DR.THOMAS
M'CRIE
by HUGH
MILLER
FOURTH ARTICLE.
DR. JOHNSON has occupied a whole paper of the "Idler" in
showing that the biographies of authors may be as rich in interest as the
biographies of any class of persons whatever. No lives, he remarks, more abound
in sudden vicissitudes of fortune, and over no class of men do hope and fear,
expectation and disappointment, grief and joy, exercise a larger influence.
Goldsmith, in his Life of Parnell, has recorded an opposite opinion ; but
Goldsmith did not sufficiently attend to his own history, - a history quite as
striking in its details as any piece of fiction, not excepting even his own
exquisite "Vicar of Wakefield." The obscure Surgeon-assistant, whom the faculty
were afraid to employ because his brogue was so strong and his appearance so
uncouth, - the imprudent and ruined surety, who, forsaking his obscure little
shop in a provincial town, fled from his creditors to avoid a jail, - the poor
scholar and itinerant musician, who wandered on foot over France, Belgium, aud
Italy, purchasing a supper and a bed with his tunes from the peasantry, and
disputing on some philosophical question for the same meed and a piece of money
additional, with the learned of Ferrara and Padua, - was the elegant and
accomplished author whose poetry a few years after was to be rated higher than
that of Pope, and his prose superior to that of Addison. Dr Johnson was so much
in the right, that, to establish the point, one has but to appeal from the
opinion of his opponent to his opponent’s biography. We have already
passed, in our rapid sketch, over that part of the life of Dr MCrie most marked
by vicissitude. The novelist or the poet takes but a portion of individual or
national history for Ins subject;- the curtain falls, or the tale closes, when
the hero of the piece has passed from one extreme of fortune to another ; even
the boy hears no more of Whittington after he has become Lord Mayor of London,
or of Pepin after he has become King of France. On the same principle, what may
be termed the romance of the Doctor’s life closes when the obscure and
persecuted preacher of Carrubber’s Close, known only, beyond the narrow
circle of his friends, when known at all, as a narrow-minded and illiberal
sectarian, takes his undisputed place among the literati of his country as
beyond comparison the first historian of his age, - as a great master of public
opinion, - as successful above all his contemporaries in removing
long-cherished prejudice and misconception, - and as singularly sagacious in
seizing the events of the remote future, in the imperfect and embryo rudiments
of piesent occurrences, or in partially developed modes of feeling and thought.
But in the portion of his history which remains, though little chequered by
incident there is interest of a different kind. It is something to know the
Part taken by such a man in the controversies of the time, - controversies many
of which still survive ; for there were tiny judgments less liable to mistake,
and no honest man ever questioned his integrity.
Dr M’Crie was very
much of the opinion of Cowley. Good men, says the prince of metaphysical poets,
should pray no less frequently for the conversion of literature than for the
Jews. No one better knew the importance of literature, or was more earnestly
solicitous for its conversion, than the Doctor. He saw every species of power
among men, whether for good or evil, founded in opinion ; and recognised in the
press an all-potent lever, through which the public mind may he either
heightened or depressed. He was aware, too, that it is not always the grave or
more elaborate works which produce the deepest impressions. Songs have hastened
national revolutions, and a single romance has powerfully affected the
character of a country ; and in the first series of the "Tales of My Landlord,"
with its marvellously unfair representation of the Covenanters, he recognised a
work of the most influential character, and influential chiefly for evil.
Rarely, says the poet, has Spain had heroes since Cervantes laughed away the
chivalry of his country ; and it was a class beyond comparison nobler and
hotter than the chivalry of Spain that the novelist had set himself to laugh
down.
Dr.M’Crie’s review of the ‘‘Tales" appeared in
the ‘‘Christian Instructor’’ for 1817, and produced a
powerful impression. Sir Walter, secure in his strength, had felt for years
before that he could well afford being indifferent to criticism. He had a
firmer hold of the public mind than any of his reviewers. The occasional
critique either re-echoed his praises in tones caught from the general voice,
and then sank unheeded, or dared to dispute the justice of the almost universal
decision in his favour, and sank all the sooner in consequence. So far was he
deeming the strictures of a hostile reviewer worthy of reply, that he had
ceased to deem them worthy of perusal. On this occasion, however, he found he
had to deal with no ordinary critic; the stream of public opinion had been
turned fairly against him; and, after recording his determination not even to
read the doctor’s article, he eventually found it necessary not only to do
so, but also to attempt answering it, which he did in the "Quarterly," in the
form of a critique on his own work Hogg has informed us how invariably
favourable Sir Walter as a critic was to Sir Walter as an author. He of course
decided that his "Tales" were very excellent tales, and that the Covenanters
were in no degree better than he had described them; referring for proof to a
few insulated facts as valuable in proving general propositions, as if it were
to be inferred from the history of the Rev. Titus Oates that all the clergy of
England were perjured miscreants, or from that of the Rev. Dr Dodd, that they
were all malefactors, and deserved to be hung.
His article had its weight
with a few High Churchmen, zealously prepared to believe on the side of
Claverhouse without the trouble of thought or scrutiny; but in the estimate of
the less prejudiced classes, both in England and our own country, victory
remained as unequivocally on the side of Dr M’Crie and the Covenanters as
if the reply had never been written.
