican Church lost her hold, because she 
 became a Church among but not of the people. Was 
 it from lack of endowments ? No. In Ireland and in 
 Wales unendowed rivals won the hearts which the 
 clergy had lost. The Irish Sogarth and the Welsh 
 Pregethwr, differing in faith, had this in common 
 natives of the soil, unfed by its wealth, they beat the 
 stranger-clergy fattened by the chiefest of its offerings. 
 
 The tale of the Church's ruin in Wales is simple. 
 Where did the malady begin ? "As in human bodies," 
 Pliny wrote, "so in states, the worst disease is that 
 which is diffused from the head " (" Ut in corporibus, 
 sic in imperiis, gravissimus est morbus qui a capite 
 diffunditur 'V 
 
 In the hundred and fifty years preceding 1700, when 
 the Church had the Welsh people, Wales produced more 
 than forty chief pastors ; in the hundred and fifty years 
 1 Epist. lib. iv. 22.
 
 34 2 The Past and Present Position 
 
 succeeding 1700, in which the Church lost the Welsh 
 people, not one. For a hundred and fifty years the head 
 of every diocese was an imported ecclesiastic, ignorant 
 of the language, out of sympathy with the people. He 
 came into Wales strong in his narrow national creed that 
 all things un-English were unpardonable. To root out 
 the sin of Welsh, he transplanted into all sunny places 
 English brothers, cousins, connections, friends. Thus it 
 gradually became the mark of the dignified clergy that 
 they were dumb in the language of the people. To the 
 Welsh the cathedral city became a fortress garrisoned 
 by men who despised everything Welsh except Welsh 
 endowments ; the cathedral itself a consecrated ice- 
 house, in which Welsh hearts were chilled to find 
 strangers, wearing Welsh dignities in person, doing 
 Welsh duties by deputy. This treatment was tried 
 upon a people so proud of their race that, under 
 their old laws, the descendants of a foreigner settled 
 in Wales were not accounted Welsh, until after nine 
 degrees of ascent by generations of intermarriage with 
 natives of pure Welsh blood. 
 
 In Wales, as in India, natives were enlisted to fill 
 the humbler posts. Who were they ? The favourites 
 were feeble, pliant, unpatriotic men, who cringed to 
 climb ; who told their patron not what was true, but 
 what he wished to hear, viz. that all things Welsh were 
 dying. Aping their masters, they affected contempt for 
 the popular language. Ceasing to be Welsh, failing to 
 be English, they became Nobodies. Of Welsh enthu- 
 siasm, oratory, literature, poetry, patriotism, they were
 
 of the Church in Wales. 343 
 
 innocent. Obsequious to the squires, arrogant to the 
 people, they had no influence. They had no Welsh 
 culture, and very little English ; for, like North American 
 Indians, they learnt the vices sooner than the virtues of 
 their conquerors. 
 
 Instinctively strong Welshmen, of eloquence, intellect, 
 and influence, shunned the Church. Dissent was more 
 attractive to them, because the chapels contained their 
 countrymen, and the Church had lost them. They pre- 
 ferred flocks without tithes, to tithes without flocks. 
 
 The clergy, imported as apostles of English, retarded 
 the progress of the English language, by associating it 
 with ecclesiastical abuses, by throwing the people under 
 the exclusive influence of monoglot Welsh teachers, 
 by neglecting to promote higher education. During a 
 hundred and fifty years these dignitaries one of whom 
 bestowed on his family more than half the revenues of a 
 diocese never endowed a single grammar school, and 
 left Wales with barely a third of the school endowments 
 existing in the average English districts of equal popu- 
 lation. Chief pastors, devoid of Welsh sympathies and 
 illiterate in the Welsh tongue, produced a clergy in 
 their own image. Hence, for a hundred and fifty years, 
 every teacher whose name lives in the hearts of the 
 Welsh people has been almost without exception a 
 Nonconformist. While the Bishops were laying hands 
 upon unfit men, the natural Heaven-born teachers of 
 Wales were influencing thousands in the Chapel and 
 Cymmanfa. Of the clergy, those who were educated 
 knew no Welsh, and those who knew Welsh were not
 
 344 The Past and Present Position 
 
 educated ; those who had something to say couldn't 
 say it to the people, and those who could say it had 
 nothing to say. 
 
 The Bishop, good easy man, went around to confirm 
 Each pastor of empty pews filled his church for the 
 day. How ? Sight-seeing Nonconformists came to the 
 Durbar of the great English official, and many knelt 
 before him. Too often the candidates had received no 
 instruction. Sometimes they were hired for the day, to 
 make a show before the Bishop. They heard what was 
 to them but a magical incantation, and gazed at a 
 pompous mechanical rite without religious meaning to 
 their minds. But the good Bishop, an overseer without 
 insight, saw the crowd, and went away delighted. No 
 one told him that, if he had gone there on the following 
 Sunday, he would have found the church empty, and 
 the newly confirmed all in chapel ! These Confirma- 
 tions, themes of endless Welsh ridicule, confirmed the 
 Bishop in happy ignorance of his diocese, and confirmed 
 earnest Dissenters in their Dissent. 
 
 The Church has made material progress of late. 
 Churches, parsonages, schools, have been built, and on 
 the cathedrals, after great efforts, over many years, half 
 as much money has been spent as is raised by Welsh 
 Methodism in one year. But how many of the churches 
 are empty ? Five-sixths of the Welsh-speaking million 
 are outside the Church. That is the present position. 
 Is it satisfactory ? I think not. 
 
 Well, how can it be altered ? The Church must be 
 treated as the Church of the Welsh people, and not as
 
 of the Church in Wales. 345 
 
 the Church of the English-speaking minority. As long 
 as more than half the people of every diocese worship 
 in Welsh, clergy occupying diocesan positions ought to 
 speak and write both languages, not as schoolboys falter 
 through a French exercise, but with power. But I shall 
 be told by some worthy clergyman, whose sight is 
 weakened by the strength of his will, who is blind to 
 most Welsh facts, but has an eye to Welsh preferments, 
 who tells his Bishop that all the Welsh in his parish are 
 dead, because they are all gone to chapel, " Is not the 
 Welsh language to die out ? " My answer is, " It may 
 die, but you'll die ages before it. You can't justify your 
 present position by saying that you are waiting for the 
 shoes of a dead language. You may serve the Church 
 in Wales if you live till 2079. To-day you are a possible 
 pastor for posterity, a light fitted to shine, only in the 
 Church of the future." 
 
 But it is said, " There are no men of sufficient culture 
 who know Welsh." Why ? Because ignorance of Welsh 
 has been treated not as a disqualification, but almost 
 as a sign of fitness for high promotion in the Welsh 
 Church. Let it be known that no man can minister in 
 the chief places of a Welsh diocese unless he has power 
 over both languages, and soon men so qualified will be 
 forthcoming. 
 
 In every diocese, 2000 a year would be better 
 spent in training devout, gifted Welshmen for the 
 ministry, than in building churches doomed to be kept 
 empty by ordained illiterates, and mouthers of marvel- 
 lous Welsh. These men wisely chosen ought to be sent
 
 346 The Past and Present Position 
 
 to the English Universities for general culture, and to be 
 trained in the cathedral city for a few weeks of the long 
 vacation in Welsh speaking, writing, and ministerial 
 work. Such a system would dry the springs of Dissent. 
 The flower of Welsh youth would give themselves to 
 the Church, if she had a discerning spirit to choose, and 
 charity to educate them. A clergy trained at the Uni- 
 versities, and masters of Welsh, losing narrowness and 
 winning popular sympathy, will be at once eager and 
 able to lead their countrymen in all paths of true social 
 and religious progress. 
 
 As to the future of the Church in Wales, I have 
 confidence in the religious instincts of my countrymen. 
 Show them the Church in all her fairness, and they will 
 see the meanness of sectarianism. Take away, if you 
 will, the privileges of the Church ; take away, if you 
 must, her endowments ; but give her back a living 
 ministry that can win the heart of the Welsh people. 
 That warm religious heart of Wales chilled out of the 
 Church has built three thousand humble shrines, and 
 gives ^300,000 a year for God. Let the Church have a 
 native ministry that can regain that Welsh heart, and 
 she will be strong and rich ; and when another Congress 
 is held in Swansea by our children at the end of thirty 
 years, some of us may then be living to hear them call 
 her, not the Church in Wales, but the Church of Wales, 
 strong in the love of the Welsh people ; when their 
 " nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall 
 proceed from the midst of them."
 
 of the Church in Wales. 347 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THIS address was delivered at the Swansea Church Congress, on 
 Thursday, October 9, 1879, in the discussion upon "The Past and 
 Present Position of the Church in Wales." It attributes the decay 
 of the Welsh Church to the anti-national policy by which prelates 
 and clergy ignorant of the language were thrust upon the Welsh- 
 speaking people. This policy, adopted in early times, relaxed, 
 though not entirely suspended, from 1558 to 1700, was then revived 
 and continued without a break till 1870. That policy is regarded 
 in this address as the radical cause of the evils which have alienated 
 five-sixths of the Welsh-speaking million from the Church. 
 
 The writer ventures to affirm that this opinion has never been 
 seriously challenged by any living clergyman or layman who has 
 a competent mastery of the Welsh language, and an intimate 
 knowledge of the Welsh-speaking people. Its correctness has 
 been questioned, but only by critics either ignorant of the Welsh 
 language, or incapable of writing and speaking it effectively. 
 Welsh Churchmen know how to estimate the value of such 
 criticisms. But inasmuch as great ignorance prevails among 
 English Churchmen as to the inner religious life of the Welsh 
 people, the writer thinks it advisable to add in this Appendix 
 some proofs that the view expressed is not a " pretty little theory " 
 easily demolished, but a statement of historical truth. 
 
 The anti-national policy of appointing Bishops ignorant of 
 Welsh to be the chief pastors of Welsh-speaking people prevailed 
 down to 1558. Between that year and 1714, fifty Welshmen 
 became Bishops. Of these, forty-three were born in Wales, and 
 thirty presided over Welsh dioceses. From 1714 till 1870 no 
 Welshman rose to the Episcopal Bench. To what cause is this 
 long exclusion of Welshmen from the Episcopate to be attributed ? 
 Sir Thomas Phillips, in his well-known work upon Wales, published 
 in 1849, traced it to the Jacobite sympathies of the Welsh clergy
 
 The Past and Present Position 
 
 and squires. The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St. David's was 
 therefore mistaken in suggesting at the Congress that this "little 
 theory " was first formulated by Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 There are some interpreters of Welsh Church history, it seems, 
 who regard the English appointments from 1714 to 1870 as a for- 
 tuitous succession, arising out of the apathy of the age, rather than 
 as the deliberate expression of a political purpose. 
 
 The Rev. Canon Bevan was described by the Right Reverend 
 President as having disposed of this " little theory." But inasmuch 
 as his paper attributes these appointments to a cynical indifference 
 to the true interests of the Church on the part of statesmen, who 
 " prostituted the Episcopate into a reward for political services," 
 Canon Bevan appears to be rather a supporter than a destroyer of 
 Sir Thomas Phillips' theory. 
 
 But although Mr. Bevan acknowledges that a change of policy 
 occurred at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he declines to 
 agree with those who attribute to it the ruin of the Welsh Church, 
 and he bases his conclusion upon the authority of Dr. Erasmus 
 Saunders. " It is supposed," he says, " that the period of declen- 
 sion set in with the change of policy to which we have referred, 
 and was mainly, if not wholly, due to that policy. I think the 
 causes lie deeper and further back in the history of the Church. 
 We have, fortunately, a most graphic description of the diocese of 
 St. David's at this time from the pen of Dr. Erasmus Saunders. 
 . . . Crushing poverty and disorganization consequent thereon 
 were, in Dr. Saunders 1 view, at the bottom of all the evils that then 
 afflicted the Church in Wales." 
 
 If Canon Bevan has, in these words, correctly described the 
 opinion of Dr. Saunders, the view of that graphic writer whose 
 work was published in 1721 is opposed to the view set forth in this 
 address. But let Dr. Saunders' view be given in his own language. 
 In his work entitled " A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese 
 of St. David's, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, with 
 some account of the causes of its decay, together with considerations 
 of the reasonableness of augmenting the revenues of impropriate 
 churches," we find Section III. thus headed, "Wherein are con- 
 sidered the injuries occasioned to religion by pastors that neglect 
 the use of our language, by non-residence," etc.
 
 of the Church in Wales. 349 
 
 " First, then, if it were not an opinion that did not seem very well 
 to comport and bear with the sense and practice of many learned 
 and eminent men, I could not forbear thinking that the disposing 
 of Welsh preferments, I mean those especially that are attended 
 with cure of souls, to such as are wholly ignorant of that language, 
 to be a practice that has contributed not a little to the decay and 
 desolation of our religion ; not that any gentlemen, and least of all 
 neighbours, or natives, should be envied what benefits or prefer- 
 ments they can obtain in these parts, as being generally of so mean 
 a value ; but that it is humbly to be supposed that they should 
 accept of them on no other view, but of being useful and doing the 
 service of the Church, whose bread they eat, it being just and 
 equitable that they should be qualified for the duty where they 
 receive the profit ; and I think it can't be well supposed that they 
 are so, till they make themselves intelligible to the flock they are 
 to guide and oversee. For as St. Paul observes, when the voice 
 of him that speaketh is not understood, then both he that speaks 
 and he that is spoken to are mutually barbarians to each other ; 
 and a greater yet infinitely than St. Paul hath told us, that it ought 
 to go into the character of a good shepherd that his sheep should 
 know his voice. . . . 
 
 " But if Revelation had been silent, and had not said so, the 
 reason of the thing is so clear and unanswerable, as that it is in 
 truth amazing that ambition itself, with all its fertile inventions, 
 should think to find out arguments to justify the contrary ; for of 
 what use can one be (let his learning in other respects be ever so 
 great) to instruct and teach those whorn he can't speak to ? And 
 therefore what benefits are the people to expect, as to knowledge or 
 information, from the ministry of such, who can neither preach nor 
 pray so as to be understood by them ? . . . 
 
 " Again, it was upon the same principle (as I am informed) that 
 the present worthy and learned Bishop of Carlisle, though there 
 were many motives to induce him to it, did yet decline accepting 
 of a bishopric in Wales, namely, because he was a stranger to the 
 language, and that he therefore conscientiously feared he should 
 not be so useful to his diocese, nor so capable of edifying and 
 instructing them, as he thought himself obliged to be. But all are 
 not of his opinion ; some have greater courage. . . .
 
