Another Critical Review 02

The review continues

In what Mr Morgan endeavours to say, he offends greatly against right feeling and good taste, by omitting all reference to the weak points in John Elias's character. Such there are in all men, and in men of strong minds they are frequently very apparent. If Mr Elias were indeed the good man which Mr Morgan attempts to describe him, and had no neutralizing qualities, in addition to and dissimilarity from those attributed to him in this book, he was the 'faultless monster' so often described as existing only in imagination amongst the sons of men. There is in these pages no hint of any defect in temper, in discretion, or in spirit. The fair inference from these premises would be, that as far as human cognizance went, there actually was no blemish in him. Now we would not record with invidious care a long catalogue of the weaknesses of good men, who are departed, and are now faultless before the throne; but we would, if there be any biographical delineation of a departed servant of God, have briefly indicated the leading features of his entire character; and therefore the respects in which he was most liable to failure should have their place — not a prominent one, indeed, but an actual place. We would have it so for the truth's sake, and for the sake of the real and abiding utility of biographic writings. In the present instance, it is not in the spirit of depreciation we say that we are sorry Mr. Morgan did not, even in his way, tell us more than he has, and did not give us some few things of a different character to those he has communicated. John Elias was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, formed by their system of church government into a most devoted admirer of his own connexion, and a most determined oppouent of every change or innovation. He did not (and no Welsh Methodist in existence who is forty years of age will say he did) always conduct himself in matters coming into this department with any very eminent exemplification of the milder and more benignant qualities. His opposition to the Catholic Relief Bill was, we doubt not, quite honest, but it was very vehement and denunciatory; and woe to the wight in his denomination who dared to avow any friendship to it. Some members of the Welsh church at Jewin Crescent petitioning parliament in favour of the measure were most unceremoniously, not to say crudely, excluded from membership; and this extreme step John Elias afterwards elaborately defended. His fear of Fullerism was very great, and his attacks on those whom he suspected of favouring it amongst his brethren, at the B_____ and other associations, were not eminent for candour or kindness. ['People now say, yes, Welsh Methodist preachers say, that man can believe the Gospel,' was his indignant complaint at the Bala Association not many years before his death. An excellent minister still living, observed, that probably such a statement might not be altogether erroneous. 'I say he cannot, as a sinner' thundered out the mighty orator. 'I beg to say,' was the shrewd rejoiner, 'that God did not make man a sinner, and man is answerable to him as a creature, irrespective of his self-acquired sinfulness.'] We are far from wondering at these things; we can revere the good man's memory, while we distinctly remember them; we can, in our own way and to our own satisfaction, account for them. We only tell Mr Morgan he ought to have let us know something of them.