The "Life of Andrew Melville" appeared
about two years after, in 1819. It may be regarded as a continuation of the
history of the Scottish Church, so auspiciously begun in the "Life of Knox;"
and displays the same power and discrimination exhibited in that work, with
even more than the same amazing profundity of research. It was remarked, it is
said, by the present Lord Jeffrey, that one would require several years’
additional reading to qualify one’s self for the task of reviewing it. The
Doctor had got into a walk of information, the intricacies of which were known
to only himself; and critics of the highest class were contebnt to set their
craft aside, and, taking the place of ordinary readers under him, were fain,
instead of leading others, to be followers themselves. Regarded simply as a
piece of narrative, it has been found to possess less interest than the "Life
of Knox." The writer has not performed his part less ably; but the subject of
his memoir, if not less a hero than his great predecessor the Reformer, had
lived a life of less stormy interest, and had found feebler, if not less
insidious spirits, with which to contend. But the history of Melville will ever
continue, notwithstanding, to be regarded as emphatically the history of the
Scottish Church for the stirring and eventful period which it embraces. The
High Churchmen of the "British Critic" were less candid and less knowing than
the editor of the "Edinburgh Review ;" and, making their own ignorance the
measure of their censure, they were of course very severe. Authorities of which
they knew nothing might be garbled and misquoted, they said, without their
being aware of the fact; and it could not be held therefore that the "bold
rebellious fanatics who figured prominently in the early days of the Scottish
Reformation" could be in reality the good honest men which the Presbyterian
historian had proved them to be. The argument seems unanswerable; and as
ignorance in one set of men is quite as good ignorance in any other set, there
can be no faith in history long as the Churchmen of the "British Critic," or
any other sort of people, remain unacquainted with the data on which the
historians have founded.
The Doctor rarely took any part in public
meetings. Though an eloquent and impressive speaker, and at once qualified to
delight by the manner, and instruct by the matter, of his addresses, his native
modesty led him to rate his capabilities for the platform lower than every one
else rated them. He felt, too, that he was not neglecting his duty so long as
he was engaged in his own peculiar walk, - the walk in which he excelled all
his contemporaries, - and so long as he saw every public measure in which he
felt an interest furnished with its zealous and appropriate champions. His
friend Andrew Thomson was the
powerful assailant of the Apocrypha and the slave-trade; and the cause of the
Scottish poor might well be entrusted to
Dr Chalmers. There were
questions and causes, however, for which he could deem it a duty to mount the
platform. Many of our readers will remember the apathy with which a large
proportion of the British public regarded the long protracted and bloody
struggle of the Greeks with their cruel and tyrannical taskmasters. The country
had grown too mercantile to be generous; the interests of some of our trading
bodies were compromised; it had become imprudent to be sympathetic. The Greeks
had grown too base and degraded, it was affirmed, to be either deserving of
freedom or capable of enjoying it; and so they were left to fight more than
half the battle of liberty, not only without assistance, but without sympathy.
But the Doctor indulged in other feelings, and reasoned on other principles. He
could sympathize with the oppressed Greeks, not only as a scholar, richly
imbued with the spirit of the ancient literature of their country, but also as
a Christian, deeply interested in their welfare as men; nor had he learned, in
the prosecution of his studies, to deem the struggles of even a semi-barbarous
people as of little importance. The accident which befalls an iudividual in his
immature childhood frequently influences his destiny for life; and it is so
also with countries. The Irish were not a civilized people when conquered by
the English under Strongbow, nor yet the Scotch when they baffled and defeated
the same enemy under Cressingham and Edward II.; but who can doubt that the
present state of Scotland and Ireland depends materially upon the very opposite
results of their respective struggles?
At the first meeting held in behalf
of the Greeks in the land, - we believe in Britain, - Dr M’Crie took the
lead, and delivered an address of great eloquence and power, which had much the
effect of exciting the public interest, and which united what is not often
conjoined, - a manner singularly popular and pleasing, with much profundity of
thought, and information drawn from the less accessible sources. At an after
period, when the struggle had terminated in the freedom of Greece, the ladies
of Edinburgh exerted themselves in raising funds, through which it was proposed
to extend the advantages of education to the long-neglected females of that
country. The Doctor gave the scheme his warmest support; - he preached in its
behalf the sermon so highly eulogized by Andrew Thomson as something beyond the
reach of his contemporary ministers of the Establishment, - conducted the
correspondence of the Association originated to carry it on, - and at a public
meeting appealed to the country in its favour. Some of the ladies, his
coadjutors in the scheme, had conceived of the Doctor merely as a person of one
talent, - one of the most common conceptions imaginable; they had no idea that
the man who excelled all his contemporaries in research could excel most of
them in eloquence also. They knew that no one could surpass him in argument or
narrative, and therefore for argument and narrative they looked to him; but to
delight the meeting with the poetry of the subject, - to recall the old classic
associations, - to appeal powerfully to the feelings, - to do all that they
supposed the Doctor was not capable of doing, - they secured the services of
the late Sir James Mackintosh. One of them even went so far as to tell the
Doctor of the arrangement, in which he readily acquiesced. When the meeting
came, however, they were all convincingly shown that he could do more than
argue and narrate. "His address," says a writer in an English periodical,
"distinguished throughout by the most thorough acquaintance with the politics,
philosophy, mythology, and poetry of ancient Greece, commingled with the
happiest allusions to these so fervid a contrast of her ancient glory with her
modern degradation, new and foreign as such topics were thought to be to the
habits of the good Doctor; his speech reminded many of his hearers of the
finest speeches of Burke."
