Welsh Journals

12 THE WELSH WEEKLY. January 15, 1892. THE SENTIMENTS OF SILAS STRONG. Sir Toby Without his Wit. The instructions given by the immortal Sir Toby Belch, respecting the proper mode of inditing a challenge, were, " taunt him with the licence of ink." "Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter about it." A writer whose name or nom de plume is C. H. Glascodine, has unconsciously followed the advice of the ancient worthy when he composed an article on " The Church in Wales " that appears in the January number of the Welsh Beview; but he lacks the wit necessary to make anything written in that style piquant, or even readable. Whether he writes in jest or earnest, we do not know. The only thing we can be certain about is the goose-pen. If he believes all he says, then he is in danger of the judgment for believing such non¬ sense, living as he does in Wales ; and if he is only poking fun, he deserves a castigation for perpetrating such a miserably poor joke. There is neither vinegar nor pepper in his article. It is a coarse and violent attack on Welsh Dissenters, in reply to the article of the Bev. Elvet Lewis, in the November number. It is true that he does " swear horrible " after the fashion of modern times; but he has for¬ gotten that " a terrible oath with a swagger¬ ing accent sharply twanged off" does not now give manhood great approbation, except in public- houses, over Which he seems to spread his segis. Total abstinence is ranked in the same category of "peculiar graces" as the "tithe war." The two offences of Welsh Dissenters are zeal for the observance " of the Lord's Day as a Sabbath," and their endeavours to curtail the liquor traffic. These are in addition to the unpardonable sin of promoting the Disestablishment of the English Church in Wales. , We fear that the author is after all in earnest, only that there is a peculiar clumsiness about his earnest strokes, that provokes a smile on the face of all who are more accustomed to the ways of controversy. He hacks without cutting. He attempts to distinguish between a Nonconformist and a Dissenter. The former "differ in forms only," whilst Dissenters "differ in dogmas and doctrines "—a futile distinction surely. We may farther judge of his crass ignorance when he thus defines the difference between Church and Dissent: " One is dogmatic and doctrinal, or largely so; the other not, or much less so." "Non-doctrinal religion" is " the equivalent for Dissenting religion." In a future article, perhaps the author will kindly furnish us with the distinction between " dogmatic " and " doctrinal," as applied to the teachings of a church. If we treated the author in the same absurd fashion as he treats the Nonconformists, we would say that the two cardinal virtues,or the two great commandments, of his dogmatic religion, are " Thou shalt get drunk, and thou shalt pay tithe, and whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." It is incredible that a man with any knowledge of the Principality should pen the following sentences :—" The Dissenting min¬ ister is in many places the centre and source of much of the dishonesty and violence that is, and has been, rife in the country. The Dissenting minister is answerable for an epidemic of disregard of all that goes to make the man a good citizen." Dissent is not in favour of truth, or honesty, or quietude and peace. Such vulgar and sweeping, and utterly un¬ founded charges, are too ridiculous to need refutation. They are onlyanother instance of the " licence of ink." The dignitaries of the Welsh Church are by no means skilful controversialists; but even the Bishop of St. Asaph could give this writer a few hints as to how to plead the cause of the Welsh Church. He has gene¬ rally some cock-and-bull story* to support his state¬ ments, or a table of fictitious figures from what he calls the " authorised statistics " of some Dissenting body; but Mr. Glascodine makes all these assertions on his own responsibility. Why did he not com¬ municate with Dean Owen, and he would undoubtedly have supplied him with a quotation in " beautiful Latin" from the correspondence of Taliesin Ben Beirdd, or from the letters of Bobyn y Goes Hir, to prove that the Welsh Church was founded by the Apostle Paul, and that Nonconformist ministers had neither brains nor conscience ? If he had written to the Bishop of Llandaff, he would have heard of the hosts of confirmation converts from Dissent—a tale to cheer his heart. Let Mr. Glascodine learn that a string of assertions, without pretence of proof of any kind, injures no one but the man that is imprudent enough to make them. Silas Strong. ETCHINGS FROM LIFE. AN OLD COUPLE. They live together in a quaint little cottage at the base of a precipitous hill—at least, the old dame lives there all day, and the old man comes there to smoke in the evening and to sleep at night. The cottage is one of the most curious you could meet on a long day's journey. The road curves sharply in front of it, and it seems as if a cart, turning the curve quickly, had overturned, and knocked the front wall in the middle until it doubled in with the blow. In the space left clear when the wall doubled in with the blow, there was a striking symbol of the old couple within; two trees had grown together, and their branches mingled above in a mutual embrace. Often did the blackbirds come to feast upon the clusters of red berries that covered them in autumn. William Thomas and Mary, his " old woman,'' had grown in like manner to maturity together ; in fact, there were only two questions on which Mary quarreeled with William. One was William's politics ; the other was William's smoking. William had a lurking sympathy with the Badicals; Mary accounted them past praying for. Of politics she knew nothing, and newspapers had no charm for her. The only news that she was interested in was the death-roll of clergymen. Their son John was a curate in the Church of England, which explains Mary's politics. Disestablishment