THE LIFE OF PRINCIPAL
HARPER D.D.
CHAPTER II.
STUDENT LIFE
AT SELKIRK. 1813-1818.
Professor Lawson - Reception of Young
Noviciate at Selkirk - Curriculum of Study and Manner of Instruction - Mingled
Influence of the Professor's Gifts and Personal Character - Owned by People as
well as Students - Lingering Fragrance - Traditional Estimate justified -
Scenery of Yarrow and Ettrick - Half-Holiday Rambles - Evenings with old
Selkirk Students - Reminiscences - Extract from Letter by Thomas Carlyle.
JAMES HARPER, entered as a student of theology in the
Theological Hall of the Associate or Burgher Synod, at Selkirk, in the autumn
of 1813. The venerable Dr. Lawson, who had been appointed Professor of Theology
to that branch of the Secession Synod in 1787, though becoming old, was still
doing his loved work with an efficiency that had been increased by ripening
graces and long experience. It was an important step in our student's life, for
it indicated that he had now set his face deliberately and stedfastly to
preparation for the Christian ministry. Mr. Harper's father had sat at the feet
of the same professor in the earlier years of his professorship, and it was
with mingled feelings that he now welcomed the promising son from the manse of
the Lanark minister. ' Mr. James,' he said, ' I must be getting an old man now,
when my own students are sending sons to me.'
For a period of
thirty-three years, Dr. Lawson was the Synod's only Professor of Theology, and
the curriculum of study extended over five years, with a session of nine weeks
in each year during the two autumn months of August and September. In those
busy months, the students listened to lectures on Doctrinal and Practical
Theology, read critically large portions of the Scriptures in the original
languages, with which the professor intermingled his invaluable exegetical
comments. And all this was varied by the delivery in rotation of prescribed
discourses and exercises by the students, which was followed by the professor's
shrewd and kindly criticisms.
Probably the instances have been very few
in which more real and thorough work was done in such short annual sessions as
those at Selkirk, more especially as the professor never thought of stopping at
the end of a scrimp hour if his topic for the day seemed to need further
expansion. Sometimes, indeed, when the sandglass had been turned a second time,
the students were still listening with unbroken interest to the old man's words
of sanctified wisdom. Still it must be acknowledged that the system was
defective, both in the narrow range of its subjects and in the too short annual
period allowed each year for intellectual drill and discipline. And the fact
that, during an entire generation, Dr. Lawson gave to his Church a succession
of ministers of solid and sustained excellence, to what an extent the
deficiencies of a system are sometimes compensated by the rare gifts and
qualifications, as well as by the personal character and influence, of the man
who administers it. The Selkirk professor was such a man. Over the whole of
that region which is watered by the Tweed, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow, the
names of Boston of Ettrick, and Dr. Lawson of Selkirk, have left a sweet savour
the fragrance of which has not yet departed. Their forms of religious thought
and their very phraseology may still be traced in many a Christian household,
even to the third and fourth generations. We question whether any theological
tutor, since the days of the perhaps too gentle Doddridge, ever drew around
himself so much of the veneration and love of his students, as did this simple
and homely man with his unique, though noiseless power. Even students who came
to Selkirk with the strong belief that the traditional estimate they had heard
of him was exaggerated, were not long in catching the enthusiasm and reflecting
it. His transparent simplicity and singleness of aim, which shone out in
everything that he said and did, contributed much to produce this reverent
regard. There was not one inch of unreality about him. Then the genial charity
which took always the kindliest view of things, which was slow to believe evil
and made ready allowance for the exuberance of youth, evoked the generous
sympathy and appreciation of the succession of young men that sat at his feet.
And his pupils soon discovered that he was 'a far abler and more learned man
than he seemed;' while his utter want of self-consciousness added a new and
irresistible charm to his character, and transformed the professor into the
sage. His saintly spirit led men to pronounce his name with something of the
veneration with which we are accustomed to speak of the Christian fathers of
primitive times.
