Biographies: D – L

Biographies

Free Church Ministers and Others

D – L

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 The Earl of Dalhousie, K.T.

Author: Rev. William Grant, Ayr
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 201

The Earl of Dalhousie

As one of the Disruption Worthies, this memoir has principally to record the services which he rendered to the Church. Yet the nature and importance of these services cannot be fully understood without adverting to his position in society, and to his political career.

He was lineally descended from two of the oldest families of Scotland —the Ramsays of Dalhousie and the Maules of Panmure, both famous in Scottish story. The Ramsays of Dalhousie trace their descent to the days of David I. Nearly two hundred years ago Allan Ramsay the poet wrote of the Earl of that day—

And throughout their history, down to the subject of this memoir and his cousin and immediate predecessor, the Governor General of India, the Ramsays have been represented by many famous names, not unworthy of the poet’s praise.

The Maules of Panmure are of an equal antiquity, tracing their descent to the days of William the Conqueror. In 1224, one of the Maules married Christian, [11] the heiress of the Panmure estates. As a race the Maules seem to have been distinguished by great strength of will, determination of purpose, and unwavering fidelity to every cause they espoused. On the death of one of the heads of the House of Maule without issue, the estates of Panmure passed to his nephew, the seventh Earl of Dalhousie. At his death the estates of Panmure were inherited by his second son, the Hon. William Ramsay, who then assumed the name of Maule. In token of his admiration of the great Whig statesman, Charles James Fox, he named his firstborn son, the subject of this memoir, Fox. This early dedication to political principles was fully accepted by his son in after life.

Fox Maule was born in Brechin Castle, 22d April 1801. He was educated at the Charter House, London. In 1819 he received his commission as ensign in the 79th Regiment of Cameron Highlanders. It is not a little characteristic of the man that, when he joined his regiment in Edinburgh Castle, he used after drill to doff his uniform and attend the Humanity Class in the University, and at the close of the session carried off the prize for Latin declamation.

For some years he served in Canada on the staff of his uncle, the Earl of Dalhousie. The practical knowledge which he then acquired of military duties and of a soldier’s life was eminently useful to him as a member of Parliament, and especially as Secretary at War during the latter part of the Crimean war.

In 1831, having attained to the rank of captain, he retired from the army, and having married the Hon. Montagu, daughter of the second Lord Abercrombie, he took up his residence at Dalguise House, on the banks of the Tay, near Dunkeld. This was his home for twenty years. Being then thirty years of age, in the freshness of manly strength, fond of society, and devoted to field sports, his life might long have been one of mere pleasure. But those were the stirring days of the Reform Bill when Scotland was excited to an unusual degree. Fox Maule caught the enthusiasm of the times, and issuing from his Highland home, plunged with his whole heart into the midst of the first election for Perthshire, canvassing in favour of his friend, the Marquis of Breadalbane, then Lord Ormelie. It was greatly owing to his indefatigable and persuasive efforts that the contest was won. The die was then cast. His aptitude for a political life was manifest at once. As he afterwards said, “I was politically born then.” At the next election, in 1834, he was returned as member for Perthshire. Having lost his seat at the next election, he was returned for the Elgin Burghs. Having resigned his seat for the Elgin Burghs, he was elected by the city of Perth, which he continued to represent for ten years, until he was called to the House of Lords after his father’s death.

But Fox Maule was more than an ordinary member of Parliament. During his Parliamentary career he filled several important offices of State. He was successively Under-Secretary for the Home Department, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, President of the Board of Control, and twice Secretary at War. He was also a Privy Councillor. On the overthrow of the Aberdeen Ministry in 1855, on account of the alleged mismanagement of the Crimean war, Viscount Palmerston was called to the helm of affairs, and Lord Dalhousie, then Lord Panmure, was selected by him to extricate the War Department from the difficulties in which it had become involved. His Lordship fully justified the confidence reposed in him, and by his good management and persevering labours, the British army was at the close of the war in a more effective state than at its commencement. His administration at the War Office was eminently successful. One of his first achievements was so to minimise and regulate the use of the lash as speedily to lead to its entire abolition. He introduced the system of competitive examination for commissions, which has tended so much to raise the standard of military education. He also reduced the period of enlistment; and in many ways promoted the comfort of soldiers.

The position which he had earned for himself as a public man was manifested when in 1842 he was elected as Lord Rector of Glasgow University, though his opponents were the Marquis of Bute and the Duke of Wellington. In token of his sovereign’s favour, he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Forfarshire, and made Knight of the Thistle and Knight Commander of the Bath. Midway in his political career, when after twenty years’ service in the House of Commons he took his place in the House of Lords, a farewell banquet was given to him by his constituents at Perth. Lord John Russell said of him: “During the whole time I was at the Home Office, and since which I had to conduct in a higher sphere the affairs of the nation, I have derived the greatest advantage from the sentiments, the intelligence, the perseverance, and the ability of my noble friend. But all this would not have so recommended him had I not been satisfied that he is thoroughly impressed with the great maxim of the great statesman (Mr Fox), from whom he has derived his name, that what is morally wrong cannot be politically right.”

Educated in England, for ten years actively occupied in military duties chiefly in Canada, surrounded by social enjoyments, and then plunging into political life, it seemed unlikely that Fox Maule would interest himself in the ecclesiastical questions that then agitated the Church of Scotland. Perhaps till he entered public life they had never engaged his attention. And probably at that time he might have thought it most unlikely that he would ever take any prominent part in religious questions. Various influences, however, prepared his mind and led him on. Among the earliest and most powerful of these was the teaching and example of a pious and much-loved mother. As the excitement of the first election after the Reform Bill led him into the arena of political life, so there were external circumstances which forcibly drew his attention to ecclesiastical affairs. Dr Chalmers was urging his scheme for church extension on the notice of the legislature when Fox Maule entered public life. As Under Secretary for the Home Department, Scottish affairs were largely submitted to his consideration. Being thus brought into contact with such men as Drs Chalmers and Guthrie, he could not but feel their influence. Again, at the election for Perthshire, in 1834, when he secured his seat in the House of Commons for the first time, the question of non-intrusion occupied so prominent a place, that both parties found themselves constrained to profess themselves to be friendly to the popular side of that question. This may have been his first introduction to the subject. But from the professions then made he never swerved nor drew back. In addition to this, the disputed settlements of Lethendy and Auchterarder, both in Perthshire, must have led him more thoroughly to consider the principles which were involved. But however this may have been, from that date Fox Maule was the zealous friend of all philanthropic and missionary enterprises, and the staunch supporter of the rights and principles for which the Church was then contending, the refusal of which led to the Disruption.

When the conflict thickened, and the Church refused to obey the orders of the civil courts in regard to spiritual things, Sir Robert Peel, in 1842, in his place in the House of Commons, accused the Church of Scotland as “defying and opposing the law.” “This attack,” writes the author of the “Ten Years’ Conflict,” “was not unanswered. It called up one whose enlightened and unflinching advocacy of the great scriptural principles, and constitutional privileges for which the Church was contending, had earned for him the gratitude and esteem of all who venerate the work of the Scottish Reformers, and who know how to appreciate that integrity and manly firmness of character, which fears not to avow honest convictions, and to defend them wherever they may be assailed. It is told in Scripture, to the honour of Onesiphorus, that even at Rome he was not ashamed of Paul’s chain. It will be told, in the ecclesiastical history of his country, to the honour of Mr Fox Maule, that he was not ashamed to identify himself, even in the House of Commons, with the calumniated Church of Scotland.” “If,” said he, in replying to Sir Robert Peel, “that Church had set itself up against the law of the land in matters of civil right, he would be the last man to stand up in its defence. But the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had over and over again declared, that as far as civil rights were concerned, it would bow implicity to the decisions of the land. All that the Church and the General Assembly had done was to say that, while on the one hand they obeyed the law as to benefices—still, they owed a duty to a higher authority than man when they inducted to any portion of their Church an individual who had a cure of souls.”

No better estimate can be formed of the position which Fox Maule had earned for himself in Parliament, and of the confidence which the Church reposed in him, than is manifested in the fact, that when, after ten years’ conflict, the Church resolved to make a last appeal to the Legislature to inquire into and to redress its grievances, by special appointment of the Commission he was requested to bring the matter before the House of Commons. On 7th March 1843, little more than two months before the Disruption, he did so in a speech of singular power and lucidity. “No Free Churchman can read without unfeigned gratitude the clear, intelligent defence of her position and privileges made by Mr Fox Maule in the House of Commons. His statement of the independent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church on the occasion referred to may be read at the present day with interest and instruction, and shew what a just and true grasp his mind had taken of the controversy which terminated in the Disruption.” [12]

His motion for inquiry in the House of Commons was rejected by a majority of 135. “It is not undeserving of notice,” writes the author of the “Ten Years’ Conflict,” “that of the thirty-seven Scottish members who were present, twenty-five voted with Mr Maule. It was not therefore simply the voice of Scotland’s Church, but the voice also of her national representatives that was that night overborne in the British Parliament. The fact is one which an impartial posterity will mark and remember.” It is not a little remarkable that on the 6th of July 1874, the very day of Lord Dalhousie’s death thirty-one years later, the debate on the Patronage Bill took place in the House of Commons. On which occasion it was fully acknowledged by all parties that the statesmen of 1843 had grievously erred in refusing to make such concessions as might then have satisfied the just demands of the Church.

The same evening on which Fox Maule brought this subject before the House of Commons, a great public meeting was held in the City Hall, Glasgow. Dr Thomas Guthrie then said:—

“And so,” wrote Dr Guthrie at a later period, “we went forth under the old banner to enjoy that freedom without the Establishment which we were denied within its pale.”

Fox Maule was not awanting in the day of trial. He entered at once into all the preparations for the new state of the Church, and with an unflagging interest and most loyal enthusiasm continued his services to the last. No doubt his rank and public position lent value to his adherence and services; “but, apart from this, the warmth, the intelligence, the sagacity, the inherent weight of his counsels, the effective character of his advocacy, and the munificent liberality he displayed, gave him a prominent place among the leading and most trusted advisers of the Free Church.” For thirty years he was returned by the Free Presbytery of Dunkeld as their representative elder to the General Assembly, and took an active part in its proceedings. After the Disruption, when so many proprietors refused sites for the building of churches and manses, it was mainly through his firm, but calm, speeches in Parliament that the difficulty was surmounted.

At the time of his lamented death it was well said, “It is no secret— the fact was made so public in many ways that there need be no delicacy in recalling it—that during the latter years of his father’s lifetime, the relations of Mr Fox Maule towards him were exceedingly constrained and uncomfortable. It is proper to mention, however, that the cause of disagreement was well known to be highly honourable to the son. Its existence was the cause of bringing out, in a variety of ways, the firmness, the chivalry, and the good sense that were embodied in his character. In one way, this disagreement was connected with family and private arrangements. In another, it was of a more public nature. His property was left in a condition that, in the case of a person endowed with less of manliness, generosity, and clear-headedness, would have led to much embarassment and unpleasantness. He avoided this by taking his tenantry into his confidence at once, and laying down rules as to the re-letting of his farms, which they cordially acquiesced in. His rental was enormously increased during the period of his administration, and yet there was, by common consent, no better, fairer, or more liberal landlord. The social qualities of his lordship were of the rarest order. He was the life of every circle in which he appeared. There was about him an irresistible charm of manner; high and low alike owned the spell.” By Her Majesty he was esteemed as a friend. In London society he was always welcome; in his own county everybody was proud of him, and he knew almost everybody, and could make himself at home with them, whatever their rank or station. This picture, however, is not complete unless it be added that none could be more stern or repellant in his manner to mere tuft-hunters, or to those of whose character or conduct he disapproved. Firm in his opinions, and determined in action, he had many opponents. Yet transparently honest in his convictions, and genial in his manner of expressing them, he had few, if any, lasting enemies.

During the last seven years of his life, Lord Dalhousie spent the winter at his charming villa at Cannes, on the shores of the Mediterranean. There he made arrangements, without expense to the Church, for the maintenance of Presbyterian worship, which he loved so well. During the last two winters of his life the writer of this memoir officiated there, and bears most loving and willing testimony that, on Sabbaths and week days, he had no hearer more regular or appreciative, nor any who took a more lively interest, not only in the temporal prosperity of the congregation, but also in the spiritual welfare of its members. Though with characteristic modesty he sensitively shrunk from a loud profession of high personal religion, the depth, the earnestness, and the solemnity of his piety were manifest to all those to whom, in confidence of private conversation, he felt himself at liberty to open his heart.

After the death of his wife, in 1854, the honours of his house were done by his sister the Lady Christian Maule. Brother and sister never loved each other more truly or tenderly. His latest energies were spent in the service of the Free Church. Hastening home from Cannes, at that season in its richest beauty, he attended, and took his wonted part in the meetings of the General Assembly at the end of May. In June he was in his place in the House of Lords, and took part in the debate on the Patronage Bill. Towards the close of the same month he laid the foundation stone of the new Free Church at Dunkeld. Full of vigour and of cheerful, though chastened hope, apparently in better health than for many years, it seemed unlikely that the end of his earthly career was so close at hand. On 24th June, accompanied by the Lady Christian Maule, he went to pay his respects to his sovereign at the Bridge of Dun station as she passed on her way south from Balmoral. The same evening he was taken ill, and on the 6th of July, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, he died in Brechin Castle in the same room in which he had been born.

Though hopes were entertained of his recovery by his medical attendants, he anticipated the issue from the first, and trusting to the merits of Christ, he calmly waited to know the will of God. At the commencement of his illness, to one of whose love he was well assured, he sent the message, “Pray for me—but whatever the issue may be, all is well.” Among his last words, in reply to a question as to the grounds of his hope, he said to his pastor.

Many touching incidents might be given illustrative of the warmth and tenderness and humility of his heart, did not delicacy towards the living and the dead, in the meantime, forbid it. “It will be many a day ere the Free Church find a man to serve her with such devotion and capacity.”

Dying without issue, he has been succeeded in his Scottish titles by his cousin, Vice-Admiral George Ramsay, second son of the late Hon. Lieut.-Gen. John Ramsay, fourth son of George Eighth Earl of Dalhousie.

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 Alexander Dyce Davidson, D.D.

Author: Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 211

The Memorial Tablet which stands in the Free West Church, Aberdeen, bears the following inscription, which sets forth in few words the leading outlines of a devoted but uneventful life:—

These lines sufficiently sum up the life of Dr Davidson. For his long, laborious, and successful career was spent among his own people. He was a pillar of the Free Church; and he was one of the best preachers of a day that saw many famous preachers. But he was not a man of affairs. He took no part in public life: if ever minister spent his whole time and strength on a congregation, Dr Davidson did. These memorial lines, therefore, with the addition of his marriage, but long loneliness, caused by the early death of wife and child, contain all that can be called biography of this able and excellent minister.

A volume of lectures on “The Book of Esther,” which the writer of these lines heard in the old Free West Church, in the winter of 1858, and which made an exceptionally deep impression when delivered, was the only work Dr Davidson published. Indeed that volume, along with a volume of sermons edited by one of his executors, and published in 1872, is all of the rich treasures of Dr Davidson’s study that has seen the light. To the latter work a preface was drawn up by the loving and dutiful hand of Mr Francis Edmond; and it is simply a perfect model of what such things should be. But it is referred to here, not for its own sake, but because it supplies us with material whereby to estimate somewhat the noble and unflagging life of this honoured minister in the sphere he had chosen for himself—the pulpit. It is an inspiring thing to read and ponder the pages of this preface, where the editor has done all ministers the service of letting them see how his minister wrought for his pulpit. A table is here given of 1800 lectures and sermons, carefully prepared and fully written out, ready for the West Church pulpit, and therefore ready for the press. To those who know what a lecture or sermon cost Dr Davidson, the reading and consideration of pages 6 and 7 of Mr Edmond’s preface will administer a humbling reproof, or a fresh impulse to faithful work, according to their own fulfilment of their pulpit duties.

Of course Dr Davidson could not have done such work, and so much of it, had he not resolved to give up his whole time, and thought, and strength to it. He might have been the most influential man in the affairs of the city in which he was so much loved and revered, but he retired from all public and social life, that he might discharge fully the office to which he was ordained. Dr Davidson was never so happy as when he was at work in his study. Perhaps he denied himself needful relaxation in his unceasing care for each Sabbath’s work. Considering his power and popularity as a preacher, it was often remarked how little he was from home; and we have heard it told by ministers whom he assisted at communion seasons, how resolute he was in getting home by the first opportunity after his work was done. He would on no account lose a day from the work he loved so well, and consequently fulfilled with such signal success.

Dr Davidson’s facility in composition was very great, and it was no doubt largely the result and reward of the honest, regular, daily work he performed through a long and happy ministry. His methods of composition were such as we might have expected from the mental characteristics and scholarly habits of the man. He wrote only after the greatest industry in preparing his matter, but when he once sat down to write, his work immediately took on its peculiar neatness and accuracy. It passed in the first draft from under his hand in a state of correctness and finish to which he could add nothing. Happy workman! He never needed to recast and correct, to destroy and restore! Indeed, he has been heard to say that he never drafted a discourse in his life. With such gifts and habits, natural and acquired, we come to see how it was possible that every Sabbath he went up to the pulpit with his work so thoroughly prepared, and carried to, and sustained at, such a high level of theological and homiletical excellence.

There was one part of his daily pulpit work which always was particularly, and indeed unapproachably, well done. It was his regular practice to give a running commentary on the passage of Scripture read each Sabbath morning. In few, sagacious, clear, and suggestive words he laid open the sense and bearing of the passage read, and that in a space of time that did not seem to add materially to the mere reading of the verses. But this, too, was only another result of those habits of mind which ruled and shaped all his life. Careful preparation, method, and a fine sense of fitness and proportion, were all characteristically displayed in this incidental looking exposition.

It could not but be that offers of promotion to offices of wider theological influence, and other preferments and promotions, should be set before such a man; but his quiet and retiring manner of dealing with all personal and public matters made these offers to be little heard of. Thus it was that Dr Davidson lived and laboured, and died in the city which had given him birth, and which is so justly proud of, and grateful for, his memory.

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 REV. DAVID DEWAR, M.A.,
Minister at Fochabers from 1837 to 1885

Author: Rev. James Gray, M.A., Fochabers
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 24

The subject of this sketch more than fifty years ago, filled a large place in the public eye. This was owing, for most part, to the share he took in the controversy that issued in the separation of the Church of the Reformation, by a voluntary act, from State connection and control. It is assumed, therefore, that there are many who will welcome a few reminiscences of his life and work.

The Rev. David Dewar was born on the 15th August, 1796, in the parish of Tillicoultry [Markinch] in Fifeshire. His native county, somehow, had a noticeably warm place in his heart. Even after eighty years had laid their benumbing fingers on him, any reference to the Kingdom of Fife at once kindled his interest. His face would lighten up as with a sunbeam on hearing of any honour brought to it by one of its sons or daughters. At an early age he entered the University of Edinburgh and passed through the curriculum of Arts and Divinity. He had as one of his fellow-students the late Rev. D. Waters of Burghead, who apparently lost sight of the ravages of the flying decades, for after more than half a century had gone by, he was accustomed to speak of the octogenarian minister of Fochabers as “that fine lad Dewar.”

According to the custom of those days, Mr. Dewar, as a student in divinity and as a licentiate, engaged in the work of school-mastering, and was for some years parochial teacher in Carrington. It was in this capacity he came first to Fochabers. The Duchess of Gordon, apparently dissatisfied with the state of education in the parish, resolved to start a new school and put into it a man of energy and piety. Making inquiry with this view, her Grace had Mr. Dewar strongly recommended as in every way fitted to carry out her scheme. Accordingly in 1830 he came to the sphere of his future life-long labours. In addition to his school work, his duties included those of Chaplain to the Ducal Family at Gordon Castle, which he visited every morning to conduct worship for the household. It may be mentioned here that he had been licensed as a preacher by the Presbytery of Dalkeith in 1827, when he was schoolmaster at Carrington. Mr. Dewar soon became a recognised force in the little community round Gordon Castle, partly from his intimacy with the Duchess, and partly from his own worth and energy. He was an enthusiastic teacher and was very successful in initiating his pupils into the mysteries of the three Rs in all their varieties. But he held that a sound education needed the three Rs of the theologian—Ruin by the fall, Regeneration by the Spirit, and Redemption by Jesus Christ. Mr. Dewar believed in this as he believed in his own existence. And as might be expected his pupils were well and wisely drilled in the truths of revelation as contained in Scripture and summarised in that matchless compendium – the Shorter Catechism. Nor were his efforts in this direction confined to the school-room. He inaugurated the very first Sabbath School that ever had been known in the district. And in this connection the usual fate of innovators or pioneers overtook him. For there were certain parties, who, perhaps feeling that his undertaking was a reproach to them, spoke of it as being unnecessary – the outcome of a fussy pretentious meddlesomeness. In 1837, a vacancy occurred in the Parish Church through the death of the Rev. Mr. Rannie, and the Duke of Richmond, at the solicitation of the Duchess of Gordon, presented Mr. Dewar to the charge, and he was accordingly ordained on the 17th August of that year. In this sphere he found congenial scope for his energies. His zeal was not content with the one statutory service on Sabbath, which had been the order of the day time out of mind. Although a very humble man, the rules of use and wont did not afford him room enough. He speedily set a-going a second regular service in the Church, as well as religious meetings through the parish on the week days. But these shakings of parochial fixtures were not welcomed by all. Indeed, they were keenly resented by some – as Mr. Dewar was often heard to say – though he tried to make them as mild as possible.

By this time the public mind was greatly exercised on the question of the Church’s freedom. What was called the Evangelical party were convinced that self-government was the Divine heritage of the Church, and that to surrender this to alien hands for any consideration whatever, was disloyalty to her Lord and to herself. The matter in dispute is often represented as centering entirely in the question of patronage. That is notoriously an error. It cannot be too strongly affirmed that patronage was a mere accident in the controversy. Indeed the whole struggle might have been fought out to the issue of 1843 without patronage being so much as named. It ought to be distinctly understood by all that any change in regard to that, which has been made, or may be made, touches no more than the merest fringe of the matter that was in dispute in the Ten Years’ Conflict. The real question was the right of the Church to self-government. To give out that any tinkering little bill that lengthens a cord here, and there, secures that, is only throwing dust in peoples’ eyes.

As to the matter in hand, Mr. Dewar never had any doubt. He saw at once and clearly the way of duty, and that for him was an end of all controversy. Without hesitation he threw in his lot with the evangelical party and continued to hold their views, not merely when they were speculative “or pious opinions” – but when they required self-sacrificing action of no ordinary kind. He was Moderator of the Presbytery of Strathbogie during the crucial period of the Marnoch proceedings, and his party being in the minority, his position was often very difficult. Dr. Candlish said of him, in this connection, that Mr. Dewar was a splendid man to work with. When he got a thing to do he always did it. The Moderate party sought the aid of interdicts to keep evangelical ministers from visiting their parishes. For disregarding one or more of these, Mr. Dewar was summoned to the bar of the Court of Session, admonished, and fined £5, besides the expense of the process, on the 26th of May, 1843. He was often heard to say that through all the painful conflict, he never experienced in fuller measure the blessedness of doing right. His duty was made clear to him, as if he heard a voice from above saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

A large section of his congregation shared his views and were quite prepared for all the consequences that naturally followed. As in other places, many difficulties stood in the way. But it is not hard to understand that in Fochabers there were peculiar adverse influences – not demonstrative perhaps – but very real and powerful. And nothing can more clearly testify to the power of conscience in the movement than the fact that, notwithstanding all these weighty deterrents, a large proportion of the people openly walked out of the Establishment.

Their zeal and energy soon found scope for exercise. Of course, the first urgent necessity was a Church. The earlier services in the new circumstances were held in a house on the Square. As many as possible went inside, but the great bulk of the congregation remained without, yet sufficiently near to hear the preacher and join in the worship. A permanent building must be a matter of time. But a temporary meeting place was needed immediately. And the energy of the people was equal to the occasion. When resolution reaches white heat there are no impossibilities. Dr. Smith, who is still spared to the congregation, was, from his professional duties, very intimate with the shipbuilders of Garmouth, which was then a hive of industry. At his solicitation, the masters agreed to spare all their men for one day. Accordingly on a fixed date, a large band of shipwrights arrived with the tools of their trade, marched into Fochabers in the early morning to the strains of the bagpipes, and before the light failed on that summer day, a huge wooden structure stood ready for public worship on the morrow. Many still living have a pleasing recollection of that stirring Saturday, and of the crowded services that were held on the Sabbath.

A few facts gathered from the Session Books, which, from the beginning have been kept with care and fulness, will be of interest to those whose memories cannot go back a matter of 54 years. The first entry there contains the signatures of the elders, who, along with Mr. Dewar, separated from the Establishment, together with notes added afterwards, probably in the hand of Mr. Dewar. It is as follows George Marquis, elder, died 3rd Feb., 1851; John Jamieson, elder, died June, 1856; Andrew Cuthbert, elder, died 1870; Alexander Logie, elder; George Brown, elder, removed to Otago, New Zealand, 23rd June, 1850 – died, 1882; Thos. Christie, elder; William Harrower, elder.

The first meeting of Session was held on the 11th July, 1843, when George Brown acted as Clerk, and the chief business was signing the Deed of Demission.

The first staff of Deacons were elected on the 4th Jan., 1844, and were as follows: Dr. Robert Smith, John Gray, Robert Proctor, James Hay, William Sievewright (father of Sir James Sievewright – highly placed in South African politics), Robert Innes, Alexander Gray, James Henderson, Alexander Munro, Alexander Scott, Thomas Hay, and John Stewart. These accepted office at a meeting of Session on the 9th Jan., 1844 – with the exception of the Deacons elect for Dallachy, who were prevented from attending on account of the tempestuous state of the weather. The ordination of all these took place on Sabbath the 28th Jan., 1844. Of this band, the only survivor is Dr. Smith, who from then till now, has been a most generous supporter of the congregation in all its undertakings – both general and local.

The new Church meanwhile was being pushed on vigorously, and we learn from the Session Record that it was opened on Sabbath the 11th February, 1844 – Mr. Dewar preaching in the forenoon from Ezra 6:16, and the Rev. Archibald MacGilvray of Keith, in the afternoon and evening – the collections throughout the day amounting to the handsome sum of £18.

The first communion was celebrated on the 3rd March, 1844, when the faithful chronicle tells that the minister was assisted at the various services by the Rev. Mr. Allan, Garmouth; the Rev. Mr. Barclay, Enzie; the Rev. Mr. Shanks, Buckie; and the Rev. Mr. Topp, Elgin. The number of communicants present on the occasion was 326.

But Mr. Dewar had more on his hands than the superintendence of these weighty affairs in Fochabers. The care of the Church throughout Strathbogie lay largely on him. He had great walking powers, and they were often severely taxed in these days. It was no uncommon thing for him to journey on foot to the remotest parishes, conduct service and return in the same fashion. He used to tell that on one occasion he was making for Glass in the usual way, and at one point, being uncertain of the road, he enquired at a farm. The farmer was a Moderate, and a keen hater of the “high-fliers,” and knowing whom he had, maliciously sent the traveller the wrong way with the result that he was late for the service. On the same journey he had a more pleasing encounter with a stranger. Passing through Botriphnie he came up with a young woman, and entering into conversation, the subject of the Churches soon came up. Mr. Dewar, of course, had no idea what his companion’s views were, but she soon enlightened him by saying, “Oor minister’s a Moderate, an’ he’s aye cryin’, ‘the law, the law, ye maun obey the law.’ We country folk dinna ken muckle aboot the law, but we ken fine fa’s the best preachers.”

For some years both before and after the Disruption, Mr. Dewar bore an enormous strain both from work and worry. But after the various congregations throughout the Presbytery were manned and organised he was able to settle down to the care of his own flock. He used to say that the struggle through which they had come, greatly warmed the bond of sympathy between ministers and people, and that there were abounding encouragements to all pastoral activity. He had his own share of these, and it was therefore with great comfort and satisfaction that he set himself to till his corner of the great vineyard. The rest of his life was comparatively uneventful. He studied to show himself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And many can testify from blessed experience that his labours were not in vain.

The later years of his ministry were lightened by a succession of assistants, to whom he was a wise and kindly counsellor, and by whom he was greatly respected and esteemed. In 1876 he was relieved altogether of the cares of the congregation by the appointment of a colleague and successor, to whom he showed himself always a judicious and sympathetic adviser. During the remainder of his life he was seldom able to engage in public work, but continued to take the liveliest concern in all branches of congregational work, and nothing gave him greater delight than to learn of any little forward movement that might be attempted, and that was successful.

Notwithstanding his very advanced years, he had the privilege of being able to move about freely and take a lively interest in all current affairs till within a few hours of his death. On the 4th May, 1885, he had a paralytic seizure, while engaged in his much-loved garden. He never regained consciousness, and, on the following day, he passed peacefully away in the 89th year of his age.

His funeral sermon was preached by his old friend and co-Presbyter, the Rev. Wm. Burnett of Huntly, who paid a warm tribute to his service and worth in the hearing of a large and sympathising congregation.

Mr. Dewar was survived by his wife, who is still among us, and by a family of two sons and five daughters, two of whom, after lives of appreciated Christian usefulness, have since entered into rest.

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 Alexander Duff, D.D.

Author: Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., Professor of Evangelistic Theology, New College, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 215

Alexander Duff

It were impossible, and happily it is unnecessary, to give here any full biographical notice of Dr Duff. His public life is universally known, while his private life was that of the loving and beloved husband and father, the genial friend, the wise counsellor, the beneficent helper. At home alike in the lordly hall, in the gatherings of the learned, and in the dwellings of the humblest, he maintained in all his intercourse with his fellow-men, in a very unusual degree, the distinctive character of the Christian man, the Christian minister, and the Christian missionary. Naturally somewhat impatient of contradiction, and with his whole soul possessed with convictions on the only subjects on which he cared to speak, the first impression that he made on strangers was apt to be that he was a man of overbearing dogmatism. But gradually the impression wore off, and those who came to know him well beheld in him the simplicity of the child, united with the fire of the zealot, and an ardour of love which called forth their earnest love in return.

His public life was nearly equally divided into two parts—in India and at home. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the former. His style of eloquence was precisely fitted to captivate the Oriental ear, and influence the Oriental mind. With a large range of knowledge, and immense power of acquisition, and unequalled faculty of retention, he knew how to turn this to account in convincing the understanding and gaining the affections of all with whom he came into contact. He was essentially the orator. Even his ordinary letters were orations. The consequence of this is, that those who never heard him speak must deem his writings somewhat turgid, overlaid, as regards their matter, with imagery, and in respect of style, with superabundant adjectives and epithets. But those who can remember him, as he poured forth a stream of eloquence, now dashing impetuously and almost furiously over all obstacles, now gliding in glittering beauty between its banks, will not fail to recognise in his writings masterpieces of eloquent oratory. He was, of course, as a missionary, more occupied with the defence than with the exposition of the Christian system. But he was a powerful preacher. Ever handling the Word of God with profoundest reverence, and deeply penetrated with a sense of the unspeakable preciousness of revealed truth, he brought all his great powers into requisition in order to commend that truth to others.

His work at home was a continued effort to arouse a slumbering Church to a sense of its duty and its privilege, as put in trust of the sacred deposit of the Gospel for the benefit of the world. This was his one theme, and in handling it he was instant in season and out of season. Whether in his professorial chair, in church courts, in the pulpit, in private intercourse with all classes of men, or in doing from day to day the work that lay to his hand as Convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church, he lived for this end, and cared not to live if he could not promote it; and for the furtherance of this end he had both the will and the power to cultivate habits which might seem almost contrary to his nature. But, indeed, his nature was many-sided. With all the exuberance of his fancy, and the apparently uncontrollable night of his imagination, he had a singular power of mastering details, and forming conclusions as to their bearings upon matters of business. It will perhaps surprise some to be told that he was a man of remarkably accurate and painstaking business habits. Endowed with unlimited power of work, sustained by over-mastering zeal, even during the later years of his life, which were years of great physical pain and suffering, he spent long sleepless nights in meditating on his work, and reverentially dealing with his God and Saviour respecting the establishment of His kingdom in his heart and in the world; while day after day he resumed his patient toil, ever glad to spend and to be spent in doing the work of the Master whom he served with the service of ardent love.

Of the men of our age regarding whom our children will be proud to tell their children and their grandchildren how they walked in our streets, and how they pleaded from pulpit or from platform for God with men, and for men with God, there is no one who will be held in fresher or holier remembrance than Dr Duff. He rests from his labours, and his works do follow him. And over most of his compeers and associates he had this advantage: their work, all-important as it was, could not but be to a considerable extent of a denominational, or, at the most, of a national character. But the work of Dr Duff was catholic in the widest sense. His heart was set upon the evangelisation of all the world; his influence was felt over all the Churches.

We shall now append a mere chronicle, consisting of little more than the dates of the principal events of Dr Duff’s life.

He was born at the farm-house of Auchnachyle, in the parish of Moulin, Perthshire, on the 25th of April 1806. His parents were not only sincere Christians, but were earnestly interested in the cause of God, and the spread of the Gospel all over the world. To their influence and their prayers he ever acknowledged himself a debtor for all that he was enabled by the grace of God to become and to do. When eight years old he was sent to school, and after that early age he was but seldom, and for short times, in his father’s house. After receiving the ordinary primary education in the parish school of Kirkmichael, and the usual secondary instruction in the Grammar School of Perth, at the age of fifteen he became a student in the University of St Andrews. From many testimonies it is manifest that here he made the most of his golden opportunities. In all his classes he held a high place, in some, the highest. He attended as a student the first course of lectures which Dr Chalmers delivered as Professor of Moral Philosophy in St Andrews, and the genius of the student caught an enlivening spark from the genius of the teacher. Under the genial auspices of this teacher and friend, he entered upon a course of study and of missionary effort, which closed only with his life.

Immediately after the close of his University course, he was licensed as a preacher, and was straightway appointed by the Foreign Missions Committee of the Church of Scotland as the first Missionary of the Church to India. His appointment was sanctioned by the General Assembly of 1829, and he was ordained to the office of the ministry on the 12th of August. After a disastrous voyage, and two shipwrecks, in one of which the Lady Holland was totally destroyed, he landed in Calcutta on the 27th of May 1830, and immediately began the great work with which his name will ever be associated. This is not the place either for the exposition of, or the apology for, that work. In the day of India’s regeneration, when its converted millions shall stretch out their hands to God, the arrival of Duff on her shore will be acknowledged to have marked an important epoch in the national and spiritual history of that great land. The hand of God was in it. Never before or since was there a time so opportune for the great experiment which Duff instituted; never before or since was there a man so qualified to conduct that experiment to a successful issue. In the doing with his might what his hand found to do, the young missionary “lighted the candle at both ends,” and after little more than four years of bright burning, it was all but burnt out. By the middle of 1834 he was prostrated with illness, and was carried on board a homeward-bound ship. Immediately on his arrival at home, though still in an extremely feeble state of health, he began the work of pleading the cause of missions all over Scotland, and inaugurated a movement which has already accomplished much, and is destined to accomplish far more, towards placing the Church of Christ in the position which her Divine Head designed her to occupy towards the world which He came to save. He returned to India in 1840, and at once resumed his labours in the Mission which he had been honoured to found. These labours we cannot describe in detail. They were abundant, and very various.

The event which gives its special character to the present publication, the “Disruption” of the Church of Scotland, was met by Dr Duff as all who knew him might have expected that he would meet it. He and his colleagues might have misgivings as to the ability of a portion of the Church to bear the cost of those operations which had been regarded by some as too heavy a tax to be paid by the undivided Church; but they had no hesitation as to the course of duty; and hence the name of Dr Duff stands in the roll of “Disruption Worthies.” The work of the Mission went on without interruption; and neither missionaries, nor converts, nor students, had more to suffer than the painful breach which divided them from many friends with whom they had hitherto been united. The death of Dr Chalmers, in 1847, led to great anxiety. The position which he had occupied in the Free Church, all felt, could never be filled by another. Men when they met were engrossed with the momentous question as to a successor to him in his office as Principal and Professor in the Edinburgh College. The response was gradually given more and more distinctly, that if Duff would accept it, he was the man. A proposal was accordingly made to him by the Commission of the General Assembly that he should return home and be appointed to this office. This proposal he felt himself constrained to decline. But, believing that one object that the Church had in view in making it was, that he might carry forward the work which he had begun as an advocate of the Mission cause, he consented to visit this country, and prosecute that work for a time. In order to prepare himself for it, he made an extensive tour over India, of which he had not till then seen much, and made himself acquainted, by personal observation, with all the work carried on in all its length and breadth. When this survey was completed, he left India, and reached home in May 1850. He now entered upon that course of exposition and advocacy of the cause of Missions, of which he had before given a foretaste, which may be said without exaggeration to have revolutionised the sentiment of the Church of Christ, not in Scotland only, nor in the British Islands, but also on the European and American continents. It was in the beginning of 1854 that he visited the latter continent. No pen of ours can describe the enthusiastic character of his reception, or the blessing that accompanied his visit. Before this, in 1851, he had enjoyed the highest honour that is open to the ambition of a Presbyterian minister, the Moderatorship of the General Assembly of his Church. His superabundant labours in this country and in America were again a lighting of the candle at both ends. For a time he was laid aside from all work, and had to learn that God requires of his servants patience as well as action. He returned to India at the close of 1855, and resumed his work in his 50th year with as much energy as he had expended on it in his 24th. But this could not continue always. Repeated illnesses convinced him that his work in India must cease, and prepared him to accept an invitation which was addressed to him to return home and work for India, and for the world, as Convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church. This was to him a great disappointment. He had often spoken to the writer of his desire to “die in harness,” and to lay his bones to mingle with the clods of his beloved Gangetic valley. Reaching Scotland in August 1864, he entered with characteristic energy on the work of his new office. How faithfully and how laboriously he discharged his duties is known in the general to all the Church, but the writer may be excused the egotism of saying that he alone knew it to the full extent, from the circumstance that he was for several years associated with him as Vice-Convener. By the generous liberality of a few friends he was enabled to present to the Church a sum of £10,000 for the endowment of a Chair of “Evangelistic Theology;” and, says his biographer, “When the General Assembly of 1867, with whom the appointment of the first Professor rested, could not agree as to which of two experienced Missionaries, from Calcutta and Bombay, should be appointed to it, Dr Duff was most unwillingly compelled to accept the appointment by the unanimous call of his Church.” Thus he became at last a Professor in that College, of which he had fifteen years before declined to be a Professor and Principal. In 1873 he had the unique honour conferred on him of a second election to the Moderator’s Chair of the General Assembly, and that at a trying time in the Church’s history. When the Assembly of 1874 had to appoint a Principal of the New College in succession to Dr Candlish, many of the friends of Dr Duff deemed that he was the fittest man to be appointed to the office. He did not desire the appointment, but when he had consented to be nominated, he was certainly disappointed, and perhaps for the moment somewhat embittered, when he found that his appointment, if it took place at all, would not be unanimous. He therefore declined to be proposed. It were altogether out of place to revive the controversy here, and out of time to revive it anywhere. I have no doubt that Dr Duff received this disappointment as a gift of his Heavenly Father, and that it contributed to that which had long been the strongest desire of his heart, his growth in holiness, and in submission to his Father’s will.

