IN the spring of 1815, our teacher having left Brechin,
I was sent, previous to going to college at the end of autumn, to pass the
summer in the country with the Rev. Robert Simpson (afterwards Dr. Simpson of
Kintore), the parish schoolmaster of Dun; and I may use his case to illustrate
one and not a rare phase of the old parish school system of Scotland.
Though
the emoluments were small, and almost all the scholars were the children of
peasants, ploughmen, and artisans, who aimed at nothing beyond "the three R s "
- as reading, writing, and arithmetic have been called - the teachers were in
many instances university men who had gone or were going through a full
curriculum of the arts and sciences. Many had won their spurs, the degree of
M.A., at one of the Universities - St. Andrew s, Aberdeen, Glasgow, or
Edinburgh - and not a few were licentiates of the Church. By help of the salary
and fees accruing to a parish school teacher, many a poor lad was able to work
his way through the expenses of a university, all the more if he had obtained a
bursary there. He taught the school during the summer, and filled it with a
substitute during the five months which he passed at college. And if, aiming at
the pulpit, he had finished his literary and philosophical curriculum, and had
become a student in divinity, it was a still easier matter to hold a parish
school. The Church of Scotland, wisely accommodating her rules to
circumstances, required only one full attendance of five months at her Divinity
Halls, if the student, instead of four sessions of that length, attended six or
seven partial ones.
The disadvantages of this system were, so far at any
rate as the general education of the country was concerned, more than
counterbalanced by its advantages. As a licentiate of the Church, or one
preparing for that position and for the office of the ministry, the teacher in
such cases had a high character to maintain, and was thereby preserved from
those temptations to fall into low, vulgar, and dissipated habits he might
otherwise have been exposed to. Th him, besides the clergyman, the rudest
country parishes had a man of literary accomplishments and cultured manners,
and the clergyman a companion of education equal to his own, But more than all
that, in such a man the humblest country school had a teacher of Greek, Latin,
and mathematics, in whom the son of the poorest peasant, at the most trifling
cost to his parents, found one who could prepare him to enter a university.
Thus ploughmen's sons were put on a level with those of peers. A. "liberal
education," as it is called, was brought to the door of the humblest cottage;
and if a shoeless
loun had talents and ambition, here was a ladder. by
which he could, and by which many such did, climb to positions in society far
above that of their birth. :
New schemes of education have altered all this;
but not in all respects to the advantage of the country, which was very much
thereby able to boast of having, in proportion to her population, three times
as many more than England, and nearly five times as many more than Ireland had,
of her sons who had received a university education. Some years ago these were
the proportions: in Scotland, one out of every 5,000; in England, one out of
every 16,000; and in Ireland, but one out of every 22,000 of the people.
Take the case of a man I knew well, who was an example, and an admirable
one, of these bygone days. His Father, an elder of the Church, and a man of
excellent character, waa by trade a weaver. But, though possessed of some
little means - what the Scotch call a "
bein' body " - he could not well
afford to educate a son at college out of his own resources. So my friend began
life at the loom. But, a youth of superior talents and early piety, he was
fired with a holy ambition to be a minister of the gospel.
Tenaz
propositi - the characteristic of our countrymen - he commenced the Latin
grammar, and, placing the book before him on his loom, as he plied the shuttle,
be studied and finally mastered it. Such a case was that of my excellent tutor
Mr. Simpson. He had only a year or two at school; but, by dint of determined
application, made such advances in study as to venture on competing for a
bursary at the University of Aberdeen. He came out first on the list. His foot
was now on the ladder, and round after round he manfully climbed, till he found
himself Professor of Hebrew in the university of that city, a position he left
to become minister of the parish of Kintore: where, after "going out" at the
Disruption, receiving the honour of Doctor in Divinity, living and labouring
for many years, he died last summer - few in life so much esteemed, few in
death so much regretted.
The accommodation provided by law for teachers in
those days was very inadequate. Mr. Simpson's house at Dun contained only two
rooms besides the school-room. The heritors of Scotland, in most instances,
grudged the schoolmaster (though, it might be, more highly cultivated than
themselves) anything beyond this, the provision required by law. To them,. with
honourable exceptions, the country owed little gratitude. They grew rich by the
spoils of the Church; starved the teachers, and opposed With dogged
determination every reform in Church and State, reminding one of what
Dr. Chalmers related as the
speech of a professor of St. Andrew's to his students. "Gentlemen," he said,
"there are just two things in nature that never change -These are the fixed
stars and the Scotch lairds!"
However, with poor accommodation and plain
fare compared with what I had been accustomed to at home,I spent a happy summer
preparing for college. No wonder! I was healthy, full of good spirits, and had
in Mr. Simpson the kindest of guardians and tutors.
Under Mr. Simpson's
charge, in November, 1815, when twelve years of age, I set out for the
University of Edinburgh. No steamboats nor railways at that time, nor even
stage-coaches always. Lads going to college were sometimes glad of a
cast
on a carrier s cart, and ,such was our condition between Forfar and Dundee,
there being no coach on that road. Spending the night in Dundee, we crossed the
Tay next day in a pinnace, and travelled two or three stages through Fife on
the top of the coach. My tutor requiring to observe a rigid economy, we made
out the last stage of ten miles to Pettycur on foot, intending to spend the
night there, and cross the Forth next morning to Edinburgh. Like "Canny Scots,"
however, we thought it well. to call for the bill, and, by the charge made for.
tea, see how we were to get on. Ignorant of the world, we stood aghast at the
charge of eighteen pence for each. Having dined in Kirkaldy some hour or two
before, we had eaten little, and looked on this charge as an outrageous swindle
- I, like a boy (as Mr. Simpson used afterwards to tell with much glee),
regretting that I had allowed any of the viands set before us to leave the
table unconsumed! We resolved to get out as quickly as possible from what we
took to be a "den of. thieves," and so, the moment we had paid the bill, made
off for the pier to cross the Firth of Forth by the six o clock boat, which was
an open pinnace.
