Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/90

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78
CALVISIUS—CALW

when Lewis Edwards (1809–1887) and David Charles (1812–1878) opened a school for young men at Bala. North and South alike adopted it as their college, the associations contributing a hundred guineas each towards the education of their students. In 1842, the South Wales Association opened a college at Trevecca, leaving Bala to the North; the Rev. David Charles became principal of the former, and the Rev. Lewis Edwards of the latter. After the death of Dr Lewis Edwards, Dr. T. C. Edwards resigned the principalship of the University College at Aberystwyth to become head of Bala (1891), now a purely theological college, the students of which were sent to the university colleges for their classical training. In 1905 Mr David Davies of Llandinam—one of the leading laymen in the Connexion—offered a large building at Aberystwyth as a gift to the denomination for the purpose of uniting North and South in one theological college; but in the event of either association declining the proposal, the other was permitted to take possession, giving the association that should decline the option of joining at a later time. The Association of the South accepted, and that of the North declined, the offer; Trevecca College was turned into a preparatory school on the lines of a similar institution set up at Bala in 1891.

The missionary collections of the denomination were given to the London Missionary Society from 1798 to 1840, when a Connexional Society was formed; and no better instances of missionary enterprise are known than those of the Khasia and Jaintia Hills, and the Plains of Sylhet in N. India. There has also been a mission in Brittany since 1842.

The constitution of the denomination (called in Welsh, “Hen Gorph,” i.e. the Old Body) is a mixture of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism; each church manages its own affairs and reports (1) to the district meeting, (2) to the monthly meeting, the nature of each report determining its destination. The monthly meetings are made up of all the officers of the churches comprised in each, and are split up into districts for the purpose of a more local co-operation of the churches. The monthly meetings appoint delegates to the quarterly Associations, of which all officers are members. The Associations of North and South are distinct institutions, deliberating and determining matters pertaining to them in their separate quarterly gatherings. For the purpose of a fuller co-operation in matters common to both, a general assembly (meeting once a year) was established in 1864. This is a purely deliberative conclave, worked by committees, and all its legislation has to be confirmed by the two Associations before it can have any force or be legal. The annual conference of the English churches of the denomination has no legislative standing, and is meant for social and spiritual intercourse and discussions.

In doctrine the church is Calvinistic, but its preachers are far from being rigid in this particular, being warmly evangelical, and, in general, distinctly cultured. The London degree largely figures on the Connexional Diary; and now the Welsh degrees, in arts and divinity, are being increasingly achieved. It is a remarkable fact that every Welsh revival, since 1735, has broken out among the Calvinistic Methodists. Those of 1735, 1762, 1780 and 1791 have been mentioned; those of 1817, 1832, 1859 and 1904–1905 were no less powerful, and their history is interwoven with Calvinistic Methodism, the system of which is so admirably adapted for the passing on of the torch. The ministerial system is quite anomalous. It started in pure itineracy; the pastorate came in very gradually, and is not yet in universal acceptance. The authority of the pulpit of any individual church is in the hands of the deacons; they ask the pastor to supply so many Sundays a year—from twelve to forty, as the case may be—and they then fill the remainder with any preacher they choose. The pastor is paid for his pastoral work, and receives his Sunday fee just as a stranger does; his Sundays from home he fills up at the request of deacons of other churches, and it is a breach of Connexional etiquette for a minister to apply for engagements, no matter how many unfilled Sundays he may have. Deacons and preachers make engagements seven or eight years in advance. The Connexion provides for English residents wherever required, and the English ministers are oftener in their own pulpits than their Welsh brethren.

The Calvinistic Methodists form in some respects the strongest church in Wales, and its forward movement, headed by Dr. John Pugh of Cardiff, has brought thousands into its fold since its establishment in 1891. Its Connexional Book Room, opened in 1891, yields an annual profit of from £1600 to £2000, the profits being devoted to help the colleges and to establish Sunday school libraries, etc. Its chapels in 1907 numbered 1641 (with accommodation for 488,080), manses 229; its churches[1] numbered 1428, ministers 921, unordained preachers 318, deacons 6179; its Sunday Schools 1731, teachers 27,895, scholars 193,460, communicants 189,164, total collections for religious purposes £300,912. The statistics of the Indian Mission are equally good: communicants 8027, adherents 26,787, missionaries 23, native ministers (ordained) 15, preachers (not ordained) 60.

The Calvinistic Methodists are intensely national in sentiment and aspirations, beyond all suspicion loyalists. They take a great interest in social, political and educational matters, and are prominent on public bodies. They support the Eisteddfod as the promoter and inspirer of arts, letters and music, and are conspicuous among the annual prize winners. They thus form a living, democratic body, flexible and progressive in its movements, yet with a sufficient proportion of conservatism both in religion and theology to keep it sane and safe.  (D. E. J.) 


CALVISIUS, SETHUS (1556–1615), German chronologer, was born of a peasant family at Gorschleben in Thuringia on the 21st of February 1556. By the exercise of his musical talents he earned money enough for the start, at Helmstadt, of an university career, which the aid of a wealthy patron enabled him to continue at Leipzig. He became director of the music-school at Pforten in 1572, was transferred to Leipzig in the same capacity in 1594, and retained this post until his death on the 24th of November 1615, despite the offers successively made to him of mathematical professorships at Frankfort and Wittenberg. In his Opus Chronologicum (Leipzig, 1605, 7th ed. 1685) he expounded a system based on the records of nearly 300 eclipses. An ingenious, though ineffective, proposal for the reform of the calendar was put forward in his Elenchus Calendarii Gregoriani (Frankfort, 1612); and he published a book on music, Melodiae condendae ratio (Erfurt, 1592), still worth reading.

For details see V. Schmuck’s Leichenrede (1615); J. Bertuch’s Chronicon Portense (1739); F. W. E. Rost’s Oratio ad renovendam S. Calvisii memoriam (1805); J. G. Stallbaum’s Nachrichten über die Cantoren an der Thomasschule (1842); Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie; Poggendorff’s Biog.-Litterarisches Handwörterbuch.


CALVO, CARLOS (1824–1906), Argentine publicist and historian, was born at Buenos Aires on the 26th of February 1824, and devoted himself to the study of the law. In 1860 he was sent by the Paraguayan government on a special mission to London and Paris. Remaining in France, he published in 1863 his Derecho international teorico y practice de Europay America, in two volumes, and at the same time brought out a French version. The book immediately took rank as one of the highest modern authorities on the subject, and by 1887 the first French edition had become enlarged to six volumes. Señor Calvo’s next publications were of a semi-historical character. Between 1862 and 1869 he published in Spanish and French his great collection in fifteen volumes of the treaties and other diplomatic acts of the South American republics, and between 1864 and 1875 his Annales historiques de la révolution de l’Amérique latine, in five volumes. In 1884 he was one of the founders at the Ghent congress of the Institut de Droit International. In the following year he was Argentine minister at Berlin, and published his Dictionnaire du droit international public et privé in that city. Calvo died in May 1906 at Paris.


CALW or Kalw, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, on the Nagold, 34 m. S.W. of Stuttgart by rail. Pop. (1905), 4943. It contains a Protestant and a Roman Catholic Church, two schools, missionary institution, and a fine

  1. Adherents and members in scattered hamlets and attending different meeting-houses or chapels, often combine to form one society or church.