Welsh Journals

ing, or rather his style, changed very consider- ably, but quite unconsciously, and became, to accept for a moment the generally accepted view of Welsh preaching, less distinctively Welsh. Two long and severe illnesses early in his career dulled somewhat the sweetness of his voice, and he reacted, as every true orator must, to his audiences. Many notes peculiarly Welsh dropped out of his preaching, and were replaced by others common to all great preaching. It is probable that many Englishmen who went to hear a great Welsh preacher found some of their preconceptions shattered when they heard T. C. Williams. They would expect, as they have been led to expect by some of our en- thusiastic, if not very discriminating, admirers, an outburst of sound and fire and fury, a veritable whirlwind of high notes and sweeping gestures. In actual fact they found in the pulpit a very calm, self-possessed and dignified presence, a master- orator, but one who had won and exercised his mastery by restraint. The central fact of T. C. Williams's life and the explanation of it all was his preaching. He could say, as few others can say This one thing I do; this one thing I want to do; this one thing I must do or die." He was interested in many things-the events of the day, the changes in the localities he knew, and their inhabitants, and the ups and downs of political life. He read about them all, and knew them, and could sum them up in a short, shrewd comment, but they never moved him deeply. In fact they were just his relaxations, and they counted for very little more in his life than the half-hour which the city business-man devotes in the train to the cricket page of his newspaper counts in his. His mind was set elsewhere. All his joys and his sorrows sprang from his preaching. He could brush aside all other gloom with a joke, and could bear heavy burdens bravely, but to feel that he had failed in his preaching, that something had gone awry with his sermon and any service which he conducted, made him the most miserable of men. And he loved to be praised and thanked for his preaching; lie drank all this avidly, and would repeat it glad- ly to his friends. It was all he sought. Wealth was never his aim. To be an ecclesiastical states- man, or to be reckoned among the leading people in the politics of his county or his country, only appealed to his sense of humour. He just wanted to preach and to preach well, and to know that he did so. He would accept the compliments and kindnesses of magnates and Cabinet Ministers in the spirit which, let us hope, led the Pope of old to expect the holy Roman Emperor to hold his stirrup for him. They were for him tributes paid not to Thomas Charles Williams, but to his sacred calling. Side by side with this passion for preaching, there was another side to his nature, which kept the balance true. He had a very high sense of, and was very jealous for, the dignity of all re- ligious service and the solemnity of the act of worship. He never forgot that preaching was but a part of worship, and never lost sight of the whole in the part. This was one strand in the strong tie of affection and admiration between him and tne Episcopal Church. He could never see that preaching in a church need be poor, and be- lieved that it would gain in real greatness and effect by being made more definitely and explicitly, as he believed that Church makes it, only one part, neither subordinate nor predominant, in the Church's service. It was on this high ground that he disliked his own Church's practice of arranging for two men to preach in the same ser- vice on great occasions. It was not that he objected to being one of two, but that he felt that the unity of the service and the wholeness of the act of worship were broken bv the custom. Well, what did he preach? To what school did he belong? Was his theology liberal or con- servative? This is bv no means easy to answer. I believe the correct answer to be that he was neither or both. Really he was an eclectic. He had a few strong and deep convictions, from which he never moved, and with which he never played. Outside these, and as long as these were not questioned, the quickness of his perception en- abled him to see the point and value of any sincere and reasonable contribution, whether old or new, to religious thought, and seeing it, he could and did express it. He would use all things, old and new alike, in the service of his message, and out- side the sacred bounds of his soul's convictions (and these are never manvl he was not consistent, and never sat down to attempt to attain this con- sistency. He spoke, to paraphrase Emerson, what he thought one day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and another day spoke what that day thought in hard words again, though it contra- dicted everything he said on the first day. A few years ago he preached the closing sermon at the Caernarvon Sassiwn, of all places, on the Good Shepherd's other sheep which are not of this fold, and set all the greybeards wagging in grave dis- may at the unorthodoxy of his views. A few months later, from the Moderator's chair at Liverpool, he fulminated with tremendous passion and power against the modernizing trend of his younger brethren and the subversive tendency of their ministry. Clearly he had not been called to lead a theological party or to resolve doctrinal difficulties. He had another and a greater work to do. Such was he to the great body of his fellow-countrymen, — a great preacher, a brilliant conversationalist, and a man of insight and great abilities. Many, and especially his neighbours, knew other things about him. They knew the kindness of his heart and the anguish which the sufferings and sorrows of those whom he knew caused him. He had a heart quick to feel and sympathise. I well re-