'No. 12.—In another parish the vicar has been in the Insolvent Court; and was also suspended for three years for immorality, but allowed to return. He has only a congregation of about fifty, whilst the dissenters have four chapels, with congregations of about 1,300.
'No. 13 Llandeilo Fach.—No service here for about ten years. The roof has fallen down for several years; but, fortunately, there is a dissenting chapel, with a congregation of about 300.
'No. 15. Llanddowror.—This parish is a frightful demonstration of the destruction of the Church in Wales by the present system. About eighty years ago this parish was under the pastoral care of a native Welshman, the excellent and eminent Griffith Jones, renowned for his piety, abilities, and qualifications. This church had then 500 communicants, and people came many miles to attend the service. But this church has now no roof to its chancel, of which it has been destitute several years. The churchyard has neither wall nor fence; sheep were seen standing on the church tower some months ago. In one parish the curate has only of late been suspended, of whom the parishioners said he was "so bad the devil would soon be ashamed of him." The vicar had not preached in this parish for ten years, and lives twenty miles off. He has had the care of the parish since 1812, which is now reduced to the above deplorable state, though formerly, when in other hands, it was quoted as the model parish of Wales.'
Such was the aspect of the Church in the diocese of St. David's only twenty years ago; and we have no doubt there were scores of other parishes in the same diocese in little better condition than those specified in the above extracts.
Let us now turn to look at another diocese. In the year 1850 a vigorous effort was made to promote church extension in the diocese of Llandaff. An appeal was issued in the form of a letter from the Archdeacon of Llandaff to the Bishop, stating the facts of the case, which were these. The population of the two Archdeaconries of Llandaff and Monmouth was 173,139. There was church-accommodation for only 17,440. Let our readers specially remark this fact. After having been in possession of the country for three hundred years, the Established Church in that part of Wales did not pretend to have made provision, in the year of grace 1850, for the religious instruction of more than one-tenth of the vast population committed to her care. But, did the people avail themselves of her ministrations even to that extent? The answer is at hand. Among others to whom the appeal for help in building new churches, founded on the above showing, was sent, was Sir Benjamin Hall. Before responding to that appeal, Sir Benjamin, who was intimately conversant with that part of the country, and who had his doubts whether more church-accommodation, scanty as it was, was really needed for the district, instructed competent persons to count the actual numbers who attended the churches and the dissenting chapels in forty of the parishes of the diocese on a given Sunday. He published the result in a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to the Bishop, from which it appeared that, while the sittings provided in the churches were 17,440, the total number of actual attendants at the most numerously-attended service on Sunday, October 13th, 'the weather being particularly fine,' was 7,229; while the number which attended the 227 chapels provided by the Nonconformists, in the same district, amounted, on the same day, to 80,270. 'From the above it appears,' says the writer of the pamphlet, 'that so far from the churches being too small to hold the remnant of Churchmen which the zeal and activity of Dissenters have not wrested from us, there is, at present, room for 9,591 persons in addition to those who now attend the divine service of the Established Church.'
If we turn to one of the North Wales dioceses, that of Bangor, it would seem that even now, notwithstanding the energetic efforts which the present bishop is known to have made to infuse some life into the church, its condition, according to the acknowledgment of its own friends, is sufficiently discouraging. At a meeting held in Bangor last year, the bishop in the chair, a lay churchman said that Anglesey has seventy-nine parishes, fifty-two of which have no parsonages. The seventy-nine parishes are held by forty rectors; two of them possess four livings each, eight of them possess three livings each, and seventeen two each. He said that the desirable thing for Anglesey was the residence of the clergyman among his parishioners. He declared that the church there was now 'empty.' Another of the speakers, Lord Penrhyn, acknowledged that Dissent had prevented Wales from becoming a heathen country. At a clerical conference held in the same city in August, 1868, also under the presidency of the bishop, the Rev. P. C. Ellis, Llanfairfechan, in the course, we are told, of 'a very earnest address,' made these remarks:—'He believed if the Church of Ireland were disestablished it would be a just judgment upon the clergy of that church for their shortcomings, and he was convinced that investigation would show that the clergy of the church in this country had fallen as far short of their duty as their brethren in Ireland. He trembled to think what the report of the state of the Church in Wales would disclose, as he believed its position was worse than that of the Church in Ireland. If the Church in Ireland were to go down, the Church in Wales must surely follow.'
With regard to the number of persons still attached to the Church in Wales, there is great discrepancy of opinion. Without pronouncing dogmatically on the subject, we propose to furnish our readers with certain data, which may assist them in drawing their own conclusions. So far as we know, the first, and we believe the most careful attempt that was ever made to procure a return of the ecclesiastical statistics of Wales, was in 1846, by Mr. Hugh Owen, Honorary Secretary of the Cambrian Educational Society, a gentleman to whom the Principality is indebted for many valuable services. What provoked that inquiry was this. About that time the National Society was making a strenuous effort to cover Wales with day-schools, wherein, according to the fundamental regulations of that Society, 'the children were to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and the liturgy and catechism of the Church of England, such instruction to be subject to the superintendence of the parochial clergyman;' 'the children to be assembled for the purpose of attending service in the parish church;' 'the masters and mistresses to be members of the Church of England,' &c. A special appeal was issued on behalf of Wales by Archdeacon Sinclair, with a view 'to raise a large fund' to establish schools on the above principles. In this appeal, the suggestion 'to adopt a broad basis in which all sects could unite,' was sternly rejected. No system 'from which the characteristic doctrines of the Church of England were expunged' could be tolerated for an instant. To show how utterly unsuited to the country schools of this description must prove to be, the inquiry of which we speak was instituted. Having obtained, through means of the relieving officers, the names and addresses of trustworthy persons in about three-fourths of the parishes in Wales, Mr. Owen addressed a circular to each of those persons, requesting a return of—1. The name of every place of worship in his district. 2. The name of the denomination to which it belonged. 3. The exact number of the congregation at each place of worship on the first Sunday after the receipt of the circular, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. 4. The exact number attending the Sunday-school at each place, morning and afternoon.[166] Returns were received from 392 parishes, thirty of which were in Anglesey, fifty-nine in Carnarvonshire, fifty-three in Denbighshire, seventeen in Flintshire, twenty-three in Merionethshire, twenty-eight in Montgomeryshire, twenty-seven in Breconshire, fifty-four in Cardiganshire, forty in Carmarthenshire, eighteen in Glamorganshire, forty-three in Pembrokeshire, and ten in Radnorshire. The population of these 392 parishes amounted to 431,000. As the total population of Wales, not including Monmouthshire, was then only 911,603, that of the returned parishes contained nearly one-half of the whole population of the country. The result is thus summarized in a pamphlet published soon after:—
'From the returns it appeared that the number attending the morning services of dissenters were 79,694, the morning service of the church, only 18,128, being more than four dissenters to one churchman; the afternoon services of dissenters were attended by 63,379, those of the church by 5,710, or about seven dissenters to one churchman. The evening services of the church were attended by 9,889, and those of dissenters by 128,216, or twenty-two dissenters to one churchman. The average attendance on the Sunday was—
| Churchmen | 11,242 |
| Dissenters | 90,415 |
| Total average attendance | 101,657 |
Hence the average attendance of dissenters as compared with churchmen was as eight to one.