THE LIFE OF PRINCIPAL
HARPER D.D.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 1795-1813.
Genealogy—The Laird of
Cambusnethan—Leighton—Lawyer and Ecclesiastic— Times of the
Covenant—Fine and Imprisonment—Edinburgh Castle—
School—French Officer—Juvenile Rhymes—Scenery around
Lanark—' Boy the Father to the Man'—Touching
Interview—Conversion—Glasgow University—Home-Sickness—The
Return—Professor Jardine—Medical Studies in University of
Edinburgh.
JAMES HARPER was born at Lanark, June 23, 1795. He was the
younger son of Rev. Alex. Harper, minister of the Associate or Burgher
Congregation in that beautifully-situated county town. His mother was Janet
Gilchrist, daughter of James Gilchrist, Esq. of Gilfoot, in the neighbourhood
of Lanark, a property on the banks of the Clyde in the parish of Carluke, still
in possession of the family. It deserves to be noticed that one of his
ancestors, by the father's side, was Sir John Harper, advocate, Sheriff of
Lanarkshire in the reign of Charles ii., and proprietor of the lands of
Cambusnethan and Craig-crook. He was the friend and frequent associate of the
meditative and saintly Archbishop Leighton, whose country house of Garion
Tower, being not far from the Sheriff's residence at Cambusnethan House, gave
the lawyer and the ecclesiastic easy opportunities of intercourse. But those
were trying times in Lanarkshire. Persecution had waxed hot against the
Covenanters who abounded in that part of the country, and both the Archbishop
and the Sheriff were sincerely averse to the work of carrying out the arbitrary
decrees of the Government against the sufferers. Leighton escaped from the
perplexity and trouble by being allowed to return to his quiet retreat at
Dunblane, where he had formerly been bishop.
But though no act of direct
assistance to the 'men of the Covenant' could be proved against the Sheriff,
his wife had been more demonstrative in her sympathies, and, on the suspicion
of connivance with treasonable practices, as we learn from Wodrow, he was
imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. He remained in the Castle prison for several
months, and was only at length liberated, under a bond of £10,000
sterling, ' to answer, when called, to the premises, or any other crime laid to
his charge.' We doubt whether the subject of this memoir could ever have been
brought to regard this passage in the history of his ancestor as a blot on the
family escutcheon.
At an early age, the boy was sent to school during
the summer months in the small retired village of Cartland. His mother was wont
to describe him as at this time a fair, ruddy, chubby, cheerful, and happy boy
- fond of whistling. He was transferred to the Grammar School of Lanark, in
which all the common branches of education, as well as Latin and Greek, were
taught. The lessons of the school were energetically assisted and supplemented
by his father at home, while the whole course was by and by pleasantly
diversified by the instructions of a French officer who came to board in the
family, and who delighted to instruct his ready pupil in the French language,
as well as to train him in the art of fencing. There was a large tree in his
father's garden at Mansfield, some of whose branches the little student
contrived to weave into a seat which was raised some distance above the ground,
and in this leafy retreat he conned his lessons from day to day. In the later
years of his boyhood he often attempted some verses in "thyme, lisping in
numbers, for the numbers came." There was a kind of self-education in all this
which was valueable. But in after years the juvenile rhymes were all placed by
him in the mouth of a rabbit-hole and burned. A wise act of cremation, it is
likely ; but we are not so sure of his wisdom in committing at intervals to the
flames so many precious sheaves of the writings of his vigorous manhood and his
green old age.
Another important branch of the youth's education was
meanwhile being carried on, in which nature was his only teacher, laying open
to him some of the most picturesque-pages of its great book in the scenery
around Lanark. In the smiling orchards which, in Summer and Autumn, turned the
valley of the Clyde, a mile round, into one great garden; in the waterfalls,
the sound of which favouring winds his home in Mansfield ; and in the lovely
glen of the Cartland Crags, his soul drank in high delight; and as he rambled
alone, the shadows of many a problem already began to rise dimly before his
mind, to be anxiously and earnestly grappled with in later
years.
"Lo! where the stripling, wrapt in wonder, roves
Beneath
the precipice o'erhung with pine,
And sees on high amidst the encircling
groves
From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine ;
While waters,
woods, and winds in concert join,
And echo swells the chorus to the
skies."
In the few scattered recollections and impressions which it
is now possible to gather regarding the growth of his character, it is not
difficult to trace the early buddings of some of those qualities which became
mature and prominent in him in later life. His veneration for his parents was
not of that passive kind which we find in so many children, but glowed with all
the fervour of a passion; and it found ample exercise in later years. Among his
companions, his delicate sense of honour and manly integrity, commanded their
respect, while his moral courage, mingled with gentleness and unwillingness to
give offence, won their love. If a boy wished to do a mean thing, he would take
care not to do it in young Harper's presence. There was a manly forbearance in
the boy that made him, without knowing it, a peacemaker. We are confirmed in
this impression by an incident which took place only a few years ago in
Glasgow. Having heard of a gentleman being still alive who had been his
playfellow more than sixty years before on the school-green at Lanark, he got
his address and sought him out. He was shown into a room, and a few minutes
afterwards a gentleman entered bearing the marks of great age. The two stood
looking at each other without recognition, when Principal Harper simply said, '
James Harper.' Instantly the old gentleman grasped him warmly by the hand, and
said with emotion, ' Jamie Harper, the boy who never made a
quarrel!'