During the sitting of the Assembly of 1876 Dr Duff met with a severe accident, from the effects of which I do not think that he ever fully rallied. From that time his friends anticipated that the day of his departure would not be distant. For many months he suffered from one affection after another, and, when the College session opened in November 1877, he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that he could not discharge the duties of his Chair. On the 12th of February 1878 came the end of a career marked by unflinching faithfulness to the cause of God and of man, a career whose track will not soon be obliterated from the sands of time, and which will be remembered, to the praise of God’s grace, in the anthems of eternity.

His remains were reverently laid beside those of his loving and beloved wife, who had predeceased him by twenty-three years.

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 ROBERT DUNBAR, PLUSCARDEN

Author: Rev. Professor Cameron, D.D. Aberdeen
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 82

Little information has been available for us regarding the early life of Rev. Robert Dunbar, the sixth minister of Pluscarden – the first in connection with the Free Church of Scotland. He belonged to the parish of Auldearn, within which his father was tenant of the farm and mills of Lethen. After attending the parish school of his native district he proceeded to Aberdeen where he took the University curriculum in Arts; and having resolved to study for the Church, he attended the requisite classes, and was in due course licensed to preach the Gospel. In 1839 he was settled as pastor of the congregation in the Glen of Pluscarden. The ecclesiastical and religious history of the Glen is well worthy of the attention of those who are interested in a state of life and a type of character which, if not quite extinct, are rapidly disappearing from the midst of us. The writer of these lines can recall worthies of the Glen whose personality was as striking and whose natural endowments were as rich as any depicted in the pages of Ian Maclaren.

The first minister of the Glen appears to have been settled in 1736, and a remarkable minister he must have been. “His aspect was equally reverend and handsome; his delivery dignified and graceful; his actions natural, gentlemanly, and animated; the tones of his voice manly, strong, musical, finely modulated, and deeply impressive; while his pastoral success was such that no sect of Christians could ever boast of a single proselyte from his audience:—he out-prayed, out-lived, and out-preached them all.” The way in which he was first introduced to his congregation throws a somewhat lurid light on the state of religious life at the time. The ministers of Elgin were anxious to make provision for the spiritual wants of Pluscarden, which formed part of their parish, but was too distant to receive proper pastoral supervision from head-quarters. They found, as they believed, a suitable man to labour in the Glen, and they appeared with him, somewhat unexpectedly, on the last day of Yule. The natives were assembled at the Abbey, engaged in a game of football (chow it was called). What the reverend gentlemen thought as they gazed on the excited crowd may be left to the imagination of the reader. The people appear at first to have suspected that their visitors were gaugers, or Government spies of some sort (smuggling was a common practice at the time.) After watching the game for a little, the clergymen separated, one of them going to the one goal, and the other to the other. The game proceeded; but by and bye one of the ministers managed to let the players know that they had come on business and that, if they would stop the game for a little, they would explain their errand. Play was at once suspended; on which the speaker said that they had brought a minister to them and if they wished to keep him, he would stay with them, preach to them, and they would have a minister of their own. On this the people gathered round the visitors, and declared that, if the gentleman was willing to stay with them, they were willing to keep him. This was what was desired. The Elgin ministers returned to their homes; and Pluscarden got its first minister.

Between Mr. Touch the first minister, and Mr. Dunbar, the Glen enjoyed the pastorate of four different men. The first two of these appear to have been able, evangelical preachers. Education, at the time, was greatly neglected. The people were largely illiterate and slaves to superstition. The moral tone was far from high. Impurity, profane swearing, and smuggling were all too prevalent. Accordingly, although the labours of the two men who succeeded Mr Touch were not without effect, reform was slow – too slow for Mr. Munro, the third minister, who, after a pastorate of some nineteen years, resigned his charge and went to America. Mr. Munro’s pulpit power may be inferred from the fact that people flocked to hear him from all the surrounding parishes – Rafford, Forres, Alves, Elgin, Dallas &c. It must have been specially galling to the ministers of Elgin, who seem to have imbibed the spirit of the moderatism which lay, like a dead-weight, on the land, to find their people forsaking their ministrations for the services of an earnest pastor in a little country glen, six miles beyond. In view of this, the following declaration, attributed to some of the members of the Elgin Presbytery, may be accepted as trustworthy; ‘when the Pluscarty folks want another minister, we’ll gae them ane that the folks winna gang sae far to hear.’ When Mr. Munro left they had their opportunity. Mr. Munro was succeeded by Mr. Macpherson. The difference between him and his predecessor appears from the fact that it was during his ministry that the most pious people of the Glen forsook the religious services at their own doors, and, Sabbath after Sabbath, made their way to Elgin, and worshipped with the newly-formed congregation of Seceders in Moss Street of that city. Mr. Macpherson was settled in the Glen in 1789. Exactly 50 years later, in 1839, Mr. Dunbar began his pastorate. During that half-century, the most significant fact connected with the religious life of the Glen was the weekly pilgrimage to Elgin of the most godly of its people. Pages might be filled with an account of the journey. The conversation to and from the city was strictly confined to subjects of religious interest. A gravel-pit near the road-side formed a resting place on the way home. In order to supply strength for the double journey the leaders took with them some provision for the body – in most cases probably simpler than the loaves and fishes of the disciples of old. In the gravel-pit, this was distributed; and while the homely food was being eaten, the young people were examined on the sermon to which they had just listened. [The journey from the Glen to and from Elgin was 12 miles, but the young folks were expected to accompany their elders.]

This was one side of the religious life during those 50 years. On the other side, the services in the Glen were attended by the majority of the people. Mr. Macpherson seems to have got on well with his parishioners, and his preaching and pastoral labours were accepted apparently without complaint, save by those who attached themselves to the Seceders. He was succeeded in 1807 by Mr. Thomson, teacher of Mathematics in the Elgin Academy from 1803. Mr. Thomson was the last minister appointed by the Presbytery. At the next vacancy, as we shall see, the Earl of Fife – the proper patron – practically allowed the people to choose their minister. When Mr. Thomson was settled the congregation worshipped in what was called “The old Ha’” – the old store and marketplace of the monks, which lay a short distance from the eastern entry to the Priory. A number of houses stood about the Ha’, the whole passing under the name of Netherbyre. In the time of Mr. Hesbane, the second minister, one of these houses was given by Lord Fife for a manse. But about 1820 the Earl set about the repairing of the Priory. It is said that he spent the rent of the Glen for some 10 or 12 years in work of this kind. Certain improvements in the estate which he resolved to effect rendered necessary the removal of the congregation and the minister from Netherbyre. About 1828 a new manse was built on the site of the present one, and Mr. Thomson and his family removed to it. A few years afterwards the congregation left the old Ha’ for the Calefactory of the Priory in which they still worship – alas! now only for a month or two. These changes appear to have had no small part in the melancholy calamity which fell on the household of the manse. Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, and their domestic servant fell into a state of mental weakness. By and bye the Schoolmaster was stricken with the same trouble; and he may still be alive – he was so a few years ago – in the lunatic asylum of the district. A dispensation of this kind was well fitted to solemnize the people of the Glen, and make them approach the settlement of a new pastor in a spirit of humility and prayerful dependence upon God.

Sometime was allowed to lapse in the hope that Mr. Thomson’s state of mind might improve. But as years passed on, and the prospect did not brighten, the pulpit was declared vacant in 1838, and the congregation proceeded to the election of a successor to Mr. Thomson. The Presbytery had no longer the power of appointment. What they had to do was to provide pulpit supply during the vacancy. The Earl of Fife was ready to confirm the choice of the people if they agreed on a man. There was a good deal of disputing. The people were new to work of this kind, and as the Glen folks were ever ready to show a spirit of independence, it may be that in this first experience of popular election the natural temperament of the natives was exhibited more freely than was necessary. Ultimately the choice fell upon Mr. Dunbar. A meeting of the congregation was held at which the question of stipend was to be settled. One of the Ministers of Elgin presided. After careful consideration the people offered – as their part of the stipend – £50. This sum the Moderator refused to accept; roundly charged the people of the Glen with the inadequate payment of their pastor; and declared that no minister would be settled among them, if they did not make suitable provision for his maintenance. The language used roused the ire of an old man in whose house hospitality was not stinted. “Let them get a good minister,” he said to the moderator, “that was the all-important matter. He had known a minister to live in the Glen on £80 of a stipend, and he did not starve. He had known others to have little more. But they were grand preachers, and people came from all the country round about – even from Elgin – to hear them. And these did not come for nothing. They always sent something after them. He had seen cart loads come to the Manse door from other places. If what the hearers got satisfied them, they were willing to pay it back. And this was more than he could say for the Elgin ministers who promised £2 to help the stipend in the Glen, but he understood they never paid it. If they got a good minister he would be well provided for.” This settled the matter. The people’s contribution of £50 was accepted.

Mr. Dunbar was ordained while the feelings excited by the election and the dispute as to stipend were still warm. The situation was somewhat trying. But it would not have been easy to find a man more likely to smooth over difficulties and to draw all parties together than the new pastor. Mr Dunbar was a man of the highest character. When principle was concerned, he was firm as a rock. But he was also prudent, as well as kindly and conciliatory in disposition, and possessed of a good share of sound common sense. In a short period every trace of discontent had disappeared. So satisfactory was the new state of affairs that even the seceders ceased to go to Elgin, and by and bye they became not merely seat-holders, but members of the congregation in the Glen. No better testimony could be given to the high moral worth and the evangelical preaching of Mr. Dunbar.

In 1839, the Ten Years’ Conflict was at the height. The great controversy was keenly discussed in the Glen. The influence of the Seceders, and of a few men who did not actually join but cordially sympathised with them, greatly helped to an intelligent appreciation of the struggle of the Evangelical section of the Church. Moreover, through the generous action of Lord Fife, the people of the Glen practically possessed the liberty for which the majority of the Church were contending, and, as a matter of fact, exercised their privilege in the election of Mr. Dunbar. The result was that, when the hour of decision arrived, with the exception of a single family, the people to a man joined the Free Church. The crisis was the means of showing the true character of Mr. Dunbar. His name did not appear in the first list of those who pledged themselves to follow the Evangelical leaders. It came to be known that a presentation to a parish was at his disposal, if he remained in the State Church. (The Glen of course was not a parish.) His friend Mr. Waters of Burghead was in the same position. They agreed to meet on a certain day for prayer and conference, and to decide the matter in accordance with what might then appear to be the path of duty. Mr. Waters ranged the arguments pro and con, and summed up by saying that there was a certain difference in favour of coming out. “Stop there,” said Mr. Dunbar, “You need go no farther. If there is a hairsbreadth more to the glory of God by our coming out, we must go, and leave other things behind.” This settled the question. They both joined the Free Church.

With his usual good sense, the Earl of Fife refused to give the use of the priory to the minority of one. The people were left undisturbed, and still worship in the part of the priory assigned to them
about 1830. [May it be permitted to put on record here that it is a grief to many that they are so soon to leave it? It says little for the liberal spirit of wealthy Free Churchmen that they have allowed this gem of pre-reformation church architecture to return to the Roman Catholics. The priory, in a measure, connected our Free Church – the latest of the Reforming Churches of our dear country – with the Christian life and enterprise of Scotland in days long before the Reformation was dreamed of. These are not the days in which a church should think little of the past. Authority as inherent in the Church, and to be loyally accepted by her members, sounds to many as a strange doctrine, unworthy of the age to which we belong. The Priory supplied an external bond of connection between our Free Church and the Church of days long ago, when piety was as genuine as it is in our time, and the authority which rightfully belongs to the Church of Christ was acknowledged without question. In this sanctuary within the Priory, hallowed by the history and traditions of many centuries, the congregation of the Glen, no doubt, enjoy a unique privilege; but the honour of the situation belongs to the Church as a whole. And it will be a matter of unfeigned regret for many a day that our Church is to be cut off from this most interesting pre-reformation structure – within whose walls a congregation was trained to throw in its lot – all but literally to a man – with the Free Church of 1843.]

Mr. Dunbar’s ministry was not a long one – only about 20 years. His health was not good; we believe he suffered from an incurable disease. The manse occupied an ideal situation, but it was a
mere cottage, consisting of 4 small rooms and 2 attics (garrets), and was quite inadequate to the wants of a growing family. How many anxious hours must have been passed in that manse between 1843 and 1859 when the faithful servant was released by death! Throughout he was the devoted pastor – anxious by example and influence, as well as by pulpit ministrations, to build up the Church of Christ in the Glen. The writer does not feel competent to speak of his gifts as a preacher; he left the Glen before he was capable of appreciating the points of a sermon. But the feeling of respect, yea, of reverence, for Mr. Dunbar he will cherish to the last hour of his life. And all who knew him – pastorally or otherwise – will probably agree in acknowledging that it was the personal character of the man – his unostentatious piety, his high sense of duty, and unwearied efforts to discharge it – his obvious desire to do to others as he would have others do to him, that constituted the strength of his ministry. His sensitiveness and delicacy of feeling appear from the fact that, when he went on pastoral visitation, he did not call on any of the Seceders. As occasion offered he was always ready to pay them a friendly visit; as pastor, no! till they, of their own free will, became members of his congregation.

A pastorate like Mr. Dunbar’s offers few points of public interest. Two matters may be regarded as of sufficient importance to warrant a brief reference before these notes are closed. The first regards the week-day school. Along with the congregation the school fell to the Free Church. A grant-in-aid was allowed at head-quarters, and the school was placed under the oversight of the Presbytery of Elgin. For a number of years an annual examination of the school took place under the auspices of the Presbytery. This examination was an important event. The Glen went, practically, on holiday. The people assembled in large numbers to see how their young folks would answer the learned men from the neighbouring parishes The school itself was much too small for the attendance, and the examination took place in the Church. Mr. Waters of Burghead was always present. Without him the proceedings would have lost half their interest, and the examination would have been regarded as lacking in point and completeness. This from the spectators’ point of view; as for the pupils, it would be difficult to say whether they were more delighted or alarmed at the thought of having to meet Mr. Waters face to face. A kinder heart than his was not to be found in the assembly; but, like other Caithnessmen, he was fond of a joke and delighted to put one in a corner. The following incident will show the kind of man Mr. Waters was when he got the young folks in hand. At one of the examinations a special prize was offered to an advanced class in arithmetic. The class consisted of 4 or 5 lads of whom the writer, unfortunately, was one. The prize was to be competed for in presence of the examiners. When the time for the competition arrived Mr. Waters proposed to separate the competitors as widely as the building allowed, and to place a boy in each of the 4 comers of the Church – with the view, he stated, of preventing the risk of copying. Mr. Dunbar and others remonstrated on the ground of the inconvenience of the proposed arrangement, and remarked that each of the boys was too anxious to gain the prize to allow his neighbour to copy. Mr. Waters was inexorable. The occasion was one to his mind, and he took advantage of it. He declared that human nature was not to be trusted in such a case, and we had to go to our corners.

In those days the school was in a very healthy condition. The spirit of emulation among the pupils was keen. The teacher took great interest in his work, and did his utmost to push forward promising scholars. And the encouragement to do so was much greater than it can ever be under the present red tapeism of My Lords’ regime.

Not less important for the true welfare of the youth of the Glen was the place now assigned to the Sabbath School. Sabbath school work appears to have been begun in Elgin about 1790. Probably it was nearly a generation later before it took root in the Glen. A somewhat remarkable man – Robert Cumming, a weaver – led the way. For sometime he carried on a successful Sabbath School in the old school at Netherbyre. The Sabbath School of those days, however, was very different from its namesake in our time. The classes were then attended by old as well as young. The school was crowded, and the majority of those present had reached years of maturity. The work of the Sabbath School was not yet directly connected with the Church. Mr. Thomson, the pastor, appears to have frequently attended the Sabbath School; but he took no part in conducting the proceedings. During the ministry of Mr. Dunbar this was altogether changed. The Sabbath School was directly connected with the Church, — placed under the control and oversight of the pastor, —and was specially adapted to the instruction of the young in spiritual and religious truth. One of the writer’s earliest recollections is that of a Sabbath evening in the school (the classes for Sabbath School instruction met in the School not in the Church.) Mr. Dunbar called our attention to an important intimation. Holding up his hands before us, he exhibited two parcels of tickets, of different sizes – the smaller in the one hand, the larger in the other. The smaller were about the breadth, and one half of the length, of an ordinary railway ticket. Scripture texts were printed on these tickets. A small ticket was to be given to the best scholar in each class, and the text, printed on it, was to be repeated next Sabbath evening. When a certain number of small tickets were gained they were given in exchange for a large ticket, and a certain number of large tickets secured a prize. The expedient was simple enough; but for a time it supplied a very considerable stimulus, and the work of the Sabbath School was carried on with no little success.

Years passed, and an unassuming but exemplary pastorate hastened to a close in human judgment all too speedy. On the last Sabbath of 1858 Mr. Dunbar preached his last sermon from the words, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” On the 10th of February, 1859 he died in the humble manse, which he had consecrated by a life of transparent piety and rare self-denial. His remains were laid beside those of his fathers in the churchyard of Auldearn, and all that is left of him to the Glen, for the spiritual good of which he laboured so consistently and unweariedly, is the memory of his devoted life, and the influence which in such a case as his, long survives the period of active service. He was held in high esteem during his life, but his real worth was not appreciated or acknowledged till after his death. Long may he, though dead, continue to speak to the people of the Glen, among whom so loyal a ministry was spent.

N.B. The information regarding the Glen in the foregoing notice has been obtained from MS. left by the late John Ross of Easter Fosterseat. Mr. Ross was a man of the highest character, and of very considerable natural ability. He inherited the piety and the best traditions of the Seceders of the Glen regarding whom he writes with warm appreciation. He has collected a mass of information which is simply invaluable to any one who desires to arrive at a trustworthy estimate of the state of things in the Glen – socially, morally, and spiritually – during the last 100 years or more. It is to be hoped that portions, at least, of Mr. Ross’ MS. may some day see the light.

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 Henry Duncan

Author: Rev. James Dodds, Dunbar
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 223

Henry Duncan

As a boy, Henry Duncan manifested those fine talents and amiable dispositions which afterwards raised him to distinction as a minister, an author, and a philanthropist. Having finished his preliminary education at the Grammar School of Dumfries, he went, in 1788, to prosecute his studies at the University of St Andrews. Having studied at that University for two sessions, he was sent to Liverpool, and became a clerk in an eminent banking firm, with a view to the mercantile profession. Under the patronage of his relative, Dr Currie, the biographer of Burns, he had the fairest prospects of success in business; but his decided taste for literature and the pursuits of a clerical life induced him to leave Liverpool, and study for the ministry of the Scottish Church. Yet the experience he gained in the Liverpool banking house was of great use to him in his after life. In 1793 he resumed his studies at the University of Edinburgh, and there he enjoyed the friendship of the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dugald Stewart. His talents and general character commended him highly to the kind offices of that eminent philosopher. He also spent two college sessions at Glasgow, and specially profited by the profound and interesting lectures of Mr John Millar, Professor of Law. His last two sessions were spent in Edinburgh. At this period of his academic career he was elected a member of the celebrated Speculative Society, and became acquainted with many young men of high promise, among others with Henry Brougham, afterwards so famous in law and politics. He continued on habits of friendship and correspondence with this distinguished statesman during the greater part of his life.

In the year 1798 he was licensed to preach the gospel, and immediately received from the Earl of Mansfield the choice of two livings in his gift, both vacant at the time, Lochmaben and Ruthwell. He chose the latter, inferior though it was in value, because it appeared to be a more suitable field for his peculiar pastoral work and philanthropic experiments. And soon, as the minister of Ruthwell, he displayed that intellectual activity, fertility of resource, and fine benevolent spirit, which enabled him to do so much, both for the temporal and spiritual welfare of his people. He imported Indian corn from Liverpool for the supply of their wants during a time of great scarcity. He also effected, amidst not a little opposition, important social reforms, and in many ways sought to improve the habits and manners of his flock. During the time of the dreaded French invasion, he raised in his parish a company of Volunteers, of which he was appointed captain. On several occasions he put off his military uniform, to assume the clerical dress, and enter on the duties of the pulpit. As his views of divine truth and the nature of the pastoral office grew deeper and more spiritual, he ceased to regard with much satisfaction this part of his career; but his loyalty and patriotism did not suffer from his progress in personal religion.

In 1808 he commenced with a few literary friends the publication of the “Scottish Cheap Repository Tracts,” which were intended to furnish sound instruction to the common people. The best of the series were written by himself, and by far the best of all, “The Cottage Fireside,” was soon published separately, and attained great popularity. In point of spirit, pathos, and humour, it has never been surpassed by any composition of its class. Soon after this period he started the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, of which for seven years he was editor. Under his management, and the more professional control of his successor, Mr John MacDiarmid, this paper reached a very high position among Scottish journals.

As the advocate of the Bible Society, when it was a new and struggling institution, as an enlightened educational reformer, and the champion of every cause that appeared to bear upon the real welfare of the country, the minister of Ruthwell gradually became highly distinguished among his brethren; and at length, in 1810, his practical philanthropy took a form which made his name known over the whole country. In that year the first Savings Bank was instituted at Ruthwell, and by the indefatigable exertions of its founder, the merits of banks of the kind for popular use were speedily acknowledged by statesmen and philanthropists of all classes. The first Act of Parliament to encourage and facilitate the institution of such banks was passed mainly through Mr Duncan’s personal efforts in London among members of both branches of the Legislature. By pamphlets, lectures, and other appliances, he rapidly made known the claims of Savings Banks over the whole island. Before long, he had the satisfaction of seeing such banks instituted in many places, and carried on with high success. For his great exertions and large personal outlay in connection with this new and noble system of Savings Banks, he never received any public reward. His letters and parcels, chiefly on bank business, one year cost him more than £80; yet he cheerfully bore such a heavy burden in the service of his country.

At this period he published another excellent tale of humble Scottish life,— “The Young South-Country Weaver,” a fit sequel to “The Cottage Fireside.” A number of years later (1826) he published, anonymously, a work of fiction in three volumes, “William Douglas; or, The Scottish Exiles,” intended to counteract Sir Walter Scott’s aspersions on the Covenanters in “Old Mortality.” This was hailed as a work of real genius, and was remarkably well received by the Scottish public.

In 1823 Mr Duncan received the degree of D.D. from the University of St Andrews, in recognition of his philanthropic labours and literary merit. It was not till 1836 that the first volume of his chief literary work, “The Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons,” made its appearance. It was rapidly succeeded by the three others; for a volume, containing papers for every day, was devoted to each Season. The work, written in a popular and devout, yet truly philosophic spirit, rapidly ran through several editions, and was long a great favourite with the public. The philosophy is by no means yet out of date, and most of the papers are as fresh and useful as when they first appeared. No better work of its class than “The Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons” is to be found in British literature.

Dr Duncan rendered a service of the highest kind to the antiquarian world by his discovery and restoration of the famous Runic cross, which, as erected and repaired by him, now stands in the garden of Ruthwell Manse. He made several beautiful models and drawings of this remarkable relic of antiquity, and wrote a learned description of it, which was published in the “Transactions of the Scottish Antiquarian Society.” No professed and experienced antiquary could have done greater justice to a monument about which volumes have been written since he first brought it to light, and the mystery of whose Runic inscriptions has only of late been solved. To the same accomplished observer belongs the credit of having intelligently brought before the geologists of Great Britain the footmarks of quadrupeds on the new red sandstone of Corncockle Muir, near Lochmaben. This discovery constituted a new era in geology, and gave Dr Duncan an honourable place among the geologists of his day.

During the early part of his ministerial career, Henry Duncan was claimed by the “Moderate” party in the Church; but he gradually grew more decided in his evangelical sentiments, and cast in his lot entirely with the party of Dr John Erskine, Sir Henry Moncreiff, Dr Andrew Thomson, and Dr Chalmers. With the latter two eminent men he lived on terms of the warmest friendship. He contributed to the “Christian Instructor,” when edited by Dr Thomson, and corresponded with Dr Chalmers on various subjects of Christian philanthropy. So early as 1827, he addressed a long and admirable letter to his old friend Mr Brougham, on reform in the Church of Scotland, especially in regard to Patronage. Afterwards, in 1831, he published in the “Christian Instructor” another letter on the subject, addressed to Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary. In these letters, as well as in a third which he wrote by request to Lord Landowner, another of his college friends, he advocated that check on the exercise of Patronage which was in 1834 embodied in the famous Veto Act. If any man in Scotland was the real parent of that measure, which had such memorable consequences, it was the minister of Ruthwell; and in all the controversies to which it gave rise, up to the time of the Disruption, the same minister took a prominent part. Dr Duncan, though at times a graceful speaker, had no great talent for debate; but he wielded a powerful and practised pen on the popular side, and contributed not a little to the triumph of the Evangelical party in the Church. In 1839, when the “Ten Years’ Conflict” was almost at its height, he was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly. This mark of distinction was amply merited by his varied services to the Church, of which he was an ornament, and by his eminent achievements as a patriotic philanthropist.

When the great conflict between the Church and the Civil Power ended in the Disruption of 1843, Dr Duncan unhesitatingly joined the Free Church, of which he became one of the fathers and founders. He was accompanied in his retirement from the Establishment by his two sons, George John Duncan, minister of Kirkpatrick-Durham, and W. Wallace Duncan, minister of Cleish; also by his two sons-in-law, Dr Horatius Bonar, minister of the North Church, Kelso, and the Rev. James Dodds, minister of Humbie. Few of his brethren made such sacrifices at the Disruption as Dr Henry Duncan. His manse, surrounded with gardens and grounds which he had laid out with exquisite taste, was one of the finest residences of the kind in Scotland. Everything around it had a history, or was endeared to him and his family by many hallowed associations. But he cheerfully left the charming spot, and took up his abode in a humble cottage by the highway side. He also met with much unworthy hostility from various classes of people in the parish and district, many of whom should have been specially forward to do him honour. He could procure no site for a church in the parish of Ruthwell, and was forced to accept of a site in the neighbouring parish of Mousewald, kindly offered by the late Dr James Buchanan and Mrs Buchanan. By his energetic efforts a new church, manse, and school were erected free of debt; and at this day, along with an obelisk reared to his memory, they form a worthy monument of noble devotedness to high principle. Built on what has been called by the people, “Mount Kedar,” they are conspicuous from various points of the railway between Dumfries and Annan.

This amiable and admirable man, on the appointment of the Rev. Alexander Brown as his colleague, removed, in 1845, with his family to Edinburgh; but, returning early in the following year to visit his much-loved people of Ruthwell, he was struck down by a deadly paralytic attack while holding an evening prayer-meeting in the house of one of his old elders who still adhered to the Establishment. He was immediately conveyed to Comlongon Castle, the residence of his brother-in-law, Mr Walter Philips, factor of the Earl of Mansfield; but consciousness only slightly returned at intervals, and in two days he calmly expired. The grief of his old parishioners knew no bounds at his death, and all classes of the people in the whole district lamented him as an eminent servant of the Lord, suddenly taken away from the scene of his lengthened and devoted ministry. He died on Thursday, the 12th February 1846, and was interred on the Tuesday following in Ruthwell Churchyard.

Dr Duncan thus died among his people, in the place he loved so well, and which will long be associated with his name. The cause of Evangelical religion, the principles of the Scottish Reformation, and the privileges of the Scottish Church, always found in him a faithful advocate; and when the time of trial came in his old age, he gloried in the name and position of a Free Church minister. He was, in lifting up his testimony for precious principles, more severely tried than most of the brethren who left the Established Church along with him; but, with characteristic cheerfulness and serenity, he bore hardship in the service of his Divine Master.

Dr Duncan was twice married, first to Miss Agnes Craig, daughter of the Rev. John Craig, his predecessor in the parish of Ruthwell, by whom he had two sons and one daughter; and, secondly, to Mrs Lundie, widow of his early friend, the Rev. Robert Lundie, minister of Kelso. His son, the Rev. Wallace Duncan, died in 1864, as minister of the Free Church, Peebles; his elder son, Dr George Duncan, who, on leaving Kirkpatrick-Durham, had been successively minister of the English Presbyterian Church at North Shields and Greenwich, and was for many years clerk of the Synod of that Church, died at Dumfries towards the close of 1868. His widow, the mother and biographer of Mary Lundie Duncan, and the author of many excellent works, a woman distinguished for her high talent and her consistent Christian usefulness, still survives in her honoured retirement. She belongs to a noble band of Christian workers who rendered great service to Evangelical religion during the past generation, all of whom but herself have been summoned to their blessed rest.

Dr Duncan was remarkable for the variety of his accomplishments. There was scarcely a literary or scientific subject that was strange to him, and he had an excellent knowledge of art in its various forms. His manual dexterity was something quite extraordinary, and was far above what is often connected with “a mechanical turn.” He excelled in drawing and modelling, was a first-rate landscape gardener, and on different occasions proved himself an excellent architect. He had a great genius for sculpture, and delighted at times in producing specimens of that noble art. But in domestic life, and in all the refinements of a cultivated social circle, he eminently shone. His piety, his benevolence, his literary culture, and manifold social accomplishments, never failed to impress all who visited Ruthwell Manse in those days when, under his sway, it was a model of a refined and happy Christian home.

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 John Duncan

Author: Rev. Alex. Moody Stuart, D.D., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 231

John Duncan

In his college course he seems to have had the characteristics of his later years; acquiring great fluency in writing Latin, yet not distinguishing himself in the regular work of the classes, but labouring hard in his own fitful way in languages, literature, and philosophy. His insatiable love for languages grew side by side with an intense delight in philosophic speculation, into which he threw himself with an ardour that would recognise no barriers in heaven or earth. The ground of Revelation was lost, he sank down through unbelief, deism, pantheism, into material atheism; and man was in his eyes a mere animal, like the other beasts, living only to go through the degrading sameness of the daily round of nature’s wants and supplies, “born to eat, and to drink, and to digest, and to die.” Atheism had not on him the effect of exciting pride in man’s greatness; but, on the contrary, he was deeply mortified at his own littleness and the littleness of all humanity, for man without God and without immortality, presented to him nothing to interest, to admire, to respect, or to love.

His inward history is inseparable from his outward life, both on account of its marked and singular character, and because he was remarkably communicative about those personal transactions in the region of the great unseen, on which most men are apt to be reserved. Along with deep abstraction, he had an irrepressible love of intercourse with others, which often took the form of asking prayer for relief in doubt about his own salvation, but sometimes also of narrating the mental facts of his past life. Chief among these were three outstanding events—his deliverance from atheism, his conversion, and his recovery out of spiritual declension.

His recovery out of atheism he ascribed, in the first instance, to Dr Mearns, whose cogent reasonings in his lectures, along with his prayers to the “Great King,” convinced him of the existence of God. But the conviction had been reached by a logical process without any more direct mental perception; and the full breaking in of the light on this first of all truths he looked back upon to the last as a great era in his life. “I first saw clearly the existence of God,” he said, “in walking along the bridge at Aberdeen; it was a great discovery to me; and I stood in an ecstacy of joy.” But while he could now “thank God for His existence,” this measure of light wrought no abiding change on his heart or life, and he accepted of licence to preach the gospel while practically a Socinian, though nominally a Sabellian, and with nothing, either in his character or his views, consistent with the high calling on which he was entering.

The next great event, after eight years intellectually fruitful but spiritually barren was meeting with Dr Malan of Geneva, who visited Aberdeen in 1826, and pressed him closely with salvation freely given and to be instantly accepted. Towards the close of their conversation, Mr Duncan quoted a text of Scripture which Dr Malan instantly seized, and said, “Man, you have got the word of God in your mouth;” to which he replied, “And may He not take it utterly out of my mouth.” He frequently spoke with deep impression of the electric power which in that moment accompanied the word that was at once in the heart of God and in his own heart, and he regarded it as the great beginning of all communion between God and himself in time and in eternity. This turning event in his life was followed by liberty and light and joy in his own spirit, and holy boldness in testifying of free grace both in preaching and in conversation.

His third great inward event was the recovery of his soul out of declension after a year or two had passed, and he had lost the fervour of his first love. Through an exclusive adherence to promise and privilege and peace, apart from repentance, self-scrutiny, and watchfulness, his love and joy had lost their freshness, and all the fruits of the Spirit had withered. His words were the same as before, the doctrinal assurance remained, and the profession was as high as ever; but the reality and power were gone, the lips and the heart were not one. He could not endure this hollowness. “I’m not a hypocrite,” he said, “and I won’t be one.” He let go the “name to live,” that he might recover the life itself; and he fell into darkness, doubt, fear, all but absolute despair. Through a conflict very protracted and at length severe, with a deep submission to the sovereign will of God, he was restored to a good measure of light and liberty. After his conversion he was never troubled with doubts about the word of God; but he said that “he was naturally of a sceptical turn of mind, but his scepticism now took the form of doubt about his own salvation.” His conversion and his recovery embraced the two extremes of spiritual exercise; and they formed the man in his long subsequent life. Each was the complement of the other; and if for a time the last became first, the fervour and simplicity of the first recovered and retained its place. The two combined introduced him into a marvellous fulness of the word of God, which he cordially received in its length and in its breadth as few men have ever done. Through life his anger burned against a surface gospel that did not grapple with the conscience, but it kindled as keenly against the gospel withheld or robbed of its simplicity. “The best preaching,” he said, “is, Believe on Jesus Christ, and keep the Ten Commandments.”

In the earlier part of his course, and indeed throughout his life, his own preaching at its best was of a very high order. At its worst it was scarcely possible for him to speak without uttering weighty truths in an original and memorable form; his reading of the Bible was singularly instructive and impressive, and his prayers were the words of one standing in the immediate presence of the great Jehovah. But his preaching was too abstract, and was sometimes the slow utterance of thoughts that seemed to be gathering themselves in drops while he was in the pulpit— big drops, but with great intervals between them, and the whole occupying an excessive time before he could be satisfied that there was enough in the cup to offer to a thirsting soul. But at other times his whole discourse was a continuous flow of heavenly eloquence, in which both the intellect and the spirit soared in so lofty a region that the body itself seemed to partake of the elevation. On such occasions his language was concise, oracular, and singularly beautiful; every word was a thought sought out as a jewel, and artistically fitted in its place. His discourse was not one idea presented in many forms, nor many ideas fitted up with looser materials, nor a chain of successive arguments; but a unity made up of parts, each fine in itself, and each helpful to the whole, fitted together as in a beautiful mosaic, and lighted up with the frequent flashes of sanctified genius. In beauty it was a picture; but in power it was the rushing of sparkling wine that had burst its bottles.

In 1830 Mr Duncan was appointed, but without ordination, to the very rural charge of Persie Chapel, in the eastern borders of Perthshire. On the brief period of his pastoral duty there he always looked back with peculiar interest; and a deep mutual attachment was formed between himself and the people of the district, who highly appreciated his ministry. His tenderness and the strength of his affection tempered his faithfulness, which at that time was occasionally characterised by a severity which would otherwise have given offence. In 1831 he was called to a Sabbath lectureship in Glasgow, where he was afterwards ordained as minister of Milton Church, and where, in 1837, he married Miss Gaven, of Aberdeen, who died after two years, to his great grief. While there he received from Aberdeen the degree of LL.D. in acknowledgment of his Hebrew and Oriental learning, in which he had few equals; but by a strange omission none of the Universities enrolled him among their Doctors in Divinity, although beside him most other men seemed scarcely to be theologians.

In 1841 Dr Duncan was appointed as a missionary to the Jews in the beautiful city of Buda-Pesth, on the Danube, where the Archduchess of Hungary had been long praying for the help of a man of God. Before leaving Scotland, he had been married again to a widow lady, Mrs Torrance, who entered with great energy and wisdom into all his missionary work. His work in Hungary was in all respects one of the happiest and most fruitful portions of his life. His intimate acquaintance with their sacred language and their literature excited an interest in the Jews, and rendered them unusually accessible; the spiritual power that rested on himself was divinely used for their religious awakening; and there was abiding fruit in some remarkable conversions. At the same time he was greatly honoured and beloved by the leading Protestant ministers; and his memory is cherished with a singular affection by pastors of the Reformed Hungarian Church. At a later period he took a similar interest in the Protestant Churches of Bohemia; and nothing could exceed the gratitude and attachment of the Bohemian pastors toward him.

In the ever memorable era of 1843, Dr Duncan, with all his mind and heart, cast in his lot with the Free Church of Scotland; and not alone, but along with all the missionaries to the Jews from the Church of Scotland, for the character of the grand event of that time was not mainly ecclesiastical, but deeply religious. He was then recalled to fill the Hebrew Chair in the New College, Edinburgh; and this position he occupied till his death in 1870.

In genius, in learning, and in devotion, Dr Duncan was one of the most remarkable men of the Disruption. His knowledge of languages was so great, that Dr Guthrie spoke of him in the General Assembly as “the man who could talk his way to the wall of China;” but he knew languages better than he could use them, and he said himself that English and Latin were the only tongues in which he could speak with fluency. His irregularity of habit, his mental abstraction, and his weakness of will in ordinary life, made him in many things of less service than inferior men. But his wonderful insight into divine things; his fruitful thoughts clothed with light and beauty; his acute, brilliant, sententious sayings; his deep devoutness, his tenderness of conscience, his transparency, his humility, his continual repentance toward God, and his ardent love to the Lord Jesus Christ, have left priceless impressions that can never be erased from the hearts of his hearers, his students, and his friends. His own words form the best memorial of his character:— “Methought I heard the song of one to whom much had been forgiven, and who therefore loved much; but it was the song of the chief of sinners, of one to whom most had been forgiven, and who therefore loved most. I would know, O God, what soul that is; O God, let that soul be mine!”