 35O Tiie Past and Present Position 
 
 " But to all this it will, I know, by some be answered with 
 regard to Bishops, that their care devolves to the inferior pastors ; 
 that their intercourse is little with the people, and their trust dis- 
 charged by charges to the clergy. Admitting, then, it may be so, 
 and that for this or other reasons above the view perhaps of 
 ordinary capacities, it may be fit or lawful that my Lords, the 
 Bishops, may be strangers to the Liturgy, strangers to the language 
 of the people, and the people also strangers to or uncapable of 
 understanding the offices they perform among them, or the bene- 
 dictions they are pleased to give them ; yet I think it is allowed 
 that this privilege should not be extended to the inferior orders, 
 because it is alleged at least ' that it is a sufficient cause of refusal 
 (when a clerk is presented to the cure of souls in Wales) if he does 
 not understand that language /' though, if the reason of this sanction 
 be just, it is difficult to conceive why it should not hold with regard 
 to superiors as well as inferiors, that hold themselves engaged to 
 ministerial offices. . . . 
 
 " Absurdities of this kind are (God be thanked) pretty well 
 understood now in most other places, where the Reformation is 
 received, for there are but few that think themselves reformed, and 
 continue still to have the service in a tongue unknown ; and were 
 any of our more knowing neighbours, who (God be thanked) are 
 not obliged to be in this respect as unhappy as we are, but treated 
 in this manner, with what patience would they bear it ? Or how 
 pleased would an English congregation be to have a Frenchman, a 
 Dutchman, a Welshman, a German, or any man, officiate among 
 them in a language they did not understand ? . . . The Church, 
 our mother, does in this respect kindly give indulgence, even to 
 the remotest and most savage infidels, by obliging all her mission- 
 aries first themselves to learn the language of those they are sent 
 to address themselves unto ; and it is manifestly absurd to imagine 
 they should be able to do anything to answer the design they are 
 sent for until they do so ; nor can it therefore be supposed to be 
 her design to be so unequal in her favours, as to deny so common 
 and so just a privilege to her own children." 
 
 Dr. Saunders endeavours to illustrate to Englishmen the in- 
 justice which ruined the Welsh Church, by recalling the indignant 
 protests addressed to the Popes against the introduction into
 
 of the Church in Wales. 351 
 
 English sees of Italian ecclesiastics. He quotes the following 
 record of the remonstrance addressed by the Lords and Commons 
 of England to Pope Innocent IV., at the Council of Lyons : " Pro- 
 ceres et populus Anglias querelas per procuratorem suum, coram 
 Innocentio quarto, in concilio Lugdunensi proposuerunt his verbis, 
 scil. Jam ditantur in Anglia Italici, nullam curam animarum 
 gerentes, sed lupos rapacissimos gregem dispergere et oves rapere 
 permittentes. Unde vere dicere possumus, quod non sunt boni 
 pastores quoniam oves suas non cognoscunt, nee pastorum notitiam 
 oves habent, hospitalitati, eleemosynarumque largitioni, sicut sta- 
 tutum est in Anglia, non insistunt, sed fructus tantum percipiunt, 
 the extra regna apportantes." 
 
 His appreciation of the spiritual efficiency in Wales of the non- 
 Welsh-speaking Bishops and clergy, Dr. Saunders also illustrated 
 by quoting, " Mutis conferuntur canibus qui latrare nesciunt, et 
 malunt potius actores esse in Fabula pro exiguo, quam spectatores 
 pro nihilo" (Annot. D. Powel in cap I. Giraldi Itin. Cambr.). 
 
 These extracts abundantly prove that Canon Bevan was not 
 fortunate in the use of words when he stated that " crushing 
 poverty and disorganization consequent thereon were, in Dr. 
 Saunders' view, at the bottom of all the evils that then afflicted the 
 Church in Wales." 
 
 Saunders distinctly describes the poverty and misery of the 
 clergy as secondary evils, and states that, in dwelling upon the 
 influence of Bishops and clergy ignorant of the language and people, 
 he was proceeding " to point out the causes that mostly seem to have 
 contributed to the desolations I have been describing; " and again he 
 declares, ''disposing of Welsh preferments . . . to such as are 
 wholly ignorant of that language, to be a practice that has contri- 
 buted not a little to the decay and desolation of our religion" 
 
 No clearer or stronger testimony could be cited in support of the 
 views enunciated in this paper than that of Dr. Erasmus Saunders. 
 In 1879, as it was m I 7 2I > the material poverty of the Church in 
 Wales (if she can be pronounced to be poor) is due to the weak- 
 ness of her spiritual hold over the people, not the weakness of 
 her spiritual hold to her material poverty. The Welsh-speaking 
 people, alienated by the influence of the imported ecclesiastics, 
 contribute more than 300,000 a year to religious purposes in their
 
 35 2 The Past and Present Position 
 
 Nonconformity. If the Church had been blessed with chief pastors 
 able to retain the religious allegiance of the Welsh-speaking million, 
 the ,300,000 now given in Nonconformity would have swelled the 
 Church's treasury, and, when added to the income of her ancient 
 endowments, would have made her richer in Wales, perhaps, than 
 in any other district of the kingdom. W T ho can doubt also that the 
 great landowners and employers in Wales would come forward to 
 multiply the Church's resources, if they recognized in her the Church 
 of the people ? They can hardly be expected to give new endow- 
 ments to the Churches, when they see the people on their estates 
 worshipping in the chapels. To endow the Church is one thing 
 to endow a flockless alien clergy is quite another. 
 
 " Poverty," says Canon Bevan, " is still the besetting infirmity 
 of the Church in Wales. Poverty is still the main cause of her 
 existing inefficiency." This is a courageous statement when made 
 in the presence of the obvious fact that ne native Nonconformist 
 ministers, who have won the affections of the people whom the 
 Church has lost, are hindered by far greater poverty, having no 
 endowments whatever. The truth is that the poverty of the Church 
 is due to her existing inefficiency, and her existing inefficiency due 
 to the rule of chief pastors ignorant of the language and out of 
 sympathy with the people. 
 
 The predominance of Dissent in every district of the country 
 is peculiar to Wales, but the crushing poverty consequent upon 
 spoliations in Tudor times was common to England and Wales. 
 Dr. Saunders reminds his readers (p. 74) that, according to the 
 account given by the Lower House of Convocation to Queen 
 Elizabeth, there were then scarce sixty out of eight thousand eight 
 hundred and odd benefices that were singly sufficient for the en- 
 couragement of learned men ; and again that Archbishop Whitgift 
 had observed that there were in England four thousand five hundred 
 benefices with cure, and not valued above ten pounds in the " Book 
 of Firstfruits," and most of them under eight. He also quotes a 
 saying of Archbishop Grindal, that for one Church in England able 
 to support a learned minister, there were ten unable. Spoliation 
 was common to the Church in England and Wales. Universal 
 Dissent is peculiar to Wales. The Church in England has become 
 strong and rich, because she is national and English in spirit. The
 
 of the Church in Wales. 353 
 
 Church in Wales has languished, because she has been made anti- 
 national and anti-Welsh, by Bishops and clergy who have reduced 
 her into a little " Church of the lairds." 
 
 One noble speaker in the discussion attributed the past weak- 
 ness of the Welsh Church to the immorality, and especially the in- 
 temperance, of the clergy in former years. The questions at once 
 suggest themselves Who were the Fathers in God appointed to 
 produce the clergy? Who failed to draw into the Church the 
 hundreds of devout gifted Welshmen willing to serve her, but 
 alienated by neglect into Nonconformist pulpits ? Who laid hands 
 "suddenly" on unfit men without taking time or trouble to ascer- 
 tain the moral stability of those whom they were about to ordain ? 
 Who utterly neglected to establish any effective system of clerical 
 education for drawing into the ministry of the Church men truly 
 capable of serving her ? The faults of the clergy were secondary 
 evils. The primary evil was the incapacity of the important 
 Bishops, who had no insight into the spiritual forces latent in the 
 population. 
 
 This introduction of Bishops and clergy ignorant of Welsh has 
 been, as Haddan expressed it, " that bane of the Welsh Church" or 
 to adopt Canon Bevan's phrase, while rejecting his opinion, " the 
 besetting infirmity" This disease, suppressed for a time, and then 
 recrudescent, has worked in her constitution ever since conquest 
 gave to the Welsh-speaking masses of Wales an English-speaking 
 upper class. The political influence of the squires and landowners, 
 of whom the chief were English in blood, language, and sympathy, 
 was always strong enough to overbear the will of the people. 
 When Queen Elizabeth, with an unerring sagacity, saw that Welsh- 
 speaking chief pastors were due to the Welsh-speaking people, the 
 voice of that small anti-Welsh upper class was heard in the ears of 
 Archbishop and Premier deprecating justice to Wales. When the 
 secret correspondence of the nineteenth century is published, it is 
 certain that there will come to light many similar protests, made 
 by the non-Welsh-speaking clergy and gentry of these days, 
 against those W T elsh appointments that were demanded by the 
 Welsh people, as soon as the extension of the suffrage in 1867 had 
 transferred political power in Wales from the squires to the masses. 
 It may be observed in passing that the national feeling of Welsh 
 
 2 A
 
 354 The Past and Present Position 
 
 Nonconformists upon this subject was, perhaps, never more 
 vigorously expressed than by Dr. William Rees, well known as a 
 poet, orator, and Nonconformist minister of the highest standing 
 in Wales. In a political letter, addressed to Mr. Gladstone in 
 1868, he used these words : "We feel that, as a nation, we are 
 insulted and degraded by the Government, in that it has always 
 appointed aliens in blood and language to the Welsh bishoprics 
 and the richest benefices in the Principality." 
 
 As the Bishop of St. David's alluded to one of these protests 
 made in Elizabethan days, against the appointment of a Welshman 
 to the see of Bangor, it may be interesting to recall the exact 
 words in which it is recorded. It is found, apparently, in the 
 following letter addressed by Archbishop Parker to Sir William 
 Cecil, and dated I2th February, 1565-6: 
 
 " I am about to make ready the instrument of Hugh Jones' com- 
 mendam, to be at Llandaff, 1 notwithstanding the last letters sent to 
 your honour ; for I yet hear better of the party. Since which time 
 I have conferred with some wise men partly of the same country, 
 who in respect of good to be done there in that diocese, they wish 
 no Welshman in Bangor. They band so much together in kindred, 
 that the Bishop cannot do as he would for his alliance sake. I am 
 desired by some well affected of that country to have a visitation, 
 and to set order there, such as whosoever should come to the 
 bishopric should be fain to prosecute it. 2 I hear that diocese to be 
 much out of order, both having no preaching there, and pensionary 
 concubinary openly continued, notwithstanding liberty of marriage 
 granted. If I thought the Queen's Majesty would allow her own 
 chaplain, Mr. Herle, to be placed there hereafter, I would join him 
 with some other learned to go through the diocese ; and I think 
 Mr. Herle to be a grave priestly man, and should well furnish the 
 
 1 In all the quotations made in this Appendix, the writer has italicized 
 words to which he wished to call special attention. 
 
 2 A venerable speaker at the Congress combated the views of this 
 address by stating that disorders had existed in Llandaff, under Welsh 
 Bishops, in the reign of Elizabeth and in 1644. The answer is obvious. 
 Welsh Bishops could not undo in a generation the abuses of centuries ; and 
 the time of the Civil War was not a time in which Episcopal administra- 
 tion could be expected to be perfect.
 
 of the Church in Wales. 355 
 
 office, with commendam of his livings, which he hath now, though 
 he should give over Manchester, where he now can have little rest. 
 If it would please your honour to send me some little signification 
 of your mind in these causes, I would frame myself thereafter. I 
 am now instantly sued unto, to have such a commissary there as 
 can be proved to keep openly three concubines, as men of good 
 reputation offer to prove." 
 
 It is not difficult for any one, who knows the inner life of Wales 
 to-day, to interpret the significance of this letter. The antagonisms 
 of 1879 throw light upon those of 1565. In Llandaff there had 
 been no Welsh Bishop since the days of Nicholas ap Gwrgant in 
 1149, until Queen Elizabeth appointed this Hugh Jones in 1565. 
 It is evident that the anti-Welsh heirs of a long usurpation pro- 
 tested secretly against the appointment of a Welshman, and to 
 their protests the Archbishop probably alludes in the words, " not- 
 withstanding the last letters sent to your honour? In Bangor there 
 had been no genuine Welshman for centuries, until Rowland 
 Meyrick was appointed in 1559. It is, therefore, not difficult to 
 decide who were the Bishops that had reduced the diocese into 
 the horrible state described by the Archbishop, nor yet how little 
 opportunity poor Welshmen had enjoyed of showing partiality for 
 their kindred ! It is not difficult to imagine who may have been 
 ''''the wise men partly of the same country" who wished "no Welsh- 
 man in Bangor" They were doubtless the descendants of those 
 superior English clergy, who for more than two centuries had 
 enjoyed the endowments, and debased the religion of the Welsh 
 diocese by their worldliness. It is an. interesting inquiry, which 
 may be commended to the attention of able antiquaries, whether 
 these wise men, who " wished no Welshman in Bangor," were 
 identical with those men who also instantly sued the Archbishop 
 " to have such a commissary there as could be proved to keep 
 openly three concubines." 
 
 The great Tudor Queen was able to appreciate the advice of 
 these "wise men" at its true value. She must have declined to 
 consent to the Archbishop's suggestion, that her English chaplain, 
 Mr. Herle, should be appointed. Although the self-interested 
 intriguers wished "no Welshman in Bangor," a Welshman, Nicholas 
 Robinson, born in Carnarvonshire, and Archdeacon of Merioneth,
 
 356 The Past and Present Position 
 
 was appointed, and was succeeded by a long line of Welshmen, 
 unbroken for a hundred and fifty years, till the scandalous Epis- 
 copate of Benjamin Hoadley, in 1716. The two South Wales 
 dioceses, although the majority of the people in both worshipped, 
 then as now, in the Welsh language, seem to have had fewer native 
 Bishops than Bangor and St. Asaph. This was probably due to 
 the fact that the landowners and magnates of South Wales, whose 
 influence controlled the appointments, were more generally of 
 English origin than those in the North. - It is possible that in the 
 diocese of St. David's the presence of the English colony in 
 Pembrokeshire may have contributed to the result. How dis- 
 astrous the influence of the English Episcopate and clergy had 
 there proved, may be gathered from what Canon Bevan calls " a 
 most graphic description of the diocese of St. David's . . . from 
 the pen of Dr. Erasmus Saunders" (1721). 
 
