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MONTGOMERYSHIRE ANTIQUITIES.

WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT.

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WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT. The following important letter from the Rev. R. Temple, late Inspector of Schools in this district, ap- peared in the O-estry Adrertizer lost week, and at the request of several earnest Disestablishere we reprint it;— Sir.—I think the time has come when, in face of the violent feelings and exaggerated language so common on this question, somebody should try, at least, to view it dispassionately, and, with your kind leave, I venture to make the attempt. On the merita of Church Establishments in the abstract I take no strong party side, I do not think Church Establishments unscrip- tural, as the Liberationists do, or divinety obligatory upon nations, as older theologians of most Churches used to do. If the great majority of people in a country belong to one Church I see very strong reasons in fnvour of establishing it, but the establishment of the Church of a minority has always seemed to me politically unjust. Now there cannot, I think, be the least doubt that the Church of England is in Wales greatly outnum- bered by the Nonconformists. One of the strongest opponents of Disestablishment is leported to have said lately that the difference was three to one, and my long aquaintanoe with the Principality, and my observation of elections of all kinds, and most especially of School Board elections, lead me to the same conclusion. Montgomeryshire, where I inspected schools from October, 1868, to 1893, is by no means an extremely Nonconformist county, and its boroughs return a Conservative member, but even there the Nonconformists have a majority on every existing School Board, and if School Boards were made universal I do not believe there would be a Church majority in more than five parishes, at the outside, out of fifty. If then Wales is sufficiently distinct from England in its religious conditions to be treated as a separate country for the purposes of this question I cannot affirm that the maintenance of the Church Establish. ment there is politically just. I think that the character and origin of Welsh Nonconformity, so different from that of England, its peculiar organiza tion and modes of teaching, and its special attitude and relation to the Church of England, as well as in* continued prevalence of the Welsh language, do give sufficient ground for dealing with the Welsh as being for religious purposes a separate people. You have no space and I have no time to enable me to go into the long and complicated train of causes that led in the last century to the alienation of the Welah people from the Church of England. They will be found pretty fully given in the Essay on the Causes of Dissent in Wales," written more than fifty years ago by my uncle, Mr Arthur James Johnes. Two conclusions, however, may be drawn from a consideration of his statements, namely, that if the advocates of Disestablishment are wrong, as thPJ certainly are, in calling the Church Establishment an alien institution forced on the people, since in 1700 the great majority of the Welsh people belonged to it, on the other hand, it is true that if the Welsh Church had never been connected with that of England and had never, in consequence of that con- nection, been misgoverned by English Bishops and swamped by English pluralists, the demand for Dis- establisbment would, in all probability, never have arisen. It was thought by Englishmen that the Archbishop of Canterbury (doubtless a scholar of the highest order and a prelate of transcendent ability) made a strong point when, in a pardonable but florid flourish of rhetoric, he said that he had come to thg aid of tb< Welsh Establishment from the steps of St. Augustine's throne. Welshmen knew that he could not have come from a worse place, for they remem- bered the reception given by that saint to tho British Bishops—a reception that prevented the union of th Churches then, as the misrule of English prelates was the cause of severance now. Another source of alienation is the character of the opinions now dominant in the Church of England. The school of theology vulgarly called Evangeli- cal" would probably repudiate me, and I should in turn be inclined to think its teaching narrow and its views of life based on the Old Testament rather than the New, but its attitudetowards Nonconformity was conciliatory and sympathetic, and under its sway, if the question of Disestablishment had arisen at all, it would have been raised in a very different spirit from that which has been aroused by the action of clergy and Churchmen whose positions as regards Noncon- formity eannot, to say the least, be accurately des- cribed by those epithets. I have the very strongest devotion to the Church of England, and above all things to the teaching of her unequalled succession of great divines who beyond all others maintained and extended the sacred union of faith and reason, and I believe that that teaching is pre-eminently calculated to correct the faults of the Welsh character, but until it is dissevered from the associations of injustice with which among Welshmen it is at present connected, it will never bring the message of wisdom home to their hearts.— am, &c., R. TEMPLE. Ewhurf-t Rectory. Guildford, Oct. 12, 1893.

LLANMEREWIG.

THE WELSHPOOL DISPENSARY CONCERT,…

MONTGOMERYSHIRE CONGREGATIONAL…

CHURCHSTOKE.

DOLANOG.

BISHOP'S CASTLE.

u_____ DISTRICT I COUNTY COURTS.

A WELSHMAN" FUR NEWTOWN.

LLANFYLLIN.

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