With regard to the whole of Wales, our information as respects what the Church has done during the last twenty years, is not so perfect as we could wish. The number of new churches built in the four dioceses appears, as nearly as we can calculate from the data within our reach, to be about 110. But there is more difficulty in getting, at those rebuilt and enlarged, as in one of the returns (that of St. Asaph) we find churches 'restored' and 'improved'—words implying merely repairs of existing fabrics without any additional accommodation—mixed up with those which have been 'rebuilt and enlarged.' We have the precise number rebuilt, and we are willing to presume somewhat enlarged, in Llandaff, which is thirty-six, and in Bangor, which is thirty-one. We think it would be a liberal allowance from the statistical report before us to assign thirty-five 'enlarged' churches to St. Asaph, and judging by the number of new churches built in St. David's, we presume that thirty 'enlarged' churches would cover all that has been done in that diocese, making a total rebuilt and enlarged of 132. Let us now turn to the Nonconformists. The following are facts on the substantial accuracy of which our readers may rely. Since 1850, the Calvinistic Methodists have built 321 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 435 more, providing additional accommodation in all for 123,881 worshippers, at a cost of £366,000. The Independents, during the same period, have built 118 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 200 more, furnishing additional accommodation for 130,000, at a cost of £294,000. The Baptists have built 142 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged ninety-nine more, furnishing additional accommodation for 81,800, at a cost of £163,000. Thus, these three denominations alone have in twenty years built 581 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged 734 more, providing accommodation for 308,681 persons, at a cost of £823,000.
But it must be further observed, that it is not merely in the matter of religious instruction that the Nonconformists have become almost exclusively the leaders of the Welsh people. As respects literature and science, and all important social and political movements, it is the same. The literature of Wales, and not its religious literature merely, is almost wholly Nonconformist. There are about thirty periodicals, quarterly, monthly, and weekly, at present published in the Welsh language. Of these all but three are owned and edited by Dissenters. There are nine commentaries on the whole Bible, and nine besides on the New Testament alone, some original and some translated from English, and only two of these were done by Churchmen, and even they were Dissenters when they began their work. There are eight Biblical and Theological Dictionaries, and as many bodies of divinity or systems of theology, and no Churchman, we believe, has had a hand in the production of any one of them. There is a History of the World, a History of Great Britain, a History of Christianity, a History of the Church, a History of the Welsh Nation, a History of Religion in Wales, all by Dissenters, besides elaborate denominational Histories of the Calvinistic Methodists, the Independents, the Baptists, &c. Indeed, all the ecclesiastical histories in the language are Nonconformist, and all the general histories except the History of Wales by the Rev. Thomas Price, and a small work called the 'Mirror of the Principal Ages.' There is a valuable work illustrated by many excellent maps and diagrams, entitled 'The History of Heaven and Earth,' treating of geography and astronomy, by the Rev. J. T. Jones, of Aberdare, formerly a Nonconformist minister. There is another large geographical dictionary in course of publication by a dissenting minister. There are two copious Biographical Dictionaries edited and principally written by Dissenters. There is now, and has been for several years, in course of publication an Encyclopædia in the Welsh language (Encyclopædia Cambrensis), dealing as such works do with the entire circle of human knowledge. It was described by the late Archdeacon Williams, who had seen the earlier volumes, as 'a work of great promise, as sound in doctrine as it is unsectarian in principle.' It is studiously free from denominational taint, and was intended to be a great national undertaking, the contributors being indiscriminately selected from the ablest writers of all denominations, the combined learning and talent of Wales being thus engaged in its preparation. The enterprising publisher at the outset addressed a letter to all those among his countrymen of whatever church or creed who had distinguished themselves in any way by their literary acquirements and productions, inviting their co-operation. We have now before us a list of the contributors amounting to ninety names, and out of these ninety, there are certainly not more than nine churchmen.
The English public has of late years become partially acquainted with a remarkable institution existing in Wales, which has come down from very ancient times, called Yr Eisteddfod, or the Session, meaning in its primitive signification the Session of the Bards. Its object is to encourage the cultivation of literature, poetry and music. The English press has tried to throw great ridicule on this institution, as the English press is wont to do, upon all institutions that are not English. And yet surely, as the Bishop of St. David's has said, 'it is a most remarkable feature in the history of any people, and such as could be said of no other than the Welsh, that they have centred their national recreation in literature and musical competitions.' Prizes ranging from £1 to £100 are offered for the best compositions in poetry, prose, and music. The highest honour bestowed by the Eisteddfod is the Bardic chair, and the productions entitling the successful candidates to this distinction are supposed to possess rare merit. There are now living nine chaired bards, of whom one is a clergyman, seven are Nonconformist ministers, and one a Nonconformist layman. In musical compositions, the proportion would be about the same. And certainly the Welsh clergy of the present day have not, any more than their predecessors, distinguished themselves as authors. A catalogue of Welsh books published within the last twenty years, would show a very beggarly 'account' standing to the credit of the official instructors of the Welsh people.
