Welsh Journals

the author meant, whether he agreed with him or not. His work as a commentator is charact- erized bv scrupulous fairness and an entire free- dom from idiosyncracies, and herein again David Williams himself is revealed in his work. Every important view is stated honestly, the difficulties are never slurred over and the exposi- tor leaves us in no doubt at all concerning his own opinion. He is free from idiosyncracies in the sense that he keeps to the main issues, refus- ing to spend his energies fighting mere shadows or expatiating on largely irrelevant minutiae. And constantly he warns his readers against the dangers of pressing either language or logic too far in interpreting the great passages of scrip- ture. He had a keen eye for what was funda- mental and independence, fairness and strength stand out as the characteristics of his work as a commentator. II. He took little part in denominational or academic politics. In that respect he was quite unlike his friend Dr. Thomas Rees, another of our recent and profound losses. David Williams was a little impatient with the routine and drudg- ery of committee work and all his spare time and energy were given to preaching. For every dozen who have read his books there are hundreds who will treasure the memory of his vigorous and inspiring preaching. Here again the secret lay in his grip of the essential content of the gospel and in the intensity and honesty with which his whole personality expressed itself in his message. It was best to hear him in the ordinary Sunday services rather than in the great preaching festivals of his country. More than once he expressed to the writer his fears concern- ing the kind of ministrv which he had perforce to exercise, viz., that of an Itinerant preacher who came one day and mavbe created a real impression but was not there to follow it up afterwards. No one had a greater horror of the merely emotional appeal or a more burning scorn for anything like tricks of oratory in the pulpit. In preaching again, he knew what was of first rate importance and what was not: and all sermons of his which one can now recall dealt with matters that were really central for faith and life. Though the cast of his mind was philosophical and theological, he had no use for a theology which could not be preached and much less for one which had no bearing at all upon life. It is this that makes his two Pauline commentaries so valuable and alive. David Williams was himself in full accord with the great principles of freedom and spiritual autonomy for which St. Paul fought so strenu- ously in the first century, nor were they to him so much dead theological lumber but living prin- ciples to be appi;ed to life to-day One remem- bers how in a recent Church Assembly he attacked the proposal to enforce total abstinence on elders by a mere rule-it was not for nothing that David Williams had read his Galatians-or how last year at the Liverpool Whitsuntide meet- ings he refused to regard Christian salvation as a series of negations and abstentions rather than a positive enriching and enlarging of life in every aspect. After St. Paul the Johannine writings in the New Testament had attracted him and this, too, was intelligible enough to those who knew David Williams. To intellectual vigour and a passion- ate insistence on the practical expression of religion in life he added something of the mystic's sense of the inward and sacramental character of life. Early last year the present writer spent a night under his hospitable roof and his host then declared that he was going to read the poets much more thoroughly than he had previously done, because he added "they are the people who see most deeply into the real meaning of life." His Davies' Lecture (1920) on "The Spiritual Gospel" was the fruit of his study of the Tohannine writings, but it has not been published. And among the reasons, which deterred him from publishing, was one that reveals his intellectual honesty his mind was still uncertain about some critical problems con- cerning -the Fourth Gospel and so the lecture has not been printed. His last and undoubtedly his greatest written work is his article on "Jesus Christ" in the new Welsh Dictionary of the Bible (1925). The value of that immense undertaking will be judged by half a dozen of its most important articles and among these that of David Williams will hold a pre-eminent place if only in virtue of its subject. He was himself a trifle disappointed that so little attention, even of a critical or hostile nature, had been paid to it when it first appeared and that the journals of his own Church only referred to it in that off-hand appreciative manner, which showed that it had not been read at all. It would be an excellent way of honouring his memory if that article could be published separ- ately in book form as was done with Dr. San- day's contribution on the same great theme in Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible" some years ago. This last literary product of his pen shows how admirably qualified David Williams was to interpret Jesus Christ to the mind of his age. Though fullv aware of the fact that Biblical Criticism had made dogmatism no longer possible on some points, he cordially welcomed all the hVht it had thrown on the background of Christ's life and ministry. Criticism had for him no terrors, for the truth is unassailable and the supremacv of Jesus was not for a moment in doubt for David Williams. III. It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon those qualities of character which caused him to be so