. _ .G85 A3 1S74 . ... Guthrie, Thomas, 1803-1873 Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie, D.D., and memoir AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR OF THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. VOL. IT. " The fascinating story of a life." — Cutler. DR. GUTHRIE'S AUTOEIOGHAPHY AND MEMOIR. .2 vols. 12mo. $4.00. Notices of Vol. I, " To say that this is a delightful book would feebly express our opinion of its merits. We think it is the most charming work of the kind that lias bcon given to the public in many j'ears. . . . It is impossible to find a page that does uot sparkle with some bright anecdote, or glow with some noMe sentiment expressed with the simplicity of true eloquence."— Christian Standard. " As an autobiography it is almost peerless." — Hearth and Home. "A very delightful book." — Independent. " A picture of Scottish life that is wonderfully graphic." — Bai-per's Monthly. DR. GUTHRIE'S WORKS. Containing: — The Gospel in Ezekiel. TuE Saint's Inheritance. TuE Way to Life. On the Parables. Out of Harness. Speaking to the Heart. Studies of Character. The City and Ragged Schools. Man and the Gospel, and Our Father's Business. 9 vols, in a neat box, $13.50 ; or separately, at $1.50 per volume. " His pages glow with the deep piety, the Scriptural beauty, the rich imagery, niid the tender pathos which breathed from his lips." — iV^. Y. Observer. ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, New York. < < 3 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. AND MEMOIR BY HIS SONS/" Rev. DAVID K. GUTHRIE CHARLES J. WTHRIE, M.A. IN TWO VOLUMES 11. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 530 Broadway. 1875. ^^ CONTENTS OF MEMO] ^^G^ RY< CHAPTER V. THE DISRUPTION. PAGE Hugh Miller's service in the Church conflict .... 1 — 3 Importance of the questions involved, from Dr. Guthrie's point of view .......... 4 — 7 The Auchterarder case and sketch of Lord Glenlee . . . 7 — 11 The Duukeld Interdict — Case of Marnoch 11 — 16 Mr. Guihrie in Strathbogie — He breaks the Interdict there . 16 — 21 The situMtion of the Church— The "Three Mii,-hties"— Mr. Guthrie's specific place and service at the period . . 21 — 25 Stirring days in Scotland — Mr. Guthrie in Ireland . . . 25 — 32 The Church's most sacred rights imperilled — The General Assemblj- of 1842 — "Claim of Eight" forwarded to the Crown — Predictions of the Church's enemies . . . 32 — 41 The Convocation — Mr. Guthrie's account of it . . . . 41 — 52 Unfavourable reply from the Crown to claims of the Church — These claims rejected by the Legislature likewise . . 52 — 58 The Eighteenth of May, 1843 — 474 ministers resign their con- nection with the State — Adherence of all the Foreign Missionaries — Sympathy of other Churches in Ireland, Eng- land and abroad — Baron Bunsen's testimonv . . . 59 — 67 CHAPTER VI. THE MANSE FUND. Contrast between the present prosperity of the Free Church and the difficulties which succeeded the Disruption — Trials felt chiefly by country ministers, and especially in parishes of hostile proprietors ........ 68 — 73 Case of site-refusing at Canobie — IMr. Guthrie's visit there — Mr. Hope's reminiscences — Similar cases elsewhere — The hardship brought before Parliament by Lord Breadalbane and Hon. Fox Maule — Committee of Inq\iiry appointed . 73 — 78 VI CONTENTS OF MEMOIR. P\GR V Mr. Guthrie's examination by the Committee — Final result . 78^84 Domestic privations of country ministers alter the Disruption — Sir G. Harvey's picture. — The necessity for a fund to provide new IManses for outed ministers and their families — Mr. Guthrie selected to raise it 84 — 89 Ilia natural qualifications for the undertaking — Special acquaint- ance with the facts of the case — Visits to Cockhurnspath and Sulherlandshire — The Mackenzies of Tongue . . . 89 — 9.3 Plan of the scheme — His successful commenceinent in Glasgow 93 — 97 His views of the Established Church at that date, indicated in two letters • . , 97—100 Edinburgh Manse Fund meeting — Lord John Russell's interest awakened — Completion of the undertaking . . . 100—105 Mr. Guthrie's own feelings, and the gratitude of his brethren 105 — 108 CHAPTER VII. EAGGED SCHOOLS. Object of these institutions — Charles Dickens' advocacj'^ — Their origin in Scotland — Sheriff AVatson and Dr. Guthrie . 109 — 111 Picture of John Pounds at Anstruther — A "city Arab" asleep — St. Anthony's Well 112—116 Publication of the First "Plea" — Response — Lord Jeffrey . 116 — 121 Irish Raggi d Children in Edinburgh — Controversy as to Con- stitution of the schools and religious instruction — Music Hall meeting in 1847 — Dr. Guthrie's position — Results of the Edinburuh discussion elsewhere .... 121 — 132 Dr. Guihrie's fellow-labourers — Deaths of Chalmers and Speirs 133 — 135 AVorking of the Original Ragged School — Diminution of juvenile crime, vagrancy, and begging . . . 135 — 138 Appeal for Government help — Marquis of Lansdowne — House of Commons Committee — Dr. Guthrie's evidence . . 133 — 147 Dunlop's Act — Withdrawal of Privy Council grant — Act of 1861 — Social Science Meeting in Glasgow — Help from servants and farm-labourers — Act of 1866 . . . 148 — 160 Bearing of Educai ion Act on Ragged Schools . . . 160 — 162 The Ahhar training sliip — Poitsniouth and John Pounds — Willis's Rooms and Lord Shaftesbury — Geneva— Mettray — Amsterdam — Jamaica — Barhadoes .... 162 — 167 Gathered fruits— Blessed results in money saved, misery pre- vented, hearts changed — Companion portraits — Ragged School harvest-homo — Ragged School children in America and Australia ........ 167 — 175 Anniiul Meetings Dr. Guthrie's thankful retrospect . . 175 — 177 CONTENTS OF MEMOIR. vii CHAPTER Vm. THE MINISTRY. PAGE The Pastor — Visitation of his flock — A hasty conclusion cor- rected— Visits to th^ sick, sorrowful, and dying — Ministerial exptriencos — Bible class — Young communicants . . 178 — 184 Congregational work — Home Mission in Pleasance — Conversa- tion at Carlton House Terrace ..... 184 — 188 The Preacher — His special gifts and calling — His pictorial power jy^ — His mode of preparation for the pulpit — The style and substance of his sermons . . . . >-~. . 188 — 195 His church on the Castle Hill — Scene when he preached — Influence of his oratory — Sa\T[ng influence of the truth. 195 — 201 Failure of heallh in 1847 — SjTnpathy of his congregation — Temporary absence from his pulpit and people — Residence in England — Letters from Leamington, Ilfracombe, and Ballater 201—216 CHAPTER IX. THE MINISTRY {continued). Return to his pulpit in 1849 — Degree of D.D. — Choice of colleague — Rev. Dr. Hanna inducted .... 217 — 220 Unabated pripularity as a preacher — Bishop Wilberforce — Thackeray— His sketch of Hugh Miller . . . 220—228 Sir J. Y. Simpson — Lord Cockburn — Funeral of Lord Jefi'rey 228 — 232 (^-^Ministerial intercourse with other denominations — His catho- licity 232—235 His varied audiences while from home — Exton Park — Arbirlot — Aldershot camp — " The casuals " in London . . 235 — 244 Preaching through the Press — " The Gospel in Ezekiel " — " Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints" — Objects in p'ublibhing — Wide circulation and salutary influence of his works — Their employment in India .... 244 — 251 Elected Moderator of Free Church General Assembly, 1862 — His appeal from the chair on the subject of ministerial support — Extracts from that Address .... 252 — 259 CHAPTER X. TOTAL ABSTINENCE. His country and city parishes contrasted — His experience of drink's doings in Edinburgh — The Irish car driver — He becomes an abstainer — A trying occasion . . . 200 — 206 viii CONTENTS OF MEMOIR. PAGE Ragged Schools and drunkenness — The Church and Total Ahsti- nence — Bijrgar Fair — The Edinburgh Bailie — His "Plea on behalf of drunkards " — Forbes- .Mackenzie Act — " The City, its Sins and Sorrows " — Painful scene at Blair- gowrie . . , . • 266 — 274 Interest in the cause spreads — Half-holiday movement — ^--^ Question of popular recreations — " Public-houses without the drink" — He explains and defends his patronage of a Saturday-ereuing concert 274 — 283 CHAPTER XI. NATIONAL EDUCATION. His early interest in the question — The condition and require- ments of Scotland since the days of Knox — Free Church Education scheme — His preference fi^r a National to any Denominational scheme — " The Happy Family." . . 