We are sorry to have another objection to make. There is no proportionate place given in this volume to John Elias's contemporaries. Has Mr Morgan never read Orme's Life of Dr Owen, or Milner's Life of Watts? How adroitly these biographers bring in as a fitting and coherent part of the narrative, so many bewitching sketches of contemporary biography! How necessary this seems to be to the completeness of these works and how commandingly interesting it makes them! It escapes, our ingenuity to devise how Mr Morgan has avoided all reference to John Elias's contemporaries in and out of his own denomination. In a country like Wales, so isolated, in consequence of its language, so united in religious creed, and so unsophisticated as to the general character of its people; a preacher, of Elias's celebrity, must in the course of his long life, have had much acquaintance and intercourse with other eminent men, engaged in similar pursuits. With the exception of some utterly uniuteresting references to a few ministers who aided him in his youth, and a few allusions to Mr Charles, we have nothing of the kind in the whole book. Out of his own connexion, a considerable number of names occurs to us with whom he was more or less, directly, or indirectly acquainted. Joseph Harris amongst the Welsh Baptists, the reviver of Welsh literature, and the first editor of Seren Gomer, a periodical in which some of John Elias's most characteristic productions appeared :—Christmas Evans, the Welsh Demosthenes, in the same denomination, and for many years resident contemporaneously with John Elias, in the island of Anglesea; William Williams, that profoundly metaphysical preacher, one of the noblest men of our day, and one of the principal ornaments of the Welsh Independents. John Roberts labouring in the same ranks, once engaged in friendly controversy with the subject of these Memoirs, 'pure as a seraph, and gentle as a lamb' :— these must have come so often in his way, and he in theirs, that we incline to think the biographer has designedly avoided all allusion to them. This, however, astonishes us less than his silence, with regard to Elias's excellent contemporaries in his own religious body. According to Mr Morgan's account almost every thing great and good amongst the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, is to be attributed to his hero. How little must he have really known of them, or how unthinkingly has he written this work! That John Elias was their greatest preacher, as far as mere popular effect was concerned, we readily admit; but as to the actual management of their affairs, and thorough and pervading influence on their general mind, he was by no means predominant. We certainly expected in this connexion some reference to Ebenezer Morris, that man of apostolic energy of character, of personal presence and power, and of such severe taste in the composition of his sermons, that we once heard a masterly Welsh scholar say of him, 'I never heard him use a word which did not seem to me to be the only proper one.' [Ebenezer Morris's voice was stentorian, yet perfectly manageable. An English traveller hearing him at Bridgend, in Glamorganshire, as he passed through the town, inserted in a small book he afterwards published, this remark, "It was as though he had received the rudiments of his elocutionary education at the mouth of a speaking trumpet."] Ebenezer Richard, that cool, self-possessed, and sagacious mind, made to govern without exciting envy, and to warn without inspiring anger. David Charles, whose sermons were a series of apothegms, and from whose lips in dry language, and with dryer manner, concentrated wisdom fell; these, (we refer not to those still living) were inferior to John Elias only in the article of popular oratory, while in other respects they were his equals, and in the actual controul of connexional matters his superiors. They arrogated less power and had more, they were less dogmatic, but not less apostolic.

With regard to the peculiar character of John Elias's preaching, we look in vain for information in these pages. What was the source of his power? Was it principally natural or artificial? What was the distinctive modification of his mind? Was it strength of faculty, clearness of apprehension, or vividness and variety of fancy? Read the book again and again, and you cannot answer these inquiries. How did he deport himself in the pulpit? Was he quiet or animated? Had he any remarkable intonations of voice, or emphasis? On all these matters 'this deponent sayeth nought.'

We are sorry for this, for Mr Morgan's own sake. We regret that a man so evidently Christian-minded, and so catholic in spirit, should do himself so little credit. We are still more sorry for it on public grounds. A great occasion has been thrown away, and an opportunity for extensive usefulness has been lost. 'The Life and Times of John Elias,' present a rich and inviting theme, to an ordinarily practised pen. They supply much, very much of most interesting detail, connected with the man, his connexions, and the history of religion in his country, and might have been made the medium of conveying to the English public a more accurate view of Welsh ecclesiastical affairs, than is commonly possessed. But this opportunity has been lost, and we part with Mr Morgan, thanking him for his intentions; while we regret we can thank him for nothing else. We must add, that the Life of John Elias is unwritten; and let us also add, that we shall anxiously look to Bala, or Trevecca for it. We earnestly hope we shall not look in vain.

[A subject to which this volume strongly tempts us to refer, is the relation between the Welsh Methodists and the Established Church. It contains some strange statements, which we should much like to dwell upon at large, but our limits forbid it at the present moment. It will come in our way in an article we contemplate on the History and Character of Welsh Nonconformity.]

At this point the review switches to something more positive which we will include next.