The year 1827 was what we would have termed a
year of triumph to Dr M’Crie, had the conscientious stand for what he
deemed a great principle, which had subjected him to so much persecution rather
more than twenty years before, borne any reference to the opinion or the
approval of men. He had stood with his few brethren on the ground occupied by
the fathers of the Secession and the first Reformers of the Church, and had
seen well nigh the entire body to whom he had been united, but who had cast him
off, carried away on a new and untried course of peril and defection, which
would terminate, he augured, in the wreck of all those principles for which
their fathers had so zealously contended. The body, however, had contained many
excellent men who, less sagacious than the Doctor; were yet not less attached
to the original principles of the Secession, and who had been led from off the
ground occupied by the first Reformers, merely in the hope of reforming a
little further. But the experience of twenty years had sufficed to teach them
that their liberalism had led them astray. About seven years before, on the
uniorr of the Burgher and Antiburgher Synod; a considerable body of this class,
thoroughly convinced that the Secession was drifting from its original
moorings, had formed themselves into a separate Synod; and now in this yea;
finding that they were contending for the same grand truths with the Doctor and
his brethren, they again entered, through mutual agreement, into communion with
them, and were reunited, as of old, into one body. They virtually confessed
that the excommunicated and deposed minority had occupied all along the true
position, - a position to which they themselves now deemed it necessary to
return. Such are some of the honours reserved for the men who, through good and
evil report, steadily adhere to the truth. With a magnanimity, however, natural
to his character, Dr M’Crie "steadily refused," says his biographer;
"either to exact or receive from his former associates any acknowledgment of
the illegality or severity of the sentences passed by the General Synod against
himself or his brethren. The honour of the truth was all that he cared to
vindicate; his own he left in the hands of his Divine Master."
June 17,
1840.
ARTICLE FIFTH.
Two of the later literary works of Dr
M’Crie bear in history such a relation to his two earlier productions, the
Lives of Melville and Knox, as, in the drama, tragedy bears to comedy. A cloud
of disaster darkened the closing scene of the life of Melville, but the
existence of the Scottish Church in the present day shows that he did not dare
and suffer in vain. The cloud was a temporary one. The seed which he had sown
lay dormant for a while, but it ultimately sprang up and bore fruit abundantly.
The biographies of Melville and Knox constitute, therefore, the history of a
successful Reformation; his later works, - the Sketches of the Reformation in
Spain and Italy, - form the histories of unsuccessful ones. The beacon-light
was kindled but to be extinguished; the seed was sown but to die. Both works
read an important lesson, and both are proably destined to produce important
effects, in the future, in the countries to which they relate. The "History of
the Reformation in Italy" has been translated into the Dutch, French, and
German languages; and in the fear; doubtless, of its being translated into the
Italian also, the Court of Rome has done it the honour of inserting it in the
"Index Expurgatorius," as a work peculiarly obnoxious. The "History of the
Reformation in Spain" has lately been translated into German. Both works are
acquiring a monumental celebrity; and when the time shall come, - and it may
not now be very distant, - when, according to Milton, the "blood and ashes"
sown over the fields "where still doth sway the triple tyrant," shall begin to
bear fruit, the faithful record of the fierce and relentless hatred of the
persecutor, and of the sufferings unflinchingly endured and the death's joy
fully welcomed for the truth’s sake by his oppressed victims, may exert no
little influence in hastening the fall of the one and leading to an imitation
of the other.
The Doctor was employed in pursuing his researches, adding
instance to instance of the cruelty and perfidy of Popery, and accumulating
proof upon proof that its atrocities have not been restricted to one country or
confined to one age, when the bill for admitting Roman Catholics into places of
power and trust was introduced by the Government. In the preceding year he had
taken an active interest in petitioning for the abolition of the Test and
Corporation Acts. He was too shrewd not to recognise the measure as merely a
preparatory one, and which could not fail to terminate in Catholic
emancipation. But he was not one of the class who can withhold from doing what
is right in itself because something not so right may follow. He believed, with
Cowper, that these acts involved a gross profanation of things sacred; that
they converted the symbols of "redeeming grace" into mere "picklocks," through
which the unscrupulous entered into office, but by which the conscientious were
excluded; and hence the zeal with which he urged their abolition. He now took
as active a part, and on quite the same principle, in opposing the emancipation
of the Catholics. He advocated the preliminary measure because he deemed it
essentially right, and denounced and opposed the measure to which it had led as
radically wrong, - as a measure, too, to be dreaded and deprecated in its
effects as one of the most ruinous of modern legislation. He was convinced, he
said, that the Ministry of the day would succeed in carrying their object; such
seemed to be the intention of Providence in permitting the union of parties
hitherto opposed, and in suffering even "our prophets" to be carried away by a
spirit of delusion but he felt it necessary to do all he could in the matter,
by way of personal exoneration, - he felt opposition, however fruitless, to be
his duty. "We have been told," he said, "from a high quarter, to avoid such
subjects, unless we wish to rekindle the flames of Smithfield, now long
forgotten. Long forgotten! where forgotten? In heaven? No. In Britain? God
forbid. They may be forgotten at St Stephen’s or Westminster Abbey, but
they are not forgotten in Britain. And if ever such a day arrives, the hours of
Britain’s prosperity have been numbered."