Such are the past history and the present condition of the Established Church in Wales. Surely no legislature with any sense of justice can long refuse to deal with so anomalous an institution as that we have described; a Church which has wholly failed, and is still failing, to accomplish the only object for which it pretends to exist, from which—and that entirely owing to its own criminal neglect—the great body of the people are hopelessly alienated, and which has no vital relation with the religions, political, social, or literary life of the nation. And it is not merely a theoretical anomaly. It is an intolerable practical grievance, and is becoming more and more so every day. For its friends, numbering as they do nearly all the landowners and wealthy classes, galvanized, of late years, into a sort of spasmodic zeal, which is far more political than religious, are making frantic efforts to regain for their Church the ascendancy it has so righteously lost, by a very unscrupulous use of their wealth, their social position, and their control over the land. The advocates of the Church, especially in the English press, are trying to wreak their vengeance on a nation of Dissenters, by traducing the character of the people, and ridiculing their language, their literature, and their religious institutions; and this they are not deterred from doing by their utter ignorance of all three. Some of the Welsh clergy, also, exasperated by seeing their pretensions contemned, and their ministrations forsaken, are propagating the most monstrous calumnies against their successful rivals, the Dissenting ministers. One Conservative journal in London has especially distinguished itself by throwing its columns open to these anonymous slanderers. Here are some of the flowers of speech that have been plentifully scattered in its pages on the Welsh Nonconformists. 'The Welsh language is made the instrument of evil by preachers and other supporters of anarchy and plunder.' 'The people are actively taught to commit arson and murder; they are regularly drilled into Fenianism.' 'Dissenting ministers are the curse of Wales; there is scarcely a sermon or lecture they deliver that is not full of sedition.'
And yet the country whose population is thus systematically trained to sedition and murder, is more free from serious crime than any part of the United Kingdom; so free, indeed, that in many of the counties the annual visit of her Majesty's judges is almost a work of supererogation. Take as an example the county of Cardigan, which was the scene of the most extensive and cruel political persecutions after the last election, where about sixty tenants were evicted from their holdings, some of them under circumstances of a singularly exasperating character. And yet at the Assizes, that were held immediately after, there was not a single prisoner to be tried. Mr. Justice Hannen, in charging the grand jury, said 'that a perfectly clear calendar was a circumstance he had never before met with since he had been on the bench, and he understood from his brother judges that only in the Principality of Wales was such a thing known, and that there it was frequent. Whether it was attributable to race or to the influence of religious teaching he could not say, but he felt deeply interested in the matter, and whatever might be the cause, there was the indisputable fact, one of which the county of Cardigan might well be proud.'
These insane efforts to drive or to drag the people back into the Church by coercion and calumny, produce, of course, precisely the opposite effect. Indeed the Conservatives, in their treatment of Wales, are triumphantly vindicating their right to the title bestowed upon them by Mr. Stuart Mill, as 'the stupid party.' Unhappily, however, they do succeed in embittering the heart of the people, and in introducing alienation and anger into their relations with the classes who are thus tempted to tamper with their religious and political rights. And all this is owing to the existence of an Established Church.
Art. VII. (1.)—The Greek New Testament, edited from Ancient Authorities, with the Latin Version of Jerome from the Codex Amiatinus. By S. P. Tregelles, LL.D. Matthew to Acts—Catholic Epistles—Romans to Philemon. S. Bagster and Sons.
(2.) Fragmenta Evangelica quæ ex antiqua recensione versionis Syriacæ Novi Testamenti a Gulielmo Curetono vulgata sunt Græce reddita textuique Syriaco editionis Schaafianæ et Græco Scholzianæ fideliter collata. Pars Prima. J. R. Crowfoot, S.T.B. Williams and Norgate.
