THE LIFE OF PRINCIPAL
HARPER D.D.
CHAPTER III.
PROBATION AND ORDINATION. 1818-1820.
Non-Professional Reading — Advantages — The
Probationer — On the Road — The Pony — Pleasant Life —
Welcomes — Adventures — The Solway Firth — Fall of Stonebyres
— Dreaminess — Craigleith Quarry — Calls — Unexpected
Arrest and Delay — Mental Doubts and Struggles — Light and Peace
— Ordination and Settlement at North Leith.
THE long recesses of nearly ten months that intervened
between the autumn sessions at Selkirk, when not partly occupied by attendance
on winter classes in Edinburgh, were spent by our student in the old home at
Lanark, where he enjoyed the care and companionship of his father, and owned
the healthful stimulus of his Selkirk training. And while theology had now
become, more than ever, his principal study, he wisely indulged himself in a
good deal of miscellaneous reading, mastering the systems of the leading
metaphysicians, dipping deeply into history and books of travel, and storing
his mind with the treasures of our best English classics. No doubt in all this
he followed strong intellectual tastes, and gratified wide sympathies. But he
was acting wisely even for his future ministry; for there are valuable
acquirements which, if not made before entering on the busy life of a pastor,
are not likely to be made in any it measure afterwards, and the want of which
makes him to go ' halting all his days.' There is no profession in which a
large stock of intellectual capital is more needed than that of a modern
minister in a town or city. He ought, before he enters on his charge, to have '
much goods laid up in store for many days' If not, he will be likely to fare
like the soldier who goes into the battle-field with only a few rounds. He must
soon either fall or fly. With his weekly preparation of discourses for the
pulpit, and the endless details of pastoral work, much of which cannot even be
delayed; with his constant exposure to interruptions, reasonable and
unreasonable, not to speak of letter-writing which almost every post forces
upon him, the wonder is not so much that some fail, as that so many succeed.
On 3rd. April 1818, Mr. Harper was cordially licensed by his native
presbytery, and sent forth to preach the Gospel. He had previously undergone,
according to the custom of the Presbyterian Churches, a series of examinations
in Dogmatic Theology and Christian Casuistry, some of which were conducted in
Latin; and translated passages in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, and
delivered, memoriter, lectures, sermons, exegeses, and other exercises
with learned names and had acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of the
grave and reverend presbyters, that many kindly prophecies ' went before'
regarding him, eventually to be much more than fulfilled. The young soldier of
the Cross received his formal commission with a mingled sense of honour and
responsibility. This gave him weekly opportunities of ministering in preaching
stations, or in vacant charges that were in search of a minister.
The
life of a Scottish licentiate or probationer was very different sixty years
ago, from what it is in our time. Railways were still unknown, and even
stagecoaches were only common on the more frequented roads. The usual and
almost necessary equipment for the young preacher was to have a pony, and to
become, as Mr. Harper was accustomed laughingly to say, with allusion to the
Church militant, ' one of the Church's mounted cavalry.' The distance which he
was obliged to travel from one church or station to another was often very
considerable. But it must have been a pleasant thing for a young man of one and
twenty, or thereabouts, who delighted in fresh air, and in such scenes of
sublimity and beauty as those in which Scotland abounds, to move along, with
abundance of time on his hands, through sunny glens, by the side of limpid
trouting streams, or on lonely mountain paths, assured of a kindly welcome at
his journey's end; for in those old Seceder families by whom he was
entertained, the preacher was welcome for the sake of his message, and there
was abundance of ' straw and provender for the beast' because of his master.
Strange stories are told of preachers who carried their library with them, and
made their pony groan by loading him in front and behind with volumes of
Henry's Commentary, or Caryl On Job; but such pedants as these were usually
veterans who had been long on the road. Our young preacher enjoyed this
wandering life while it lasted, up to the full bent of his nature, and was
often gladdened by the warm religious life which he discovered under many a
rough exterior in the families with whom he dwelt, and which did so much to
enhance the hospitality.
His brief and pleasant season of probation was
chequered by not a few adventures, and he was accustomed, in his later days, to
tell of some that might have ended fatally. Their effect was to foster in him,
through frequent recollection, a sense of dependence on God. Every one knows to
what a great distance the waters of the Solway Firth recede at ebb tide, what a
vast stretch of sand remains uncovered, and with what startling rapidity the
tide, when it has once turned, again fills the channel. Scottish song and
fiction, as well as unwritten legend, have made this fact familiar. The young
preacher, averse to a long circuitous route, and wishing to cross the Solway
sands on his pony's back from some point in Scotland to the Cumberland coast,
and seeing the many miles of sand that stretched southward out of sight,
flattered himself that he might surely venture across without the least danger
of being overtaken. Following in the course of a man who was driving a cart, he
was already a good way over, when he saw the tide advancing with alarming
speed, and crested with foam. On it came, the sand becoming soft and
treacherous, and the pony beginning to stumble and sink. The old man in the
cart, seeing his danger, called to him to leap from his horse into his cart,
which was already swimming, holding the bridle in his hands. They reached the
shore with a straining effort, which a few moments more of delay would have
made vain.