284 — 290 His willingness to co-operate with other Churches to obtain a national measure — Letter to the Editor of Tlie Witness — Correspondence with the Duke of Argyll . . . 290 — 297 The National Education Association of Scotland — His desire for a Compulsory Clause — Negotiations with public men — Lord Advocate Moncreiff — ^Visit to Birmingham . . 297 — 301 Sectarian impediments — His proposal regarding a school cate- chism— Dean Stanley — State of matters in England — Scotch Education Act of 1872— His " Letter to my Fellow- Countrymen" 301—307 CHAPTER Xn. DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE. Scene in the Lawn-market — His love for the young — An even- ing by his fireside — Home training of his family — Their recreations — Music ....... 308 — 313 A long-unbroken circle — Death of an infant in 1855 — His sister's death at Brechin — Anxiety for the spiritual wel- fare of his children — Letters to them .... 314 — 320 Hiu hospitality — " Like a public " — Social qualities — Mr. Kuskin — Conversational powers — ^AVidening circle of friend- ships— Birnam — Inveraray — From Perth to Thurso — A prisoner in Caithness — Mr. Crossley — Sir Titus Salt . 320 — 331 CONTENTS OF MEMOIR. ix PAGE Visits to London — The Speaker's Gallery — Lord Lyndhurst — Mr. Carlyle — Westminster Abbey and the Dean — Lord Lawrence and Keshub Chunder Sen .... 331 — 338 Life in the Highlands — Lochlee — Mount Keen — Expedition to ,Ballater — A plucky terrier — Life of a Nutiaralist — His enjoyment in fishing — Salmo ferox — Sunday evenings at Lochlee 338—348 Eev. Dr. Ker's Reminiscences of Dr. Guthrie at Mossfennan and Inchgrundle 348—360 CHAPTER Xm. INTEREST IN OTHER LANDS. Je suis Ecossais — "Scotch Shrimps" — Australia — America — Mrs. H. B. Siowe — Letter to Mr. G. H. Stuart — He starts for New York — Bishop of Ohio — Shipboard experiences in the Pentland Firth 361—370 The Continent — Switzerland — Continental languages — Furbish- ing up his Latin — Language of Signs — Worship in an un- known tongue 371—374 Compagtions de Voyage — Principal Cunningham at Chamouni — An unintentional offence at Interlaken — Dr. Guggenbuhl and Protestant Deaconnesses — Fribourg — Lucerne — Jubilee Fete at Brussels — The Beguinage at Ghent — The Gorner Grat — Brittany — Peasants in the Horse Fair — The Menhirs of Carnac— Edict of Nantes ., 374—386 Rome and the Apostle Paul — Tivoli and its beggars — Pius IX. — A pastoral visit in Rome — Naples and the cabmen — Flo- rence and Longfellow — Berne and the clock . . . 386 — 392 Purposes of Christian usefulness served by his foreign tours — Evangelical Alliance Conferences — Intercourse with Con- tinental brethren — Italian evangelisation — The Waldenses — La Tour— Massel and the Balsille .... 392—402 Work at home for Waldensian missions — Dean Milman and the Waldensian manuscripts — Waldensian Aid Society — Draw- ing-room meetings in London — Converts from Popery in Venice 402—405 CHAPTER XIV. EVENING OF LIFE. A birth-day reflection — Weary in -work, though not of it — Retirement from the pulpit of St. John's — Farewell letter to his fluck ' . . 406 — 411 CONTENTS OF MEMOIR. PAOK His ministerial position thenceforth— Misunderstanding with Kirk Session— Renewed intercourse with his colleague — He becomes editor of the Stmdaij Magazine — Its success — His staff, and his contributions to the Magazine — The Scotch engineer 411_418 Public testimonial to Ur. Guthrie— His gratification and grati- tude— Preference of the pulpit to the editor's desk— Occa- sional services — Rome — Inveraray — A distinguished Pre- centor— Dean Milman 418 — 423 Union question in the Free Church — His own earlj"- longings for a Union — Sir George Sinclair's breakfast parties— The Anti-Union agitation — Points versus principles — The status quo 423—433 His vifws on Voluntaryism — No expectation of a reconstructed State Church— Letter to the Duke of Ai-gyll— Utterance as Moderator 433—436 Continued interest and influence in public questions — Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — Contagious Diseases Acts 436 — 440 Variety of scene and of society — Accident at Lochlee — Visits to the metropolis — Henry Melville and C. H. Spurgeon — The rich in the parks — The poor in Whitechapel — A "Penny Gaff" — Low theatres — John Chinaman . . . 440 — 450 Marriage of H.R.H. Princess Louise at Windsor— Shetland and the patriarch of the Free Church — Evening shadows . 450 — 455 CHAPTER XV. THE CLOSING YEAR. Letter to Miss Beever — "A great imposition" — Visits London in January, 1872 — Dinner at the Middle Temple — Thanks- giving Day 456 — 46tj Return to Edinburgh and failing health — Lochlee — Dr. Norman MacLeod ......... 463—465 Severe rlieumatic attack — Buxton — Rev. Dr. Keith — His last sermon — The beginning of the end .... 465 — 471 Alarming illness in September, 1872 — Temporary recovery — Lettei's from Duchess of Argyll and Dean Ramsay — A cheerful sufferer — His last winter and its employments 471 — 476 St. Leonards-on-Sea — The Sussex fisher folk — Christian fellow- ship ; . . . . 477 — 480 Last ten days 480—490 His death and funeral 490—494 CHAPTER y. THE DISRUPTION. " The * Battle of the Banner/ whicli preceded the Dis- ruption of the Scottish Church, was not fought so much on the floor of courts, either civil or ecclesiastical, as outside these ; through the columns of the press, and from the platforms of public meetings." Thus, in a fragment written at St. Leonard's within a few weeks of his death, and designed for incorporation with his Autobiography, Dr. Guthrie begins a sketch of Hugh Miller.* " Had the ten years, from 1833 to 1843," he continues, *' been spent only in the discussion of keen, subtle, and constitutional questions, and of previous legal proceedings and precedents, the Free Church of Scotland — if it ever had existed at all — would have been but a small afiuir. The battle of Christ's rights, as Head of the Church, and of the people's rights, as members of the body of which He is the head, was fought and won in every town, and in a large number of the parishes of Scotland, mainly by Hugh Miller, through the columns of the * The portion of this sketch omitted here, will be found in Chapter ix. VOL. II. B 2 MEMOIR. Wif}7ess newspaper, and by men who, gifted witn the power of interesting, moving, and moulding public audiences, addressed them at public meetings regularly- organized, and held up and down all the country. It was thus, to use Mr. Disraeli's phrase, we were educated for the Disruption, which had otherwise been a great failure. " This is not sufficienily indicated in the ' Ten Years' Conflict,' an otherwise fair, full, and able book. In fact, the ignoring of Hugh Miller, and the influence of the Witness newspaper there, reminds one of the announce- ment of the play of Hamlet without the part of the * Prince of Denmark.' This is to be regretted ; because other churches, taking that history as their guide, may, in their battle for liberty, neglect to seize on, and occupy, the most influential of all positions — that, namely, of carrying, through the press and public meetings, the heads and hearts of the masses of the people. "I feel this the more, that Hugh Miller was a member, and indeed an office-bearer, in my congrega- tion— one of my intimate and most trusted friends. With his extraordinary powers as a writer the public are well acquainted, and to such an extent also with the details of his history, as given both by himself and others, that I need not dwell on them. He was a man raised up in Divine Providience for tlie time and the age. His business was to fight, — and, like the war-horse that saith among the trumpets. Ha, ha, and smelleth the battle afar off", fighting was Miller's delig-ht. On the eve of what was HUGH MILLER AND DR. CHALMERS. 