Thomas Guthrie
PARISH MINISTER OF
ARBIRLOT
AT last the object of Thomas Guthrie's ambition was to
be realised after five years of waiting. He was to be placed as minister over a
parish for whose moral and spiritual welfare he would be responsible. In the
early months of 1830 the Crown appointed him to the Forfarshire parish of
Arbirlot, on the recommendation of the Hon. William Maule. The presentee having
preached before the congregation to their manifest satisfaction, the call was
signed, and on the 13th May the new minister was inducted into his charge.
Arbirlot - AberElliot, the place at the mouth of the Elliot - is a
beautiful country parish on the eastern coast of Scotland, situate about three
miles from Arbroath and sixty from Edinburgh. The geographical position of the
parish causes it to combine in itself the somewhat diverse natural charms of
rich landscape and bold seascape. From several points in the district one can
command views of either kind, unrivalled on the eastern seaboard of Scotland
for peaceful beauty and impressive grandeur. It had the advantage of being easy
of access, and was, moreover, within twenty miles of Brechin, so that he was
not cut off from intercourse with his kindred. The parish was neither very
large nor very populous. In 1824 it had been returned as numbering 1077 souls,
while by 1830 it had only reached 1086, showing that the ratio of increase was
not rapid. (After a time his mother came to reside in Arbirlot to be near her
son.)
To Mr. Guthrie this was an advantage, and from the first he regarded
it as such. How many promising young ministers are dwarfed and stunted, both
intellectually and spiritually, by being placed at the outset in onerous
charges where the work is beyond their strength! Robert Hall's remark about the
ratio of sermon-production should be laid to heart by every young preacher.
From the outset Mr. Guthrie's preaching was acceptable to his people. Of this
fact there are many proofs extant, chiefly the testimony of those who had heard
the older residents speak of it. Among others, that of the saintly David Key,
one of his elders, and given at length in the Memoir, is the most remarkable.
And yet, from existing specimens of his sermons in those early days of his
Arbirlot ministry we can detect few traces of those qualities of figurative
diction, picturesque illustration, and striking apostrophes and appeals so
familiar in the discourses of later years. The style is severely simple and all
chaste, while ornament is rare.
No sooner was Mr. Guthrie fairly settled
down in his sphere of work than he began to evince that tireless activity in
the service of his Master characteristic of him all his days. He threw himself
into parochial work with an energy and concentration of purpose that astonished
and delighted all. For five years he had been eating his heart out in enforced
idleness. The stock of restrained activity, kept in check all that time, now
had free course to flow out from him in a mighty tide of far-reaching
achievement. Probably that weary delay was the Creator's mode of fitting His
instrument for the glorious work before him. Had he stepped into the ministry
fresh from college, he might never have learned that great lesson of "patience
till God opens the way" which was not the least of his virtues. Disappointment
is oftentimes the greatest of teachers, and so it proved to Thomas Guthrie. His
parochial schemes and enterprises were both varied and numerous. Five months
after his induction into Arbirlot he took unto himself an helpmate, who, in the
highest and noblest sense of that word, proved herself his coadjutrix. For some
years he had been engaged to Anne, the eldest daughter of the Rev. James Burns
of Brechin; and on 6th October 1830 they were married by the bride's father.
Though Arbirlot was, morally speaking, an earthly paradise into which the
darker and more revolting sins of our great cities scarcely entered, the
spiritual state of the parish was decidedly dead. His predecessor had held the
living for the lengthened period of fifty- nine years, occupying the pulpit in
person until he was eighty-seven. Though at first a sound Evangelical preacher,
the advent of age brought listlessness and torpor, so that vital religion and
warm spirituality burned low in consequence. To suffer such a state of things
for any length of time would not have been in keeping with the splendid
activity of Mr. Guthrie's nature. He immediately set to work to remedy it. In
the first place he established a weekly prayer-meeting. One of these was held
at Arbirlot, but he had two or three other cottage- meetings throughout the
parish for those living at a distance. These were superintended by his elders,
and to each of them he paid a visit once a month. Though successful in
Arbirlot, the cottage-meetings elsewhere scarcely came up to his expectations,
largely owing to the diffidence and modesty of the elders conducting them.
Another means of reaching his people, and thus promoting their intellectual
as well as their spiritual amelioration, was through the congregational
library, which he instituted and, in conjunction with Mrs. Guthrie, personally
superintended. The books were given out on Saturday evenings, and were retained
a week. When the parishioners returned them they found their pastor or his lady
always ready to discuss the volumes with them and to elicit even from the
shyest - but without seeming to do so - their opinions on what they had read.
The parish library was one of the most successful of Mr. Guthrie's means for
raising the status of intellectual culture among his people.