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 Alexander Murray Dunlop

Author: Rev. Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D., Professor of Church History, Free Church College, Glasgow
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 237

Alexander Murray Dunlop

He was the fifth son of Alexander Dunlop, Esq. of Keppoch, and belonged to a family which had furnished many leaders to the Church and people of Scotland.

Soon after he was called to the bar, Mr Dunlop began to study carefully the working of the poor-law system of Scotland, and it was in this way that he began to take an interest in Church questions. Like most well-educated young Scotchmen, he had had a transient admiration for Episcopacy, but his sympathetic nature soon threw that off; and when his poor-law investigations led him to study carefully the ecclesiastical system of his country, which his ancestors had so greatly helped to fashion, he soon came to see the real grandeur of the old democratic Church government of Scotland. The first edition of his book on the Poor Law was published in 1825, and the fourth which appeared in 1834 contained an appendix upon the Law of Patronage. During the first ten years of his life at the bar, he devoted himself to the work of his profession. In 1822 he became one of the editors of Shaw and Dunlop’s Reports, and in this capacity and others gave evidence of his legal attainments. But ere long Church questions absorbed the greater portion of his time.

In his early life Mr Dunlop was a Tory. His family held Tory principles; and in the pleasant letters which passed between the busy young Edinburgh advocate and the lively family circle in Greenock, there are many half-bantering, half-earnest references to the family political creed. His opinions gradually changed, however; and at the Dumbartonshire election of 1832, he published a letter to the electors of the county, which was warmly welcomed by the Scotch Whig leaders, more especially as “coming from one,” wrote Cockburn, “not steeped like me in the errors of Whiggery, but rather addicted to the follies of Toryism.”

The year 1832 saw the beginning of Mr Dunlop’s public life. He became really well known and a confidential leader, just when the party in the Church which he supported became dominant in the Assembly.

His great knowledge of old Scotch law, especially in its bearing on the relation between Church and State, as well as his powers of clear thought and expression, made his services specially valuable. He was the mediator in every dispute, the confidant in every plan, the active manager in all the more important matters of popular Church business. His correspondence on public affairs soon grew very voluminous, and now reads like the inner history of the “ten years’ conflict.” He was an active member of the various Church societies—of the Church Law Society, of the Anti-Patronage Society, and so on—and his whole time was occupied in the business which Church affairs brought upon him. In 1833 he was busiest with the Chapel Act, and was actively engaged in promoting anti-patronage meetings; in 1834 he became editor of the “Presbyterian Review,” which did good service to the cause which lay nearest his heart; in 1835 Church extension occupied him; in 1837 and in 1838 the Auchterarder case, the conflict between the Church and the Court of Session, and non-intrusion meetings, absorbed his attention. In the busy years that followed, Mr Dunlop’s activity was enormous. The Church then entered on a double struggle; self-defence was added to that of reform, and double labour fell to the lot of the leaders of the movement.

Among Church reforms Mr Dunlop took special interest in the restoration of the eldership to its old place in the Church of Scotland. He wrote two valuable articles upon this subject in the “Presbyterian Review,” and prepared an elaborate report for the General Assembly. He also left some valuable historical notes upon the place of the eldership in the ancient Church of Scotland, which have not been published. Church extension, too, interested him greatly; but, as was natural from his previous studies, the relation of the Church to education and to the poor occupied most of his attention. The information furnished by the Church to the Government about the number of paupers in Scotland, and the elaborate Report on the same subject presented to the Assembly of 1841, were both the result of Mr Dunlop’s almost unaided labour. He took an active part in the Voluntary controversy, and so thoroughly matured were his opinions upon the real connection which ought to subsist between State and Church—opinions framed not on a sentiment of what things ought to be, but on an historical study of the old Scottish Church—that, in later days, none of his speeches on the Irish Church or the Union questions in any way contradicted his earlier statements or ideas.

Mr Dunlop’s services, however, in the struggle between the Church and the majority of the Court of Session, are those which will ever be held in kindliest remembrance. He had already made himself obnoxious to most of the heads of the Parliament House by his anti-patronage views, and by his support of the Veto Act; but when he followed his church in her quarrel with the Court of Session, he deliberately surrendered all hopes of professional advancement. The services he rendered the Church in this unhappy strife, by pamphlet and by speech, in the court and at public meeting, can scarcely be over-estimated. The ground which he took up at first he never abandoned. He did not indulge in promiscuous declamation; he always appealed to the history of the Church. His argument, the same in speech and pamphlet, and at last set forth in detail in the Claim of Rights, was substantially this: There is no need in Scotland to dispute about the precise meaning and effects of the abstract doctrine of spiritual independence. In virtue of a concordat between Church and State, the Church of Scotland has had certain rights and liberties which can be enumerated, guaranteed her, and recognised as hers. These she claims to possess, not merely by inherent right, but also by legal recognition, and these are now being illegally wrested from her. This was the position he took up, and he maintained it to the last.

It would be impossible to give a list of all the pamphlets and speeches which he published during the struggle. The most important was his answer to the letter of the Dean of Faculty Hope; but the short tract, “Which Party breaks the Law?” was equally telling; and the preface and appendix to his edition of Wedderspoon‘s “Maxims for the Moderates,” were full of very effective sarcasm.

When a compromise was found to be impossible, and when the Church felt that either State connection or liberty must be surrendered, the task of preparing documents befitting the occasion was entrusted to Mr Dunlop. He prepared that memorable overture setting forth the ancient relation between Church and State, and the guaranteed rights of the Church, which was afterwards published as the Church’s Claim of Right. I have before me now the various proof-sheets, which shew the gradual growth of the document, and the changes which were made upon it ere it saw light in the form in which we now have it. On the margins are corrections, mostly in Mr Dunlop’s handwriting; but here and there occur suggestions made by others to whom the sheets were submitted. On one, Dr Candlish has nervously pencilled two important additional clauses; on another, John Hamilton has suggested additions and alterations; but perhaps the most interesting is the one on which Dr Gordon was set to work, where he begins by suggesting alterations which tend to soften the sternness of the document, and ends, for divine wrath has kindled in him, with emendations which make the draft sterner and more severe. Those old proof-sheets, yellowish with age, stained with printer’s ink, and scored over with hasty pens and hastier pencils, bring back in a strange vivid way the mingled anxiety and resolution of the times. The MS. draft of the Protest which Dr Welsh left upon the table of the Assembly on the day of the Disruption, is also an interesting document. Its corrections are all in Mr Dunlop’s handwriting, except one clause, which seems to have been added by Mr Hamilton. Among Mr Dunlop’s papers there are two drafts of the programme of procedure on the day of the Disruption; the first proposes to have a discussion before leaving the hall. This difference is probably explained by the following MS. note appended to the MS. draft of the Protest, which is the only reference Mr Dunlop makes to the obloquy thrown upon him by many of the Scotch and English newspapers for the part he was taking in Church affairs:— “The Times gave Dr Chalmers great credit for the quiet and orderly way in which the Disruption was effected—contrasting it with what it might have been supposed would have taken place had Candlish or the author of the Protest had had their way. How little did they know of the matter! Till Chalmers read this draft, he was fierce for a discussion before leaving the hall, and that in opposition to the arguments of all his intimate friends. The ‘arch agitator,’ in the Times‘ estimation, was the person really entitled to credit for the course followed.”

After the Disruption, Mr Dunlop was made legal adviser of the Church, an office which he held till his death, and in which he continued to render eminent service to the cause which he had made his own. But want of space compels me to refrain from even mentioning the numerous evidences of his labours which are to be found among his papers.

In 1844 Mr Dunlop married Eliza Esther, only child of John Murray, Esq., of Ainslie Place, Edinburgh. On the death of his father-in-law in 1849, he assumed the name of Murray, to which he added the additional surname of Colquhoun-Stirling, on succeeding, in 1866, to the estate of his cousin, William Colquhoun-Stirling of Law and Edinbarnet. It was Mrs Murray Dunlop’s rare good fortune to be able to make amends to her husband for the sacrifices which his devotion to the Church had cost him. His marriage rendered him independent of the hostile influences of the Parliament House, and enabled him at last to yield to the wishes of his friends, who had long been urging him to enter Parliament. Mr Dunlop’s first efforts were unsuccessful. In 1845 and 1847 he failed; but in 1852 he was returned by the electors of Greenock, his native town, and he kept the seat until failing health compelled him to resign.

Mr Dunlop’s Parliamentary career was very successful. Few Scotch members have had as much influence in the House, and none were able to pass so many useful measures. His position was due almost entirely to his weight of character, and to the wisdom and diligence he shewed on committees and in the House; and although hindered by a weak voice and a somewhat hesitating manner, he was always respectfully listened to when he rose to speak. As was to be expected from his previous training and character, Mr Dunlop assiduously devoted himself during his Parliamentary career to the cause of legal and social reform. The Parliamentary work which he himself looked back upon with most satisfaction was that done in connection with the marriage law of Scotland, the series of measures regarding reformatories and industrial schools which culminated in Dunlop’s Act, and the Act to facilitate the erection of dwelling-houses for the working classes. His Parliamentary career was marked by the same lofty moral courage and disdain of all that was tyrannical and selfish which had characterised his earlier public life. In the “Arrow” affair, he testified his abhorrence of the conduct of the Liberal Government in the war with China in 1857. The defeat of the Ministry involved a general election, and it was felt that many of the Liberals who had voted against the Government would lose their seats. Mr Dunlop at once placed his resignation in the hands of his constituency, and declared, with his usual high sense of honour, that he would not even stand as a candidate if they disapproved of his conduct. The people of Greenock, however, were not unworthy of their member, and re-elected him in such a way as to shew their admiration for his honourable and high-minded course of action. Perhaps Mr Dunlop’s conduct in his vindication of Sir Alexander Burnes was still more courageous. The Government sought to justify the Afghan war in which they had engaged, by extracts from the despatches of the late envoy at the Afghan court. The papers thus published were so different from the documents sent home by Sir Alexander to his relatives in this country, that they were led to seek an explanation. The result shewed that “mutilated, false, forged opinions of a public servant, who had lost his life in the public service,” had been offered to the House, to support a policy which Sir Alexander had always opposed. Members of the House of Commons have described the appearance of Mr Dunlop on the occasion when he led the attack upon Lord Palmerston. His quiet and almost timid manner disappeared, and in a firm, almost loud tone, he said that he had read the papers with amazement, indignation, and shame; he declared that these papers had been laid on the table of the House by her Majesty’s command; that her name was appealed to as the stamp of their truthfulness, and that her servants had not shrunk from using that name as the voucher and the cover of a lie. Although, with the help of the leader of the opposition, the Government were not defeated on the vote, yet the character and reputation of Sir Alexander Burnes were vindicated; it was felt that such a mutilation of Parliamentary documents could not again take place, and a great victory was gained in the interests of public morality.

In 1868, at the general election, Mr Dunlop resigned his seat in Parliament. His health, never robust, had begun to give way, and he wished to spend the rest of his life out of the din of public service, and in calm preparation for the rest that remaineth to the people of God. That rest came soon after. He died the 1st of September 1870, and was buried in the beautiful little grave-yard of the Free Church at Corsock. He left to mourn him his widow, four sons—three of whom were not long separated from their father—and four daughters.

Mr Dunlop never received any of the honours which the Scottish Bar has to bestow upon her distinguished sons, but this was from his own unwillingness to accept them. Even in his early days, when he experienced considerable persecution, Cockburn, when Solicitor-General, offered him a sheriffship, which Mr Dunlop declined, because he thought it would interfere with his work for the Church; and later he was offered a judgeship, and the office of Lord Advocate. I cannot close this sketch in a better way than by quoting Lord Cockburn’s description of Mr Dunlop’s character, lately published in his journals. He ranks him in everything, except impressive public exhibition, superior to both Dr Chalmers and Dr Candlish.

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 Patrick Fairbairn, D.D.

Author: Rev. James Dodds, Dunbar
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 245

Patrick Fairbairn

Patrick Fairbairn was born on the 28th January 1805, at Hallyburton, in the parish of Greenlaw, Berwickshire. He was the second son of a family of five children. His father, a respectable farmer, gave all his children a good education. Two of them he educated for the ministry, Patrick, the subject of this sketch, and John, now minister of the Free Church at Greenlaw. In November 1818 Patrick was sent to prosecute his studies at the University of Edinburgh. On leaving the Divinity Hall he was licenced as a preacher of the gospel by the Presbytery of Dunse on the 3d October 1826. In the year following be went to Orkney as tutor in the family of Captain Balfour, a large Orkney proprietor. Through the interest of that gentleman he was appointed by the Crown in 1830 to the Parliamentary parish of North Ronaldshay.

In his new sphere of action Mr Fairbairn found the need of all his natural firmness and resolution. His parishioners were addicted to many semi-barbarous practices; and many of them had the repute of being “wreckers.” They had not formerly enjoyed the benefit of a faithful gospel ministry, and their standard of morality was very low. But the young minister, by his powerful pulpit services and faithfulness in dealing privately with the people, soon wrought a great reform in the island. While diligently discharging his pastoral duties, he had ample time for private study. During his whole college career he had always been a laborious student, forced to depend more on his own efforts than on the assistance of his teachers. In this way a spirit of independent and original research was fostered as he pursued his studies. In the manse of North Ronaldshay he carried out with great regularity a scheme of study which he had previously planned. He made himself an excellent Hebrew and German scholar; but he read largely in theology, and laid the foundation of that eminence in biblical literature which he afterwards attained. When appointed to his Orkney parish, he had been asked how long he was likely to be buried in that remote locality, and had replied that he would not probably remain in it above six years, as he had given himself that period to complete the course of study he had projected. This prediction was one that was likely to lead to its own fulfilment. At all events, when he had been about six years in North Ronaldshay he was called to the new “Extension” Church of Bridgeton, in the city of Glasgow.

As the minister of a new and important city charge, Mr Fairbairn laboured with great zeal and energy. He soon collected a good congregation, and gained the entire respect of his people by his vigorous preaching and faithful pastoral labours. But he had scarcely entered on his work in Glasgow when he lost his wife and two fine children. In Orkney he had married Miss Margaret Pitcairn, sister of Mr Thomas Pitcairn of Cockpen, afterwards well known as the first Clerk of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. Of his children by that lady only one survived, John Fairbairn, who, after spending some years in Java, ultimately settled in Australia, where he died a few days after receiving intelligence of his father’s death.

When he had been about three years in Glasgow, Mr Fairbairn was presented to the parish of Salton, East Lothian, of which his distinguished friend, Dr Robert Buchanan, had once been minister. Salton is also noted as having been the first charge of the celebrated Dr Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, who left an endowment for the education of a number of poor children, and for the foundation of a ministerial library. This library, which had long been neglected, Mr Fairbairn put into excellent order, and turned to much better account than had been done by any of his predecessors. When he went to Salton in 1840, the conflict which led to the Disruption was approaching its climax, and he thoroughly identified himself with the Evangelical or Non-Intrusion party. In 1843 he cast in his lot with the Free Church of Scotland, and was the first in the Presbytery of Haddington who left a pleasant manse to brave all the hardships of a trying period. He took an active part in organizing the Free Church Presbytery of the district, and in supporting every movement that bore upon the diffusion of scriptural principles and practical religion. With some difficulty he procured a site for a church and manse in the parish of Salton; and in the course of a few years he was enabled to reside once more among his people.

In 1845 Mr Fairbairn published, in one thick duodecimo volume, his “Typology of Scripture,” a work which had occupied much of his leisure for several years. It was afterwards published in two octavo volumes, and in its greatly enlarged form it reached a fifth edition. It was instantly recognised both in this country and America as a work of extraordinary merit. Not so much from any elegance or splendour of style, or from the sterling weight and value of its matter, it was hailed by the best judges as a real contribution to modern theology. The Old Testament types had never previously been expounded in a truly philosophical manner, and it was reserved for the Free Church minister of Salton to produce a work on the subject which, for grasp of principle, soundness of judgment, and solid, though unostentatious learning, has not been surpassed, if ever equalled, by any similar performance. The publication of the “Typology” naturally fixed the eyes of his brethren on its author as a man qualified to fill with distinction a theological chair.

Mr Fairbairn had translated, when at North Ronaldshay, two German works— “Stieger on 1st Peter,” and “Lisco on the Parables,” both of which were published by Messrs Clark of Edinburgh as parts of their “Biblical Cabinet.” Soon after the appearance of the “Typology,” the same eminent firm published, in three volumes, Hengstenberg’s “Commentary on the Psalms,” translated by Mr Fairbairn and the Rev. John Thomson, now minister of St Ninian’s Free Church, Leith. His knowledge of German introduced Mr Fairbairn into the vast region of German theology, and no Scottish minister ever explored that region to better purpose. It has been justly observed, that his works present an excellent combination of some of the best fruits of German erudition with the solid attainments of Scottish orthodoxy. In 1851 Mr Fairbairn published, in one volume, “Ezekiel and the Book of his Prophecy,” which was well received by the public, and added to its author’s reputation. He next published a translation, in two volumes, of Hengstenberg’s “Commentary on the Revelation of St John,” a performance which, whatever may be said of the general views of its learned author, is certainly an important contribution to Apocalyptic literature.

In the autumn of 1852 Mr Fairbairn was appointed assistant to Dr Maclagan, Professor of Divinity in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had scarcely entered on his duties when he met with a most painful bereavement in the death of his second wife, Mary Playfair, who died soon after giving birth to her fourth child. In spite of this terrible trial, he, through grace given him, performed his work at Aberdeen with signal energy and success. Dr Maclagan having died before the winter session began, Mr Fairbairn was appointed his successor by the following General Assembly. The new professor gave fresh life and vigour to the Aberdeen College, which in the course of a few years became a well-equipped Theological Institution. While Professor Fairbairn was at its head, he received the well-merited distinction of D.D. from the University of Glasgow.

In 1856, when the Free Church College of Glasgow was instituted, Dr Fairbairn was appointed its first professor, and in the year following he was elected to the office of Principal. In this new and important situation he taught his classes with distinguished ability, and managed with consummate prudence the general affairs of the college. Everything connected with the buildings, the endowments, the library, and the business of the different classes, were directed by him with great zeal and judgment. He also endeared himself to the students, not only by his ability in the chair, but by the genuine and kindly interest he took in their welfare. They came to look upon him as a father and a friend as well as a learned and judicious theological instructor. When he had presided over the college about fifteen years, his “present and former students,” with enthusiastic eagerness, subscribed a sum of £200, in order to present the Principal with a portrait of himself by an eminent artist. This was but a demonstration of that feeling of affectionate reverence with which, from first to last, he was regarded by the young men who studied under his care. The portrait, painted by Mr Norman Macbeth, A.R.S.A., was publicly presented to the Principal, and by his directions hung up in the College library. There it still remains, having been bequeathed by him to that Institution.

Between 1856 and 1858 Dr Fairbairn published a volume on “Prophecy,” as a sequel to the “Typology,” and a Hermeneutical Manual intended chiefly for the use of theological students. Both of these works bear the impress of the author’s learning and intellectual power, and are characterised by good sense and sound judgment. But neither of them has attained any degree of popularity, though they well deserve to be studied by professional theologians. During many years of his residence at Glasgow, Dr Fairbairn acted as editor of the “Imperial Bible Dictionary,” published by Messrs Blackie & Son. His labours in conducting this great work were exceedingly onerous. Many of the best articles proceeded from his own pen, and the necessary correspondence with his contributors severely taxed his energies. The work has taken a high place in Biblical literature. Soon after he had finished his editorial labours, he was appointed to deliver the third series of “Cunningham Lectures.” He chose for his subject the “Revelation of Law in Scripture,” which he treated in nine separate lectures, the first six of which he delivered in Edinburgh early in March 1868. The whole of them were published soon after their delivery. The work is very profound and able, but is too abstract in subject and style to be popular.

Principal Fairbairn was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church in 1864, and by his excellent bearing in the chair, he amply justified the confidence of his brethren. None ever better deserved the honour of the chair, or bore it with more dignity. Though eminently a scholar, versed in books and devoted to theological studies, Dr Fairbairn was an admirable man of business, well acquainted with ecclesiastical forms, and not shrinking from his fair share of the burden of Church government. When he spoke in the Presbytery or General Assembly, he was always listened to with marked respect. The gravity of his character added force to the weight of his arguments, and commanded the attention, if they did not change the convictions, of his keenest opponents in debate. He warmly advocated the Union side in the great controversy that agitated the Free Church from 1863 to 1873; but he always spoke with studied moderation, and strove to mitigate the fierce contentions that for some time estranged so many of his brethren from one another.

In 1867 Principal Fairbairn, along with the Rev. James Wells of the Barony Free Church, Glasgow, visited America, to represent the Free Church of Scotland in various Presbyterian General Assemblies held in the United States and in Canada. Dr Fairbairn’s name had travelled before him across the Atlantic, and American scholars vied with one another in doing him honour. He visited President McCosh at Princeton, and had an interesting interview with Dr Hodge at Washington.

Principal Fairbairn was chosen one of the Committee appointed to revise the Authorised Version of the Old Testament Scriptures. He was one of four Free Church professors selected to represent Scottish scholarship in this great matter of national concern. He attended to the close of his life the meetings of the Committee with remarkable regularity, and was held in great respect by his learned colleagues. He took a deep interest in the work of revision, and contributed not a little to its real progress.

Early in 1874 Principal Fairbairn published a volume on the “Pastoral Epistles.” It contains a learned introduction vindicating the authenticity of the epistles, a new translation of the Greek text, and a valuable commentary on each verse. This is one of the best of his works, and ought to be in the hands of every minister of the gospel. For judicious criticism, sound theology, and a practical spirit, it is not surpassed by any modern work of the kind. An excellent sequel to it, “Pastoral Theology,” which he had prepared for the press, was published shortly after his death, under the superintendence of the writer of this sketch. These two volumes are legacies to the Church of Christ, which would of themselves have been sufficient to give their author a good place in theological literature.

While this distinguished man was spending his best energies in the service of that religious denomination which he adorned, and in the cultivation of that sacred learning which belongs to the Church of Christ at large, he never forgot what was due to his own spiritual life; and to the very last he grew in that spirituality of mind which best becomes intellectual accomplishments. Holding fast the great doctrines of evangelical religion, he took a deep interest in all evangelistic work. He gave his hearty support to the remarkable evangelistic labours associated with the names of Messrs Moody and Sankey. He presided over several meetings at Glasgow at which Mr Moody was the chief speaker, and on the 16th April 1874 he attended the Evangelistic Convention held in the Glasgow Crystal Palace. After delivering a very earnest address, he suddenly felt unwell, and was obliged to go home, where he was confined several days by what was his first serious illness.

A hitherto unsuspected affection of the heart was discovered by his physician, and he was advised to take some quiet relaxation in the country. Accordingly he went with Mrs Fairbairn and a few relatives to Arrochar, where he gradually recovered strength, and soon was fit to resume with caution his ordinary duties. On the 30th June he went up to London to attend a meeting of the Revision Committee: and after paying several visits in Berwickshire on his way home from England, he returned to Glasgow, and resumed his ordinary work; but on the evening of Thursday, the 7th August, after he had retired to rest, he was suddenly seized with a fatal illness, and before Mrs Fairbairn could summon any medical aid, he calmly expired. Thus, while his usefulness was undiminished, and his mental faculties were as strong as ever, this honoured servant of the Lord was called to his eternal rest and reward. Deeply was his departure lamented by good men in all the churches. His eminence as a learned theologian was universally acknowledged, and every one felt that his death had made a blank in the ranks of sacred scholarship which could not be easily filled up. But while he was an undoubted ornament of Scottish theology, he was a true-hearted Free Churchman, whose character and talents raised him to a high place among the heroes of the Disruption. In manners and bearing he was mild, yet dignified. To great force of will and soundness of judgment he united meekness of temper and a conciliatory disposition. His tall, well-formed figure and majestic presence were admired wherever he went, and appropriately set off the solidity and strength of his intellectual powers.

Principal Fairbairn was married in 1861 to Miss Frances Turnbull, sister of a worthy Disruption minister, the late Rev. John Turnbull of Eyemouth. This lady survives him, as well as three children, two sons and a daughter, all by his second wife. He was buried in the Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh, where Chalmers, Cunningham, Guthrie, and other mighty men of the Free Church are laid, in the hope of a blessed resurrection.

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 William Findlater

Author: Rev. E. J. Findlater, M.A., Balquhidder
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 61

William Findlater

It would appear, from a genealogical tree found among the papers of the late Robert Findlater, Inverness, that the Findlaters were not only Presbyterians, but also a clerical race; thus, Alexander Findlater was the first minister of Hamilton after the Revolution (1688); his son Thomas was minister of Linton; and he had three grandsons, the respective ministers of Cults, Peebles, and Newlands. Alexander, the minister of Cults, had a son, William, grandfather to the subject of this memoir. William’s son Robert settled about the year 1780 as a merchant at Drumond, in the parish of Kiltearn, Easter Ross, where he had two sons, William and Robert, and one daughter, Isabella. William was born on 10th May 1784, and received his education at the parish school until he was ready to enter the Edinburgh University. The domestic training which Mr Findlater received previous to entering college has already been described by himself, in a memoir of his brother Robert, published in 1840. His conversion, and we believe that of many, if not most, of those similarly trained, more nearly resembled that of Timothy than Saul of Tarsus. In a letter to Mr David Black, minister of Lady Yester’s, Edinburgh, he says: “The first impressions I recollect to have had was about eight years ago [at which time he would have been eleven years]. I thought I was much impressed during the service. I went home very penitent, and went immediately to pray. I continued a while, and I thought I took great delight in it; tears mingled with my broken sighs and sobs, but I do not think I was at this time convinced of the evil of sin, the corruption of my nature, or the necessity of an inward change to any great degree. In a few days it was forgotten. Shortly after this I went every Sabbath day with my father, mother, and a few others to hear sermon in a neighbouring parish, from Mr Calder (Urquhart).” He then goes on to state how his father, observing his levity on one of those occasions, forbade his afterwards going with them for a year and a half. He also stopped the translating of a chapter from English into Gaelic, which he and Robert were accustomed to do alternately at family worship. He was much cast down by this severe sentence, and although his mother interceded for him, the stern old man would not change it without a confession of his fault. This he at last made before he left home for Edinburgh, as he could not bear the thought of going there unpardoned by his father. His father then prayed with him that the Lord would convince him of the nature and evil of his sin, and he was permitted once more to accompany his parents to church.

In the same letter to Mr Black, he speaks of a ride he had with the Rev. Mr Stuart, Dingwall: “When I went home,” he says, “I was much impressed with what he had said, and seeking a convenient place and opportunity, poured out my soul before the Lord. I wept much that night, but it was not a sincere repentance, only a temporary conviction, arising chiefly from respect to Mr Stewart. His own recent change convinced me there was a reality in religion which I did not experience aright.” These things are recorded, and many such might be given, because they throw light on his subsequent preaching, to which they give, as it were, the key-note, for he was as jealous of a superficial profession of religion in others as in himself.

Mr Findlater was licensed by the Presbytery of Dingwall on 26th November 1806. From this date to May 1807 he preached in various districts of Lochbroom, when the “Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge” appointed him to the mission of Erribol, Kinlochbervie, and Melness, in the Presbytery of Tongue, by which Presbytery he was ordained 7th April 1808. During the first six months of his residence in the Presbytery, he was the invited guest of Mrs McKay, widow of Major Donald McKay of Erribol. While there, a visitor from a neighbouring parish being asked what he thought of the young minister, replied, “Mr Findlater is a minister every day of the week.” Thus early did his consistent conduct attract attention. The bounds of the mission assigned him were very extensive, as any one may see by glancing at the map of Sutherlandshire; and as there were no roads in the district, and the climate during winter is exceptionally wet and stormy, none but a man of very strong physique could have gone through the fatigue of walking, each alternate week, from Erribol to Kinlochbervie and back, and then from Erribol to Melness, across the Moin, with occasional excursions to Strathmore; yet, during the five years that he held this appointment, there is scarcely a break in his list of fulfilled engagements.

The state of religion was at that time very prosperous within the bounds of the mission, so that we have heard him state there were about twenty-four men at the monthly meeting at Cambus-in-dune whom he could call on to pray, or to state their Christian experience, if it happened to be a fellowship meeting. But this was not to last long, for a social change began about the year 1810, which swept as with a besom over this district of the Reay country. This was the introduction of sheep-farming on a large scale, in order to accomplish which, in one district of the parish consisting of 517 inhabitants, almost the whole were turned off, and emigrated to North America, selling their cattle to pay their passage; a few went to Caithness, and those who could not afford to emigrate were packed into small townships already inhabited. Bidding farewell to these godly emigrants was one of the most painful trials of Mr Findlater’s life; they found a home and plenty beyond the Atlantic, and became a salt in the midst of our Colonial possessions.

The Rev. John Thomson, minister of Durness, dying in 1811, Mr Findlater, through the recommendation of Lord Reay, was presented to the parish by the Crown, and inducted on 30th April 1812. His ministry there continued for the long period of fifty-two years. Mr Findlater had previously, on the 15th March 1810, married Mr Thomson’s fourth daughter, Mary. Of their family of eight, there now remains four daughters and one son.

When he entered upon his new charge at Durness, the principal obstacle he had to contend with was the people’s inveterate love of dancing; and it required all his wisdom and firmness to put a check to these very frequent night revels. It is still told in the parish how two of his servant maids were helped down from a garret window on one of these occasions, and made off to the ball. This being discovered, George, the beadle, was despatched for the girls. But the sound of the bagpipes was too much for George, who, on arriving at the house, threw off his greatcoat and joined in the reel, continuing to dance until the minister himself appeared and dismissed the assembly, no doubt administering a sharp rebuke to the trio from the manse. He used to say that Rob Don’s songs had just done the harm to Durness which those of Burns did to Ayrshire. At the same time no one formed a higher estimate of the poet’s genius than he did. Mr Findlater not only spoke, but wrote Gaelic correctly and fluently. He took great pains in teaching some grown-up people to read, making the Gospel of Luke in parallel columns of English and Gaelic his text- book. The class met on Sabbath evening, and it was interesting to notice old men and boys reading the same book, and sitting side by side.

Another source of usefulness was his power of letter-writing, in which he had few equals. Many years ago, when a parish in an adjoining county became vacant, the young man for whom it was intended not having completed his studies, the patron bethought him that a stepping-stone for his young friend might be made of a venerable minister in Sutherlandshire, verging upon ninety, if not beyond that age. In offering him the living, Mr ____ urged upon the old gentleman the good he might yet do by bringing his experience to bear upon that parish. The flattering bait took; and the good old man seemed for a while all on fire with youthful enthusiasm, so that his family feared that he might accept the living. Mr Findlater hearing of this, wrote a letter to his aged friend, asking advice in regard to a painful case which had come to his knowledge, describing a gallant old soldier, who had been in many a battle, but was now so seduced by the charms and wiles of a young Delilah that he was about to forsake the wife of his youth, the partner of a life-time’s joys and sorrows. When this was read to the old man, who was now nearly blind, he made the reader pause, exclaiming, “Where is the rascal? send him to me immediately!” “Oh, father,” said his son, “do you not see what Mr Findlater means?” In a moment the old text, “Thou art the man,” flashed upon him, and no more was said about the presentation to ____.

On another occasion in 1846, when there was great dearth in the Highlands, on the breaking out of the potato disease, a ball was proposed, the proceeds of which were to be given for the alleviation of the abounding distress. Mr Findlater, seeing the incongruity of such a proposal, wrote a long letter with some ten or twelve reasons against it, which he sent to the gentlemen at the head of the movement. This made such an impression upon them, that although the preparations for the ball had been well-nigh completed, they wisely and gracefully allowed the scheme to collapse.

There must always be a great measure of uniformity in the life of a country minister, and that of the minister of Durness was no exception to the general rule. There were one or two Presbyteries to attend annually, at the expense of great bodily fatigue; but the genial welcome at the manse of Tongue from the McKenzies, the business of the meetings, and the subsequent pleasant social intercourse, made up for all. He also enjoyed the meetings of Assembly, which, in going to and returning from Edinburgh, occupied a whole month of the year. Then the summer sacraments in various parishes had to be attended, while the winter months were occupied in catechetical visits throughout his parish.

During his lengthened ministry he married the three generations of one family – the grandmother, mother, and daughter, and baptised the daughter’s child. He was much attached to his parish, which he used to call “bonnie Durness,” and expended several hundreds in trenching and fencing its glebe, which is a very large one; superintending this was his principal recreation, and so correct was his eye in regard to work, that it became a common saying among the people, when anything was badly done, “Cùiridh e suil a mhinistair,” – that will hurt the minister’s eye. About the year 1840-41, there occurred what were termed “the Durness riots.” These arose from an old evil, that of removing the people from one township and packing them into another already over-peopled, the consequence being that the officers of the law were interfered with in the execution of their disagreeable duty. A party of soldiers was ordered to be in readiness at Fort George to back them; but owing to the representation which Mr Findlater made of the people’s cause to the Edinburgh authorities, a special Commissioner was sent to Durness, and the matter was amicably settled. So grateful were the people for their pastor’s interposition, that they gave a public dinner to himself and another gentleman who had also taken their side.

About the year 1823, the Presbytery of Tongue deposed the parish teacher of Durness for carelessness and incompetency, but he appealed to the Court of Session, and was reponed (and is still there). The expenses, amounting to £800, fell upon the four members of Presbytery. This happening in his own parish was deeply felt by Mr Findlater, but it was only a slight instalment of what he and his brethren were yet to receive at the hands of that Court.

Every one now knows the history of the Disruption, and in no part of Scotland did it better deserve the name than in Sutherlandshire. Mr Findlater had not a single scruple from the beginning of the conflict as to the path of duty, and when the Disruption took place he was followed by nearly all his congregation. He has himself described that sorrowful time as follows: “It was on a calm evening early in the month of July that we took our final departure from the manse. For several days the hurry and bustle always accompanying a removal, the packing up of furniture, distributing small tokens of remembrance, provisions and articles of dress among the poor, who came from the neighbouring hamlets to bid farewell to my wife and children, occupied our time, and occasionally suppressed the feelings which the varied recollections of home called up, a home which to us would be one no more. Here my beloved wife herself drew her first breath, as well as her eight children. Her last resort was the churchyard, where she stood over the graves of her sons, one a babe of a few weeks, the other a promising youth of twenty years of age, and the grave of her venerable father, for forty-seven years the minister of Durness. Some of the children were with a neighbouring family. After extinguishing the only fire, which was in the kitchen, putting the keys in the doors, leaving the rooms swept and emptied for the next incumbent, for a few minutes we retired, the one to the study, the other to the closet. Few words were spoken, and the outer door was locked. “We called our son and the young children who had gone to take a last look of the garden and its house; its walks had been for some time neglected, and the honeysuckle was spreading over them in sweet luxuriance; a few roses were plucked, but they soon faded, and their fragrance passed away – not so the recollections of these scenes of early days. The lake, the wild flowers on its banks, the fields and green knolls where the lambs skipped joyously, and the high hills in the distance – all this is vividly painted on their memories, ‘scenes of their youth where every spot could please’. On the first rising ground which was to conceal the manse from our view a momentary look was taken, our hearts were full; we were reminded that this was not our rest. The sunshine of many earthly joys had departed never to return.

“We thought now of the children whom the Lord had given us, the two who had gone before, and those still with us. The two young ones, walking on in front, were occasionally conversing in broken accents, unable at their tender age to account for our departure.

“Upon our arrival at the inn, after a slight repast taken in silence, we united in offering up from heavy hearts the accustomed sacrifice of prayer and praise, committing ourselves to the guardian care of the God of Jacob, who had encouraged us to cast all our cares on him who had hitherto cared for us, whose name is Jehovah-Jireh.” 

“It was deemed expedient to divide our family; our eldest son taking his two sisters and the servants to Thurso by boat, while I accompanied my wife, who all along manifested much courage, and the youngest children, a day’s journey by land, and then returned to the inn where I have since resided. ” Here, in my old parish, I feel pleasure in proclaiming to a poor yet patient people upon the hillside, or under a canvas tent, the glorious principles which have constrained so many of God’s dear servants to come out and be separate, to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Christ, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free . ” Dated 1844.

During the year and half spent alone in the Durness inn he was very happy in mind, and went about as usual among his people. In 1845, when the Duke of Sutherland relented and gave sites, he was permitted to enjoy the society of his family again in the Free Church Manse, where he continued until advancing years and failing health constrained him to give up the charge which he had so long held to the Presbytery of Tongue. There being no suitable house for his successor, he again left the manse and removed to Tain, where he lived in his own hired house until his death. It was there that, on a day when the Prince of Wales was expected to pass, and which happened to be the Fast Day, he was met on his way to church by one going in the opposite direction, who said, “What! Mr Findlater, are you not going to see the Prince of Wales?” “No,” the old man quietly answered, “I am going to meet a higher Prince.” His reverence for the Sabbath distinguished him through life, and towards the close, when his faculties became clouded, each day was a Sabbath day to him; nor had he to wait long before he awoke to realise the joys of the eternal rest. He quietly breathed his last on the morning of the 29th July 1869, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and fifty-seventh of his ministry. After having lived so long within the roar of the billows of Cape Wrath, he now lies in the same grave with his father and mother and his beloved Mary, in the quiet churchyard of Kiltearn, beside the calm ripple of the Cromarty Firth.

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 Robert Finlayson

Author: Rev. Colin Sinclair, Invergordon
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 145

Robert Finlayson

“The name of Robert Finlayson” (we quote from a short notice of Mr Finlayson, written by Rev. Duncan Macgregor of Glasgow, who was for several years a co-presbyter) “though comparatively little known in the south, has long been a household word in the Hebrides and in the northern shires of Scotland. He was a genuine descendant of that school of eminent ministers, and a genuine representative of that beautiful type of living Christianity which flourished in the north of Scotland in the last century. The combination of gifts and graces which he possessed, and which, when mellowed by long experience in his Master’s work, made him one of the most loveable men we ever knew, was so remarkable, the place he held in the hearts of the best people over the wide tracks where he exercised his ministry was so deep and tender, and the influence he wielded for the last five-and-thirty years was so hallowed, that we are sure our readers will be gratified to see something more than a passing notice of him in an obituary.”

