SUDDEN DEATH OF DR. ANDREW
THOMSON
PUBLIC TESTIMONY TO HIS CHARACTER AND WORTH.
MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 1831. VOL.3 - CHAPTER XV.
In the period intervening between these two
Assemblies of 1830 and 1831, the Church of Scotland was deprived of one of the
most eminent of its ministers. In the full vigour of his mental and physical
energies, Dr. Andrew Thomson had taken part in the proceedings of the
Presbytery of Edinburgh, on Wednesday the 9th of February. He left the
Presbytery Hall about five oclock in the afternoon. Meeting a friend by
the way, and conversing with all his accustomed vivacity, he had reached his
house in Melville Street. In front of his own door, and as his friend was
leaving him, he turned rapidly round, as if to say something which he had
forgotten, but fell back senseless upon the pavement. He was carried instantly
into his house, and every effort to restore animation was made without delay.
The tidings of the deplorable event passed like lightning through the city. Dr.
Chalmers hearing the fearful rumour hastened to the spot : but every attempt to
reanimate the lifeless frame had failed. In a moment the spirit had passed into
eternity.
Meeting with his class on the following day, Dr. Chalmers closed
his lecture as follows : I meant, gentlemen, to have expatiated on this
subject at greater length, and perhaps would have done so with greater vigour,
but I must confess that the sad and saddening event of yesternight has unhinged
me out of all strength, for the requisite preparation. At the ordinary time
employed in framing a lesson for others I was called away to be a learner
myself - to read a lesson which of all others is the oftenest told yet the
oftenest forgotten - to gaze upon features which a short time before were
instinct with living energy, but which were then fast locked in the
insensibility of death. I should not have felt myself justified in thus
adverting to it had it only stood connected with personal griefs or personal
interests of my Own; but, gentlemen, it is an event of deepest interest to the
members of a theological school, and more especially to those who are now
training for the Church of Scotland, standing apprised, as I doubt not you all
are, of the heavy loss that Church has sustained in the noblest and most
distinguished of her ministers.
A time of deep emotion is not the time for
analysis ; yet the characteristics of Dr. Thomsons mind stood forth in
such bold and prominent relief, that it needs but their bare enumeration to be
recognised by the most superficial observer. The first and foremost of these
characteristics was a dauntless uncompromising honesty in the maintenance of
all which he deemed to be the cause of truth and righteousness. But, gentlemen,
I must spare myself the execution of this task, for I feel the wound to be
greatly too recent, and that the afflicted heart keeps all the other faculties
of the soul in abeyance. At present I have no steadiness of hand for drawing a
portrait every lineament of which opens a fresh and bitter recollection. There
is still an oppressive weight on the subject which makes all attempts at
delineation impossible; and rather far than sketch the likeness of one who,
with a suddenness so extraordinary, has been drawn away from us, would I now
mingle in sympathy with his friends, or weep with his deserted family.
Tuesday the 115th of February was the day of Dr. Thomsons
interment. Two thousand gentlemen in mourning, including the magistrates of the
city, ministers of all denominations, the professors of the University, and
members of other public bodies, followed his remains to the grave. Along the
streets through which they passed every shop was shut, while upwards of 10,000
saddened spectators lined the pathway and crowded every window, and clothed the
very house-tops; as the mournful procession passed by. Never before had there
been such a funeral in Edinburgh, nor had a testimony so general, so
spontaneous, so profound and so heartfelt, ever been offered to the memory and
worth of any of her citizens. On the following Sabbath, while preaching the
funeral sermon in St. Georges Church, Dr. Chalmers thus alluded to the
melancholy event : - It is as if death had wanted to make the highest
demonstration of his sovereignty, and for this purpose had selected as his mark
him who stood the foremost and the most conspicuous in the view of his
countrymen. I speak not at present of any of the relations in which lie stood
to the living society immediately around him - to the thousands in church whom
his well-known voice reached upon the Sabbath - to the tens of thousands in the
city, whom, through the week, in the varied rounds and meetings of Christian
philanthropy, he either guided by his counsel or stimulated by his eloquence.
You know, over and above, how far the wide, and the wakeful, and the untired
benevolence of his nature carried him; and that, in the labours and the
locomotions connected with these, he may be said to have become the personal
acquaintance of the people of Scotland, - insomuch that there is not a village
in the land where the tidings of his death have not conveyed the intimation
that a master in Israel has fallen; and I may also add, that such was the charm
of his companionship, such the cordiality lighted up by his presence in every
household, that, connected with this death, there is, at this moment, an
oppressive sadness in the hearts of many thousands even of our most distant
Scottish families.
