The Sun.
London, England, 1853-11-14 00:00:00

THE BIS.HOP OF LLANDAFF VERSUS THE

WELSH PEOPLE.

TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD J. RUSSELL

My LORD, —Dr. 011ivant being chiefly indebted to
your lordship for his present high position in the Welsh
Church, I would respectfully direct your attention to
the details of a public meeting lately held under his
auspices, and but too plainly declarative of that uncon-
ciliating and adverse spirit towards the Welsh people, of
which his previous conduct had afforded many indica-
tions.

The Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, of Oct. 8, con.

tains an authorised report of the annual meeting of the
Cardiff Auxiliary Branch of the Pastoral Aid Society,
held on Monday, Oct. 3, 1853—the Right Rev. the
Bishop of Llandaff, in the chair.
After having stated the general objects of the society,
and shown that the enormous increase of population in
certain parts of his diocese requires a proportionate
increase in the number of religious instructors, his
lordship proceeded to argue against the alleviating
suggestion that the defective action of the Established
Church is in any degree supplied by Dissenting teachers.
Alluding, as an instance in point, to the district of Hir-
waun, his lordship commended the Vicar of Aberdar for
having recently taken measures to provide a separate
church for about 3,000 persons inhabiting that portion
of his parish, and manifested great astonishment and
indignation at the protest which had been entered by a
writer in the " Diwygiwr" of Sept. 1853, against the
Vicar of Aberdar's collecting circular, which describes
Hirwaun to be lying " in a condition of barbarism and
pagan ignorance ;" and leaves utterly unnoticed the re-
gular chapel services, Sunday schools, and week-day
prayer-meetings, which constantly afford religious in-
struction to about 2,300 persons in that district.
Attempting to nullify this statement, and to prove
that the dissenting ministers alike of the diocese of
Llandaff, and of the whole principality, do not furnish
their respective congregations with the necessary means
of grace and salvation, the Bishop then produced from dif-
ferent Welsh publications of various dates, " certain selec-
tions," shadowing forth to his lordship's own view "the
condition of this countryas it is described by the Dissenters
themselves :" the extracts being translated from the
original Welsh. The Bishop's first quotation was made
from the " Drysorfa" of Sept., 1852, wherein the Rev.
D. Jenkins deplores that " the outward and circum-
stantial matters of religion seem to be in a flourishing
state, but the inward and spiritual matters are with-
ered," &c.

His second quotation was from the " Seren Gomer"
of March, 1852. It complains in the words of a Bap-
tist minister, that " there was no one who could boast
a great increase in numbers, and in consequence ther3,
were many who sorely lamented their want of success,
&AL

Were the clergy of the Established Church equally
alive to their position, its superior privileges and en-
hanced responsibilities, surely similar complaints would
well befit them.
The Bishop quoted, 3dly, from the " Diwygiwr," of
July, 1853, a passage in which the Rev. S. Griffiths
says :—" In spite of all the places of worship, schools,
ministers, preachers, deacons, Sunday-school teachers,
all the hundreds of crowded congregations and thousands
of communicants (q. communicants ?) or religious pro-
fessors, yet many are to be seen turning to Popery, yea
to different kinds of Popery," &c.
Here is a decisive testimony, inadvertently produced
by the Bislop himself, and establishing the very facts
which he denies.
Ist. That the necessary means of grace and salvation
abound among the We!sh Dissenters.
2d. That those means are attended upon, by mul-
titudes of people.
As regards the alleged converts to "different kinds
of Popery" among the Welsh, few, indeed, will their
numbers appea' when compared with the hosts of Eng-
lish Tractarians within the very pale of the Established
Church, and with the hosts of apostates who are daily
forsaking it for Rome.
His lordship's 4th quotation appears to have been
made merely as the occasion of a
,iblerty satiricalof allusion to
religious liberty, that conscientious ,
sying" or preaching, for which the loyalo Bishop, Jerem
Prophe-
Taylor, so eloquently pleaded of ld
The fifth quotation, which is from. y
the "
of December, 1851, bears upon the recent perversion of
" hundreds, OR thousands" to Mormonism, &c.
Scrutinising malevolence alone could ever have at-
tached importance to a charge so futile and so indeter-
minate.
With weak and wearisome reiteration the Bishop re•
minded his hearers that these were the statements of
Dissenters, and that he would not answer for their
truth, adding—
"l do notsay
oansko, ?ij they are t whether they are or not, but I simply
rue, is it not a call on you, on every
The Bishop next quoted from the " Diwygiwr," of
185, p. 121,
ic ___a passage tending to show that there exist
an our works," where people of different races and