was the boundary of her political world. When I spoke to her once about " the planks in the Liberal platform," Bhe said " she would like to get them to heat the oven, as she was going to bake next morning." Their other bone of contention was William's pipe. Often have I seen him draw it—a dirty two-inch clay thing—from his waistcoat pocket, and light it uncon¬ sciously ; but before the first column of smoke from his mouth had flattened itself against the low white¬ washed ceiling, Mary was tossing about in the con¬ vulsions of a cough that shook her whole frame. That was her way of objecting to the pipe. For fear she might cough herself to pieces, William would sidle away guiltily to the parlour, where Mary's agony would trouble him no more. It was always a pleasure for me to visit him, though he always repeated the same stories to me. At that period I was at school, some 60 miles away; but about once a fortnight went home, and called to see him. " Stop you now, Tom," he would say; "where are you now ? " You might suppose that such an indication of dense ignorance concerning my whereabouts would offend me. It didn't. It was a way the old man had to introduce a story, the scene of which was laid in the town where I was at school. I knew that beforehand, for the old man told me the story dozens of times ; it was always introduced by the same preliminaries. He would then ask me what chapel I attended, who was the pastor, and who was the leader of the singing. Now he would playfully inquire what sort of a man this leader of the singing was ; and after a faithful description of the outward and the inward man from me, William would jump on his feet with a shout, " His father was just Buch another man." "And thereby hangs a tale." The tale which the old man "had been working towards was about this father. " William, William," says Mary, testily, "you've told Tom that story before." The merri¬ ment faded away from William's face quicker than "breath off a razor." He indignantly denied the charge, and appealed to my recollection. Then I screwed my body, and contorted my features in a tremendous effort to remember, " No, I can't say that you have." Then he launched into it. In spite of Mary's Toryism and John's High Churchism, William Thomas was a deacon in the* village chapel. Mary never went to meeting. Some remembered a period when no week-night meeting was held without Mary Thomas being present. That period lasted for two months. There was no special revival at the time. During those two months a quarrel between two mem¬ bers was being thrashed out on the arena of the church meeting. When the spirit of battle departed from the air, Mary's devotion departed. But William Thomas was in every meeting, " like the clock." I shall not soon forget the last occasion on which I saw him. Some of the younger members, in a committee, advo¬ cated doing away with the weekly prayer meeting, on account of the sparse attendance during harvest time. Throughout the discussion William bit his lip in silent horror at this tampering with a sacred institution of the fathers ; at last he burst out: "At at any rate, don't lock the door, for I will come, though I have to come by myself." Bare old manl "Among the faithless, faithful only he." His righteous soul is vexed very much these days by the disrespect shown to the sacredness of the Sabbath day. On the way home from the Sunday School I remember once lifting my hand to pick a hazel-nut off a bough. This desecration of the Lord's Day brought a thundering reprimand from him down on my devoted head. In the village a story is told at his expense in this connection. Long ago, just when machines for threshing corn worked by steam began to come into vogue, William Thomas had a servant-man, who had gone to Herefordshire to work at the harvest the season before. William Thomas and this man were returning home from Sunday School together, when the servant noticed the cow had broken into the cornfield. " Master, Master 1" he shouted ; " the old cow is in the cornfield again." " Davey," answered the master, rebukingly, " let such worldly matters alone to-day ; can't you engage your thoughts with the wonders of the Judgment Day?" "Judgment Day, indeed !" retorted Davey, flippantly. " What if you had seen a steam-engine threshing corn in England ? You wouldn't talk much about the Judgment Day then!" The master was nonplussed, for he had never seen the wonders of the world beyond Offa's Dyke. B. THE TOWER OP REPENTANCE. Just after crossing the Border on one of his journeys to Scotland, Steele, according to Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, observed a shepherd on the hillside, reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. "And what do you learn from this book?" asked Sir Bichard. " I learn from it the way to heaven," answered the shepherd. "Very well," replied the knight, " we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would show us the way." Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence, at some miles' distance, and said,— " Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower." The party, surprised and amused, inquired the name of the tower. The shepherd answered, " It is the Tower of Bepen- tance." It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Bepentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Commertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round. " It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three H'gh souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century ; But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men; To write some earnest verse or line, Which, seeking not the praise of art, Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine In the untutored heart. He who doth this, in verse or prose, May be forgotten in his day, But surely shall be crowned at last with those Who live and speak for aye." —Lowell. A man, like a watch, is to be valued for his manner of going. —William Penn.