On another occasion, he was crossing the Clyde on his pony,
a little distance above the famous fall of Stonebyres. Supposing himself to be
beyond the power of the current, and not dreaming of danger, he became aware at
length that he had come within the suction of the stream, and that, in another
minute at the utmost, the ' astounding flood' would carry him to an awful
death. Turning the face of the animal up the stream, and urging it onward, he
succeeded, with a desperate struggle, in reaching the opposite bank. He used to
mention, when repeating the story of this ' hair-breadth' deliverance, his
noticing at the time how the intelligent animal trembled, as if it had become
fully aware, as well as himself, of its imminent danger.
It would
almost appear that, at this period, he was rather given to moods of dreaminess.
The pony, however, does not figure in the next adventure. He was passing by the
famous Craigleith Quarry, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, reading a book. A
man who had been stationed near at hand, to warn passers-by of a coming
explosion, had given the wonted signal. But the absorbed student neither heard
the warning nor saw the man; and a large mass of rock soon after falling at his
feet, was the first indication to him of the great danger to which he had been
exposed. The incident made a deep impression on his mind ; and in later years,
he never afterwards passed the place without remembering his hazard and
deliverance with renewed feelings of devout gratitude.
This wandering
life, during which trial was being made of the young preacher's gifts, and
which could only be pleasant for a brief period, did not long continue. Before
midsummer was past, more than one congregation had begun to look to him with
longing eyes. In the month of May 1818, he received a call to the pastorate of
the Associate Congregation of Stonehouse, in his native presbytery; and, while
measures were proceeding for his settlement there, a new congregation, which
had recently been formed in North Leith, in the Presbytery of Edinburgh,
addressed to him an invitation to become their first minister. According to the
practice in those times, the two competing calls were laid on the table of the
Supreme Court of his Church, that it might decide between the contending
claims, and choose for him his place. The Synod did not meet, however, until
2nd September of the same year. Meanwhile difficulties and obstacles of a
formidable kind had arisen in the young licentiate's own mind. It was intimated
in a letter which Dr. Peddie had been authorized by him to read to the Synod,
that it was ' Mr. Harper's deliberate and fixed resolution to accept of no
fixed charge.'
The Synod appears to have been much surprised by this
sudden arrest on progress; but those who intimately knew the man in his latter
days, will be able to guess at the explanation with considerable likeli hood of
accuracy. He had now to look in the face the grave responsibilities to be
undertaken by him in his ordination to the Christian ministry. But one purpose
was immoveably fixed in his mind, that he would bind himself to preach nothing
but what he believed; and that if he could not deliberately and ex animo
accept the faith of his Church, he would not go forward to be ordained as one
of its ministers. He therefore proceeded to question himself upon the grounds
of his belief, going down to the very foundations, and reviewing his
convictions on the Divine origin of Christianity itself. And temporary doubts
appear to have disturbed his mind, and to have made action impossible until
they were dispelled. One to whom he once spoke respecting a crisis in his
mental history, which we believe to have been this of which we are now writing,
informs us that his struggles with doubt were more like the result of direct
temptation than of ordinary inquiry. He became sad and silent, and almost
abstracted from the outer world; even his bodily health suffered from the
inward conflict. His state resembled the experience described in some passages
of Bunyan's autobiography, and afterwards reflected in his great allegory. Like
his Lord, he had to be led into the wilderness and learn the truth of Luther's
saying as to the threefold qualification of the minister—meditatio,
oratio, tentatio. He read with incredible eagerness works like Grotius On the
Truth of the Christian Religion, and the famous article of Chalmers, just
launched amidst breathless interest, on Christianity. But the enemy departed,
and the student, stronger in faith for the trial, could go forth to publish the
Gospel of the kingdom. He never regarded doubt as strength; but he knew what it
was to have been compassed with it as infirmity. Hence he could have compassion
on the ignorant, and on them that were out of the way.'
But even when
this temporary ' eclipse of faith' had passed away for ever, there remained,
and indeed had partly grown out of these very experiences, an almost
overwhelming sense of the difficulties and responsibilties of the pastoral
office, which made him shrink from submitting himself to the 'laying on of
hands.' The high intellectual standard which, from the beginning, he wished to
reach in his pulpit ministrations, may have had something to do with this, but
much more the thought of the burden which must be borne for life by one who had
undertaken 'the care of souls.' Through anxious days and sleepless nights the
cry of his heart was, 'Who is sufficient for these things?' The Synod, however,
believing that his hesitation was born not of indifference but of
self-diffidence, and confident that 'to the upright light would arise in
darkness,' did not allow his letter to stay their progress. Preferring the
claims of the congregation in North Leith, they appointed the Presbytery of
Edinburgh to take all regular steps for his ordination over that church, so
soon as his difficulties were removed. But it was not until the 2nd of February
in the following year, 1819, that Mr. Harper went forward with trembling steps,
and bowed his head to the laying on of hands. His venerable father, from
Lanark, preached on the occasion from those solemn words to which the son's
full heart responded, 'Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the
flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the Church
of God which He hath purchased with His own blood' (Acts xx. 28).
If
the yoke of the Christian pastorate has seldom been assumed with greater
diffidence and humility, it has as rarely been borne for so long a period and
with such ever-increasing efficiency and honour. The congregation at North
Leith, which had worshipped in an old deserted parish church since 1816 when it
was organized, entered with high hope on a new place of worship, containing
above a thousand sittings, early in 1820. But it was still in its feeble
infancy, the call to Mr. Harper, which now lies before us in its ' sear and
yellow leaf,' having been signed by only 138 persons. He had therefore not only
to minister to a congregation, but to make one. We are now to see in the use of
what measures he did this, and with what success.
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To Chapter Four
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