16 OCTOBER 1909, Page 17

THE BISHOP OF CARLISLE AT SWANSEA.

[To THE EDITOR 07 TIM " S7scraros.-1 Sin,—I venture to think that you have done signal service to the Church in Wales by drawing attention in last week's Spectator to the sermon preached by the Bishop of Carlisle at Swansea in connexion with the recent Church Congress. The spirit of that sermon and the attitude of thought it represents—I write as a Welshman who can claim to know something of Wales—will do much to clarify the issues, to allay suspicion, and to conciliate Nonconformist feeling. All Welshmen who have given thought to the history of the rise of Welsh Nonconformity know that in its origin it was emphatically and essentially a spiritual force, and, whatever its shortcomings may be, it has been empowered from on high to lift the Welsh people to a closer walk with God. Bitterness and strife may now at times be painfully apparent—and the fault does not lie entirely on one side— but large tracts of Welsh Nonconformity remain spiritual in their aim and life. The Bishop of Carlisle's sermon cuts through the pretensions of an exaggerated sacerdotalism, which is foreign to the very fibre of Welsh Nonconformity, and invites co-operation in larger ideals of Christian thought and service without prejudice to that heritage of polity and worship which Churchmen value as in accord with the mind of the primitive Ecclesia. Might I suggest how desirable it would be for either the Central Church Committee of Defence or the Spectator to get permission to print the sermon in pamphlet form, and post a free copy to every minister of the Established Church and of the Nonconforming Churches in Wales ? If the Spectator would open its columns to a sub- scription-list, the whole cost of such an effort would, I think, be speedily defrayed.—I am, Sir, &c.,

Gsonon H. WILLIAMS.