Mr Finlayson was a native of Caithness. He was born in the year 1793 in Clyth, in the parish of Latheron, where his father was a teacher. During his youth he enjoyed the privilege of hearing Mr, afterwards Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh, and also Mr John Munro of Halkirk, a man of rare devotedness and apostolic simplicity. When these, and like-minded  men, of whom Caithness had not a few, preached, Sabbath was a feast day. The minister had abundant time for reading, meditation, and prayer; and he had valuable assistants in the bands who met in the different districts of the parish to unite in special prayer for a blessing on the minister in his study and on the services of the Sabbath. The answer to their prayers was often manifest. The Lord’s day was a day of gladness and blessing. On their way home from church, the older portion of the people spoke about the sermon they heard, and the younger portion listened. At certain places they stopped and united in prayer for the blessing of God on the day’s exercises, and then separated. The evenings were occupied in a similar manner. The people assembled in some house in each district. Notes of the sermon heard were given by young and old. The questions of the Shorter Catechism were repeated. The word of God was read, and prayer was mingled with the various parts of the evening’s exercise. Amid such influences Mr Finlayson passed his youthful days. He had at home the benefit of wise and pious training, and he had access to some of the works of Bunyan, Edwards, Willison, and Ralph Erskine, in his father’s library, which exercised a lasting influence on him. Before he was twelve years of age, Mr Finlayson passed through seasons of deep anxiety about his soul; but he did not reckon the impressions then made to be saving. A few years thereafter, when a student at King’s College, Aberdeen, he derived much benefit from the preaching of Dr Kidd; and through the teaching of Mr James Hervey in Theron and Aspasia, he came clearly to know and welcome the gospel message. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Caithness in May 1826, and preached his first sermon in Watten. After the service Mr Gunn, the eminent minister of the parish, remarked to one of the elders, “We had a young minister to-day.” “Well,” said the other, “I thought he was an old Christian.”

In July 1826 he went to Aberdeen, and there, partly as assistant in the Gaelic church, and partly as missionary in connection with Dr Foote‘s congregation, he laboured for three years. In the Gaelic church he preached every Sabbath evening, and with such acceptance, that the church was always crowded an hour before the preacher appeared. He preached once a fortnight at Woodside to similar crowds, and this continued to the close of his career in Aberdeen. His services were greatly appreciated by the Lord’s people, and not a few became seals of his ministry. When he left, they loaded him with testimonies of their esteem and gratitude. To his work in Aberdeen he ever looked back with the deepest interest and thankfulness.

He was ordained at Knock, in the island of Lewis, in June 1829, where he laboured for two years. “And again,” says Mr Macgregor, “such was the eagerness to hear him, that not only was his church crowded on the Sabbath, but every night the parlour, and lobby, and stair, and every available inch of space within the manse, was filled at the hour of prayer. Many walked every night from Stornoway, a distance of four or five miles, to be present. These parlour preachings were blessed to many.” Two years thereafter the parish of Lochs became vacant. Mr Finlayson was presented to the charge, and urged to accept of it by those who knew him and were interested in the spiritual welfare of that large and important parish. After anxious consideration, he agreed to accept the charge, and was inducted in May 1831. “His work in Lochs,” says Mr Macgregor, “may be said to have been the great work of his life. He spent his strength there. To estimate his labours at Lochs aright, it would be necessary to consider the spiritual state of Lewis thirty or forty years ago. For the contrast between its spiritual state then and now is so amazing, that a narrative of the steps by which a change so great was effected would form a most interesting chapter in the religious history of Scotland. “The venerable Mr McLeod of Uig (afterwards of Rogart) had preceded Mr Finlayson in Lewis by a few years, and a great blessing crowned his labours. The Uig revival is a matter of history. Great numbers were savingly converted. The public mind over the whole island, with a population of 20,000, was awakened. The gospel had all the charm of novelty. It was like the opening of the heavens. Then several of that most admirable class of Christian labourers, the Gaelic school teachers – men such as Angus McIver and Angus Matheson, Kenneth Ross and Hector Morrison – began to teach the people. The Gaelic scriptures began to be circulated. Boston’s Fourfold State, then newly translated into Gaelic, began to be read to groups of weeping and wondering hearers. Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh occasionally visited the island, and mightily reinforced the efforts of the growing band of labourers. Showers of blessing began to fall upon the neighbouring island of Skye. The tide was rising; and Mr Finlayson, soon after his translation to Lochs, enjoyed the help of two like-minded coadjutors, Mr John McRae at Ness, and Mr Matheson at Knock, who during their briefer ministries in Lewis helped their brother to take advantage of the rising tide.

“The parish of Lochs is deeply indented with arms of the sea, which run far inland in all directions. The pastor could visit few of his flock without crossing one of these. Geographically, no parish in the Highlands presents such obstacles to pastoral over-sight, except Lochbroom. In spite of these obstacles, Mr Finlayson was the personal friend of every family, and his portly and happy presence was familiar to every child from Aline to Stornoway, and from Carloway to Gravir. He catechised them once a-year, and the day alone will declare the fruits of these catechetic diets. The boat from Cromore, from Keose, from Loch Seaforth, from Grimshader, touched the jetty below the manse on the shore of Loch Leurbost, and the trusty crew, proud of their freight, threaded their way backwards, and conveyed their revered pastor to his destination. There were no penny-elders at Lochs, and some of the elders always accompanied the minister. That day was a Sabbath at Cromore. Men, women, and children eagerly assembled in picturesque groups; where you might see the grand-mother and the grandchild on her knee repeating in succession the questions of the Shorter Catechism. It was the perfection of catechising. There were two diets. The minister opened up and applied the doctrine of each question; the exercise was intermingled with praise, reading the Scriptures, and prayer, and it was observed that never did Mr Finlayson speak with such fervour and richness and solemnity as when in these familiar addresses he poured out of the fulness of his Christianised heart the words of eternal life. What a harvest of souls was reaped from first to last at these diets of catechising!”

His services in the pulpit were as acceptable as those above described. Given to meditation and prayer beyond most men of his generation, he came forth on the Sabbath “in the fulness of the blessings of the gospel of peace.” Acquainted experimentally with the suitableness and preciousness of the gospel to his own soul, he spake “out of the abundance of his heart.” A few years before his death, he directed a student of divinity to the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy (1:15): “Give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all,” and he dwelt on the words, “thy profiting may appear to all.” The words were exemplified in Mr Finlayson’s case above most men. His profiting appeared to all. A notable feature of his preaching was the rich vein of fancy that pervaded it. Mr Macgregor says: “Mr Finlayson was a perfect master of allegory. We used to call him the John Bunyan of the Highlands. And hence his preaching, while retaining a spice of the quaintness of Dr Kidd, under whose ministry he sat as a student in Aberdeen, more closely resembled that of Mr Porteous, of Kilmuir Easter, and of Mr Lachlan McKenzie, of Lochcarron. He spoke in parables; he preached to the whole man, for parables are the people’s speech – they are the language of nature. He studied the word and the works of God, and drew aids from earth and sea and sky to unveil the glories of Christ crucified. To him all nature was vocal with God, and all her phenomena waiting as handmaids to be enlisted in the Master’s service. His fertile fancy, sometimes by a parable, sometimes by an analogy from everyday life, cast a clearness even on the deeper doctrines, and set them forth with dramatic vividness. His church at Lochs for five-and-twenty years was an ‘Interpreter’s house,’ frequented by pilgrims to the Celestial City, where every room was hung round with typical figures and subjects, whose very floor was inlaid with mystic emblems, and each figure and emblem a key to some intricate spiritual truth, and where many a pilgrim was braced by what he heard and saw for climbing the Hill Difficulty and encountering the other perils of the journey. This faculty predisposed him to the exposition of the typology of the Old Testament, surely the most profitable of all forms of exposition. None excelled him in explaining the New Testament truth by the Old Testament type. And though occasionally he was a little Cocceian in his typical expositions – in his exposition of the typical character of Jonah, for example – and though his lively fancy mayhap soared into a region where his hearers could not follow without risk of giddiness, the themes were ineffaceably dented in their memories. Hence hundreds of his sayings are quoted daily. The same instinct led him to study Jesus’ parables profoundly. He was better fitted to preach on the parable of the good Samaritan than on the ninth chapter of Romans. His ripest thoughts on the types of the Old Testament and the parables of the New, like rich old wine, were often a cordial to heavy hearts. When listening to him we often thought of Job’s saying: “Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. After my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain” (Job 29:21-23). And how concisely was it done. Preaching on John 13:14 – the duty of disciples to wash one  another’s feet – he observed: “One way in which disciples wash one another’s feet is by reproving one another. But the reproof must not be couched in angry words, so as to destroy the effect; nor in tame, so as to fail of effect. Just as in washing a brother’s feet, you must not use boiling water to scald, nor frozen water to freeze them!” They said of Charles of Bala, that it was a good sermon to see him. To see Mr Finlayson, as Isaac-like he went out to meditate in his little garden at Lochs at the even-tide, to see him wending along in his gig so deep in reverie that, when a fellow-traveller once asked him, “Where are we now?” his reply was, “Aye, aye: wherever you are, I am between Genesis and Revelation” was no bad sermon either. His appearance as he preached his action sermon in 1850 on the parable of the two foundations, as he preached his action sermon in 1852 on the two disciples going to Emmaus, and in 1853 on the brazen serpent, is vividly before us at this moment. The tall, portly figure, so full of loving simplicity, the brown hair and fair complexion, indicating the Scandinavian blood in the population of his native Caithness-shire, the large features, which, judging from the portraits, must have closely resembled those of the celebrated Professor Jardine of Glasgow – the meek eyes, that, soon as he kindled, became suffused with tenderness; the sonorous voice, deep at first, as if it almost came out of the ground, but which rose by-and-by to tones of silvery sweetness; the smiles of joy which after played on his features, like sunshine on the deep sea; the words he uttered, and the vast audience on the hillside the whole is daguerrotyped in our memory. Never did we feel the power of personal holiness in reinforcing the truth spoken from the pulpit more than when hearing him.”

When the liberties of the Church were invaded by the Courts of Law in the movement which led to the Disruption, Mr Finlayson was keenly alive to the interests at stake; and while some of his brethren had considerable difficulty with reference to the path of duty, he had none. His mind was clear as to the duty of renouncing the status and advantages of the Establishment, as he could no longer retain them without violating his conscience, and being unfaithful to his Lord and Master. On the Sabbath after the Disruption, he and his congregation quitted the old church so dear to them, and continued to worship in the open air, summer and winter, till a church was erected. There being no suitable house in the parish, he was obliged to remove his family to Stornoway, a distance of nine miles, where they resided for two years till a manse was built. But notwithstanding all the hardships which he had to encounter, and these were not few nor slight, he never regretted the course he had taken. His was the spirit of those who “took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing in themselves that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance” (Heb. 10:34). In 1849 Mr Finlayson was visited with a very heavy domestic affliction. His two eldest boys, Donald, aged 17, and Robert, aged 14, were drowned while fishing in the loch in front of the manse. Though deeply affected by this trying dispensation, he was marvellously supported, and bowed submissively to the divine will, saying with one of old, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

In 1856 he was called to Helmsdale, in Sutherlandshire, and he accepted the call. He felt that his work in Lewis was done, and that his Master called him thence. The sorrow of the people of Lochs was intense. The scene in the parish on the day on which his family left was like that witnessed on the occasion of a funeral. He rendered valuable service to the cause of Christ in Helmsdale, and in the neighbouring parishes, where he assisted on communion occasions. One of the last services he conducted was at Dunbeath communion, about a month before his death. On his return he preached from the words, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready” (Rev. 19:7), and three weeks thereafter he was seized with the illness that resulted in death on the 23rd June 1861. Although the period of his service at Helmsdale was short, men came to recognise his value as a minister, and to love him, so that his removal caused deep sorrow throughout the country. There were very few who won the respect of men, and at the same time drew their hearts to them, as Mr Finlayson did. He was one of the most loveable of men. The law of love was written on his heart, and words of kindness and love were on his tongue. Mr Macgregor says: “Every one loved him; he loved every one. A Nathanael for simplicity, an apostle John for lovingness, his very presence was a benediction. The atmosphere he shed around him had a softening and healing influence even on caustic and fretful natures. When a loving nature is associated in a minister with other rare gifts and aptitudes for his work; when God gives him strength of mind, as well as tenderness of heart, especially when his soul is early sanctified by divine grace, and schooled at Christ’s feet into unison with the glorious truths of salvation, and when he pours forth from a heart aglow with Christ’s love, and from lips which the live coal has touched, the truths he has known and felt and trusted, it is not strange that he should fetch a deep response from the hearts of his hearers. It was this that won for Mr Finlayson, from the very first, such an ascendancy over his audiences.”

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 Alexander Flyter

Author: Rev. Duncan MacGregor, M.A., Glasgow
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands, page 37

Alexander Flyter

He was born in 1782 in the neighbourhood of Elgin, and trained under the famous Dr Ronald Bayne, then minister of the “Little Kirk” in that town, who afterwards became his father-in-law. His mind was early impressed with divine things under Dr Bayne’s preaching, and also by a remarkable sermon which he heard from Charles Calder of Ferintosh. He studied at King’s College, Aberdeen, and in 1810 was appointed to the Gaelic Chapel in Rothesay, where he spent ten useful and happy years (1810-1820). It was the spring-time of his official life. The people were deeply attached to him, and his ministry was greatly blessed. It was a disadvantage for a time that one of the services was conducted in Gaelic, as Gaelic was not his mother-tongue; but by dint of strenuous labour he soon acquired the power of preaching in it with wonderful accuracy and effectiveness. There are some still living in Rothesay who speak of him with affectionate remembrance. His successor there was Mr Stewart of Cromarty.

During his ministry in Rothesay he married Miss Bayne, the eldest daughter of his early friend Dr Bayne. “Mrs Flyter,” writes one who knew her well, “was the loveliest character I ever knew.” Refined, winsome, and elegant in manner, she was a partaker of the same grace which distinguished so many members of her family; and side by side with her husband, she gave herself wholly to the work of the Lord. For more than fifty years she was “an helpmeet for him.”

[The Baynes – like the Calders, the Frasers of Kirkhill, the Mackintoshes of Tain, the Stewarts, the Kennedys – were a Levitical race. Dr Bayne’s son was minister of Fodderty. Kenneth Bayne (Dr Bayne’s brother) was pastor of the Gaelic Chapel in Greenock, and old Christians there speak of him with profound veneration. His son, Dr John Bayne, was minister of Galt, in Canada West; while his two daughters, who were full of missionary zeal, married two distinguished missionaries – the one became the wife of Dr Wilson of Bombay, the other the wife of Robert Nesbit.]

Mr Flyter was called to Alness in 1820, and was cordially welcomed by a united and affectionate people. Dr Lachlan Mackenzie had died the previous year (20th April 1819), and Mr Macadam of Nigg two years before (8th June 1817); but Dr Angus Mackintosh of Tain, Kennedy of Redcastle, Forbes of Tarbat, Sage of Resolis, Stewart of Cromarty, and Dr Macdonald were in their prime. The power and blessing that attended their preaching are touchingly described in the Days of the Fathers. Alongside of these distinguished men, Mr Flyter gave himself to his Master’s work. He was in the full maturity of his powers. He found an open door to the hearts of the people, and went out and in among them as an ambassador of Christ. The accounts I have heard of his reception recall Krummacher’s glowing description of the enthusiastic reception he met with from the simple people of Ruhrort and of Barmen.

From the very first he “determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He loved to dwell upon the glory of His person, the efficacy of His blood, the riches of His grace. And he was cheered from time to time with tokens of the divine blessing upon his labours. During the revival which visited Ross-shire in 1840 at Alness, “many were added to the Lord.” Mr Flyter was not only the faithful pastor, he was the tender and considerate father, friend, head of the whole parish. He was greatly beloved by his people. He could truly say of them, “Ye are in our hearts to die and live with you” (2 Cor. 7:3). Very beautiful and pleasant were the relations between them. He was the universal mentor and referee. They consulted him about everything – their bodies as well as their souls, their temporal as well as their spiritual interests. They told him their joys and their cares. He had a ready ear for every tale of distress. If there was a difficulty, he solved it; if there was a dispute, he settled it. He was the greatest authority in the parish. His judgment was so impartial, and his voice so true and wise, that the cases were very rare in which they did not at once acquiesce in his decision. The manse was a place of unceasing resort – a sunny islet a haven where troubled ones always found shelter. The great house might be shut up, the laird might be absent all the year; but if the minister was absent a week, it seemed as if he had taken sunshine away with him.

The Disruption brought many trials, but Mr Flyter bore them cheerfully in vindication of the crown rights of Christ. He was followed by the great body of his people; and the toils and struggles of an arduous and memorable time bound them together by still closer and tenderer ties. Strong things were said at that time of those who remained in the Establishment. It was natural perhaps; for “oppression maketh a wise man mad.” Mr Flyter chose a more excellent way; and, while firm as a rock in his devotion to the principles of the Free Church, instead of indulging in philippics, he shewed his brethren both in the Establishment and out of it an example of the charity that never faileth. He was “first pure, then peaceable.” His health suffered for a time owing to the necessity of living at a distance from the church; but he meekly bore the cross. “The way he accepted the difference in his earthly lot,” writes a friend, “which the Disruption brought, often filled me with admiration and wonder. He was just as cheerful and beaming in his straitened circumstances as he had been when he had abundance of the good things of this life; and he and his saintly wife took to their single servant and reduced comforts with the most cheerful obedience to God’s will.” He was now advancing in years too, but the same light of mildness and gentleness and inward peace still shone on his clear and beautiful countenance.

It is often said in the south that the mode of preaching in the Highlands is so exclusively doctrinal as to be defective on the practical side; that too much prominence is given to God’s sovereignty and man’s helplessness, and too little to the free offer of Christ and the sinner’s duty to repent and believe; that justification by faith is so incessantly dwelt upon as to leave out of sight the correlative truth that we are judged by works. I believe that sweeping charges of this sort are often as unjust as they are  unwise. Mr Flyter’s preaching, at least, gives an emphatic contradiction to this imputation. Here is a notable incident of Disruption times which has reached me. Shortly after the Disruption, when associations were being formed in all the congregations for raising a Sustentation Fund, and when it was necessary to impress upon the people of the Free Church the duty of giving for the support of the gospel, Mr Flyter preached a sermon upon Christian liberality, and went very fully and very practically into the whole question. He referred to Christ’s sitting over against the treasury, and taking notice of the offerings of the people; to “the collection for the saints” (1 Cor. 16:1.); to the liberality of the churches of Macedonia and Achaia (2 Cor. 8), &c. The following week some well-intentioned but feeble friend called upon him, and said in a half-remonstrating tone: “‘Deed, Mr Flyter, ‘am thinkin’ ye’ll no’ need to be bringin’ money to the pulpit!” Mr Flyter said little; but the next Sabbath he read the 36th chapter of Jeremiah, and announced for his text the 23d verse: “And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he (Jehoiakim) cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.” Amid breathless silence he proceeded: “There are some in our day also who presume to use Jehoiakim’s penknife, and to pick and choose from God’s Word what should be preached and what should not – what they will hear, and what they will forbear!” The sermon made such an impression that no one ever after ventured to suggest that any Bible duty should be slurred over. I am told that the sermon upon Jehoiakim’s penknife is still remembered in Alness.

During the last seven years of his life, when he was unequal to the sole charge of the congregation, he enjoyed the co-operation of a like-minded colleague, the Rev. A. R. Munro. It was a source of unmingled satisfaction to all parties. In the efficient on-carrying of the work of the congregation, his colleague was everything to him; serving with him in the gospel “as a son with the father”; he was everything to his colleague. 

Very rarely indeed have a senior and a junior pastor been linked together by stronger ties of mutual affection and regard. He had an intense delight in preaching. He first fed upon the Word himself, then he fed his people with the finest of the wheat. A subject took possession of him; and after preaching, he would walk to and fro on the Sabbath evening, beaming and happy, throwing out new thoughts, and dwelling on different aspects and applications of it. A careful course of lectures which he delivered upon the 45th Psalm is still fresh in the memories of his hearers. I have also heard of a series of sermons on blind Bartimeus which he preached during the revival of 1859-60 which were greatly blessed. I regret that I never heard him preach. But I once heard him give a table address on a very solemn occasion in Bon-Accord Church, Aberdeen, where one of his sons-in-law, the Rev. Charles Ross, was minister at the time. You would have said he was “such an one as Paul the aged.” The fire in his eye, the glow which suffused his venerable countenance, the ripe wisdom of his words, are still memorable to me. On the Monday evening after the communion we had a long walk together into the country. He talked of college memories. Every object around Aberdeen – hill or headland, ivied tower, bend of river, or glimpse of distant steeple – called up some quaint story of his college life. For he was full of humour, and had a fine ringing laugh on occasion. He spoke much of old Elgin days, of early spiritual impressions, of brave Ronald Bayne and his brother Kenneth, and Charles Calder; giving interesting reminiscences of their preaching, methods, &c. He told, for example, that Kenneth Bayne’s preaching was profoundly experimental, but his enunciation slow and difficult; a fact which made his hearers often remark that “the wine of God’s kingdom is very costly.” He said that Mr Calder always rose at five on Sabbath morning, shut himself up in his room, and seldom saw human face till he went to the pulpit; that his voice was low, rather than loud, but rich and musical; that his manner  in the pulpit was so calm and self-restrained that he seldom even raised his hand; that he was of fair complexion, and singularly pleasing physique; that his preaching was more like the result of inspiration than any preaching he (Mr Flyter) had ever heard; that people after hearing him often went away so filled with awe that they could not speak a word. He spoke of his own life-work as almost finished and set by; of the goodness and mercy which had followed him all the days of his life; of the blessed “hope which is laid up in heaven.” It was a rare privilege to listen to all this; and the memory of it still is sweet.

It is not easy to portray a life so quiet, simple, uneventful, just as it is not easy to paint a smooth-flowing river or a ripe field of wheat. It was a bright sunny life, full of usefulness, full of earnest service to God and man. He had his own share of trials. Who can escape them? At different times he had experience of the rod, the scourge, the heated furnace, the stirred-up nest. But he bowed in everything to his Father’s will. He learned that “tribulation worketh patience.” In 1842, when the Ten Years’ Conflict was thickening, he had to suffer severe domestic trials. A beloved daughter left home to proceed to India, and the parting cost him a very keen pang. His only son was seized with dangerous illness, and his life despaired of. From what seemed to be his dying bed, his father went to attend the Convocation. The stroke was deferred at the time, but his son never quite recovered from that illness, and he died in the prime of manhood.

The Rev. A. D. Mackenzie, of Beauly, writes as follows:

“His Christian fortitude and acquiescence in the Divine will made a deep impression on my mind in a time of peculiar trial. Two of his daughters were struck down by malignant fever on the same day. The one, the pet of the family (for she was beautiful as well as amiable) sank rapidly, and the other seemed likely to follow. He wrote me a touching letter, of which I can only recall the opening words, ‘We are in deep waters, and they are likely to become deeper;’ and he asked me to come to see him. I set out with the feeling, ‘How can I behold his sorrow;’ but he met me with a placid smile, and I could only discover by the pressure of his hand how much he felt. We retired to his study, and there he told me the state of matters. She whom many regarded as the flower of his family was in her shroud, and the other in a most critical condition. He bowed his head for a moment on the table, and said solemnly, ‘The will of the Lord be done!’ When he lost his wife (in 1863), it was the same. After she had passed away, he met a beloved daughter in the lobby, and said with a triumphant smile, ‘She’s safe in glory now!’ It often reminded his family of the sandal-wood tree. Every stroke of the woodman only draws forth a breath of sweeter fragrance.”

He was able from time to time to conduct a portion of the public services even as late as the communion in July 1865. His last illness extended over three months. “I am waiting on this side the river,” he would say, “getting frequent glimpses of the land beyond.” The words of Psa. 31:5, were often upon his lips: “Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth!” To a believer in distress who called to see him he uttered the memorable words (how they illustrate the covenant-faithfulness of God!): “I know full well the strength and malice of the great adversary; but, blessed be God, not one shaft has he been permitted to shoot my way since I lay on this death-bed!” Most lowly in his estimate of himself, as a sinner saved by grace, he rested as a little child upon the all-sufficiency of Jesus. He died 3rd January 1866. He left four daughters behind him. Three of them are married – one to the Rev. Dr Murray Mitchell; one to the Rev. Andrew D. Mackenzie, Free Church, Beauly; one to the Rev. Charles Ross, Free Church, Tobermory. He was followed to the grave by a large concourse of true mourners, by his brethren of the Presbytery of Dingwall, and a number of ministers and friends from a distance. He was laid in the same grave as James Fraser, the most distinguished of his predecessors in Alness.

“It is sown in corruption: it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour: it is raised in glory.” 

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 John Forbes

Author: Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., Professor of Evangelistic Theology, New College, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 253

While the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland have always maintained an honourable place in respect of the general intelligence and culture of their clergy, they have never at any time had a large number of men who occupied foremost places in the fields of literature or science. Probably the third part of a century immediately preceding the beginning of the “ten years’ conflict,” on account of the revived activity of ministerial work, was less productive of literary or scientific attainments of a high order among the clergy than the days of Moderatism, when pulpit preparation and pastoral duties claimed a smaller share of men’s thoughts and energies, or had not their claims allowed. In point of fact, we believe that we do no injustice to any, when we say that the Church of Scotland on the morning of the Disruption day contained three men who occupied places in the first rank of scientific men, and that on the evening of that day the Established Church contained not one. It so happened that this trio consisted of a minister, a probationer, and a layman, though the probationer had for a long time ceased to be more than nominally such. Their special departments of science were respectively the demonstrative, the experimental, and the observational—mathematics, physics, and geology. The men were John Forbes, David Brewster, and Hugh Miller. We do not mean to say that Dr Forbes was as eminent as a mathematician as Sir David Brewster was as a physicist, or Hugh Miller as a geologist. But he had long before given evidence that he had the power to do anything in mathematics, and had left it beyond doubt that if he had abandoned the work of the ministry at an early age, as Brewster had done, and had made mathematical study the business of his life, as Brewster had made physical research the business of his, he would not merely have been, as he actually was, in the foremost rank of mathematicians, but he would have occupied one of the foremost places in that rank.

It will be through our incompetency if it be not made to appear that, while of the heroes of the Disruption, none but Dr Chalmers and Dr Gordon came near him in the faculty of mathematical investigation, he did not fall behind either of them in simplicity and godly sincerity, in zeal for the glory of God, and for the salvation of men; while it is freely admitted that in the power of leading a great movement and stirring up men to enthusiasm in a great cause, he was not for a moment to be compared to one, and in pulpit eloquence and power he was much inferior to both.

Those who have read much of Scottish ecclesiastical biography have become familiar with the sentence which might be stereotyped as an almost universally applicable introduction, that “the subject of this memoir was the son of poor but pious parents.” From the way in which we have frequently heard our friend allude to his early days, we presume that the statement is strictly applicable to him. A native of Perthshire, and shewing even at an early age a liking for the ministry, he was placed as a pupil at the Perth Academy,—a seminary which has sent forth many who have done it honour. In Forbes’s days one of the teachers of mathematics in the Perth Academy was Mr Gordon; and the relation of close friendship, cemented by congenial tastes and similar sentiments, which led to so close an association of Robert Gordon and John Forbes in the thoughts of those who enjoyed their friendship, began while the one was the earnest teacher and the other the earnest pupil. Often have we heard Dr Forbes speak of all that he owed to Dr Gordon, both as the first cultivator of his mathematical powers, and as his ideal model of a Christian man and a Christian minister. At an early age Forbes became a student in the University of St Andrews; and, as a matter of course, when his natural abilities, his habits of application, and his previous advantages are taken into account, he passed through his university course with distinction and high credit. At the close of it he was licensed as a preacher; but whether because in those days of patronage there was no place open to him, or whether because he desired to have time to consolidate his knowledge and prepare himself more fully for the great work of the ministry, he does not seem to have been much occupied in preaching for a time. He became instead an assistant-teacher in his old Perth Academy; and on the appointment of Mr Gordon as minister of the parish of Kinfauns, Mr Forbes succeeded him in the mathematical mastership of the Academy. From Kinfauns Mr Gordon was translated to Buccleuch Chapel, Edinburgh, thence to Hope Park Chapel (now Newington Church), thence to the New North, and ultimately to the High Church of Edinburgh. On his removal from Hope Park to New North, Mr Forbes became his successor there, and was ordained to the ministry in 1826. From this time onward, for very nearly half-a-century, his life was that of a faithful, laborious, earnest city minister. In Edinburgh he remained only about two years, and was removed to Glasgow, to what was then called the Outer High Church. In consequence of the inconvenience of having two congregations meeting in the old Cathedral, the church of St Paul’s was built for him and his congregation. Thither he and they removed, and there he continued to minister to a large and intelligent congregation, who regarded him with a singular union of affection and reverence. The cares inseparable from the life of a city minister did not press so heavily on him as they do on some, not because he discharged his duties more perfunctorily, but because his well-balanced mind and his methodical habits enabled him to go through more work with less appearance of effort, and probably less consciousness of effort, than a less amount of work would have cost almost any other man. At no time did he take a prominent place in the discussion of public questions, social or ecclesiastical. The pulpit was more appropriate to his powers than the platform; and of this he was perfectly aware. He took indeed such a share in the public work of the Church through her courts as every Presbyterian minister ought to feel himself conscientiously bound to take; and when the Voluntary controversy, and the Church Extension controversy, and the unhappy Moderatorship controversy, arose one after another, he did not withhold the sagacity of his counsel and the influence of his character, but heartily threw them into the scale. And his brethren always knew that when any matter arose which required sustained thought and clear logical exposition, they could count upon Dr Forbes as ready to render the aid which they needed. Speaking now of the time when our own interest in such matters began, the decade from 1830 to 1840, we recall with pleasure the interest which students in Edinburgh took in the then comparatively young and chivalrous champions of the truth and of the Church in the western metropolis— Lorimer and Buchanan, Gibson and Forbes—now, alas! all passed away. It was on such occasions that he produced almost the only professional publications that he ever gave to the world, with the exception, probably, of a few occasional sermons, and one or two pamphlets on subjects of comparatively temporary interest. In 1838, a course of lectures was delivered by ministers in Glasgow, on the Evidences of Revealed Religion, which were afterwards published in a volume; and in the following year another course was delivered on Infidelity. Each of the volumes contains a lecture by Dr Forbes. We have just read these lectures, and cannot state in too strong terms our admiration of the clearness of the arguments, and of the felicity of the illustrations. The former, especially, on the “Harmony of Scripture and true Philosophy or Science,” is one of the most comprehensive treatises that we have ever seen on this most important subject. It contains passages of real eloquence; and the whole bespeaks the earnestness which was characteristic of the man.

In the “ten years’ conflict” he sustained exactly the part that his friends would have expected him to take. While he never occupied a very prominent place in the discussions, no one who knew him ever doubted for a moment on which side he would be when the crisis should come. Cautious and somewhat slow in coming to a conclusion, balancing the arguments for and against a particular course of action, rather than coming to a conclusion by intuitive or instinctive perceptions, strongly conservative in all his mental leanings, and knowing that a Disruption would break many ties which to him were very binding, when once he had made up his mind as to the right, few men could be more confidently counted upon to pursue unhesitatingly and unflinchingly the path of duty. If a solution of the difficulty had been offered which should have conserved the great principle for which the Church contended, he would have been one of the first to hail it with joy. His extreme simplicity of character might even have rendered him liable to be imposed upon by the plausible schemes which were propounded; and the fact that none of these schemes ever made him hesitate, is to us one of the strongest proofs that their glitter was not of gold. We are persuaded that amongst outsiders, intellectual scientific Englishmen, who never could understand what the controversy was about, there were not a few who began to think that there must be something in it after all, when they came to learn that John Forbes was one of those who unhesitatingly signed the deed of demission.

For by this time Forbes was well known to the mathematicians of Europe. It must have been very scanty leisure that the minister of St Paul’s could give to the study of mathematics; but it was the only relaxation for which he cared, and to him it was really a relaxation. Some years before the Disruption he had published a most remarkable book on the Differential and Integral Calculus; not remarkable merely on the ground that it was composed in the snatches of leisure in a busy life, but remarkable in itself, by whomsoever composed. We have made a careful examination of this book with a view to the preparation of this sketch, and have no hesitation in saying, that it is as original a work on a purely mathematical subject as has appeared in this country in our time. Almost all our books on this subject are largely borrowed from the French; they have been written by mathematical teachers, with a view to their being used as text-books, and in most of them rigidity of investigation has been occasionally sacrificed to simplification. We do not know whether Dr Forbes expected that his book should be used as a text-book. It is certainly not suited to that use. But it is suited to a higher use, even to point out to the mathematician hundreds of unsuspected connections betwixt the truths which he has learned apart, and so to contribute to the unification of mathematical science. We are afraid that we may expose ourselves to some measure of good-natured ridicule on the part of some who may peruse these pages, when we say that Dr Forbes’s book suggests to our thought the singing of a lark on a summer’s morning; and that because of the recklessness with which he throws out his formulae, and the abandon with which he revels in the profusion of his harmonies. Be it noted that there is not a sentence in the book in which he tells us his delight—indeed there is scarcely anything in it that can be called a sentence at all, only formulae,—but neither does the lark tell us that he delights in his own song. We only infer it from the way in which he sings.

It may be as well to say here that Dr Forbes never abandoned his mathematical pursuits. About a dozen years ago he told the present writer that he would take it as a great favour if he would look over a manuscript, containing an investigation of some questions relating to “elliptic functions,” as the results that he had brought out were so strange that he thought he must have introduced some erroneous assumption, which a stranger’s eye might perhaps detect. Having very willingly undertaken the task, we were not a little taken aback when, after a few days we received some three hundred closely-written folio pages! We were obliged to break the promise which we had rashly made, and we do not know what has become of the MS.

When the Disruption occurred in 1843, Dr Forbes became minister of Free St Paul’s. A great portion of his congregation quitted the Establishment along with him, and the affection betwixt him and his congregation grew with length of years. They were to him as wife and children, and he was to them as a father whom they revered, a friend in whom they confided, and of whose character and reputation they were far prouder than he ever was himself. His preaching, without being eloquent, as eloquence is commonly understood, was earnest, impressive, solemn, in no ordinary degree. Few men have given sound instruction to so many, or given it so acceptably, as Dr Forbes did during his long ministry. Up to the last his preaching lost none of its freshness, while of course it gained in those qualities which depend upon experience, and continued converse with God and with divine things; and his pastoral dealings with his people were in accord with his strong common sense, and with the tenderness of a peculiarly sensitive nature, sanctified by a large measure of divine grace.

There are two points on which we must touch before we close, and, upon the whole, we are not sorry that our exhausted space compels us to touch upon them with extreme brevity.

A vacancy having occurred in one of the Chairs in the Glasgow Free Church College, it fell to the Assembly of 1864 to appoint a professor. Dr Forbes was proposed, but was not elected. Those who opposed his election grounded their opposition mainly on his age, and strongly expressed their respect and affection for his character, their admiration of his gifts, and their gratitude for the services which he had rendered to the Church and to the cause of truth. It fell to the lot of the present writer to take a somewhat prominent part in advocating the claims of Dr Forbes; and while thankfully acknowledging that the appointment actually made was a good one, he still regrets that Dr Forbes was not then put into a position for which he had very singular qualifications.

The other point on which we must touch was the part that Dr Forbes took in the Union negotiations. He was a member of the Assembly of 1863, made a long speech on the Union question, and accepted a place in the Committee. Afterwards, when he and some of his brethren came to believe that union with the United Presbyterians could not be achieved but by the relinquishment of one of the fundamental principles of the Free Church, he felt that he had no alternative but to withdraw from the Committee. This is not the place to argue the question of the accuracy or erroneousness of his belief. No one could doubt the sincerity of it. Very keenly he felt the painfulness of the position which he had henceforth to occupy, of antagonism to those with whom he had so long and so lovingly dwelt together in unity; and his somewhat recluse habits made him more sensitive than those who are more habituated to the rubbings and knockings of public life.

Although time seemed to sit but lightly on his stately frame, and it seemed to his friends that he might yet do good work for his Master on earth; yet with his characteristic conscientiousness, he would not undertake responsibilities which he felt himself not able fully to discharge; he therefore applied to the Assembly of 1874 for a colleague and successor, spontaneously abandoning his right to a retiring allowance either from the general funds of the Church or the particular funds of the congregation. While steps were being taken to obtain a colleague, he continued to discharge his full duties. On the 20th of December he conducted the services as usual in his own pulpit; on the Wednesday following he was seized with an inflammatory affection in the chest, and on Christmas day he closed a seventy-three years’ service of his generation according to the will of God, and fell on sleep.

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 REV. ALEXANDER GENTLE, ALVES

Author: Rev. Duncan Colvin, Alves
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 16

The Rev. Alexander Gentle was born in the city of Edinburgh, in the year 1798. His parents had a good social position—his father being a Writer to the Signet. As he often told his children, his conversion took place in early life. When a boy of nine he met with a serious accident, he fell down a stone stair of considerable length—which dislocated his thigh so badly that a painful limp was the consequence, from which he suffered much pain and inconvenience all through life. During the period of enforced retirement, caused by the accident, young Gentle became the subject of a saving change. He received his education at the High School, Edinburgh, where he won the gold medal and held a good position, especially in classics. His father believing that his son had an aptitude for law, and that he had good prospects of success, desired him to adopt the legal profession. To his great disappointment his son chose the ministry and believing that he was called of God, thereto, no persuasion could turn him from his purpose. After finishing his education at the University, for some years he acted as Tutor in families of high standing, Lord Napier’s, Mr. Ferguson’s of Kinfauns and others.

Having been licensed to preach the Gospel he became assistant to the Rev. Dr. Watson, Burntisland; and on one occasion when preaching he had as a hearer Lady Grace Douglas, sister of the Earl of Moray, who was so much impressed by the sermon that she sent a special request to her brother that he would nominate this young preacher to the first vacant parish within his estate. The request was complied with, and accordingly, to the preacher’s great surprise, the presentation to Alves Parish was handed to him with the remark that no Gaelic was required. Arriving in Alves in 1828, he was ordained in 1829. For some time his aged father lived with him and became a great favourite with the county gentlemen around Elgin and Forres, visiting them in the old-fashioned style of staying a few days, which were called ‘The rest day,’ ‘The dressed day,’ ‘The pressed day.’ The young minister was invited along with him, but he was considered too good; he would not touch cards, nor dance, nor, as some worldly man expressed it, “Would he allow every man to go to Heaven in his own way.” Thus faithful at the outset of his career, we are not surprised to learn that long afterwards, in the heat of the conflict, he was often called by his brethren, “The firm and faithful Gentle.” The course of his ministry ran smoothly and quietly for some years. His pastoral visitation, visits among the sick, his Bible classes, prayer meetings, and work amongst the young, were all much appreciated. His life was very consistent, and his preaching very effective. A tribute to the latter occurs in the memoirs of the Rev. John Macdonald, Calcutta.— “ Mr. Gentle’s preaching,” says that eminent man of God, “does me as much good as that of the best preachers.” Said an old deaf lady, belonging to Elgin, “I never hear a word of the sermon, it is his life that preaches.”