Another Critical Review 01

This critical review of A Memoir of the Rev John Elias by the Rev E Morgan, AM, Vicar of Syston, &c. With an Introductory Essay, by the Rev J K Foster, &c. Jones, Liverpool; and Hughes, London is from The Eclectic Review of  1846

Never did reviewer sit down to read a work influenced by kindlier feelings than we did the one now before us. We knew the great man whose life it records, and had heard him preach in the strength and glory of his days. The reminiscence is one of the imperishable treasures left us by the past. The fact of Mr Morgan's having written this book prepossessed us much in his favour. We were sensibly affected by the gracefulness of the act, and the noble candour of the man's spirit, who, being himself a clergyman of the established church, becomes the biographer and eulogist of a celebrated dissenting minister. Besides, we happen to have a profound interest in the subject of this volume - his life, his times, and his ministry. We have from earliest recollection been deeply curious in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Principality, and have studied somewhat carefully the constitution and history of all its sects. The portraiture of a life so intimately connected with these matters, had therefore to us no common attraction. There was another cause of our predilection for the volume before us. We had read some very flattering notices of it in one or two periodicals; in one especially, whose editor we would have willingly trusted in such a case. Thus disposed, we read the book — aye, we actually read it through; and now we make our report. It must be an honest one; and, however much we regret the necessity laid upon us, we must say nothing but the truth. We have, then, put down this volume with feelings of intense mortification. In all the necessary characteristics of such a work, it is a most signal, a most pitiful failure; in its style, or rather its no-style, it is excessively puerile and powerless, with scarcely a tolerably constructed sentence, excepting in some of the quotations from other writers, throughout its two hundred and sixteen pages: and this from a clergyman, and M A of Cambridge! Nothing can be more feeble, more pointless, more jejune than the composition. The book mainly consists of exclamations of wonder, iteration and reiteration of unmeaning and common-place eulogy, interwoven with the baldest and most indiscriminating detail of John Elias's personal, domestic, and public history. We have again and again wondered that Mr Morgan did not catch some of the spirit of his hero, some little of that vivacity and vigour which distinguished the remarkable man commemorated in his pages. On the contrary, he transfers his own dulness to the great subject itself.

The 'Elias' of this book (for, with wretched taste, Mr Morgan calls him 'Elias,' without any prefix whatever) is not the John Elias whom formerly we heard with wonder, with tears, and with joy. Had we not previously the means of forming our own estimate of the great preacher, we are bound in truth to say this production would have been of no real use to us. He was a good man, we might have said, perhaps, he was a great man; for Mr Morgan says so, but he does not give us any materials by which we may ourselves come to that conclusion. Had it not been for some quotations from letters of friends, especially Mr Thomas's graphic and vigorous sketch, the reader would not have, in the whole volume, a single datum upon which to form his opinions of John Elias. Mr Morgan does not in one instance bring before us a concise, or even intelligible account, of one of the sources of his eloquence. Epithets there are enough, but discrimination there is none. In the very first paragraph we find him saying, 'Very few have been so gifted as Elias'. He might have left this unsaid until we had heard something of his personal history. It is just saying nothing, that is, nothing to the purpose, because at no proper time and in no proper place. He quotes largely from John Elias's autobiography, but very much mars the effect of these sketches, by frequently interrupting the narrative to interpose remarks of his own, in which he sometimes repeats, in less forcible language, what the writer has been saying; and in other instances he indulges in pious reflections, the obviousness of which, and their tameness of style, make them superfluous, and sometimes worse than useless. For instance, in page 4:—

'As soon as I was able,' he is quoting from the autobiography, ' to walk with my grandfather to the parish church, I was obliged to go with him that very sabbath. He was a true churchman. There were at that time no Methodists, to the best of my knowledge, in that neighbourhood. There was, however, a small chapel, that belonged to a few people of that denomination, within about two miles of us, in a place called Pentref uchaf. My grandfather used to have family prayer morning and evening. He would read a chapter in the Bible with Mr P Williams's exposition; then he would pray in one of those excellent forms of Mr. G. Jones, of Llanddowror, in a very devout and serious manner. My grandfather endeavoured to teach me to read the Welsh language, when I was about four or five old. I had even read from the beginning of Genesis to the middle of Jeremiah, when I was at the age of seven years.'

Let the reader remember this is a translation by Mr Morgan. At this point he stops for a moment, and gives the following profound and striking reflections :—

We cannot but perceive that there was something remarkable and promising in such a child as this. We are reminded of young Timothy, by his love of the Scriptures and diligence in perusing them. Not many had read the Bible (the italics are our own) so far as he had, even at a more advanced age. We find by the account Elias has given of himself, that his grandfather's pious attention towards him, particularly in training him up in the ways of the Lord, was not in vain,' &c.