By this time the night had fallen down wet and stormy. We
two were the only passengers who appeared, and, as such a small freight
promised poor remuneration to the crew, they were unwilling to put out to sea,
but at last were compelled by the superintendent to start. When a short way out
on the tumbling waves, which, as this was the first day I had ever been at sea,
I looked on with considerable fear, my fears changed into terror when, seeing
us to be two "greenhorns," the boatmen threatened to pitch us overboard unless
we paid them double or treble the proper fare. But a woman whom we were called
back to take in came opportunely to our relief, gave them as good as she got,
and, snapping her fingers at their threats, with a tongue as loose as theirs,
and more mother-wit, answered these fools according to their folly.
The
habits of students then were formed on a much less expensive scale than they
are now. Our one apartment ‘was bedroom, parlour, and study. For it, with
coals, attendance, and cooking, we only paid 5s. or 6s. a week. We lived in
Bristo Street. Our landlady was a highly respectable woman, the widow of a
banker's clerk, whose children, wisely and piously trained at home, fought
their way up through their straitened ciroumstancee to affluent and highly
respectable positions.
With the exception of some "swells," few students
had ampler accommodation than ours, and our living was on a par with our
lodgings - the usual bill of fare being tea once, oatmeal porridge twice a day,
and for dinner, fresh herring and potatoes I don t think we indulged in
butcher's meat more than twice during the whole first session at college; nor
that, apart from the expense of fees, books, and what my tutor received, I cost
my father more than £10. Though not luxuriously brought up at home, this
was too great a change perhaps for a growing boy, who shot up into 6 feet 2
inches without the shoes by the time he was seventeen years of age.
Nevertheless, it is better for boys to ‘be so trained than taught, on the
John Bull system, to make a god of their belly. My expenses were higher in the
two succeeding sessions when I had different tutors, and lived in better
lodgings; but even then, and afterwards when, during the last seven years I
spent at the University, I ceased to be under tutors than is common nowadays.
One winter, six of us had a common table, and we used to make up for the outlay
of occasional suppers, by dinners of potatoes and ox-livers, which we reckoned
cost us only ‘three halfpence a head.
Sidney Smith might joke about
Scotchmen cultivating the arts and sciences on oatmeal, but the struggle which
many an ambitious lad makes to fight his way on through college, is a feather
in the cap of our country.
I knew one poor fellow, who brought up a large
box with him to. Edinburgh. He never took a meal outside his own room, which
was a poor chamber in a mean house, near the scene of the "Burke and Hare"
murders; the landlady told me that he had lodged with her for three months, nor
been served with anything else than hot water. That chest, the inside of which
he was too proud to let her see, contained, she had no doubt, oatmeal; and her
belief was, that, by the help of a little butter and salt which he had brought
with him also, he lived on
"brose," as it is called in Scotland - on
nothing else than brose, for all these months. Such food was fit only for the
strong stomach of a ploughman; whether due to this or not, the poor fellow went
mad before the close of the session! I came to know the case by his landlady
applying to me to get him, as I did, received into a lunatic asylum.
A more
fortunate case was that of a poor lad, who restricted himself for a whole year
to two shillings and sixpence a-week, went hungry to his classes and hungry to
bed, but fought his way through to become a Doctor in Medicine, and (till death
in a distant land suddenly closed his career) occupy as a physician and a
Christian, a position of the highest respectability.
A very striking
reminiscence of my college life was the entrance of the 42nd Regiment of
Highlanders into Edinburgh after the Battle of Waterloo. It must have occurred
during the first session I was at college, that is 1815 - 16. This gallant
regiment, who left most of their number behind them, had been feted all the way
north through England; and on the day when they were to enter Edinburgh, the
whole town turned out to hail and welcome them. They were to come in by the
Water-gate, and march up by the Canon-gate and High Street to the Castle. The
long line of their triumphal march was one densely-packed mass of human beings.
Every window was filled up to the topmost storey of these seven and
eight-storied houses. Wherever there was sitting or standing-room on the roofs
and chimney tops, there daring fellows were clustered. The town was wild with
joy; and as the small but gallant remnant of that noble regiment entered with
tattered colours, some with their arms in slings, patches still on the naked
limbs that trode, and on the brave bronzed faces that looked upon that bloody
field, the roll of drums and shrill sound of their bagpipes were drowned in
shouts that rent the air. Order was gone; brothers and sisters rushed into the
arms of their soldier brothers as if they had got them back from the
grave.Friends shook hands with friends, and one of the pipers, blackened, was
nearly choked in the embraces of a drunken chimney-sweep. Imposing spectacle as
it was, to how many had it brought back sad memories of the dead, opening these
wounds afresh! War is one of sin's worst curses. May it cease to the ends of
the earth, and the world be brought under the sceptre of the Prince of Peace!
Yet it was a grand procession; the grandest I ever save that other when, at
the close of a better battle, in presence of a crowd as great, nearly five
hundred ministers who had laid down their earthly all on the principle,
marched, amid prayers and tears and on the l8th day of May, 1843, to form the
Free of Scotland, in Canonmills Hall; teaching anew infidels, sceptics,
worldlings, the reality of religion and the power of conscience.
Beyond the
departments of fun and fighting, I was no way distinguished at college.
