JAMES, WILLIAM (1836-1908), Calvinistic Methodist minister;
b. at Tre-del, Mathry, Pembs. A labourer's son, he was apprenticed at 15 to a carpenter, went to Cardiff at 19, but in a year's time removed to Aberdare. There, in 1863, and at Bethania C.M. chapel, he began to preach; in 1865 he went to Trevecka, but returned to Aberdare in 1870 as pastor of Bethania, and d. there 23 July 1908. He had been moderator of the South Wales Association in 1902-3, and of the General Assembly in 1895, and delivered the ‘Davies Lecture’ (Christianity the Goal of Nature) in 1902. Besides this, he published a number of articles in periodicals, and collaborated in a handbook on the Gospels, 1888-90, and (with John Morgan Jones, 1838-1921, q.v.) in a biography of his predecessor at Bethania, David Saunders (1831-1892) (q.v.), published in 1894. He was an eminent preacher, and a volume of his sermons was published in 1910.
Bibliography:
- Compiled from various articles on him by J. Morris-Jones.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D., F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor.
