Welsh Nationality, and How Alone It is to Be Saved: A Sermon

by William Gabriel Davies

How deeply the cares of life, the “what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?” the anxieties of business, the wild fever of speculation and gambling, the frivolities of a life devoted to the exclusive pursuit of pleasure and excitement, the arduous strain endured in climbing giddy heights of fame, glory, and power; how deeply are all such merely temporal pursuits, even were they innocent, condemned as vanity of vanities, by that loving reproof of our Saviour, “But one thing is needful.” However unmindful we may be of the fact, eternity surrounds and makes prisoners of us all; and what is the whole world with all its pomp, wealth, greatness, and pleasures, viewed in the dimming light of that eternity? What shall it profit a man if he gain everything but what is really needful, everything but the good part, since “when he dieth he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not descend after him?” This indeed, is a most serious and awful consideration, and no one possessed of proper feeling, can treat it with levity. The grave, without respect of persons, confronts us all with its awe-inspiring illimitable beyond; and we cannot, if we would, brought up as we have been to possess long-standing associations on the side of Christian truth, and in harmony with the voice of conscience and the higher aspirations and presentiments of the soul, bring ourselves to believe that we shall not reap hereafter as we have sown here.

How often have the hills and valley of Wales resounded to stains like these, and long may they do so. But a most important question to ask is, what is comprised in the one thing needful? Are science, literature, and art of only temporary value? In the day of trial will they prove, even when true and pure, but “wood, hay, and stubble,” or will they turn out to be a portion of the “gold, silver, and precious stones” which we can carry with us to the better land?

I shall not, I presume, be far from the truth, when I declare that the Welsh are, on the whole, a God-fearing people; and that they are somewhat remarkable for the manner in which they put into practice the principle contained in the text, “But one thing is needful.” If we except the various pursuits by which they gain their livelihood, the Welsh-speaking portion of my countrymen have few proclivities apart from religion. Their reading is almost purely religious reading; their music, psalmody; their social gatherings, for the most part, clerical meetings, religious camp meetings, and the assembling of Sabbath schools. Their periodical literature consists almost wholly of religious magazines. Secular knowledge, secular music, and well nigh everything approaching to fiction, are by many of them deemed not only valueless but sinful. Y gwir yn erbyn y byd, a motto of which the Welsh nation may justly be proud, expresses the intolerance with which many natives of the Principality regard everything but what they believe to be downright sober truth. Is it the one thing needful? If not, avoid it as mischievous; at all events, “do not spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which profiteth not.” That the great mass of my country-people are remarkable for what many would consider the logical reduction of Christianity into practice, is unquestionable; but are they therefore, any more than St. Anthony and the early pilgrims, who believed they did the same thing, to be pointed out as worthy the imitation of others in all respects?

The Welsh-speaking inhabitants of this country, it must be admitted, live in a manner which has its attractions for primitiveness and homeliness; their wants are few, their passions are much under control, they are self-denying, industrious, and provident; and throughout the Principality, much to its credit, criminal cases but seldom darken the calendar. Such being the social condition of the Welsh, but more especially in the agricultural districts of what has been termed Welsh Wales, though not indeed without exceptions as regards keeping the “body in temperance, soberness, and chastity,” would it not be desirable to take note of the influences which conduce to such a state of things, with the view of bringing the same to bear upon communities, in which so many are deplorably corrupt, criminal, and profane? When, however, we come to consider that one of the leading causes of the peculiarities exhibited by the Welsh, is the isolation resulting from their language, few distinctive points remain in their social economy which admit of being copied with advantage by other communities. Influences which are rapidly changing the character of the English, and the better educated classes in these parts, exercise but a faint effect upon the primitive Welsh; because they are, by their language, shut out from the rest of the world. They are like the river water, which is out of the main current. Their manners, customs, and ideas, all tend to permanency. The sons follow with little change in the steps of their fathers, and the daughters in those of their mothers. As a consequence of this, even in business pursuits, they are, like the French Canadians, deficient in enterprise, and acquire property mostly by saving and self-denial. Like the Chinese, they give one the idea of a people whose development has been arrested at a certain stage, whose inspiration is drawn from the past, and not, as by the Israelites of old, from the future. They love to dwell on the antiquity of their language, and its purity from foreign elements. What they were is to them a source of fond exultation. What they are destined to become, they fear to contemplate.

