Warning for Wales - Dr Alan C Clifford

Nineteenth-century Wales was blest with a host of godly Protestant Nonconformist preachers. Most notable among the Calvinistic Methodists were John Elias (1774-1841), John Jones, Talsarn (1796-1857) and Henry Rees (1798-1869). The nationwide Gospel labours of these zealous servants of Christ were wonderfully effective. Indeed, Welsh domestic, social and cultural life was permeated by the Christian Faith as never before.

In the wake of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the restored Roman Catholic hierarchy (1850) created as much excitement in Wales as in England. Many looked with an anxious eye upon the encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry Rees felt gravely concerned lest the churches of Wales should lose their hold of the great fundamental doctrines of the Gospel of Christ: the inability of man to come up with the demands of God’s law; the infinite sufficiency of the atonement of Christ; the need of repentance and simple faith in the Saviour; and the glory of Christ as the Head of the
Church.

In the beginning of December 1850, a Quarterly Association meeting of the Calvinistic Methodists was held at Newtown, Montgomeryshire. Mr Rees was appointed to preach at ten o’clock on the morning of 13 December. The service was held in the large Baptist chapel. Henry Rees’s text was Col. 1: 23: “If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel.” In this sermon he contrasted the Pope as the false head of the Church with Christ the true Head. On the one hand, he described the Pope; he spoke of his high position in Rome, of what power and capacity were in him for filling that position. He declared his high assumptions,
together with his imperfections and fallibility.

On the other hand, he discoursed of the glory of Christ. He recounted His greatness in eternity with God; he spoke of His wonderful incarnation and of the magnitude of the work He accomplished while here; he described His agony and death in behalf of His people; and, finally, His resurrection and ascension into heaven, and how He was exalted above all principalities and powers to sit on the right hand of the Majesty on high, the Head above all things unto His Church.

This description of Christ came from a man who had been in close communion with Him that morning, and from a heart that burnt with love to his Saviour; and it failed not to absorb the most intense interest of the congregation. The preacher continued: “Now I have presented Christ and the Pope before you in the best way I could. The head of the Roman Catholic Church has had every fair play at my hands, I am sure; but as to Jesus Christ, I have utterly failed to do Him justice; He has suffered from my inability and unworthiness; His glory is infinitely beyond my poor description. I have wronged Him
from want of talent and power, and from poverty of language and expression. However, I have done the best I could. And now I am going to ask you the question, ‘Which of these two will you have? Which of these two will you have?’When the preacher put this question, the most intense silence prevailed. After a slight pause, he again said, “I think I hear some one in this congregation saying, ‘The old Head of the Church for us! The old Head of the Church for us!’ ”

With that word a strange, unearthly thrill passed through the preacher, and an overpowering influence like a wave rolled over the vast congregation. The effect of it was seen that very instant in the new twinkle in many an eye, arising from the tears which filled them. So instantaneous and so intense was the feeling that, according to the
testimony of one of the preachers who was there, the tears were dropping down from the gallery upon the heads of the people below.

With great power, Henry Rees appealed to the multitude not to leave Christ. “Arrest your steps before you go farther; reflect, and ask yourselves the question, ‘To whom shall we go?’ If we turn away from Christ and his Gospel, who can then give us the words of eternal life? What a dismal prospect lies before the man who moves away from the
Gospel! ‘For if we sin wilfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries’ [Heb. 10: 26-7]. If thou, my soul, incline to depart from the hope of the Gospel, if sin and the world allure thee on, I would that the Spirit of the Lord should meet thee, as the angel of the Lord met Hagar in the wilderness, and said, ‘Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? Hast thou turned away from Abraham’s family, where the living God is worshipped? And canst thou find anywhere a better place?”

The preacher closed his sermon with a powerful challenge. “Thou, professor, who triflest with the temptations of the flesh and the world, whence camest thou? Is it from the house of prayer and from the communion of saints, and from among those who hope in Christ? And whither wilt thou go? Wilt thou wander into the wildernesses of the present evil world until thou come to the land of everlasting woe?... Now, then, my hearers, I am going to ask you, what will you do? I know well what I will do: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

The Revd John Foulkes Jones, BA, Machynlleth, heard this sermon. Vividly recalling it, he recorded its impact in one of his letters. The preacher’s object was ‘to contrast the Protestant and the Romish Church, and to show the superiority of the one over the other. We knew this before, and we believed it; but Mr Rees made our hearts feel that a simple but pure Gospel was infinitely and incomparably better than an unhallowed, though splendid Popery. Oh! we were all ready to exclaim, ‘Yr hen efengyl am byth!’ [‘The old Gospel forever!’] I thought at the time, and, indeed, I have often thought since, that I wanted no other, that I cared for no other—no other salvation, no other Saviour. Let us believe and trust Him.”

The ambitions of Rome remain unchanged. In view of liberal ecumenical apostasy, the message of the great Henry Rees is more urgent than ever.

Edited extract from Owen Jones, MA, Some of the Great Preachers of Wales (London:
Passmore & Alabaster, 1885), 404-7.