 We are indebted to the Rev. D. W. Thomas, Vicar of St. Ann's, 
 for the discovery of a letter in the Lambeth MSS., which proves 
 that the English Episcopate in Llandaff was producing results 
 equally injurious to the Church. That letter, found among the 
 Codices Gibsoniani Catalogue, 930-933, was dated October 23, 1703, 
 and addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury by a Glamorgan- 
 shire clergyman. Its opening sentences are as follows : " May it 
 please your Grace to grant a country parson, who thinks himself 
 the meanest of his own function, to petition your Grace, on behalf 
 of others and himself, that you would recommend a Welshman 
 always to a Welsh diocese, for it is almost morally impossible for 
 an Englishman to answer the expectations we, the clergy, have, 
 upon the next vacancies here in Wales. We have (more is the 
 pity) great divisions amongst us, and, generally, our divisions are 
 the wider where there is less of the English tongue understood ; 
 . . . when we had Bishops that could preach in Welsh, and did 
 take pains to instruct the people, the generality of the people did 
 keep the unity of the Church, it may be, as well as any part of 
 the nation. But now, of late, there has been another course 
 taken, to make choice of perfect strangers to our country and 
 language, who generally have large commendams in England, and 
 seldom give up ; and besides, by their living from us, upon all 
 vacancies of any dignity, strangers and Englishmen are the only
 
 of the Church in Wales. 357 
 
 persons that come in, to tke great decay of learning and virtue 
 among us." 
 
 Doubtless in all ages the imported Bishops have justified them- 
 selves in appointing strangers to the chief dignities in their 
 dioceses, by saying that they could not find men of sufficient 
 learning among the native clergy. So far from being a justifica- 
 tion, such a statement is the severest condemnation which they 
 could have pronounced upon their own Episcopate. That a 
 Bishop, after many years of power, should have failed to produce 
 in his diocese natives fitted by general culture and learning, as 
 well as by special knowledge of the Welsh language and people, to 
 do the higher work of the Welsh Church, is a sufficient proof that 
 he was not equal to his position. If the English commander-in- 
 chief were to complain that he had no officers in the English 
 army fit for high command, and proposed to introduce foreign 
 generals, unable to give orders in the English language, the world 
 would know what to think of him. Surely the selection and train- 
 ing of clergy and not merely the " sudden " incautious laying of 
 hands upon unfit men is one of the chief functions of a Bishop. 
 Consequently, in condemning his clergy, he condemns his own 
 work. 
 
 In dwelling upon "The Past and Present Position of the 
 Church in Wales," it may not be undesirable to dissipate some 
 popular fallacies that have been industriously propagated as to the 
 religious condition of the Welsh people before the rise of Dissent 
 in the eighteenth century. The Welsh people have been seriously 
 misled by that collection of marvellous traditions and Puritanical 
 reflections given to the world by Mr. John Hughes, as a history of 
 Welsh Methodism. Those who have the patience to read and the 
 credulity to believe such books, are led to the conclusion that the 
 Welsh people, in pre-Methodist times, were a nation of barbarians 
 without religious knowledge or feeling. The truth, probably, is that 
 there was less sermon-hearing, nearly as much simple piety, and 
 perhaps less of cant and hypocrisy, in 1721 than is found in 1879. 
 
 There is a popular delusion, not discouraged by some Dissent- 
 ing ministers, that Welsh virtue has been coeval with Welsh Dis- 
 sent, and that the Welsh people, when conforming to the Church, 
 were little better than turbulent heathens. The law-abiding cha-
 
 358 77/1? Past and Present Position 
 
 racter of the people, the absence of crime, the " white-gloved " 
 Assizes, and other favourable features, are attributed to Noncon- 
 formity. The great religious services rendered by Nonconformists 
 ought not to be depreciated. But neither is it right that modern 
 Welsh Nonconformists should glorify themselves by underrating 
 their ancestors. The leading virtues that are peculiar to the Welsh 
 people are older than Nonconformity. Dr. Saunders has de- 
 scribed those virtues as exhibited in 1721. There is still earlier 
 evidence. In a letter addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, on 
 March i, 1583, Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord President of Wales, 
 described his presidency as his " great and high office in Wales, 
 a happy place of government ; for a better people to govern, or 
 better subjects, Europe holdeth not." 
 
 It is painful to be under the necessity of feeling ashamed of our 
 ancestors. Our Nonconformist friends will be relieved to find that 
 Welshmen labour under no such necessity. In the days in which 
 Welshmen loved the Church, they also loved righteousness and 
 hated iniquity. 
 
 It has been necessary, in these pages, to declare some truths 
 which the writer would have been glad to omit. He well kno\vs 
 how true are Dr. Saunders' words, " This is a part very disagree- 
 able, and what I wish my subject would permit me to overlook 
 and pass by ; and so prevent the angry resentments which (I am 
 sensible) the telling of unacceptable truths must expect to meet 
 with}'' But being convinced that the telling of these truths, though 
 very unacceptable to some few, will tend to promote the revival of 
 the Welsh Church and the welfare of the Welsh people, the writer 
 has not shrunk from publishing them " without regard to any other 
 view or interest but that of truth." 
 
 The oft-repeated protest, made by Dr. Saunders in 1721, and 
 renewed by Welsh Churchmen to-day, against the intrusion of 
 ecclesiastics ignorant of the Welsh language, has been unfairly and 
 disingenuously described as a Home Rule cry of "Wales for the 
 Welsh ! " Those who so describe it choose to ignore solid facts. 
 It can hardly be denied that in each of the four Welsh dioceses 
 a majority of the Welsh people worship in the Welsh language. If 
 ecclesiastical endowments exist for the good of the people, and not 
 for the comfort of clergymen, no candid man will deny that the
 
 of the Church in Wales. 359 
 
 Welsh-speaking people have a right to a Welsh-speaking ministry. 
 The denial of that right has been "the bane of the Welsh Church." 
 The ruin wrought in a hundred and fifty years cannot be repaired 
 entirely in a generation. But if justice is done to the Welsh people, 
 the Welsh Church will revive. 
 
 Injustice, assuming the form of superior light, has darkened 
 the inmost life of Wales. It has desolated her sanctuary. It has 
 poisoned her wellsprings. Bitterness and sourness have been 
 infused into the social life of her genial, gentle race. Unity of 
 action for national purposes, such as higher education, has been 
 made impossible. Her men of talent, uneducated, have had the 
 gates of light shut against them by strangers who held the keys. 
 Her endowments, the patrimony of the many, have been treated as 
 the prey of the few. Her voluntary offerings, lavishly given, have 
 been wasted because not dedicated at the shrine of that unity 
 which is strength (Deut. xii. 11-13), and her sacrifices, though 
 many, have been made vain by the rending of her altars. Let 
 justice give to Wales her ecclesiastical and educational rights. 
 Her people will advance in unity of spirit, if not in uniformity of 
 worship, according to their gifts received from God. To their 
 seriousness and peacefulness and industry they will add sweetness 
 and light.
 
 THE CALLING AND EDUCATION OF 
 THE CLERGY FOR THE CHURCH 
 IN WALES. 1 
 
 THE calling and education of clergy is at all times one 
 of the most important subjects that can engage the 
 counsels and energies of those who have it in their 
 power to shape and direct the progress of the Church. 
 But in Wales, at the present time, there exist, I am 
 profoundly convinced, in the religious state of the people, 
 in the changes induced by the extension of political 
 privileges, and in the influences of railway communica- 
 tion and a cheap press, manifold forces that contribute 
 to invest the subject with more than ordinary impor- 
 tance. The times are, I believe, at hand which are 
 destined to witness either to a very great revival or a 
 very rapid deadening of religious life among the Cymric 
 people. During the last sixty years, since the schism 
 of the Calvinistic Methodists was finally consummated 
 in 1811, the religious instruction and pastorate of 
 a large number of the people have been assumed by 
 
 1 A paper read on Thursday, August 4, 1870, at a Church Conference 
 held at Bangor.
 
 Ediication of Clergy for Church in Wales. 361 
 
 unauthorized teachers. The violation of the central 
 law of Church unity, in the defiant ignoring of Apos- 
 tolical Orders, has produced its necessary consequence. 
 Religious creeds and systems have been indefinitely 
 multiplied, until the Welsh people has been divided 
 against itself into nine or ten religious societies. This 
 religious anarchy has been accompanied by its insepar- 
 able result, viz. unhealthy religious excitement followed 
 in due course by a proportionate deadening of religious 
 vitality. The people are gradually growing weary of 
 endless divisions, strife, and excitement in religious 
 systems, the leaders of which are not seldom wanting 
 in the deep earnestness that characterized the unworldly 
 spirit of the early Methodists. 
 
 It must be acknowledged that the aspirations of the 
 founders of Methodism in Wales were true and noble, 
 and that they proved their earnestness by the great 
 personal sacrifices which they made in seeking their 
 realization. The action of the Methodist clergy in the 
 last century, led by Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands, 
 was a sincere protest against the selfish worldliness 
 which disgraced too many of the clergy, and the 
 ignorant unspiritual formalism which was too often sub- 
 stituted for the power of godliness in that age. They 
 never intended to protest against the doctrines and 
 Sacraments of the Church ; nor yet against the inalien- 
 able authority of Apostolical Orders. But in 1811 
 that system, which in its early spirit might well have 
 been called " Bethel," became in its schismatical de- 
 velopment " Bethaven ; " the Methodism which was
 
 362 Education of the Clergy 
 
 originally a revival within, became a disorderly move- 
 ment without, the Church. 
 
 Gradually, by a slow but sure process, the masses are 
 beginning to understand that the evils against which 
 the original Methodists protested, were not evils inherent 
 in the Divine constitution of the^ Church, existing in 
 its doctrines, Sacraments, and orders, but arising from 
 the human infirmities and shortcomings of those to 
 whom was committed the administration of its system. 
 They are learning, day by day, that it is not possible 
 to ensure the life of the religious spirit by destroying 
 the beauty of religious forms intended to embody it ; 
 and that the Divinely appointed subordination of minis- 
 terial offices is essential to the permanent life of the 
 Church. They are also beginning to master the great 
 truth that religious feeling and reverence can no more 
 exist without expressing themselves in forms, than 
 thought can exist without its instrumental signs. 
 Furthermore, while it has been proved by experience 
 that there are worldly peasants no less than worldly 
 gentlemen who occasionally assume the office of religious 
 teachers for the sake of "the piece of bread," it has 
 dawned upon intelligent minds not a few, that the for- 
 malism of vulgar irreverence and conceited mannerism, 
 unredeemed by the pristine earnestness of Methodism, 
 has too often succeeded to the formalism of the autho- 
 rized rites and ceremonies of the Church. Hence per- 
 haps has arisen that yearning among Dissenters, as 
 witnessed in their imitation of Church architecture, and 
 their adoption of Church music, for a return to that
 
 for the Church in Wales. 363 
 
 elaborate comeliness in the external habit of worship 
 enjoined by the Apostle in the significant word i><rx*?- 
 fj,6va>g. On the other hand, the attempt made to create 
 a more educated and settled ministry, which has excited 
 the opposition of the traditional Methodists represented 
 by " Thesbiad," proves that the largest Nonconformist 
 Society of Wales are unconsciously being led to recog- 
 nize the necessity of that Divinely constituted subordi- 
 nation in the ministry of the Church, the principle of 
 which is suggested by the same passage of the Apostle 
 in the expression Kara ra^iv. 
 
 A people so profoundly religious in their national 
 tendencies as the Welsh are, cannot fail to discover 
 that negative protests against the shortcomings of men, 
 and the subjective excitements created by impassioned 
 preaching, and vociferously intoned extempore prayers, 
 are not sufficient to satisfy the soul. These religious 
 resources of the Dissenting systems are gradually giving 
 place to another style of teaching, attractive in its 
 novelty, like the popular airs of American minstrelsy, 
 but soon losing its power, which is but a feeble echo 
 of the Germanizing speculation that would fain stir up 
 religious feeling and sentiment, without any strong 
 development of historical and objective truth. So great 
 is the doctrinal vagueness of religious teaching, and so 
 completely have even the preachers of Welsh Dissent 
 lost sight of some of the eternal obligations flowing 
 from the revelation of the attributes of the Divine life 
 in Jesus Christ, that a believer in the primitive creeds 
 of Christendom is constrained to say of them what the
 
 364 Education of the Clergy 
 
 Saviour said (notwithstanding the lovingkindness shown 
 by bne, and the gratitude by another) of the Dissenting 
 Samaritans, " Ye worship ye know not what." 
 
 This doctrinal vagueness of the religious systems, 
 destitute of objective authority, cannot feed the soul of 
 man in green and fresh pastures ; cannot give him rest 
 by leading him forth to satisfy the aspirations of his 
 being beside the waters of comfort that spring in inex- 
 haustible abundance for those that truly believe in the 
 great mystery of the Incarnation of Godhead. Hence 
 the religious watchwords and religious exercises, divorced 
 from objective truth and order, are gradually becoming 
 worn out, and are perceptibly losing their hold upon 
 the minds and consciences of the people. What, con- 
 sequently, is the cry that is everywhere heard among 
 earnestly religious Dissenters ? " Y mae crefyddwyr yn 
 farwaidd iawn." 
 
 The state of the masses in Wales at the present time 
 is, I honestly believe, that state of religious relaxation 
 and practical indifference due to the want of an efficient 
 pastorate of souls which called forth the Divine com- 
 passion of the Lord. "When He saw the multitudes 
 He was moved with compassion on them, because they 
 fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no 
 shepherd." What is the significance of that wonderful 
 expression, e^AtA^'vot ? It describes with Divine accu- 
 racy the state of men whose souls are unbraced by 
 religious uncertainty, when the old forms and watch- 
 words which swayed the soul have lost their power of 
 obligation, and cease to govern the will and the con-
 
 for t/ie_ Church in Wales. 365 
 
 science. It describes the state of the sheep who 
 straggle hither and thither, without the binding, direct- 
 ing, bracing power of definite guidance. It describes 
 the state of shepherdless sheep, who spend their time 
 not in feeding, but in speculating whether there are 
 any fields of pasture to be found. 
 