But while
their spiritual and mental improvement was thus carefully considered, he felt
that the lessons inculcated regarding thrift and economy would be shorn of half
their value if there were not at hand some agency whereby the savings of the
people might be looked after for them. Hitherto the time-honoured bank of the
Scottish peasantry - the stocking or the old teapot - had prevailed in Arbirlot
as elsewhere. But such a system had its evils. The money was always at hand,
and the pedlars packs were oftentimes pitfalls, leading the industrious
country-folk into extravagances they afterwards regretted. A parish
savings-bank was therefore initiated and proved a conspicuous success, the
minister's banking experiences now standing him in good stead in suggesting the
best means of organising and carrying on such an institution.
Nor were the
young children neglected. Several Sabbath-schools, conducted by the elders in
various parts of the parish, were started and proved successful. To- day the
Sabbath-school is the invariable adjunct and feeder of every congregation.
Then, however, they were few and far between, the opinion being too often
entertained that such classes destroyed parental responsibility for the
religious education of their children. At Arbirlot the schools were so arranged
that they did not interfere with family catechising where such existed, but
rather acted as valuable aids to such domestic instruction.
Nor was the
social welfare of his parish beyond the limits of his personal oversight.
Though not yet a total abstainer, he was a strong advocate of temperance,, and
impressed its necessity upon his people. Not that the vice of drunkenness was
very prevalent in Arbirlot. When Mr. Guthrie went there he found only two
public-houses in the district. One of these, after a fatal accident to an
inebriate had roused the community, he succeeded in getting closed. The
remaining one being at the extreme end of the parish, offered little temptation
to the Arbirlot people.
While Mr. Guthrie was attaching his parishioners to
him by the closest ties of mutual love and respect, his relations with his
brethren of the Presbytery of Arbroath were of the most friendly character. He
likewise interested himself in the business of the Synod of Angus and the
Mearns, and was a Commissioner to the General Assembly in 1832, a position he
also filled in the years 1834 and 1835. Among his important speeches in the
Presbytery was one he delivered in January 1834, when he moved the notable
resolution that the Presbytery should petition Parliament to repeal the Act
relating to Church Patronage. His speech on that occasion was a cogent and con
vincing one, and he carried his motion by three votes, notwithstanding all the
efforts of the Moderate party in the Presbytery.
This Anti- Patronage
resolution brings us at last to the time when the first soughings became
audible of that mighty storm which was first to shake, but in the end to rend
Scotland, in a social as well as an ecclesiastical sense, to her foundations.
In 1830, when Mr. Guthrie began his ministry at Arbirlot, there were in reality
two questions adopted by the Evangelicals of the day as their rallying cries
against the dominant Moderatism - No Patronage and - No Intrusion. Though
logically separable and, as was proved, capable of attracting each its
distinctive class of supporters, yet the two topics were virtually the obverse
and the reverse of the same great problem - Was the Church of Scotland
"Erastian" or "free" ? - in other words, was it the thrall of the State, or had
it inalienable rights - rights that might indeed have remained dormant for many
long decades, yet rights that had never been legally abrogated? Moderatism
maintained the right of the State to intervene in the purely spiritual affairs
of the Church, while the Evangelicals claimed that Christ's Headship over the
nations and His Church left the spiritual jurisdiction of the latter
independent of the Civil Power, save what was implied in formal recognition,
protection, and maintenance.
Mr. Guthrie was not only an Evangelical in a
party sense, he was one by conviction, temperament, and bitter experience of
the evils inflicted alike on the doctrine and polity of the Church by
Moderatism and its methods. Not because Dr. Nicoll and his followers had long
debarred him from exercising the office of the ministry did he now put forth
all his efforts to destroy the influence of the party. His motives were not
dictated by such personal considerations. As he says in a letter written a
little later, - my aim all through this bitter but monotonous struggle has been
solely to vindicate the Headship of my Saviour over His Church and people, to
lead men to see that no one, not even the State, has a right to come between
Christ and His Redeemed. Mr. Guthrie accordingly threw himself into the
struggle with the enthusiasm of a youthful warrior, conscious of the justice of
his cause. Never minister educated his people better in the principles at
stake. Though with that lofty reverence he always manifested for the sanctity
of the pulpit, he never introduced controversial topics into the Sabbath
services, he was assiduous on week-nights in lecturing to his parishioners on
the subjects then bulking so largely on the public attention. He also held
meetings in the district, at which his friends were brought from far and near
to speak, and he proposed motions both in Presbytery and Synod on the Abolition
of Patronage.
As yet the Auchterarder and Strathbogie cases had not made
the question of Non-Intrusion so prominent and crucial as afterwards it became.
To an Anti-Patronage crusade, therefore, rather than a Non-Intrusion one, his
efforts were at this stage devoted.
