Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

I. PEOPLE who love paradoxes would find in Daniel Owen a rich subject for the exercise of their in- genuity. For he is a character full of those contradictions which make paradoxes telling, and possesses at the same time that harmony in contradiction which makes some paradoxes-true. He was a good deal of a Puritan, who could be at times almost as coarse as a bargee. And, by coarseness here, I do not mean that downright frankness of expression that insists on calling ugly things by theii right names that is so far honest and healthy enough. I mean, rather, the delight taken in clothing the ugly object in suggestive dashes, or else in a dressing of circumlocu- tion more ugly and suggestive than the ugly name itself. Readers who remember the first chapter in Enoc Huws, and the account of the beating which Edward Tomos gave to Rheinallt will understand what I mean. Again, Daniel Owen was a really unworldly Methodist preacher who could work a master tailor's business on profit- yielding commercial lines, and be as shrewd in his judg- ments of men's weaknesses as customers as he was charitable in his estimate of their sins. As I have suggested, he was largely a Puritan. He accepted-not without misgivings, it is true-that curiously logical and curiously untrue division ot life into compartments which is the most distinctive mark of Puritanism while he could yet depict with understanding sympathy the unceasing search of the human spirit for that unification of thought which we call Truth. Or, to put this contradiction in terms of his own characters, he found but little difficulty in accepting in essentials the creed of Abel Hughes and Mari Lewis, while he understood the revolt ot the intellectually honest Bob Lewis, and the shattering sincerity of Will Biyan and Ismael. I do not think it solves the contradiction to say that he perceived a deep community of ideals between the former characters and the latter for there seems to me to be scarcely any evidence that he did. Neither is it a matter of the hospitality of a capacious mind. A capacious mind he did most indubitably have but no mind has ever been capacious enough to be able to afford house-room at one and the same time to two fundamentally opposed philosophies. His great gift of characterization accounts for much of the difficulty, in that it enabled him to enter into the inmost soul of characters whose con- victions he could not share. And, with all his under- standing insight into the character of Bob Lewis, a doubt disturbs us that Daniel Owen had decided for himself for the theology against which Bob tilted, and that he enjoyed only periods of lucid penetration into the" truth of Bob's no-creed, accompanied by uncomfortable uncertainty of the adequacy of the official theologies. I think it would be as near the truth of his mental position as it is possible to get to say that, philosophically, he was a Puritan with a very strong and uneasy sense of the inadequacy of the Puritan position. He was great enough to know that he was not altogether free great enough also to have occa- sional glimpses of the land where lay freedom; and DANIEL OWEN By The Rev. Lleto. G. Williams. chivalrous enough to admire those who had achieved freedom. It was a happy fate that decreed that for some years of life he should serve in the dual role of master tailor and Methodist preacher, because such a position afforded opportunities of observing human nature at work in the two most important activities of men, those of trade and religion. He thus secured knowledge of the inner workings both of the world and of the particular religious sect which to him represented the Church. And, spite of the irrecon- cilable cleavage which his theology made between Church and world, he had sufficient spiritual independence and intellectual integrity to allow much interplay between the impressions gained in the one sphere and the beliefs held in the other. This incessant sifting of impressions, and testing of beliefs which was rendered inevitable because of his unusual position affords a clue to many aspects of Daniel Owen's work which would be otherwise difficult to explain. It explains, for one thing, his imperfectly disguised dissatisfaction with his own and other people's Puritan creed a dissatisfaction none the less strong and real for the tenacity with which he clung to the creed. It was as if a scientist with a firmly-held hypothesis were constantly coming upon facts which his hypothesis did not explain. And though such a position does not induce mental comfort, it does make for tolerance, and for that firm conviction of human limitations which is the basis of all tolerance. It also explains his level balance of judg- ment and his ability to see his characters as men and women, and not as the puppets of a predestined fate or as mere customers, mere buyers and sellers. His balance of judgment and his insight are perhaps more surprising than we are apt to think. For Daniel Owen had to break through two very rigid classifications of men in order to attain to his penetrating levelheadedness the classifica- tion of men, which his theology made, into lost and saved, sinners and saints and the classification of trade, into customers and non-customers, debtors and creditors. Some of the profoundest social and religious problems that confront us to-day could be solved much more easily if social reformers and religious teachers could only be shaken free from their small classifications into an atmos- sphere of universality where they could for once understand the Christian conception of Man and forget petty theological and economic credal conceptions which are now their miserable substitutes for it. And, quite apart from an innate breadth of comprehension which he no doubt possessed, I think Daniel Owen's experience as shop- keeper and preacher helped him to break through, at least periodically, the stuffy and academic idea of mankind which too frequently rules in a preacher's study and the material and mechanical conceptions of the shop-keeper's counter. That he did break through both seems to me undeniable. Mari Lewis and Abel Huws are saints, but the first impression that they cut clearly on our minds is that they are a real woman and real man. Twm Nansi and Nansi herself are sinners, but we cannot resist their