The twenty-ninth meeting of the Church Congress assembled on Tuesday,
the Archbishop of Canterbury opening the pro- ceedings with a historic sketch of the Church in Wales, which ended with an exhortation to the clergy to bear their persecu- tion (in the tithe matter) patiently ; for the Church went on with her work ever more earnestly, and "there are no such conversions as are wrought by doing good to them that despitefully use you." As was natural in such a place, the state of the Church in Wales was a great subject of considera- tion, and the general tone was hopeful. The Bishop of Llandaff maintained that at least a third of the population belonged to the Church, and that, so far from her being the Church of the rich, she was doing the main work in the new and congested centres of population. Mr. J. T. D. Llewellyn, a very popular clergyman, thought these statistics too un- favourable. In 1885, when the election was fought on the question of Disestablishment, 98.593 votes were given on that side, and 67,260 against it, being a proportion of three to two, a result confirmed by Mr. Gee's census of attendance at worship. The returns of burials give the remarkable result of 20,598 by clergymen of the Church, and only 1,144 by anybody else; but those of marriages are less favourable. The Established clergy in 1881 married 4,150 couples, and the Nonconformist only 2,198 ; but 3,870 were married before the Registrar, indicating an indifference to the religious aspect of the contract we should not have expected. On the whole, the truth would seem to be that a large majority of the people of Wales have given up the Church as tutor, but retain a high respect for her as adminis- trator of sacred offices. The general idea for the improve- ment of her position was embodied by Mr. Stanley Leighton in the advice to preach in Welsh, make the services musical, and condescend more to the Welsh fondness for meeting together in a half-formal way. We see little trace of de- spondency in any of the speeches.
Previous page