Several of the addresses he delivered
on such occasions are still extant. They are characterised by thorough
knowledge of the subject, sound logical reasoning, vigorous thought, stirring
personal appeals, pithy apophthegms, almost proverbial in their epigrammatic
conciseness, while the whole is seasoned with the Attic salt of his wit and
humour. No wonder opponents even were constrainied to admit the force of his
arguments.
This, however, was not the only controversial campaign wherein
he was then engaged. Voluntaryism and the State Church principle were being
subjected to keen discussion and comparative analysis. Into what is known as
the Voluntary Controversy Mr. Guthrie threw himself with as much gusto as
spirit, involving as it did the defence of what, at this stage of his career,
he believed to be absolutely indispensable to the spiritual welfare of the
country - the national maintenance of religion. In the war of words
characterising the assertion by either party of its distinctive principles, Mr.
Guthrie took a prominent part, and crossed swords with the redoubtable Ajax of
Voluntaryism himself, - "Potterrow John," otherwise Dr. John Ritchie of
Edinburgh.
The efforts made by Dr. Chalmers and his friends to promote the
cause of Church Extension in many districts in Scotland had filled the
Secession churches with dismay. At this time there may be said to have been
four separate denominations coming under the generic designation - "Seceders" :
the United Associate Secession Church, formed by the re-union, after
seventy-three years of disruption over the terms of the Burgess oath, of the
General Associate or Anti-Burgher Church, and the Associate or Burgher Church;
the Associate Synod of Original Seceders, the Original - Burgher Associate
Synod, and the Relief Synod. The raison d être of these bodies, apart
altogether from the high-handed oppression shown towards the original founders
of the Secession churches, had largely been the inertia and abuses, along with
the lack of spirituality, peculiar to the State Church under the reign of
Moderatism.
There can be no doubt, as an unprejudiced study of contemporary
facts will demonstrate, that in many districts the Church of Scotland was
either most inadequately represented, or not represented at all. In some
instances, incumbents who came under the designation of Slothful Shepherds,
alienated the mass of the piously inclined people from the Church while in the
case of others who ostensibly did their duty, the icy apathy of Moderatism to
all higher spiritual interests, with the Socinianism and Rationalism preached
from the pulpits, drove from the parish kirk to the Secession meeting-house
those who felt that to remain under State Church ordinances would be to allow
an Arctic winter of religious indifference to settle down upon their souls.
To counteract in some measure these patent evils, Dr. Chalmers had
initiated his great Church Extension movement. His aim was to infuse life into
the whole organism by commencing aggressive religious effort in certain parts
of it; and by begetting a spirit of emulation among the clergy, to induce the
sluggards from mere shame, if from no higher motive, to bestir themselves in
their respective spheres. But the Secession ministers, in place of welcoming
such evidence of the coming spring in the State Church, looked upon the
Anti-Patronage and Church Extension crusades as threatening their existence. If
the State Church were reformed, where would be the logical vindication of the
continuance of Dissent? Hitherto none of these Secession Churches had
definitely pronounced against the principle of State Aid. But with the ripening
reformation of the Church of Scotland before them, with the steady decay of
Moderatism and the consequent predominance of Evangelicalisrn, after the
turning-point of the passing of the Veto Act in 1834, the Seceders felt that
they must have some more positive and definitive foundation for their existence
than mere negative dissent to certain abuses in the State Church.
Thus came
into being what is known as - the Voluntary principle, which, be it admitted or
not, forms the chief stone in the foundation of every Dissenting Church's
standards. Mr. Guthrie, albeit in after years he was to hold, proudly and
tenaciously, the Voluntary principle, in most, if not all, of its
ramifications, considered his duty meantime to lead him, as parish minister of
Arbirlot, to a vehement opposition to the doctrine. Yet he did so in no spirit
of bigotry. Though a State churchman, he was a liberal- minded Christian, and
only resisted what he esteemed an unwarrantable aggression. He would not have
been the honest and honourable man he was, in fact, if, holding the sentiments
he did, he had not rushed, when the battle-bugle sounded, with all the
enthusiasm of his nature, into the thickest of the fight. But Mr. Guthrie,
however busy with Church politics, never permitted the interests of his
congregation to suffer. He might do battle with - Potterrow John to-day, and
with the Moderates of Presbytery and Synod to-morrow; Church Extension meetings
might occupy one part of the week, and schemes for the social and moral
improvement of the parish the other; but when the Sabbath came round he entered
his pulpit as carefully prepared as though he had done nothing else all week
than write his sermon.
