Welsh Journals

Gobeithio'n wir y bydd y gyfrol nodedig hon yn tanio diddordeb o'r newydd mewn cyfnod pan oedd Cymru, os oes coel ar dystiolaeth wyrgam yr hen Biwritaniaid, yn un 0 'gorneli tywyll y deyrnas'. I'm tyb i, canrif oludog oedd yr ail ganrif ar bymtheg a da gennyf groesawu blodeugerdd sy'n codi cwr y lien ar rai o'i thrysorau. [This bulky and interesting anthology of early seventeenth-century poetry is an unusual addition to a successful series insofar as it seeks to portray social life in early Stuart Wales by means of its poetry. It will therefore serve as a valuable source of evidence for social historians. Much of the poetry-at least in the eyes of purists-is rebarbative and conventional, but it also reflects many fascinating aspects of daily life in a period when Wales was reckoned by Puritans to be one of 'the dark corners of the land'. The editor, Nesta Lloyd, deserves high praise for assembling an intriguing anthology and for providing a lively introduction and a set of illuminating notes for the untutored reader.] GERAINT H. JENKINS Aberystwyth COMMEMORATIONS: STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND HISTORY. By Alan P. F. Sell. University of Calgary/University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1993. Pp. xi, 394. £ 19.95. This is not an easy book to review. It consists of a series of essays of varying lengths on a wide variety of subjects, between which the connecting threads are few and tenuous. The subtitle, 'Studies in Christian Thought and History', is accurate enough but gives little indication of the diversity of subjects treated. Most of them are concerned with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century topics, and although a number of them are concerned with major characters like Cardinal Newman, C. H. Spurgeon, Richard Baxter, George Fox, John Wesley and our John Penry, others treated were- to this reviewer at all events-unknown figures seemingly of no great consequence. Nevertheless, the reader cannot but be impressed by the range of the author's interests and the detail of his knowledge. One is also struck by the liveliness of his mind and the energy of his written style. It must be concluded that if he lectures to his students at the United Theological College, Aberystwyth, with this degree of breadth and vivacity he must command an admiring and appreciative audience there. From reading the book I derived a marked impression that Professor Sell approaches his studies with a keen and bracing sense of ecumenism. He is obviously anxious that Christian groups should seek to understand each other's points of view more thoroughly and sympathetically, though he would readily recognize that in making such an effort it is important not to fudge genuine differences or paper over the cracks in order to arrive at an ostensibly agreed position. He is also under few illusions about how easy Christians have always found it to disagree with one another. There is, one might say, an inbuilt tendency among believers of the Reformed tendency to debate vehemently with one another- sometimes with less than Christian charity-about points of belief and doctrine and an