3 to prove a desperate conflict, I have seen him in such a high and happy state of eagerness and ex- citement, that he seemed to me like some Indian hrave, painted, pkimed, leaping into the arena with a shout of defiance, flashing a tomahawk in his hand, and wearing at his girdle a very fringe of scalps, plucked from the heads of enemies that had fallen beneath his stroke. He was a scientific as well as an ardent controversialist ; not bringing forward, far less throwing away, his whole force on the first assault, but keeping up the interest of the controversy, and continuing to pound and crush his opponents by fresh matter in every succeeding paper. "When I used to discuss subjects with him, under the impression, perhaps, that he had said all he had got to say very powerful and very pertinent to the question, nothing was more common than his remarking, in nautical phrase, * Oh, I have got some shot in the locker yet — ready for use if it is needed ! ' ****** " Dr. Hanna and I walked foremost in the vast funeral procession which accompanied his body to the grave ; and many is the day since then, that we have missed that mightiest champion of the truth, who did L more to serve its cause than any dozen ecclesiastical leaders, and was beyond all doubt or controversy, with the exception of Dr. Chalmers, by much the greatest man of all who took part in the ' Ten Years' Conflict.' " B 2 4 MEMOIR. That conflict issued in the Disruption of 1843. Thirty-one years have come and gone since then, and the ranks of the combatants are thinning fast. " A few more years," in Dr. Guthrie's pathetic words, "and they shall all be gone — dead and gone, all but some grey old man who, with slow steps, bending on his staff, will come into the General Assembly and will look around him to see the face of a fellow- soldier, and he will not see one. And men, moved by the sight, shall point with reverence to that hoary head and say, * There goes the last of the Romans ! That old man bore a part in the great Disruption.' " But the subject has lost none of its importance with the lapse of time ; and various considerations claim for it the special attention at the present hour of all who seek a right solution of a confessedly difficult problem — the due relation between the spiritual and civil powers in a country. With the rise and progress of the Free Church of Scotland, Dr. Guthrie's name, like Hugh Miller's, is intimately bound up. He v/as in his prime during the stirring period which preceded the Disruption, and threw himself with all the enthusiasm of an ardent nature, into the work that fell to his share. If, in later years, he took a less prominent part in the domestic questions of the Free Church, time only deepened his conviction of the truth of her principles, and to the close of life he was thankful to have lived in the Disruption era, and felt honoured to have CHURCH AND STATE. S fougtt on such a field. "Nothmg," lie declared in 1859, " nothing has happened in providence to shake my conviction that God led the host that day which saw many leave the walls they had fondly loved and reso- lutely defended ; resigning, with families dependent on them, that status and those stipends which no sensible man among us affected to despise." His ultimate position, as a minister in the Free Church, was a logical carrying out of his early-formed convictions of the true nature and polity of the Church of Christ, whether in connection with the State or ex- isting apart from it. The Church he held to be a spiritual society, whose alone Head is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose ofiice-bearers hold their authority directly from Him, and whose only statute-book is the Word of God. He believed — otherwise he never would have entered her ministry— that the Church of Scotland, in obtaining recognition and endowment three hundred years ago from the State, had surrendered none of her independence. He looked upon her as, while an Esta- blished Church, yet a self-acting and self-regiJating body; free to modify her constitution as increased knowledge or altered circumstances rendered it ad- visable ; and free also, when she thought fit, to dis- solve the alliance, which, after seven years of separate existence, she had formed with the State in 1567. That serious evils and abuses in connection with patronage had crept into the Church of Scotland, during the long period when, from 1G88 to 1833, the 6 MEMOIR. *' Moderate " party were in tlie ascendant, lie knew and keenly felt ; and, from the time he had a seat and a voice in Church courts, he protested against these. But his conviction was — nor till 1843 was he forced to abandon it — that while these abuses were excrescences which had gathered on his Church's con- stitution, they were no part of its essence. The causes which led to the " Ten Years' Conflict," as well as the principles which it involved, have been stated at some length by Dr. Guthrie in his Autobiography (pp. 223 — 229), and we shall therefore only touch on them incidentally here. As the Autobiography, how- ever, unhappily terminates just where the history of the struggle commences, it will be necessary briefly to narrate the course of events. We confine ourselves to those incidents in which Mr. Guthrie was himself concerned ; for to do more would lead us fur beyond our limits. Nor is it needful : since the whole subject has been treated with equal knowledge and ability in Dr. Buchanan's " Ten Years' Conflict " and in Dr. Ilanna's Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers.* In his Autobiography (page 224), Dr. Guthrie has explained how, in 1834, the Church, led by those who were desirous at once to preserve patronage and yet give the people a voice in the election of their pastors, passed the Veto Law ; and, further, how the working of * In a shorter form, the question, particularly in its bearing on present circumstances, is lucidly stated by the Rev. N. L. Walker in " Our Church Heritage," 1874. For the legal aspects of the question, we refer the reader to Mr. Taylor Innes's "Law of Creeds." AUCHTERARDER. ^ ttat law brought the Church into collision with the Civil Courts. The circumstances which brought about that collision were these : — In August, 1834, Auchterarder, a parish in Perthshire, became vacant. Lord Kinnoul, the patron, thereupon presented Mr. Young, a "probationer," to the vacant living. Having preached before the congregation, Mr. Yoiuig was almost unanimously rejected ; 287 male heads of families voting against him, and only three in his favour. In these circumstances the Presbytery declined to take any steps with a view to his ordination, and that conduct was approved on appeal by the Synod and General Assembly. On this. Lord Kinnoul and Mr. Young sought the interference of the Civil Court. This procedure in itself did not seriously alarm the Church. She knew and admitted that the filling up of a vacancy was a matter involving both civil and spiritual interests. The latter — the ordination to the cure of souls — she claimed as hers alone ; but the civil interest — the disposal of the benefice — she left to the determination of the Civil Court ; at the same time maintaining that, by certain perfectly definite statutes, the disposal of the benefice had been made to depend upon the decision of the Church in the matter of ordi- nation. If, however, the Civil Courts did not so construe these statutes, she would not dispute their right to disjoin the benefice from the cure of souls. But now, be it observed, the question brought by Mr. Young before the Civil Courts was not merely as to his 8 MEMOIR. right to the stipend, the manse, and the glebe. Dis- regarding all distinction whatever between things spiritual and temporal, he asked to have it found not only that he was entitled to the benefice, but also that the Pres- bytery was bound to ordain him, regardless of the oppo- sition of the people, provided only they were satisfied with his moral and intellectual qualifications. The case in the Court of Session was deemed so important, that it was argued before the entire bench of thirteen judges. Eight declared in favour of Mr, Young, and five. Lords Glenlee, Moncriefi", Jeffrey, Fullerton, and Cockburn, in favour of the Church. In connection with Lord Glenlee's decision. Dr. Guthrie wrote at St. Leonards, in a fragment designed for incorporation with his Autobiography — " I shall not soon forget the scene which the Court of Session presented that day, when Lord Glenlee came forth from his long retirement to deliver his judgment on this great question. " My next-door neighbour in Brown Square, we had opportunity of seeing how frail he was. He was seldom able to undertake even a drive, and Avas carried in and out of his carriage as helpless as a child. But age had nowise blunted or impaired his mental faculties. He still engaged in and enjoyed the pursuits of literature, both ancient and modern ; and the little old man, with his withered face, might be found crumpled up in an arm-chair, absorbed in the profoundest mathematical speculations. In point of intellect, accomplishments, LORD GLENLEE. 