Wales

by William Watkin Davies

In 1743 was held at Watford what was probably the first Welsh Methodist Association; and, in the same year, another at Carmarthen. During the first few years there was active partnership between the Welsh Methodists and those of England; and plans were discussed for their unification. Fortunately these plans always failed to commend themselves to the majority, and the two bodies remained apart. By degrees Harris became estranged from all his early friends and coadjutors. For this he himself was, no doubt, chiefly to blame. He was not an easy man to work with, being jealous, obstinate, and masterful. Furthermore, his theological opinions were undergoing a change, and he had become subject to frequent ecstasies and visions, all of which he regarded as special revelations and tokens of Divine favour. The upshot of it all was that Howel Harris decided to live a life apart, and to form at Trevecka a sort of religious community which he called a Family. Something must be said about this scheme, which engrossed the last twenty-two years of his life (1751-1773) before we return to follow the growth of Methodism in general.

As early as 1736 Harris seems to have cherished the desire to found at Trevecka a community, after the pattern of that of Frank at Halle, or of the Moravians at Herrnhut and Fulneck; but for several years he was altogether absorbed in the work of evangelization. Now, however, he took up the idea with renewed zest. In preparing the house at Trevecka for the reception of the Community, he had the assistance of his friend and adviser Madame Griffith. Residents began to arrive in 1752, and continued to do so, from time to time, for many years. But the average membership remained throughout somewhere near a hundred. Every member was expected to put all his worldly possessions into a common fund. The concerns of the Family were both religious and industrial. Three services were held every day, and on Sundays four. But industry held almost as important a place in the scheme as religion; and it is this that makes Harris so prominent a figure in the economic and social, as well as in the religious, life of Wales. The first faint indications of the coming Industrial Revolution were beginning to be descried in England; but as yet Wales was almost wholly agricultural and pastoral; and, of course, what industries there were, were carried on in the cottages of the people. In a few short years the enormous mineral wealth of the country would be discovered; and the introduction of the factory system, and the construction of turnpike roads, would alter the whole face of society. More than a century earlier, an Industrial Community had been founded by the Vaughans of Bredwardine, but that had long sunk into oblivion: it was the Trevecka Family that really brought the main ideas of the Industrial Revolution to the doors of the Welsh people. The industrial pursuits of the new Community were interesting and varied. They picked wool, carded flax, and knitted. A woollen factory was instituted, and a printing-press installed. Harris and his followers were equally interested in the development of the land. He introduced new, and better, methods of growing turnips and corn, and also an improved system of crop rotation.

Our account of this versatile man would not be complete without a word about a most curious, and wholly unexpected, episode in his life. In 1756 the Seven Years' War broke out, and a French invasion of England was deemed to be imminent. Loyal citizens everywhere rushed to arms; and the Breconshire Agricultural Society, with which Harris was intimately connected, offered to form themselves into a troop of light horse. Five members of the Family joined the regular army. They served in Nova Scotia, besieged Louisberg, and fought with Wolfe at Quebec. Four were killed, or died of fever, and one only lived to return to Trevecka. In 1759 Harris joined the local militia; and was made, first an Ensign, and soon afterwards a Captain-Lieutenant. In this capacity he accompanied the troops to Yarmouth; and he did not return home until 1763, when the Peace of Paris put an end to all danger of invasion.

The last ten years of his life Harris spent quietly with the Family, his calm existence varied only by the assistance which he gave to Lady Huntingdon in founding her Methodist College at Trevecka Isaf. To the end he remained a member of the Episcopal Church; and at his funeral, in July 1773, fifteen clergymen administered the Sacrament to a multitude of twenty thousand people, who had come to show their affection and respect.

By this time congregations of Methodists had grown very numerous in Wales, and the problem of administering to their spiritual needs was becoming a difficult and a pressing one. It was obvious that the few clergy who had joined the Association could not cope with the situation. Large numbers of lay preachers had arisen; but none of them were ordained, nor did they claim the right to administer the Sacraments. The English Church was confronted with the alternative of either making its doors wider, so as to make it possible for the newly converted multitudes to find a congenial home within it; or of keeping its doors rigidly narrow, and so keeping the people out. The latter course was the one adopted. The leaders of the Church remained stiff, unsympathetic, and aloof. For years the small band of Methodist clergy strove hard to obtain recognition, having to perform the difficult task of restraining the eagerness of their own more extreme followers. To most of them, if not to all, the thought of a break with the Church was extremely repugnant; and they were prepared to go great lengths to make such a thing unnecessary. But on one point they remained firm: the people must have the preaching, and the religious services which they found to be of most spiritual value to them. If the Church could provide this, so much the better; if it refused, then secession must be bravely faced. In 1802 the Rev. Thomas Charles (better known as Charles o'r Bala) issued his Vindication, in which he repudiated the name "Dissenter," proved the absolute identity of the Methodists with the Church in creed, and made a last appeal for recognition. The appeal met with no response; and at the Association which met at Bala in 1811 Charles himself, while still protesting his preference for episcopal ordination, ordained eight preachers, of whom the great John Elias was one. This implied a definite breach with the Church. The great body of Methodists formed themselves into a new Church, with its own constitution and its own Confession of Faith. It became known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church. But even then six Methodist clergymen refused to quit the Establishment.

