"The question is, 'What is the Methodist Constitution ?' and I shall give the answer in his own words (i.e. Wesley's), which, though I am not sure they are printed, yet I am willing to go into eternity declaring that he said them to me, and I know not that he has not said them to hundreds. His words were, As soon as I am dead, the Methodists will be a regular Presbyterian Church.' And he did not mean we should become such by making any alterations in our government, for the thing is true if he had never said it; but he meant that his death would make us such."

And so, says Bradburn, "We are not Episcopalians; we cannot be. We are not Independents; we will not be. Therefore we must be Presbyterians, whatever we may choose to call ourselves." And he further remarks, "Our Quarterly Meetings answer to those Church meetings in Scotland called the Presbytery; our District Meetings agree exactly with the Synod; and the Conference, with the National or General Assembly."

And so in 1792, in the face of some temporary opposition on the part of a small but more conservative section, it was determined that ordinations should take place under sanction of Conference, and of it alone; any breach of this rule entailing exclusion from the Connexion.

Within a short space after Wesley's death, in the Manchester Conference of 1795 (where the famous "plan of pacification was adopted on the other vexed question of administering the Sacraments), ALEXANDER KILHAM, who had itinerated in Scotland, and had acquired a strong preference for its Presbyterian system of lay representatives, brought forward his proposals in this direction, to modify the oligarchic rule of the Legal Hundred, but in such a spirit as to ensure his own exclusion, and the founding of "The New Connexion," on more democratic and more distinctively Presbyterian lines.

The convulsions that ensued from time to time during this century showed the need of the original Wesleyan body submitting to some more Presbyterianized development, in order to get over the one weak point of having a purely clerical Con

ference, while yet they had a lay element in all subordinate judicatures.

In 1877 and 1878 the final and natural consummation of their Presbyterian Polity was happily attained, by constituting a United Conference of ministers and lay representatives, and by arranging, ten years later, in 1888, that the meeting of the lay Conference should have precedence of the other or distinctively pastoral one; and thus the last stage of a fully-organized Presbyterianism has been reached among the Wesleyan Methodists, who may be most truly called The Presbyterian Methodist Church.

Q Q

II.

RISE OF THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THEIR CHURCH IN

WALES.1

THE CALVINISTIC METHODISTS of WALES; or, as they are now commonly called, the Welsh Presbyterians, had their origin in the great Evangelical movement before the middle of last century. Though deriving its name eventually from the Methodism of England, the religious revival in Wales was really the earlier one of the two. It had already sprung up before Wesley or Whitefield had begun their Evangelistic labours. Owing to its strong attachment to Calvinistic doctrine, Welsh Methodism assumed in an early stage an attitude of antagonism to Wesley's own personal teaching and agency; preferring to cast itself rather, for assistance, upon George Whitefield, through whom it derived its Methodist name, and to whom it looked up with the greatest respect, though never putting itself under his leadership. Whitefield's forte, in fact, was that of a travelling and evangelizing, but not an organizing influence; and indeed he was too much on the move, in America and elsewhere, to wield any strong or continuous influence, save indirectly, on the course of Welsh Methodism. The religious revival in the Principality was primarily an Evangelistic or Gospel-preaching movement, with little or no organization; and for more than half a century it continued under the sway of the same generic impulse, without any particular régime. Gradually, however, the need of some distinctive mode of administration was realized; though it was not till 1811 that the movement assumed a distinctly separate and organized form, when, after long and

1 Chief authorities are History of Welsh Methodism, by Rev. John Hughes, Liverpool, 3 vols., Oct., 1856; and Welsh Calvinistic Methodism: a Historical Sketch of the PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH of Wales, by Rev. W. Williams, of Swansea, 1871. See also Article METHODISM, by Dr. J. H. Rigg, in Encyc. Britan., ninth edition.

anxious deliberation, the important step was taken of ordaining men apart from Episcopal authority, and thereby consolidating the new Connexion. Henceforward, the organization became more and more distinctively Presbyterian; though it was not till 1864, when the Calvinistic Methodism both of North and South Wales put itself under the control of one common "General Assembly," that the Presbyterianism of its government became more clearly manifest, and the Presbyterian name began to be used.

In offering a few notes on these two main points,-the spiritual revival which gave birth to Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, and the ecclesiastical organization it ultimately assumed,-we need do no more at the outset than simply remind the reader that there were many Presbyterian elements and principles imbedded in the original and early native Welsh Church, before it was by conquest incorporated with that of England and stripped of so much of its special characteristics as well as of its property to enrich some English cathedrals; and that the Presbyterian movement in the Church of England, from 1570 and onwards, made its mark and left its traces on the religious condition of the Principality. The history of the Presbyterians in Wales followed, however, very much in the wake of their fortunes in England, so that in 1715, when we come upon the first carefully collected statistics, we find mention made of only nineteen Presbyterian Churches in Wales and Monmouthshire, while there were thirty-five Independent and fifteen Baptist Congregations. Even among these comparatively few Nonconformist bodies, there was at work a leaven of that kind of sentiment which had a tendency in not a few cases to degenerate into Arianism, and which ultimately landed in Unitarianism. The spirit that reigned in the Church Establishment was no better; and a painfully lurid light is cast upon its condition by the proceedings and evidence

2

1 The list, prepared with much care by Dr. John Evans, the Presbyterian successor of Dr. Daniel Williams in Hand Alley, London, is preserved in MS. in the Williams Library, and is given by Dr. Rees in his History of Nonconformity in Wales, p. 259.

2 Rees, History of Nonconformity in Wales, p. 297.

of the grave charges at the trials of the Bishops of St. David's and St. Asaph's, which resulted in the deprivation of the one for gross malpractices (22 Feb., 1700) while only the humiliating confessions of the other obtained the removal of his suspension, 5 May, 1702. The condition of religion throughout the Church of Wales, with a few bright and honourable exceptions, was in the main truly deplorable. It is however but just to observe that the religious revival sprang up from within the bosom of the Established Church; and if only its Bishops and clergy had known the time of their merciful visitation, and had striven to guide the movement as they ought, its future history might have been a different one.

THE SPIRITUAL AWAKENING.

In three different counties of South Wales there sprang up, -almost simultaneously and quite independently, under three young men, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and Howell Davies, unknown to one another, that remarkable religious awakening, in 1735-6, which ultimately issued in modern Welsh Presbyterianism. Howell Harris may be regarded as foremost in the work-a young man of gentle blood and superior social position, who belonged to Trevecca in the parish of Talgarth, County of Brecon, South Wales. On 30th March, 1735, which was the Lord's day previous to the Easter Communion, Howell Harris, who was then about 21 years of age, resolved, under some emphatic words of exhortation from his parish clergyman, to become a communicant and prepare for the solemn rite. Strong religious convictions settled upon him; and the weeks after his first Communion were weeks of inward spiritual struggle under a deep sense of sin and the need of a Saviour, whom at last he found, and in whose peace he rejoiced. In November his friends sent him to Oxford, "to cure him of his fanaticism"; but the prevailing secularity and ungodliness of the University life at the time completely sickened him, and sent him home at the end of his first term,

1 View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. David's about the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, by Dr. Erasmus Saunders, 1721.