Welsh Journals

As might be expected of so vigorous a campaigner and so ardent an evangelist, he occasionally came to grief. His publication of criticisms of Wesleyan missionaries in India, published in the Methodist Times of 1889, led to bitter controversy within the Connexion, especially on the Missionary Committee, and proved to be a grave error of judgement. Towards the end of his life the stance he took in support of the Boer War offended many of his Liberal friends, and caused him to be lampooned in the popular press. Nevertheless, Hughes' achievements were considerable, and his death in 1902, at the comparatively early age of 55, was the occasion of widespread and genuine grief. His work with missions in particular marked him out as a proponent of a particular kind of Christian Socialism which the author identifies as 'a development. of the evangelical tradition of Methodism', arising from conversion theology, and shaped in the political and theological ferment of the revival, temperance and purity movements (p. 336). It would have been interesting, and instructive, to compare Hughes' thinking on evangelism with that of, say, William Booth and the Salvation Army, but no doubt considerations of space precluded such a comparative discussion. The picture that emerges from this fine, well-written study is that of a man of immense Christian conviction and courage, autocratic and overbearing at times, but a leader and organiser par excellence, and an eminent Victorian who deserves to be better remembered, not least by his fellow Welshmen. RHIDIAN GRIFFITHS Aberystwyth Robert Pope, Seeking God's Kingdom: The Nonconformist Social Gospel in Wales 1906-1939 [University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1999] xiii + 194 pp. ISBN 0-7083-1568-2. Price £ 25. Robert Pope has already done a great service to the religious and social history of Wales in his Building Jerusalem: Nonconformity, Labour and the Social Question in Wales, 1906-1939 (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1998). One of the criticisms made by reviewers of that volume was insufficient attention to the theological bases of the Nonconformist responses to social questions there described. This volume makes up for that deficiency, by publishing the chapter from the original Ph.D. thesis omitted from the first volume, and expanding it with new material. In a real sense, this must now be regarded as a two-volume work. The range of the book is more restricted than the title suggests. The core chapter, chapter 2, considers the work of only four theologians-three Congregationalists and a Baptist. This in itself is surprising, given that the largest Welsh Nonconformist denomination at the time was the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Furthermore, all four theologians were educated at Mansfield College, Oxford. To put it mildly, this means they were not typical of the Welsh Nonconformist clergy of their day. The most important of the four is D. Miall Edwards, author of the Welsh language liberal systematic theology Bannau'r Ffydd. It is to him that Pope devotes most space, and with whom he has most sympathy. His summary of Edwards's views on