A petition to the
Legislature against the Catholic claims, which, whatever might be thought of
its object, could not be regarded as other than a document of extraordinary
ability, was drawn up by Dr M'Crie, and received the signatures of rather more
than thirteen thousand persons. We are ill qualified to decide on the part
taken on this occasion by the Doctor. There were very excellent and very
sagacious men, -maybe moved by the arguments of mere expediency, - who place
themselves on the opposite side; nor was it easy to see what other course
remained for our legislators, in the peculiar circumstances of the country,
than the course which they adopted. The Catholics seemed prepared for a civil
war, and at least nine tenths of our Protestants were determined not to fight
in such a quarrel We would not have signed Dr M’Crie’s petition at
the time ; - had an opportunity occurred, we would have readily appended our
signature to the list which contained the names of Thomson and of Chalmers.
Eleven years, however,have since passed: the government of Ireland is well nigh
as great a problem now as it was then; the struggle between Protestantism and
Popery still continues, with this difference, that the advantage is now more on
the side of the enemy, without his being in any degree less bitter in his
enmity; the power of the priest is nothing lessened; the success of the
missionary or the triumph of the Bible is nothing increased. We are afraid, in
short, that the part taken by the Doctor did not run so counter to his profound
sagacity in such matters, as at one time we might possibly have thought; nay,
more, - we are somewhat afraid that events are in the course of showing it did
not run counter to it at all. As little, however, can we avoid feeling that,
should the worst come to the worst, Protestantism on its present ground would
have at least a clearer, if not a better quarrel than on its former post of
advantage; and that if Popery, unlike an ancient wrestler, could not have
contended with most success when beneath its opponent, it would at least have
to contend with an opposition less hearty, and encouraged by a sympathy deeper
and more general.
Three years after, Dr M’Crie again deemed it his
duty to tome publicly forward, and record his conscientious disapproval of
another political measure, - the Irish Educational scheme, with its carefully
culled Scriptural lesson-book. His estimate of the statesmanship of the present
day was far from high; but it was not an estimate that any one party would
choose to quote with the view of bettering their own character at the expense
of that of the party opposed to them. Nor was it much more favourable to the
people than to the people’s rulers; for though the Doctor loved, he could
not flatter them. "It has been my opinion fixedly for some time," he remarks,
in a letter to a friend, "that any Administration to be formed at present, Whig
or Tory, would sacrifice religion on the shrine of political expediency; and
‘my people,’ provided their temporary and worldly views were
gratified, would ‘love to have it so.’ This is my political creed."
He held that the scheme which he opposed involved a principle on ‘which
the very foundations of Protestantism rested; and that it was taking a view of
the subject radically false to regard the book of selected extracts in the same
light with collections of passages drawn up for purposes of mere economy;
seeing that these extracts were confessedly made to conciliate the prejudices
of a class who deny the right of the laity to the use of the whole Bible. We
are not unacquainted with the arguments which have been urged on the opposite
side, and they are at least plausible. We have little doubt, however, that
ultimately it will be found that the Doctor was in the right; and we are
inclined to think, besides, that by placing the question, through a slight
alteration of the terms, more in a secular lights the soundness of his views
would be more generally recognised. Suppose the entire Scriptures consisted of
the decalogue alone, - that a sound criticism had proved, as it has proved, the
integrity of every one of the ten commandments which compose it, - and that all
Protestants were thoroughly convinced of their Divine origin; suppose that
Popery treated four of the ten in exactly the way in which it sometimes treats
one of the ten, - that it had not only struck out the Divine prohibition of
idolatry, but the prohibition also against murder, and adultery ; - would any
Government, five-sixths of which were Protestants, so much as dream of forming
an educational scheme for both Protestants and Papists, through which, out of
respect to the prejudices of the latter, only six of the commandments - the
permitted six - would be taught? And yet, either the Bible, as a whole, is no
revelation, addressed as it is to the people as a body, not to any particular
group of functionaries, or the same rule must apply to it too. Or, again,
suppose that Popery, instead of forbidding the perusal of the whole Scriptures,
forbade the acquirement of the art of reading altogether, leaving the other
branches of education open, - such as arithmetic, drawing, and the mathematics
; - would a liberal Government once think of closing with it on such terms, or
exclude reading from its schools, in deference to a prejudice so illiberal? And
if a prejudice against secular knowledge is to be overborne and denounced, why
respect a prejudice against religious knowledge? But our limits, and the
character of our sketch, forbid an examination of the question; and we refer
the reader to the powerful and eloquent speech of the Doctor on the subject,
appended with his biography. He was no way appalled at finding himself standing
in a slender minority; he had been in the minority, he said, all his life long;
and the truth has often shared the same fate with Dr M’Crie. On an attempt
being made to disturb the meeting, of that low and disreputable character so
often resorted to on similar occasions, and in which brute noise is brought to
bear against argument, - the mere animal against the moral and rational agent,
- the Doctor stepped forward, and told the disturbers, with much emphasis, to
"recollect that they had to do with men, and with men who were not accustomed
to be browbeat.." His spirit rose with opposition, and kindled at every show of
oppression and injustice; and though the shouts and bellowings of score or two
of Liberals, determined to tolerate only the principles of their own party,
might drown his voice, just as the kettle-drums of Dalyell and Claverhouse
drowned the voices of the Covenanters in their scaffold addresses, no one could
better exert the influence of that moral force before which all such brute
violence must ultimately quail.