Throughout the nineteenth century Nonconformity flourished abundantly in Wales. The Revival had not only produced the Calvinistic Methodists, but had given a new and powerful impetus to the older sects; and between them they claimed the allegiance of the vast majority of Welsh people. The young Welshman, and even more so the foreigner, finds it a little difficult to understand the enormous place which the Chapel filled in the life of Wales during the greater part of the century. Those little plain square buildings, scattered so profusely all over Wales, so ugly in the eyes of the tourist, yet so sacred to those who dwell around them; what was the secret of their power and their charm? To-day there are many competing institutions—the school, the college, the club, and the library; but in those days the chapel was everything. In the pulpit the artistic soul of Wales found its full expression, as it has never quite succeeded in doing anywhere else. Its poetry (if we except its hymns), good as much of it is, never even approaches the very best. Its painting and its sculpture are almost non-existent. Even in music Wales has not given to the world anything of real distinction, and of abiding value. But between 1780 and 1880 it produced successive generations of preachers, who brought pulpit oratory to a point that has never been surpassed, even if it has been equalled, by any other nation before or since. Even to-day, when oratory has declined, and when there are so many competing attractions, there is nothing that the Welshman loves so well as a Preaching Meeting. Five thousand people will still come together eagerly to the village green on one of these great occasions. At six o'clock in the morning two sermons, averaging each an hour in length, will be delivered. These will be followed, at ten o'clock, by two others of the same length. In the afternoon two more will be delivered. The day will close with yet another two, or sometimes three, such sermons; and the multitude will disperse over hill and moor to their scattered homes, discussing the great feats of oratory to which they have listened, quoting and conferring with discrimination, and singing, for the twentieth time that day, some favourite hymn.

The accounts which we possess, written by eyewitnesses, of some of the effects produced by the great preachers make marvellous reading. In the hands of a John Elias, a Henry Rees, or a John Jones, the vast congregation, standing before them throughout the long summer hours, would be like clay. From tears to laughter, from ecstatic joy to the profoundest sorrow and the most poignant terror, it would be moved by a word, or even a gesture. So realistic and dramatic was the preaching of John Elias that, on one occasion when he was describing the Almighty letting the arrow fly from his bow, the whole vast audience parted in two in order to allow passage for the shaft. So powerful was the voice of Owen Thomas that, preaching at Bangor his accents could be distinctly heard in Anglesey across the Menai Straits. Needless to say, scenes of the most uncontrolled enthusiasm would prevail. Fear of Hell, and hope of Heaven would alternate in the hearts of the congregation; but in all the utterances of the greatest preachers the dominant note was the compelling love of God in Christ.

In the chapel, and in the federation of chapels, the Welshman learnt the difficult art of self-government. The rule of the parson had been an autocratic one; that of the Nonconformist bodies was, from the first, democratic. Every official, including the Minister himself, was chosen by a direct vote of the whole congregation. Even in a further, and a different, sense Nonconformity was democratic. Its members were mainly drawn from the middle and lower classes; and its Ministers, until well advanced in life, were simple workmen—John Elias a weaver, Christmas Evans a farm servant, John Jones a quarryman, Williams o'r Wern a carpenter. The doors of the Universities were closed against them; and Glyndwr's University of Wales was still an unrealized dream. They were the poor preachers of a poor people.

Did Nonconformity justify its existence? Was the life of Wales cleansed and elevated? The answer of the impartial historian must surely be an emphatic affirmative. Between the itinerary of the preacher Giraldus Cambrensis, and that of the preacher Howel Harris, a period of some five hundred and fifty years intervened; but it is difficult to see that the Welsh people were at all higher, mentally or morally, at the later date than they were at the earlier one. But add another hundred years, and no chance visitor would suppose that he was seeing the same people.