9 knowledge of law, and legal acumen lie was favUe princeps, — admitted by all to be the foremost of the judges. He had no bias in our favour arising from his religious views ; for I fancy, from what I have heard, that he made little or no profession of religion, but was imbued with the views of Hume, Gibbon, and other literati of his early days. " It was weeks after the other judges had given their decision in our case, which was supported by the in- tellectual, though not by the numerical, majority of the judges, that old Glenlee was bundled out to deliver his judgment on the matter. This was looked forward to with the greatest interest. As he had no particular bias in our favour, and had never mingled in any of the con- troversies that were so naturally calculated to influence some of the other judges either for or against us, no man knew which side he was to espouse, although some said that Forbes (Lord Medwyn) did. "The court was crowded to excess. The bench was full, and everybody on the tip-toe of expectation in the hope that Glenlee would be found on their side. This hope it was plain the judges opposed to us fondly cherished ; for when, as we were all waiting in im- patient silence, a side door opened, and the old man — his withered form swaddled in the robes of office, and his face bloodless and pale with age — came tottering in, they rose from their seats and ofiered him warm con- gratulations arid shaking of hands. " The stir occasioned by his appearance having at 10 MEMOIR. length subsided, a profound silence filled the court. Seated in front of the gallery, beside Dr. Candlish and Dr. Cunningham, and others of our friends, with a hand up at each ear, it was but now and then that I could catch what he said, or rather faintly mumbled. For a while I could not even guess at its drift ; but, like a great ship sailing into view out of the fog, we ere long discovered, to our inexpressible joy and triumph, that Glenlee was with us. I caught him telling how, in the first ages of Christianity, even the bishops were chosen by the acclamations of the people. I saw a visible elongation of the faces of those judges who had already given their voices on the other side ; and, though it was slightly and slyly done, I saw Andrew Rutherfurd (the Solicitor- general, and our leading counsel) turn to the bench and look to Lord Moncrieff, with the smallest possible wink of his eye — small, yet marked enough to say, * Is not that capital ? * " We could hardly conceal our joy, nor the judges opposed to us their mortification, at this turn of afiairs ; for though they had all, as an expression of their respect and reverence, risen to their feet when Lord Glenlee came in, and shaken him by the hand as if this were the happiest day of their lives, they allowed the old man to rise from the bench and totter away out, so soon as he had delivered his judgment, without taking any notice of his departure." The decision of the majority of the Court, pronounced THE DUNKELD INTERDICT. ri on the 8tli of March, 1838, was to the effect that the Church had forfeited the benefice of Auchterarder for the time being, and that the Presbytery was bound to take Mr. Young "on trials" with a view to ordination. The first part of this judgment, involving, as it did, only the disposal of the benefice, the Church was pre- pared to acquiesce in and obey. The point at issue was not contained there, but in the control claimed by the Civil Court over the purely spiritual matter of ordination. The Church claimed that in no case what- ever could she be coerced in the discharge of her spiritual duties. The Civil Courts asserted their right of coercion in certain circumstances, and they maintained that these circumstances had now occurred. The grounds on which this judgment was rested — involving undisguised Erastianism — were of the most alarming nature. But the judgment itself was not one that could produce a direct collision. It declared, indeed, that the Presbytery was bound to take Mr. Young "on trials ; " but it did not order them to do so, and thus did not interfere with their free action. A case, how- ever, soon arose in which this farther step — the logical consequence of the other — was unhesitatingly taken. The details are unimportant for our purpose. Suffice it to say that when the Presbytery of Dunkeld was about to ordain a licentiate to a vacant charge, the Court of Session granted an " interdict " against their proceed- ing with this purely spiritual act. What was the Pres- bytery to do ? As is explained in the Autobiography, 12 MEMOIR. the Churcli of Scotland claimed that, by the constitution of the country, ecclesiastical jurisdiction belonged ex- clusively to her Church Courts. But here was the Court of Session manifestly assuming this very species of juris- diction. Had not the precise circumstances occurred which Lord Jeffrey contemplated when, speaking in the Auchterarder case, he alluded to the possibility of in- vasion by one supreme court of the province of another — " When they trespass on the province of other courts, the remedy is for these courts totally to disregard the usurpation, and to proceed with their own business as if no such intrusion had occurred." The Presbytery accordingly, in violation of the interdict, proceeded with the ordination, and for this conduct they were summoned to the bar of the Court of Session on the 14th of June, 1839. " I was present," wrote Mr. Guthrie, " with Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Candlish ; and I heard the Lord President of the Court of Session say that, on the next occasion when the ministers of the Church of Scotland broke an interdict, they s went through the form of ordination amid circumstances so painful and humiliating that their memory will long remain in Scotland. 22 MEMOIR. hand, we are satisfied that the courts of law have com- mitted a violent aggression on the proviuce of the Church ; and are, on the other hand, determined to maintain our present position till a better settlement can be obtained ; still it is plain that neither the Established Church nor any other Church can remain in permanent collision with the Civil Courts of the country. In the end, the struggle, if it is protracted, may be destructiye, not to one only, but to both."* Negotiations were, accordingly, entered into, first with the Whig government under Lord Melbourne, and, after 1841, with the Tory government under Sir Robert Peel. In a letter, dated 26th February, 1841, referring to one of these, Mr. Guthrie writes : — "Cunningham has not yet returned (from London), but Candlish was telling us the other day that he had had a letter from him which was as gloomy as could be. He had written home — for cold comfort to his wife — that he had found the Conservatives so ferocious and dead-set against the Church, that he did not consider his stipend worth two years^ purchase. Chalmers, as I mentioned before, has given up all hopes of enlightening their eyes. Both are, I take it, too gloomy ; though it is hot easy to say how things may turn up. Both, of course, remain unshaken by their fears. ... Chalmers has a kind of desperate joy in the prospect of an * Lccturo on " The Present Duty and Prospects of the Church of Scotland," hy the Rev. Thomas Guthrie — No. \\\\. of " Edinburgh Lectures on Non-Intrusion." John Johnstone. 