Village Sermons (2) - Thomas Guthrie at Arbirlot.
DR. McCOSH'S REMINISCENCES.
This gentleman was then of Arbroth, now President of Princeton College, United
States. Dr. McCosh's relations with Mr. Guthrie, always most intimate, were
strengthened by his marrying a daughter of Dr. Alexander Guthrie, of Brechin.
He has kindly furnished us with some reminiscences of Mr. Guthrie's later
Arbirlot life, of which we gratefu]ly avail ourselves
His preaching, writes Dr. McCosh, had already (1885) the characteristics which
afterwards made him so marked a man, and made him what I was accustomed to call
him, the pictorial preacher of the age. On the Sabbath afternoons he held an
exercise for the young, and there he began to let out, at first timidly, his
peculiar gifts. The dull eye of the cow-boy and of the servant-girl, who had
been toiling all the week among the horses and cows, immediately brightened up
as he spoke in this way, and they were sure to go back next Sabbath and take
others with them. It should be added that his unsurpassed power of illustration
was always employed to set foth the grand old cardinal truths of the Gospel.
His preparation for the pulpit was conscientiously careful. Possessed of a
ready power of speech, he could have extemporised a sermon at any time, and
thus saved himself much labour. But during all the seven years he was at
Arbirlot, I believe ho never entered the pulit without having his dicourse
written and committed. Had he acted in any other way, he might have been lift
in Arbirlot all his life, greatly esteemed, no doubt, in the district, but
without ever occupying the wide sphere which God opened to him. Even in
writing, he kept anaudience before his mind's eye, and he prepared not an
abstract essay, but an address to be spoken to men and women, to young men and
maidens. I often found him on the Saturday night amanding and correcting what
he had written, and filling his mind with the subject. His illustrative style
made his discourse more easily remebered by himself, as it was more easily
remembered by his audience.
He was alreaday the most popular minister by far in the district. In all the
surrounding country parishes when he preached at the weekday seervices in
connection with the dispensation of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the
whole people rushed to hear him; and, in
Arbroath,
where he often preached on the Sabbath evenings after
officiating at home during the day, the churches were crowded to excess. Some
hard men thought that his discourses were not very logical; some finical men
and women regarded his Forfarshire pronunciation as very broad and his
illustrations rather vivid; but they all went to hear him, because they got
their hearts warmed.
And here I am tempted to remark that those critics have committed a great
mistake who represent him as having had no other quality than that of being
able to move the feelings. Deeper down than even his power of exciting emotion
by his pictures, was a foundation of sound common sense with a profound
knowledge of human nature, and his pathos was an efflorescence from this root.
Some years after this, Sir William Hamilton one day said to me quietly,
"Your friend Dr. Guthrie is the best preacher I ever heard." I
answered I did not wonder at the opinion, but I was surprised to hear it
expressed by so great a logician of one not specially possessed of large
logical power. He replied with great emphasis "Sir, he has the best of
all logic; there is but one step between his premise and conclusion."
I am not sure that the great Edinburgh metaphysician ever uttered a profounder
saying than this.
Mr. Guthrie's genius always seemed to me to resemble in some measure that of
Robert Burns. In both, there was the same basis of masculine sense and
knowledge of human character. Young Walter Scott marked in Burns conversation a
singular mixture of pathos and humour. There was the same union in Guthrie's
conversation and speeches. The question has often been put, How are those two
dissimilar qualities so often combined? I believe the answer is this ; - both
qualities imply a sympathy with human nature.
What was said of Burke might have been said of Thomas Guthrie - that a man
could not have passed five minutes with him in a shed to which they had been
driven by the rain without asking who this man is. This arose from his sympathy
with man as man. It was by observation and by conversation with the persons he
met that he acquired the greater part of his extensive knowledge. No doubt he
was a reader with very marked tastes. He liked picture-books and Shakspeare,
and history and travels, and biography and medical works ; - he certainly did
not like metaphysical disquisitions. But he was on the alert to get information
from the people he met with, and he must have been a very stupid or a very
stiff man from whom be could not extract something. He left on every man the
impression, that, of all things, he was most interested in that man's favourite
pursuit, and he encouraged him to speak of his craft, whether he was a farmer,.
a shepherd, a sailor, a soldier, or a tradesman.
I have a vivid recollection of his taking me up on one occasion to a place some
half-dozen miles off, to the funeral of a co-presbyter. We travelled in a cart
which he liked to do; it reminded him of his boyish days, when he and other
children went out to the country. We talked of the departed minister, who was a
staunch Moderate; but Mr. Guthrie maintained that he was a sincerely pious man,
though brought up in a bad school. The cart was driven by his servant-boy,
Sandy Hovells, a halflin - that is, half between man and boy. He talked
with Sandy about the things Sandy knew - the farms, and the crops, and the
farmers, and the servants; ever and anon giving, without seeming to do so, a
good moral or religious reflection. By the time we reached Carmylie I believe
he had drawn out of Sandy everything he knew.