 The second word of Divine wisdom, Ippi^ivoi, de- 
 scribes the effects of this religious uncertainty. The 
 sheep at last become weary of straggling in diverse 
 directions, broken in spirit, apathetic, indifferent. In 
 this mood they cease to graze the exhausted surface 
 which they have trampled down in their narrow wan- 
 derings. This state is very vividly described by that 
 Welsh word " marweidd-dra," so frequently heard in 
 our days. To what is that state due ? To the want 
 of a more efficient and powerful pastorate. " As sheep 
 having no shepherd." That Church, which is the Body 
 of Christ, " in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge," has in her doctrines, Sacraments, and 
 ordinances inexhaustible food for souls green pastures 
 and living fountains, fenced by her creeds and Divinely 
 commissioned ministry from the desolating, befouling 
 tread of infidelity. But for the support of the sheep 
 it is not only necessary that there should be pastures 
 and fountains, but there must also be shepherds who 
 can lead to them. For the salvation of souls it is 
 necessary, not only that there should be Divine truth, 
 but also teachers capable of leading to the knowledge 
 of it. 
 
 Now, those who are in living sympathy with the
 
 366 Education of the Clergy 
 
 mind and heart of Wales at the present time, know 
 that the relaxation of old religious ties and the apathy 
 exhibiting itself in growing indifference to religious 
 ministrations, which I have described, is in many forms 
 perceptible in the state of the Welsh people. Not many 
 weeks ago a man of sagacious insight, keen in intelli- 
 gence and vigorous in expression, whose writings weekly 
 influence thousands of Welsh minds, gave utterance in 
 my hearing to the following opinion : " The time is 
 come for some new movement in Wales ; the people 
 are tired of the old systems and watchwords. They 
 no longer charm." What is the interpretation of that 
 language? If the people are in expectation, musing 
 in their hearts concerning some new system, why is it ? 
 It is because they have no shepherds. Their shepherd- 
 less souls are hungering, unguided through an efficient 
 authorized ministry, by the full preaching of God's true 
 and lively Word ; and unsupported in the inward 
 cravings of their deepest religious aspirations, by the 
 heavenly manna of the Blessed Sacrament of the Body 
 and Blood of Christ. The enlightenment and the sus- 
 tenance afforded by the fulness of the Church's Divine 
 system alone can satisfy these cravings. It is, therefore, 
 the part of the Church's seers, in looking abroad upon 
 the restless, weary, craving multitude, to be moved with 
 compassion on them, because they faint. They cannot 
 fail, in surveying the state of Wales at the present 
 moment, to be convinced that the harvest is plenteous, 
 and that the fields are already white for the harvest. 
 There are forces, as I have attempted to describe,
 
 for the Church in Wales. 367 
 
 working in the social, political, and religious state of 
 Wales, that would lead back vast numbers of the 
 wandering sheep to feed within the folds of the Church, 
 if the true policy of conciliation were wisely and 
 courageously conceived, and carried into vigorous and 
 immediate operation. 
 
 What do I mean by the policy of conciliation ? Do 
 I mean that we should approach Dissenters, and attempt 
 to conciliate them, in that false, untrue, compromising 
 attitude so often tried, and always tried in vain, by 
 assuring them that there is no important difference 
 between the Church and the Nonconforming societies ? 
 Are we to tell them that there is no difference between 
 the Church which owes its existence to the Divine 
 mission of its Apostolical founders, and those societies 
 which had their origin in the well-meaning but dis- 
 orderly impulses of men whose action has been fatal to 
 religious unity in this land, and productive of a defiant 
 violation of one of the fundamental laws of the kingdom 
 of Heaven ? Are we to tell them that there is no dif- 
 ference between a ministry deriving its authority from 
 above, in the objective order of unbroken succession 
 from Christ, preaching the Word and administering the 
 Sacraments according to the authoritative creeds of the 
 primitive . Church ; and a ministry chosen from below 
 by the people to reproduce popular ideas, and recite, 
 instead of the unchanging creeds of Christendom, 
 popular, variable, and ignorant interpretations of Holy 
 Writ ? Are we to tell them <hat there is no difference 
 between Sacraments administered in loyalty to Divinely
 
 368 Education of the Clergy 
 
 appointed authority, and rival rites celebrated in defiant 
 violation of that authority ? The inalienable authority 
 of Holy Orders is not a personal prerogative, which a 
 clergyman can lay aside at his will in order to please 
 the multitude, but the Divinely ordained power, which 
 is the bond of union, that can alone preserve harmony 
 in the Church, and enable humanity to reflect the image 
 of the Eternal Unity. To attempt to conciliate Dis- 
 senters by sacrificing these everlasting realities is a vain 
 and fatal policy. The clergyman who, for the sake of 
 popularity, adopts language which leads men to sup- 
 pose that the difference between the principles of the 
 Church and of the Nonconforming societies is slight 
 and unimportant, is guilty of 'very grave inaccuracy, 
 lends his aid to weaken the obligations of religious 
 unity, and incurs a very solemn responsibility. Such 
 language, in a land which is torn by endless divisions, 
 is especially mischievous, and utterly indefensible upon 
 any plea but that of well-meaning ignorance. 
 
 For clergymen living in the midst of a Dissenting 
 population, the pardonable desire of popularity creates 
 a great temptation to forget the authority of their 
 mission. To lower the authority of mission has always 
 been popular. " I am come in My Father's Name, and 
 ye receive Me not ; if another shall come in his own 
 name, him ye will receive? But if we betray the solemn 
 authority of our ministerial office (however personally 
 unworthy we, as earthen vessels, may be of that office) 
 by resting our claims to attention, not upon the truth 
 committed to us, but upon our personal gifts ; by say-
 
 for the Church in Wales. 369 
 
 ing, as the world would have us say, that we come in 
 our own name, and not in the Name of Christ the 
 King of the Church, and the Fountain of orders we are 
 not loyal to the kingdom of Heaven. To win the ear 
 of the crowd, and make our ministry popular by such 
 language, is not to feed the sheep, but to lay waste the 
 pasture. 
 
 The policy of conciliation, which alone can restore 
 the wandering souls of the deeply religious people of 
 Wales into the fold .of that Church which received' 
 original mission to this land, which has a sacred ministry 
 authoritative in the unbroken succession of Holy Orders, 
 which teaches the full truth of the One Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church, which rightly and duly administers 
 the holy Sacraments, which is equally removed in its 
 glorious constitutional freedom and order from the 
 spiritual anarchy 'of an innovating Dissent, and from 
 the spiritual despotism of an innovating Papacy must 
 be a policy not of destruction, but of creation. It will 
 not avail, in the hope of conciliating Dissenters, to 
 mutilate the doctrines and Sacraments, nor even the 
 rites and ceremonies, of the Church. But it is essen- 
 tially necessary that, in the practical administration of 
 the Church, her rulers should open fields of energy and 
 religious usefulness for the men endowed by God with 
 ministerial gifts who are now tempted into disorderly 
 activity, because the practical machinery of the Church, 
 as hitherto administered, has offered them no place in 
 its ministerial system. 
 
 It is my profound conviction that thousands of the 
 
 2 B
 
 37 Education of the Clergy 
 
 Welsh Dissenters are ready in their hearts, as far as 
 acceptance of essential doctrines go, to return to 
 feed upon the pastures of the Church. The harvest 
 is plenteous ; why cannot it be reaped ? The sheep 
 are scattered abroad ; why cannot they be led back ? 
 While the harvest is ripe, the really effective labourers 
 are few. The multitudes are ready to return, but they 
 are " as sheep having no shepherd." 
 
 The primary function of the Church, from which it 
 takes the name iicicArjo-ta, is to call. In the preaching of 
 her ministry, ever summoning men to rise out of the 
 lower corruptible life of the flesh and the world into 
 the most high unchanging life in Christ, is heard the 
 Voice of God. " By Whom ye were called into the 
 fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ." By whom is 
 that Divine call to be sounded ? " He ordained twelve 
 . . . that He might send them forth (KfjpiWeiv) to 
 preach;" in other words, to summon men into that 
 f KicXrjo-m which is " the Church of the Firstborn." The 
 function of preaching, committed in that ordination by 
 Christ to the twelve, is vested in their lineal successors, 
 to whom alone it authoritatively appertains by their 
 own lips, and by the lips of those whom they ordain, 
 to preach the Gospel, and to summon men into the 
 tKicXrjo-ta of the kingdom of Heaven, flwc St Krjpv^ovmv, 
 lav fj.ii a-rroaToXwai ; " How shall they preach, except 
 they be sent ? as it is written, How beautiful are the 
 feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace ! " They 
 who preach without having been authoritatively sent by 
 the commission of Apostolical Orders, assert that they
 
 for the Church in Wales. 371 
 
 preach the Gospel. But can it be said that it is the 
 Gospel of peace ? Can the rival preaching organizations 
 among the mountains of Wales, that divide every hamlet 
 against itself into bitterly jealous sections, be said to 
 preach the Gospel of peace ? No. The systems that 
 exist, in open violation of the Divinely constituted order 
 of the ministry, perpetuate in the land strife, divisions, 
 heart-burnings, and bitter jealousies. 
 
 But if the preaching of the KJjpu must be authori- 
 tative by virtue of his commission, it must also be 
 effective in its practical power. To undervalue the 
 power of preaching is to paralyze one of the most 
 important functions in the Church's organization. To 
 undervalue the Sacraments and ordinances of the 
 sanctuary is to sweep away the feast from the table 
 of the Church, or to lay waste her pastures. 
 
 The powerful preaching that does not teach definite 
 doctrine, that calls not to the blessed Sacraments, and 
 to the ordinances of confession, prayer, praise, and 
 thanksgiving, is but the ill-directed labour of the shep- 
 herd, who excites his sheep, but leads them only along 
 bare lanes, to lie down with hunger and thirst un- 
 appeased, and the strength and hope of the soul un- 
 revived. 
 
 On the other hand, the frequent administration of 
 the Sacraments and the other ordinances of grace, when 
 unaccompanied by the call of powerful preaching, is to 
 prepare the table, but to neglect the hearty invitation 
 of guests. 
 
 At the present time the Church in Wales is in-
 
 372 Education of the Clergy 
 
 efficient in both these respects. Here and there she has 
 eloquent KIJJOUKEC who proclaim, with fervid earnestness, 
 uncertain sounds which lead to no objective channels 
 of grace. She has also many well-instructed, devout 
 clergy, who are diligent in the administration of the 
 Sacraments and other holy ordinances, but who are 
 unable to command attention, and are deficient in 
 teaching power. Hence in some parishes the Church 
 is as a banquet-hall furnished with a feast, but without 
 guests. In other parishes the guests are summoned by 
 stirring appeals, but no objective ordinances of grace 
 are prepared in sufficient abundance to feed their souls. 
 How are these deficiencies to be remedied ? The calling 
 and education of the clergy will give this question its 
 answer. 
 
 In considering this important problem, it is neces- 
 sary to bear in mind the characteristics of the country 
 in which the work of the Church lies that it is the 
 work of the Church in Wales. 
 
 The Apostolic rule, which I may call the rule of 
 ministerial accommodation to circumstances, must be 
 observed by the Church in Wales, as in every other 
 land. " I made myself servant unto all, that I might 
 gain the more. . . . Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, 
 that I might gain the Jews ; ... to the weak became 
 I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made all 
 things to all men, that I might by all means save some." 
 The Church, in her Apostolic mission and ministry, 
 must accommodate herself to the national peculiarities 
 of the peoples whom she would save must, in a certain
 
 for the Church in Wales. 373 
 
 sense, be made "all things to all men." Thus, in her 
 ministry to the Welsh people, she must become as 
 Welsh ; not treating them with arrogant superiority, 
 but making herself subservient to their peculiarities for 
 their good ; not coming among them to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister ; describing the attitude she would 
 assume in the words of the Apostle, iraaiv l/iaurov gSou- 
 Xwo-a, " I made myself servant unto all." 
 
 In considering the problem which I have called 
 " The Calling and Education of Clergy for the Church 
 in Wales," it is necessary to its solution to bear in 
 mind 
 
 I. The social condition of the people. 
 
 II. The national peculiarities of language and tem- 
 perament. 
 
 I shall briefly dwell upon some points in the social 
 condition of Wales. In a country comparatively poor, 
 a country of hills and valleys, the highest class is com- 
 paratively small. The upper middle class is also, I 
 imagine, less numerous in proportion than in England. 
 The great mass of the people of Wales belong to the 
 classes known as the lower middle and working classes, 
 composed of the small farmers, small shopkeepers, 
 artisans, quarrymen, colliers, miners, shepherds, and 
 labourers. These two classes, closely united in views 
 and sympathies, are socially and politically powerful 
 enough to outvote all other classes in Wales. To these 
 classes, as forming the main body of the population, 
 the Church is bound to devote her main exertions. The 
 clergy in Wales must learn, what they ought to have
 
 374 Education of the Clergy 
 
 learnt long ago, that it is their duty to be the priests 
 of the people. It is the glory of the Church, when her 
 system is developed in healthy life, to have a clergy 
 comprehensive of the sympathies of all classes, and 
 reflecting, in their collective character, all that is best 
 in every class of society. By the learning and refine- 
 ment of the clergy, the Church enters the palace, to 
 purify, to enlighten, and to extend the sympathies of 
 its tenants. By the self-devotion and pastoral labour 
 of her clergy, she enters the cottage, to brighten the 
 clouds of poverty, and to make the burden of toil in 
 humble life easier to bear. Thus she combines in her- 
 self all that is noble in aristocracy with the grand, 
 broad, popular, human sympathy that gives all its truth 
 to the democratic spirit. And thus only can her 
 ministry represent Him, Who was at once loftiest in 
 human social rank, " born of the house and lineage of 
 David," and also at home amid the humbler scenes of 
 human life in the cottage of the carpenter at Nazareth. 
 
 The clergy are rarely in danger of being tempted 
 to neglect the rich ; but we may sometimes forget to 
 understand the mind and to sympathize with the heart 
 of the poor. The true ministry of the Church, however, 
 must be a popular ministry. Popularity was one mark 
 of the Divine-human ministry of the Head of the 
 Church " The common people heard Him gladly." 
 Great is the glory of a clergy who are popular, but 
 have not purchased that popularity by the sacrifice of 
 truth. It is well that we should do all that we can to 
 gain for the Church's organization the support of " the
 
 for the Church in Wales. 375 
 
 wise men after the flesh, the mighty, and the noble," 
 whenever, unlike the Corinthian aristocracy, they answer 
 the calls of the Church. But in doing so we must beware 
 of minding high things, and forgetting to follow the 
 Apostle in condescending to men of low estate. If, like 
 the Pharisees, we sneer at the devotion of the unlearned 
 classes, and talk with scorn of " this common people 
 that knoweth not the Law," while measuring the value 
 of every movement by the approval of the wealthy, and 
 ever asking, " Have any of the rulers believed " in it ? 
 we shall never gain among the masses that influence 
 which can enable us to guide and benefit them. 
 