1840. THE THREE 311 GH TIES. 23 overthrow, in the idea that some four or five hundred churches would be built for us outed ministers; and that we would hardlj' have them built when, to pre- serve themselves from ruin, our opponents would give way, and be glad to take us back again ; and that, in this way, both his objects would be accomplished, of Church extension, and Church independence and reform ! " Mr. Guthrie had, personally, no share in any of these dealings with statesmen ; and it may be well at this point to indicate the precise place he filled, and the special work he performed during these eventful years. No feature of the period is more remarkable than that group of ministers, seven or eight in number, who were raised up to take the conspicuous part in the Dis- ruption conflict : but, as King David had among his captains "three mighties," so, among the prominent ministers on the Evangelical side, this distinction was awarded by common consent to the three, whose names, by a curious coincidence, began with the same initial letter, — Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish. All three were pre-eminently Church leaders ; Mr. Guthrie was not. He took comparatively little share in the deliberations and debates of Church courts. "I remember his once remarking to me " (writes Dr. Elder, now of Rothesay, at that time a co-Presbyter of his), "when I was sitting beside him during one of the fights, ' My folks in the «4 MEMOIR. nortli country sometimes ask me why I don't make speeclies in the Presbytery of Edinburgh, as I used to do in the Arbroath Presbytery ; and I tell them that in the Edinburgh Presbytery we speak by counsel; for when Cunningham and Candlish speak on a subject there's no need for any other man to say a word.' " Or, as he himself put it in later years, "I have never taken any active part in the management of our Church ; I never belonged to what might be called the council of its leaders, but all along, like ' Harry of the Wynd,' I fought for my own hand. No man can be more thanki'ul than I am that God has, in His kind providence, furnished our Church with so many men who have not only the talent but the taste for Church courts. I am content to remain in the cabin, and allow other folk to walk the quarter-deck." He contributed almost nothing to the abundant polemical literature of the time, writing only one short tract.* Nevertheless, the place he did fill was one which no man could have occupied but himself. To quote the testi- mony of Dr. Candlish f : — " Guthrie was a power, unique in himself, and rising in his uniqueness above other powers. He did not, indeed, venture much on the uncon- genial domain, to him, of ecclesiastical polemics, or the wear and tear of ordinary Church administration ; leaving that to others whose superiority in their department he * No. 6 of a Series of Tracts on "The Intrusion of Ministers on Eeclaiming Congregations." t III the sermon preached after Dr. Guthiie's funeral. HIS SPECIAL SERVICE. 25 was always the first to acknowledge. But in his own spheO, and in liis own way, he was, to us and to the principles on which we acted, a tower of strength. His eloquence alone — so expressive of himself, so thoroughly inspired by his personal idiosyncrasy, so full always of genial humour, so apt to flash into darts of wit, and yet withal so profoundly emotional and ready for pas- sionate and affectionate appeals — that gift or endowment alone made him an invaluable boon to our Church in the times of her ten years' conflict and afterwards." His place in the vessel, from whose mast-head the old blue flag of the Covenant again floated, was defined in his own characteristic words, " Before the Disruption I oftener found myself at the guns than at the wheel." As indicated towards the close of the Autobiography, Dr. Elder was associated with him on one occasion in the work of rousing the country. " We were sent out together " (we quote again from Dr. Elder's MS.) "on the first Non-Intrusion raid in 1839, after the final decision in the first Auchterarder case. Our object at that time was to make the people understand the real position of the Church under the decision of the Civil Courts, so as if possible to influence the Legislature, with a view to obtain some legal enactment which would conserve the principle of non-intrusion and protect the spiritual independence of the Church. " He has told in his Autobiography of a triumphant meeting we had at Moff"at ; I may say something about another at Dumfries, of which I have no doubt he would have gone on to tell. The meeting there, like the Moffat one, was crowded ; and the minister of the congregation occupied the chair, opening the proceedings with prayer. By this time Dr. Begg had joined us ; and it was arranged that T should speak first, Dr. Begg second, and Dr. Guthrie last. But it 26 MEMOIR. immediately appeared that a body of Cliartists had come to the meeting under the leadership of a Dumfries writer, witli the obvious intention of stopping our whole proceedings by uproar. After many ineffectual attempts to restore order, Dr. Guthrie at last proposed to them that, if they would hear us out, they might speak after us, and reply to our statements ; which was agreed to. " So I began in the midst of great noise and confusion ; Dr. Guthrie charging me to speak on whether they listened or not, assuring me that after a while they would grow wearied and the noise would cease. This turned out true ; for, after a time, they did listen pretty well — occasionally throwing out coarse remarks. There was more interruption durmg Dr. Begg's speech, some of his hits being very pungent and telling ; but the ujDroar sometimes rose to a great height while Dr. Guthrie spoke ; the friendly pftrt of the audience being mean- while quite carried away with his eloquence. "Immediately on his sitting down, the Chartist leader rose in the midst of noise and confusion ; and, claiming his right now to speak, proceeded to address the meeting in a very offensive way, bordering on profanity. Dr. Guthrie whispered to us, ' We are in a scrape with this fellow, and we must watch our opportunity to get out of it.' So, after a few minutes, the man came out with a sort of profane and obscene allusion to Scripture, when Dr. Guthrie, starting from his seat, and raising himself to his full height, lifted his long arm above his head, and exclaimed in a voice of thunder, ' Shocking ! shocking ! I call on all Christian men and women to leave this meeting ' ; and, suiting the action to the word, he strode out of the church, followed by the chairman and almost the whole audience ! " The Chartists, being left alone, proceeded to choose a chairman in the person of a letter-carrier not of high repute, when an old woman of the right staonp, who had lingered behind the rest, rushed to the precentor's desk, where he was taking his seat, and dragged him by force from his elevation. The uproar then became so great, that the managers of the church ordered the gas to be extinguished, and so the scene suddenly ended in darkness." It is impossible to convey any just conception of the excitement which in these days pervaded every county of Scotland. "Scotland is in a flame about the Church SCOTLAND IN A FLAME. 