We have already noted with what honesty he worked
when a student at College, and also when removed from every beneficial home and
social influence during his stay on the Continent. To him, as to Carlyle,
albeit their spiritual and ethical standpoints were so diverse, the Gospel of
Work-a-day Duty presented its moral Categorical Imperative so forcibly as to
require no external authority to induce him to be instant in industry. He loved
work for its own sake. With regard to the exercise of his powers, until he went
to Arbirlot his character was still tinged with much of the impulsiveness and
prodigality of youth. His chief anxiety was to do a thing well, without giving
much consideration to the expenditure of time, talents, and energy on the
undertaking. He was too apt to take a Nasmyth hammer to crack a nut, in place
of apportioning the degree of effort to the importance of the end. He did not,
as yet, understand that the subtle laws of the Conservation of Energy hold as
potently in the mental as in the physical economy. When placed in charge of a
parish, however, and when he realised that he, and he alone, was responsible
for its progress, both in a religious and a moral sense, his character
underwent a rapid change. To the irresponsibility of youth - and of such a
youth as his had been, engirt with pious home influences, and where the
strictness of the family regtme had precluded any member being left open to the
assaults of early temptations - had succeeded a sense of personal obligation
and liability, with a realisation of all the duties the position of pastor and
teacher implied. Only a few months were to pass, ere those who had known him in
pre-Arbirlot days, scarce recognised in the sagacious, far-seeing clergyman,
the volatile youth, brimming over with laughter and humour, and ready for all
kinds of innocent amusement. The laughter and the humour remained as the salt
and savour of his gracious yet dignified personality. But into the laughter had
crept a new note as of one who had looked upon the mystery of the world's
misery and sin and had been awed by the sight; while the humour, if less
piquant, was more human, having lost somewhat of its careless abandon, as
though the possessor had learned to regard all humanity as his brethren,
because bound to him in the universal - Brotherhood of Christ.
Meantime,
the light of a man so prominent as Mr. Guthrie was becoming, both in a
spiritual and intellectual sense, could not longer be hid under the bushel of a
country charge. Already the eyes of many of the leaders of the Evangelical
party in Edinburgh were turning towards Arbirlot, anxious to devise means
whereby a minister of such gifts and controversial ability might be secured for
the metropolitan pulpit and the central councils of the party. More than one
deputation went to the beautiful seaboard parish from the capital, to hear the
young preacher. To such deputations as appealed to himself, Mr. Guthrie gave no
encouragement. He was happy at Arbirlot. He believed God was blessing his
labours. His Ebenezer or sign that hitherto the Lord had helped him - was
raised in those numerous fruits of his ministry that had come under his
personal knowledge. His stipend was sufficient for the simple needs of his
family: - "not a royal revenue would tempt me to leave," he wrote to a friend
in Edinburgh, - "were mere social position and increased remuneration the sole
inducements held out."
Therefore, when the new and fashionable parish
church of Greenside was built, and negotiations were opened with him to see if
he would accept the pastorship, his reply was an unconditional negative. He
could not discern the Master's leading therein. When he was sounded with regard
to Old Greyfriars Collegiate Church, however, the matter presented itself in a
different light. Though at the outset he discouraged the proposed transfer, yet
when he was informed that the charge was about to be uncollegiated, and that
his work would really lie in that field where he had always desired to labour -
the slums of the Cowgate - he felt that the Lord's voice was present in the
invitation to "come over to the Macedonia of sin, suffering, and sorrow, and
help us."
But another reason, and one of a more secret and personal
character, decided his acceptance of the call to Old Greyfriars. During the
fatal winter of 1836-1837, when the epidemic of influenza passed like a scourge
over the land, he had been brought within view of the dusky shores of death.
For months he had lain helpless as a babe. Restored at length to life and
labour in response to earnest prayers, he felt that, in return, notwithstanding
his love for Arbirlot and its rural peace, that life with all its splendid
possibilities must in future be consecrated to higher, nobler, and wider
issues. Peaceful and pleasant beyond most though his pastorate had been, the
irresistible call had come for the young labourer to proceed to that new
sphere, to carry the good news of the Gospel, with all the force of his burning
eloquence, to that submerged tenth in our population that had fallen away from
the means of grace.
On the conditions named, therefore, Mr. Guthrie
accepted the call to Old Greyfriars, and amid the regret of his Forfarshire
parishioners he took leave of them in September 1837, after, as he says, -
seven busy, happy, and - I have reason to know and bless God for it - not
unprofitable years spent amongst them. The radiance of those golden days of his
early ministry followed him on into life - nay, was never dimmed until the
great end came. During those years in Bonnie Arbirlot he had realised the
mission of his manhood. There first he had learned the secret of true eloquence
- viz, to touch the heart in such a way as to tell on the life; there first he
had known the holy joy of leading a sin-stricken soul to the divine Sin-bearer;
there first he had adequately understood the possibilities as well as
responsibilities of the pastor's office; there first he had come to see that
not by might of intellect or of eloquence, not by power of will, but by the
working of the Spirit of the living God - was the world to be won for Christ.
And in ever-deepening dependence on that divine source of all success, he set
up the banner of the Cross and marched forward into the unknown future, to
achieve fresh conquests for his King.
From
"Thomas Guthrie" by O.Smeaton. (Famous Scotsmen series)
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