Again, in page 6:—

'Once,' he says, 'I heard a lad swearing: it was new to me, for I was not allowed to be in the company of immoral characters. However, I thought the boy was clever and masterly in uttering the words, and I Whs tempted to follow his example: and I went far from all people, even into the middle of a field, to try to utter the oath! Alas! I was so unfortunate as to speak the awful word, upon which I was immediately seized with such fears and terrors, that I apprehended I should be swallowed up instantly alive on the spot into hell.'

Here the biographer interferes, and says — 'How remarkably tender was Elias's conscience, and how carefully he must have been brought up in the fear of God and his holy ways.' To this he adds, in a note at the foot the page, 'Young Elias might be fearful some person should hear him from the hedges, or that some judgment might befall him from thence: he consequently went as far as possible in his apprehension from all danger, on the painful occasion of taking the oath, ' &c. We are, indeed, quite puzzled as to the principle upon which our author arranges his notes. In the above instance the note might have been incorporated in the text, without impairing its continuity or disturbing its coherence. Sometimes he seems to insert a note to fetch up what he appears to feel has not been said in the text; and we are sorry to add, the failure is equally certain at the foot of the page. Again, he puts part of a letter in the text, and the other portion in a note. In one instance, p 209, he inserts a letter in the text, which the writer refers to a former letter to the author; and when you have read the second letter, an asterisk sends you to the first in a note below! The reader may indeed be amused by such introversion; but if he expects by inserting in the text the matter in the notes, to deduce from the whole some intelligible and consistent outline of biographic incident, some definite and marked description of private and public character, his amusement will soon give place to utter disappointment and mortification.

Critical review 02

This is the rest of the critical review of Morgan's biography from 1845:

Among the class some of whom we have thus briefly noted, John Elias stood forward in acknowledged, though by no means in such transcendent and indisputable pre-eminence as a preacher, as big exclusive fame in England would seem to imply. In other qualities of character, necessary for a leader and ruler of the people, he was greatly inferior to several of those whose names we have mentioned. We make these remarks, not to deprecate the worth of this great and good man, but to correct a misconception which this volume is adapted to create, - that Mr. Elias was a sort of giant among dwarfs, a solitary form of grandeur and devotion, around which all his brethren, - as if they were at best only men of clever mediocrity, are to be grouped and arranged, in a position of quite submissive and secondary importance. This error of the work has been already kindly rebuked, in an able Welsh periodical, conducted by a number of gentlemen exclusively connected with that body of Christians of which Mr. Elias was so conspicuous an ornament.

With this abatement, however, we have no exceptions to take to the language of eulogy and admiration, in which the subject of this memoir is spoken of throughout its pages. He was indeed a man of whom any country might well be proud - nor is it easy to overrate the importance of the services he rendered to his native land - a man whose name will long be a word of magic significance to the pious mountaineers of Wales. We must refer our readers to the volume before us, for a fuller account of his life and character.

