Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

Thomas Charles Williams, D.D. By the Rev. John Roberts, M.A. NINETEEN-twenty-seven has been a calami- tous year for Welsh Presbyterianism, and indeed for the Welsh pulpit. In the death, first of David Williams, and then, in less than three months, of T. C. Williams, we have witnessed the passing of two men who, in different ways and by the exercise of strikingly different gifts, had become outstanding figures in the religious life of Wales. In one respect T. C. Williams was the inheritor and the bearer of a great tradition. He was born in Anglesey, in the village of Gwalchmai, and a man whose destiny and only strong desire was to be a great preacher could not have made a better choice among the counties of Wales. His father and his grandfather were ministers; his maternal uncles were all ministers, who, though they died young, won for themselves enduring fame as men of eminent and brilliant gifts. He was born thus into a preacher's home and into the land of preachers, for Anglesey, fifty years ago, had but one hero-the great preacher-and but one red-letter day in its calendar-the great day of the Sassiwn. He readily absorbed these influences, and grew up in this congenial atmosphere, almost uncon- sciously, to be a preacher. I do not think that the idea of doing anything else ever crossed his mind. When he began to preach there was no long and toilsome apprenticeship. He came forth from Gwalchmai fully-fledged and of full stature, with all a veteran's command of himself and of his art. Many of those who heard him in the first few years of his preaching will declare to-day that he never preached better than in those days. This is not surprising, for in those days he was carrying on with but very slight modifications and with an equipment never excelled, the old tradition of the great preachers of his land. He preached very much as they had preached, and the old notes were heard, invested with a new sweetness in his voice-those old, soothing, caressing, haunting cadences which have charmed the Welshman's heart since the days of the Methodist revival, and which even then may not have been new, but were only heard anew after a long and silent winter. They may have been familiar long ago in the sacred aisles of Penmon, and the groves of the Druids' Isle may have heard them ere ever the name of Christ was known in this land. T.C. was educated at Gwalchmai, and later at the High School, Oswestry, when that institution, under the supervision of the late Mr Owen Owen, almost attained the distinction of being the Public School of Welsh Nonconformity. Thence he proceeded to the denominational college at Bala, and after a short stay there, to the University College, Aberystwyth, and so to Jesus College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1898 with honours in Theology. He did well in Oxford-more than well, in fact, when the many demands upon his time and energies to preach all over the Principality, which date from his Aberystwyth days, are borne in mind. All his terms were broken terms. It is difficult to define exactly what and how much his education, and Oxford in particular, did for him. He would not allow them to make him a scholar, and they could not have made a student of him. He was not built on those lines. One effect Oxford had upon him to a very marked degree. It introduced him to a new and a wider world and broadened his sympathies. His nature was keenly and deeply sensitive to all aesthetic appeals, and the charm of Oxford he never forgot. He loved, all his life through, the things under whose shadow Oxford grew, and for whose service it was founded. Thus, while he was a loyal son and servant and leader of his own Church, he was never that and nothing more. He never mistook Calvinistic Methodism for Christendom, and he knew, not merely as a historical fact, but felt it in his bones, that Christianity existed prior to 1735. He had a remarkable mind-in fact, a brain of a very high order. It worked rapidly behind a seeing eye. He looked at a situation, saw it very clearly, and saw all there was of it. And with the glance he sized it all up and summed it all up in a phrase. His wit, for which he was famous enough to have many sallies of which he was not guilty fathered upon him, was not merely a matter of verbal felicity. It was quite as much a matter of insight, and his authentic sallies and repartees were not only very smart, but also very true. He could read a book, or, at least, most of it, and would get its point and message very clearly, and in doing so would link it up with all else he knew. It was this gift that enabled him, in a busy life of almost incessant preaching and travel- ling, to keep almost, if not quite, abreast of his times, and preserved him from the dismal fate of the man who can preach, but has nothing, or only old things, to say. At the end of his course in Oxford he accepted a call to become the minister of the Welsh Church at Menai Bridge, and there he remained to the end of his days. The relationship between him and the Church at Menai Bridge was a very close and affectionate one. It is true that they did not see very much of him, but because of his almost uncanny insight into human nature, he knew them intimately, and in their hours of sorrow and dis- tress they found in him a very near and sympa- thetic friend-a very present help in time of trouble. From Menai Bridge, for twenty-eight vears he went forth to preach throughout the Principality, and, as the years rolled on, with an ever-widening range, all over England and Scotland, with a crowded visit to America thrown in. His preach-