The
first year, I was twice in the hands of the college porter and policeman, under
a threat of being reported to the Senatus Academicus. On one of these occasions
I got into trouble in the following circumstances. Some of the students, lads
belonging to Edinburgh, who had come to college from its High School, despising
my youth and ridiculing my Brechin accent (as if theirs were a whit better),
thought they might make game of me. After days of patient endurance, I selected
the chief offender as soon as we got out of the Greek class into the college
yard; and, though I had not then a friend or acquaintance among them, my
class-fellows acted very fairly. So soon as my opponent and I had buttoned our
coats, turned up the end of our sleeves, and stood face to face in the miiddle
of the ring, he came up to me squaring in the most scientific fashion. I met
him with the Brechin tactics, pouring in a shower of blows, all directed to his
face; and, so soon as blood came streaming from nose or mouth, and he held down
his head to protect his face, hitting and giving him no time to breathe. The
victory only cost me a blue eye and the gentlest of all rebukes from my tutor,
who, being himself a native of Brechin, was secretly proud of the boy who had
stood up for the honour of the north country and its. tongue!
During the
second year, I was twice fined by one of the Professors, and put besides on a
sort of pillory or "cutty-stool," being made to sit apart from my fellows and
beside him, "a spectacle to men."
Not that for these sins of omission and
commission I take much blame to myself. I was a mere boy, pushed on too fast at
school, and sent to the University much too soon. 1 had no chance with many
lads in my class, who, having been pupils in the celebrated High School of
Edinburgh, were much more thoroughly educated, and who were, besides, three or
four years older than I. .
As to the fun, it was natural at my age; and, so
far as it exposed me to be fined and pilloried in the class, it was provoked by
my position and professor. We met in a part of the Old College buildings, at
eight o clock in the morning. The room was dark. My seat was one of the highest
up, and farthest back. The professor, though a learned and at bottom- a
kind-hearted man, was very peppery, and without rhyme or reason, he flew into a
passion, it was not very wonderful that a boy who had some split peas in his
pocket should, led on by older rogues, astonish the worthy man with a shower of
them rattling like hailstones on the book he held, and on himself. I have seen
him so carried away with passion that he would leave his chair to dance on the
floor, or collar, as happened sometimes, an innocent student and drag him from
his seat. The blame was more his than ours. Who cannot govern himself is unfit
to govern others - the parent, master, or teacher, who, in dealing with his
children, servants, or pupils, loses his temper, being sure to lose their
respect.
Another Professor, though sour and sulky, never indulged in
outbreaks of passion, and we left the uproar of the class just mentioned to be
as quiet as lambs in his. In my second session, besides attending for a second
time the Latin and Greek professors, I went to the Logic class. It was
conducted by one of the Moderate ministers of the city, and of course a
pluralist. It was said he read his predecessor's lectures; but, any way, it was
all one to me, who, then but thirteen years old, set down logic to be a farrago
of nonsense. In my third year, when I studied Mathematics under Sir John
Leslie, and Moral Philosophy under the celebrated Dr. Thomas Brown, I made some
progress in these sciences. Mathematics and Natural Philosophy occupied my time
and attention in my fourth winter. I was rather fond of these sciences, and
made a reputable appearance in both, but nothing more. Nor much wonder: for I
had finished my four years curriculum of Literature and Philosophy before I was
sixteen years of age, leaving college at the age most youths nowadays enter it.
This was an evil; and yet, like many other ills in life, the parent of
good in some respects. It saved me from self-conceit; no prizes inflated me
with vanity, making me, as they have done not a few whom I have known, fancy
myself a genius who might rest on his laurels, and dispense with the hard work
that alone insures ultimate eminence and success. My extreme youth also
rendered it advisable that, for the first three years at college, 1 should be
in charge of tutors; and as these were grown men attending the divinity
classes, whose associates were fellow-students far advanced in their course, I
was thrown into the society of such as were in age and acquirements much my
superiors. This, next to being able to say with David, "I am the companion of
all them that fear thee," is the greatest blessing for men as well as youths..
He who associates chiefly with his juniors is almost sure to grow vain,
self-sufficient, and intolerant, whilst they in their turn become his
sycophants and flatterers. Elsewhere than in tap-rooms, it is a dangerous thing
to be cock of the walk. To this, and the effect on if associating chiefly with
men very much his inferiors, I can trace the unfortunate aberrations of a man
who stood high in the public esteem. He is never seen without some of them;
they are his like a kite's, of straws and base stuff; but do not, like it,
repay the service he renders them in raising them from obscurity by giving
steadiness to course.
In consequence, besides, of entering college at a
very early age, I had finished all my course of eight years - in at the
literary and philosophical classes, and four as a student of theology - two
years before I could begin on my "trials" for licence as a "probationer" or
preacher." In these two years I returned to the University, seizing the
opportunity of studying subjects beyond the requirements of Church law and the
usual course of ministers; such, for example, as chemistry, anatomy, and
natural history; thereby enlarging my mind and adding to my stores of
knowledge. What I thus gained at the end, perhaps compensated for what, in
consequence of my youth, I lost at the beginning of my course. I lost the
metaphysics, but gained the physics; and perhaps, so far as common sense, power
of conversation, knowledge of the world, and power of popular address on the
platform and in the pulpit, were concerned, that was a good bargain.
My
parents acted prudently in placing me under the charge of an accomplished,
tried, and religious guardian, as well as teacher. Left to the society of any
companions they may choose, to become lodgers in houses where no oversight of
their habits is taken, and exposed in university towns to temptations they have
never before encountered or learned to resist, many promising youths are ruined
at college, and more would be so, but that, happily for themselves, they are
poor. Every university should have a roll of lodging-houses from which parents
could make their selection, and on which no houses should be admitted but such
as ministers or citizens of respectability have certified. After I escaped from
tutelage, my father was prudent enough to keep me very short of money, and
always required, me at the close of the session, on my return home, to account
for every penny I had received. And for this, which I may have thought hard at
the time, I now bless his memory.
