RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Presbyterians
ministers' salaries range from £100 to £250 yearly; nearly every congregation has a manse, of which the minister has the use free of rent. The synod has nearly £20,000 of invested funds, most of which has been left as legacies by members of the church. From this and from congregational contributions for different purposes the yearly income is about £6,500. John Lynd.
3. Secession Church in Ireland: The Secession movement in Scotland spread to Ireland and established itself widely in the north of that country. The divisions and unions of Scotland had their counterparts in Ireland, with modifications caused by the different environment. The present " Presbyterian Church in Ireland " is the fruit of the union of 1840 (see above, 1). Some did not enter this united body because they did not think that in the basis of union there was a sufficient guaranty for purity of doctrine, and because in it the platform of the covenanted Reformation had been abandoned. They are few in number, but they exist as a separate organization under the name of the Associate Synod of Ireland or the Presbyterian Synod of Ireland Distinguished by the Name Seceder. There are six congregations, and five ministers, grouped into two presbyteries, with a synod which meets annually. A fraternal union between this church and the Secession Church in Scotland (see above, I., 6) was established in 1872.
R. Morton. IV. Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connection: This body, frequently called The Presbyterian Church of Wales, and generally known in Wales as Y Corff, " The Body," came formally into being at a small synod — the first quarterly association,
as it came to be counted — held at i. Origin. Watford, near Cardiff, Jan. 5-6, 1743,
under the presidency of George Whitefield, who had been specially invited to attend by Howel Harris (q.v.), of Trevecca, near Brecon, the leaderofthe religious r e vi val in Wales and the founder of Calvinistic Methodism. Howel Harris, who was spiritually awakened in 1735 by one of Tillotson's writings and by a solemn antecommunion sermon in the church of Talgarth, was one of the most remarkable men of his time; his indomitable energy and unflinching courage are evinced by his ceaseless itineraries over much of Wales and even parts of England and his fearless preaching before furious and hostile mobs. Owing to various doctrinal and personal disputes he was excluded from the fellowship of his coworkers in 1750, the year of the " Rupture"; in 1752 he established at his own home at Trevecca a religious and industrial community consisting of families and individuals drawn from many parts of Wales; here he showed remarkable skill as a ruler, steward, and organizer. The real birthplace of Calvinistic Methodism, however, is properly the farmhouse of Gwernos, near Trevecca, where Harris held the first private " Society," or fellowship meeting, for the expression and discussion of spiritual experiences. The " Societies," the monthly association held at Trevecca and other parts of Wales, together with the quarterly associations, are the basis of the organization of the Calvinistic Methodist Church.
Almost simultaneously with the revival inaugurated in Mid- Wales by Harris, a movement wholly independent of it, as both were independent of the revivals in England under Whitefield and Wesley, began in Cardiganshire under
2. Contrib- the powerful preaching of Daniel utory Rowlands (q.v.), who had been greatly
Movements, influenced by the Rev. Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror in Carmarthenshire, the apostle of the Welsh circulating schools. The other clergymen who joined the movement included William Williams (q.v.), of Pantycelyn, in Carmarthenshire, who had been converted by the preaching of Harris himself and became the most inspired of all Welsh hymn-writers; Peter Williams, of Carmarthen (1722-96) one of Whitefield's converts, best known for his editions of the Welsh Bible and his annotations thereon; also Howell Davies, of Haverfordwest (1717-70), who with George Whitefield, in Woodstock, Pembrokeshire, in 1754 was the first clergyman to administer the Lord's Supper in a Methodist chapel in Wales. Between 1750 and 1769 Harris was estranged from the Methodists, but in the latter year his reconciliation was brought about at the first anniversary of the college for young men preparing for the ministry which Harris had induced his patroness Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (see Huntingdon, Selina Hastings), to establish not far from his house at Trevecca. In 1792, the year after the death of the countess, her college was removed to Cheshunt, but exactly fifty years later, the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists of South Wales, following the example of those of North Wales, who had recently established a school for candidates for the ministry under the Rev. Lewis Edwards at Bala, opened a residential college under the Rev. David Charles, in the old house of Harris, the associations of Methodism with the memory of Harris being thus perpetuated. In 1873, on the centenary of his death, a memorial chapel was erected adjoining the college.
Not until 1811 did the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists take the grave step — on account of which a number of the Methodist clergymen withdrew from the body — of ordaining their own ministers, thus severing their connection with
3. Organ- the Church of England. Yielding to a ization, Ac- strong agitation and the pressure of cir-
tivities, and cumstances, the Rev. Thomas Charles, Statistics, of Bala in Merionethshire (1755-1814), himself an ejected curate, a convert of Daniel Rowlands, and famous as one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society, agreed to take the responsibility of the new departure in the two associations held that year at Bala and at Llandilo in Carmarthenshire, where a score of "exhorters," as the non-clerical preachers were called, were set apart for the administration of the sacraments. Of the twenty-two thus ordained at least two deserve especial notice, viz., John Elias, the prince of Welsh pulpit orators, and Thomas Jones of Denbigh, the greatest theologian and most versatile writer among the earlier Calvinistic Methodists. Three years later the Home Mission was founded, for the evangelization of, and the support of churches in, the neglected parts of Wales.
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