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it has been decided to issue the present volume, containing a selection of essays and addresses from his published and unpublished writings.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