It may not be considered that he acted
with the same sound judgment in sending a boy to college at such an early age.
But he followed in this matter the advice of my teachers, and a not very
uncommon as well as ancient practice. It appears, from the Records of Oxford
and Cambridge, as well as those of the Scotch universities, that, not youths
only, but boys even of ten years of age, were found at college in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. With all our progress in the arts and sciences and.
boast of improved systems of education, the generation is not so early
initiated into the different branches of education as were the boys and girls
of my day. Not that the race has degenerated; but we could read at an age when
most children nowadays are ignorant of their letters. My youngest brother, for
instance, could read in the New Testament when he was but three years of age,
and we were half way through the classics at school before most of the boys of
this age have begun them.
This also might enter into the calculation. of
parents who had sons preparing for the ministry - that the earlier the time
when they had finished the eight years at college required by the Church, they
could afford to wait the longer for a living. In my early days, and for long
years thereafter, the appointment to a parish did not go merit but by
influence; and, by one of the many evils of patronage, there was nothing either
to be lost, or gained by the candidate being but a raw youth. How often did it
come across me, excusing and encouraging idle fits, that my "getting a living,"
as it is called, would not turn on my diligence, and that, through the
influence my father had with those who were patrons of churches, I was sure of
an appointment
This system, so far as students were concerned, had but one
redeeming feature. Through it, boorish cubs were licked into shape, and
vulgarly-bred lads acquired the manners of gentlemen; for most of those who had
the ministry in view could obtain the favour of a patron in no other way than
by becoming tutors in gentlemen's and noblemen's families. Few had the
political influence which made it unnecessary for me to seek access to the
Church in that way. The consequence was that almost all divinity students were
eager to get tutorships. In this capacity - entering the houses of landed
gentlemen, associating there with people of cultivated habits, and becoming in
a sense members of the family - they, however humble their origin, acquired
those courteous and genteel manners which were more the characteristic of the
ministers of my early days than they are of their successors.
This old
system is now abandoned. The landed gentry, and. others too, send their boys to
England, either to public schools, or to the charge of some clergyman of the
English Church, who, by his own hard toil and to the loss of the people
committed to his charge, ekes out a wretched living by receiving pupils. Either
way, the boys get Anglified and Episcopalianized, and thereby the gulf which
separates them from the mass of the people is made wider and wider; much to the
loss of the country, and very much, as events will prove, to the danger of the
upper classes of society.
It is not easy to know how to supply the want of
these tutorships, in order to educate in polite manners those candidates for
the ministry who have come from the lower classes of society. Short of a moral
crime, nothing is more offensive in a minister than hilarity; unless, indeed,
it be when they swing over to the other side, and we have vulgar gentility and
a pompous affectation of high breeding. With my own ears I heard an Independent
minister in England - a very fine gentleman, with his ring and well-arranged
hair - deeming meal a very vulgar term, speaking of the widow' s barrel of
"flour," when referring to her who had the cruse of oil and barrel of meal; and
to my old country neighbourhood there came a Seceder youth, affecting such
refinement that, while some of his worthy predecessors would have called
children bairns, he spoke of them as "those sweet and interesting bipeds that
call man father!"
Now, however vulgar themselves, the common people
appreciate and admire good breeding and gentle manners in their minister. There
was an old minister of Brechin, grandfather of Dr. John Bruce of Edinburgh, who
maintained, and rightly, that every truly pious man, every true Christian, had
in him the elements of a true gentleman. I have heard the old people in Brechin
tell how he illustrated that by appealing to the manner in which Abraham
received the three Strangers who approached his tent; and, certainly, the
single chapter in Genesis which relates that story is worth more than the whole
volume of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, he would also refer to Joseph
when summoned from prison to the palace. of Pharaoh.
It is said that Joseph
"shaved himself and changed his raiment." "Joseph," said old Mr. Bruce, "did
not go to Pharaoh foul and begrimed as he lay in prison. No; but he got himself
shaved and shirted like a gentleman, and then he went in unto Pharaoh!"
Dr.
Davidson, one of the ministers of Edinburgh when I attended college
(brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord Cockburn), a man of landed. property,
and - better than all - one of the most pious and devout ministers of his or
any day, was so impressed with the importance of ministers adorning the
doctrine of God their Saviour by all freedom from vulgarity and a certain
polish of manners, that I have heard of the good old man actually himself
teaching such manners to a pious but awkward lad from some remote island or
glen of the north. To the back of the door went the venerable Doctor, and to
the amazement of the gaping boor, opened it to make him, and teach him how to
make, a profound bow! On another occasion, it is said he slipped a bank-note
into the hands of a poor student, beneath whose coarser crust, however, he
discerned both uncommon piety and uncommon talents, saying, "Take that, my dear
lad, and go to Mr. - ," (naming him), "you will be much the better of a quarter
at the dancing."
Might not the churches learn from examples like these, as
from their own observation and good sense, to supply what is lacking in the
education of their ministers, and see that all of them learn, as Paul says, to
"be courteous"? I have known ministers whose usefulness in the pulpit and out
of it was very much impaired by their vulgarity. Even Paul may have owed some
of his influence to the circumstance, which may be. seen on the surface of his
addresses, that he was not less a polite gentleman than a great orator. "Rough
diamonds," as some are called, are better than Bristol stones, but polished
ones better than either.
The Church of England has, strange to say, no
prescribed course of study for her clergy. The power of the Bishop in that
matter is or was absolute: and so, at the end of the long war after Waterloo,
some officers, finding their vocation gone, doffed the red coat to put on the
black, thereby surprising the world and descending as a curse on certain poor
parishes. It was enough that they had friends among the patrons, and bishops on
the bench to ordain them, irrespective altogether of their qualifications for
the ministry, or of the souls committed to their charge.