 The social characteristics of Wales render it not 
 only unnecessary, but, even if it were possible, abso- 
 lutely undesirable, that the majority of its clergy should 
 come from what are called the higher classes. But if it 
 is undesirable that the clergy of Wales should be exclu- 
 sively of those classes, need I add that it is still more 
 undesirable that (in their attitude towards the people) 
 they should affect to be so when they really are not ? 
 I do not think that any one can, with truthfulness, 
 accuse us as a body of being too aristocratic, or too far 
 removed from the people in our origin. But there are 
 many who in times past were disposed to accuse us of 
 being too aristocratic in our notions, and of socially 
 forgetting the classes from which, at no very remote 
 period, we are sprung. Now, if this temper existed 
 among us, it would be most injurious to the influence 
 of the Church. The clergy cannot be too gentlemanly 
 in manners, cannot be too refined in tastes, cannot be
 
 3/6 Education of the Clergy 
 
 too elevated in sentiment. But the thin veneering of 
 social pretentiousness, that serves to irritate the observer, 
 but fails to cover the originally moderate social rank of 
 the pretender, is greatly calculated to lessen the in- 
 fluence of the class who assume it. As the clergy of 
 the Church of Christ, we are placed in a position that 
 ought to raise us in heart and mind above the socially 
 necessary, but spiritually unimportant, distinctions of 
 rank. Certain it is that nothing more surely tends to 
 make the clergy uninfluential than the feeble self- 
 forgetfulness which marks the type of Welshmen repre- 
 sented by the name of " Die Sh6n Dafydd." 
 
 As I have already indicated, it is necessarily certain 
 that a large proportion of the clergy in Wales will 
 always be drawn from the lower middle and working 
 classes. It is most conducive to the influence of the 
 Church that it should be so. A clergy so derived, by 
 virtue of older associations and more living sympathy, 
 will influence the masses of the people more powerfully 
 than a clergy who have only a professional acquaintance 
 with their social atmosphere. At the present time a 
 large proportion of the clergy derive their origin from 
 the classes which I have named. But it is my con- 
 viction that the young men from those classes who now 
 seek Holy Orders, are not always the men who are 
 marked by the proper natural gifts for the sacred 
 ministry, and that they are often very insufficiently 
 educated. At the same time, the education, scanty as 
 it is, which now suffices to secure Holy Orders, is un- 
 fortunately up to the present time so far costly as to
 
 for the Church in Wales. 377 
 
 be beyond the reach of very many young men who, 
 with respect to their natural endowments, are admirably 
 fitted for the ministry. It often happens that the 
 naturally clever and eloquent son of a small farmer, 
 artisan, or collier, who is most anxious to receive a 
 fitting education for Holy Orders, is unable to do so, 
 because his friends have absolutely no command of 
 money. At the same time, perhaps, the dull ungifted 
 son of a neighbour who happens to have scraped to- 
 gether some 200 or ^300, is sent for the shortest avail- 
 able time to some college, where he acquires that 
 amount of classical lore and theological science (that I 
 shall not attempt to describe) which suffices, inasmuch 
 as better men are not forthcoming to fill the vacancies, 
 to command the forced leniency of the Bishops' chap- 
 lains. Into what channel does that other youth throw 
 his energies ? Supported at some Dissenting college 
 by the contributions of Dissenting congregations, he 
 is in due time enabled to devote his energies, with an 
 embittered spirit, to the irregular ministry of the Non- 
 conformist pulpit, and to do much to weaken the in- 
 fluence of that Church which has practically denied him 
 any sphere of usefulness. 
 
 I must, in dealing with this question, say a few 
 words concerning the peculiar conditions created by 
 the distinct language and national temperament of the 
 Welsh people. As to the future extinction or non- 
 extinction of the ancient language of Wales, I will 
 venture no prophecy. We are none of us blind to the 
 great advantages commercial, social, and literary that
 
 378 Education of the Clergy 
 
 are only to be gained by the knowledge of English. 
 Doubtless that knowledge will, in the next twenty or 
 thirty years, become almost universal among Welshmen. 
 But whether the ancient language of the people will also 
 die, as the language of their hearths and altars, admits 
 of some doubt. Its extinction has often been foretold. 
 It has often been "doomed to death," but whether we 
 can also add, "fated ne'er to die," I cannot attempt 
 to determine. But I will venture to assert that the 
 youngest child living will not live to witness its ex- 
 tinction. For many long years (possibly for ever) it 
 must continue to be, as it is now, the religious language 
 of hundreds of thousands. It follows, then, that as long 
 as it exists, and is the intellectual instrument by which 
 nearly a million of souls express their highest thoughts 
 and deepest feelings, it ought to be cultivated to the 
 highest degree by the clergy who assume to be in 
 charge of those souls. While our missionaries abroad 
 have been striving to master the dialects of every in- 
 significant tribe of barbarians for the love of Christ, 
 and inspired by the Divine Spirit of Pentecost, it is 
 simply monstrous that the clergy of the Welsh people 
 have neglected to obtain, in speaking and writing, a 
 mastery of the noble Welsh language. I say it fear- 
 lessly, that the clergy, as a body, have not that com- 
 mand of the native language which they ought to have. 
 Our Welsh, whether spoken or written, is too often stiff, 
 unidiomatic, and powerless. I will also remark that 
 literary power exhibited in the native language has 
 not been recognized among the Welsh clergy in the
 
 for the Chiirch in Wales. 379 
 
 degree which the importance of its possible services to 
 the Church deserves. If the clergy are content to be, 
 not the ministers of Christ to the people, but to the 
 thin upper strata of society in Wales, they can afford 
 to despise the cultivation of the Welsh language ; but 
 not otherwise. 
 
 There are also peculiarities in the national tem- 
 perament of the Welsh people that affect this question. 
 One only of those peculiarities can I now notice. The 
 Welsh are lovers of impassioned stirring oratory. I 
 think, also, that we Welshmen may assert, without 
 untruthfulness, that a large number of our countrymen 
 are gifted with those natural powers which, when duly 
 cultivated, render them eloquent speakers and writers 
 in their own language. These gifts, as existing in the 
 working classes of Wales, and aided by very scanty 
 means of cultivation, maintain the influence of the 
 Dissenting press. The men whom God has endowed 
 with these gifts are the natural teachers of the people. 
 If the Church does not enlist and train them in her 
 schools of the prophets, they will go to a hostile state, 
 and some day return to attack the influence of the city 
 which has neglected them. By her past neglect of 
 these gifts, the Church has in a great measure lost the 
 powerful forces of Welsh oratory and of Welsh popular 
 literature. Second only in value to a hearty acquaintance 
 with the definite Scriptural and Catholic theology of 
 the Prayer-book, is the possession by the clergy of the 
 power to teach that theology with power both of writing 
 and speaking in the language of the people. In a word,
 
 380 Education of the Clergy 
 
 the Church in Wales wants a clergy at once popular 
 and educated. In order to be influential the clergy 
 must be popular, understanding the sympathies of the 
 masses, connected with them by manifold interwoven 
 bands of live-long associations. 
 
 They should also be popular by virtue of possessing 
 cultivated gifts of native eloquence and literature. I 
 would not assert that the clergy, who are to recover the 
 Welsh people to the Church, must be less refined or 
 more exclusively drawn from the humbler social strata 
 than the clergy of Wales in the past. It is desirable 
 that they should come from the same classes which 
 supply them now. But it is, I think, more than possible 
 that they should receive a training that will render them 
 more refined, more highly educated, than the clergy of 
 the last five or six generations. No wise objection can 
 be found to the social classes that now mainly supply 
 the clergy of Wales. But I think it desirable that those 
 who rise out of those classes into the sacred ministry 
 should do so by virtue of other gifts than those which 
 now oftenest secure their Ordination. What are the 
 gifts that now enable the sons of small tradesmen, small 
 farmers, and artisans to seek Holy Orders ? The 
 possession by their friends of 200 or 300 required for 
 that most abbreviated course of education that unhappily 
 suffices. I well remember the case of an avowed atheist 
 (a character happily rare in Wales) who spent his savings 
 in educating his son to become a clergyman. When asked 
 why he did so, holding his peculiar views, he replied that 
 he had simply regarded the matter as an investment.
 
 for the Church in Wales. 381 
 
 Now, I should be sorry to condemn the son (in this 
 case, I think, he became a very useful man) for the 
 father's unbelief. Nor do I think it possible to guard 
 against instances of the kind. If an infidel has money, 
 and chooses to spend it in that way, and his son is 
 morally blameless, however much we may regret that a 
 clergyman should come out of the atmosphere of such 
 a home, no obstacle can be raised. But I think that 
 the Church should so organize her nurseries of clergy, 
 if possible, as to give the least possible encouragement 
 to young men whose parents are actuated by sordid 
 motives, and should prove that she measures ministerial 
 aptitudes by a different gauge from that of money. The 
 gifts that ought to command admission into the sacred 
 ministry for youths of humble parentage, are religious 
 character, a reverential disposition, natural intelligence, 
 and eloquence. 
 
 How can the Church obtain a clergy endowed with 
 these gifts? She must encourage them by lowering 
 the pecuniary standard, and by raising the religious and 
 intellectual standard that regulates enrolment in her 
 clerical ranks. The attitude of the Church in Wales, 
 in the nurture of clergy, is at present too passive. She 
 must take a more active part in the calling and educa- 
 tion of those whom she sends forth to teach. She must 
 go forth as her Divine Head went forth among the 
 avocations of human life, and choose and call those who 
 are marked by their natural gifts, by the courage of 
 St. Peter, the enthusiasm of St. John, or the thoughtful- 
 ness of St. Thomas, for the great work of her Divine
 
 382 Education of the Clergy 
 
 commission. She must exercise a wise discernment in 
 choosing servants in the Name of her Master, and take 
 them when they are marked by fitness that reveals 
 itself to the eye of her seers, even from the sheepfolds, 
 and bring them to feed Jacob His people, and Israel 
 His inheritance. In the past she has not gone forth to 
 make this choice. The old grammar schools, originally 
 intended for the education of poor scholars, have been 
 diverted to other purposes; The Church has need of 
 clergy, but takes no sufficient measures to secure duly 
 qualified men. Instead of going forth to choose and 
 call, she remains passive, until unfit, ungifted, uneducated 
 men come to offer themselves. In her need she is 
 compelled to lay hands suddenly upon them, because 
 better men have not been prepared for her ministry. 
 It will be her wisdom to depart from this attitude of 
 passive expectation, and to go forth for the choice and 
 calling of fit men. 
 
 To this end I would suggest that a fund be raised 
 in each diocese, to be called "The Diocesan Clergy 
 Education Fund," and to be dispensed in exhibitions 
 of the value of 20 or .25 per annum, to poor scholars 
 from the humbler ranks of life. For the awarding of 
 these exhibitions a Diocesan Board of Examiners 
 should be appointed in each diocese, to examine and 
 test not only the knowledge and intelligence, but also the 
 other necessary ministerial aptitudes of youths desirous 
 of being prepared for the ministry. Youths of fifteen 
 years recommended by the clergy of their district as 
 having evinced the gifts and graces most required, might
 
 for the Church in Wales. 383 
 
 get exhibitions that would enable them to obtain for 
 four years a good preliminary education in the classical 
 department of such a school as the commissioners 
 propose to establish at Bangor, and in three other 
 districts of Wales, probably conterminous with the three 
 other dioceses. At the close of that period they would 
 be enabled to spend four years more at St. David's 
 College, Lampeter, or at some other approved college, 
 to obtain the special education required for Holy Orders. 
 At present it is, I fear, true that the youths who go to 
 St. David's, and to similar colleges, are so scantily pre- 
 pared beforehand, that the tutors are obliged to do the 
 work which ought to have been done by others, and to 
 spend in rudimentary classical instruction the time that 
 they would gladly devote to the higher training in 
 theology and the cognate branches of study. A pre- 
 liminary preparation during four years at a good 
 classical school would fit youths of ability to avail 
 themselves effectually of the teaching of the professors 
 at Lampeter and other colleges. 
 
 Now, when we consider that the wealth of Wales is 
 mainly in the hands of Churchmen, who are, I believe, 
 ready to contribute liberally when it can be shown that 
 there is a prospect of real and fruitful work being 
 effected, there ought to be no difficulty about raising in 
 each of the Welsh dioceses a fund of ;iooo per annum. 
 That annual income would afford a sufficient number 
 of exhibitions to maintain at school and college forty 
 students. Thus, eight years being the average term of 
 preparation, five talented and well-instructed candidates
 
 384 Education of the Clergy 
 
 for Holy Orders would present themselves every year 
 in each diocese. At the same time, the duly gifted men 
 from the higher classes, able to obtain the advantages 
 of a University education, would continue to be forth- 
 coming in the same numbers as at present. But the 
 constant supply of candidates educated by the Clergy 
 Education Fund would place the Bishops and their 
 examining chaplains in a position to reject candidates 
 not duly qualified. Thus the standard of clerical educa- 
 tion and efficiency would be gradually, but certainly, 
 raised far above its present height. It cannot be 
 doubted that the " Diocesan Clergy Education Board 
 of Examiners " in each diocese would be in a position 
 to command great influence in the counsels of the 
 professors at Lampeter and other colleges, and would 
 be able to make with effect, from time to time, such 
 practical suggestions as would offer themselves more 
 readily to men employed in actual work among the 
 masses, than to those engaged in the lecture-rooms of 
 colleges. We should probably find, as a consequence, 
 that such exercises as the practice of elocution and 
 sermon composition (to say ' nothing of rudimentary 
 theology) would no longer be as they are now, too often 
 overlooked in those nurseries of our clergy. 
 