The author of this memoir is a worthy and pious clergyman of the Established Church, whose great simplicity of mind, and catholic liberality of sentiment, cannot fail to commend his labours to our respectful estimation. The anxiety which Mr. Morgan has shown, to rescue the memory of several of his illustrious countrymen from obscurity, is deserving of all admiration; and the zeal, diligence, and conscientiousness, with which he has discharged his biographical duties, are everywhere obviously apparent. Nor can we overlook the utter absence of all sectarian bitterness or bigotry, by which he is distinguished, at a time when so many of his brethren are almost beside themselves with the intoxicating fumes of spiritual and official arrogance. Beyond this, however, our commendations cannot go. We should do violence to our own critical conscience, if we allowed it to be supposed, that Mr. Morgan's other qualifications for the task he has undertaken are equal to his pious ardour and good intentions. - But they are by no means so; and we sympathise, we confess, with the fears, which we know many of our Welsh brethren entertain, that this book will not only convey a very imperfect impression of Mr. Elias's character and preaching to the English public, but will also tend to perpetuate rather than correct the false conception as to the nature of Welsh preaching in general, which we apprehend prevails very extensively in this country. The fact is, that though Mr. Morgan is a most excellent man, and is actuated by the best motives and spirit, he seems to us singularly deficient in faculty, and especially that kind of faculty requisite to apprehend and delineate such a character as John Elias. To transfer to the pages of a book anything like a living picture of a great popular orator, is one of the most difficult of tasks, and rendered, of course, still more so, when it is to be done through the medium of another language. It requires that there should exist between the subject and his biographer at least such points of similarity, as would bring the two minds into some degree of sympathy. But Mr. Morgan's mind, on the contrary, appears to be, in almost all respects, the exact antipode of Mr. Elias's. The contrast, indeed, is almost ludicrous, between the tame, creeping, common-place style of the memoir, and the daring, vehement, fiery spirit of the man whom it professes to commemorate. It is as if one saw the patient, ponderous, slow-paced ox, yoked with the war-horse, whose neck is clothed with thunder, who paweth in the valley and saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha. Mr. Morgan's attempts, therefore, to describe Mr. Elias's preaching and character, consist of little more than vague and impotent exclamations of wonder and admiration, and the specimens he has given of his manner of speaking are both ill-chosen, and most imperfectly represented. As a sample, both of the style and strain of sentiment in which the work is written, we may take the first few sentences of the volume.

"I feel, in entering upon this very important work, my inadequacy and insufficiency. I have frequently, while composing it, sought the Lord's aid and direction. I trust that he has heard my petitions, and favoured me with the guidance of his Spirit, - a blessing which was so much enjoyed by the subject of this memoir. May the following pages be attended with the Divine blessing to the reader! Great and remarkable men have appeared in every period of the Christian church, filling important situations and becoming eminently useful. The Lord is sovereign in thus placing and endowing his servants, as well as in every other work. Very few have been so gifted by him as Elias. He was indeed a rare monument of the Lord's providential care; he was favoured with extraordinary qualifications for the ministry, and made very useful in his day and generation. The memory of the wise, the pious, and the useful, especially such a man as Elias, is truly blessed, and ought to be preserved and made known for the benefit of the present and future generations."

And so twaddles the good Mr. Morgan, through several pages of this book. Happily, however, the volume contains contributions from several pens far better qualified to do justice to the subject, than that of the worthy biographer himself. Especially is there a most spirited and graphic sketch by Mr. Thomas, a gentleman who has gained great celebrity, by winning several high prizes in the Bardic contests of his country.

With all its imperfections, therefore, we venture to recommend the volume to our readers, as being the best because it is the only formal attempt made to convey to the English public some idea of the nature of Welsh eloquence. We trust, indeed, the time is not far distant, when some one competent to the task, will undertake to supply this desideratum, as we have a profound and deliberate conviction, that the art of popular preaching is incomparably better understood and practised among the Welsh, than among ourselves.

Critical review 01

This critical review of Morgan's book on Elias appeared in The Congregationalist in 1845. It begins

A Memoir of the Rev. John Elias. By the Rev. E. Morgan, A.M. Vicar of Apton, Leicestershire, and Author of the Life of the Rev. T. Charles, of Bala, fyc. With an Introductory Essay by the Rev. J. K. Foster, late President of Cheshunt College. 12mo. pp. 216. London: Hughes.