And so a national lesson has been given forth by this
event, even as a national loss has been incurred by it. It is a public death in
the view of many spectators. And when one thinks of the vital energy by which
every deed and every utterance were pervaded-of that prodigious strength which
but gamboled with the difficulties that would have depressed and overborne
other men - of that prowess in conflict, and that promptitude in counsel with
his fellows - of that elastic buoyancy which ever rose with the occasion, and
bore him onward and upward to the successful termination of his career - of the
weight and multiplicity of his engagements; and yet, as if nothing could
overwork that colossal mind, and that robust framework, the perfect lightness
and facility wherewith all was executed - when one thinks, in the midst of
these powers and these performances, how intensely he laboured, I had. almost
said how intensely he lived, in the midst of us, we cannot but acknowledge,
that death, in seizing upon him, hath made full proof of a mastery that sets
all the might and all the promise of humanity at defiance.
But the lesson
is prodigiously enhanced when we pass from the pulpit to his household
ministrations. I perhaps do him wrong in supposing that any large proportion of
his hearers did not know him personally - for such was his matchless
superiority to fatigue, such the unconquerable strength and activity of his
nature, that he may almost be said to have accomplished a sort of personal
ubiquity among his people.
But ere you can appreciate the whole effect of
this, let me advert to a principle of very extensive operation in nature.
Painters know it well: they are aware how much it adds to the force and beauty
of any representation of theirs when made strikingly and properly to contrast
with the background on which it is projected. And the same is as true of direct
nature, set forth in one of her own immediate scenes, as of reflex nature set
forth by the imagination and pencil of an artist. This is often exemplified in
those Alpine wilds, where beauty may at times be seen embosomed in the lap of
grandeur, as when, at the base of a lofty precipice, some spot of verdure, or
peaceful cottage-home, seems to smile in more intense loveliness, because of
the towering strength and magnificence which are behind it.
Apply this to
character, and think how precisely analogous is the effect, when, from the
groundwork of a character that mainly in its texture and general aspect is
masculine, there do effioresce the forthputtings of a softer nature, and those
gentler charities of the heart which come out irradiated in tenfold beauty,
when they arise from a substratum of moral strength and grandeur underneath. it
is thus when the man of strength shews himself the man of tenderness; and he
who, sturdy and impregnable in every righteous cause, makes his graceful
descent to the ordinary companionships of life, is found to mingle, with
kindred warmth, in all the cares and the sympathies of his fellow-men.
Such, I am sure, is the touching recollection of very many who now hear me,
and who can tell, in their own experience, that the vigour of his pulpit was
only equalled by the fidelity and the tenderness of his household
ministrations. They understand the whole force and significancy of the contrast
I have now been speaking of - when the pastor of the church becomes the pastor
of the family; and he who, in the crowded assembly, held imperial sway over
every understanding, has entered some parents lowly dwelling, and prayed
and wept along with them over their infants dying bed. It is on occasions
like these when the minister carries to its highest pitch the moral ascendency
which belongs to his station. It is this which furnishes him with a key to
every heart ; - and when the triumphs of charity are superadded to the triumphs
of argument, then it is that he sits enthroned over the affections of a.
willing people.
I must now satisfy myself with a few slight and
rapid touches on his character as a man. It is a subject I dare hardly
approach. To myself he was at all times a joyous, hearty, gallant, honourable,
and out-and-out most trustworthy friend - while, in harmony with a former
observation, there were beautifully projected on this broad and general
groundwork some of friendships finest and most considerate delicacies. By
far the most declared and discernible feature in his character, was a
dauntless, and direct, and right-forward honesty, that needed no diiguise for
itself, and was impatient of aught like dissimulation or disguise in other men.
There were withal a heart and a hilarity in his companionship, that everywhere
carried its own welcome along with it ; and there were none who moved with
greater acceptance or wielded a greater ascendant over so wide a circle of
living society. Christianity does not overbear the constitutional varieties
either of talent or of temperament.
After the conversion of the apostles
their complexional differences of mind and character remained with them; and
there can be no doubt that, apart from and anterior to the influence of the
Gospel, the hand of nature bad stamped a generosity, and a sincerity, and an
openness on the subject of our description, among the very strongest of the
lineaments which belong to him. Under an urgent sense of rectitude he delivered
himself with vigour and with vehemence in behalf of what he deemed to be its
cause - but I would have you to discriminate between the vehemence of passion
and the vehemence of sentiment, which, like though they be in outward
expression, are wholly different and dissimilar in themselves. His was mainly
the vehemence of sentiment, which, hurrying him when it did into what lie
afterwards felt to be excesses, was immediately followed up by the relentings
of a noble nature. The pulpit is not the place for the idolatry of an
unqualified panegyric on any of our fellow-mortals; but it is impossible riot
to acknowledge, that whatever might have been his errors, truth and piety and
ardent philanthropy formed the substratum of his character; and that the
tribute was altogether a just one, when the profoundest admiration, along with
the pungent regrets of his fellow-citizens, did follow him to his grave."
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