I claim to be a lover of my country. I admire much the social and civic virtues, and the religious enthusiasm of her people; but I am forced to admit that among the Welsh, as such, there is no onward tendency. That is a great and noble ambition of theirs which urges them to retain their language; and they firmly believe in the prophecy, “Eu hiaith a gadwant.” But to be equally bent on perpetuating certain peculiarities which unite them with the past as a race opposed to their English neighbours, this desire to surround themselves with a sort of Chinese wall, instead of letting “the dead past bury its dead,” is not the part of true patriotism. For, by blindly adhering to such a stationary policy, they will eventually, as a distinct nation, be submerged by the tide of progress, instead of floating on its surface, and exist about as much in reality as their fabled Lowland Hundred. In everything but political sectarianism, and this only because they are moved to it by political agitators, the Welsh are in fact a most conservative nation.

This primitive condition of the Welsh, however, is not singular. It has existed, and exists even now, in various parts of the world. As an instance with which we have lately been made acquainted, it may be mentioned, that Wallace has found, in some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, several communities which have no intercourse with the world at large, leading an industrious, peaceful, moral life; committing little or no crime; “showing the work of the law written in their hearts;” and a pattern to many of the inhabitants of so called Christian and civilized countries. When we contemplate such beautiful simplicity and purity of life, we must admit that these people “are not far from the kingdom of God;” and one is tempted to doubt whether civilization with its extremes of wealth and destitution, refinement and barbarism, culture and ignorance, integrity and crime, saintliness and profanity, is the blessing that it is commonly held to be. But yet if we compare the endowments of mankind with those of the more intelligent brutes, we find that man has a capacity for being educated into a higher being in proportion as the race stores up knowledge, a power which opens the vast treasury of nature; whereas the most intelligent of the brutes are but slightly educable, and therefore stationary. While man, however, is gifted with this immense superiority, he does not always turn it to the greatest advantage. Some nations are rapidly advancing; some, having advanced in time past up to a certain point, have either long ago halted, or have gone back to barbarism or worse. Of these three tendencies, the one strongly manifested by the Welsh is halting. What forces there are urging them forward are almost entirely from a foreign source; and the fact that such influences are operating upon them is, by many of their number, regarded as a misfortune, by few as a blessing. Painful, however, as it must be to Welsh patriotism, and high-wrought sentiment, yet it is not to be doubted that the genius of Wales is receding before that of England, as is so clearly evident to those who dwell on the border land, where the two rival powers are brought face to face. And now what I wish my country-people particularly to understand is, that as long as they adopt a policy of stagnation, Cambria is sure to be worsted in the conflict for distinctive existence; because such is the law of evolution, a law which pervades all nature; and to this law I would now draw your attention.

What is called evolution or development in nature is a procedure from simplicity to complexity of structure. The more elaborate and special an organ is, the higher is the function which it has to perform. To select an illustration from the animal kingdom: among the lowest kind of animals called the hydra there is no distinction of parts such as seen in the human body; no nutritive, muscular, and nervous system; no senses, no brain. Each portion of them being complete in itself, these animals can be propagated by simply cutting them into bits. Each part is independent of every other part; as if in this country we had local government, but no central government. The whole is a medley in which there is no division of labour and of responsibility, no interdependence.

How different the case in man’s elevated and complex nature! And how can I express this more forcibly, or in a way better adapted for conveying to you the principle here held in view, than in these words of St. Paul:—“There are many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” The principle here enunciated is that of unity in variety. “The body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, though they be many, are one body.”

The chapter from which these passages are taken demands your special notice, in order that you may see how fully the Apostle’s mind was possessed with the law of unity in variety—many members, yet but one body; and together with the sequel to it, the New Testament song of love, should deeply impress upon our hearts the all important truth conveyed in the words, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof.” There will be diversities in the Church, there cannot be uniformity, but there must be unity. “For as it is noted by one of the fathers,” says Bacon, “Christ’s coat, indeed, had no seam, but the Church’s vesture was of divers colours; whereupon he saith, ‘In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit.’”

There was a time, even in the memory of living men, when Welsh households had little need of aid from commerce, when almost every kind of food was home grown, and almost every article of clothing home spun and home made. Some lament that this is not still the case. Let these, however, console themselves with the knowledge that as mankind progress, they are made, by division of labour, to become more dependent on each other, and that perforce the law of love, of mutual beneficence, is being propagated in the world, not only by the Christian ministry, but by the agency of commercial, scientific, and literary progress. Not only the inhabitants of the same land, but the various nations of the earth are more and more coming to this, that they can less and less do without each other’s co-operation.