The question has often been asked in reference to one who
afterwards rose to such a position of eminence and usefulness, at what period
and in what circumstances did young Harper come under that supreme influence of
religious principle and motive which the Scriptures describe by the name of
conversion ? Various gathered hints have led us to conclude that this great
change took place in his boyhood; but in his case, as in that of thousands
regarding whose personal Christianity there cannot be any doubt, it is
impossible to determine, with even an approach to precision, ' the happy day
that fixed his choice.' Dates are of little consequence where we have fruits.
In the case of children who have lived in the atmosphere of a Christian home,
there is an influence which often brings them at an early age ' near to the
kingdom of heaven,' but it is no more possible to determine the actual moment
of decision than to tell the very instant at which the first ray of light
streaked the heavens at sunrise. ' There are differences of ministration, but
the same Lord.' The wind bloweth only where, but how it listeth. One child in a
year may be awakened from sleep by a thunder-peal, by a mother's kiss. One of
the holiest and wisest of the Puritans, Philip Henry, declared, after his own
curiously quaint manner, that he 'could not tell the precise time at which the
match was made and the knot was tied.' We are strengthened in these impressions
regarding the boy's early religious decision, by the glowing terms in which,
throughout his manhood, and most of all in his old age, he was accustomed to
speak of the singular happiness of his boyhood and youth. With our recollection
of James Montgomery's words, that ' youth is the poetry of old age,' we can
scarcely doubt that the golden mist in which he ever beheld his earlier years,
contained in it the supreme element of a loving heart at peace with God; though
this does not exclude other elements which brightened his recollections, and
made it possible for him, even to the last, to taste anew his earlier joys.
In one of his latest letters, written to a daughter from the old family
home at Lanark after he had passed his seventieth year, he writes : ' We drove
to Orchard by way of Cartland, a small retired village where I went to school
one summer. I recognised some old fir-trees where the youngsters of old had
their playground, and it so happened that the children now attending school
there, were enjoying their play-hour as I passed, so that my recollections of
boyhood were thereby rendered more vivid.'
By the time that our somewhat
precocious youth had reached the age of twelve, the Grammar School at Lanark
appears to have well-nigh exhausted upon him its rather limited resources, and
it became a serious question at home, What was next to be done with the lad?
His active mind must receive employment somewhere; and it was at length
resolved to enter him as .a student in the University of Glasgow. It proved a
premature step, though probably no harm came out of it. Borne away from his
native town where he knew every one, and where every countenance smiled upon
him, into a great sea of strange faces where no one cared for him, he was
seized, during the winter, with a homesickness that made work impossible, and
even his young life a burden to him. As time moved on, and his longing sadness
did not pass away, he at length summoned courage to inform his father of his
condition. With a considerateness that was characteristic of the lad, the
letter was written in Latin, to secure that his father might be his only
confidant. But it gushed with such a filial tenderness, and revealed such a
weariness of spirit in the lonely boy, that the father's resolution was
promptly taken. Early next morning the pony was saddled, and the good minister
was on his way to Glasgow, a distance of twenty-eight miles, to bring the
student back. On the way back the father and the son walked and rode by turns,
and the house was brighter again when James was back. The home education was
renewed, a miscellaneous lot of books was read, the old scenes of beauty and
grandeur were revisited, study went on in his awakening mind when there was no
book in his hand; and in the following winter he returned to Glasgow with an
rejuvated body, and with braced resolution to pursue University studies in
right earnest.
He continued a student at this time-honoured University
during three sessions, from 1810 to 1813, passing through the course of
classical and philosophical study which the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland
require of their students previous to their formal entrance on the study of
theology. Beyond the fact that his diligence, application, and opening gifts
made him a favourite with his professors, and that he was loved by his
fellow-students, with many of whom he formed lifelong friendships that mellowed
with years, we have been able to glean almost nothing of his college life. Of
one of his professors he was accustomed to speak, in common with thousands who
had sat at his feet, with admiring gratitude. This was George Jardine, the
Professor of Logic, a man who united in himself the possession of knowledge
with a remarkable power of conveying it; who knew how to stimulate thought in
young minds, and to send away his pupils daily with the feeling that the last
hour's training had made them intellectually stronger and wiser; and whose
mingled dignity and affection drew forth towards him from the occupants of his
crowded benches the veneration of children to a father. To the last he
cherished fond recollections of his Alma Mater and his student days in Glasgow.
' On his last visit to us,' writes a son-in-law, ' he expressed a wish to see
again the old University buildings, his student lodgings, and the road to
Lanark which he had so often paced; and it was touching to observe the deep and
somewhat pensive interest with which he viewed the old scenes.'
In the
winter of 1813 he passed to the University of Edinburgh, where, in addition to
the study of Natural Philosophy which was required by his Church, he stepped
beyond the prescribed curriculum, and became an eager student, during two
sessions, in the important medical classes of Chemistry, Anatomy, Surgery, and
the Practice of Medicine, attracted by the names of such renowned teachers as
Playfair, Gregory, and Hope. In after life, he always put high value on these
supplementary studies. They enlarged his mind, widened his sympathies, enriched
and diversified his intellectual stores, and helped him to make other spheres
of knowledge, besides those supplied by sacred learning, ' pay tithes to the
priesthood.' But that they did not indicate any hesitation of choice between
the profession of the Christian minister and that of the physician, is evident
from the fact that he had already entered, at the Divinity Hall of his Church
at Selkirk, on his course of theological study. This last-named fact now turns
our thoughts to Selkirk.
Go To Chapter Two
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