27 question," wrote Lord Palmerston to Ms brotlier, Sir W. Temple, in tlie Disruption year. But the words may be equally applied to the preceding period, of which we write ; and, no doubt, in the excitement, when men's feelings were at a white heat, many things were said and done on both sides which are to be regretted, and ought now to be forgotten. • Probably no other, country could have presented such a spectacle. To the ears of an Eng- lish visitor the keen air of the North seemed filled with strange and uncouth words — Auchterarder, Strafhhogie, Culsalmond, Anti-patronage, Non-intrusion, Liberum Arhi- trium. Families were divided, nay, the very boys at school ranged themselves into hostile camps of Moderates and Non-Intrusioni^ts. The polemical literature of the time was almost incredible in quantity. Think of seven hundred and eighty-two distinct pamphlets on this one subject, printed during these years, circulated by thousands, and falling like snow-flakes all over the land. The newspapers teemed with advertisements and reports of " Non-intrusion Meetings," " Church Defence Meetings," " Spiritual Independence Meetings," in towns, in villages, in hamlets even ; nor was it the idle, excitable mob who were stirred by this question, but the quiet, steady, God-fearing men and women of the land. To them the principles of Spiritual Independence and Non-intrusion were matters that had a direct bearing on their own and their chil- dren's highest interests ; and it is very significant to note how numerous were the intimations in the 28 MEMOIR. newspapers of the time calling meetiugs for special prayer. "When Yoltaire visited Great Britain in 1727, lie exclaimed, " What an extraordinary country I Here I find fifty religions, and but one sauce ! " Xo one will pretend that it is to our country's credit to present so many denominational divisions ; but it is the glory of any land to possess a people who can think for themselves on a religious question, who are willing to struggle and to sacrifice for conscience' sake and their Church's liberties. Scotland may claim a special distinction in this respect. It is no Scotchman whom Tennyson has described in the "Xorthern Farmer;" for hear how the old man speaks of his pastor : — " An' I hallus coined to's choorch afore moy Sally wur dead, An' 'eerd un a bummin' awaar loike a buzzard-clock ower my yead, An' I niver knaw'd whot a meand, but I thowt a 'ad s immut to saay. An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said, an' I comeJ awaay." An easy-going parishioner like this would be utterly indifierent to his rights in the election of a minister, and still more to the inherent rights of his Church. The grossest form of patronage, the most abject Eras- tianism, woxild be no grievance to him ; and had the members of the Scottish Church been of such a tA-pe, they could never have been roused to an intelli- gent interest in the questions which resulted in the Disruption. As the conflict thickened, the interest extended far IN IRELAND, 29 beyond Scotland. OtTier Churclies, both in -England and Ireland, watched tbe struggle with the keenest interest. The Irish Presbyterian Church especially, herseK a daughter of the Church of Scotland, and holding her standards, had espoused the cause of the EvangeKcal party from the very first, and continued all through the conflict to give that party the most generous sympathy and support. She invited a deputation to cross the Channel ; and, along with the Eev. Charles J. Brown and Mr. Bridges, "Writer to the Signet, Mr. Guthrie was appointed. He announces the proposed expedition in a letter to his mother : — " Yith Felruary, 1841. I am by-and-by to set off for Ireland. There came a demand for a deputation from our Church to "visit their principil towns, and I was singled out in the request as one whose stvle of speaking was peculiarly suited for an Irish auditory ! This afforded us all no small amuse- ment ; but it became serious work when the Committee insisted that I should go. Though, if I had not the brogue I might have the hlurney for the ' hoys' it was to be a most inconvenient thing for me, having so many schemes yet to set a-going, and some of them in the very act of uprearing, connected with my new church. I fouo-ht the whole Committee for a good half-hour on the subject, till Dunlop and Candlish got angry, and they aU declared that it would be flying in the face of duty to refuse ; and so, at last, I was fairly forced off my feet, and ffave a verv slow consent. . . . "VTe all felt that the Irish people must be kept and roused." 30 MEMOIR. " CoLERAiNE, Uth Ifarch, 1841. " The Belfast affair went off in a very large and magnificent cliurch, in a house crowded to the door and ceiling, and in the ' grandest and most enthusiastic style you ever saw. I never, I think, spoke under the inspiration of such enthusiasm ; they saluted me, when I rose, with what they call ' Kentish fire,' and repeatedly discharged volleys of it during my address. . . . Our progress has been more like a triumph than anything else. We cannot but be delighted and deeply affected with the cordiality and sympathy both of ministers and people. I never saw anything like it, and will remember Ireland as long as I live, nor ever allow a man, or woman either, to say a word against our friends here. They have Scotch faces, Scotch nauies, Scotch affections, and far more than Scotch kindness. " At Londonderry I had the pleasure of sitting on the cannon they call ' Eoaring Meg,' who spoke much to the purpose in the memorable siege. Above their court-house there, I saw a figure of Justice which reminded me of our Court of Session : the wind had hloivii away the scales, and left only the sword. " Things look well for next Assembly. What with Gray and Candlish, and Cunningham and Chakners, there will be a superabundance of talent on our side. I hope the Moderates will send up their choicest warriors to call it forth." (2'ci J//-s. Guthrie. "Armagh, March, 1841. " On our way from Omagh to Cookstown we passed over a high and very wild country, crossing bogs not less than twenty miles long. We were overtaken by a tremendous shower, and, being in an open car, were glad to take shelter in a sort of half-way house. They were regular cut-throat- looking characters that kept it, and in such a lone place I would not have cared for spending a night. They spoke Erse to each other. One of the men was ill with inflammation in the chest. He had picked up from Bridges that I knew something of medicine, and made application to me for tho benefit of my , skill. I saw his tongue, and felt his pulse, and ordered him to bed, and played the doctor to a T ! " This town of Armagh is an old antique-looking place, and is the seat of the primates of the Episcopalian and Popish churches. We went to see the Cathedral — you know how well pleased I am with my own — partly induced by the strong desire of Brown and Bridges to hear the chanting. I accompanied them, and we heard the chanting, to be sure, IN IRELAND. 3* by a parcel of young scamps in white surplices, who behaved themselves most irreverently ; but we heard more than the chanting, for to our dismay (being in a hurry to be off) the chanting was closed by a High Church sermon, which, fortu- nately for us, was very short. We saw Beresford, the primate : he is a lordly-looking fellow, "But I must reserve a great deal (if we are spared) for the leisure of the Manse of Tweedsmuir. When I left Edinburgh the bairns had the months, the weeks, the daj's counted — I am not sure but they were trying the hours — till the beginning of the holidays.