The Church of
Scotland, on the contrary - as she still does, and as, with slight
modifications in some instances, all Presbyterians in Scotland do - requires
her students to, study literature and philosophy for four years and divinity
for other four; and even after this, no young man is licensed to preach, nor
any licentiate ordained to the ministry, till he has given proof of his
fitness, by delivering a certain number of discourses before the Presbytery,
and submitting to an examination by them also on all the subjects he has
studied during his eight years at the university. No profession requires so
long, and few so costly, an apprenticeship; which, I may remark, makes it all
the more disgraceful that, with a preparation so great, ministers should
usually receive a payment so small; starvings being a better name than livings
for many of their charges. Some gentlemen pay their French cooks, and many
merchants their clerks, a larger salary than he receives who has charge of
their souls, and in whom they expect the piety of an apostle, the
accomplishments of a scholar, and the manners of a gentleman.
Look at my
own case: it occupied me eight years to run my regular curriculum. I attended
the university, as I have mentioned, for two additional years before I became a
licentiate, and other five years elapsed before I obtained a presentation to a
vacant church, and became minister of the parish of Arbirlot. Here were fifteen
years of my life spent - the greater part of them at no small cost - qualifying
myself for a profession which, for all that time, yielded me nothing for my
maintenance. The inadequate means of creditably supporting themselves and their
families of which most ministers have to complain, is a very serious matter, -
threatening, in an enterprising and commercial and wealthy country such as
ours, to drain away talent from the pulpit, and, through the weakness of its
ministry, bring contempt on religion; worse still, perhaps, to make good the
sage remark of Matthew Henry - " a scandalous maintenance makes a scandalous
ministry."
FROM LICENSE TO
ORDINATION. 1825 - 1830.
* Having
finished his literary and theological training, a candidate for the ministry in
the Presbyterian Church is, on attaining the age of twenty-one years, and after
certain " trials," licensed by the Presbytery to preach. He is then called a
"licentiate," "preacher," or "probationer." He is not ordained until he
receives a "call" to a particular congregation; and he is eligible for such
call immediately on receiving "licence".
I WAS licensed by
the Presbytery of Brechin in 1825. In passing through my trials for licence, I
had to deliver what is called the "Popular Discourse" in public. Ordinarily
there is a small attendance on such occasions, the orator addressing himself to
a "beggarly account of empty boxes." But, Brechin being my native place, when I
ascended the pulpit of its old Cathedral Church, I found myself face to face
with a large congregation - a greater trial that, than standing the Presbytery'
s examination in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Logic, Moral and Natural
Philosophy, Church History, Hebrew, Exegesis, and Dogmatic Theology.
The
practice common in the English Church of ministers preaching other people's
discourses is, I may say, unknown with us in Scotland. He who is found out
doing so is considered guilty of a disgraceful, if not a dishonest transaction,
- of something far worse than smuggling, illicit distilling of whisky, or
evading the Custom House duties by running tea and brandy ashore in the dead of
night. Nowhere in Scotland would you find what I saw at Oxford - piles of
manuscript sermons openly lying on the counter of a bookseller for sale at one
shilling a piece, which were bought, the shopkeeper told me, by "young
gentlemen entering holy orders." Nor would any mother in Scotland make such a
speech as did a lady to me whom I met lately in London. She expressed much
pleasure at renewing our acquaintance; but was specially glad at the
opportunity of introducing me to her son, who was a clergyman. "He will be so
glad to see you," she added, "for, dear Dr. Guthrie, he often preaches your
sermons to his people!" Had a Scotch mother a son who went to the pulpit to
preach other people's sermons, she would do anything rather than tell it. Not
but that I think it were well for their congregations if some of our Scotch
ministers, who are not specially gifted as preachers, though very good pastors,
would, without being slavish copyists, draw to some extent on the rich stores
of the old divines, or Puritan Fathers.
It is better in England now; but
how great was the ignorance of some of the "young gentlemen in holy orders" and
how lightly they took their duty, appears in a circumstance which I have heard
a minister of the Independent Church relate as having occurred to him, when a
young man, in England. In the house where be lodged was a young clergyman with
whom he became acquainted. On one occasion, this young gentleman expressed
unbounded astonishment when he found that the Dissenting preacher composed his
own sermons; and, on the latter asking how he got his, he frankly confessed
that he had purchased a stock before coming to that place to preach. He was a
fine young fellow, honourable, and, up to the measure of his knowledge,
faithful and con scientious in the discharge of what he considered his duty.
But his ignorance of theological matters was almost in credible. He had studied
the Thirty-nine Articles, and was well versed in Paley's Evidences, but beyond
that, he seemed to have learned absolutely nothing of theology. One day, the
Socinians being mentioned, he asked, "What do they believe?" and on being told
that it was rather for what they did not believe, than for what they did, that
they were esteemed heterodox, and that especially they denied the Deity of
Jesus Christ, he exclaimed with horror and indignation, "What! deny the Deity
of our blessed Lord and Saviour! What a set of rascals they must be! "
But
to return, after this digression, to my feelings when I rose in the pulpit to
face for the first time in my life a public assembly. I felt for a moment as if
my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth, pretty confident of this,
however, that if it were once loosed and set a going, I could go on: and so it
did - my apparent calmness and self-possession being such, that many declared
that I spoke and had the bearing of one who had been preaching for years.