He soon became a popular idol;, and the country people had all sorts of stories
about him, illustrating his kindness of heart. He had a favourite dog, Bob,
black, rough, and ungain]y, much attached to his master, but no way amiable to
other men and dogs. This animal at times insisted in going into church while
his master was preaching, and the minister, in the midst of his sermon, would
open the pulpit door and let him in, evidently to keep him quiet.(see footnote)
He kept his own congregational library, and had it opened every Saturday
evening in the manse to give out books. One night I was present, and greatly
interested in the scene. He had a pleasant word to everybody. The parish
patriarchs came in, not only to return their book, but to have a talk with him.
He asked especially for the man's wife, always giving her a name, How is Betty?
and got the whole details of the man's family and farm. The shy boy and the
blushing maiden approached him with considerable awe, but felt assured when he
named them and asked about their parents, and they went away with the
ineradicable conviction that their minister loved them. He had too shrewd a
knowledge of human nature to think of examining them on the books they took
out; but he encouraged them to talk of the contents of the volume, and be
noticed what books and parts of books they liked best, and turned the whole to
their good and his own good, as helping him to learn how to preach.
His generosity was not of the sentimental but of the genuine character; ho had
not only a heart, but his heart was in the right place. At his house the
afflicted were welcomed and the poor relieved, and every parishioner went away
happy, and with a prepossession in behalf of religion which had been so
recommended, and likely to come to the church to hear him preach next
Sabbath.
Arbirlot lay two or three miles from Arbroath, into which he came very
frequently. My home became his house of call when he or Mrs. Guthrie came into
town. And here let me remark that he had, in his wife, one in every way a
help-meet for him. She attended most carefully and judiciously to every
domestic duty, and he had thus no household care lying upon him. She was ever
kind to his people, and greatly increased his usefulness in his parish. Full of
equanimity, when he was excited she was calm, and while she appreciated his
genius and evidently enjoyed his jokes, she never attempted to copy or rival
him in his personal peculiarities.
Whenever I had an idle half-day I walked out to his place, where he always
received me with a roar of welcome. In the summer season we went out and rolled
on the grass. The cattle in the field would gather round and sniff at us; then
he would spring up and delight to see them startled and scampering off. What a
lovely eye! so soft and expressive, he would say, the ox has. People think the
simile vulgar, but old Homer must have had a fine sense of beauty when he
described a goddess as "the ox-eyed." As the lark flew up singing ;
That bird rebukes you and me (we had been talking on some anxious subject) ; it
has no cares, and it sings. The farmers are apt to look on the birds as pests;
but the birds keep down the grubs, and the grubs may limit certain plants, and
these plants have their use, though they may require to be restrained: and so,
if you were to destroy that bird, you would throw the economy of nature into
confusion. (Footnote 2)(That saying of his was
brought vividly to my mind when I found them bringing sparrows from Britain to
keep down the insects in New York and Philadelphia.) Or we would go down a mile
to the shore of the German Ocean, and watch for hours the sea anemones in the
rocky pools; and as he described to me their habits, which he had carefully
noted, he would drop a little stone into their cavity, and make me mark how
they rejected it, while they clasped and digested their appropriate food. He
was sure there was a good and intelligent Being guiding that creature, he could
not tell how. And then he would tell me a funny story of some Brechin
character. "One of the vainest men I ever knew was Willy - . On one
occasion he paid a visit to Edinburgh, dressed in high boots with yellow tops.
He came back in the same steamboat with the hangman, who was about to execute a
woman in Montrose. Several hundred people had gathered on the quay at Arbroath
to give the hangman a warm reception. The hangman, seeing them, got on shore
early, and addressing one of the leaders of the mob, pointed to Willy as the
hangman, and then walked quietly on. Willy had his vanity considerably wounded
when he found men, women, and boys bespattering him with mud, tearing his
clothes, and threatening to tear his body in pieces!" Then we talked
seriously about the wisest way of helping on the cause of the reformation of
the Church of Scotland.
Footnote Another informant
remembers seeing this actually occur. "Bob" lay quietly at his
master's feet till the close of the service; when, the blessing having been
pronounced, the people were vastly amused to see his fore-paws laid on the
book-board, the great black head appearing above it, as he gravely surveyed the
departing congregation.
Footnote 2 Dr. Guthrie used to tell that frequent
inquiries were made for "Adam's Private Thoughts," a devotional book
written by an English clergyman of that name in the last century. One Saturday
evening Mr. Guthrie thought he would find out from a decent man what made him
so anxious to have that particular volume, "Oh, sir," said he,
"I just wondered how they could mak oot what the first man's private
thoughts would be aboot!"