Miscellaneous Papers on Subjects Relating to Wales (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 Excerpt: ... taverns, Sunday sports, and other irreligious amusements. The glaring failure of the Established Church to evangelise the nation, during a whole century when she had the country entirely to herself, without a single Nonconforming teacher to attract the people from her clergy, naturally leads us to conclude that Wales in the present day would have been as dark as the most unenlightened districts of Ireland, had not Protestant Nonconformity done for it what the Establishment was either unable or unadopted to accomplish. The laudable efforts of a few clergymen in former ages, and several in the present age, to promote religion and education among the middle and lower classes, have often been adduced as proofs of the utility and adaptation of the Established Church to do good. But does not the fact that she had been almost utterly useless and inactive during the first century of her existence, and comparatively so during the second, amount to a presumptive proof that she would have been to this day as useless as ever, had she not been compelled, by the activity of rival Nonconforming sects, to do something to save herself from utter extinction? The Established Church of this country, for aught we know, is as well adapted to answer the purposes of a religious establishment as that of any other country; but where is there, or has there been, a Protestant State-Church which has effected any extensive permanent good in any nation, where no Dissenting sect existed to goad her to activity? BECENT ACTIVITY OF THE CHURCH. RISE OF NONCONFORMITY. As a further proof that the present life and activity of the Church are to be attributed to the existence and influence of Dissent, we may refer to the fact that the parish churches are much better attended in those districts w...