Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

unaware of its lack of artistic restraint and of depth of sentiment. A musical student, again of ability and inspiration, who can hold the attention of a critical audience, will in course of performing among friends spoil the virtually perfect rendering of a song by making some utterly inadequate comment on the song which she has so ably interpreted. Thus there appears to be a false sense of values in the artistic life of the nation. It is exceedingly difficult to define the fault; perhaps it is a lack of fastidiousness-the absence of a certain niceness of discrimination. Our schools do not give it our colleges By the Rev R. E. Rowlands, M.A., Rector of St. George-super-Ely, Cardiff. THE Seiat is an institution which has played an im- portant part in the religious development of Wales during the last two centuries. The name itself is a corrup- tion of the English word society," and its origin and history are full of instruction and interest, a romance in the spiritual growth of a people With the dissolution of the monasteries and the union of the Rose and Crown, the Church by law established," the Church of England, lost much of her elasticity and freedom of movement. She gained strength by subjection to regulation, but missed something of grace. The evil of law is that it quenches the spirit and induces the mechanical. The Church had her ordered services in the vulgar tongue in every parish, and yet not quite in the vulgar tongue, for the people had not been educated up to the language of the Prayer Book. And the homely, hearty and popular services of the Pre-reformation days, which lived side by side with the Latin mass, were missed. There was a demand for devotion to supplement the Prayer Book. Efforts had been made, as at Little Gidding, to bind men and women together for spiritual purposes. Matters came to a head at the end of the 17th century when the spirit overran the law and what is known as the society system in the Church of England came into being. The two great representative societies, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel were then born. The societies were meetings of earnest laymen gathered together for a distinct spiritual purpose, the deepening of their own spiritual life and the advancement of Christ's Kingdom Zealous clergymen joined with them, but the foundation was lay not clerical. The movement came down to Wales, and societies were formed in the majority of Welsh parishes. The seiat of North Wales has its Welsh equivalent in the gyfeillach of the South. Both these terms are applied to local societies. Higher up the more classical word Cymdeithasfa is used. Cymdeithasfa y Gogledd, and Cymdeithasfa y De, the "Society of North Wales and the Society of the South -the Cymdeithasfa Gyffredinol, the General Society. The movement spread like wild fire. By the end of the 18th Seiat is the name given to the weekly meeting of communicants in connection with the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist churches. do not give it indeed, it is doubtful whether the latter develop it in the students who have already acquired it in a home, or, more rarely, school environment. It can never come of class teaching it will surely come of close associa- tion with things of beauty, and with the personalities of those who better understand the different forms of art. The creation of such an association would seem to be one of the aims set forward in this report,-the result would surely be to raise the level of whole artistic life of the nation and to ensure that Wales shall not perish everlastingly because she has not art." *"Y SEIAT" century the societies had combined, and had grown into the powerful Welsh Calvinistic Body, which in 1811 1 seceded from the Church of England. The term Corph or body, was used, because here is the perfect society, each member working in harmony with the rest, and contri- buting to the good of the whole. The Calvinistic Body is the one communion in Wales, outside the Church of England, which is wholly Welsh in origin and in history. It was started not in disagree- ment with or in opposition to the doctrine or discipline of the Church, but by some of her most earnest and spiritual members banded together to further her work. The beginning of the 18th century had seen a change from the days of the Tudors. The beautiful Welsh language began then to be ridiculed. Some of the coarse buffoon- eries of the time are still extant. The poverty of the Church produced plurality and non-residence, and the people became ignorant and degraded. The society became a light of an evil time. The Calvinistic Methodists still retain their seiat, which has become to them yr eglwys, or the church. They have their gwrandawyr or hearers, and the inner circle or seiat, to which the full members of the body belong, and where the Lord's Supper is celebrated, and the spiritual life is maintained and strengthened. The seiat is the holy hearth where the young are trained and nurtured in the fear of the Lord. The rise of Calvinistic Methodism in Wales from the seiat-which is still, as I am trying to show the centre of the system-illustrates the growth of the Evangelical revival in the 18th century. The Wesleyan body, by the way, has not retained the name society," but has kept another like it, the "class meeting." The names show that evangelicalism was a lay movement. The Wesleys became Wesleyans when they were laymen belonging to a society at Oxford. In Wales there were clergy who were Methodists, but not a single one of the beneficed seceded. The movement was called a body, not a church. It definitely separated itself from the mother church, which at its birth in the society it was meant to succour, when Thomas Charles, of Bala, an unbeneficed clergyman, an Oxford man, a Welsh scholar and writer of indefatigable industry, whose work has been a help and a light to many a poor Welshman long after his