As the Ten Years’ Conflict drew on, Mr. Gentle was prepared to take a decided stand. Up to 1838, he stood alone in the Presbytery. Thereafter he was joined by another faithful servant ot the Lord, and together they fought manfully against the great odds opposed to them, ever contending for, and maintaining with great zeal, the principles of non-intrusion and the spiritual independence of the church. Not only did Mr. Gentle carry on diligently his pastoral and ministerial work, in which he was much helped by the worthy schoolmaster of the parish, the Rev. George Wilson, afterwards of Malta, and by his patroness, Lady Grace Douglas, who was in the habit of sending him boxes of books for distribution; but alongside his work, he did splendid service in the way of helping to instruct the people within his own parish and beyond it, in the great principles for which he and other faithful brethren were contending. Frequent meetings he held in barns, sheds, and even by the roadside. In one of these barn meetings, the Rev. Mr. Grant, Tain, tells how he stood by the speaker’s side holding a candle a whole evening. On one occasion he had a narrow escape, the dogcart in which he was driving on a very dark, stormy night, along with the Rev. Mr. MacWatt, Rothes, to one of these evening meetings, being upset and the occupants thrown out. On another occasion, when accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Thorburn, Inverness, and when persecution was at its height, they were followed to a meeting by a hostile factor who cried “shame” after them and spat upon them.

That no one was more convinced than he that he was pursuing the Scriptural course or that which was for the welfare of the church and the wellbeing of the people, is evident from his great activity and courage in upholding and propagating what were, in reality, the principles of the Covenanters and of the Reformers; and also from his brave stand in church courts. It is reported, on good authority, that when present at the Convocation Meeting in Edinburgh, previous to the Disruption, and when the leading city ministers had expressed their views as to giving up their all, if their terms were not complied with by the civil courts, and the remark was made; “Now we would like to hear what the country brethren have to say;” Mr. Gentle was the first to get to his feet and in his own simple, straight-forward way stated his own views, and those of his brethren. At the close of the meeting, he was approached by a much venerated minister, the Rev. Dr. Burns, Kilsyth, whose parish is ever associated with the wonderful revivals that took place there. The venerable man seized him by the hand, saying very warmly: “I was very glad you were able to say these few words, they had a very good effect.” These congratulatory words, coming from such a good old man, gave much encouragement to the faithful minister, who, in after years, had been overheard telling it, with tears in his eyes, to Dr. Kennedy, Dingwall, when talking over these bygone events.

It is interesting to observe how that aptitude for law, which was so early manifested, and which his father had hoped would win for him great success in the legal profession, was by the great Master reserved and consecrated for service in his own kingdom; for it is well known that Mr. Gentle shone as an expert in church law, and from his long study and knowledge of the laws and forms of the church he rendered valuable service, during the progress of the great controversy, and was generally regarded as a safe guide, a wise counsellor, and an exceptionally useful member of Presbytery and Synod.

As the Disruption drew near the Alves people were by no means idle or lukewarm in the struggle, for we find that towards the end of January, 1843, a paper had been drawn up and signed by 438 parishioners, above l6 years of age, declaring their adherence to those ministers, who felt in conscience bound to quit the Establishment, and a large committee, composed of all the male heads of households, within the Parish, who had signed the above-mentioned document, was formed whose business it was to make all arrangements necessitated by such adherence. Their first business was to arrange for a site for a new church and collect subscriptions, which the committee at once set about, for we find the collectors were out by the l5th of May, 1843, and communications were opened with the Earl of Fife, who after a short delay, agreed to grant a suitable site. It may be mentioned that Mr. Brodie, of Lethen, very kindly offered a site on his property, on the west side of the parish, but the site offered by the Earl of Fife being more central was chosen, and his lordship was very cordially thanked for his generosity and liberal mindedness.

At a meeting of committee, held in the Manse of Alves, on the 29th May, 1843, a letter was received from Mr. Gentle, who was then in Edinburgh, stating that the General Assembly of the Established Church had declared vacant the churches of all those ministers who had signed the deed of separation from the Establishment. In consequence of this communication, the finding of the committee was to the effect that those in the parish who adhered to the Free Protesting Church were bound to regard themselves as virtually precluded from assembling for Public Worship in the Parish Church, on the following Sabbath, and under the necessity of looking for a place of worship somewhere else, and that in present circumstances a Barn, belonging to Mr. Rhind, Miltonhill, who himself was one of the committee, was the most convenient place that could be obtained. We understand that the last sermon in the Parish Church was preached by the Rev. Mr Rhind of Knockando, a son of the above-mentioned tenant of Miltonhill, and the scene must have been extremely interesting and affecting as the throng of worshippers, loyal to their minister and conscience, filed out from the church in which many of them had long worshipped, taking their Bibles with them; one of them a well-known old lady, whose legacies are still enjoyed by the Free Church, being conspicuous as under one arm she placed her footstool and under the other her well-worn Bible and with the rest marched forth never to return. The elders – who constituted along with Mr. Gentle, the Kirk-Session of the congregation of the Free Church in June, 1843 were – Alex. Rhind, Hugh Robertson, James Watson; and the first Deacons who were ordained in the presence of the congregation, assembled in the usual place of worship at Miltonhill, were John Mitchell, John Sinclair, William Robertson, Alexander Taylor, and John Rhind – all of whom have long since passed away. It may be mentioned that the congregation assembled for worship, frequently, in a Barn at Sweethillock, belonging to Mr. Aeneas Adam who is still an elder of the Free Church in Dingwall, and the only surviving member of the committee above referred to. He was also the first precentor in the Free Church in Alves.

Meanwhile the erection of the new church was being proceeded with, the architect being Mr. Mackenzie, Elgin, and ultimately a place of worship was raised capable of holding 420 worshippers, and we understand the opening services were conducted by the celebrated Dr. Macdonald of Ferintosh. The Church was completed in 1845, and on Sabbath, the 29th of June of that year, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was dispensed in the church for the first time, and we can imagine with what memories, and with what deep feeling these communicants commemorated, along with their faithful pastor, the love of Him for whose honour they were there that day. There is not much more of special interest to tell regarding the story of the Disruption, so far as Alves is concerned or the life history of him who so nobly led the van, risked so much, and endured much hardness for the crown rights of the Redeemer. In 1866, his patient and devoted wife, whose health had been considerably enfeebled by the hardships of the Disruption struggle, passed from his side to her eternal rest, while his son, Dr. James Gentle, who though of delicate frame had gone forth as a medical missionary to China, in the same year closed his brief but useful career; a double sorrow that told severely on the devoted husband and father. Now his own career was nearing its close, and in the year 1869, just 40 years after his settlement in Alves, this veteran minister of Christ, pious but without ostentation, earnest bu tnot severe, zealous but not officious, and faithful and gentle – as was his name, and loving as his Master – so a well-known fellow-labourer described him – also received the great summons, and on the last Sabbath of his public career he preached with unusual vigour, and from what for him was a very appropriate text – “Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” Three members of Mr. Gentle’s family still survive, a son and two daughters, to the latter of whom we are much indebted for several of the above interesting reminiscences.

Addenda:
Mr. Gentle’s Son holds the important Government appointment, at Singapore, of President of Municipal Affairs.

Note regarding Mrs. Gentle. Soon after his settlement at Alves Mr. Gentle was united in marriage to Miss Isabella Boyle, Edinburgh, a lady of great tenderness of heart, yet of remarkable firmness of purpose. Mrs. Gentle fully sympathised with her husband in all his manifold labours for the spiritual welfare of his people, and in all hardships and sufferings undergone for conscience sake.

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 James Gibson, D.D.

Author: Rev. Robert M. Wilson, Maryhill
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 261

James Gibson

After leaving college, where he proved an industrious and, especially when attending the Divinity Hall, successful student, he was employed as tutor in a family in the Presbytery of Hamilton, and it was from his residence there that he obtained licence from that Presbytery. He next filled the same office in a family in the Presbytery of Jedburgh, where he remained three and a half years.

In 1825 Dr Gibson became travelling companion to Captain Elliot, a cousin of the Earl of Minto. They first went to Portugal, and as they remained a considerable time in Lisbon, he had full opportunity, by visiting the churches and cathedrals of that city, of witnessing the corruptions and gross superstitions of the Church of Rome.

Returning to this country, Dr Gibson was appointed assistant to Mr Steel of the West Church, Greenock. After labouring there for two years, he accepted an offer unexpectedly made to him, to be tutor to a young gentleman who was about to travel on the Continent. But before leaving Greenock, he received a testimonial from the congregation, expressive of their esteem for him both as a man and a minister.

His continental tour occupied a year and a half. In company with his young charge he travelled through France, Switzerland, and Italy, especially visiting Paris, Geneva, and Rome; and what he saw of the irreligion, infidelity, immorality, and licentiousness of these countries, he traced in a great measure, after the depravity of the human heart, to the monstrous forms of popery which fell under his observation. Indeed, what he saw of the corruption of popery, had a saddening and yet a beneficial effect upon his mind. Writing to a friend, he says, “I have just come from St Peter’s, disgusted with the crowd, noise, bustle, glare, folly, trickery, absurdity, and impiety of ceremonies called religion. In the great part of the popish ceremonies which I have seen, it would baffle any human being not initiated into the mystery to find any resemblance to religion either Pagan or Christian. It is a strange compound of human pride, gaudy show, and abject degradation. How the earth does not shake it off its bosom, I cannot comprehend; but, by the most ingenious methods and deep-laid policy, it has laid hold of the strongest principles of our nature, and drawn into its sphere everything, good and bad, by which it can rivet the chains on poor human nature.” This was a training for the future. And the hand of God in leading him by the way was also seen in his unsuccessful attempts to obtain a ministerial charge. He longed for rest after so much wandering. He would have deemed himself happy could he have obtained a “guid little charge,” with the opportunity of devoting himself to his Master’s service, and many were the efforts made by himself and others to obtain such a charge. The highest influence was put forth on his behalf, and on one occasion there was the almost certain prospect of obtaining a rural parish in the south of Scotland. But this hope, so bright, was doomed to disappointment. In short, every door was closed. There was to be no “guid little charge” for him. It was to be on a wider sphere that he was to be engaged in his Master’s service; and the training having in God’s providence been completed, that wider field was opened up. Returning from the continent, Dr Gibson became assistant to Dr Lockhart of the College Church, Glasgow.

It was during the heat of the Voluntary Controversy, and having been led from circumstances to take part in that controversy, he so ably defended the cause of Establishments by his writing, that certain influential members of the church put it in his power either to accept a sum of money, which, it is believed, amounted to £2000, or that a church should be built in a destitute locality of Glasgow, of which he should be the minister. He adopted the latter alternative, and in 1839 he was inducted into Kingston Church. In 1843 came the Disruption, and having joined his brethren who formed the Free Church, he was obliged to leave his place of worship; but soon after another was erected for him and those of his congregation who adhered to the principles of the Free Church.

The Clerkship of the Glasgow Presbytery having become vacant, Dr Gibson was unanimously requested to accept the office; and such was his knowledge of Church law and practice, that he rendered important service to the Presbytery in that office. On resigning it, the Presbytery recorded their sense of the painstaking zeal and careful efficiency with which, for twelve years, he had discharged its duties.

In 1855 the Assembly resolved to proceed with the erection of a Theological College in Glasgow, Dr Clark of Wester Moffat having promised a grant of £30,000 for its erection and endowment, and it is well known that he frequently communicated with Dr Gibson on the subject, whose influence with Dr Clark contributed materially to his liberal proposal. In 1856 Dr Gibson was elected by the Assembly Professor of Systematic Theology and Church History.

Dr Gibson had a vigorous mind, and was quick of apprehension. When he once formed his opinion, no one was better able to hold and defend it. Tenax propositi (firm of resolve) was a characteristic feature of him. He was of a noble and generous disposition. He could not brook anything that was mean and grovelling. He shrank from it as from the touch of a loathsome reptile. We remember with what contempt he spoke of a fellow-student who had stooped to a low artifice to secure a prize. “It was,” he said, “the essence of meanness.” It was the noble in conduct which fired his soul. He looked up to it with the admiration with which we gaze on a lofty mountain.

In debate there was no want of the fortiter in re. He would have liked a little more of the suaviter in modo, but then we must make some allowance for the warmth of his feelings; and however he might treat the argument of his opponent, there was no ill-feeling towards the opponent himself. On the contrary, we have known him burst into tears when the hand of reconciliation was stretched out, and the hope expressed that no difference of opinion should henceforth mar their social intercourse. Nor was this generous regard for the manliness of his honesty confined to his brethren of the Presbytery; the same justice was done him by the world outside.

But under the stern countenance of the polemic, there was a genial loving heart. It shone forth in his family, rendering it a happy home, and in private life; and those who experienced his friendship can best speak of its warmth.

As a minister, he admitted that he was not “popular in his manner,” and thus did not attract crowds; but his discourses were rich in gospel truth. His writings on the Voluntary Controversy, on the Claims and Protection of the Sabbath, on the Marriage Affinity Question, on the Errors of the Church of Rome, and on the Distinctive Principles of the Free Church, shew the good he was the means of doing by the press as well as the pulpit. And no doubt the students who listened to his instructions from the chair can bear testimony to the advantages they received from his teaching.

[In the foregoing Sketch, which is substantially the Minute adopted by the Free Presbytery of Glasgow expressive of its appreciation of the life and work of Dr Gibson, no reference is made to his views on the Union question. Throughout these negotiations he ably and consistently maintained that Union was inadmissible on the footing of the proposals of the majority of the Church.]

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 William Henry Goold

Author: Rev. William Binnie, D.D., Professor of Church History, Free Church College, Aberdeen
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 265

William Henry Goold

Dr. Goold is of Covenanting lineage. His father, a native of the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, belonged to a family which had been connected with the “Cameronians” or “Society-people” from the time of the eight-and-twenty-years’ persecution. For a good many years, subsequently to the Revolution of 1688, this community subsisted as a number of praying societies. It was not till 1743 that they were in a condition to constitute a Presbytery. Long after this, a curious tradition of the persecuting time cleaved to them in the shape of a fancy for erecting their meeting-houses in out-of-the-way places. Thus the Glasgow people met for worship at Sandhills, near Shettleston, three miles out of town; the Dumfries people, smitten with a similar shyness, met at Quarrelwood; the Kilmarnock people at Crookedholm; the Falkirk people at Laurieston. Thus it came about that the “Society-people,” in and about Edinburgh, held their meetings at the village of Pentland, not far from the battle-field of Rullion Green. Here the Rev. John Thorburn ministered to them during the closing decades of last century; and here the elder William Goold was ordained to the ministry on the 13th of December, 1804.

The congregation after a while divided, one part clinging to the Pentland meeting-house, the rest transferring themselves, along with their pastor, to a place of worship which they erected for themselves in Lady Lawson’s Wynd, near the Grassmarket. It was in Edinburgh, accordingly, that the subject of this sketch first saw the light. The date of his birth was the 15th of December, 1815. He was a bright boy, and as he was the only son in the family, special care was bestowed on his education. Entering the Edinburgh High School at an early age, he ran a brilliant course, and in 1831 attained the much-coveted position of Dux of the Rector’s Class. Thereafter he prosecuted the usual course of classics and philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Divinity he studied under Dr. Andrew Symington, of Paisley, in the Divinity Hall of the Reformed Presbyterian Church; but he attended also the lectures of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Welsh in Edinburgh. It is known that Dr. Symington conceived for him a singular affection and admiration. Of all the students—Scotch or Irish—who passed through the Hall at Paisley, he undoubtedly stood highest in the esteem of the venerable Professor.

From the first, there was something about William Goold which left on the minds of those about him a deep impression of unfeigned piety. He belongs to the class of men—never very numerous—who are exceptions to the proverb, that “a prophet is not without honour save in his own country and in his own house.” The members of his father’s congregation watched with loving eyes his brilliant academic course; and rejoicing, above all, to see the grace of God in him, they spontaneously and unanimously called him to be his father’s colleague, immediately after he was licensed to preach the Gospel.

Dr. Goold “has never changed—nor wished to change—his place.” The congregation to which he now ministers, in the Martyrs’ Church on George the IV. Bridge, is the same over which he was ordained in 1840, in Lady Lawson’s Wynd. Soon after his ordination, he married the eldest daughter of the elder Dr. William Symington, of Glasgow, who, like his brother Andrew, of Paisley, was long one of the most distinguished preachers in the West of Scotland. In addition to the ordinary duties of the pastorate, Dr. Goold soon came to have more than an ordinary share of public service allotted to him. In 1850, an enterprising Edinburgh firm having undertaken an extensive republication of the works of the Puritan divines, it was resolved to begin with the voluminous writings of Dr. Owen; and Dr. Goold was appointed editor. This entailed on him much labour during six years—labour so well bestowed that the new edition has finally superseded all previous ones. The vacancy in the Divinity Hall, caused by the death of Dr. Andrew Symington in 1853, was supplied in the following year by a double appointment, Dr. Goold being appointed Professor of Biblical Literature and Church History, his father-in-law, Dr. William Symington, receiving the Chair of Systematic Theology. As the session extended to no more than eight weeks each year, the appointment did not, in either case, involve separation from pastoral work. New labour it certainly did involve; but the labour was congenial in the highest degree. And among the students who passed through the Hall during the twenty-two years of Dr. Goold’s Professorship, there is, we believe, but one opinion regarding the ability and efficiency of his teaching.

A variety of circumstances led Dr. Goold, at an early age, to take an uncommon interest in the work of the Bible Societies. Accordingly, when the Scottish National Bible Society was constituted by the union of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Societies, and a Secretary was required, on whose judgment reliance could be placed, in relation to the business connected both with the translation and the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, the Directors turned their eyes towards him. After some hesitation on the score of the paramount claims of pastoral and professorial work, he saw his way to accept the Secretaryship, and a reference to the Records of the Society will show that the work has prospered greatly under his care.

Dr. Goold’s aptitude for the management of affairs is such that his help has always been much sought in conducting the schemes of the Church. For this, as well as other reasons, when negotiations for union were entered upon by the Free and United Presbyterian Churches in 1863, and the Reformed Presbyterians agreed, on invitation, to take part in these, the Synod unanimously appointed him Convener of its Union Committee. This position he did not accept without hesitation; for although, even at that time, an ardent friend of the projected Union, he had a stronger sense than most of his brethren of the difficulties likely to be encountered. But, after having accepted, he never once turned aside. His time and strength were ungrudgingly expended on the cause; and it certainly was not through any fault of his that the negotiations, after having been prosecuted for ten long years, had at length to be broken off. In the progress of the negotiations, the leading men of the two larger bodies expressed a great and growing appreciation of his sound judgment, his wisdom, and his high Christian integrity. The indefinite postponement of the general Union is known to have caused him poignant sorrow. This was somewhat alleviated by the success with which it pleased the Head of the Church to crown the endeavours afterwards made to effect a separate union between the Reformed Presbyterian Church and the Free Church. The great speech delivered by him in the General Assembly of the United Church on the day of the consummation of the Union (Thursday, the 25th of May, 1876), was the most thrilling feature in the proceedings of a memorable day.

Dr. Goold was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of 1877, a graceful recognition of the Reformed Presbyterian section of the Church, and at the same time a token of the regard and confidence in which he was himself held. He had rejoiced in the Union of 1876, and he was not insensible of the honour done him in the Moderatorship of 1877, but these had been immediately preceded by domestic afflictions, which chastened the gratification he felt. During the winter of 1875-76, the Lord took from him first one son, and then another, both dearly beloved, and both on the threshold of active life. In the short interval between these trying bereavements, Mrs. Goold, who had till that time enjoyed fair health, and whose cheerful godliness and winning ways had imparted an uncommon charm to the house, was suddenly called away. In all the three instances there was solid ground for a good and assured hope regarding the departed, nevertheless the blow was heavy. But grace has sustained under it, and the tree so much chastened has not ceased to bring forth fruit.

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 Charles Gordon

Author: Neil Macleod, Newport
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 153

Charles Gordon

Among the ancestors of Mr Gordon were men prominent in the religious history of the Highlands. His great-grandfather, the Rev. John Mackay, was a man of herculean frame, of unwonted mental vigour, and of apostolic zeal. From 1707 to 1714 he was minister of Durness, which at that time embraced Tongue and Eddrachillis, a territory so immense, that it is recorded he used to be three months absent from his own house when he took his round of parochial visitation. In 1714 he came to Lairg, where he laboured nearly forty years. In that rude age his unusual physical strength was not without its peculiar use. The people were wholly uncivilized; quarrelling and fighting around the church on the Lord’s day were not uncommon. Having been armed with certain delegated legal powers, he did not shrink, when milder measures failed, from resorting to severer remedies, even to the extent of inflicting corporal punishment on obstinate offenders. By the divine blessing on his ministry, he lived to see not only a great reformation of manners, but an earnest living Christianity flourishing in the district. His son, the Rev. Thomas Mackay, was minister of Lairg for half a century after his father’s death. He, too, was an eminent man of God, though of a different type from his father. He was of an affectionate and winning nature. He was the close companion of Mr Macphail, Resolis, and men like-minded. His great theme was the love of Christ, and he had much unction and power. He left behind him a very fragrant memory. In his later years, Mr Thomas Mackay was assisted by the Rev. George Gordon, who married Mr Mackay’s second daughter.

Charles Gordon, the subject of this sketch, was born in the manse of Lairg in 1799, and lived there till his grandfather’s death in 1803. His father had been settled the previous year in Loth, where he ministered till his death in 1822. Charles Gordon was a student of divinity within a year of license at that time. He was early brought to the knowledge of the truth. Dr Angus Mackintosh of Tain was, under God, of much spiritual benefit to him; and between Mr Gordon and the two Mackintoshes of Tain, father and son, there was a life-long and unbroken intimacy. It was in 1825 that Mr Gordon was ordained in Assynt. Some of the people thought his extremely youthful appearance an objection. When this was spoken of in a praying company, Neil Bain, one of the elders, and a deeply-experienced Christian, said, after a pause, “Let him alone; he is a chosen vessel.” Among those that feared the Lord in that part of the country, the feeling thus expressed never ceased to be cherished toward him throughout his long ministry. Assynt, with its magnificent mountain scenery, is a pleasant place for a summer tourist to visit. But fifty years ago it was a singularly arduous sphere of labour for a faithful minister. There was no road to it, or through it. It had not been divided into two ministerial charges, an arrangement afterwards effected. It is a vast parish, with a considerable population, at points widely remote from each other, scattered along the sinuous and rugged coastline. Up in the heights of the parish, many miles inland, at the head of Loch Assynt, amidst a wondrous amphitheatre of hills, stand the old church and manse. In those days Mr Gordon had seven preaching stations, and with his characteristic fidelity to duty, he carried on assiduously the work of preaching, visiting, and catechising; his solitary and weary journeys on foot or horseback, through treacherous moss, or along craggy steep, having frequent incidents of peril and adventure. The mass of the population living twenty miles from the parish church, it was only occasionally that there could be a general gathering. The communion time was the signal for a great concourse, and there are sunny memories connected with these sacramental seasons in the heights of Assynt, at which, among other worthies, Mr Kennedy of Redcastle was always present till his death.

Notwithstanding all difficulties, Mr Gordon’s pre-disruption ministry was a happy one. The parish was blessed by having in it a large number of godly elders, who held up their minister’s hands. He had a bright home, on which the cloud of sorrow had not yet fallen. From its beginning, Mr Gordon took a deep interest and an active part in the ten years’ conflict. He had remarkably clear and decided views on the great principles involved in the struggle. He was much refreshed and strengthened through the prayers offered at the Convocation in November 1842, and in touching terms referred to this in his letters at the time. The trial of the Disruption was to him great above that of many. He had to encounter the displeasure of powerful friends. He had no prospect of being able to remain in Assynt. Unmistakeable warnings had been given that there was to be no toleration in Sutherland for dissenters. He writes in March 1843: “A very mournful reflection for me is, that here I shall have no footing after resignation or ejection.” But he had no hesitation as to his course. From the first Free Church Assembly he pens these words to his wife, who bravely stood by him through the darkness: “I am now no longer minister of Assynt in connection with the Establishment. In many respects the thoughts of this are overwhelming. But when I consider the clearness with which God points out the path of duty, I do not fear but God will provide.” On the lawn before the old manse the first Free Church service was held. The people all rallied round their minister; not one native of  Assynt remained behind at the Disruption. But according to the stern rule of the hour, he could now have no home among his flock. His family were removed to Tain, seventy miles off. Providentially, a lady in Assynt had a house from which, by some peculiarity in her tenure, she could not be ejected. She gave her minister a room, the best she had. It was very small; so low, that only in the centre was it possible to stand erect, so ill lighted, that reading was a work of difficulty, with the rain-drops trickling through it, and with nothing but two feet of space between its bed and the damp “divots” of the roof. But it was a gift most seasonable and welcome. In it the minister found that “footing” among his people which he feared he would never get, and this humble room during three winters furnished him a shelter. The year of the Disruption did not pass without bringing to Mr Gordon a heavier trial than any he had yet borne. His family in Tain were one after another prostrated with wasting fever, and his wife was carried to her grave. Thirty years afterwards, in the midst of varied griefs, he was wont to speak of that as the one earthly sorrow of his life that made all others light in comparison. Yet he was strengthened in his desolation to go forward with his master’s work. The removal of the minister who had for several years occupied the Stoer district, threw once more into his hands the care of the whole wide parish, a state of things which lasted for five years. He had periods of deep spiritual depression during these trying times, but he found strength and comfort in the truth he preached to others. The policy of coercion and repression continued to be perseveringly employed for a while, but was at last abandoned. Sites were granted in 1844, churches were built, and after harassing delays, Mr Gordon in 1846 once more possessed a manse, and had his children about him. The church near Lochinver was now the place where he most frequently preached, but the distant stations under his charge were tended by him in his later ministry as diligently as in his earlier years. The hardships of the Disruption era left their traces on him, and he never fully recovered from a very serious gig accident he met with in 1859 when going to preach for his friend Mr Macleod, Lochbroom. But up to the very last, when each third Saturday came round, calling him to his sixteen or twenty-four miles journey to Stronchrubie or Elphin, it never mattered to him how wild might be the storm. Summer and winter, he was always at his post. He had God’s work to do, and to the best of his ability he did it. The great day will declare what were the saving fruits of his ministry of forty-eight years.

In his preaching he was solid and evangelical, setting forth clearly in a plain and practical way the fundamental doctrines of the gospel. He was perhaps more at home in English than in Gaelic. The weight and worth of his personal Christian character was universally recognised. Whilst firm and bold to the end in the maintenance of truth, he was pre-eminent in the possession of the milder graces of the divine life. In his humility, he was ever preferring others to himself. In his meekness, he harboured no unkind thought, and uttered no harsh word even against those who most wronged him. In his unselfishness, he was always thinking of the interests of others, rather than of his own, whilst in his guileless transparency and straight-forwardness, every one felt how true and genuine he was. Hostility was disarmed by the consistency and beauty of his life. It was the testimony of a minister of another denomination who knew Sutherland well, and whose immediate circle was widely different from that of Mr Gordon, “There might have been differences of opinion about others, but no one ever spoke of Mr Gordon, Assynt, without profound veneration and respect.”

The year 1873 was the closing one of his life. Bereavement, and other things hard to bear, saddened his last days. But he had the consciousness, and often expressed it, that the end was very near, and that he would soon be at his rest. In September he was prevailed on to pay a visit to his friends in Ross-shire. He spent a week among them, giving them all to understand that it was his farewell. He returned to Assynt on the 24th, and on the way those who met him remarked his calm, bright cheerfulness. Till now there had been no special sickness, but on that night he was seized with a mortal malady, and on the morning of the 26th the good old man passed away, and was gathered to his fathers. In the little churchyard at Lochinver is to be seen an obelisk marking his grave, and bearing his name on its front. On one side is the name of his fourth son, the Rev. Hugh Mackay Gordon, a young man of the brightest promise, who died suddenly, four months before his father, in Bolton, Lancashire, after one brief year’s ministry there. On the other side is the name of Lieutenant-Colonel John Gordon, Mr Gordon’s third son, an officer of rare worth and nobility of character, who with almost equal suddenness was cut down in the prime of manhood, on the shores of Western India, two years after his father’s death.

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 Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon

Author: Rev. H. M. Williamson, Belfast
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 271

Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon

This is not the place to trace her history as a citizen of earth, and as one of the nobles of the land. These brief sketches of the Disruption Worthies are intended to exhibit chiefly their connection with that series of events in the history of the Church of Scotland, culminating in what is aptly termed the Disruption. These transactions are still too recent, to be viewed, either by friends or foes, in their due proportion. We confidently hazard the assertion that with increasing years their magnitude will be acknowledged, and their weighty influence upon the progress of true religion, not only in Scotland, but throughout the world, freely admitted.

Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon, was born in London, 20th January, 1794. Her father was Alexander Brodie, a younger son of Brodie of that Ilk. Having acquired a large fortune in India, he returned to his native land, and purchased the estates of Arnhall and Burn, in Kincardineshire, and sat as Member of Parliament for Elgin. Her mother was Miss Elizabeth Wemyss, of Wemyss Castle. Having lost her mother at the early age of six years, she was carefully trained by her aunts. Educated with a culture not the usual then for ladies, she passed, in due course, through the customary routine of fashionable life, and was married to the Marquis of Huntly in 1813, and was widowed in 1836.

Adorning the position in which she was placed by the providence of God, she would have been a remarkable woman in any rank of life. Distinguished for beauty of person in her youth, she retained to her latest years, features indicative of sweet gentleness, great good sense, Christian benevolence and heavenly rest. She had, it may be added, a most winning smile, and an unconscious, but irresistibly attractive manner. She possessed very fair natural abilities, carefully cultivated, great stores of general information, derived from her intercourse with all classes, and from the constant habit of having in course of reading some standard work. She was distinguished for great tact, with a singular combination of firmness and gentleness.

As with many eminent servants of God it seems difficult to say when first she truly came to know the Lord. Some links in the chain, some helpers on the way appear—Erskine’s Essay on Faith, seems to have made a great impression, subsequently intercourse with Lady Olivia Sparrow, and specially with the Duke of Manchester. Step by step she was led on till at length the dawning brightened into noon-day, and she knew the Lord, and knew that she knew Him. Ever after, in often most testing circumstances and amid great temptation, with notable wisdom and humility, and sweetness and courage, she confessed Christ before all.

The history of her connection with the Disruption is noteworthy, exhibiting, as it does, the steps of an ingenuous and truth-loving mind making its way to the light through mists of error and over mountains of prejudice. Born and bred an Episcopalian, and living in an atmosphere and surrounded by a society to which “The Church” was everything, and all outside, socially and religiously, nothing, her leanings naturally were very strong towards Episcopacy. Then, too, the barriers which separated her politically from Presbyterianism were, if possible, stronger still. The questions which were connected with the Disruption were intensely disagreeable to all Tory minds. The struggle for the crown rights of Christ and the liberties of His Church was viewed by most of the aristocracy as radical and revolutionary, and all who favoured it were suspected of disloyalty. To any in such a position and with such surroundings, it required very strong convictions of duty and very clear light to enable them to break through and follow the teachings of the Word of God and the dictates of conscience.

Very early in her spiritual history she seems to have got a firm grasp of what are distinctively known as the Doctrines of Grace. Few could more quickly detect, whether in the living voice or the printed page, any deviation from a pure Gospel, either towards legality or antinomianism. While, therefore, continuing nominally an Episcopalian, during these earlier years she sought after and waited upon the ministrations of the Evangelical clergy in the Church of Scotland.

Thus it came to pass that for some years before the Disruption she and the ministers of the Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland stood in a somewhat peculiar relation. She honoured them much for their Master’s sake. She waited upon their services, and received them as welcome guests in her home, and yet she stood aloof from them in all their efforts to deliver the Church from Erastian bondage, and to restore to Christ his crown rights as the Church’s King and Head.

Strathbogie is familiar, ecclesiastically, to every one who knows anything of the history of the Disruption. The intrusion of a minister upon the people of Marnoch—the deposition from the ministry of the majority of the ministers of the Presbytery by the General Assembly for the breach of their ordination vows—the Interdicts of the Court of Session— the proclamation of the Gospel in these parishes by leading ministers of the Assembly in the face of these Interdicts! During this time the Duchess was absent upon the Continent. With her measure of light she acted in the circumstances with what might almost be termed a beautiful inconsistency. With her still strong episcopal and political leanings, she greatly disapproved of the steps taken by the Church, not, indeed, in the deposition of the ministers, but in breaking connection with the State. On the other hand, with her quick spiritual instinct and love of the Gospel, she gave express orders for the honourable reception, as her guests, of the ministers sent from Edinburgh to preach in the parishes of the deposed incumbents, although she knew they were acting in the face of Interdicts from the Court of Session.

The Disruption at length came, breaking the stillness of death—opening avenues of access for the Gospel to many a parish from which it had been banished for more than a century. The Duchess, on her return to Huntly, found herself in exceedingly trying circumstances, nominally an Episcopalian, politically strong in the belief of the inviolability of the union between Church and State, religiously full of clear light as to the truth of the evangelical doctrine which the ministers of the Free Church preached! But, doing “His will,” ere long she came to know of the doctrine that it was of God. Her path was made plain, and became as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. She came at length clearly to apprehend the glorious truths clustered round the doctrine of the Headship of Christ. She cast in her lot with the Free Church of Scotland, and ever after gave herself, with all her influence and means, to the cause of God in connection therewith.

To form any due estimate of the services she was enabled to render to Evangelical Religion in the north of Scotland, one requires to understand something of its previous history. From the combined effects of Scottish Episcopacy and Presbyterian Moderatism, true religion was almost extinct. The whole region was aptly termed “the Dead Sea.” It is strictly correct to say that at the period prior to the Disruption, in whole parishes, scarcely one could be found who would openly confess his personal and saving interest in Jesus Christ, and if he did so, such a confession would be met with incredulity and derision. The history of the revival of religion in Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and the surrounding region, during the past half century, has yet to be written. The landowners as a rule, discountenanced, and often violently opposed the quietest efforts made to preach the Gospel by any one and every one outside the Established Church. In some parishes the preachers of the Gospel were denied a lodging, and the tenants who would shelter them were threatened with eviction! The people themselves were in gross ignorance of the Gospel; while parishes by the combined influence of the Laird and the Minister were hermetically sealed. Half the Queen’s highway was the only place where a man dare stand and preach Christ! Sabbaths were sometimes spent by parish ministers in the effort to refute the new doctrine of regeneration by the Spirit, and justification by faith alone. The proclamation of the Gospel in feeing-markets, a plan approved of and aided by the Duchess, where salvation by free grace was set forth, was received with wonder and incredulity, and often with the exclamation, “That’s a new way o’ it!”

Now it was in such circumstances that God raised up the Duchess of Gordon to do a work for His name and for the souls of men, for which He so admirably qualified her. In her own high social circle she disarmed prejudices, stood sponsor for the loyalty of the members of the Free Church, and exhibited to all with whom she came in contact, the attractive beauty of living Christianity. Visitors, not a few, of all ranks and classes, and from all lands, were made familiar with the doctrine and practices of the Free Church in Huntly Lodge, in the ministration of the Sabbath, to which almost all invariably accompanied her. Of these visitors, many were disarmed of their prejudices, and not a few were attracted and blessed. Thus the Free Church, through her, was exhibited to many in high places, as loyal to the sovereign, as the mother of true piety, and a blessing to the land.

But while thus, by wise words and a holy life she testified to those in her own circle, seeing the fearful state of spiritual death everywhere around, she took the most prudent and active measures to have the Gospel widely and faithfully preached. It was her custom for many years both before and after the Disruption to invite to her house, for a monthly conference, all evangelical ministers within access of Huntly Lodge. At such meetings the forenoon was spent by the ministers in much prayer and brotherly conference on some difficulty in the way of the spread of the Gospel, and the best measures for its removal. In the afternoon there was a prayerful review of the subjects, in company with the Duchess and all her visitors who desired to be present. In the evening some two of the ministers addressed a public meeting in the church. The power of such meetings for good it is impossible to estimate, and the fruit that followed. There is great reason to believe that the revival of religion which spread over the north of Scotland, may in no small measure be traced to these meetings. Certainly, it can be established as a fact, that very remarkable revivals of religion were witnessed in the parishes of all the ministers who attended’ these conferences.

But there were large districts lying spiritually waste without any to cultivate them—large masses of the people who seldom, if ever, heard the Gospel preached in purity and power. For such districts she sought to provide evangelists and missionaries. Her name and influence obtained access for these labourers to places and persons from which they would otherwise have been completely shut out.

Frequently under her auspices, evangelistic tours were undertaken, and the Gospel preached from parish to parish—in the fair green of the village—in the market square—not seldom in the quiet meadow of a Highland glen. Multitudes heard the Gospel in the half-yearly feeing-markets. From such labours abundant increase was gathered. The first access to a parish, lying in great spiritual darkness, whose minister was a prominent leader of the Moderate party in the Disruption conflict, was obtained through the conversion of a farmer under the preaching of the Gospel at a feeing-market. Having welcomed Christ to his heart, he gladly welcomed Him to his house. In his barn the first evangelical sermon was preached that had been heard in that parish for very many years.

In later years of her life, the expedient was tried of holding large gatherings in the parks surrounding Huntly Lodge. Many had been brought to God by the faithful preaching of the Gospel throughout the region. But although numerous they were scattered, and as yet timid, and surrounded also by opposers and scoffers. It was thought that if they could be collected together, for mutual recognition and encouragement, a strong stimulus might be given to the work; and moreover, that an opportunity, upon a large scale, would be afforded for the proclamation of the Gospel. Such meetings were then a new thing. It is difficult to realise with what fear and anxiety the step was taken. Many true Christians spoke against them. Others stood aloof in wonder! God greatly owned them! Believers were greatly strengthened and edified, and multitudes of sinners were led to Christ, who by their future lives, proved the reality of the change. Some who found Christ at these meetings are now in the ministry of the Gospel; many in the eldership of the Church, and others serving the Lord in almost every colony of the British Empire.