The Voluntary controversy, in which he had
entered so early, had become what he had predicted, - an all-important
conflict, recognised by every one as of the first importance. Men of some
religion and men of none had made common cause, though with a different object,
- the one against church establishments, the other against Christianity itself;
and the Doctor could now look forward to a time when the better materials of
the combination wbuld be reduced to well nigh the level of the worst, and the
religious degradation of the men from whom he had parted company more than
twenty years before would be rendered apparent to all. It was one of his first
principles, "that society is a corporate body, and has rights and duties of the
same kind as those of the individual;" nor could he believe, therefore, in his
thorough conviction of the importance of religion, that religion would hold
other than the first place among national concerns. Still his anticipations
were gloomy when he thought of the Establishment. Though persuaded, as we have
already said, that "the Voluntary principle was not only untenable, but
incapable of defence except on grounds inconsistent with a belief in Divine
revelation, and directly but infallibly leading to infidelity," no man could
see better how much of abuse and corruption had crept into our national Church,
and how strenuously every measure of reform would be resisted through the blind
and suicidal selfishness of her professed but hollow friends, and the hostility
of her clearer-sighted enemies. He often anticipated, therefore, a disastrous
result of the controversy, and a season of general suffering an erturbation, in
which all classes would be fearfully taught the value of religion through the
want of it.
At times, however, his views would brighten; and we find him,
in one of his happier moods, thus addressing a correspondent : - "Is it yet
time for me to commence a canvass for John Knox’s Church? I have heard
that Adam Gib, to a considerably late period in his life, expressed the hope
that he would preach in St Giles’s. You know the practical inference. Yet
we do injury to more than our own happiness by dealing harshly with kind hope,
repressing her ardour, and chiding her for those lamb-like friskings in which
she indulges to please us." And he did bestir himself in the behalf "of John
Knox’s Church," but it was not by striking at her enemies, but by striking
at one of the main abuses which had entered into her system, - the abuse of
patronage. And the blow was dealt by no feeble or unpractised hand. The cause
was of importance enough to bring him to the platform. He attended, in the
beginning of 1833, a meeting of the Anti-Patronage Society, and delivered a
powerful and impressive speech, in which he advocated the total abolition of
patronage, as the sole means of saving the Establishment And perhaps on no
opcasion was the magnanimity of the man more strikingly shown than in the
concluding portion of this address, or brought out in broader contrast with the
no doubt widely opposite, but equally selfish feelings of the class who, rather
than relinquish their miserable powers of patronage, would stand and see the
Church overwhelmed amid the surges of popular anarchy, or the class - anxious
to fill their meeting-houses - who, like the wreckers of Cornwall, exert
themselves with a view to her destruction, in the hope of profiting by the
wreck.
"If you succeed in your object," said the Doctor, "you will do me
much harm, - you will thin, much thin, my congregation. For I must say that,
though patronage were abolished to-morrow, I could not forthwith enter into the
Establishment. But I am not so blind or so ignorant of the dispositions of the
people as to suppose they would act in that manner. Your cause will soon come
into honour; the restoration of long-lost rights will convert popular apathy
into popular favour; and in their enthusiasm the people will forget that there
are such things as erroneous teachers and neglect of discipline. Do I therefore
dread your success, or stand aloof from you, on the ground mentioned? Assuredly
not. The truth is, that I think I may be of more service to you by declining to
be in your council I have only to say, therefore, go on and prosper: though
your beginnings have been but small, may your latter end greatly increase. You
have my best wishes and prayers."
These surely are the sentiments of a man
who, to employ the striking figure of Burns, held a patent of nobility direct
from Deity himself, and who had trained and cultivated his heart as sedulously
and successfully as his head. He published, in the May of the same year, his
now well known, but at the time neglected pamphlet "What ought the General
Assembly to do at the present Crisis?" It had one great defect, - it wanted the
author’s name; and told, in consequence, with less power on the body for
whose benefit it was chiefly intended. But in none of all the Doctor’s
writings is his wonderful sagacity more clearly and unequivocally shown, and
there are none of them on which subsequent events have read a more striking
comment. His advice to the Assembly forms an emphatic reply to the query in the
title : - " WITHOUT DELAY PETITION THE LEGISLATURE FOR THE ABOLITION OF
PATRONAGE."
