JOHN JONES TALSARN
Pregethwr Y Bobl / The People’s Preacher
By Alan C. Clifford
Charenton Reformed Publishing
306 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 955 516 580
In mid-19th-century Wales, the subject of Dr. Clifford’s book made for himself, in the opinion of at least one first-hand observer, ‘a deeper home in the affections of his fel-low-countrymen than any of his mighty predecessors or contemporaries’.
Given that three of the greatest figures in all of Welsh history — Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris and William Williams Pantycelyn — graced the previous generation, and that among John Jones’s contemporaries can be listed John Elias, Thomas Charles of Bala and Henry Rees, such a statement needs careful weighing. It is a tribute to Dr. Clifford’s skill in marshalling his variegated material that by the end of this briskly decisive and compelling little volume we have no reason to doubt its accuracy. If John Jones is largely forgotten today, it is a mark of our sad, distracted age: an age which has seen the decimation of church and chapel life in Wales.
These pages contain many original insights. After addressing the confusion and conflation that plague materialist philosophies, Dr. Clifford argues, convincingly I think, that Jones’s monoglot Welshness ‘preserved him from the sceptical influences which have ruined many’. Useful light is shed upon the theological controversies around the extent of the atonement that so scarred Welsh religious life from about 1810 onwards. Clearly, our author can spot a kindred spirit. Having designated Jones a ‘biblical Calvinist’, Dr. Clifford unabashedly applauds his efforts to ‘rescue preaching from the fatalistic grip of hypercalvinism’. In a fascinating coda he also expands upon the history of Methodism in Wales and contextualises the bitter opposition Jones faced from John Elias and other ‘confessional Calvinists’.
In Dr. Clifford’s book the man he calls ‘the pulpit prince among the Calvinistic Methodists’ emerges from the shadows as someone who was all truth. There was nothing he said he did not believe. He loved his neighbour as himself but the Saviour most of all. As such, he remains a reliable signpost for anyone who wants to advance in the Christian faith. John Jones Talsarn: The People’s Preacher tells an important story. With encouragements for the dispirited believer on every page, Alan Clifford may have come along just in time to rescue the legacy of John Jones from undeserved oblivion.
This is the most heartfelt and enjoyable work I have read from this author. It is impossible not to be captivated by his love of his subject. At the head of each chapter are found two of John Jones’s hymn tunes. These include the limpidly beautiful Tan-y- castell. All preachers ought to buy this book, but no one will read it without spiritual profit.