* "AU well — sometimes very tired; little sleep and gi'eat excitement. Fell asleep last night upon the platform." "Edinburgh, Uh April, 1841. ** It is satisfactory to hear from many letters and papers I have received that our Irish expedition has done much good. Since my return I have lain in bed a whole week almost, during which I have read more newspapers than I have done at other times. A queer mixture they were ; some of them extravagantly laudatory, and others as extravagantly abusive. It is, to a man accustomed to both, not a little amusing to turn in a moment from the bepraising to the bespattering. And what lies they do tell ! If it were not for the sin of it, it were perfectly entertaining." {To Mrs. Burns, Tweedsmuir.) Of this Irish tour, Dr. C. J. Brown supplies us witli a cliaracteristic reminiscence : — " At the Belfast meeting it had been arranged that I was to speak first, Mr. Bridges next, and that Dr. Guthrie should wind up with a full and earnest appeal to our brethren for aid * Mrs. Gutkrie's uncle, the Rev. George Burns, D.U., now of the Free Church, Corstorphine, was at that time minister of Tweedsmuir. He has many recollections of the visit to which this letter alludes. When Mr. Guthrie preached, the people came from great distances — some from twelve and fourteen miles — to hear him. Kis chief outdoor amusements were stilting across the Tweed and fishing in it. At the latter sport his success was small. He had not then acquii-ed the skill which his suhse- quent experience at Lochlee gave him; and, in Dr. Burns's words, "the Country people jocularly assigned another cause, namely, that his tall figure cast such a shadow as scared away the finny tribes ! " 32 MEMOIR. in the shape of petitions to Parliament. The second speech — that of Mr. Bridges — was full of spirit, and interspersed with strokes of humour. After he had spoken at some length, he told, with great effect, a story of the earlier days of Sir George Sinclair. The audience was convulsed with laughter ; and Dr. Guthrie, who sat close behind him, sagaciously perceiving that the time had come for the speech to end with advantage, ventured, quietly hut very decidedly, to give the speaker's coat-tails a pull, whispering to him as he did so, ' Down, man!' The hint was taken, and the speech closed with such marked effect that Mr. Bridges, thanking Dr. Guthrie warmly, declared his full purpose to follow his counsels during the rest of the tour. " When we arrived at Dublin (where the concluding meeting was held) we were waited on by a deputation of the ministers, to assure us that the people of that city were of a class to be moved only by calm, grave, and thoroughly logical state- ments of our case. As I had dealt in no pleasantries, I had nothing to change. Mr. Bridges, on the contrary, considered it expedient to make his speech as grave and lawyer-like as possible ; and so, omitting all his anecdotes (* Sir George' among the rest), he was tamer and less effective than usual. Dr. Guthrie perceived this ; and, having wisely come to the conclusion that the Dublin Presbyterians were very much like their neighbours, threw himself at once on them with his usual fulness of illus- tration and humorous incident, and made quite as telling and powerful a speech as on former occasions. It was amusing to us when our friend, alive to the contrast with his own some- what marred speech, said to Dr. Guthrie at the close, ' Really it was too bad ; you gave all your jokes, and I had not one of mine ! ' " I need hardly add that Dr. Guthrie was the life of all our somewhat fatiguing journeyings and labours by his unvarying cheerfulness, his fine eye for the beauties of the country, and his ever-recurring sallies of humour and mirth." The object of tlie Irish visit, as Dr. Brown has stated, had been to secure the assistance of the Presbj^terians of Ireland in the attempt the Church of Scotland was making to obtain legislative protection against the encroachments of the Civil Courts. In the course of the DUKE OF ARGYLL S BILL. 33 montli after Mr. Guthrie's return to Edinburgh, the Duke of Argyll introduced a Bill into the House of Lords for the settlement of the question. That measure, which was ultimately withdrawn, did not propose to decide whether the Civil Courts or the Church were right in their respective contentions ; but, by legalising the Church's Veto Law, it aimed at removing the cause of difference between them. The Evangelical party were unanimous in their approval of the Duke of Argyll's Bill. A large and growing section, however, would have preferred a more radical remedy, viz., the total abolition of patronage. Among these, it need scarcely be said, Mr. Guthrie was numbered. As in Arbirlot days, many were the Anti- Patronage meetings at which he thundered against an abuse which he pronounced " contrary to Scripture and contrary to reason." Take, as a specimen of his speeches on these occasions, some sentences from one delivered in Edinburgh, on 31st January, 1842 : — " Though I am no musician, my Lord, yet if I could form any idea of what music is, the motion which I have to propose ends with words, to my ears, extremely musical — the aboli- tion of patronage. Short of that consummation, I see no resting-place for the Church of Scotland ; and, short of that, I frankly tell you, I wish none. I don't say but that I would rejoice in a breathing-time ; I would welcome even a pause in the storm : but let men talk of difficulties, dangers, distresses as they may ; for myself, I rejoice in the very tempest that is compelling our Church to change her course. " I remember reading in history that King William left Holland with the intention of landing on a particular part of the coast of England ; and had he landed there, he had landed VOL. 11. D 34 MEMOIR. in the lions' cTen. But as his fleet neared the English shore, Heaven seemed to fight against the enterprise ; the wind shifted round upon the compass, and blew from the very quarter where he sought a landing. The gale rose into a hurricane ; and contrary to the King's wish, contrary to his plans, and in the face of all his seamen, his fleet, with the flag of freedom at its masthead, was drifted by the tempest onwards to a point of which he had never thought, but which was for him the best place of all. May such be the issue with the Church of Scotland ! I weary for the next General Assembly ; we will weather the gale till then, and then we shall hear its venerable Moderator give the word ' 'bout ship ; ' and then we shall see the noble vessel, leaving ' Calls ' and ' Vetos ' and half-measures all astern, amid the cheers of the crew, bear down on Anti- patronage. " I know that there has been a difference of opinion about the essential evil of patronage among Non-intrusionists. I know more — I know that our opponents have been flattering themselves with the hope that this difference of opinion would lead to difference of action. But, my Lord, there was an event that happened in the history of our country, from which we have learned a lesson never, I trust, to be forgotten. I allude to the battle of Bothwell Brig. When the troops of Monmouth were sweeping the bridge, and Claver- house, with his dragoons, was swimming the Clyde, the Covenanters, instead of closing their ranks against their common foe, were wrangling about points of doctrine and differences of opinion. In consequence, they were scattered by enemies whom, if united, they might have withstood and conquered. "But though the hattie of Bothwell Brig was lost, the \ei<.son of Bothwell Brig is not. We will sacrifice no principle ; but it is common sense which tells us that, rather than break our ranks and rush forward to what we believe to be a right position, leaving many of our friends behind, we should advance in one solid column, and with united ranks. Now this, my Lord, is just what we have done. We have raised two colours, and shall soon, I hope, raise a third, united as before. We have one on which is blazoned the words, ' No Surrender.' We have another, on which is blazoned the words 'No Division.' And 1 trust that next Assembly will shake a third from its folds, on which shall be blazoned forth the words, * No Patronage.' " Let it he clearly understood, however, that Mr. Guthrie THE CENTRAL POSITION. 