 Such an organization as that which I have thus 
 sketched in bare outline would ensure a constant, 
 equable supply of twenty able and well-prepared candi- 
 dates for Holy Orders in the Church of Wales in every 
 year. These men, drawn from the most numerous, and 
 in some sense most powerful, class in Wales, would
 
 for the Church in Wales. 385 
 
 conciliate to the Church, by the workings of a popular 
 ministry, the sympathy of the masses, and make her 
 truly, what in many parishes she now is only in name, 
 the Church of the people. Such an organization, for 
 promoting the education of young men of talent from 
 the humbler classes, supported by the liberality of the 
 landowners and wealthy members of the community, 
 would tend to conciliate towards them also the kindly 
 feeling of the masses, whom the exertions of those same 
 young men of talent, now employed in other directions, 
 largely alienate from them. Thus a healthier social 
 feeling would be created, and in all Wales, to use the 
 phrase of an eloquent popular statesman, " the breath of 
 society would be sweetened." 
 
 Some such plan as that which I have now indicated 
 would, I believe, be feasible, conservative, and effective. 
 It would not be above the resources at the command of 
 the Church in each diocese. It would not weaken, but 
 strengthen, all the existing educational agencies. 
 
 If the Church in Wales is destined to regain the 
 masses, and to be raised from her low estate, some such 
 organization must be boldly adopted, and must be 
 vigorously worked. We have to rejoice in the frequent 
 repair and multiplication of churches. But we must 
 beware of putting all our trust in wood and stone. If 
 the ecclesiastical buildings of Wales were taken from 
 the Church to-morrow, provided only that she could 
 retain the earnestness, the talent, and the eloquence of 
 the men whom Providence has marked as the teachers 
 of the people, she would rise again. But without the 
 
 2 C
 
 386 Education of Clergy for Church in Wales. 
 
 living agency of hearts and minds filled with the love 
 of God, and His Son Jesus Christ, and without lips 
 prepared, by the live coal of religious earnestness and 
 the burning desire for the salvation of souls, to give 
 fervid expression to the everlasting truths, the Church 
 cannot feed the sheep or reap the harvest. Such an 
 organization as that which I have suggested, would 
 unfailingly draw into the sacred ministry of the Church 
 a very large proportion of those naturally gifted and 
 religiously earnest men who now often seek irregular 
 employment for their energies in the Dissenting pulpits. 
 A devoted, popular, well-instructed ministry, thoroughly 
 trained in the Scriptural and primitive theology of the 
 Church, would regain the lost heart of Wales, would 
 preach among her mountains good tidings, and reunite 
 her divided sections by the blessed power of the " Gospel 
 of peace." Such a body of clergy, " replenished with 
 the truth of her doctrine, and endued with innocency 
 of life," is the great want of our Church. Never was it 
 more truly the solemn duty of those who love Wales, 
 and who love the Church of God in Wales, earnestly to 
 pray the Lord of the harvest of souls in her own beautiful 
 words : " Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, Who 
 hast purchased to Thyself an universal Church by the 
 precious Blood of Thy dear Son ; mercifully look upon 
 the same, and at this time so guide and govern the 
 minds of Thy servants, the Bishops and Pastors of thy 
 flock, that they may lay hands suddenly on no man, but 
 faithfully and wisely make choice of fit persons to serve 
 in the sacred ministry of Thy Church."
 
 HOME REUNION. 1 
 
 DURING the few minutes allotted to me I will speak 
 of three things union, disunion, reunion. 
 
 The law of union is laid upon mankind. It draws 
 its sanctions from the unity in the Godhead. We men 
 exist to reflect the image of God. Therefore the family 
 of God on earth must be one, as He is one. There 
 is " one God and Father of all " in Heaven. Therefore 
 there is to be "one body" on earth. In the infancy of 
 life mankind lived in union. " The Lord said, Behold, 
 the people is one, and they have all one language." 
 Union, like other powers, may be abused to evil ends. 
 When the spirit of a united body becomes evil, God 
 decrees that forces no longer directed by love shall 
 no longer be strong by unity. At Babel God revealed 
 the law under which forces corrupted by false aims are 
 made harmless by their own confusion. The spirit of 
 Babel destroyed unity. The Spirit of Pentecost renews it. 
 
 When mankind were brought together into one 
 household, as a family of God, the Divine unity re- 
 appeared in human life. He Who said, ." Ye shall be 
 
 1 A paper read at the Bangor Diocesan Conference, August, 1880.
 
 Home Reunion. 
 
 holy: for I the Lord your God am holy," also said, "That 
 they all may be one, . . . even as We are one." In the 
 patriarchal Church the one patriarch was the centre of 
 unity. In the Mosaic period, the Divinely called ministry 
 of the house of Aaron, guarding the ark upon which 
 God's glory rested, was the centre from which no Israelite 
 could separate himself. " Ye shall not do ... every 
 man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. . . . There shall 
 be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to 
 cause His Name to dwell there." " Three times a year 
 shall all thy male appear before the Lord thy God in the 
 place which He shall choose." 
 
 In the Incarnation the unity existing eternally in the 
 Godhead was declared by Christ, when He said, " I and 
 My Father are one." As men in Christ are to be 
 renewed into the life of God, the declaration of the unity 
 that is in God is followed by the declaration of the 
 unity that is to be among men : " There shall be one 
 fold, and one Shepherd." Thus the Christian faith is, 
 " I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church." 
 
 It is true that unity of life is not perfect in the 
 Church. Neither is holiness perfect. But holiness is 
 her aim ; and when she ceases to pursue it, she dies. No 
 less is unity, as an aim, an eternal obligation. There 
 can be no unity in a society without a centre of authority. 
 In the Jewish Church the centre was a sanctuary, a 
 priesthood, and a Divine Presence. In the Christian 
 Church the centre of unity is not local. It is described 
 in the words, " They continued steadfastly in the Apostles' 
 doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and
 
 Home Reunion. 389 
 
 in prayers." The Apostolical ministry, teaching and 
 administering, is still the centre of the Church's unity. 
 
 We know that the political unity of our country is 
 centralized in the one throne, out of which authority 
 goes forth to the humblest official who can act or speak 
 in the name of national order. Likewise in republics, 
 the chair of the President is the centre of the national 
 unity. Every diocese is a kingdom, and the throne of 
 the Bishop is the centre out of which Holy Orders go 
 forth. In his ministry all the members of the Church 
 meet as brethren in the presence of a father the earthly 
 type of the one eternal Father. 
 
 In the parish the one parish priest, authorized by 
 Apostolical Orders, ministering in the congregation, is 
 the father of the spiritual household. Thus the Holy 
 Communion, administered by the Apostolical ministry, 
 and bearing the light of the Shechinah into all lands, is 
 the Divine bond that unites souls on earth. " We being 
 many are one bread, and one body." As of old, so in our 
 own Israel to-day, every soul is invited to adhere to this 
 Divine unity. " Every parishioner shall communicate at 
 the least three times in the year." Thus union, which 
 is the outcome of love, is centred in the showing forth 
 of that Divine death which expressed infinite love. 
 
 What, then, is disunion ? It is the work of our human 
 self-will marring the harmony of the Divine life. It 
 appeared on the plain of Shinar, when man raised from 
 the clay of earth a structure by which he professed to 
 scale heaven. Human pride was the force that then 
 broke human unity. In the patriarchal household the
 
 390 Home Reunion. 
 
 impatience of his brethren, provoked by the apparent 
 favouritism of Jacob in the promotion of Joseph, raised 
 the cry of equality and shattered the family in disunion. 
 In the wilderness the disunion in the camp owed its 
 origin to selfish ambition playing upon popular ignorance 
 and passion. A movement born of earthly motives was 
 doomed to sink into the earth that gave it being. Dis- 
 union threatened to rise when Reuben, Gad, and half 
 Manasseh built an altar by Jordan. Israel fiercely 
 resented what looked like a breach of Divine unity, 
 saying, " What trespass is this that ye have committed 
 against the God of Israel ... in that ye have builded 
 you an altar ? " But the builders proved that they had 
 raised an altar to perpetuate unity, not to destroy it. 
 
 When Rehoboam, the small son of a great father, 
 oppressed his realm, there came political disunion. But 
 the politically separated tribes would have continued 
 religiously united, had not Jeroboam, for his own selfish 
 interests, made Israel to sin by leaving the centre of 
 intercommunion, at which they were bound to assemble 
 before the Shechinah three times a year. 
 
 In the body of the disciples, when the God-Man was 
 the centre of their unity, ambition disturbed harmony. 
 " There was a strife among them which should be 
 accounted the greatest." But ambition did not break 
 up the society, or bring the hour of darkness upon the 
 Divine life. The power that broke up unity and scattered 
 each to his own was the greed of him who bore the 
 Church's money-bags, and sold the Divine Love for pieces 
 of silver.
 
 Home Reunion. 391 
 
 In the early Church there was strife. But there was 
 no final disunion until the papal system built its high 
 structure of earthly, miry polity, and affected to reach 
 heaven on steps of clay. The evils of a union that built 
 with slime-bound bricks of earthly mould, are greater 
 than the evils of honest disunion. Thus papal tyranny 
 has everywhere been, if not the parent, the grandparent 
 of divisions. In the lands where its yoke has not been 
 broken, it has created worse divisions than here. There 
 it has dug a deep black chasm across which the fanatics 
 of superstition are glaring at the fanatics of atheism. 
 Here no chasm exists that cannot be easily bridged. 
 Here Christians not united in communion are not far 
 apart in faith. Those who stand aloof from the 
 Apostolical fellowship hold what they conceive to be 
 Apostolical doctrine. The Roman Church is separated 
 from her dissenters by a bridgeless ocean ; the Church 
 of England from many of hers by only a rill. 
 
 But here the waters of that rill are sometimes bitter, 
 and sometimes swell into an angry torrent. Our religious 
 divisions break the unity of social sympathy in every 
 city, town, village. Whence have they arisen ? As in 
 every place, so here, selfishness has been the disuniting 
 spirit. The Rehoboams, the Jeroboams, 'the Judases, 
 men exalted by interest, men living on the merits of the 
 dead, the men of ambition, the men of greed, have broken 
 up the Church's unity. What are the fruits of disunion? 
 The Divine Spirit is quenched, spiritual motives are 
 weakened, education is heathenized, missions are para- 
 lyzed, atheism is encouraged, social life is poisoned, social
 
 39 2 Home Reunion. 
 
 sympathy is narrowed, countrymen and neighbours are 
 estranged, energy, time, and money are wasted, jealousies 
 are fed fat, evil spirits of envy, hatred, malice, unchari- 
 tableness intrude into the holy places, call themselves 
 angels of light, and masquerade in the garb of love. 
 This fiend of disunion threatens to bring upon religion 
 anew the powers of darkness, to expose it to the mockery 
 of foes, to fix its Divine Life upon the Cross of shame, 
 and to hide its sleeping Form in the tomb of a rocky 
 materialism. 
 
 Earnest men, working in disunited bands, are crying 
 out, as they feel the chilly twilight of doubt around them 
 darkening into the cold, starless night of atheism, " We 
 want a revival." In all love I will say to them, 
 " Christianity, the religion of unity, will not revive in 
 you as long as you bow to your idols of disunion. The 
 movements you call revivals may stimulate, but cannot 
 feed, the decaying life in systems stricken to death in 
 vital organs by consumption bred from the old taint of 
 the poison of disunion." 
 
 What, then, shall we say of reunion ? Whether men 
 will hear or will forbear, we must in love teach the 
 truth of Divine unity. Whatever men may say, disunion 
 in itself is not good, but evil ; not the child of God's 
 Spirit, but the offspring of subtle, secret human self-will ; 
 not from above, but of the earth, earthy. W T e believe 
 that the centre of unity in the Church's organization is 
 the one Apostolical ministry, inheriting in its highest 
 order the twelve thrones to judge the tribes of the Israel 
 of faith, and deputed by the one King invisible to preach
 
 Home Reunion. 393 
 
 His Word and administer His Sacrament. Men, however 
 learned and eloquent, can no more validly administer 
 the chief function in the Church without the sanction 
 of Apostolical Orders, than a citizen, however gifted and 
 virtuous, can administer formal justice in the Queen's 
 name without her commission. The popular theory of 
 a subjectively authorized ministry seems to me to imply 
 a subjectively originated Christianity, to involve the 
 denial of Christ's having come in the flesh, and to destroy 
 the foundations. The temple of the Church is "built 
 upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus 
 Christ Himself being the chief Corner-stone." 
 
 What are the prospects of reunion ? " If the foun- 
 dations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do ? The 
 Lord is in His holy temple." 
 
 Reunion is not near, but it will come. Outside and 
 inside the Church it has foes, but it has also friends. 
 Outside it has foes in ignorance, in bigotry, and in the 
 selfish interests of the " men of renown " in the congrega- 
 tions, who love to be great leaders in small circles, who 
 love to carve out demagogic careers for themselves by 
 widening the wounds of the Church. But it has friends 
 in the thoughtfulness and social sympathy and increasing 
 culture -of the young men in the sects. The narrow- 
 minded believer in the all-sufficiency of his sect is gene- 
 rally a man over fifty. The younger, more educated 
 men are not, perhaps, attracted to the Church ; but they 
 are not satisfied in their narrow religious birthplace, and 
 are longing for a nobler atmosphere. 
 
 Inside, reunion has foes in the self-seeking that seeks
 
 394 Home Reunion. 
 
 ministerial positions for personal ends ; that uses minis- 
 terial authority as Turkish pashas use political ; in the 
 sloth of priests who do not sacrifice time or toil, and go 
 not into the Holy of Holies of communion with God; in 
 the baseness that makes the freehold of a benefice a 
 stronghold of worthlessness ; in the well-meaning rigidity 
 of traditionists who mistake the cramping fetters of iron 
 uniformity for the cords of love, the elastic bands of 
 unity ; and, again, in the unsympathetic narrowness of 
 Churchmen who will not do mental justice to those out- 
 side, by trying to look at things from their point of view. 
 Let us bear in mind that the forerunner of reunion is 
 the grace that turns the hearts of the fathers to the 
 children, so that when the fathers have the wisdom to 
 be just, the children may cease to be disobedient. That 
 grace will teach us the attitude we ought to take towards 
 Nonconformists. I would define it in a word. More 
 social sympatJiy and less religious compromise. Not to 
 realize by sympathy the position of an adversary is to 
 march blindly to defeat. Every cause draws its strength 
 not from the evil but from the good in it. The strength 
 of Dissent is in its protest for liberty ; its anarchy and 
 disorder are its weakness. The Church will reunite 
 souls, not by abusing the vices of Dissent, but by 
 absorbing its virtues. Before unity can return there 
 must be more liberty a liberty under which diversities 
 of gifts, differences of administrations, and diversities of 
 operations can find full play within one Church, animated 
 by one Spirit, bowing to one Lord. " Where the Spirit 
 of the Lord is, there is liberty."
 