As the fruit of all these prayers and efforts, and of the full consecration of herself to the Lord, and of uninterrupted labour for His name’s sake, it might safely be affirmed, comparing the present with the past, that in no part of Scotland has vital godliness made such progress, and acquired such a hold as in these northern counties. When she came to Strathbogie, she found it spiritually a region and shadow of death, and when she ceased from her labours and went to her reward, she left it full of the life and light of the Gospel.

As one thoughtfully reviews her life, and notes the fruit of her influence and efforts in the cause of Christ, he is ready to say concerning the nobility of our land, “O si sic omnes!” If in their exalted station they would become, as she, nursing fathers, and nursing mothers to Zion, the widening gulf between class and class would quickly be filled up, the whole breath of society sweetened, many difficult social problems solved, our land would become a delightful land; then should we not only hear it, in prophetic utterance, but see it with our eyes, “Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.”

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 Robert Gordon, D.D.

Author: Rev. Norman L. Walker, Dysart
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 309

Robert Gordon

His outward personal history was not an eventful one. He was born at Glencairn, in Dumfriesshire. After receiving license to preach the gospel, he became Mathematical Assistant to the Rector of the Perth Academy,—an office in which he was succeeded by the Rev. Dr Forbes of Glasgow. There his gifts came to be known to Lord Gray, who presented him to the parish of Kinfauns, where he continued to labour from 1816 to 1820, when he was translated to Edinburgh. In that city he remained till his death in 1853, but during that long period his services were not confined to one congregation. His first charge was that of Hope Park Chapel; his next was the New North, in Brighton Street; his third was the High Church Parish; and his last the Free High Church, at the head of the Mound. In all he maintained, from first to last, the character of an able and earnest evangelical preacher. His discourses were prepared with extraordinary thoroughness and care. They were delivered in a manner which was particularly impressive. And there is the best reason for believing that his ministry was eminently successful, in the highest sense of that expression. A volume of his sermons was published in 1825, and since his death two other volumes, containing additional examples of his method of expounding Scripture, especially the prophecies relating to the Messiah, have been given to the world. We have it also on good authority that he contributed several articles on mathematical subjects to the Edinburgh Cyclopaedia, a publication which was edited by Sir David Brewster. But his highest memorial is the spiritual fruit which followed from his pastoral labours, and the emphatic testimony which, with all the weight of his character, he gave to the principles which constitute the heritage of the Church of Scotland.

In the latter connection, there are several outstanding incidents in the life of Dr Gordon which are peculiarly worthy of being referred to in such a record as the present.

One of these was his appearance at the bar of the Court of Session, along with the Presbytery of Dunkeld. That Presbytery had been placed in a somewhat singular position. Two men—Mr Clark and Mr Kessen—had been nominated to the pastorate of Lethendy, a parish within their bounds. The former was first in the field, but he was vetoed, and, with the concurrence of the patron, was set aside. Mr Kessen was then presented, and he having received in addition a call from the people, the usual steps were taken with a view to his settlement.

Mr Clark, however, was not prepared to be thus dropped. He asked the Court of Session to interfere on his behalf, and the Court did so, issuing an interdict forbidding the Presbytery to proceed to Mr Kessen’s ordination. Lord Cockburn, commenting not long afterwards on this act, says in his Journal:— “This is the second deep cut into the nervous system of the Church, for if we can order a Presbytery not to induct, I don’t see that we have not the power to bid it induct. And after this, where is the peculiar power of the Church?” So reasoned the Church itself. The Presbytery was forced to settle for itself the question, of whether in a matter so purely spiritual as the ordination of a minister, it was bound to obey the civil court or its own spiritual superior. The General Assembly’s command was explicit:— “You shall proceed to Mr Kessen’s induction to the pastorate of the people of Lethendy, leaving the law to determine, as it has a right to do, to whom the benefice shall belong.” The Court of Session was equally articulate:— “This is a matter which concerns us, and you must not ordain Mr Kessen until we give you leave to do so.” In just such a dilemma was once the famous Presbytery of Strathbogie. The civil power said one thing, the Church said another, and they were in a strait between the two. But they came to a very different conclusion from that which was reached by the Presbytery of Dunkeld. At Marnoch, the will of the Court of Session was carried out, and the ministers got their reward by being upheld by the law in the performance of all their spiritual functions, even after their deposition. At Lethendy the order of the Church was obeyed, and the offenders were threatened in consequence with fine and imprisonment. It is no secret, now, that in the breasts of some of the judges, who had been, as they thought, defied, there raged such a feeling of anger that, if it had not been for the influence of some of their more temperate brethren, measures of a very extreme character would certainly have been taken. As it was, the men who had dared to ordain a minister without the permission of the Parliament House, were summoned to answer for their conduct at the bar of the Court of Session. And in the remarkable historical picture which, in consequence of this summons, came to be framed in Edinburgh on the 14th of June 1839, one of the figures which appears most prominently in the foreground was that of Dr Gordon.

He was not, of course, a member of the Presbytery of Dunkeld; but he believed that they were being called to suffer in a public cause, and for the maintenance of a great principle—the freedom and independence of the Church—and he resolved to place himself by their side, to share their shame and their glory, and to give to them what comfort was to be derived from his openly identifying himself with their interests.

It must have been a striking scene:—

What followed belongs to the ecclesiastical history of the period. It is enough, in the present sketch, to connect Dr Gordon, as a leader, with one of the most significant battles of the “ten years’ conflict.”

Two years later, in 1841, Dr Gordon received the well merited distinction of being called to the Moderatorship of the General Assembly: and in that capacity he was required to perform a duty which could not but have been painful, but which he discharged, there can be no doubt, with the entire approbation of his own conscience—we refer to the pronouncing of the sentence of deposition on the seven Strathbogie ministers. Occupying the chair of the Assembly, as he did, it did not fall to him either to take part in the discussion which preceded the judgment, or to vote upon the two motions which were made on the occasion. It is rather remarkable, however, that in the history we should find him so closely associated with the two cases in connection with which the Church asserted its Spiritual Independence most emphatically, and in the face of all hazards. The good-will and active support of the civil powers he no doubt highly valued, and it could not but pain him to find himself in such direct collision with them. But whether these powers were for him or against him, there was one principle which he could surrender in no circumstances—that of the Church’s inherent freedom—its right to rule without secular interference, within its own province.

And some months later he gave distinct and articulate expression to these feelings in the famous meeting of office-bearers which was held in St Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh. That meeting was attended by over twelve hundred ministers and elders, and was the first of a series held in different parts of Scotland, in which the Evangelicals everywhere banded themselves to resist the encroachments of the State. Dr Gordon was called on to preside; and those who heard his opening speech, as chairman, were never weary afterwards of telling of the profound impression which was made by it. He uttered strong words, but these did not exceed in strength the feeling which manifestly possessed him. Never, we have heard it said, did Chalmers himself speak with more power, and intensity, and effect:—

Having thus clearly stated the nature of the issue which was at stake, he, with equal explicitness, announced the practical conclusion to which he had come—viz., that he would maintain the great principle of the Church of Scotland, whatever might be the consequence.

It was one of the first unmistakeable foreshadowings of the coming Disruption. Dr Gordon even then clearly foresaw the catastrophe toward which the civil courts were driving; and his address derived an additional solemnity from the picture which he silently held up before his audience.

One other outstanding incident of these times is well worthy of mention in this connection. The General Assembly of 1842 adopted The Claim of Rights—a document in which the position of the Church was finally defined, with a view to a last appeal being made to the legislature. The adoption of that great historical State Church paper was moved by Dr Chalmers, and seconded by Dr Gordon. In the short speech which he delivered on that occasion, Dr Gordon expressed a hope that Parliament would act in a wiser way than the Court of Session had done.

When the 18th of May 1843 arrived, and intimation was formally given that no more was to be hoped for from the legislature than from the civil courts, Dr Gordon took, without the slightest hesitation, the now unavoidable step of seeking, with his brethren, spiritual liberty outside of the Establishment; and for ten years more he was honoured to do the work of an evangelist in Edinburgh, and to aid effectually in the organisation of the Church of Scotland, free.

But he was not allowed to spend this last decade of his life in absolute quiet. The refusal of sites, in many places, for the erection of Free Churches, had resulted in the appointment of a Parliamentary Commission to take evidence on the subject, and Dr Gordon was summoned to London as a witness. He appeared before the Commission on the 27th of March 1847, and some of the things which he said on this occasion are important enough to warrant our quoting them here:—

“Sir James Graham: A very important point in dispute between the Free Church and the Established Church, which you have left, is the efficacy of the call by the hearers of the clergyman to be appointed?

“Dr Gordon: The main question I hold to be the spiritual independence of the Church; the interference of the civil authority with matters purely spiritual.

“Sir J. Graham: Is not the call a very important check, among others, against the abuse of patronage in your opinion?

“Dr Gordon: No doubt, but the question which led to the Disruption, was the question of the independence of the Church. …

“Mr Fox Maule: The question of Patronage was not that upon which the Free Church separated from the Establishment?

“Dr Gordon: Certainly not.

“Mr F. Maule: It was a question entirely as to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church?

“Dr Gordon: Yes. …

“Mr W. Patten: At what period do you think the Established Church relinquished the truth?

“Dr Gordon: At the time of the Disruption.

“Mr W. Patten: Were any steps taken at the time of the Disruption, other than those which had been taken previously?

“Dr Gordon: They then homologated the act and deed of the civil authority in interfering in spiritual matters.

“Mr W. Patten: Was that the first time they had done that?

“Dr Gordon: The first time they gave consent to it. …

“Mr G. W. Hope: Is it not denied by those who adhere to the Church, that they do exercise these functions under the guidance of the State?

“Dr Gordon: They believe, I suppose, that Lord Aberdeen’s Bill has protected them; but the very introduction of the Bill appeared to me to be an admission that the law which led to the Disruption had, in fact, deprived the Church of her rights and privileges as a spiritual court. …

“Mr Brotherton: Have they changed within the last seven years?

“Dr Gordon: We think that they have admitted the civil power to interfere in spiritual matters, so that the spiritual liberty of the Church has been sacrificed.

“Mr Brotherton: In what respect?

“Dr Gordon: In permitting themselves to be dictated to in spiritual matters by the civil authorities.

“Chairman: Has the great body of the Scottish dissenters separated from the Church of Scotland upon the same ground, that of interference with the spiritual independence of the Church?

“Dr Gordon: The original dissenters from the Church of Scotland left it partly on the ground of patronage. They considered that as an interference with the liberties of the Church. We continued in the Church, and thought that we retained our liberties, even with the law of patronage, although among us there were many who looked upon patronage as rather a grievance—indeed, a great grievance—but still we did not consider that patronage itself, if the call had its proper place, was such an encroachment upon the liberties of the Church as to compel us to leave it.”

The Scottish worthy, of whom the above is a most imperfect sketch, was engaged in the preparation of a sermon for his communion Sabbath, when the summons reached him to go up higher. The sermon was never finished and never preached; but after his death it was published for the edification and comfort of his people. We have that discourse of his now before us, and it is most striking and affecting to see that the last words he ever penned were these:— “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?”

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 Duncan Grant, M.A., Forres

Author: William Winter, D.D., Dyke
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 73

“Was licensed, July 1813; was ordained, April 1814; removed from Aberdeen to Alves, July 1819; removed from Alves to Forres, September 1827.”

Such was the brief account of his ministerial life furnished by the subject of this notice, in answer to queries which had been issued by a Committee of the General Assembly in 1864, appointed to collect information for a biographical record of the ministers ousted at the Disruption. As in the case of Mr. Grant, so in regard to the great, body of the Disruption ministers, the information given was so scanty, if there was any at all, that the purpose of compiling a history of the individual men had to be given up. Clearly the Disruption fathers did not court notoriety for themselves. If only they were enabled to maintain the honour of Christ, they could leave their present comfort and future remembrance on earth to the care of their Master. What has just been stated, taken in connection with these other facts – that Mr. Grant was removed by death thirty-two years ago, on the 17th March, 1866; that during the last fifteen years of his life, he was laid aside from the discharge of all public duty; that he was a speaker rather than a writer – makes it difficult now to frame a memorial of him. Yet, traditions of the impression produced by his preaching powers and of the demand made, in consequence, on his services gradually come into one’s memory and may furnish a suitable starting point.

One of his brethren in the Forres Presbytery – Mr. Aitken of Dyke – described him as having a “nacky” way of preaching, in which he was inimitable. This gift appeared from the commencement of his ministry, so that in Aberdeen, where was his first charge – the Gaelic Chapel there – his pithy sayings, applicable to the times, would be current. One instance is given in Dr. David Brown’s Memoir of Professor John Duncan, pp. 94 and 95. It obtained for him from the Earl of Moray, on the request of the people, the presentation to the church of Alves in succession to his uncle Mr. William McBean, and from the same patron eight years after, the presentation to the church of Forres. While in Alves, his popularity as a preacher was such that many from the neighbouring parishes attended his ministry, the churches would be crowded where it was known that he would officiate, and the most anti-evangelical of his co-presbyters were obliged, in deference to the people’s wish, to invite his services at Communions. “Be short, Mr. Grant” – one of these brethren is reported to have said on such an occasion, “Mr L.,” was in effect the reply, “it rests with you to ask me here or not; but once in your pulpit, I must use my own liberty with regard to that.” So Mr. Grant was invited to enter the pulpit and take his own course.

This popularity proved sometimes inconvenient to the subject of it, by necessitating the preparation of a second sermon, when he was to officiate on the Sabbath Evening in a neighbouring church for the sake of any who might be present in both places. On one occasion – a stormy winter day, when driving to Burghead to preach, he expected to be able to re-deliver his Alves sermon, when, on the way, he came up on Mr. John Grigor, an elder in Duffus Parish but a frequent hearer in Alves. No doubt a little irritated by the change of prospect, Mr. Grant said “John, I should have thought one sermon would serve you on a cold day like this.” “’Deed, Mr. Grant,” was the reply, “I need as good a diet of meat on a cold day as on a warm one.” It is needless to add that the elder was taken up into the gig and that the minister applied himself to meditate another discourse for his friend’s behoof.

Though, on his translation to Forres, he was in the midst of evangelical ministers, and the people of the neighbouring parishes had not the same inducement to leave their own churches in search of spiritual provision, as those bordering on Alves, Mr. Grant’s services were not the less welcome, when he preached in any of these churches. And after the Disruption, when the vacant congregations within the Presbyterial bounds were fully planted, his eminent preaching talent, in Gaelic as well as in English, was utilized by the General Assembly’s Committee for the relief of destitute districts in the Highlands. He was appointed to labour for considerable periods in three successive years, 1845, 1846 and 1847, in the Isle of Skye, the parish of Petty, and the parishes of Fodderty and Contin. His brethren of the Presbytery, on these occasions, shewed their appreciation at once of himself and of his work, by giving him full supply for his pulpit during his absences.

While it was in his spoken utterances that Mr. Grant supremely excelled, he could, and did occasionally, wield a vigorous pen both in poetry and in prose. His abilities in both departments of literary work also began to be displayed during his ministry in Aberdeen, and that in connection with his interest in Sabbath School instruction. It was the custom then in Aberdeen, initiated we believe by Dr. Kidd, to gather for a special service the children of the different Sabbath Schools in and around the city, on the first evening of the year. The sermon preached on one of these occasions by Mr. Grant was published at the request of the Directors of the schools, and was afterwards expanded into a more lengthened “Address,” which received such a measure of acceptance that it went through several editions. It was also in connection with his interest in the religious education of the young that he began to exhibit his poetical talent. The practice of publishing a New Year’s Hymn for Sabbath Schools was begun by him in Aberdeen and continued till the close of his active ministry; the sermon of one New Year’s day being frequently adapted to verse as a hymn for the next. In addition to these efforts, he published occasional verses on various subjects. The death of his mother, whom he appears to have tenderly loved, called forth an affectionate tribute to her memory. In this he referred to the character and aims of both his parents in the following terms;—

“To train our minds, in early youth,
To heavenly wisdom, virtue, truth,
Was still your chief pursuit;
And then to teach our feet to climb
The hill, where learning’s fane sublime
Presents the richest spoils of time
And knowledge yields her fruit,”

“Lines suggested by the sudden death of the Rev. Donald Fraser, minister of Kirkhill, on 12th July 1836” and founded on the text: “How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!”, appeared in the Scottish Christian Herald, a popular periodical of the time, and exhibit marked ability.

The preceding reference naturally recalls to mind the affectionate intimacy that subsisted between Mr. Grant and the leading supporters of the evangelical cause, throughout the North in his time. Memories of incidents related by himself and others, and illustrative of the close relations between him and Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, Dr. Macdonald of Ferintosh, Mr. Stewart of Cromarty, with many others more or less known and distinguished, are presenting themselves but cannot be recorded in detail. The fact is, that the talents and Christian character of Mr. Grant – his extensive reading, retentive memory, ready utterance, correct taste, sound judgement, warm affection, together with his self-denying devotion in matters connected with the cause of Christ and the public interest – not only gave him a position of influence and authority, alongside of the men who have been mentioned, but drew towards him the esteem and sympathy of kindred spirits.

It remains now to record briefly the part which Mr. Grant took in the Disruption, in some of the events which led to it, and in the work which followed upon it. There can be no doubt that the Voluntary Controversy, as it was called, had much to do with the ultimate severance of the Free Church from the State and the preparation of ministers and people for it. That controversy brought into prominence the doctrine of Christ’s sole headship over his church, as an essential doctrine of the Church of Scotland and as one, which was not weakened in practice but confirmed by the Church’s establishment. It was in this view of the state of matters in Scotland that the establishment of the Church was so vigorously defended by the evangelical party; and so strong were their convictions of the soundness of this position that, on obtaining a majority in the General Assembly, they proceeded to give effect to them in the administration of the Church. This brought the Church Courts into conflict with the Civil Courts, which took a different view of the National Establishment, and eventually led to the Disruption. But it is unlikely that would have happened, on the scale on which it did, unless for the Voluntary Controversy and the training in the scriptural and historical foundations of the Church of Scotland, which was furnished by it.

In this controversy Mr. Grant took a prominent part. Among other manifestations of his keen interest in it he published a pamphlet of over 70 pages, in which he upheld the following positions: 1. That the revenues of the Church of Scotland are not an unjust and burdensome tax; 2. that her mode of maintenance is not less favourable to purity in doctrine and discipline than the Voluntary system; 3. That the endowments of the Church of Scotland are not unnecessary and useless; 4. That these endowments are not unscriptural. The pamphlet was one exhibiting much minutenes of information, acuteness of reasoning and power of illustration, but disfigured withal by that spirit of bitterness and contempt, which has so often been shewn by Churchmen to Dissenters and is so fitted to grieve Christian people. Mr. Grant’s known views as to the duty of all who professed to adhere to the original principles of the Church of Scotland, when the time for ultimate decision came, and his known firmness of character prevented any from approaching him to solicit his remaining in a now Erastianized Establishment. Having in the carrying out of these views, as a Commissioner to the General Assembly of 1843, signed the Protest and, in the General Assembly of the Free Church constituted thereupon signed the Deed of Demission, on the 22nd of June thereafter, he along with his co-presbyters, Mr. William Robertson at Kinloss, Mr. George Mackay at Rafford and Mr. Mark Aitken at Dyke, met and constituted themselves the Free Presbytery of Forres. From the date mentioned to the close of the year 1844, no fewer than 52 meetings of this court were held, the minutes of which are most interesting as shewing the diligence of the brethren in fully organizing the Free Church, not only in their own parishes but in the other two whose ministers had adhered to the establishment. Sessions were constituted and Presbytery Elders chosen, sites and plans for churches were sanctioned. Associations for the support of the ministry were formed and strengthened. With the assistance of the following probationers in succession: Mr. Rhind afterwards at Knockando, Mr. Morrison afterwards at Urquhart, Mr. Mackay afterwards at Lossiemouth, Mr. Macleod, Mr. Brichan, Mr. Davidson and Mr. Macdonald, the vacant congregations at Dallas and Edinkillie were supplied with ordinances. Until the new churches were opened, the congregations in the country parishes met in the open air or in barns; in Forres the Independent Chapel was kindly made available for the use of the Free Church. But the work of church-building was so vigorously prosecuted that, from the 4th December 1843 to the 18th February 1844, five places of worship were opened: Rafford on December 4, Dyke on December 29, Edinkillie on February 4, Kinloss on February 11, Forres on February 18. On account of difficulties in procuring at Dallas a site on suitable conditions, the congregation there had a minister ordained over them before church-building was commenced. Mr. William Davidson was ordained and admitted to the charge at Dallas on 8th August 1844, and Mr. Donald Macdonald to that of Edinkillie on the 19th December in the same year.

After a few years more of active and useful work, to a portion of which reference has already been made, Mr. Grant’s health began to fail. On the 5th November, 1850, he stated to the Presbytery that, “in consideration of his infirm health and inability to discharge the public duties of his situation, he had come to the resolution to request them to give their early and serious consideration to the matter, and to proceed, if they thought it expedient, to take steps for having a colleague and successor to him appointed.” The Presbytery, at first, “considering that they still entertained the hope that Mr. Grant’s health might at no distant period be so restored as to enable him to return to his wonted duties and usefulness” declined to concur in the proposal. But on a second application made by Mr. Grant to the same effect on 7th January, 1852, and based on the plea that “owing to his increasing infirmity he could no longer continue to render even the small assistance which he had been rendering in the supply of ordinances to his congregation,” the Presbytery yielded; and, as the result Mr. Adam Robertson, who had been Mr. Grant’s assistant for some time, was ordained Colleague and Successor on 12th August, 1852. After this and “until a few months before his death,” as stated in an obituary notice which appeared in the Free Church Monthly Record, though laid aside from active duty, “Mr. Grant’s mind retained all its original vigour and clearness. His conversational powers continued a source of delight and instruction to his friends, who often wondered how, in the solitude of his study, he acquired such an extensive and accurate acquaintance with the proceedings of the Church and the world. Gradually becoming indifferent to the latter, he never lost his interest in the cause of Christ, which he had served during so many years.” The writer of this can add his testimony to Mr. Grant’s uniform kindness and readiness to give the benefit of his deep knowledge and wide experience to his younger brethren, which, joined to the dignity and courtesy of his manner, conveyed an impressive lesson in the ministerial life.

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 Andrew Gray

Author: Rev. J. B. Irvine, Strathkinness
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 279

The pen of Hugh Miller delineates Mr Gray to the life, as he appeared among the leaders in the heat of the “ten years’ conflict”:—

Mr Gray was born at Aberdeen, 2d November 1805, and he used to remark with pleasure, that most of the leaders in the controversy which ended in the Disruption, were born about the same time. As his parents were unable to meet the expenses of his education for the ministry, he had much hard work in supporting himself during his preparatory course by teaching privately and in schools. His father early dedicated him to the Lord’s work, and instilled into his mind the doctrines of the Reformation and the principles of the Presbyterian Church. This humble and singularly pious man spent his latter years under the roof of his son, in whose congregation at Perth he acted as an elder. Even while a student Mr Gray was recognised as a man of mark. Although he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, when religion there was at a low ebb, yet he found a few companions like-minded with himself, and great was his delight in them as well as his influence over them. He had all his life a keen relish for the company of men of his own calling. The reserve which he sometimes maintained in general society gave place, among his trusted brethren, to genial frankness and hilarity, especially when he recalled the happy years of his youth. Mr Milne of Free St Leonard’s, Perth, in preaching Mr Gray’s funeral sermon, mentioned that Mr Gray once led him out into the country, and spoke to him faithfully and affectionately about the state of his soul and the way of salvation; “the first time,” added Mr Milne, “that any one had ever addressed me directly on the subject.” This pleasing circumstance must have had a good effect on the relations between these men of God, who occupied the most important positions in Perth at the Disruption. While Mr Gray was at college, the tide turned, and the evangelical section of the students which had been despised became most influential. He was largely instrumental in bringing about this change, and preserved in a book intimations of meetings and other memoranda of his activity among his fellow students. In after years, his exertions for the erection of a Free Church Divinity College in Aberdeen, led to differences with honoured friends, which, to the writer’s knowledge, caused Mr Gray intense pain. Aberdeen should remember him, for all that concerned her was to him most dear. When Dr Andrew Thomson remonstrated against the insertion of the Apocrypha in the bibles of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the great questions of the canon and the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures came to be publicly discussed, Mr Gray, though only a student, wrote with unusual power against the loose views of Dr Thomson’s opponents.

But the controversy with which his name was most closely associated, and in which he best evinced the energy and determination which characterised him, was what is called the “Chapel Question.” While yet at college, he took the foremost place in assailing the unscriptural practice of excluding chapel ministers from the government of the Church, and even forbidding them to hold kirk-sessions in their own congregations. In 1825, when he had scarcely completed his twentieth year, he published, in the “Christian Instructor,” an able vindication of the right of all ordained ministers to rule as well as to teach. Both Dr Andrew Thomson and Dr Chalmers opposed the movement for procuring the acknowledgment of this right by the General Assembly, in the case of ministers of Chapels of Ease. Yet undaunted even by such opposition, Mr Gray kept the matter in various ways before the public mind, and stirred up those who had a voice in church courts to bring it forward, before he could procure a hearing in them himself. His ordination as minister of the Chapel of Ease at Woodside, near Aberdeen (1st September 1831), brought home to him very painfully, in his own experience, the restrictions which so anomalous a position imposed on the exercise of the Christian ministry. He delighted to tell that on his return from the Assembly of 1834, in which, greatly owing to his powerful speech at the bar, the evil was remedied, Mr Carment of Rosskeen recommended him to give out in Woodside Chapel, as their first psalm in their state of freedom, Psalm 129.

Notwithstanding bitter opposition from some influential individuals in the neighbourhood, Mr Gray’s labours in his first charge were highly successful. The congregation, of which he was the first minister, became numerous, and five hundred scholars attended the Sabbath school. Conversions gladdened his heart, especially among the members of his bible class. Woodside was a field which the Lord was blessing up to the time of Mr Gray’s removal to the West Church, Perth (14th July 1836). In this new sphere he was soon the acknowledged leader of the evangelical party in the church courts of the district, while the congregation became much larger than it had ever been, though he found it in a flourishing state. He began weekly prayer meetings, and during the sittings of the Assembly great numbers met every evening to hear a letter from their minister, when the struggle became serious, and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Aided by a munificent member of his congregation, he erected a handsome parish school, and, amid far greater difficulties, he built, after the Disruption, another school and teacher’s house. His preaching was of a very high order, as his published sermons prove, and those who loved a pure gospel rejoiced in the simplicity and fervour with which he proclaimed salvation. It was to him a painful trial that his work for the church at large, coupled with his frequent ill health and consequent absence from home, prevented him from accomplishing the amount of pastoral visitation he felt to be due to his people. Of his lack of service in this respect, and of his own shortcomings as a man, he had a deep and lowly conviction. “A minister’s sins are so aggravated,” he once exclaimed, and burst into tears.

But few, if any, rendered more valuable service to the Free Church. Dr Candlish, as well as Hugh Miller, assigns to Mr Gray’s pamphlet on the conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical courts, the merit of marking out the precise ground which was subsequently taken by all the leaders on the evangelical side. He says it became the text-book of the controversy. Dr Chalmers pronounced it “one of the most masterly and conclusive reasonings that ever issued from the press.” It is not therefore surprising that after the Disruption Mr Gray was requested to draw up a Catechism for the instruction of the young in the principles of the Free Church. If some of the answers in that Catechism are rather long, many are both short and pithy. Thus, having quoted from the authorised “Proceedings” of the Established Church Assembly of 1843, that the Assembly appointed a committee to draw up a full and formal answer to the Protest of the Free Church, and report to the Assembly on Saturday, he asks, “What happened on Saturday?” Ans. “There was no report.” He then records that the committee, having been enlarged, did, in August, give in a report to the Commission, and quotes from the “Proceedings” that the Commission agreed to consider this report “at their meeting to-morrow.” We then have—Ques. “What occurred on the morrow?” Ans. “No quorum appeared, and the Commission did not meet.” Ques. “What became of the answer to the Protest?” Ans. “It was never heard of more!”

Mr Gray would gladly have retained the benefits of an Established Church, could he have done so with a good conscience. He confessed that, as an endowed minister, he felt more at rest in regard to his income than at Woodside, or after the Disruption. It was chiefly owing to him that the large congregations of the Free Church in Perth were content with humble structures for themselves, more aid being consequently given to country churches. The claims of the Sustentation Fund were vehemently urged from his pulpit, while congregations had not yet learned to look on the things of others, though his personal interests might thus have suffered. He was himself a liberal contributor. His labours for the Free Church in his own Presbytery were most abundant; and he took a leading part in the Assembly, both in the arrangement of its business and in its legislation. His profound sagacity and knowledge of Church law made his advice much sought and followed in the many perplexing questions that arose both before and after the Disruption. He was the first to suggest the scheme for the evangelisation of the masses in Glasgow which has been so marvellously successful; and the Assembly made him Convener of the Committee on that scheme as long as his health permitted him to take charge of it.

In the prosecution of this great and difficult undertaking, he was separated for weeks together from his own congregation, and subjected to toils which seriously injured his constitution. No one more clearly saw the danger to which the Church is exposed, not only from the encroachments of the State on its freedom, but from the prevalence of ungodliness in our great centres of population. Strict as he was in his views of ecclesiastical order, he reckoned it expedient in the circumstances of our overgrown cities, to employ effective speakers, chosen from the ranks of working men, to reason with their neighbours, “of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Had his life been spared, he would have developed original and valuable ideas and modes of operation in the department of Home Missions. Revival work always lay near his heart; but a suspected undervaluing of the ministerial office on the part of some who were active in its advancement rather alarmed him, though he rejoiced at the co-operation of ministers and gifted members of different churches in giving addresses.

From the time of his coming to Perth to his death (March 10, 1861), he was labouring under chronic bronchitis, which often brought him very low, and made public speaking, especially such vehement oratory as his, a perilous task. He said he made men think rather than feel; but as his weakness increased, his pulpit addresses became very touching. In his eyes the preaching of the gospel always seemed the best and noblest work to which he was called. If his abrupt manner repelled strangers, those who enjoyed his friendship found him true as steel, and of a generous disposition. He had a great desire to visit the Exhibition in London in 1851, but to an old fellow-student who asked pecuniary aid from him at the time, he gave the sum required for his own expenses, and stayed at home himself. Yet perhaps in public life he was apt to be too eager in the pursuit of the objects he sought; and he himself looked on his afflictions as a curb on this natural impetuosity. Once, after a severe paroxysm of coughing, he said to a friend, “I would have been a terrible fellow had the Lord not put some such restraint on me.”

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 Major Robert Greig, Edinburgh

Author: A. S. [perhaps Alexander Stewart, St Columba, Edinburgh]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1924, page 183

At an early stage he was attracted to the military profession, and while still in his teens he became a gunner in the Midlothian Artillery Volunteers. Afterwards he served successively with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Artillery Militia, the Scottish Rifles, and the Highland Light Infantry, from which he finally retired with the rank of Major about the beginning of the century.

After 1900 Major Greig attached himself to the congregation of Buccleuch-Greyfriars, and some years later to that of St Columba’s, Edinburgh, in which he remained an elder until his death, although a year or two ago he gave up his residence in Edinburgh and removed to Shortwoodend, Moffat. In the courts of the Church, as well as in the work of its committees, Major Greig rendered highly useful service. Especially was he a prominent figure in the General Assembly, where his erect soldierly figure and gracious personality will long be remembered. For many years the task of seconding the motion for the election of the new Moderator was assigned to him, and although he was no orator his speeches on those occasions were models of appropriateness and tact.

There was one department of the Church’s work in which Major Greig was specially interested and to which he devoted himself with unflagging enthusiasm. That was the work of the Psalmody Committee. Music, indeed, was the chief hobby of his life. He was an accomplished pianist, and practised assiduously for several hours every day until near the close of his life, when failing eyesight compelled him to relinquish his favourite preoccupation. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that with all his devotion to music, he was uncompromising in his opposition to the use of instrumental music in the worship of the sanctuary, and his own instrument was never opened on the Sabbath day. In collaboration with his friend, Mr Aytoun, he produced, several years ago, the Free Church Psalmody, a publication which has met with remarkable success, and which forms a worthy memorial of his devotion to the interests of congregational praise.

Major Greig was a fine specimen of the Christian gentleman. His manners were marked by an unaffected simplicity and an old-world courtesy which never failed to attract. From his lips one never heard a harsh judgment, or an unkind word. But with all his gentleness he was firm as a rock in his devotion to principle. In the Free Church he leaves behind him a fragrant memory.

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 Thomas Guthrie, D.D.

Author: Rev. John Ker, D.D., United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 285

Thomas Guthrie

The movement which ended in this event had been progressing in the “ten years’ conflict”; a battle waged over the breadth of the land, in country homes and hamlets as well as in church courts, in remote islands as keenly as in the great towns, by lecture and debate, through book, newspaper, and pamphlet, and every agency of speech and pen by which the heart of the people could be reached. It was one of the periodical uprisings that have made the nation what it is. “Scotland,” wrote Lord Palmerston, “is in a flame about the Church question,” and men who imagined the ages of faith gone, and materialism lord of the future, were surprised to see the same unquenched spirit that leapt into being at the voice of Knox, and signed the covenant amid tears of enthusiasm on the tombstone in Greyfriars’ churchyard. In the surging eddies of the fight Thomas Guthrie was often seen, and his winged words, with the pen of Hugh Miller, were powerful co-efficients in bringing out the response which the heart of the people gave to the self-sacrifice of the ministers, and in securing, under God, the success of the Free Church from the first day of its existence. He was in the band that burst from the doors of St Andrew’s, Edinburgh, on the 18th May 1843, and which, beginning with 474 ministers, has grown to 900 churches, three Divinity Halls, and a yearly free-will revenue of half a million sterling. He formed one of a deputation that visited the chief towns of England and Ireland, to explain the principles of the Church, and not long after commenced his operations for the Manse Scheme, which ended with his reporting £116,370 for this one object, as the result of a year’s labour. The journeys, speeches, and business work compressed into this effort might have been spread through an ordinary life, and shook a frame of unusual strength. From homeless ministers, his exertions turned to what had long been in his heart, houseless children, and in 1847 came out the “Plea for Ragged Schools.” Its effect was electric, for the Christian conscience was ready; and he became identified with the movement personally in his own city, and, in name and influence, throughout the country. One plea followed another; hundreds of “life-boats,” to take his own favourite figure, were launched, and he was called on to advocate the cause with the people, and to watch the part taken in it by Parliament. To the close of his life it held the place nearest to his heart of all public questions; not as a piece of politics, or branch of social improvement, but as a chief part of the religion of Christ. His numerous speeches, and his fervent pleadings through the press, have entered deeply into the general zeal for the education and elevation of the people which is one of the best features of our time.

In the midst of these multiplied efforts his health broke down, and a silence of two years from pulpit work made many fear that his public course was finished. But it had half its way to run. In 1850 the happy settlement of Dr Hanna, the son-in-law and accomplished biographer of Dr Chalmers, as co-pastor in St John’s, divided his pulpit labour, and doubled his power and opportunity. His name as a preacher had been growing like sunlight; it was now at its zenith, and audiences representing all classes of rank and culture, mixed with strangers from every part of the world, were drawn to listen to the same gospel preached with a clearness and force, a vividness and human interest, that satisfied a common need. Another field opened in the use of his pen. It is seldom that eloquence of speech can flow through the press without losing a large portion of its colour and vitality, and accordingly his first “Plea for Ragged Schools” took many by surprise, and was the revelation to himself of a latent power. His heart had been touched in what lay nearest to it, and the string of his tongue was loosed to speak on other matters. In 1855 his first volume, “The Gospel in Ezekiel,” appeared, and at this date it has reached its fortieth thousand. “The City: its Sins and Sorrows,” rose to fifty thousand, with others corresponding, too long here to mention. His books cannot represent him to those who never heard him, as he was in his mastery over an audience, not merely by gesture, and voice, and look, but by the mysterious soul magnetism which some speakers possess; nevertheless it is remarkable how much of his heart and life he was able to transmit through the conducting rod of the pen. It is proof of the great store of impressive power with which his spiritual nature was charged, and also of an instinctive literary skill, for though his style in both was the same, there was a change of manner and proportion of which few orators are capable. To thousands who never saw him, he was familiar as the editor of the “Sunday Magazine,” known as “Dr Guthrie’s Magazine,” which reached a great circulation in his hands, and where he gave to the world not only many of his sermons, but his view of things civil and sacred, his observations on men and manners, as, in later years, he extended his journeys at home and abroad. His independence and breadth of handling made his papers always racy reading, while there was felt through them the discrimination of the best touch-stone— “A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.” To number up the subjects in which he took the interest, not of a man who is an editor, but of an editor who is a man, and proved it also by speech and action, would be to give a list of most of the great concerns that touch the welfare of mankind. Anti-slavery, total abstinence, the purity and morality of national law, the improvement of the condition of the army, sanitary reformation, better homes for the people, working-men’s clubs, continental missions, with a peculiar love for the old Church of the Valleys, the union of the Presbyterian denominations, are some of the questions that occupied him. His fugitive papers have an interest, in shewing the comprehensiveness of his nature as well as its intensity, the curious pleasure he took in peering into, and the curiosa felicitas he had in touching, whatever belongs to genuine human nature, and helps it on. Differing as he and the late Dr Norman Macleod did in Church polity and some other things, these two distinguished men had the same ground of a true and broad humanity in them, playful in its rippling creeks, sadly earnest in its depths, with the sure sign of this breadth, a sympathy that moistened into humour and melted into tears; and, never far off, the endeavour to make a wider, nobler, human nature, of which Christ is the alone possible centre.

Some of his later papers were entitled, “Out of Harness,” but this condition he never reached till he lay down to die. A winter’s preaching in Rome, and a visit to America, to work his way across the States to California, where he had a son, were among his last plans, an extraordinary proof of courageous energy on the verge of his seventieth year; and with his heart still pressing forward, his strength failed. His end was by the border of the sea, which had been making its music within him for many years, and he looked out on it, as Bunyan describes his pilgrims by the brink of the river they had to cross, exchanging messages with friends near and far, rehearsing memories and expressing hopes with an affection and faith and humility that were very touching; and at the close of Sabbath the 23d February, he entered into his rest, or should we not say of him, began his new work? He was laid in the Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh, beside numbers of his old companions, eminent ministers and faithful elders, with many a tribute of love and sorrow from the vast multitude that gathered to his burial, but with none felt so deeply as the song of the children of his own Ragged Schools, a requiem very fitting, and also the echo of a welcome, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these little ones.”