Though I read what on that occasion I preached, as was the practice of all
on trials for licence, I had made up my mind that I would be no reader;
considering then, as, if possible, I do so more now, that he who reads, instead
of delivering his sermon looking his hearers fair in the face, throws away a
great. advantage. With the determination, on the Saturday afternoon thereafter,
I made my way to Dun, a pariah some four miles from Brechin, once the seat and
estate of John Erskine, one of the leaders of the Reformation, and the friend
both of Queen Mary and John Knox - having promised to preach my first sermon
there. On the road I spent my time repeating, or trying rather to repeat over
to myself the sermon I had prepared for the following day; and my memory so
often failed me, that I remember well saying to myself, " I have mistaken my
profession! I shall never succeed as a preacher!" It was more or less under
this depressing feeling I ascended the pulpit at Dun. To be secure against a
complete break-down, I, turning over the leaves as I advanced, kept my MS.
before me on the Bible; and, though at one time during the first prayer, for an
instant, my mind became a perfect blank, I got through my work without halt or
blunder, which was then the height of my ambition; and was so happy at that,
that I think that hour after I left that pulpit was perhaps the brightest,
happiest of all my life.
To get a charge was now my outlook and that of my
friends. My father had enough of political influence to secure me a parish
through patronage. That happened thus in days that preceded the Reform Bill by
a good many years
The cluster of Burghs called the Aberdeen Burghs, which
consisted of Aberdeen, Bervie, Montrose, Arbroath, and Brechin, then united to
send a member to Parliament. The two first supported the Tory interest -
Montrose and Arbroath the Whigs: they therefore neutralised each other, leaving
Brechin, which was not very pronounced either way, to turn the scale. The real
power of returning a member to Parliament lay in my native city - whoever won
it, won the day: and, as my father was Provost of the City, and his was much
the strongest party in the Council, it may be said that he had virtually the
appointment of the member of Parliament.
However bad this state of matters
might be for the country, it secured me an amount of political influence, that,
altogether irrespective of my own merits, made me sure of a church: and before
I had been licensed four months, I had one of the largest charges and best
livings of Scotland in my hand - but on a condition, which, thanks to God, I
could not stoop to. The Moderate party, as if they foresaw that their time was
short, were driving things with a high hand, and Sir Robert Peel, then Home
Secretary, was aiding and abetting them. None was appointed to a church, where
the Crown was patron, but such as bound himself to support the Moderate, or
anti-popular, and in many instances anti-evangelical, party in the Church. So,
notwithstanding political influence, I found that they would not me to the
charge in question until I would go to Dr.Nicol, at St. Andrew's, the then
leader of the Moderates and there sell my liberty to him, "my birthright for.a
mess of pottage." Till then, I had little interest in Church politics, but
lived on kindly terms with ministers of both parties. But I recoiled from the
idea of this bondage. To persuade me they said I would have but to pay my
respects to Dr.Nichol, that he would ask no questions, nor attempt by any
paction to bind me to his party. But, regarding the waiting on him as though a
silent, a distinct pledge that he and the Moderate party would have my vote in
the Church Courts, I refused to go, saying that if I could not enter the Church
without pledging myself to either party, I would turn to the pursuit of some
other profession.
The loss of this church was a great disappointment to me -
the way I lost it did not certainly recommend the Moderates to my favour, but
it was a blessed Providence for me: their grasping, high-handed tyranny
dictated conditions I was too proud (if nothing else) to agree to, and I was
thus kept from entering on a charge, the weight of which as I was then "in the
gristle," would have dwarfed and stunted me for life.
Not requiring, like
many others, to be a tutor for my maintenance, and having nothing special to
do, I wearied staying at home: and so, to enlarge my knowledge, improve my
mind, and pursue those studies in anatomy and the natural sciences, such as
chemistry and natural history, on which I had spent two years at the Edinburgh
University after completing the eight years curriculum there required by the
laws of the Church, I made up my mind to spend the winter of 1826-27 in Paris,
as a student at the Sorbonne.
What a difference between travelling then and
now, in respect of speed, cost, and comfort! It must have been in the month of
November, 1826, that I made the journey to London. I took an outside seat all
the way from Edinburgh; and remember that when, after travelling from early
morning, we reached Newcastle about midnight, I was so benumbed with cold that
I hardly knew I had a leg, to say nothing of a pair. We called a halt for a
little while there; and, beyond a brief-stoppage for meals, I do not recollect
of another all the way to London. On the second night, I exchanged the outside
for the interior of the coach; taking for the journey, which we now accomplish
in some ten hours, no less than three days and two nights. Wearied and worn
with want of sleep, and by three days and two nights constant, and by no means
very comfortable, travelling, I was at last set down in London and, amid its
teeming millions - crowds rushing past who would have hardly stopped to lift me
up if I had dropped down dead in the gutter - I felt as solitary as I would in
an African desert. I had never felt so helpless and lonely all my life - I had
never been in London till then.
Indeed, I had never crossed the Border
before; and, being then more patriotic and less of a cosmopolite than I am now,
I remember with what interest I looked on Berwick-on-Tweed, and the scenes of
many a bloody battle between the Scotch and English. I remember nothing of my
compagnons de voyage, but that a very matronly Lady and a young woman
going up to London on service, to whom the guard compassionately gave an inside
seat, were my company that night I left the top of the coach; and that then I
travelled a good way with four poachers whom two constables had in little
charge, and who thought so little shame that, on passing a preserve where some
pheasants were strutting about as thick and tame as barn-door fouls. "Ah,
Jack," exclaimed one of them to his fellows, "to be down there ! " - an
observation which set all a-laughing, poachers, passengers and
constables.
They, the very constables themselves, plainly looked on poaching
as our Highlanders did on making whisky without a permit from the Excise, or
the farmers and ploughmen, and fishermen of the sea- coast, on running
contraband goods, so as to escape the oppressive duties laid on tea and
tobacco, or gin and brandy.