But he neither did anticipate, nor could have anticipated, the
present position of the Church; for to have done so would have required not
simply human sagacity, but a superhuman prescience. "No meaning," says Pope,
"puzzles more than wit :" "it is almost impossible," says Robertson, ".to form
a satisfactory conjecture concerning the motives which influence capricious and
irregular minds." No one could have presaged more justly than Dr M’Crie
the manner in which the Court of Session would have decided any ecclesiastical
case according to law; but it was not in the nature of things that he could
have presaged the manner in which the Court was to decide ecclesiastical cases
contrary to law. There was no clue to surmise, - no guide to conjecture. One of
the first principles laid down in his profound and masterly pamphlet, - a
principle from which he deduces the necessity of a popular check in the
appointment of ministers, - must have as effectually prevented him from
premising the possibility of such interdicta as have been granted to the
suspended functionaries of Strathbogie or the rejected licentiate of Lethendy,
as it ought to have stood in the way of the Court itself in rendering them
possible.
"According to law," says the Doctor, "there lies no appeal from
the decisions of a Church court to any civil tribunal, not to the Parliament
itself; in any case properly ecclesiastical. Everything of this kind is finally
settled by the decision of the General Assembly, which, in addition to its
judicial and executive power, olaims a legislative authority, or at least a
power of making authoritative acts, and, with the concurrence of a majority of
Presbyteries, of enacting standing laws which are binding on all the members of
the Church, laity as well as clergy."
The decision of the historian of Knox
and Melville in a question of this kind bears a very different sort of value
from that of the Dean of Faculty or the Earl of Aberdeen. Mark, too, the
shrewdness of his conclusion regarding the more thoroughgoing Voluntaries: -
"You will not find one of them taking part in a society for promoting
Church reform; you will not see one of their names at a petition for abolishing
patronage. They affect to laugh at such attempts to reform minor abuses,
although, in fact they dread them more than the most able and elaborate
vindication of ecclesiastical establishments.".
June 24, 1840.
CONCLUDING ARTICLE
WE passed a Sabbath in Edinburgh early in
1835, - the first after a lapse of nearly ten years, - and sought out the
well-known chapel of our favourite preacher. There was no change there ; - the
same people seemed to occupy the same pews: but so marked was the change in the
appearance of the Doctor, that at first we scarce recognised him. " Can it be
thought," says a living writer, "that the human soul, so nobly impressed by the
hand of Deity, is but the creature of a passing day, when a brick of Thebes or
of Luxor retains undefaced its original stamp for thousands and thousands of
years?" The intervening decade had borne heavily on the Doctor. He had lost his
elasticity of tread, and his erect and semi-military bearing; and the
complexion, darker and less pale than formerly, bore, after slight exertion, an
apoplectic flush, that indicated some perilous derangement in the springs of
life. But the too apparent decay affected only the earthy and material frame:
the mind retained all its original vigour. We have never listened to the Doctor
with deeper interest, or a more thorough admiration of his sound and powerful
judgment, than on that Sabbath; and we fancied, but it might not be so, that
his manner was more impressively earnest even than usual, - impressive and
earnest as it always was, - and that he was "labouring with all his might," in
the belief that the long night was fast closing over him, in which "he could no
longer work." We stood beside the chapel-door as the congregation slowly
dismissed, and took our last look of the Doctor, believing it to be such, as he
entered a hackney coach, assisted by a friend. The assistance did not seem
necessary, but it was sedulously rendered.
His death took place in the
following autumn. Melancthon, in his latter days, evinced a weariness of the
world: the folly and villany of mankind, the littleness of their aims, and the
base and ungenerous spirit in which they so often pursued them,, sickened and
disgusted him, and he longed earnestly to be "away from them, and at rest."
Cowper’s wish was of a similar character. The ever-swelling rumour of
outrage and wrong, of oppression, cruelty, and deceit, disturbed and pained his
gentle spirit, and he longed for a "lodge in some vast wilderness," where he
might never hear it more. There were seasons towards the close of his life in
which Dr M’Crie experienced a weariness such as that of Melancthon, - a
feeling such as that of Clowper. "His heart," says his biographer, "was greatly
alienated from the world, and tired of the troubled scenes of its politics,
civil and. ecclesiastical." There was an impression, too, borne in upon his
mind that he was soon to be called away, and that his death, like that of his
friend Andrew Thomson, was to be
sudden. He felt his little remaining strength fast sinking, and the remarkable
dream to which we adverted in an early article mingled its warning with his
waking presentiments, like the morning dreams described by Michael Bruce in his
Elegy. He had seen the hand beckoning him away, which, nearly half a century
before, had so solemnly devoted him to the service of God.
Not the less,
however, did he continue to urge his labours, - to walk his round of
professional duty, - to ply his literary occupations - for he had now engaged
in a life of Calvin, - aud to meet the unceasing demands made upon him for
counsel and assistance. He was too little sedulous, perhaps, to "keep
life’s flame from wasting by repose ;" an accumulation of toil was
suffered to press on his health and spirits; but in the benignity of his
disposition he could not find heart to refuse an application, and so he toiled
on. "Some people," he said, with reference to a task to which he had just
submitted, and which was to engage him for a whole week, "some people seem born
to be beasts of burden." Nor did the presentiment of his approaching
dissolution lessen his interest in the fortunes of the Church of Scotland.