It is difficult to estimate our unpaid obligations to the students and scholars who have sacrificed their life to furnish us with the common-places of our knowledge. The elaborate and prolonged effort, the perseverance, ingenuity, and scientific skill often concealed in the foundations of a great building or in the underways of a great city, are no inapt illustration of the lifelong labours of those students and votaries of literature who have placed in our hands authentic and accurate copies of the chefs-d'œuvre of ancient thinkers. The learned, patient, and devout men to whom we are indebted for our present careful approximations to the text of the New Testament, have undergone a species of toil which it is very difficult for those scholars even to appreciate, who have never made the attempt to decipher a single MS. or to gather around them the abundant and often conflicting evidence on which the judgment of the critic really turns. Whatever be the ultimate currency or acceptance of the text which Dr. Tregelles has offered to the world as the result of his life-long effort, and granting that some of the disadvantages under which he has suffered have left ineffaceable marks on the greater part of the work, and that his main principles may still be under judicature, yet we readily endorse the strong language of Bishop Ellicott: 'The edition of Tregelles will last to the very end of time as a noble monument of faithful, enduring, and accurate labour in the cause of truth; it will always be referred to as an uniquely trustworthy collection of assorted critical materials of the greatest value, and as such it will probably never be superseded.'[170] The Bishop does not regard Dr. Tregelles' text as the final one, but does not hesitate to speak of it as far better than Tischendorf's, and as furnishing material which no subsequent editor can afford to ignore. With the exception of the text of the Apocalypse and of the appendices rendered necessary by the progress of textual criticism since the earlier portions of the work were published, this long-expected work is now placed in our hands. The exception to which we have referred is, we profoundly regret to say, occasioned by the serious indisposition of the learned, laborious, and devout editor. The regret is to some extent alleviated from a literary point of view by the circumstance that one of the first contributions to Biblical science made by this conscientious and accurate scholar was published in 1844, and entitled 'The Book of Revelation in Greek, edited from Ancient Authorities, with a new English Version and various Readings, by Samuel P. Tregelles.' There is this difference, however, between the evidence alleged by Dr. Tregelles for the text of the Revelation and that which he has pursued throughout the elaborate work now before us, that in the former he was either content or only able at that time to give the evidence of the few Uncial MSS. and early versions, then known to contain the Apocalypse, with such confirmation as they received from a large number of the Cursive MSS. Although his object was to approximate as nearly as possible to the most ancient text, his apparatus criticus had not then reached the proportions it has subsequently assumed, and he did not even attempt to marshal the evidence of patristic quotations, or to give the arguments pro and contra any reading that he deliberately adopted. The Codex Sinaiticus had not then been rescued from the Convent of St. Catherine by the enterprising Dr. Tischendorf, and the system of careful notation which is adopted in the magnum opus now before us, had not been elaborated. Since 1844, moreover, the Rev. Bradley Alford has published a collation of the celebrated Cursive MS. 38, Dr. Delitzch has discovered the MS. used by Erasmus, and a careful collation is promised of the Codex Basiliensis, which Dr. Tregelles proposes to call Q, instead of adopting the old and confusing symbol B, which has led some to identify it with the Codex Vaticanus. The introduction to the interesting volume on the text of the Book of Revelation was expanded in 1854 into a goodly octavo entitled 'An Account of the printed text of the Greek New Testament, with remarks on its revision upon critical principles, together with a collation of the critical texts of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf with that in common use.' We know no work on biblical criticism more charged with well-digested information, and none which reveals a more extensive literary enterprise, than that which is here recorded. Dr. Tregelles tells us in the preface to his Greek Testament, that this work contains a detailed exposition of the principles he holds and the studies in which he has been engaged, and as his editors earnestly request that it be referred to in explanation of the principle adopted by Dr. Tregelles, it is almost incumbent upon us to remind our readers of its contents and spirit. In the appendix to section 13, occurs a brief and modest sketch of the extensive and continuous labours of this great student of the New Testament text. It appears that he commenced his research simply for his own satisfaction. The text of Dr. Scholz, based so largely on the consensus of later MSS. but revealing the small group of Alexandrian authorities and most ancient witnesses in opposition to the text adopted by him, first called Dr. Tregelles to a consideration of the fact that these most ancient but rejected testimonies were curiously confirmed by the older versions. He was thus led to conceive of the creation of a text entirely based on the authority of the most ancient copies. He did not even know that Lachmann in 1838 had already made his celebrated though imperfect attempt to produce the text of the first four centuries in entire or professed independence of the later authorities and of the received text. When the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin Version was collated and published by Fleck in 1840, Tregelles found it confirm, in opposition to the Clementine Vulgate, the oldest Greek readings. In preparing his work on the text of the Revelation, he found it necessary to collate the Uncial MSS. with his own hand. In 1845 he collated the Codex Augiensis (in Trinity Coll. Camb.). Though he visited Rome for the purpose of collating the celebrated Codex Vaticanus he was prevented from copying unless it were surreptitiously on his thumb-nails, a single reading. We formerly gave to our readers[171] a full account of the various imperfect collations made by Birch, Bartolocci, and Cardinal Mai, and also of the edition which has recently been published under the auspices of Dr. Tischendorf. In the greater part of Dr. Tregelles' critical labours he has been compelled to trust to the faulty and otherwise divergent collations which preceded Dr. Tischendorf's edition; but while he was deprived of the personal advantage of investigating Codex B for himself, he did collate at Rome, with his own hand, the Codex Passonei, and at Florence the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin; and at Modena, Venice, Munich, and Basle, other Uncial MSS. of considerable portions of the New Testament. Many of these were used by Tischendorf in his second Leipsic edition of the Greek Testament.