26.

Thomas Charles had tried to arrange for taking over Trevecca College
when the trustees of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion removed
their seminary to Cheshunt in 1791; but the Bala revival broke out just
at the time, and, when things grew quieter, other matters pressed for
attention. A college had been mooted in 1816, but the intended tutor
died suddenly, and the matter was for the time dropped. Candidates for
the Connexional ministry were compelled to shift for themselves until
1837, 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 des