Nothing so delighted him as any indication among her ministers of a
"disposition to return to the good old way of their fathers." The Assembly of
May 1835 appointed a day of general fasting, - "an assertion," says the
Doctor’s biographer, "of the intrinsic power of the Church which he did
not anticipate, and which, reminding him of her better days, appeared a token
for good." "Will they venture," he said, unacquainted with what the Assembly
had intended, "to appoint a fast on their own authority?" and he received the
intelligence with hardly less surprise than pleasure, that what he had been
scarce sanguine enough to anticipate from them they had actually done. The
Doctor had never held public worship on a King’s fast, but readily and
willingly on this occasion did he join with the Church. His resentments,
however, were all over; and he anticipated, more. in sorrow than in anger, and
anticipated justly, that the Dissenters, as a body, "would keep their shops
open and their churches shut" "They did not use to do that," he said, "on days
of Royal appointment."
But if no man could evince a deeper interest in the
welfare of the Church of Scotland, there was no man, on the other hand, who
could feel, more painfully for what he deemed the imprudence of her ministers,
or for any general act on the part of her friends, which compromised, an he
believed, either her safety or her usefulness. The following remark in a letter
to a friend, - a remark full of shrewd meaning, and on which recent events have
been reading a comment of tremendous emphasis, - belongs to the closing year of
his life, and craves careful study : - " What fools Church folks are, to
identify their cause with Toryism at the present day, - to alienate the Whigs,
and oblige them to league with Radicals, - to give them an excuse for deserting
the defence of the Church whenever they shall find it safe or politically wise
to do so ‘Don’t you think that our times bear a. great resemblance to
those of 1640 in England, with the difference (great indeed), that there is not
the same religious spirit in Parliament and in the public which existed at that
period? How a collision between the aristocracy and the commons (not to speak
of the monarchy) is to he avoided, I do not see. The public mind is much more
extensively enlightened as to politics than it was in 1793; and it has got a
power - a lever - which it did not then possess. I have no doubt I have got a
great portion of the incredulity of my namesake, and would wish to say with
respect to public prospects, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief" He had
held, as we have said, the Assembly’s fast; and never, it was remarked,
had he addressed his people with more solemn effect than on that occasion. On
the Sabbath after, he preached twice from the striking text in Matthew, "Whose
fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his
wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
At the close of the service he seated himself at the door of the vestry,
contrary to his usual practice, "and watched the people while they were
retiring, until they had all gone out."
On the afternoon of the Tuesday
following, after spending the early part of the day in visiting some of his
congregation, he was seized, immediately on his return home, with a severe pain
in the bowels; and, after experiencing an interval of partial relief, fell into
a slumber, out of which he never awoke. He continued to breathe until the
middle of the next day; and then, surrounded by his friends, and by many of his
beloved flock, who had collected to witness his last moments, he passed to his
reward without a groan or a struggle. He had entered the sixty-third year of
his age, and the fortieth of his ministry.
His funeral was attended by
nearly fifteen hundred persons, including the magistracy of Edinburgh, its
ministers of all persuasions, the preachers and students attending the halls of
the Establishment and the United Secession, and by a deputation from the
Assembly’s Commission, headed by the Clerk and the Moderator. Nor could
his remains have found a more appropriate resting-place than the ancient
cemetery to which they were conveyed, - the burial-ground of the Greyfriars. It
contains the dust of Alexander Henderson, the great leader of the Church during
the troubles of the First Charles; it contains also, in its malefactors’
corner, the remains and the monument of the martyrs who, in the cause of Christ
and of Presbytery, laid down their lives in Edinburgh during the dissolute and
bloody reign of Charles the Second; and for an entire twelvemonth its open area
was the prison in which the captive Covenanters of Bothwell Bridge were exposed
to every inclemency of the seasons, and to the mockeries and revilings of their
fierce and cruel jailors. Nor is there any lack of the kindred dust once
animated by genius. There occur on the surrounding tombs the names of Colin
M’Laren, of Allan Ramsay, of Hugh Blair, and of William Robertson. But the
talents which the TaskMaster entrusts to his servants, - whether the sum total
consist of one or of ten, - are of but little value, compared with the use to
which they have been devoted, and the effects which the possessors have
accomplished through their means. We have stood beside the Doctor’s grave,
and felts amid the deep silence of the place where knowledge and device
faileth, and where there is no work and no wisdom, how well and honestly he had
"occupied" his. His important labours are over ; - the work set him to do has
faithfully performed. Though during his life he too apart from the Church which
he loved, it was only as a watchman on some outer tower, or like a sentinel of
the times of the persecution, stationed on some eminence of the waste, to warn
the assembled congregation. of coming danger; and the imperishable monuments
which he has reared stand forth to shed on the present the light of the past,
and as beacons which, however times may darken, will continue to mark out the
course which churches and nations will ultimately find it their interest as
well as their duty to pursue. A massy and tasteful monument of white stone,
erected t’y his sorrowing flocir, as a memorial of "his worth and of their
gratitude," marks out his final resting-place, and bears an inscription whose
rare merit it is to be at once highly eulogistic and strictly true.
