Major Influences On The Life of Young Robert
Three 1)
McCrie 2) Chalmers 3) Thomson
It was the period of a great crisis in the religious history of
Scotland. There were three powerful influences which then began to operate,
that were destined, in their issues to produce mighty unforeseen changes, and
which have given shape to the state of things as now found among us. They could
not fail to affect a nature so susceptible as Robert Candlish, whose mind was
always open to accept and adopt what was good and true, and help it forward
with all his energy.
One of these influences, and that by no means the
least powerful, although operating in a noiseless and unseen way, was the
publication of Dr. M Crie's Lives of Knox and
Melville, the former in 1811, and the latter in 1819. These works has an
extensive circulation, and especially among the class of men who mould the
character of the age in which they live. They carried the mind back to
Reformation views and principles, and were a very effective protest against the
Moderateism which had so long cramped and stifled the religious life of
Scotland. As they greatly helped to awaken the questions which soon came to be
agitated, and which led to the sepaeation of the Free Church from the State, so
they shed a clearest light upon these questions, and made the way plain enough
to all who cherished the principles of the Reformation. To Dr. M Crie more than
to any other we owe it that so many of the people of Scotland clearly
apprehended the doctrine of the Church's autonomy, and recognised obligation to
act out what she had ascertained to be the will of her great living Head
irrespective of what secular and authorities might do and determine.
Another of the influences to which I have adverted was wielded by
Dr. Andrew Thomson, whose place in the Church
Robert Candlish was soon destined to fill. By means of the Christian
Instructor he was to a large extent working on the same lines as Dr. M
Crie,while he was at the same time encouraging and helping forward every
evangelical movement. But he effected still more by his living voice and
energy. Being inducted in 1814 as the first minister of St. George's Church,
Edinburgh, his influence soon began to be felt among the elite of the city, as
respects culture and intellectual power. Edinburgh at that time had many
eminent citizens, and some whose fame was world-wide; but Andrew Thomson soon
placed himself in the front rank of them all. He was felt as a power not only,
perhaps not even chiefly, in the pulpit; but as a public speaker he was
unrivalled in versatility and eloquence. He could confront and defeat the
ablest members of the Bar. Bold and uncompromising in word and deed, if he made
some enemies he secured the affection and venerated adherence of many friends.
When he began his ministry the tone of Edinburgh society was decidedly cold
towards religion, and tending very much towards infidelity a tendency mightily
strengthened by the Edinburgh Reviewers. It was Andrew Thomson chiefly who
turned the tide, and obtained respect at least for evangelical religion on the
Bench and at the Bar, and among the medical profession. He was the means
gradually but very effectually of producing a great and blessed revolution in
the character of Edinburgh society. Nor was it in Edinburgh alone that his
influence was felt. The Apocrypha controversy made him known all over Scotland,
for he went everywhere advocating a pure and unadulterated Bible with wondrous
eloquence and success. And, whatever intemperance may have characterised the
controversy at some of its stages, we owe it very much to Andrew Thomson that
the views so extensively prevail which are now held regarding the inspiration
and the sole and authority of the Word of God as the rule of faith and manners.
This was, perhaps, the greatest permanent service to the Church and to the
country.
The third, and by no means the least influential power at work
in Robert Candlish's student days, was
Dr. Chalmers, who began
his ministry in Glasgow in 1815,and in which he continued till 1823. He was at
once recognised as the greatest preacher of his time, and attracted great
multitudes to hear him, not a few of whom were savingly impressed, and became
from that time and afterwards the leaders and promoters of every philanthropic
work. But it was not his pulpit ministations,nor his published writings which
were the most valuable contribution of Dr. Chalmers to the moral and spiritual
wellbeing of his countrymen at large; it was rather the evangelistic bent he
gave to the energies of the Church. Dr. Chalmers still lives in the work of
Church extension, and in the methods he devised for carrying it forward. His
aim was not the erection of a place of worship, and to set open a door for the
entrance of such as might be attracted to it by the ministrations of the
pulpit; but to provide an agency to carry the gospel the homes of the people
within a limited territory, and to "compel them to come in."
Thus there
were three great powers in those days simultaneously at work in somewhat
distinct departments, which largely moulded the future history of the Church
and country. Dr. Chalmers led the way in the great evangelistic movement which
so happily characterise the present time. Dr.Thomson awakened a new interest in
the Bible, as the alone authoritative guide of what the Church and individual
men ought to believe and to do. Dr. M'Crie, by his publications, created a new
era in ecclesiastical affairs.
It was under such influences as these
that the College career of Robert Candlish was carried on and came to an end.
He personally enjoyed the ministrations of Dr. Chalmers, and scarcely less
those of his distinguished assistant Edward Irving, although the latter was
then far from being generally popular. But Robert Candlish and a few of his
fellowstudents were among Irving's regular hearers.
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