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

by William Gabriel Davies

It is recorded by those who have sought the conversion of the savage that his capacity for receiving Christian truth is commentate only with the contracted character of his intellect, and the low range of his attainments. If he does become a Christian, it is only such views of the Gospel find an abode in his heart as accord with the feeble mental powers which he possesses. And now I would ask, is this degree of truth all that is absolutely necessary for salvation in every ease? Being but a child in intellect, the savage is not yet capable of putting away childish things. But you may think he can be educated, and be thus brought into a state of mind in which the seed of the Word may grow with less stint. But then it is found that his capacity for education, except in rare instances indeed, is very slight. So again I ask, after an attempt has been made to enlarge his mind, is that measure of Christianity which he is capable of realizing all that is absolutely necessary in every case? I take it for granted that your answer to this question is in the negative. Do you not believe that besides the education of individuals, there is, as the result of this, the education of the race; that as the sins of the fathers descend unto the third and fourth generation of them who continue to hate God, the punishment for violation of law increasing in intensity till the guilty race dies out; so God’s mercies in the shape of increasing aptitude for knowledge, refinement, and Christian elevation, are transmitted from generation to generation among those who stedfastly love the Lord? At all events, savage tribes when brought under the influence of civilized nations, instead of becoming civilized themselves, disappear from off the face of the earth. For as the wind which makes the larger flame burn more brightly, extinguishes the lesser and feebler flame, so the manners and customs of advanced life put upon savage nature a strain too heavy to be borne; and this because such a nature needs to undergo that gradual elevation of the race which it would take generations to accomplish.

What is the drift of these remarks? That the more the mind is developed, both intellectually and emotionally, the greater becomes its power of realizing the knowledge of good, and therefore of glorifying God—the Good.

When a gifted man stores his mind with truth, and at the same time strives his utmost to attain purity of heart, his Christian experience must needs be widened, and his whole soul elevated, in proportion to the number of distinct kinds of truth which combine with each other, and with the ruling passion of his life, to form one grand result, many systems of truth all threaded on that one cord, “the love of Christ constraining;” much differentiation, but perfect unity; many members, yet but one body; in short, a state of mind similar in kind to the Son of Man’s. For is there anything in the whole range of the sciences, physical, biological, political, social, and moral; anything connected with the theory and the practice of art; anything relating to the history of the past, even eternity ab ante; in short, is there anything which is not perfectly open to the mind of Jesus? And is He not our elder Brother, and divine Pattern in all things heavenly? Is not the realization, in so far as that privilege is extended to us of His mind, to be the grand object of our life here and for evermore?

To be possessed of talents and of facilities for obtaining for them the highest cultivation, what do these gifts involve? That they should be diligently used in promoting the glory of God who gave them. Can the savage mind know much of God? Can he who knows no more of the infinite ocean of truth than he has explored of it, so to speak, in his rude canoe, know as much as is really essential for you and for me of the redeeming love of Christ? The true answer to this question evidently is, that in a babe’s mind you can expect no more to exist than a babe’s knowledge; it has “need of milk, and not of strong meat;” but “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.”

The Christian life then is not a fixed quantity, the same in the child, the savage, the barbarian, and the Welsh peasant, as in the saintly scholars of the Christian Church; but answering to every advance in pure knowledge, there is, in the man after God’s own heart, a corresponding advance in moral and spiritual excellence. For emotions are manifested only in proportion as ideas form the branches round which emotions twine. No well-defined emotion can exist without its related ideas. True, ideas are countless, while emotions are comparatively few, and from age to age retain their identity and freshness, while ideas change and change. Still, however, emotion must enter into union with ideas in order to have any definite existence. The more, therefore, the intellect is stored with knowledge, the greater also must be the number of instances in which ideas and sentiments become associated together.

But what is of more importance still to consider is, that certain ideas can only exist when other ideas have been fully realized first. The former grow out of the latter as branch from trunk, and twig from branch. Certain twinings of feeling with thought must follow, therefore, the evolution of these various grades of ideas. Now the notions in the savage mind are of the lowest grade, and rest assured that his religious feelings, however warmly manifested, cannot reach beyond the level of his knowledge.

Now it must be almost superfluous to ask the question which these remarks suggest. Are all the thoughts and feelings which hold a higher elevation than the lowest, to be deemed, not as the necessaries, but the luxuries of religion? You cannot fail to perceive that the reply to this inquiry must depend on the level you have been made to occupy. If you have been placed in a high position to start from, and if every advantage in the way of mental culture has been extended to you, the one thing needful for you is clearly to push on higher, to enlarge the intellect by searching still further for the true, which to the heart is the good and the beautiful; and to enlarge the heart by cultivating for these latter, an evergrowing love. Moreover, are you not justified in believing, that if you do this, you will be choosing that good part which shall not be taken away from you when you die? For if we are not to forget in heaven that we were once on earth; if we are not to lose the feeling of identity which is to unite our heavenly with our earthly existence, why should it be thought incredible that the knowledge of good which we acquire below should not be one of the links in that chain of identity; more especially as it will be our supreme delight to be always extending such knowledge in the realms of light? Yea, what a source of joy it will be in the bright spirit-land to discover that our mental powers are as compared with their prior state, so much enlarged and strengthened, that we can acquire knowledge with so much more ease and precision than while on earth, and that questions which baffled solution then, are easily solved now. But does not this imply that the remembrance of the earthly life, with its trials, miseries, infirmities, ignorances, and doubts, is the dark surface, which by contrast, heightens the splendour of celestial bliss?

Even in heaven, then, knowledge will be progressively acquired. “No one,” writes Dr. M‘Leod, “surely imagines, that on entering heaven, we can at once obtain perfect knowledge; perfect, I mean, not in the sense of accuracy, but of fully possessing all that can be known. This is possible for Deity only. For it may be asserted with confidence that Gabriel knows more to-day than he knew yesterday.” [23]

Throughout these remarks, it has been supposed that the scholar’s piety is great; for without piety, however extensive his learning, he will have less insight into divine truth than the dullest of God’s own scholars. Truth also impels us to concede that the good qualities of the heart, and intellectual capacity, are frequently bestowed in an inverse proportion upon God’s people; so that many that are first in the one, shall be last in the other, and the last in this shall be first in that.

I have now, to the best of my endeavour, combated a too prevalent propensity, not only of my countrymen, but of most people of little or no education; a sort of complacent resting in ignorance, as if it were the part of a wise man, and most in accordance with the teaching of Holy Scripture, whereas it is, in fact, but the self-excusing Stoicism of the unfledged mind.