A record of St. Cybi's Church, Holyhead

by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Church of St. Cybi.
SERMON

Preached on the Reopening of St. Cybi’s Church, Holyhead,
after Restoration, 1879, by
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D.,
Dean of Westminster.

“Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.

“Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you.”

Isaiah li. 1, 2.

We have been reading for several Sundays in church the history of the Patriarchs. The words of the Prophet which I have taken for my text give us the key to that history. We all know the value of the graces and gifts we derive from our families. Who is there that does not recognise in himself or in those about him what has come to him and them from father, mother—nay, it may even be grandfather or great-grandfather, uncle and aunt—or what may be breathed again into him by brother, sister, cousin. These, if anything in the world, are gifts to us from without. These, if anything, are gifts from God. What we drink in, as we say, with our mother’s milk our mother’s tongue, our mother’s faith and prayers, it may be, our mother’s character; what we have had impressed upon us of our father’s spirit, of our “fatherland,” of our father’s blood—the innocent joys, the tragical sorrows of home and household;—these are the materials out of which our souls and spirits are fashioned. We may have our own personal character besides, but without these our characters would not be what they are.

Now, what is thus true of the family in respect of individuals, is true of races of men in respect both of nations and individuals; and this is one lesson which those early chapters in the Book of Genesis impress upon us. They tell us of the family. But, over and above this, they tell us of the race; they tell us of the immense importance to the Israelites, and through them to us, of the fact that they sprang from no ignoble or commonplace nation, but from those whom God had specially selected for His work on earth—from the tribe of Jacob, from the seed of Abraham, from the race of Shem. This is the true “predestination” of God’s counsels; this is the true “election” of the chosen vessels. Race and nationality, as well as family, are the precious gifts of God, to be used and recognised and taken account of as amongst the mighty moving powers of the world. If we wish to see what work we or others are called to do, we must not forget to look back to the ancient rock from whence we are hewn, and the deep pit from whence we are digged.

There is also the lesson which all such inquiries bring before us, and which is specially impressed upon us by these early records of the Bible—the advantage of being transported to remote ages and scenes wholly unlike our own. In those stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob there is a freshness as of the dew of the womb of the morning. We feel younger as we read; they refresh us in the weary pilgrimage of life; we catch the early fragrance of the first dawn of the human race. There had been many great epochs and many great men in Israel since the time of Abraham and Sarah: there had been Jacob, or Israel, from whom they derived their name and some of the chief elements of their character; there had been Moses, under whom they had won their freedom and their laws, and Joshua, by whose prowess they had conquered the Promised Land, and David, with all the line of kings and prophets that followed. But still there was a charm about their first ancestor, Abraham, and their first mother, Sarah, which they could find in no later times. There was a delight in seeing the peculiar blessings which they had gained from those old primitive patriarchs, and for which they were to be ever thankful to God, through whom these and all other gifts had come.

I. May I take up the Prophet’s words and the lessons of the Book of Genesis, and give them a special application which this day suggests. We are met to celebrate the reopening of one of the most ancient churches of the Welsh people. Most of the building has stood for five hundred years—one aged arch, we are told, for a thousand years. [27] Let us then, Englishmen or Welshmen, who are assembled here, ask, in no spirit of boastfulness or rivalry, but of thankfulness to God, what are the special gifts for good which the British Celtic race has contributed to our common country? As the Israelites had for their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, before their own special patriarch Israel or Jacob—ancestors by whom they were connected with other races besides their own, Edomite, Arabian, Mesopotamian—so we were Britons before we were Englishmen; and we by that Celtic parentage are made one in blood with that old original people which is parent alike to the Welsh, the Irish, the Scottish, and the French nations.

What, then, are the best peculiarities of the Welsh people?

(1) To the ancient Cambrian British race we owe that distant atmosphere of romance, of sentiment, of poetry, which neither Saxon nor Norman have given or could have given us.