No class of men was insensible to the influence of his
holy character and ' unbought grace.' When Prince Leopold, the future King of
Belgium, accompanied by Sir Walter Scott, paid a transient visit to Selkirk, he
acknowledged that the one happy allusion of Dr. Lawson to his great ancestor,
the Elector of Saxony, and to his connection with the Reformation, had more
touched his heart than all the elaborate addresses and piled-up epithets of
public bodies and municipal corporations. But rough and reckless men were
equally ready to venerate simplicity and goodness as they saw it in him. We
have heard it related that when a company of carters, more than twenty in
number, were approaching Selkirk with twice as many waggons of coals for the
winter use of the town, and they saw the old minister coming in the opposite
direction, they immediately loosed their horses, and, retiring into a recess on
the roadside, asked him to pause and pray with them. The request was doubly
welcome as coming from such men. In the impromptu which followed, he rose above
himself, for it led 'to have been given him in that hour what he speak.' Like
the great preacher of the Judaean in not very dissimilar circumstances, he did
not spare their class sins, but prayed that they might ever be kept from
(taking the name of the Lord their God in vain,' and that they might always
remember that it was written in His Word that ' a righteous man regardeth the
life of his beast.'
As the qualities we have named revealed themselves
to our student, they awakened his unbounded admiration and enhanced his delight
in the man and the place. And if anything could have added to these attractions
of Selkirk, it was the unrivalled pastoral scenery of the Yarrow and the
Ettrick, of which that little country town, standing on its breezy uplands, was
the centre; and in the midst of which every Saturday, as it came round with its
half-holiday, allowed him and his fellow-students to wander at will. Nature
was, in fact, another classroom to those who knew how to use it, and the old
professor did not like those discourses of his students less which were
redolent of the wild flowers rather than of the lamp. It was something to live
in the very scenes from which, with their historic legends and their simple
beauty, Scott had already begun to draw some of his inspiration, and which
were, not long afterwards, to attract Wordsworth twice into Scotland from his
poet's home in Rydal.
It was a treat of no common kind in earlier days
to sit with a number of old Selkirk students, after they were far advanced in
the ministry, and to mark how they kindled into enthusiasm as they spoke of
their old professor, - dilating on his outward appearance in his spare form and
ruddy countenance, his brown wig overlapping his ample forehead, and his
shepherd's plaid wrapped round his shoulders, which, like the garments of the
Israelites in the wilderness, seemed never to grow old. Others would bring
forth their budget of anecdotes and racy sayings, which, though often repeated,
never grew stale, and many of which still circulate upon men's lips like
proverbs; while all would testify of the life benefit which they had derived
from the man of God. One of Mr. Harper's fellow-students, now beyond his
eightieth year, writing from Portland, in the United States, thus conveys his
impressions regarding him when they attended together at the Selkirk Hall: 'I
recall the form of your father, his sparkling eye, and the affectionate
intonations of his voice. Being in course of .preparation as a student with a
view to missionary work in Russia, your father, on this account, perhaps,
allowed me more than usual attention, and I had then and still feel a reverence
for him such as his whole demeanour necessarily excited.'
Of all the
educational influences that helped most to mould and develop our student's mind
and character, next to those of his Lanark home, those of the professor were
the greatest; and his Selkirk impressions and reminiscences continued to
operate undiminished influence to the end of his days, though it would be
difficult to determine whether the power of the professor or of the man was the
greater. We remember the hearty and grateful appreciation a few years since, he
read for the first Carlyle's genial and masterly life-portrait of the
professor, and saw how readily, in listening to his mother's recollections of
him at Ecclefechan, he had recognised in the old Selkirk sage one of Scotland's
great men: ' It seems to me I gather from your narrative and from his own
letters, a perfectly credible account of Dr. Lawson's character, course of
life, and labour in the world; and the reflection rises in me that there was
not in the British Island a more completely genuine, pious-minded, diligent,
and faithful man. Altogether original, too; peculiar to Scotland, and, so far
as I can guess, unique even there and then. England will never know him out of
any book, or at least it would take the genius of a Shakespeare to make him
known by that method; but if England did, it might much and wholesomely
astonish her. Seen in his intrinsic character, no simple-minded more perfect
lover of wisdom do I know of in that generation.
' Professor Lawson, you
may believe, was a great name in my boy-circle, never spoken of but with
reverence and thankfulness by those I loved best.
' In a dim but singularly
conclusive way, I can still remember seeing him and hearing him preach (though
of that latter, except the fact of it, I retain nothing); but of the figure,
face, tone, dress, I have a vivid impression (perhaps about my twelfth year,
that is, in summer of 1807-08). It seems to me he had a better face than in
your frontispiece, more strength, sagacity, shrewdness, simplicity, a broader
jaw, more hair of his own (I don't remember any wig) - altogether a most
superlative steel-grey Scottish peasant (and Scottish Socrates of the period) -
really, as I now perceive, more like the twin-brother of that Athenian Socrates
who went about supreme in Athens in wooden shoes, than any man I have ever
ocularly seen.'
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