Our
sketch has been miserably imperfect indeed if the reader has not been enabled
to form from it some estimate, correct though not adequate, of the character of
Dr M’Crie. His whole life was a powerful illustration of how much a
superior mind can be improved and ennobled by Christian principle. It shows
also how necessary integrity is to the development of a high order of
intellect. Had the Doctor been less honest, he would have been less sagacious
also. His mind, like a fine instrument took the measure and tendencies of
passing events; and there were no disturbing influences of selfishness to throw
their mixture of uncertainty and error into the process. His wisdom, in part at
least was a consequence of his magnanimity. It may seem a mere fancy to couple
such men as Dr M’Crie and the Duke of Wellington, - the statesman and
general with the historian and divine; but resembling minds may be placed in
very opposite circumstances; and for sobriety of feeling, far-seeing sagacity,
great firmness of purpose, an impregnable native honesty, uninfluenced by the
small motives of party,- in short, for all that constitutes the safe and great
leader, - the standing of both men, each in his own sphere, refers to a level
to which very few attain. Plutarch has parallelisms that lie less parallel. We
shall just refer, ere we close, to one or two detached points in the
intellectual and literary character of Dr M’Crie.
It was well remarked
by Lord Jeffrey, in his admirable review, that the Life of Knox "exhibited a
rare union of the patient research and sober judgment which characterize the
more laborious class of historians, with the boldness of thinking and force of
imagination which are sometimes substituted in their place." The remark
strikingly illustrates a peculiar excellence of the Doctor’s intellect. He
could not rest on the surface of a subject, even if he had wished it. It was
his nature to search to the very bottom, at whatever cost of labour - to pursue
some obscure fact through a hundred different authorities, until he had at
length fixed it down befire him as one of the unimpeachable certainties of
history. The privileged friends whom he at times received in his study used to
be utterly appalled by the huge masses of books and manuscripts which always
lay piled up before him for constant reference; and so severely and
conscientiously was his judgment exercised in every instance, that on not so
much as one of his statements have even his abler antagonists succeeded in
casting a shadow of doubt. Robertson was much his inferior in research. Hume,
whose defects in patient investigation are now pretty generally known, was
immeasurably so. In tracing the history of opinion and doctrine, where of
necessity the evidence must be more shadowy and intangible than in whatever
relates to conduct or action, the degree of certainty at which he invariably
succeeded in arriving was truly wonderful The whole bearing of bygone
controversies, - their after effects on doctrine and belief - the degree in
which they had led the parties they had divided to modify, retract, restate, -
the influence on society of particular minds and peculiar modes of thought,-
all seemed to open before him as he advanced, alone and unassisted, on his
solitary and laborious course.
His style and manner fitted him no less for
his task than his unwearied perseverance. To employ one of Johnson’s
figures, the heat of his genius sublimed his learning. It is related by Gibbon,
that after he had formedhis determination of devoting himself to literature, he
perused the then recently published histories of Robertson and Hume. The
measured and stately periods of Robertson delighted him; and yet he could hope,
that with much pains and great study he might at length succeed in writing such
a style. But he read Hume and despaired. Art might enable him to rival the
exquisite art of the one, but art could not enable him to equal the still more
exquisite nature of the other. Hume is one of the most readable of historians:
he is invariably unaffected, invariably clear. Robertson palls: we admire his
pages, but his volumes tire. Now, Dr M’Crie in this respect resembles
Hume. His pages are not so elegant as those of Robertson, but they are more
attractive, and the reader turns over more of them at a sitting. We merely
peruse the history of Scotland ; - we devour the biography of Knox. The number
of editions which have appeared within the last few months, since the copyright
has expired, evinces the degree of popularity which the latter work is destined
to enjoy in the future. The last we saw formed a two-shilling volume; its price
and appearance showed that it was intended for the common people; and we paid
our respects to it, at once recognising in it a formidable opponent of the Earl
of Dalhousie’s arguments, the Court of Session’s encroachments, and
the Earl of Aberdeen’s bill
We refer, ere we close our remarks, to but
one other trait in the literary character of Dr M’Crie. There is an
occasional quaintness in some of his finer passages, that, to men deeply read
in the theology of the Church’s better days, constitutes an additional
charm. His eloquence is that of the divines of the Commonwealth, rendered
classical through native taste and the study of the better models. We submit,
as an example, the following exquisite passage : - " Who would be a slave! is
the exclamation of those who are themselves free, and sometimes of those who,
provided they enjoy freedom themselves, care not though the whole world were in
bondage. But there is a sentiment still more noble than that. Who would be a
slave-dealer, a patron, an advocate for slavery? To be a slave has been the
hard, but not dishonourable, lot of many a good man and noble spirit. But to be
a tyrant, - that is disgrace! To trample on the rights of his fellow-creature,
- to treat him, whether it be with cruelty or kindness, as a dog, - to hold
him, in chains, when he has perpetrated or threatens no violence, - to carry
him with a rope about his neck, not to the scaffold, but to the market, - to
sell him whom God made after his own image, and whom Christ redeemed, not with
corruptible things, as silver and gold, and, by the act of transference, to
tear him from his own bowels, - that is disgraceful! I protest before you, that
I would a thousand times rather have my brow branded with the name of Slave,
than have written on the palm of my hand or the sole of my foot the initial
letter of the word Tyrant!"
June 27, 1840.
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