While his life-work went beyond the Disruption, we cannot estimate his character without going back to it. Whatever view may be taken of the claims involved in that event, no thoughtful man can help seeing that it contained immense quickening influences. It was an epoch in Scotland, moving and magnetising it as perhaps nothing has done since the Reformation, and those who were most hostile to its principles have not been able to escape its impulse. We should be blind and ungrateful did we not acknowledge the obligation which the entire Christianity of this land, and of others, owes it for its noble testimony to the power of conscience, for the spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity, of free-giving and zealous working, that have flowed from it into many channels, as from a swelling river. If it was a mistake, the world could stand a few more such errors; abnegation is not such a common thing even in the Christian Church that we can afford to want this instance of it; our history would have been poorer, and our life lower, at this day without it, and this is its best practical justification. But, doubtless, it told most on those who were directly engaged in it, and brought out whatever was in them of heart and capacity—an Ithuriel’s spear, with a better result in its touch. Under the frown of Government, and with the door of Parliament shut in their face, they carried their appeal to the people, put the rights and resources of the Church, under its Head, in their hands, and the reply inspired a confidence which made them strong for Christian work everywhere. After Chalmers was so soon withdrawn, there was no one perhaps of the survivors who felt so much this quick beat of the heart for fresh enterprise as Dr Thomas Guthrie. The Disruption, like every other great providential movement, had its men made for it—we omit the living—each fitted to his place; the central fire and upheaving force of Chalmers; Cunningham the Ajax of debate, with his colossal blows; the sinewy strength and marshalling skill of Candlish; the calm sagacious statesmanship of Robert Buchanan; the pen of Hugh Miller, dipped in poetry and feathered with history and philosophy. But Dr Guthrie represented its sense of new-found power not only to maintain itself, but to give out energy as never before; its obedience to the command, “to launch out into the deep and cast the net on the right side;” its interest in the children of the poor, in the home heathen, in the continent of Europe, in the world. It was mainly this spirit which determined henceforth his ecclesiastical outlook, and turned it not back, but forward. From the first he went for the entire abolition of Patronage, when Patronage only was in question. When the independence of the Church in her spiritual domain was invaded in the course of the struggle, he was forced, with many more, to give up connection with the State; but when once that tie was broken, new feelings and considerations came in, and grew with the new experience. A different kind of life brought its own pleasures, in its sense of freedom, its activities, its struggles, its very sacrifices, its growth of affection to objects for which, and friends with whom, these sacrifices had been made—the joy of life in life itself—and it became a question, not difficult to answer, whether all this should be forsaken for the former position, even if it lay open. It is the ancient parable of putting the new wine into the old bottles, with the fact, that the bottles had given way before. Dr Guthrie felt, as he expressed it, “when he had got rid of the crutch and found his limbs,” no desire to go back to that kind of help, and the fear that, if he did, he should lose what he had gained. And, after all, this is what will determine the form of Church reconstruction in Scotland, not the lines drawn across the water by statesmen, but the deep currents below—the necessities and cravings of spiritual life in the Christian people. Statesmanship has often had to recognise that there are things done in the world by its mistakes which it cannot undo. The abolition of the tea tax would not have reclaimed America when independence was declared; and when Israel was once across the sea, in the freedom of the wilderness, with its divine provisions, and Canaan before, not the land of Goshen and a constitution, octroi or other, under a repentant Pharaoh, could have brought them back, though some would fain have tried.

In describing a man, it is the custom to begin with his appearance, and the likeness which this sketch is to accompany invites its continuance. He was tall beyond the ordinary stature, with a strength of frame that would have made him a “shepherd of the people” in the old Homeric time, as his other gifts made him in the movements of ours. The face was not regular, but had much expression, first in the eyes, keen and gray, and then in the mouth, which spoke by its lines, as well as its words; a face that was the farthest from being a cover to the feelings, but let them through in their quick changes, flitting up in sympathy and mirth, and honest anger and righteous scorn. The photographer cannot give this, the reader’s imagination must help. The complexion was swarthy, especially in youth, with long dark hair, which retreated as age advanced, and waved in a cloud-like white about his temples, the general remark being that he grew comelier as he grew older.

His intellectual nature was not of the abstract or contemplative order, but strongly concrete and objective, thinking in analogies and speaking in figures, as old Homer used them, with picture-like fulness that would have been dangerous to the sustained interest but for the glow and movement that made them one with the subject. It recalled the eddy of a Highland pool in love with the overhanging birch and rowan, but still part of the stream. His knowledge was drawn from nature more than science, and from men more than books, gathering all his life from every one he met, and having his library of fact and incident and observation ready at hand. The amount and variety of these, and the power of putting them in easy dramatic form with naturalness and geniality, were the charm of his conversation. Those whose conception of Scottish divines is represented by the dried mummies that fill the vaulted niches of the Capucin Monastery at Rome would have had their ideal disturbed; and yet the type to which he belonged has great antiquity, as any one may see who will study the character of John Knox himself in his “History of the Reformation.” Connected with this was a stock of prompt common sense in reaching instinctive judgments about men and things, much of what is thought to be the national peculiarity of shrewdness, that is, penetration for cases of entanglement, and much also of what is thought to be not so national, tact, the perception of things delicate. But the centre of his natural character was his power of emotion—commonly called heart—a great breadth of human nature, inflammable all round, crackling in playful flames, burning also with steady worklike purpose, and capable of deepening to a still white heat. This made him the preacher and philanthropist he was—a preacher who needed to fill his study in thought with his congregation, and kindle himself thereby to fire them in turn; and a philanthropist, not of the Benthamite school, but with a personal friendship for waifs and strays, a romantic interest in them, and a human naturalist’s study of the curious shell under which he hoped to find his pearl. In little things it was seen, in the ready confidences he made up with children, and the good understanding he was on with dogs; for humane is only human widened out. And humanity lay at the root of his theology. Not but that he was sound to the core in his Christian and Calvinistic faith, that “all things are of God,” and drew it from God’s book. But there are different ways of realising it, as there are different roads leading up to Christ, though He is the one only door. One way of theology is by reasoning the matter down, as is done in systems; another is by thinking it up, and this last was according to his bent. Given man, his sin and unhappiness, and how can he be cured and raised? Is not the gospel the only possible solution of this? Is not its fitness for humanity the seal of its divinity, and is not the centre of its power, as well as its mystery, God manifest in the flesh? It was in this way, we believe, that he reached it for his own comfort; and it was in the presentation of the gospel as the great human need, in the application of it to the circumstances and wants and sorrows and sins of men, as he had learned to know them, that the power of his preaching lay. He had truthful realism, and vivid fancy, and passionate force; but natural as these were in him, they were successful, under God, from their having something in their midst more deeply human, because divine, the presence of Jesus Christ brought close to the heart, as the only Satisfier of its yearnings and Healer of its wounds.

He did much for his own Church, but more for the Church of Christ; and though it may seem a narrower thing to close with, it needs to be said, he did much to represent the best parts of the Scottish character— deep feeling, with a tenderness that seeks to hide itself under humour; sagacity of the head with warmth of the heart; shrewdness with self-devotion; outbursts, resolute to obstinacy, against human authority when it crosses the path of the fear of God; a nature very jealous of its rights, and very fervid for what it believes to be the cause of freedom and truth. History has written down this character of the people for three centuries or more, and it will put the name of Thomas Guthrie among those who in different ways have helped to keep up, and hand forward, the old renown.

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 John Hamilton

Author: Rev. William G. Blaikie, D.D., Professor of Apologetics, New College, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 317

Of the laymen who exercised a leading influence in the Disruption controversy, and in setting up the Disruption Church, Mr Hamilton’s place was second to none, with the single exception of Mr Dunlop. But, for the most part, it was an unseen influence—the influence of a pure-minded, modest man, who sought only to do his duty, courted no eclat, and was careless of fame. Though a member of the bar, he was no public speaker; he never drew forth the enthusiastic huzzahs of the General Assembly, but was content to see his friends wearing the laurels which his exertions had in a large measure helped them to gain.

Mr Hamilton was born in Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, in 1795. His father, who died young, held the office of Deputy-Controller of Excise; his mother was the daughter of Mr Walter Biggar, of Sciennes. He was the youngest of four brothers, all now dead;—Walter, a colonel in the Indian army, who, on succeeding to the Estate of Falkland, assumed the name of Tyndal-Bruce; Andrew, Secretary of the Alliance Assurance Company, London, and for a considerable time editor of the Record newspaper; and Robert, a doctor of medicine. His education was received mainly at the High School and the College of Edinburgh, but between his attendance at these, he spent a couple of years at Shelford, near Cambridge, where Mr Simeon’s curate received a few young men to be boarded and educated. In that beautiful spot, “the garden of Cambridgeshire,” associated with the names of Simeon and Thomason, of Henry Martyn and Henry Kirke White, it is believed that Mr Hamilton first felt the power of grace, and gave his heart to the Lord.

Mr Hamilton was called to the Bar in 1821, and for a number of years lived quietly with his mother and brothers, among whom there subsisted a warm family affection. In 1836 he married Miss Louisa Balfour, daughter of Mr James Balfour of Dantzic, a connection of the family of Balfour of Pilrig. She was a young lady of singular beauty; and not less simplicity and sweetness of character. When on a visit to some relations in Banff, and under the ministry of the late Mr Grant she received her first impressions of divine truth; and we have been told by some who knew her intimately, that her progress in the divine life was singularly interesting and rapid, and that a more beautiful Christian character could hardly have been conceived. The fair prospect of domestic happiness which thus opened to Mr Hamilton was destroyed in less than a year, by his wife dying in childbed, both mother and infant having been laid together in the grave. This was felt by Mr Hamilton as a terrible blow: he bore it like a Christian, but it was long before he regained his wonted tranquillity of mind.

In politics, Mr Hamilton was a Conservative, and being a member of the congregation of the late Dr Muir of St Stephen’s, it did not seem likely that he would take side with what Lord Cockburn and many others called the wild party in the Church. His taking that side, and taking it with great decision and earnestness, was due to his strong conviction that it was constitutionally right, and to his not less strong intuitive perception, that the most vital interests of the Church of Scotland were bound up with the maintenance of non-intrusion and spiritual independence. Nothing short of this could have induced Mr Hamilton to labour as he did in the cause. We have said that he was no platform man or public speaker. He was a chamber-counsel for the Church, a wise adviser in her difficulties, a compiler of important documents, a writer of pamphlets for statesmen and public men, a negotiator in delicate transactions, the trusted and valued friend of the more prominent leaders, particularly Dr Candlish, with whom Mr Hamilton had extraordinary influence, and in whose congregation, after the Disruption, he took office as an elder. During the conflict (1840-41), he wrote two pamphlets that did yeoman’s service in the cause of the Church; the one entitled, “The Present Position of the Church of Scotland Explained and Vindicated,” the other, “A Remonstrance, especially addressed to the Members of the Legislature and others, in relation to the Scottish Church question, embodying an answer to an article on the same subject in the Quarterly Review!” Mr Hamilton filled for some time the laborious and irksome post of Secretary of the Non-Intrusion Committee; and when the Disruption hove in sight, and for a considerable time thereafter, he was Convener of the Building Committee. He rendered another important service, as editor, for a considerable time, of the Scottish Guardian newspaper.

The chief feature that distinguished Mr Hamilton among the galaxy of great men at that remarkable time, was his singular fairness and calmness in controversy, joined to profound earnestness, and deepest concern for the interests involved. These were qualities remarkably fitted to gain the esteem of opponents, at a time when those whose post was often on platforms and in Church Courts were naturally more hot and excited. How remarkably Mr Hamilton impressed public men with his fairness and honesty, may be gathered from the opinion of the Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Aberdeen. The latter nobleman wrote to Mr Thomson of Banchory (Jan. 27. 1840): “Mr Hamilton will perhaps like to be informed that I have placed his pamphlet in the hands of the Duke of Wellington, who, at my request, has read it, and entertains a very favourable opinion of the work. The Duke takes a warm interest in the affairs of our Church, and deeply laments the unhappy differences which exist.” A few months afterwards, Lord Aberdeen wrote of Mr Hamilton, with whom he had now become acquainted, contrasting him with some other champions of the Church: “Your friend Hamilton is a man of another stamp altogether. I had the greatest pleasure in all my intercourse with him, and found him always the same, honest and straightforward, and invariably adhering to his words. I did not agree with him, far from it, but that was quite a different matter; he is as well entitled to his opinion as I am to mine, but I always had pleasure in discussing with him,” &c. A similar impression of Mr Hamilton’s character was conveyed by an eminent member of the Parliament House, shortly after the publication of his second pamphlet. It was understood that this gentleman was the author of the article in the Quarterly to which the pamphlet was a reply. “I was much gratified to-day,” wrote Mr Hamilton to Mr Thomson (2d March 1841), “by G. M. [George Moir] coming up to me in the House with great frankness, and saying he had read me, and had nothing to complain of, as he might say what Chalmers had said in relation to the Dean, that ‘it was a great happiness to fall into the hands of a gentleman.'” The celebrated pamphlet of the Dean of Faculty, however, Mr Hamilton could not regard with respect. “It appears to me,” he said, “to distort the whole subject of controversy to an extent that I should have thought absolutely impossible. Unquestionably it is written, throughout, in the spirit or tone of a counsel or party in a private cause, which is far from the temper of mind with which it befits either the duty or the interest of the country to regard the proceedings of its Established Church.”

It is not easy to estimate the value of the calm, fair, judicial tone of a man like Mr Hamilton, in the face of the unexampled torrent of denunciation which the attitude of the Church drew down on it. There was such a gentle, honest look about him, that the usual epithets, “firebrand and fanatic,” would not fit him in any degree. The world has long since learned to regard the lofty spirit of self-sacrifice as the outstanding feature of the Free Church movement, and before the splendour of that spirit the infirmities of controversy, which marked some of her leading men, have passed out of view. But in those days this was reversed. The world would not believe in the sincerity of the Church, and its refusal to obey the law exasperated the friends of law and order to the verge of madness. The whole tone and character of Mr Hamilton, and, indeed, of not a few other leading men, was a demonstration of the world’s injustice. As shrewd as any man, as true a Conservative, as good a friend of the law, as sincere a lover of the constitution, he not only sailed with the wild men, but helped to steer the ship. On some points of policy, it is true, he did not agree with some of his friends. When the veto was declared illegal, he would have made some concession, and in some other matters he would have been more cautious, but he was too loyal to the great principles involved in the controversy to allow such matters to cool his earnestness in the cause.

Mr Hamilton died in the prime of life. His last illness was sudden and short. In the end of August 1847, he was seized with diarrhoea, which ended fatally on 2d September. Dr Candlish hastened to the bedside of his friend, and found him in the last extremity of weakness. “He could scarcely speak articulately,” says Dr Candlish, in an interesting notice of him, “but his breathings were all ejaculatory thanksgivings and prayers. We asked him if he had anything to say regarding the affairs of the Church, in which together we had taken so deep an interest, and shared so many toils. No, he briefly answered; you know my views on all points sufficiently already. Nothing then passed but what pertained to the common salvation. His smile was radiant as in broken sentences he poured out his soul, adoring Christ’s love, and wondering that it should have reached such a sinner as himself. We asked if he would wish us to join in prayer, and immediately, with a beaming countenance, he himself offered up a short collected supplication. The scene was too affecting. He had on the previous day commissioned one of his medical attendants, who was also a personal friend, to convey a message to the writer, and to another of the brethren, to the effect, that on his deathbed he derived great comfort from the thought of the principles he had maintained, and the cause in which he had contended. But while thus bearing testimony, along with so many others, to the preciousness of these principles and of that cause, as seen in the light of the eternal world breaking in upon the departing soul—while deriving consolation from the remembrance of his having been enabled to be faithful to the crown rights of the Redeemer, in whose presence he was so soon to appear—he was far from resting his confidence on any other ground than the mediatorial work of the Great High Priest. It was of Jesus, as the Lamb of God, that he spoke; it was atoning blood that gave him all his hopes; and redeeming love formed the burden of his last feeble utterance of praise. We saw him in the same frame on the night before he died. Early on the 22d he fell asleep in Jesus.”

The names of champions whose eloquence resounded through the country and stirred the soul of the multitude, are naturally remembered longest, and by the greatest number. But there are still some who are moved with a tender and respectful affection, if perchance, sauntering through St Cuthbert’s churchyard, their eye lights on the stone that bears the name of John Hamilton. It recalls to them a man eminently good and loveable, and reminds them how much the Free Church owes to such men, who, in the noblest spirit, and with much self-sacrifice, built the wall of Jerusalem in troublous times.

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 William Maxwell Hetherington

Author: Rev. W. M. Falconer, M.A., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 301

William Maxwell Hetherington

He received his primary education in the parish school of Troqueer, which he left however without introduction to the study of the Classical Languages. In 1822, after a few months’ private study of Latin and Greek, he matriculated in the University of Edinburgh, at the age of nineteen, and in spite of disadvantages in preliminary training, achieved marked success as a student all along the lines of study; taking the highest place in Greek, and the second in the class of Moral Philosophy. His relations to Professor Wilson developed rapidly into intimate friendship; and it was under his encouragement, that he ventured to publish in 1829, before completing his Theological Curriculum, a small volume of poems, under the title of “Dramatic Sketches.”

On the completion of his course of study, Mr Hetherington received an appointment as tutor, first in the family of a Scottish nobleman, and then to the son of an Irish peer resident in London. During this period of comparative leisure which extended over several years, he devoted himself to the study of general history; and in the course of his research became impressed with the idea that there was room for a popular exposition of the course of providential discipline by which the world was prepared for the advent of the Son of God. In prosecution of this idea, he published in 1834 an elaborate treatise, felicitously titled “The Fulness of Time,” in which he traced the progress of the mental and moral development of the race during the Patriarchal Age, and under the dynasties of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The work is one of profound erudition, and is confessedly the ablest and most original of his writings.

In 1836, Mr Hetherington accepted a presentation to the parish of Torphichen, in the Presbytery of Linlithgow, where he speedily won for himself a position of influence, by the earnest evangelism of his ministry, and the ardour with which he entered into the discussion of the public questions of the day.

Shortly after his ordination he married a daughter of the Rev. Dr Meek, of Hamilton, formerly of Torphichen, who by a singular arrangement of Providence, returned as his wife, to the manse in which she had been born, and where she had spent the years of girlhood.

During these opening years of his ministry, Mr Hetherington, though a young man, gained the confidence of the more public leaders of the Evangelical party; he was looked to as a representative in his district of the country; and was in frequent and intimate communication with them. Perhaps the most effective of his platform appearances on the Church question was made at this time, in Linlithgow, when, in response to a sudden call to take the place of a deputation from Edinburgh who had failed to appear, he held the large audience spellbound, while in an extempore address of three hours, he expounded the principles at stake.

His ministry at Torphichen was a period of great literary activity; his “Minister’s Family,” the article “Rome” for the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” and numerous contributions to the Presbyterian Review, and other Magazines, being amongst his lighter efforts.

As the Ecclesiastical Controversy advanced, Mr Hetherington became alive to the want of a Treatise, which would present, in a popular form, the historical bearings of the questions in debate; a want which he supplied by his “History of the Church of Scotland,” published in 1841. The rapidity with which new editions were called for, testified at once to the seasonableness of the Work, and to the important part it played in ripening the minds of the people for the brilliant issue of 1843. In the Autumn of that year the history was brought down to the Disruption; and by the year 1848 the work had reached the sixth edition.

His next important literary contribution to the solution of existing ecclesiastical problems, was a “History of the Westminster Assembly,” published in 1843. Written with the avowed intention of “vindicating the principles and the character of the Presbyterian Church,” the work did an important service at a time when these were both “misrepresented and condemned.” It is characterised by the author’s wonted intensity of thought and feeling, and stands alone as a popular History of the Genesis of the Standards of the Presbyterian Church. In a recent edition, published in 1878, under the editorship of the Rev. Dr Williamson, Ascog, Bute, the work has been enhanced in value, by the addition of a considerable amount of new matter, and by various important corrections which have been supplied by the publication of a portion of the Original Minutes of the Assembly proceedings, a document, which until after the death of the historian was supposed to have been “irrecoverably lost.”

In 1840, Mr Hetherington was one of the General Assembly’s deputies to the refractory Presbytery of Strathbogie, and in the discharge of his work received the usual attention of a Civil Interdict, which he defied on the strength of his higher commission as a servant of Christ and of His Church.

Mr Hetherington was present at all the diets of the memorable Convocation in 1842, in which the Church’s line of action was finally determined; and has left behind him an interesting memorandum of each day’s proceedings, noted on the spot.

There is no need that we should here describe the familiar and stirring events of the 18th of May 1843; but a few lines from a letter of that date to his “disinherited wife” may be of more than personal interest.

“The deed is done!! We are now sitting in the hall of our new Assembly with feelings of the deepest solemnity, yet holy joy, and unutterable peace. … All was done in calm and solemn sacredness of manner and spirit. The protest was read without interruption; then Dr Welsh stepped down from the chair and walked out, followed closely by Drs Chalmers, Gordon, Makellar, Macfarlane, &c. Then we all rose and left the house as quietly as we could. … The hall (Tanfield) is quite full, and it will contain at least 3000 people. About 460 ministers have signed the protest … were there no more, enough. Glory to God alone! … All has gone on most nobly, and every one seems light and happy, and thankful to God for the great things which He has done for us.”

On the second Monday of its session, the Assembly of 1843, “taking into consideration all the goodness which the Church had received at the Lord’s hands,” appointed Thursday the 15th of June as a day of thanksgiving, to be observed in all the congregations of the Church. The pastoral address issued on the occasion was prepared by Mr Hetherington.

On the 28th of May Mr Hetherington preached for the last time in the Parish Church of Torphichen, closing the service with a solemn protest against the action of the Legislature, by which “wrong had been done to the constitution of the kingdom, and to the Church of God.” It is an interesting evidence of the deliberate certainty with which he had anticipated the issue of the controversy, that the site for the new church at Torphichen was secured, and some materials collected, before he set out for the meeting of the Assembly in 1843. The removal of earth for the foundations was begun on the 12th of June, and on the 6th of August, within eight weeks of its commencement, the church was opened for public worship. On the 24th day of the same month Mr Hetherington entered the new manse; and, on the 2nd of October, a new building was opened as a school-house. Thus it was given to the congregation of Torphichen to complete successively the first church, manse, and school-house in connection with the Free Church of Scotland.

In addition to the enormous labour of organising the Free Church, there fell upon the leaders of the Disruption the work of expounding its principles far and wide, at the earnest solicitation of friends interested in its history. Mr Hetherington was sent in November of 1843, along with Dr Candlish, Rev. Andrew Gray of Perth, D. M. Makgill Crichton, Esq., and others, to visit certain of the leading towns in Yorkshire. A short extract from a letter, dated Bradford, 24th November 1843, will give an idea of the straining character of these missions. “For three days I have been driven from place to place, travelling every day, I know not how many miles, scarcely reaching the place of meeting till the hour was come, and then commencing to speak immediately; again resuming conversation after returning from the meeting, and continuing till two or three o’clock in the morning; then getting up at seven in order to resume travelling on next morning. Such has been my course since Monday, at Sheffield, and must be for another week, till I leave Leeds. This forenoon I addressed the meeting at Bradford, and have to speak again this evening. To-morrow I obtain a little respite; and, on Sabbath, have to preach three times. On Monday I have to be at Leeds; on Tuesday, Dr Candlish and I return to Sheffield, and thence again to Leeds. …”

Early in 1844, Mr Hetherington accepted a call from the congregation of St Andrews. He was a fitting representative of the evangelical cause in a university city, which was a hereditary stronghold of Erastianism, and the very “Siberia of Moderatism.” By appointment of General Assembly he received a certain Professorial charge of the students attending the University of St Andrews who adhered to the Free Church. One of them, who remembers his friendship with a grateful enthusiasm, thus writes:— “It was of great value to us in that testing time and place to be in habitual contact with a man of nerve and vigour like Dr Hetherington. There was about him a wholesome atmosphere of sharply defined opinion, which was a shield to our young convictions. … Altogether, with his literary wealth, his ecclesiastical lore, his fertility and vigour of thought, his robust convictions, and his manly courage in maintaining them, he made his years in St Andrews a time of forcible and effective service.”

As a pastor and preacher he was held in the highest esteem by his congregation, and, although circumstances arose which somewhat marred the peacefulness of his work at the close of his ministry in St Andrews, the attachment of the congregation was evinced by a memorial, couched in the most affectionate terms, and signed by 427 members and adherents, urging him to refuse the call which an Edinburgh congregation had addressed to him.

Immediately on his settlement in St Andrews, Mr Hetherington received the Degree of LL.D. from the College of New Brunswick, U.S.; and, eleven years later, in 1855, the Degree of D.D. was conferred on him by the Jefferson College, Pennsylvania. At St Andrews, he started and for four years edited the Free Church Magazine.

In 1848 Dr Hetherington was translated to Edinburgh, to the pastoral charge of the congregation of St Paul’s. His Edinburgh ministry was an influential and, in many respects, a remarkable one. The notes of daily work which he has left indicate a rare amount of pastoral activity. In the pulpit he was always fresh, always vigorous, and not unfrequently rose to a height of real eloquence, when his theme kindled the passionate fire that was so characteristic of him. His widest fame as a preacher was achieved in connection with his monthly Sabbath evening lectures on the characters and scenes of Old Testament history. These lectures were enriched by a free use of his extensive stores of historical and scientific information; and in them Old Testament incident was often used as a foil to set off some moral principle bearing a contemporary national or social life. They attracted hearers from all parts of the city, and throughout the whole course the large church was crowded month after month,—pews, passages, and pulpit stairs being thronged with eager listeners.

At this period he was a frequent lecturer on subjects of general interest—social, literary, and historical; in 1853, delivered in Exeter Hall, London, a brilliant lecture on “Coleridge and his Followers;” and during his Edinburgh ministry wrote his well-known “Memoir of Mrs Coutts.”

After a laborious ministry of nine years in Edinburgh, he received a unanimous appointment by the General Assembly of 1857 to the chair of Apologetics and Systematic Theology in the Free Church College of Glasgow. A posthumous volume entitled “The Apologetics of the Christian Faith,” which contains the lectures prepared for his students during his first session, and almost in the form in which they were originally delivered, testifies to the enthusiasm and thoroughness with which he entered on the duties of the professorship.

In connection with this period of Dr Hetherington’s life, it is due to him to refer to his unwearied labours in fostering the young charge of Kelvinside, of whose provisional session he was the first moderator, and over whose beginnings he watched with all a pastor’s affectionate care.

The heavy strain of the first two years of his professorship fatally undermined his constitution, and prepared the way for a stroke of paralysis in 1862, by which he was entirely laid aside from public duty. During three years he bore his affliction with the most perfect resignation. Though the vigour of his mental powers was much impaired, and his remarkable memory sadly shattered, he manifested occasionally something of his old clearness of perception, and was to the end keenly alive to the preciousness of Divine truth. The end came peacefully on the 23rd of May 1865. His wife, who tended him with the most affectionate devotion through his protracted illness, thus wrote a few months after his departure:— “When I remember his irrepressible energy and restless activity of both mind and body in younger days, I look back with thankfulness and something like wonder to the calm, cheerful, submissive, patient sufferer. Never a murmur escaped his lips; and when, on that bright morning, he fell asleep in Jesus, without a struggle, without a pained look, without even a nervous quiver, I truly felt how graciously and tenderly the Lord, in His mercy and loving-kindness, had dealt with me and mine; and now all my reminiscences of him are pure, unmingled love—love that draws me onward and upward to my Saviour and my God.”

By his own request, his remains were interred in the Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh, “as near as possible to Cunningham.” The session of the General Assembly afforded to many of his old friends and admirers the melancholy satisfaction of following his body to the grave. The graceful monument that marks his resting-place was erected to his memory by the congregation of St Paul’s, who never ceased to cherish the most affectionate regard for their former pastor.

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 James Maitland Hog of Newliston

Author: Rev. James C. Burns, M.A., Kirkliston
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 317

Mr Hog was one of the comparatively small number of “lairds,” or landed proprietors, in Scotland who, having been attached to the Evangelical party in the Establishment previous to 1843, “came out” at the Disruption. In his own county of Linlithgow he stood alone.

From the year 1828 (the date of his ordination to the eldership by Dr Gordon), he had taken an active interest in Church affairs, as well as in Christian work generally. He resided at that time in Edinburgh, having been called to the bar a few years previously,—a contemporary and confrére of such men as Graham Speirs, Alexander Earle Monteith, and Mungo P. Brown, who were ordained to the eldership along with him.

In 1834, when, at the call of the General Assembly, Dr Chalmers placed himself at the head of the “Church Extension Movement,” Mr Hog was his chosen ally; and, having his time largely at his own command, he did more, perhaps, than any other man in the way of personal service to promote its success. He accompanied the great doctor on most of his tours throughout Scotland, and took charge of the general subscription, which (having his own name next to the doctor’s at the top of it) welled up to what was then thought the munificent amount of £200,000, in the course of the ensuing twelve months.

During the ten years of the “conflict,” until within a year and a half or so of its close, Mr Hog was a trusty and much esteemed member of the “Non-intrusion Committee.” About that time, however, being constitutionally “conservative” and cautious, and having taken alarm at what appeared to him to be rash, or prematurely exacting, in the demands of the Committee, he was one of a small minority who retired, and thus kept themselves uncommitted by any of the subsequent negotiations. For so doing, he lost his seat in the Assembly of 1842; the Presbytery of Linlithgow, which for several years he had represented, withdrawing from him for the time their confidence, and returning a more decided non-intrusionist in his stead. It is amusing as well as instructive now to remember, that when the day of trial came, it was not he that proved faithless, but they, so little did they know either him or themselves. Of the sixteen members of Presbytery who should have come out, only five came.

Mr Hog was among the very last to be convinced that the case of the Church was hopeless. He clung to the persuasion that Lord Aberdeen meant bona fide to acknowledge the Church’s jurisdiction, and that Sir George Sinclair’s clause might have done. He could not bring himself to believe that the Conservative Government was capable of so destructive a deed as the breaking up of the Establishment. He refused to admit that a Disruption was inevitable, until it had actually taken place. And even then he tried to persuade himself that it was premature, or that the breach was not irreparable. It was not till a week or more had elapsed, till the two General Assemblies had got through the greater part of their business, till the Deed of Demission had been signed, and the separation was complete, that he finally made up his mind.

And it was not, after all, what the State had done, or rather refused to do; it was not even the Queen’s letter that decided him; but what the Church herself (the “remanent” part of it) did, in formally homologating and adopting as her own the policy of the civil courts. The point on which he had all along felt most strongly, which alone touched his conscience as a Christian man, which he regarded as absolutely vital (vital no less to “the body,” than it is to each member in particular), was Christ’s headship of the Church,—its absolute dependence upon Him, its inherent independence and freedom under Him: and so it was, when he came to see that not only had that independence been trampled on by the civil courts, and repudiated by the State, but surrendered and sacrificed at the State’s bidding by the Church herself,—and not till then, that he saw the path of duty made plain before him. He did not hesitate a moment after that. The reponing of the seven deposed ministers of Strathbogie, or rather the finding that they had never been deposed, because the Court of Session said so, was what at length convinced him, that though the Establishment still remained, the dear old “Church of his fathers” was no longer to be found within its walls.

It was on Friday, the 26th May, that the “Seven” were thus rehabilitated; a minority of thirty-three protesting against the deed, on the same ground substantially as that on which Mr Hog condemned it,— and one of the number (Mr Story of Roseneath) denouncing it as being equivalent to a declaration that “what had been had not been, and that a sentence pronounced by the Assembly was not a sentence.” These thirty-three protested, and remained. Next day Mr Hog wrote the following letter to Dr Gordon:—

“My Dear Dr Gordon,—Having been confined to the house since the 16th by an attack of influenza, I have been unable personally to witness the events of the last ten days; but this solitude has been favourable to that calm review of all the circumstances affecting the Church, which I had always resolved to take before committing myself to any particular step. I can no longer hesitate to which communion I shall attach myself.

“Believing that the constitution of the Church has been violated by the decisions of the civil courts exceeding their province in suspending ecclesiastical sentences, declaring them null and void, and interdicting the preaching of the gospel; seeing no disposition on the part of the Government to admit any grievance, or to secure what is essential to the existence of a Christian community; and, finally, having observed the ‘remaining’ Assembly bowing in the dust, and echoing the very words of the civil courts, declaring the solemn sentences of the Church to be ‘null and void,’ I feel that I have no choice but to turn from her with the most melancholy aversion.

“If I have been tardy in declaring myself, it is because I felt it my duty to watch the last struggles of the Church as I would the death-bed of an expiring parent, not feeling at liberty to depart till the spirit was fled, and the work of corruption begun. My duty to myself, to my children, and, I believe, to my country, requires me, therefore, to join the communion of those who have sacrificed their all to maintain their principles.

“I make this communication through you, because it was from you that I received my ordination as an elder; and it was my difference of opinion with yourself in the Non-intrusion Committee that gave me the greatest pain.—Believe me to be, my dear Dr Gordon, with the greatest respect and regard, yours faithfully-.

“J. M. Hog

“To the Rev. Dr Gordon.”

Such was the enthusiasm awakened by the reading of this letter, when the Assembly met on Monday, the 29th, in the Brick Church, Lothian Road, that a demand was made for its being read a second time, and that Dr Gordon should re-read it, in Tanfield Hall (which, as always, was crowded to the roof), in the evening. The rev. doctor in coming forward “was received with loud and long continued cheering from the immense assemblage.” When the applause had subsided, he said, “I appear before you this night as a proxy, and therefore I thank you for the way in which you have received me. I take your approbation as offered to my dear and much esteemed friend Mr Hog, who is worthy of it all.” Dr Guthrie used to say, “that letter of Mr Hog’s was a stroke of genius.”

One of Mr Hog’s oldest and most intimate friends (his brother-in-law) was Mr Patrick Fraser Tytler, the historian, and it is interesting to know what he thought of this “weighty and powerful” letter. Writing from London a few days after, he says:—

From that day forward Mr Hog threw himself, heart and soul, into the movement—indeed he devoted to it the rest of his life, feeling himself called (as he said) to do double service, to work “double tides,” as “one born out of due time.”

His first care was to “shew piety at home,” by looking after the supply of ordinances for “those of his own house,” and by associating himself with those of his fellow-elders and fellow-parishioners of Kirkliston who had already been moving, or who might afterwards adhere to the Free Church; and, having learned that steps had been taken, in view of the event, both for the erection of a church and the providing of a house for its future minister, he at once offered to relieve his brethren of all further anxiety about either by providing both himself, on the single condition that the whole sum which had been or might be contributed for local purposes should be transmitted to the Central Church Building Fund. How fully and handsomely he implemented this engagement need not here be told. Dr Chalmers laid the foundation-stone of the new church in August, and Dr Guthrie opened it (introducing at the same time its first minister) in December following.

Of his public services to the Church, its records supply ample information—and, indeed, they speak for themselves. Of the three great movements with which he specially identified himself, it may be truly said that he completed them all, leaving little or nothing for any one else to do.

The Bursary Scheme for the New College was his scheme alone,—he, in accordance with the advice of Dr Chalmers and his colleagues, having taken it up in the first instance, rather than another which he had contemplated, for the endowment of the Professors’ Chairs. He went about quietly among his friends, informing and interesting them in the subject, getting one and another to do as he had done—to found a bursary, and name it; and only ceased from his assiduities when he had secured what he thought enough—an annual income of somewhere about £600.

In 1848, after the lamented death of Sheriff Speirs, Mr Hog was selected as, next to him, the fittest man in the Church to preside over the Committee on “Refusal of Sites,’ and manage the difficult business entrusted to it. How well he acquitted himself in this position is proved by the fact that the battle was successfully fought, and sites ultimately obtained,— “owing mainly,” said Dr Candlish, “to the tact, judgment, patience, and perseverance of Mr Hog.”

The Debt Extinction Scheme was mainly his scheme also, having associated with him in it a “true yoke-fellow,” Mr William Campbell of Tillichewan. The multitude of letters he wrote, of meetings, public and private, he attended, and of journeys he undertook in this cause, would seem almost incredible, were it named; but he grudged neither time nor labour, any more than he grudged money, for any good cause which he embarked in; and it is interesting to remember, that at the last meeting of his Committee which he was able to attend, when he had to be carried into the room in his chair, he had the satisfaction of intimating that the whole contemplated sum of £50,000 had been subscribed, with several hundreds over,—that his work in connection with it was done.

The “Sabbath Question” was one in which, it may be added, he took a lively interest, especially in connection with the running of passenger trains on the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway; and it was to him, in conjunction with his much esteemed co-director, Mr Henderson of Park, more than to any one else—to his combined firmness of purpose and suavity of bearing—that the satisfactory settlement of the controversy then arrived at was due.

The “Elders’ Association” of the Free Church was formed in 1858; and had he been able, he would have been its first president. As it was, he could only write (and with great difficulty), within a month or two of his death—in the form of a letter to Mr Robert Paul—some of his thoughts on the subject of the eldership, which formed, I believe, the basis of Mr Paul’s own address at the next general meeting, and which are as judicious and wise as in the circumstances they were felt to be impressive—like a message to his brethren from the other world.

During the last two years of his life Mr Hog was an invalid, confined, not to his bed nor his room, but to his chair or his pony-carriage, by a stealthy paralytic affection, which deprived him of all power of locomotion. Beginning at his lower extremities, the disease “crept” up gradually over his body, reducing him to great physical prostration; and in the end—some months before his death—producing a painfully depressing effect on his mind. From being the sunniest, the most cheerful, he became one of the saddest of men. His countenance lost the smile, which no one had ever missed before. But never did his character shine out more impressively, or the genuineness of his piety make itself more evident (to all but himself), than under that severely trying discipline. Even when cheerfulness was no longer possible, his patience never gave way. No murmur ever crossed his lips, nor, sad though his countenance looked, did it ever betray a symptom of peevishness or of unwillingness to bear. He seemed to grow, even in the absence of sensible comfort from his religion. His graces ripened in the shade. I may have read or heard of, but certainly I never witnessed, either a humility, a sense of sin so deep, or a faith so simple, so exclusive, as his. He could see nothing in himself from which to derive comfort, even in the way of evidence. “Assurance” he had none. But all the more did he cling, did he adhere, to Christ, who was truly “all in all” to him. And at the very worst, he could not help admitting, with as sweet a smile as of old, that Christ was “precious” to him, though refusing to admit the inference that he was one of “them that believe.”