Brechin being an inland town, I knew little
about the coast smuggling, though I remember the principal farmer in my first
parish charge, which lay on the sea-board, telling me how, when he went north
from the Lothians, he often found his servants standing by their ploughs asleep
at mid-day: nor knew the reason why, till he discovered that it was no uncommon
thing for the ploughmen there to be up all night "running goods," as they
called it - .discharging boats laden with the contraband goods of a smuggler
that had ventured in shore when the darkness concealed her from the cutters
that were prowling about.
But, when a boy in Brechin, I was quite familiar
with the appearance and on-goings of the Highland smugglers. They rode on
Highland ponies, carrying on each side of their small, shaggy, but brave and
hardy steeds, a small cask, or "keg," as it was called, of illicit whisky,
manufactured amid the wilds of Aberdeenshire or the glens of the Grampians.
They took up a position on some commanding eminence during the day, where they
could, as from a watch-tower, descry the distant approach of the enemy, the
exciseman or gauger: then, when night fell, every man to horse, desoending the
mountains only six miles from Brechin, they scoured the plains, rattled into
the villages and towns, disposing of their whisky to agents they had
everywhere; and, now safe, returned at their leisure, or often in triumphal
procession. They were often caught, no doubt, with the contraband whisky in
their possession. Then they were subjected to heavy fines besides the loss of
their goods. But - daring, stout, active fellows - they often broke through the
nets, and were not slack, if it offered them a chance of escape, to break the
heads of the gaugers. I have seen a troop of thirty of them riding in Indian
file, and in broad day, through the streets of Brechin, after they had
succeeded in disposing of their whisky, and, as they rode leisurely along,
beating time with their formidable cudgels on the empty barrels to the great
amusement of the public and mortification of the excisemen, who had nothing for
it but to bite their nails and stand, as best they could, the raillery of the
smugglers and the laughter of the people.
Few, in the end throve on this
trade. Smuggling was bad thing, as a result in most instances demoralising
those engaged in it; but you could not convince but few of the best of the
people, that it was a positively wrong thing. So everybody, with a few
exceptions drank what was in reality illicit whisky - far superior to that made
under the eye of the Excise - Lords and Lairds, members of Parliament and
ministers of the Gospel; which shows how positive evil there is, in making laws
unsuited to times and circumstances, and commend themselves neither to the
reason nor the conscience of the masses - this, when there are temptations to
break it - makes the law be not honoured, but despised.
In London, where I
spent two or three weeks, I lived in Tabernacle Row, kept by a decent Scotch
widow woman. The last night I passed there I was put fairly
hors de
combat by the spectacle which met my eyes on striking a light after I had
been some time in bed; on looking up, there, on the white curtains, hung scores
of bugs, ready to drop down and reinforce the enemy below. As some one said in
similar circumstances, if they had only been unanimous, they might have turned
me out of bed! I spent the rest of the night on two chairs, glad next day to
avail myself of the offered hospitality of a kind but curious countryman.
His name was Allan, and his birthplace Arbroath. He had gone to London long
years before as a baker lad, and thriving, had risen to be himself a
master-baker, and, latterly, a corn-dealer. When I knew him he had retired from
business and become a pretty old man. His time a was spent in the study of
metaphysics and theology; and his delight was to engage with others in
passages-at- arms on these knotty subjects. First meeting him at a dinner
party, I happened to sit opposite to him at table; knowing neither who he was,
nor what he was, I was surprised, when, addressing me, he said, "What do you
consider, sir, the most general of all ideas ?" I learned. afterwards that by
their reply to this strange and startling question he gauged men's capacities.
I could hardly have been more astonished though he had given me a blow on the
nose; but, taking him for an odd character, and wishing to be courteous, I
thought it best to humour him, and, after a moment's reflection, replied, "I
would say, Eternity." This came so near what lie thought the proper answer -
Space namely - that I was instantly enthroned in his good graces; and thinking
me "a foeman worthy of his steel," after a tilt on metaphysics, which showed
that he had Watts Logic at his finger ends, this old Scotch baker rushed into
the theological arena, and put me to my mettle to defend Calvinism against the
doctrines of Arminius, which he had embraced on leaving the Presbyterian Church
to become a Methodist. The result was that he made me an offer of his house,
and would not let me go till I had promised to leave my and accept of his
hospitality. He was very kind, good and devout man, but very queer; an old
bachelor, followed his own ways. On going to his house with bed and baggage, I
found him sitting in his parlour in his shirt sleeves,.smoking a long pipe,
whose fumes filled the room but did not seem to disturb a whole flock of
canaries, linnets, and bullfinches that occupied the same apartment, and flying
about at their ease from one piece of furniture to another, did everything but
perch on the old man's bald head. It was a lone life, his, and sometimes I
fancied he himself thought the birds but a poor substitute for bairns,
But
to dismiss him for better-known men : - I breakfasted with Dr.Waugh, a minister
of.the Scotch Secession Church, in London, who was celebrated for his eloquence
as a preacher, and his singuilar love for and frequent use of the Scotch
tongue. He was a heavenly old man, with the most brilliant pair of eyes, large
and black and lustrous, I had ever seen. He was a genius, with much quaint
humour; and I have heard that when he, and these two "origina1s," and
remarkable men, Matthew Wilks and Rowland Hill, met (as they often did), their
talk was a treat - -a coruscation of meteors,
seria mixta cum
jocis, worth travelling miles to enjoy.
I was often with Mr. Joseph
Hume, then member of Parliament for the group called the Aberdeen Burghs. At
his house one day I met at dinner Sir John Sinclair, to whom the country owed -
what excited the admiration of the first Napoleon - the "Statistical Account of
Scotland," and Alderman Wood, the friend of Queen Caroline and father of the
present Lord Hatherley. I remember with what interest and astonishment the
Alderman listened to the account I was led, somehow or other, to give the
company of the way in which the Sabbath was observed generally in the
households of Scotland: and also how Joseph Hume, when some looked almost
incredulous, struck in, saying, that it was just so when he was a boy in
Montrose, and how he remembered it well in his father's house.