The subject of this memoir was, in many respects, a very remarkable man, and represents a class of remarkable men, with whom, we cannot help wishing, that the English churches had a more intimate and accurate acquaintance. We refer to the great Welsh preachers, the immediate successors of the early Methodists in Wales, whose ministry has, for the last sixty or seventy years, so powerfully stirred the national mind of the Principality, and wrought so extraordinary a change in the moral condition and aspect of their country. We know not, indeed, where to look, at least in modern times, for so convincing an illustration of the power of the pulpit, as an engine of influence over the popular mind, as is presented in the history of the labours and successes of these excellent men. And yet the names of most of them have never been heard in this country. Of those who were the means of commencing that happy reformation in Wales, such as Howel Harris, Rowlands of Llangeitho, Charles of Bala, and other pious clergymen of the Establishment, the English public has occasionally heard. But the permanence and extension of the movement which they originated were secured, not by successors of their own class, who, even when they were pious and evangelical men, rather employed their influence to repress and retard it, because they saw it was diverging at too acute an angle from that model of ecclesiastical decorum, and clerical supremacy, to which they were so fondly wedded, but by a body of men, "chosen out of the people," whose minds were more thoroughly in sympathy with the great bulk of the community, and who, in other respects, were admirably qualified to carry on and perfect the work so happily begun. Shaking themselves free from those trammels of official fastidiousness, to which the clerical leaders of Methodism clung to the last, and overleaping at a single hound the narrow pale of prejudice within which it was thought for a season to restrict their labours, they threw themselves, in perfect freedom of thought and action, and with the whole strength and energy of their character, into the great work of evangelising their country. They went forth into the highways and hedges, and their voices, proclaiming in clear, powerful, trumpet-tones, the message of truth and mercy, were every where heard awakening the echoes of their native mountains, while the people thronged in eager and excited multitudes to listen to that wild and thrilling eloquence. Results the most decisive and gratifying soon became apparent. Powerful revivals, not the product of forced, artificial, mechanical means, but springing from profound and spontaneous spiritual impulses, were seen to heave and agitate whole neighbourhoods, as if shaken with an earthquake. Large churches were gathered where none had previously existed. Rustic sanctuaries sprang up in every corner of the land. A great religious organisation was created, which spread itself over the whole country, and continues to this day to bless, with spiritual irrigation, the mountains and valleys of Wales. It need hardly be remarked that those who were instrumental in accomplishing such results as these, were no common men : we believe them, indeed, to have been most richly and rarely endowed with all qualifications - mental, moral, and spiritual - for the work they were appointed to fulfil: men of massive minds, of eminent piety, of transparent and irreproachable character, of undaunted zeal and courage; and moreover endowed with that contagious earnestness of soul, and commanding power of utterance, which so admirably fitted them to way the minds and thrill the hearts of the vast multitudinous assemblies which they were so often called to address. Such men were Robert Roberts, whose brief and brilliant career was prematurely quenched by an early death, but of whose singular and almost seraphic eloquence the elder people in the Principality still talk with an admiration amounting to rapture; David and Ebenezer Morris, father and son, men of lion hearts, whose presence and voices, even when they stood up amid turbulent and menacing crowds, "wielded at will that fierce democracy;" David Charles, a man of profound and original intellect, not possessing indeed such learning and extended reputation as his more illustrious brother of Bala, but admitted by all who knew them to be naturally of a much higher order of mind ; Ebenezer Richard, who, combining great powers of persuasive and pathetic eloquence, with that native authority of character, and aptitude for government, which give such ascendency over the minds of others, did perhaps more than any other man to organise and consolidate the great Methodist body in South Wales ; William Williams, the wise, large-hearted, noble-minded apostle of Independency in Wales; and Christmas Evans, whom our Baptist brethren had the honour of producing, with his rugged energy, and untamed imagination, weaving its materials sometimes into the wildest and most fantastic combinations, but withal "of wondrous power to chasten and subdue." These and others (a few still living) of scarcely inferior celebrity, have their memories embalmed in the profoundest veneration and gratitude of their countrymen, and their names throughout the whole extent of the Principality, are

"Familiar in men's mouths as household words."

Let not our readers smile to hear men thus spoken of, whose names may perhaps now for the first time meet their eye. Let them believe that wide-spread fame is a matter of accident, at least quite as much as of desert. And if we do not absolutely accept the dictum of the poet that " the world knows nothing of its greatest men," certain it is that in all ages there have been men far more worthy of perennial commemoration than many who have contrived to perk their small reputation into the face of the world, whose names have been hid in comparative obscurity and neglect, carent quia vale sacro.

(To be continued)