In his recently published Autobiography (written within a month or two of his own death), Dr Guthrie makes the following reference to Mr Hog, and to these his last days:—

It was not the last day of his life when the above incident occurred, but it was the last day he was able to be dressed, or to leave his room. There were other two days remaining, which, though they were days of severe suffering (from fever, oppression in breathing, and otherwise), were yet days of perfect calmness, and apparently undisturbed peace. The cloud was being dispersed; the sun was gleaming, shining, through. It was “evening time,” and it was “light.”

An hour or two before the close, calling once more for the little tube, he spelled out his dying testimony thus: “I am looking to the Saviour: my only hope is in Jesus.” Then he asked that a psalm might be read to him, the 143d; after that, Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Jesus, lover of my soul”; also that other sweet hymn (long a favourite with him), “Just as I am, without one plea.” Then, declining to hear anything further, and knowing that he had nothing more to do but to die, he expressed a wish to be removed to his bed from the chair, where he had been sitting all night (taking his farewell look, from the window, of the sweet landscape which he knew so well); and this had scarcely been done, when the loud breathing ceased, the oppressed bosom gave its last heave, and all was over.

“It was somewhat singular,” a dear friend of his and mine, Mr Robert Paul, afterwards remarked, “he died at twelve o’clock on the night of Saturday, the 31st day of July; and the glorified spirit opened his eyes then, on a new day, a new week, a new month, a new Sabbath, a new life, a new heaven—an eternity, at once!” Had Mr Hog been spared till that day week he would have entered on a new year also—the fifty-ninth year of his age—having been born on the 7th August 1799.

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 James Ingram

Author: James B. Gillies, Esq., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 325

James Ingram

The Rev. Dr James Ingram of Unst, the north-most island of Shetland, and the most northerly point of Her Majesty’s dominions, was for many years the father of the Free Church. The inhabitants of Shetland have some compensation for the bleakness of their place of abode, its wild seas, and its stormy shores, and its boggy soil. They enjoy an equable temperature, pure air, and a mode of existence, which, with all its hardships is free from the exciting turmoil of the busy haunts of trade and commerce. It is probably to these advantages, more than to its inheritance of a robust Scandinavian ancestry, that Shetland owes its freputation for the longevity of its people. Dr Ingram, the oldest minister of the Gospel in the British Isles at his death, was not a native Shetlander. He was born in Logie Coldston, Aberdeenshire, 3rd April 1776, and lived till within a few weeks of completing his 103rd year. He came of a long-lived family. His father lived to the age of 100, and his grandfather to the patriarchal age of 105. Both of them spent their long years on the same farm, in the Daugh, parish of Logie Coldston.

James Ingram, the subject of this sketch, received his early education in the parish school of Tarland, and afterwards in the Grammar School of Old Aberdeen. He entered upon his Arts curriculum in King’s College there, when fifteen years of age, and was a distinguished student, carrying off the highest competition bursary of his entrance session. He commended himself by his diligence and talent to the whole professorial body, and particularly to Dr Jack, then the Principal of the College, and during life the warm friend of his promising pupil. He began his Divinity course at Aberdeen in 1795, and the following year he was appointed tutor to the family of Mrs Barclay, widow of the parish minister of Unst, obtaining in this way his first introduction to the island where he laboured as a minister for more than half-a-century. Supporting himself for the most part by his emoluments as a teacher, he continued his attendance at the Divinity Hall, from time to time, till the year 1800, when he was licensed as a probationer by the Presbytery of Shetland.

His first appointment as a minister of the Gospel, was to be assistant to the Rev. James Gordon, minister of Fetlar and North Yell, on whose death he was presented to the vacancy by the patron, Lord Dundas.

After his ordination, he was married to Mary, daughter of Mrs Barclay, and the happy union was blessed with a family of four daughters and three sons. The manse was in Fetlar, but having charge of the congregation of Yell also, Mr Ingram had to cross and re-cross almost weekly, the channel, six miles broad, which separates the two islands. Only those who have sailed among the fierce and rapid tides of the Shetland Isles, can form any conception of what it must have been to navigate such seas in an open boat, summer and winter, for eighteen years. Not many constitutions could have endured the hardships which fell to the lot of the parish minister of Fetlar at this time. He braced himself to his work cheerfully and joyously, preaching and visiting and catechising from house to house, with all the more diligence because it was impossible to tell how long it might be before the warring elements might permit of his next visit.

In 1821, he obtained some relief from this incessant toil and exposure. The church of Unst became vacant, and the godly of the people cast their eyes upon the devoted minister of Fetlar, as the man best known to them as a faithful steward in things pertaining to the kingdom. Lord Dundas was pleased to have the opportunity of again doing a kindness to Mr Ingram; and to the great joy of the people of Unst, the object of their choice was settled amongst them in 1821, to remain, as Providence had ordained, till almost every individual of his new charge had preceded him to the grave or left the island.

The new pastor did not enter upon another man’s line of things made ready to his hand. Previous to the time of the Haldanes and others, who in the beginning of this century, preached the Gospel in these far-off islands of the North Sea, this Ultima Thule of the Romans was as dreary in its spiritual as in its physical condition. The island of Unst in particular, so far as the ministry was concerned, had known nothing of religion except in the form of Moderatism, and the virtuous life which was the theme of the pulpit ministrations was rarely exemplified in the habits of the people. Mr Ingram may almost be said to have re-christianised Unst. He found the people grossly ignorant, and he established schools. He found them addicted to intemperance, through the facilities offered for smuggling by foreign vessels, as well as through the entire want of intellectual resources, and he founded a temperance society which entirely changed the habits of the greater part of the people. There is probably no part of the British Isles where intoxicating liquors are now less used than in Shetland. The hardy Zetlanders who prosecute the haaf-fishing make tea their beverage when engaged in their arduous calling, and the visitor to the Shetland Isles cannot fail to be struck with the appearance of the tea-kettle, not only at every fireside, but in every peat-field and scene of out-door labour. Much of this reformation is owing to the early and long-continued inculcation of temperance principles by Dr Ingram among his parishioners in the northmost island of the group. As an illustration of the character of the people, and the good effects of temperate habits, we may note that we found in 1870, two constables responsible for the peace of the whole group of islands; and we were amused to find the one who had charge of Lerwick (with a population of over 4000) enjoying a day’s fishing on the opposite side of the mainland, because he had nothing else to do.

But the Gospel was after all the great lever power employed by the minister of Unst for raising the moral standard of the people. He was an instructive, earnest, and faithful preacher of the Word, and from his first entrance among his flock, he instituted the practice of regular visitation and catechising. The ordinance of Church discipline was also revived, and became a subordinate but real means of grace. His labours were not in vain in the Lord. The outward reformation of manners was not the only outcome of his fidelity as a preacher and a pastor. There are still those in Unst who can speak of him as their spiritual father, and many more who could give the same testimony, have gone before him to heaven.

In 1838, Mr Ingram’s son was associated with his father in the pastorate by his steady friend, Lord Zetland, moved, as in the case of the senior minister, by the free voice of the people as well as by his own inclination.

In number of years, Mr Ingram, senior, was an old man at the date of the Disruption. He was then sixty-seven. But his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. He was as forward and decided as his son in taking his side in the conflict which came to a climax in 1843. And this, although he held strong views in favour of church establishments founded on a Scriptural basis, and, although the difficulties of erecting new church buildings and organising a new congregation were peculiarly formidable in a place where poverty is extreme, most of the people being in a chronic state of debt to the landowners and merchants, seldom fingering money, but bartering their labour for articles of necessity, and sometimes — against their will — for articles of superfluity. A large majority of the natives of Unst, however, encouraged their ministers by their adherence, and by their material support as far as their slender resources permitted. The peculiarity of their position, so remote from the stimulus and fellowship of brethren like-minded, came at last under the notice of the great leader of the Disruption. For several months the ministers, father and son, had to conduct Divine worship in the open air, and, afterwards, the congregation and Sabbath school had to content themselves with the precarious shelter of a tent. Dr Chalmers, on hearing of the circumstances, used his influence with the Countess of Effingham to such good purpose that her ladyship provided funds for the erection of two churches, one on the east and the other at the south end of the island.

In 1864 the University of Glasgow conferred upon Mr Ingram the Degree of D.D., while he was still in the exercise of his ministry. The last time he ascended the pulpit was in 1875. It was the failure of memory and of sight that prevented him preaching afterwards. His voice was as strong as ever, and he was as much at home as ever in prayer; it was only in his pulpit address that he was not his former self.

There were others besides the Senatus Academicus of Glasgow who felt it an honour to themselves to honour the face of the old man. Dr Guthrie and his son, the minister of Liberton Free Church, paid a visit to Dr Ingram in 1871, and greatly cheered the heart of their venerable friend by their genial company and conversation. On his return to Edinburgh, Dr Guthrie set about the raising of a subscription for a portrait of Dr Ingram, and Mr Otto Leyde went to the Free Church Manse of Unst to execute the commission assigned to him. He succeeded in producing a characteristic likeness, life size, and the portrait having been presented to the Free Church, now adorns the walls of the Common Hall of the New College, Edinburgh. A replica of this canvas was taken by the artist, and, along with a silver tea service, was presented to Dr Ingram, to be preserved as an heir-loom in the family.

Extreme old age, as a rule, is not desirable. It is pitiful when the grasshopper becomes a burden, and the once strong active man falls into second childhood. With Dr Ingram there was less to suggest this painful feeling than in the case of many others who had not nearly attained his years. When wisdom was shut out at both ear-gate and eye-gate, he had still the resource of a memory retentive of early lessons. With all his active labours as a pastor, he had found time to keep up his early studies in theology and classics, and to store his mind with general information. To his hundredth year he could repeat long passages from favourite Latin authors, and regale himself with texts from the Hebrew as well as the Greek Scriptures. As Hebrew, strange to say, was no part of the curriculum of the Aberdeen College when he was a student, he became a self-taught Hebrew scholar, after the age of sixty, and acquired even a critical acquaintance with the language. He mastered German also, later in life.

The mens sana was lodged in corpore sano, and it is worthy of note that his green old age was not indebted to the stimulus of wine or strong drink, for he maintained his total abstinence principles to the last. Two years before his death, he remarked to a friend, in the vernacular of his early days, “It’s a very guid warld to leeve in, efter a’, for though I’m a hundred noo, an’ gey stupid tae, yet I’m neither sick nor sair.”

His sunset of life was without a cloud. During the winter of 1878-79, the cold compelled him to keep his room, but not till within twelve hours of his last breath was there any symptom of serious illness. Like a shock of corn fully ripe he was gathered into the heavenly garner on the 3rd of March 1879.

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 Alexander Keith

Author: Rev. David Brown, D.D., Aberdeen
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 331

Alexander Keith

Dr Alexander Keith was born in the year 1791. His father, Dr George Skene Keith—minister of the; parish of Keithhall, Aberdeenshire, and latterly of the parish of Tulliallan, Perthshire—was a man of superior intelligence, wide information, and great energy. Though not slack in his clerical duties, he made agriculture a special study, and published an able work, entitled, “An Agricultural Survey of Aberdeenshire.” At the beginning of this century, Aberdeen occupied a distinguished position in the literature of Scotland. The Principal and Professor of Divinity in the University and Marischal College was the celebrated Dr Campbell, author of the best work on Miracles, in reply to Hume; in the neighbouring University and King’s College, Old Aberdeen, the Professor of Divinity was Dr Gerard, author of the first work ever published in Scotland on Biblical Criticism; while the well known Dr Beattie, author of “The Minstrel,” was Professor of Moral Philosophy in Marischal College. Along with these there were others in the Presbytery and Synod of Aberdeen whose literary and theological tastes found vent in an association for the reading and discussion of papers, such as Dr Campbell’s valuable “Dissertations on the Gospels,” originally prepared for and discussed at these reunions. With such men Dr Skene Keith was thoroughly at home, while his broad intelligence, gentlemanly bearing, and commanding presence made him a general favourite alike with the gentry and with society in general. The manse of Keithhall was the home of all that was genial, and the subject of this sketch enjoyed in it every advantage for early development. As a youth, his tall figure, and powerful physique attracted general notice, while his feats of walking and running—such as seemed to defy fatigue—were the wonder of every one. To what occupation would such a youth be likely to devote his days? Probably to the military or naval service, or perhaps to colonial enterprise, but least of all to the quiet and study of a clerical life, one should say. But just this was the choice of Alexander Keith. Having taken his degree at Marischal College, he entered the Divinity Hall, was in the year 1813 licensed to preach the Gospel, and thereafter ordained minister of the parish of St. Cyrus, Kincardineshire. In the year 1816 he married Miss Jane Blaikie, sister of the late James Blaikie and Sir Thomas Blaikie, both Provosts of Aberdeen, and aunt of Professor Blaikie of the New College, Edinburgh. By this lady Dr Keith had seven sons and one daughter. The eldest son became assistant and successor to his father in the parish of St. Cyrus, and was the author of a Commentary on Isaiah. Four of his sons made choice of the medical profession, two of whom have risen to eminence in Edinburgh—Dr George Skene Keith and Dr Thomas Keith.

For the first ten years of his ministry Dr Keith devoted himself exclusively to the duties of his parish—authorship never being dreamt of. But meeting one day with a professional gentleman, who had imbibed the views of Hume on the subject of Miracles, and failing to satisfy him with the usual arguments, he appealed to facts, such as those recorded by Volney in his “Ruins of Empires,” as undeniable evidence of the fulfilment of prophecy, in other words, as evidence of miracles in the form of knowledge, demanding immediate Divine interposition no less than miracles of power. Overawed by this new style of argument, his friend was candid enough to say, “I cannot answer you.” Encouraged by this result Dr Keith thought that a book specially devoted to that line of argument might be eminently useful. Newton’s “Dissertations on the Prophecies,” though coming nearest to his idea, had two defects—it mixed up literal and symbolical prophecies, clear predictions and obscure; and it wanted the testimony of recent travellers. And having tried in vain to induce one or two clerical friends to prepare such a work, he determined, rather than abandon the idea, to try it himself; and thus originated the work by which Dr Keith has been and will be known as long as works of this nature in our language retain their interest. It was in 1823 that it first appeared in modest form, with the following title as afterwards enlarged:— “Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy, particularly as illustrated by the History of the Jews, and by the discoveries of recent travellers.” In the second and following editions, the new matter regarding Palestine and the surrounding countries—drawn from the newest works of travel, with a number of engravings representing the ruins of Babylon and Petra—made the book virtually a new work, and one peculiarly suited to the time. Such was the popularity which it attracted that edition after edition was called for; it was translated into most of the European languages; and the Tract Society’s abridged and stereotyped edition of it has had a steady sale to this day. “One chief feature of the book,” as is well observed by the Society’s edition, “was to make unbelievers the leading witnesses, their testimony being unexceptionable and conclusive. Volney did not visit Palestine as a devout pilgrim, nor was he even a believer in inspiration or the fulfilment of prophecy. Neither was Burckhardt, who never alludes to the prophecies, and was himself a sceptic. The testimony of such men has more force than that of many who visit and describe the scenes of sacred history expressly for the purpose of finding confirmation of Scripture.” Perhaps the most remarkable example of the effect produced by this book was that of Dr Meshakah of Damascus, a man of some authority in the Greek Catholic Church. An Arabic translation of Dr Keith’s work having fallen into his hands, he read and studied it with intense interest. The issue was his conversion from nominal religion, or no real faith at all, to the faith of Evangelical Christianity. The change became immediately known, and made a great stir in the Church to which he had belonged. For many years after this he held the office of Consul at Damascus to the United States of America, and since 1848 his writings have done more perhaps for Protestant Evangelical Christianity in Syria and other Arabic-speaking countries than any others. The excellent man is still alive, and in the controversy between the Oriental and Evangelical Churches his books are regarded as standard works. In the introduction to one of the best of them his obligations to Dr Keith for all that is most precious to him in the faith and hope of the Gospel are particularly recorded, and Dr Keith had the gratification of hearing this from his own lips and in his own house at Damascus.

On the 28th August, 1833, on the motion of the Rev. Dr Black, Professor of Oriental Languages, the Senatus of his Alma Mater unanimously conferred “the honorary degree of D.D. on the Rev. Alexander Keith, minister of St. Cyrus, and author of the well-known work on the ‘Fulfilment of Prophecy;’ in testimony of their high estimation of his character as a clergyman, and respect for his attainments in Theology and General Literature.”

In the year 1839, the General Assembly, having resolved to seek the conversion of the children of Israel, appointed a deputation to visit the Continent of Europe and the sacred lands, for the purpose of collecting information respecting them; and Dr Keith was naturally selected as one of four for the discharge of that interesting duty. On their way home, having arrived at Pesth, Dr Keith was prostrated with fever, and brought to the gates of death. To the astonishment of the medical professor who attended him, he survived, and on his strength slowly returning, he found at his bedside that noble Christian lady, Maria Dorothea, wife of the Prince Palatine and Viceroy of Hungary. The effect of her frequent visits, first on herself, in the enlargement of her views of Divine truth and the strengthening of her Christian character— and next, on the great object of Dr Keith’s visit, in the establishment of a mission to the Jews in Pesth, and its singular success from its outset to the present day-—this was a subject to which, in after years, Dr Keith was wont to recur with unceasing wonder and devout acknowledgment of the Hand that had so marvellously led the blind in a way that they knew not. The details of it, however, must be read elsewhere. [13]

In the year 1840, his health being then indifferent, and his eldest son, as already stated, being associated with him in the duties of his parish, he retired from pastoral work and henceforth devoted himself to his peculiar studies. When the memorable “Disruption” took place, Dr Keith, as might have been expected, was found among those who at the cost of their all in life, refused to surrender to the Civil power the spiritual independence of the Church of Christ, and became one of the members of the Free Church of Scotland. Having been Convener of the Committee for the Conversion of the Jews since its first formation, he for many years continued in that office in connection with the Free Church. But though in this capacity, he had to read to the General Assembly his annual report, he took no active part in ecclesiastical affairs. In fact, once only does the present writer remember him coming openly forward. At one of the early post-Disruption Assemblies, an effort was made, in a somewhat veiled form, to pledge the Church to what was called “The Descending Obligation of the Covenants” (meaning the National Covenant of the 16th and the Solemn League and Covenant of the 17th centuries). When the true nature of this proposal came to be seen, and some strong speeches by eminent members had been made against it, Dr Keith rose, and in a speech of but a sentence or two, put an end to the whole thing. It was about midnight, and his tall figure wrapt in a long cloak, and his dark visage reminded the present writer of the prophet Elijah; while the rarity with which he opened his mouth, and the solemnity with which he spoke spread a stillness over the crowded house, as he uttered words to the following effect:— “Moderator, God never made, and never will make, a National Covenant with any people but one—the children of Abraham; and the day that sees this Church recognising any other National Covenant than that, will see me for the last time a member of it.”

In the year 1844, Dr Keith revisited the East, examining all the sacred spots, and this time he was accompanied by his son, Dr George Skene Keith, who then first applied the daguerreotype process to the illustration of the scenery they witnessed. These illustrations, being transferred to Dr Keith’s pages in subsequent editions, greatly enhanced their interest and value. In fact Dr Keith kept ever availing himself of the most recent works of travel in those parts for the illustration of his subject. Of none did he make more use than that of M. Leon de Laborde on Idumaea, a region then almost unknown; transferring to his book, at considerable expense, his magnificent engravings of the rock-tombs and temples of Edom, and the ruins of Petra.

The popularity of his first work on Prophecy, and the length of time during which it was his chief study, naturally led Dr Keith to think that the same subject might be turned to account in the direction of symbolical prophecy. By some, indeed, even his first work was thought to go too far, in pressing literal fulfilment where the evidence seemed more fanciful than real. But when he undertook to interpret symbolical prophecy he was on more precarious ground; and his next work, “The Signs of the Times, illustrated by the Fulfilment of Historical Predictions, from the Days of Nebuchadnezzar to the Present Time,” encountered opposition from other expositors of the same predictions, who viewed them differently. Another work, “Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion from existing Facts and collateral Proof,” was more in the line of his first work; and not a few found the same fault with it as with the former—of building too much on slender data. It had, nevertheless, a considerable sale; Dr Keith’s glowing style and forcible way of putting things kindling general interest. A subsequent work, “The Land of Israel according to the Covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,”—the object of which was to show that the land originally granted extended much further northward and eastward than was usually supposed—made a considerable sensation. The only other works we are aware that he issued were in the same line as his second one— “The Harmony of Prophecy concerning the Time of the Restitution of All Things, in a Comparison of the Book of Revelation with other Prophecies of Scripture,” and “History and Destiny of the World and the Church according to Scripture.”

“The great service rendered by Dr Keith to the Christian Church,” says his nephew, the Rev. Dr Blaikie, “we believe to have been threefold—First, Establishing on the clearest footing the reality of specific predictions uttered before they came to pass; Second, Directing earnest attention to the Jews and their place in the purposes of God; and Third, Bringing out clearly and minutely the character of the Papal Church, as delineated in prophecy and fulfilled in history, and making Rome a witness against herself—a witness to the fulfilment of the prophecies in regard to her.”

Latterly, Dr Keith resided chiefly at Buxton—so well known as a place of resort for invalids. From this time to the day of his death, having little or no communication with Scotland, his name gradually passed out of notice; indeed owing to the great age which he reached, it was the impression of not a few of his Scottish friends that he had ceased to live, and the announcement of his death alone disabused them of that impression. But his Buxton days, prolonged as they were, were far from dull. Until shortly before his death, he retained much of that lively and genial manner which made his society so valued by those who enjoyed it; with congenial visitors, delighting to recall his first literary efforts, the progress of his studies and researches, and, above all, the marvels of his illness and recovery at Pesth. “A distinguished minister,” said the present Free Church minister of St. Cyrus, in the funeral sermon which he preached after Dr Keith’s death, “was surprised when I told him I had never seen him. He remarked, with some emotion, ‘You should go and see the old man before he dies, and get his blessing. I should count it a rich possession.’ He was confined to his bed during his last months, and the writings which gave him most pleasure were Spurgeon’s Sermons. He was very gentle, very contented, and very happy.” He died at the ripe age of eighty-nine, and was buried in a country churchyard near Buxton.

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 John Kennedy, D.D.

Author: Rev. John H. Fraser, M.A., Rosskeen
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 527

John Kennedy

The great men in the Church of God are not simply the men of great learning, or even the men who accomplish great things. The men whom the Church of God reckons great, are those who, in addition to all they do, are in possession of holy nobility. They are men who see the King’s face, who have access to His presence, and whose known standing in the heavenly court, gives a solemn authority to all they do. It is not great deeds, but deeds done by faith, that are commended in the kingdom of God. The Church above celebrates as mighty conquerors those who “overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony”; and the Church on earth places on its roll those “who have obtained a good report by faith.” In admitting any to the rank of worthies, the Church of God asks not only what the deeds were that those men performed, but inquires further, Were they done in faith? Was the warrior on his knees, and his eyes lifted upward, when he gained the victory? We know well that, victories gained by argument and intellect are not peculiar to the family of God. The successes that refresh the Church must be such as are marked by faith and prayer. And hence, in all the struggles of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, there ever was a noble band who maintained her conflict, not on the platform, or on the floor of her courts, but by this believing and praying spirit. In their closets and pulpits, setting themselves free from human policy, and despairing of success by the mere influence of human talent and strong argument, they cast themselves on the support of their blessed Head and Lord. Such was the pastor of Killearnan, the father of the subject of this sketch.

The parish of Killearnan is pleasantly situated along the northern shore of the Beauly Frith. The church and manse occupy a much admired spot on a sunny eminence on its margin. The Rev. David Dunoon, one of its ministers, died in 1806; but, in consequence of a tedious law-suit which took place regarding the patronage, the people were saved from a Moderate ministry, and in 1813 the Rev. John Kennedy, father of Dr Kennedy, was inducted. He was ordained by the Presbytery of Lochcarron in 1798 as assistant to the Rev. Alexander Stronach, Lochbroom. He subsequently laboured as missionary at Erribol, and assistant to the parish minister of Assynt. In these localities his labours were eminently blessed, and many seals of his ministry were left behind him to mourn his removal. In Killearnan his labours were blessed, and in the whole Northern Highlands his name at one time was a household word. He was indeed “a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth.” He died on the 10th of January, 1841, aged about seventy years. Instead of delineating his character, let us quote from the inscription on a tablet erected beside his tomb, by his sorrowing parishioners: “A man of God, sent forth into the vineyard with the fulness of Gospel blessing, and the peculiarly honoured ambassador of Christ, through whom shone forth the excellency of the power in the conversion of many a soul to God. … Richly replenished in spirit by close communion with God. … With holy unction, fervour, wisdom, and love, he watched, warned, and nourished the heritage. Sinners in Zion were afraid. Full of faith, and of the fruits of the spirit, abounding in labours, and ripened for glory, he fell asleep. This parish mourns.”

The subject of this sketch, his fourth son, was born on the 26th August, 1819, the birthday of the late Prince Consort. He received his early education at the parish school, well known at the time for the eminence of its teachers. In those days, when the parish had a number of comfortable tenant-farmers, it was not uncommon to find two or three classes of boys at different stages of their classical education, and seldom a year passed without one or more of its advanced scholars passing to the university.

In 1836, Mr. John Kennedy entered the University and King’s College of Aberdeen. As might be expected from his early promise, he stood high in all his classes, but especially in Moral Philosophy, and at the close of his curriculum took his degree of A.M.

In December, 1840, he entered the Divinity Hall, Aberdeen. Scarcely had he begun his studies there, when he was overwhelmed by receiving tidings of his father’s death. This seems to have been the time when he passed through the great spiritual crisis. That process, in the hand of the Spirit, was deep, thorough, and searching, and has left its impress on the character of his experience and preaching. Nothing is more certain than that some of the most remarkable of our preachers have come forth prepared for their work, from the seven-times heated furnace of mental suffering. He thus refers to that period of his history in the preface to his sketch of his father: “In the only sense in which he was my father, while he lived, I lost him when he died. But the memory of that loss I can bear to recall, as I cherish the hope that his death was the means of uniting us in bonds that shall never be broken.”

During the Non-Intrusion Controversy, Mr. Kennedy was known in the Aberdeen Hall as one of the most active students on the Evangelical side, and as one that incurred the strong dislike of a certain cold Aberdeen Professor of Divinity, for his warm Evangelical views. He had just finished his third session at the Hall, and delivered his prescribed discourses before license in April, 1843. He came home to the manse of Killearnan, still occupied by the family as of old; his eldest brother, the late much-beloved Rev. Donald Kennedy of Killearnan, having succeeded his father. When the Disruption came, this family, consisting of the mother, three sons, and two daughters, had to leave a manse associated with many happy memories, and remove to the parish teacher’s house. The accommodation there consisted but of three apartments. But soon the teacher, who had joined the Free Church, was ejected; and the family had then to remove to an old, half-dilapidated mansion-house in a distant part of the parish. The present generation may talk glibly of the Disruption and its struggles, seeing they know little of the great privations endured by ministers and their families in those days. Still, we have heard some of those who had passed through the depths of these trials say, that they would willingly, if called upon for conscience’ sake to do so, pass again through the same privations, if they had the same measure of the Lord’s presence in the work, and the same love and unity in the Church.

Mr. Kennedy was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Free Presbytery of Chanonry in August, 1843, and preached his first sermon in a sweet spot, sloping to the shore, and within a hundred yards of the old manse and church where he was born and baptised, and where the Free Church congregation worshipped till such time as the first Free church was erected. In few, if in any parish in the Highlands, did the parishioners, as in Killearnan, almost in a body cast in their lot with the Free Church.

From the first he became one of the most popular and attractive preachers in the Highlands; and many were the vacant congregations which aspired to call him. The adherents of the Free Church in Dingwall, the capital of the county, being formed into a congregation under the care and superintendence of the Apostle of the North, had set their hearts upon him, gave him a unanimous call, and he was ordained and inducted early in 1844 as its first Free Church minister. Here he has prosecuted his ministry with untiring zeal, with growing ability and spirituality for well-nigh forty years. His labours in preaching the Gospel to his own congregation, and throughout all parts of the Highlands, were incessant and almost superhuman. When at home he preached three sermons on the Sabbath habitually, and these carefully prepared sermons. With his mental resources, his large experience, and his extemporaneous gifts, he could preach well without the trouble of much writing and severe study; but he would not serve God with that which cost him nothing; the oil he carried into the sanctuary was beaten oil.

No characteristic of his mind is more marked than his reliance on his own resources in all his mental efforts. He seems to place little reliance on books, or on the thoughts and labours of others. He is not a learned man in the broad sense of that term; at least, with his many pulpit duties, he had no time to become an extensively read man, and, we believe, he lays no claim to this distinction. He works out his numerous discourses with little beside his Bible and Concordance to aid him. They all bear the impress of his own mind and characteristics, and hence their freshness, depth of experience, and eminently Scriptural character.

The theme of his preaching is “Christ and Him crucified.” The doctrines he dwells upon most, are the peculiar doctrines of the Christian system. These he loves, and aims steadily to exalt. He impressively sets forth the sovereignty of Divine grace, with the freeness and all-sufficing nature of Gospel salvation, and under a deep and convincing sense of their reality, he holds forth man’s depravity, moral inability, and utter ruin; and, at the same time, Christ’s divine authority, infinite readiness, and ability, to save sinners. As an ambassador for Christ, in a deeply affecting manner, he pleads with guilty, perishing sinners, with great earnestness, sincerity, and importunity, to accept at once of the salvation provided for them; enforcing the freeness and urgency of the offer, the sufficiency of Christ’s blood, and the utter groundlessness of the excuses and reasons pleaded for delaying or rejecting salvation.

His preaching, also, partakes largely of the experimental. No discriminating person could hear him preach for any length of time and fail to discover that his own soul was often in deep travail—in a peculiar manner alive to the profound mysteries of Providence and redemption —grappling with these, and longing to clear them up. This gives additional interest and power to his ministry. It imparts a chastened and subdued feeling that is sometimes indescribably touching. It leads him to explore the recesses of the heart, to watch its varied workings, and study its manifold deceitful forms, and search into the foundation and evidence of Christian hope.

Dr Kennedy is distinguished among Highland ministers as the most eloquent and impressive preacher in both languages. He is equally at home in English and Gaelic; and equally free from the peculiar tones and accents of the latter in preaching the former, possessing an easy and a full command of most suitable and expressive words.

He is emphatically a self-sacrificing man. Every enjoyment, and personal interest seem to be always subordinate to the claims of his Master, and the welfare of souls. From the first day of his ministry, he entirely gave himself to his work. He has been ready to respond to every call, seldom seeking relaxation, never complaining, except of his own shortcomings, but taxing his mental and bodily strength to the utmost of human endurance.

He is a man of keen feeling, and of very decided opinions. Many are too ready to pronounce these opinions to be narrow; and so some of them may be; but he is never afraid to speak his convictions, and very emphatically too, when he thinks the times require it. His manner of doing this may at times be somewhat peculiar, and so his sentiments and feelings suffer unjustly, from the way in which they seem unfavourably to impress strangers, and at times even to wound the feelings of friends. He has no toleration for that weakness which has no opinion of its own, and readily adapts itself to the shifting popular mind. This decision of character has made him a faithful preacher, a bold defender of the faith, and a reprover of sin. We know that some charge him with being a man of excessive dogmatic tendencies, strong aversion to the “light and culture” of the men of progress, and of narrow prejudices; but those who know him best can discern, as underlying what may be thus apparent, a hearty sympathy in every effort which Scripture and experience warrant, for advancing real godliness. He has, no doubt, the misfortune, mainly owing to the peculiarities of his mental constitution and his keen convictions of what seems to him to be the better way, to be misunderstood by many in his own Church.

Many and flattering were the calls he has received from other congregations, but, believing that his Divine Master had put him into his present sphere of work, and that duty required him to continue in it, no solicitation could draw him away from it. He seldom or never speaks of them, or trumpets them in paragraphs through the press; and it is no feature of his character, to sacrifice the interests of others for self-exaltation.

In addition to a number of pamphlets called forth by the public questions which have agitated and divided the Free Church for the last score of years, he has published “The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire,” “The Apostle of the North,” and “Man’s relation to God.” At present he is issuing a weekly sermon, which, we suppose, when the year ends, will appear in a collective form.

In 1873, his “Alma Mater” conferred upon him the honourable degree of D.D. As might be expected, although blessed with a robust constitution, such severe labours as his, with little time for rest or relaxation, his mind continuing on the stretch, and his sensibilities excited; preparing and preaching so many sermons; travelling in snow and rain, fair weather and foul, in all parts of the Highlands; and agreeing to relieve others when he needed rest, were too much for mortal endurance, so that his health gave way more than once, and lately it has been so seriously impaired, as to lay him aside for a season, from what he so loves, “preaching the glorious Gospel.”

What he said of the “Apostle of the North” is also true of himself — “to him preaching was no task. He was so devoted to it, and became so dependent for his happiness on his work as an evangelist, that the day of which he wearied most, was the day on which he did not preach. He shrank from acknowledging on any occasion that he felt fatigued, in case it might be suspected that he was wearied of his work, because sometimes he wearied in it.”

It is not our intention to enter upon the position which Dr Kennedy felt it his duty to take up in reference to the public questions which of late years have agitated the Free Church. These questions are so comparatively recent and memorable, that there are few persons who have not a sufficient general acquaintance with them, and who know, too, that he stood side by side with those who shrank not from defending their views, on the floor of the General Assembly, though “by decreasing minorities.” Alas! the ranks of these have now become thin. The places of some of those who were Dr Kennedy’s most valued friends arc now vacant, and their voices shall be heard no more amidst the conflict of opinions, and the din of crowded Assemblies. “Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men.”

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 Robert Lorimer, LL.D.

Author: A. P. Lorimer, Esq., Banker, Tillicoultry
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 339

Robert Lorimer, LL.D., was born at Kirkconnel, in Dumfriesshire, on 11th May 1765. He received his university education at Glasgow, and after passing through the usual literary and theological curriculum, he was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Abernethy in September 1792. On 1st March, in the following year, he was appointed to the Chaplaincy of the Southern Regiment of Fencibles, commanded at that time by James, Earl of Hopetoun, and a few months later he was ordained by the Presbytery of Penpont. In 1795 he had his degree from the University of Glasgow, and, in February 1796, he received simultaneously the presentation to the First Charge of the parish of Haddington from the Earl of Hopetoun, and to the parish of Smailholm, in the Presbytery of Lauder, from George Baillie, Esq. of Jerviswoode. After due consideration he decided to accept the former, and, on the 16th June, he was inducted as successor to Dr George Barclay. During forty-seven years he faithfully discharged all the duties pertaining to the oversight of so important a parish, and when at the Disruption he was required to choose whether to remain in the benefice he had held so long, or to go out into the wilderness, he did not hesitate to remain true to his convictions, and chose the latter course. He then became colleague in the pastorate of St John’s Church, Haddington, the duties of which he fulfilled to the day of his death.

When Dr Lorimer went to Haddington, there were only two ministers within the bounds of that large Presbytery who were decidedly Evangelical, but he lived to see the cause to which he was attached predominate as much in East Lothian as in other parts of the country, and to both local and national changes he contributed his own part by his able, evangelical, and acceptable ministry. When the contest between the Church and the State reached its critical point, and the Convocation of ministers adhering to the Evangelical cause in the Church of Scotland, met in November 1842, Dr Lorimer was chosen to preside over the deliberations. The Convocation continued its sittings for nearly a week. Two series of Resolutions were adopted. In the second series, after stating

On completing the fiftieth year of his ministry in Haddington, all classes of men united in shewing their high esteem for him by inviting him to a public dinner, which was presided over by his valued friend and co-presbyter, Dr Makellar.

After a very short illness, Dr Lorimer died on 9th November 1848, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. He had preached on the preceding Lord’s day from the text, “Enoch walked with God;” and was engaged in preparing for the following Lord’s day a discourse on that passage in Job, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come,” shewing that his mind was fully occupied with the contemplation of that heavenly rest for which he longed. He was buried in the Parish Churchyard, in the presence of a large concourse of persons, who had assembled out of respect to his memory.

His valuable library, on the collection of which he bestowed much time and thought he bequeathed to the Free Church College, Edinburgh. As his old friend Archibald Constable said, there was “less trash” in it than in any library he had ever examined.

In his home life, Dr Lorimer was singularly happy, the influence of the manse for good being felt throughout the parish. In 1801 he was married to Elizabeth, eldest daughter of John Gordon, Esq. of Balmoor, Writer to the Signet, by whom he had two daughters and four sons. The second son was the Rev. John Gordon Lorimer, D.D, who, first in Torryburn, and then in the parish of St David’s, Glasgow, contended for the same Evangelical principles upheld by his father. At the Disruption he became minister of Free St David’s Church, and, along with Dr Robert Buchanan and Dr James Gibson, did no mean service by his writings and by his preaching in upholding and strengthening the cause of the Free Church in the West. By his constant correspondence with the Churches abroad, he did what lay in his power to awaken their sympathy with the Free Church movement. He died suddenly on 9th October 1868.

In estimating the services of Dr Lorimer to the cause of religion, it must be borne in mind that the greater portion of his ministry preceded the Disruption, and it would be an error to measure the labours of him, and others like him, by the same standard that is applied to the great leaders of the movement. The Church cannot but admire and honour the able band of men whom God raised up during the “Ten Years’ Conflict”; at the same time, she must not forget what is due to their predecessors, the Evangelical minority of the Church of Scotland. They were the pioneers of the Free Church, the harbingers of a better state of things. In many great movements it has seemed as if the heroic element was first developed, to be followed by a time of comparative calmness and tranquillity; but at the Disruption the evangelistic element had first leavened the whole lump, and the heroism was manifested at a later stage. From 1784 there was half-a-century of Evangelical preaching, which silently and gradually prepared the materials out of which the Free Church was to arise. Whilst, therefore, all due praise is to be given to the leaders who achieved the triumph, it is for the honour of the Church to remember that the whole movement sprang from the pious and fruitful ministry of the Evangelical minority. Among the honourable band who formed it,—such as Innes, Balfour, Davidson, Campbell, Colquhoun, Moncreiff, and Thomson,—Dr Lorimer held a high place fifty years before the Disruption.

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11 A name still nobly represented in the family.

12 Minute of the General Assembly of the Free Church on the death of Lord Dalhousie.

13 See Life of the late John Duncan, LL.D., by David Brown, D.D., Chap. 12, Second Edition, 1872.