Hume was a
man of great practical wisdom; held whatever matter he fastened on with the
tenacity of a bull-dog; possessed an unblemished character; and had more true,
religious principle than the Tories and Church- men, who hated and abused him,
gave him credit for. He, certainly, was not a man of genius; and had no more
appreciation of it than I have of music. I remember breakfasting with him in
Edinburgh after he had attended and spoken along with Andrew Thomson at an
Anti- Patronage Meeting on the preceding day. Thomson was then, as he always
was, most effective; stepping forth as a grand debater - the prince of
debaters-crushing the arguments employed by the friends of Patronage to powder,
and, by some inimitably funny stories, covering them with ridicule. I expected
to find Joseph charmed with Thomson. Not he! All he said was, "he seems rather
a humorous man." Though broad and loose in some of his views, he was a better
man, as I have said, than many took him for. His family, as I had opportunities
of seeing, had a religious training; and he was a and true friend to many a
young man whom his influence and patronage helped on to fortune.
I was much
touched With a proof of a kindly heart which Mr. Hume gave me but a few months
before his death. He and I had in many respects, taken different courses, I had
had no correspondence with him for twenty years. Yet, on passing through
Edinburgh, he called at my house. I was from home, but he sought an interview
with my wife; said he had heard from Sir George Sinclair with whom he had been
staying at Thurso Castle; that I had a large number of sons; and that he came
to say that he would be very happy to do what in him lay to help them on by his
influence.
He was the only man of all the great ones of the earth I have
known that ever made me such an offer. Not that but from some of them, I am
sure, had I asked their petronage, I would have got it, and got it very
cordially; but, (as my wife, while moat gratefully thanking him explained to
Mr. Hume) I wished to preserve my independence, so, made it a principle to ask
no patronage for my children from men in place and power. I had fought my own
battle, and they must fight theirs. People have often expressed their wonder to
me why I did not get good, snug, lucrative berths for my sons in Government
offices and in India. Well, I could have done that; but at the loss of my
independence as a public man. Besides, how could I have solicited favours for
my own family, and refused my good offices on behalf of others? I was so
situated, I should have been made the medium of so many applications, that I
would soon have been dubbed "The Solicitor-General," and become such a bore as
to lose all influence for good with those who, under God, shaped the course and
ruled the destinies of the country. I did occasionally intercede on behalf of
others, but only where I had public grounds to stand on, where the educational,
moral, or religious interests of the community were concerned - never
otherwise.
At that my first visit to London, I saw His Royal Highness the
Duke of Sussex lay the foundation-stone of the London University. He was the
only one of George III. s family I ever saw; for, when George IV. came to
Edinburgh, I did not move a step to see one of the worst men that ever
disgraced a throne - a base fellow, who had all the bad, without any of the
redeeming qualities of Charles II. I sought Rowland Hill's Chapel, being very
anxious to hear a man who was possessed of such remarkable abilities, and whom
God had so highly honoured to stir up England and convert souls. I, however,
stumbled in among Wesleyan Methodists, and was fortunate enough to find the
pulpit occupied by the celebrated Adam Clarke. He was greater as a Commentator
than a preacher.
I usually dined at an eating-house in the City in company
with an old school-fellow, who was then a clerk in a mercantile house. We
bought rump-steak at a butcher's stall, carried it away with us in our pockets
wrapped in paper, got it cooked with potatoes, and had probably some beer or
porter, and I remember the dinner cost in all but one shilling, and we had rare
fun to make us relish it. The place was a favourite resort of lads, clerks like
my friend Allardice, and how used to play on their ignorance and credulity! It
was teh I first saw the narrow limits and defects of the ordinary education of
English schools. These lads were, I doubt not, thorough masters of their own
particular deaprtments of business, but, beyond the small hole they filled -
like certain shell-fish in the sea- rocks - they were amazingly ignorant of
everything outside.
I cannot remember whether it was at this time, or on my
return from Paris, that I saw a grand encounter in the House of Commons between
Mr. Canning and the Whigs who supported him on his becoming Prime Minister, and
the Tories, his old friends, and now deadly foes. I got an order from Mr. Hume,
who warned me I should hear nothing but some discussions about the shipping
interest, to be brought on by Mr. Huskisson. But, unexpectedly, Canning
appeared for the first time that night as the head of the Government. This was
the signal for battle; Dawson, Sir Thomas Lethbridge, and others leading the
assault against the Government. I marked Brougham sitting with his hand resting
on one of the iron pillars of the old House of Commons, immovable for an hour
or so, with his eyes fixed like a basilisk's on the two assailants. When they
had closed, up he rose to a task for which he could have made no preparation,
and which was the most extraordinary display of reasoning, sarcasm, withering
denunciation, and eloquence I ever heard. Canning stepped for a moment into the
arena, but, leaving the fight to his troops, contented himself as he looked
over on the Opposition benches, with exclaiming in trumpet tones, and his arm
suiting the words, "I rejoice that the banner of opposition is unfurled!" Sir
Thomas Lethbridge that night spoke the speech of a bitter Tory, Sir Francis
Burdett that of an extreme Whig. I lived to see them change sides years
thereafter - Lethbridge dying a Whig, and Burdett a Tory.
The journey from
London to Paris, like that from Edinburgh to London, occupied three days and
two nights. I remember of being much struck on landing at Calais at the sight
of a lofty crucifix which stood by the pier, representing our Lord hanging in
blood and agony on the accursed tree, and of looking with mingled awe and
wonder and horror on that symbol of Popery, the first of the kind I had seen.