 Home Reunion. 395 
 
 May we not hope that, when the fear of a common 
 foe awakes in Christians a common love, a concordat 
 may be framed under which all who believe in the 
 Triune God defined in the Nicene Creed, while wor- 
 shipping in various meeting-houses, some with simpler, 
 some with more elaborate rites, shall come at least 
 three times a year before the Lord of unity as one body 
 to partake of one bread ? Let us remember that each 
 of us has his work to do for reunion. If in us and in 
 our parishes the Church is dead, it is vain to talk of 
 reunion. It is only when the Church lives that she 
 reunites souls. When the -brethren found that Joseph 
 alone could feed them, they came to live near him, and 
 there was home reunion in the house of Jacob. When 
 souls find that the Church opens for them the granaries 
 of grace, they will come to her. 
 
 Let us do our part Let us not try to work out God's 
 righteousness by our wrath. Let us not be narrow, 
 unsympathetic, self-righteous, and, above all, let us not 
 be patronizing. Let us remember that the sins of 
 Churchmen no less than the sins of separatists form 
 that dark pit of evil out of which the fiends of disunion 
 wing their flight to poison life. While never ceasing to 
 assert the Divine unity of the Church of God, and the 
 authority of the ministry, " called of God as was Aaron," 
 to be the centre at which the Shechinah of that unity 
 promises to shine, let us be just to those who have not 
 yet come to see what we see. Let us say to them, " We 
 admit your virtues, eloquence, zeal, learning, earnestness ; 
 we admit, if you wish, that many of you may be superior
 
 396 Home Reiinion. 
 
 in personal gifts to many of us ; but we believe that 
 your systems are contrary to God's Word, so far as they 
 encourage disunion that they are not in harmony with 
 the general sense of Holy Scripture, but built upon half- 
 truths and the misconstruction of isolated texts. We 
 should like to join you in spiritual work, and to hear 
 your eloquent voices in our pulpits ; but our conscience 
 forbids us to partake of the altars of disunion, and to 
 admit that there can be concord between unity and 
 systems born in disunion." 
 
 American patriots who fought for the union of their 
 country would have said, " We do not deny that the 
 soldiers of Secession have virtues, but we deny that they 
 have the right as their cause. Robert Lee and Stone- 
 wall Jackson are gallant warriors, equal to our best ; but 
 they fight under the Secessionist flag, that floats in the 
 name of a false independence, that severs brethren, 
 rivets human chains, breaks up national greatness, and 
 causes foreign foes to rejoice. We admire their valour, 
 but mourn to see it misdirected. We cannot let them 
 go from us. We mean to regain them, and by the aid of 
 the Divine Spirit that broods over the troubled waves 
 of life, and gives victory to truth in the end, we shall 
 regain them." So we, believers in the Church's unity, 
 will say, " You, our brethren, who justify corporate 
 disunion, who fondly cherish faith in sueh a figment 
 as a fragmentary Christianity, and after a hundred 
 " splits " dream that in disunited bodies unity of spirit 
 can dwell, we believe that you are fighting under a 
 flag that represents a false cause. You may reject our
 
 Home Reunion. 397 
 
 advances, shut your ears against our arguments, forget 
 the Scriptures that rebuke, and read only the texts 
 that encourage, you ; you may call our firm convictions 
 bigotry, and you may ignore the evils of disunion that 
 force themselves upon unprejudiced minds every day 
 and hour'; but we dare not give up what we believe to be 
 a Divine truth. We dare not sacrifice true liberty for 
 the sake of false order at the bidding of Rome, nor yet 
 true order for the sake of a spurious liberty at the 
 bidding of Geneva. The house of God in which' the 
 Shechinah will shine in its full brightness is one. " God 
 is not the author of confusion, but of peace." Reunion 
 will come. The tendency to aggregation among peoples, 
 the spirit of combination and co-operation among men, 
 is abroad in the material sphere, and will soon come 
 into the spiritual. 
 
 Unity will not come back in its old form. The 
 unity of a people educated to think for themselves will 
 not be the old unity of a people glad to follow their 
 leaders. The old unity was that of acquiescence ; the 
 new unity will be the nobler unity of tried conviction. 
 Reunion may not come for centuries, but come it will. 
 Who shall live to see it ? We only know that -divisions 
 must cease, when the hour comes in response to that 
 Almighty prayer, " Sanctify them through Thy truth 
 . . . that they may be made perfect in One; and that 
 the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast 
 loved them, as Thou hast loved Me."
 
 "STRIKE FOR THE KING!" 
 
 THE great question which we are met to discuss how 
 to promote temperance among our countrymen is not 
 a new one. It has been treated so frequently of late 
 years that any novelty or charm about it is absolutely 
 impossible. I can say nothing new. It is no doubt 
 known to you that 140 millions sterling, more or less, 
 have been the sum annually spent by the people in this 
 country in the purchase of strong drink, which high 
 medical authorities pronounce to be not only unneces- 
 sary, but in many cases absolutely injurious to human 
 life. It has been proved again and again that this 
 tyrant vice brings crime, pauperism, lunacy, disease, and 
 death in its train. The policeman, the gaoler, the 
 magistrate, the judge, the executioner, the coroner, are 
 the most effective orators upon this subject, because 
 they can tell us that two-thirds of their most sad work 
 are due to the ravages of drink. Doctors, economists, 
 statesmen, and moralists tell us that physical decay, the 
 
 1 An address delivered in Hope Hall, Liverpool, at the annual meeting 
 of the diocesan branch of the Church of England Temperance Society, 
 the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Liverpool in the chair.
 
 " Strike for the King!" 399 
 
 ruin of the intellect, the deadening of the moral sense, 
 the brutalization of man, domestic misery, social discord, 
 national embarrassment, and the darkness of despairing 
 death are the fruits of this wide-spreading deadly tree. 
 These are truisms. None know these ravages better 
 than the unhappy victims of the curse. I am not this 
 evening going to denounce the evils of intemperance 
 without trying to analyze the motives that lead men 
 into its bondage. Denunciation had its work to do, 
 in the moral order, but to my mind denunciation is 
 always more effective when tempered with sympathy. 
 It is possible to denounce an evil in such a tone as 
 to provoke a reaction in its favour, and to suggest the 
 idea that even the chief of the spirits of darkness may 
 not be quite as black as he is painted. 
 
 Let us try to realize the motives that led men to 
 their ruin. Every sin proceeds from some tendency in 
 human nature that is in itself good. The meaning of 
 the word " sin " in the New Testament is " a false aim, 
 a missing ~of the mark ; " to have life, and have it more 
 abundantly, is the aim of all men. Now, intemperance 
 is simply a false way of trying to secure a fuller life. 
 Strong drink, as we all know, does for the moment 
 appear to give a fuller life. It stimulates the energies, 
 enlarges the horizon, it lifts the clouds, elevates the 
 depressed spirits, it stirs the sluggish stream of feeling, 
 it quickens all the emotions, it makes thought vivid, 
 gives a glow to the imagination, fills the despairing with 
 fictitious hope, and penetrates the heavy leaden atmo- 
 sphere of dull, commonplace, vulgar existence with
 
 400 " Strike for the King!" 
 
 fitful gleams of a short-lived and delirious glory. But 
 we all know that this enlivening power of strong drink 
 is a lie. It stimulates only to paralyze ; it lifts up only 
 to cast down into deeper and darker depths; it stimulates 
 the feelings only to deaden them ; it warms the imagi- 
 nations and stirs the intellect only to debase and destroy 
 both ; it kindles hope only to leave behind the cinders 
 and ashes of despair ; it sheds upon existence some 
 wild flashes of boastful, feverish glory only to light up 
 the dark, downward passage that leads men headlong 
 into the dungeon of outer darkness. 
 
 Drink is like a dealer in spurious coin, who takes 
 from his dupe all that he had worth having, and, after 
 fooling him with his fill of fancied wealth, leaves him 
 to awake in moral nakedness and famine an outcast, a 
 bankrupt, and a slave. But the secret that helps strong 
 drink to do its trade is that it promises to pay at once. 
 Its coin is spurious, but it is ready cash. The joys it 
 gives are base, but they are immediate. Therefore, 
 when men are short of life they take to drink. All 
 that impedes, cramps, lowers, weakens, darkens, disturbs 
 life is an ally of intemperance. Too little work, too 
 much work, the stagnation of solitude, the rivalries and 
 jealousies of society, the hunger of failure, the satiety 
 of success all the worries, trials, collisions, the chills 
 and the heats, the clouds and the sunlights of life 
 all tempt the shallow, unprincipled man to drink. 
 When existence is dull and slow, when the body is 
 depressed, when the nerves are relaxed and the brain 
 weary, when the affections have lost their object, and,
 
 " Strike for the King!" 401 
 
 above all, when men have no aim in life that excites 
 hope and unfolds a prospect, they will seek in sensual 
 indulgence sedatives for their pains and stimulants 
 for their languors. All men have this desire to be 
 filled with life. Gautama Buddha, more than two 
 thousand five hundred years ago, told his fellow-men 
 that all human evils come from the Trishna the thirst 
 for external things that impels them into vain, restless 
 efforts. That thirst is the spring of all that is evil in 
 man, but it is also the spring of all that is good in him. 
 The steam that hurls to ruin the train that has left the 
 rails is the same force that would have taken it, rightly 
 directed, to the terminus where the traveller would be. 
 And so the desire for life, the thirst for fuller existence 
 what we call " go " is in the well-regulated character 
 the energy that bears him on to joy and rest ; and in 
 the " fast man," the blind, unguided impulsiveness that 
 leaves him a broken wreck on the wayside of life. 
 
 We cannot expel this thirst from human nature, but 
 we can teach men how to quench it at the springs that 
 God has given. The world is full of poisoned wells, 
 but it is also full of the springs of purest joy, from 
 which men can draw rich draughts of living water for 
 every stage in the journey of life. In the first stage 
 of life, the toys, the games, the little treasures of child- 
 hood, gave a keen joy, to which we all look back and 
 wish we could still enjoy as we then enjoyed. In adult 
 years, work, business, the profession drawing out the 
 energies of body, mind, and spirit, give to the well- 
 regulated man a lifelong pleasure in his pursuit. The 
 
 2 D
 
 4O2 "Strike for the King /" 
 
 daily intercourse of social life, in all the common scenes 
 of existence, gives a stream of gladness which, like 
 common water, is never fully valued until it is lost. 
 The home, love, union of hearts, the care and nurture 
 of children, in these a virtuous man finds a bright, 
 cool, covered spring that keeps his life green, and 
 refreshes the lips parched in the less sheltered stages 
 of his journey. 
 
 The improvement of the physical and social con- 
 ditions of life is one of the great means to which we 
 must look for the cure of intemperance. Workshops 
 and dwellings in which men can breathe the air and 
 drink the water that God has given unpoisoned ; the 
 light of education, social recreations, deliverance from 
 the excessive burdens that brutalize, must be afforded 
 to all before we can hope to reclaim that moral 
 wilderness in which the beast grows more and more, 
 and the man grows less and less. Schools, colleges, 
 museums, art-galleries, libraries, open parks, public 
 gardens for the people, all these are agencies that 
 help to brighten and cheer the common life, and to 
 check the craving for sensual excitement. A great 
 American thinker and orator, while denouncing the 
 degradation of the stage, the monkey-like indecencies 
 of ballet-dancing, the dissipation of all-night balls, gave 
 it as his opinion that a purified drama, a general 
 cultivation of music, and the adoption of dancing, 
 under healthy and virtuous conditions, as an everyday 
 recreation in social and family life, satisfying the human 
 craving for beauty by the gracefulness of form and the
 
 "Strike for the King!" 403 
 
 harmony of movement, would open up a new spring of 
 natural joy and brightness for the people. I offer no 
 opinion upon the subject, which has its difficulties. 
 But this I will say when England has become more 
 virtuous, she is sure to become more merry. Gloomy, 
 narrow views of God and life darken, depress, and stunt 
 the nature of man. Puritanism is not always purity, and 
 rank weeds grow in the shade as well as in the sunshine. 
 But when education, culture, the beauties of art, the lights 
 of science, material progress, and social recreation have 
 all done their utmost, man will still desire a life that 
 these cannot give. He may drink and drain them all, 
 but he will thirst again. Let him work and win, let 
 him love and build up a home, let him succeed ever so 
 well in the world, yet after all the thirst will return. 
 Work has its worries, health decays, the home has its 
 bereavements, society has its jealousies and disappoint- 
 ments ; wealth, position, fame, although dazzling in the 
 distance, cease to enchant when you become accustomed 
 to them they "crumble into dust," and leave man 
 " thirsting in a land of sand and thorns." All things 
 become vulgar, commonplace, and unsatisfying in the 
 order of the lower life. Man craves a satisfaction external 
 things cannot give. 
 
 Where is the well that shall slake human thirst? 
 Some dream that it is to be found in the miry bog of 
 atheism. It is not there. Tell man that he has nothing 
 to expect, deprive him of every prospect, and you at 
 once destroy the charts, the compass, and the rudder 
 of life, leaving him to drift like a log at the wild will
 
 4C>4 "Strike for the King!" 
 
 of the winds and waves of lust and passion. Tell man 
 that he is only a brute of the earth, earthy, only a 
 superior animal, dreaming for a few brief years his fitful, 
 feverish dream of life, and then passing away into 
 nothingness, and he will cast away the restraints of 
 human self-respect, and will rush into a frenzy of bestial 
 excitement, singing as he goes that old song of the 
 human brute, " Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we 
 die." Deprive man of eternal hope ; seduce him to 
 receive the lie of the Sadducee, that there is no here- 
 after ; take down from his firmament the sun and the 
 stars of faith ; what will follow ? You will have left 
 him nothing but the mists and vapours of this cold, dark 
 earth. He will not be satisfied to sit down in the chill 
 and gloom. He will seek warmth and light from below, 
 if he is not to have it from above. The flames of sensual 
 passion, set on fire of hell, will be his refuge when you 
 have deprived him of all the lights of heaven. Where, 
 then, is the well out of which man can draw fulness 
 of life ? The power of religion is the only source out 
 of which an unfailing stream comes forth. It reveals 
 to man his nobler self. It unfolds within him the 
 mystery of a moral and spiritual being, which, by God's 
 grace, he can develop so as to rise into the consciousness 
 of an inward rank and an inward wealth, compared with 
 which the highest position of the worldling is degrada- 
 tion, and his hoards of gold but dross and destitution. 
 In the daily, hourly, momentary culture of that life he 
 finds a well of water springing up to give unfailing satis- 
 faction to his being. Thus the Church of Christ is the
 
 "Strike for the King!" 405 
 
 great Temperance Society. To those who take and 
 keep her pledges she gives peace and joy in the pre- 
 sent by revealing within them the true life, and kindles 
 the fire of an inextinguishable hope by quickening 
 within them the consciousness of immortality. They 
 who have found the experience of true life here, and 
 the prospect of deathless promotion hereafter, will not 
 drown their present dignity or forfeit their future heritage 
 by sinking into the slimy pit of sensuality. The rock 
 of eternal truth follows them, and, when parched in the 
 wilderness, in sickness and in health, in failure and in 
 success, they drink freely of the waters of life. 
 
 I have spoken of social progress and religion as the 
 two influences that are to destroy intemperance. They 
 are but different aspects of one force. All true social 
 progress is the outcome of that love which is the central 
 principle of religion. These two influences are to be 
 exerted by two classes of men the social leaders and 
 the ministers of religion ; the princes on one hand, and 
 the priests and prophets on the other, whom Jeremiah 
 held responsible for the woes of Israel. Let me speak 
 first of the princes of the people. The stream of fashion 
 flows down from the men of high position to the masses 
 on the level in every community. Therefore a vast 
 responsibility rests upon the men of position and wealth. 
 If selfish luxury, idolatry of money, trust in uncertain 
 riches that is, riches the use of which they do not 
 clearly discern prevail among the upper classes, the 
 same spirit, in coarser forms, will appear among their 
 humbler brethren. If social leaders think more of
 
 406 "Strike for the King!" 
 
 privilege than of duty ; if they regard themselves as 
 chosen vessels of porcelain to be set apart on the high 
 shelf of social exclusiveness, and the masses of men as 
 ware of commoner clay only fit to be filled " with the 
 scornful reproof of the wealthy, and the despitefulness 
 of the proud ; " if the men of wealth fly away from the 
 hives of industry in which they have made their fortunes, 
 taking all the honey with them, doing nothing to sweeten 
 life for the toiling myriads in the grimy quarters of the 
 town deserted by fashion, but crowded with souls ; if 
 they spend their thousands upon pleasure, upon the 
 moor in Scotland, the stable and kennel in England, 
 and the yacht in the Channel, while they patronizingly 
 send their paltry pittance to the Church, the school, and 
 the philanthropic institution, then they are not doing 
 the work of social leadership, and will not long retain 
 the position. A selfish, luxurious, unintellectual, money- 
 worshipping upper class, putting their trust in ceiled 
 houses, in horses and chariots, in purple and fine linen. 
 and in the sumptuous faring every day, while they drop 
 their contemptuous crumbs to the human brother who 
 is lying at their door covered with sores, will by their 
 malign influence create a drunken, dissolute, discon- 
 tented, unhappy community ; and some day those 
 toiling myriads, grinding in the mill, and now about to 
 be brought forth, enfranchised, to grasp the pillars of 
 the constitution, will, like Samson, in their blind misery 
 pull down the house to overwhelm the lords of the 
 Philistines. I congratulate you in Liverpool that you 
 have among you some leaders of heart and mind who
 
 " Strike for the King!" 407 
 
 know how to use nobly the wealth that God has given 
 them. Your educational institutions, your new Univer- 
 sity College, your noble library, your art-gallery, your 
 Episcopal throne, founded on the munificence of your 
 sons (and ere long, I doubt not, your august and stately 
 cathedral), prove that you have citizens who wish to 
 broaden, deepen, elevate, and glorify human life in this 
 great city. Depend upon it, the power of a nobler spirit, 
 pervading the leading classes, and going down from 
 them to the skirts of society, is one of the most potent 
 influences for bringing moral and physical weal to the 
 body of the nation. 
 
 The clergy have also their share in the work of moral 
 emancipation. The Church's message must be delivered 
 with power. Her truths are old and unchangeable, 
 but the forms of thought and language in which they 
 are taught must be new in every age. The scribe well 
 instructed must bring out of his treasure things new and 
 old new in form, old in essential truth. If we would 
 save the men of to-day, we must translate the truths of 
 eternity into the language of to-day. The well-worn, 
 hackneyed phrases, the traditions of the elders, the 
 fossils of petrified platitudes, which were once alive but 
 are now dead as Egyptian mummies, will not save souls 
 from drunkenness or any other sin. The hard blows 
 of loveless controversy, the hollow roll of the sounding 
 brass, and the empty din of the tinkling cymbal, will 
 not satisfy souls or slake their inward thirst. We must 
 not pose as the monopolists of wisdom, forgetting that 
 truth has many aspects, and that our little narrow view
 
 408 " Strike for the King /" 
 
 is not the only one in the universe. The dust and the 
 heat of warring sections are enough to make a whole 
 nation take to drink. If we would save society we must 
 preach the living God, and not our narrow dead party 
 watchwords. We must preach the Cross of Christ, which 
 means infinite love, and not dark, cruel, blind bigotry. 
 
 What, then, is the special mission of this Church of 
 England Temperance Society? It is to awaken the 
 sleeping consciences of all who are directly or indirectly 
 responsible for multiplying the temptations of their 
 fellow-men. First, we must press upon the national 
 conscience the question whether the millions of revenue 
 now drawn from the Excise duties are not a source of 
 rottenness and decay. Here and in India finance and 
 righteousness, we are told, are opposed to each other. 
 For my own part, I dread the opium traffic as the chief 
 peril of our Indian empire. I dread it because I am 
 afraid that God cannot go forth with the armies of a 
 Power that equips its soldiers with weapons bought with 
 the profits of human degradation. I dread it more even 
 than the stealthy advance of that crafty, cruel empire 
 which exports all its chivalry and benevolence for gain, 
 so that it has neither justice nor mercy left at home 
 for the sons and daughters of the foremost of the races 
 the race of Abraham and David and Isaiah, " and of 
 whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over 
 all, God blessed for ever." For the same reasons I 
 regard the millions of money flowing from the vices 
 and lusts of the people at home as a source of weak- 
 ness and a chief cause for national alarm. It is the
 
 " Strike for the King /" 409 
 
 Church's duty to teach that "righteousness exalteth a 
 nation." 
 
 It is also our duty to teach the conscience of the 
 individual. There are limits within which the manufac- 
 ture and sale of alcoholic drinks are as legitimate as 
 any other trade. But when the drink traffic is unduly 
 pushed, and men seek to become rich by the manufac- 
 ture of vice and misery, it is time to lift up our voices, 
 and say that after the fortune is made comes death, and 
 after death the judgment. For my own part, I do not 
 envy the man who has risen high upon the ruin of 
 myriads. Let such a man try to summon up before the 
 eyes of his mind all the scenes that he has darkened on 
 this earth the homes that he has debased, the husbands 
 and fathers that he has turned into brutes, the wives 
 and mothers, once innocent young girls, whose cheek 
 knew no darker colour than the blush of modesty, whom 
 drink has made broken-hearted women, furrowing their 
 faces with frequent tears, or, still worse, has trans- 
 formed into swinish viragoes with bloated countenance 
 and bloodshot eyes, with hearts full of lust and fury, 
 and mouths full of filth and blasphemy. Let him call 
 to mind the children whom his trade has blighted in 
 their earliest bloom the criminals, the paupers, the 
 raving lunatics, who are the accompaniments of his 
 fortune, let all these pass in long procession before the 
 sight of his soul, and I will venture to say, that if he has 
 one ray of right reason and one spark of true human 
 feeling unquenched within him, he will feel that no 
 palatial residence, no liveried luxury of outward life,
 
 4 1 o ''Strike for the King ! " 
 
 can compensate for the agony of that review, the 
 thoughts of which crawl in the chamber of the soul like 
 worms that will not die, and the self-reproach glares 
 like a fire that will not soon be quenched. It is for the 
 Church to teach men to look upon themselves as they 
 will be looked upon in the searching light of the great 
 white throne of judgment Then every man's life-deeds, 
 and all their remotest consequences, in long procession 
 will pass before him, and he will be judged according 
 to their nature. 
 
 One function of this society has been to raise the 
 temperance cause out of the atmosphere of declamatory 
 vulgarity into which feeble, well-meaning friends were 
 taking it, and in which its enemies would have been 
 glad to keep it. By making the temperance spirit at 
 home in many of the palaces, this society has made it 
 more powerful in the cottages of the land. English 
 deference to fashion and gentility, in its excess, may 
 be a weakness. But as long as fashion and gentility 
 are an undoubted power, the society that enlists them 
 under the banner of virtue does good and effective 
 service. It has also done much to conciliate, by the 
 moderation and tolerant reasonableness of its platform, 
 those sober-minded and weak-kneed people who are 
 alienated by the excesses of unadulterated teetotal en- 
 thusiasm. It seeks to promote counter-attractions of all 
 kinds, and, by making the people more comfortable, to 
 make them less vicious. It seeks to reduce the number 
 of drinking-houses, those open pitfalls of temptation, that 
 yawn with open doors at every step in our towns and
 
 " Strike for the King / " 411 
 
 villages to engulf unhappy men in the ever-ready ruin. 
 It seeks to advance the physical, moral, and spiritual 
 elevation of the publicans and their servants by securing 
 for them the priceless blessing of the Divinely ordained 
 day of rest. In Wales we have won that boon. We 
 have as yet but partially enjoyed its advantages. But 
 before the year is out, the Welsh publican will be saved 
 from himself, and raised, as far as spiritual opportunities 
 on one day in the week can raise him, to the moral 
 level of his countrymen. 
 
 We are sometimes told by the^ argumentative parrots, 
 caged in their prejudices and repeating to every comer 
 the few phrases of reasoning they have learnt, that you 
 cannot make men sober by Act of Parliament, and that 
 it is very wrong to interfere with the liberty of the 
 subject. Liberty of the subject ! The subjects with 
 whom we wish to deal are not at liberty. The enslaving 
 poison has long since crept into all their veins and 
 riveted his chains around heart and brain. They are 
 not masters of themselves. Reason has lost her throne, 
 and a foreign unclean spirit reigns in her place. 
 The strait-waistcoat is made for madmen. The law 
 is for the lawless. So compulsory restriction of the 
 drink traffic is for the emancipation of those drunkards 
 and drunkard-makers whose name is legion. In the 
 deliverance of the demoniac in the synagogue at 
 Capernaum our Master has given a typical revelation 
 of the process of moral emancipation. Then, as now, 
 the frenzied slave hugged his degradation and protested 
 against deliverance. " Let us alone ; ... art Thou come
 
 412 "Strike for the King!" 
 
 to destroy us ? " What were the stages in the work of 
 liberation ? First, " Jesus rebuked him." Rebuke, ex- 
 posure, denunciation, breaking the self-confidence of 
 evil, is a Divinely ordained agency for good. Secondly, 
 the word of restraint was spoken with power <^w- 
 Orjri, " hold thy peace ; " literally, " be thou gagged," or, 
 " muzzled." Lastly was given the word of final expulsion, 
 " Come out of him." These are the three stages in the 
 process by which the demon of intemperance is to be 
 expelled out of our national life. The word of Christ, 
 spoken in the Christian consciousness of the country, 
 denounces the evil spirit in argument and remonstrance. 
 Then it seeks to restrain its power by the word of 
 legislative restriction 0t/zw0rjrt. But its perfect work 
 will not be done until the evil spirit has been driven out 
 of heart and mind by the free spirit of reason and self- 
 control. To-day we are rebuking this unclean spirit 
 in the Name of our Master. Soon we hope to apply 
 the forcible gag of legal restriction. Finally, we hope 
 to see the nation emancipated by the One mightier than 
 the evil the Divine Spirit of life. " Strike for the 
 King!" 
 
 This war, fought for the freedom of souls and the 
 expulsion of a great foreign tyrant force out of our 
 national life, is a struggle in which we all have an 
 interest. In fighting under the banner of temperance, 
 we are fighting pro arts et focis for hearths, homes, 
 and altars. If the destroying power is to go on 
 poisoning the atmosphere of life around us, slaying 
 his thousands and tens of thousands, our nearest and
 
 " Strike for the King / " 413 
 
 dearest may some day be in danger. He may invade 
 our homes. Our children may be his victims, if he is 
 allowed to march on with forces unbroken and progress 
 unchecked. Let us, then, take our places, shoulder 
 to shoulder, in the ranks of the grand army of tem- 
 perance. Let us hasten to the battle and fight for the 
 King of souls, our " Fair Father, Christ." Let us war 
 a knightly warfare that the beast may be driven from 
 the land, and the true King reign over human life. 
 Our cause has already passed through the winter of cold 
 discouragement. The ice is broken and gone. Tem- 
 perance is now in its month of May, full of hope and 
 promise. Let us, then, rise, " Strike for the King and 
 live ! " Let us summon all men of knightly souls to the 
 field to fight for our King. 
 
 " Blow trumpet ! He will lift us from the dust. 
 Blow trumpet ! Live the strength and die the lust. 
 Clang battle-axe and clash brand ! Let the King reign. 
 
 " Blow ! for our Sun is mighty in His May. 
 Blow ! for our Sun is mightier day by day ! 
 Clang battle-axe and clash brand ! Let the King reign."
 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
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 io A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Liddon. Works by HENRY PARRY LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., 
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 MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRITINGS OF H. P. 
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 Being Letters descriptive of the Tour, written by his Sister, Mrs. KING. 
 Crown 8vo. y. 
 
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 Dean of Lichfield. 
 
 AFTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
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 [continued.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 11 
 
 Luckock. Works by HERBERT MORTIMER LUCKOCK, D.D., 
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 12 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Mozley. Works by J. B. MOZLEY, D.D., late Canon of Christ 
 
 Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 13 
 
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 [continued.
 
 14 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Oxenden. Works by the Right Rev. ASHTON OXENDEN, 
 
 formerly Bishop of Montreal continued. 
 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 15 
 
 Sanday. THE ORACLES OF GOD : Nine Lectures on the 
 
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 OUR LORD'S NATIVITY. 
 
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 OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION. 
 
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 [continued.
 
 16 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
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