35 did not regard the ■abolition of patronage as the main question about wliich tbe Ten Years' Conflict was fought. He felt that a higher issue was involved. "It happened in our controversy," he said in recent years, " much as I heard an old soldier say it happened at Waterloo, on whose bloody field, facing the iron hail of France, he had stood with his gallant comrades, 'from morn till dewy eve.' Placed on the left of our position, where plumes and tartans waved, he said, speaking of the right wing, * The battle, sir, began at Hougomont, but the firing came steadily on.' Even so here ; the battle began with the rights of the people, but it ' came steadily on ; ' till, extending itself, it embraced, within the din and dust of the fight, that grand, central, and most sacred of all positions — the right of Jesus Christ as king to reign within His own Chiirch." The distinction is clearly brought out by Cockburn in his Life of Lord Jeffrey. " The contest at first," he says, "was merely about patronage, but this point was soon .... absorbed in the far more vital question whether the Church had any spiritual jurisdiction independent of the control of the civil power. This became the question on which the longer coherence of the elements of the Church depended. The judicial determination was, in effect, that no such jurisdiction existed. This was not the adjudication of any abstract political or ecclesiastical nicety ; it was the declaration, and, as those who protested against it held, the introduction of a principle which afiected n 2 36 MEMOIR, the whole practical being and management of the Establishment." To David Key.* "Edinburgh, \Wi May, 1842. " My dear Friend, — I have often intended to write you in answer to a kind letter I received from you some good long while ago. Biit if you knew how many letters I am obliged to write every day on matters that will not put off, I am sure that you would excuse me. I calculate that I get some two or three thousand letters of one kind or another in the year. . . . " I will be very happy again to have a cracli with you about many things, and especially the affairs of our Churcli. These occupy much of mj^ thoughts, care, and time. We have two stated meetings about them each week,f besides occasional meetings. All are looking forward, both friends and foes, with much interest to the Assembly ; and all who feel a right interest in the welfare of our Zion should be earnestly engaged in prayer at this most critical season. The popular election of Elders is safe. We will carry a motion for the abolition of patronage. We are to propose an overture anent grievances, which will also be carried. We are to make a number of decided thrusts at the vitals of Moderation, and I hope the Head of our Church will guide and strengthen us. Our enemies in high quarters are shaking, and when their ranks are wavering, now, under God, is our time to strike home and make our highest demands. If our men stand firm and resolute, ready to suffer all things rather than yield an inch of principle, our enemies will give way. The words of the * The Aibirlot weaver, one of Mr. Guthrie's elders in his country charge, whose reminiscences are given at p. 328, vol. i. t On these occasions, a friend tells us, Mr. Guthrie was wonder- fully animated. The tone of the meeting was one dny somewhat gloomy. The near prospect of having to go forth on the world penniless was a serious one, even though all felt the cause worthy of the ssicrifice. "Well," said Mr. Guthrie, in his hearty way, "Cunningham there [who had a rich library] can sell his books ; they will keep him fur a good while. But, as for me, I have no books to sell ; and I see nothing for it but to publish a volume of stories ! " The idea thus thrown out as a joke was realised in a curious way long years thereafter, when, in 1863, Messrs. Iloulston and AV right, of LoiiddU, without Dr. Giithiie's know- ledge, published a shilling book, entitled "Anecdotes and Stories of the Rev. Dr. Guthiie ; " now in its twentieth thousand. ASSEMBLY OF \%\i. 37 Apostle are emphatically applicable to the Church in the present juncture of affairs, — ' Having done all, stand ! ' " Amid the bustle and driving and whirling of this place I often think of you all ; and at this season of the year, when the country is so fascinating, I am especially led to think of Arbirlot, and how beautiful and sweet the grounds and garden of my former manse must be. At the term, I am to shift my habitation; and as the house I am going to has a garden, I hope to have some enjoyment in my old relaxation of culti- vating flowers. But I must close; I have not^time for a line more. With kindest regards to your wife and all my eld friends ; and my prayers for your best welfare, " Yours, my dear David, with unfeigned regard, " Most sincerely, " Thomas Guthrie." The motion for the abolition of patronage, to wliich Mr. Guthrie alludes in this letter, was carried triumph- antly in the Assembly of 1842. Following on this resolution, the next step, in ordi- nary circumstances, would have been for the Church to have gone to the Legislature, and sought the rejjeal of the Act of Queen Anne. But more vital work was on hand. It had become evident that all attempts at compromise, such as that contained in the Duke of Argyll's Bill, were destined, if not to failure, at least to create indefinite delay. Meanwhile, the Civil Courts, as case after case came before them, were encroaching on one after another of the most sacred prerogatives of the Church. The Church must, therefore, know, and that at once, whether the acts of the Civil Courts were to be homologated by the State. "Edinburgh, Vlth May, 1842. " . . . . You would be gratified to see in our synod's pro- ceedings that we had struck such a good key-note for the 38 MEMOIR. Assembly. There was not a man broke down of whose rotten- ness we were not previously aware. There seems to be no ground to doubt that we will have a very firm Assembly. " You would see from Grant's speech some indications, at its close, that the Government had not backed, nor were very likely to back, the Moderates as they expected. I have no doubt that both Peel and Graham are most anxious to settle our question. It meets them in their members, and meets the members in their electors, very inconveniently. So, if we present a bold and resolute front, we have a chance of some- thing like a measure of justice — of more than a measure, at least, under which we could barely remain in the Establish- ment." (To Ids brother, Provost Guthrie.) The resolute attitude desiderated in this letter was promptly taken by the General Assembly of 1842. A " Claim of Rights," as it was commonly called, drawn up by Mr. Dunlop,* was adopted by the Assembly, and for- warded to the Crown. After setting forth the grievances of the Church, it declared that " they cannot — in accordance with the Word of God, the authorised and ratified standards of this Church, and the dic- tates of their consciences — intrude ministers on reclaim- ing congregations, or carry on the government of Christ's Church subject to the coercion attempted by the Court of Session ; and that at the risk and hazard of suffering the loss of the secular benefits conferred by the State, and the public advantages of an Establishment, they, must, as by God's grace they will, refuse so to do ; for, highly as they estimate these, they cannot put them in competition with the inalienable liberties of a Church of Christ, which, alike by their duty and allegiance to their « See vol. i., p. 176. SECOND AUCHTERARDER CASE. 39 Head and King, and by their ordination vows, they are bound to maintain 'notwithstanding of wbatsoever trouble or persecution may arise.'"* The end was now drawing near. On 9th August, 1842, the House of Lords pronounced judgment in what is termed the Second Auchterarder Case. By their decision, the vitally important principle was. conclusively settled that, in certain circumstances, the Courts of the Church tcere liable to be coerced by the penalties of laic in the performance of their spiritual duties. Immediate and united action was felt by the Evangelical party to be more than ever necessary ; but it had first to be ascer- tained how far they were at one as to the course to be adopted. That there was no little difference of opinion * The only speech which Mr. Guthrie delivered in any General Assembly before 1843, was spoken in this Assembly of 1842. The subject was one fitted to interest his catholic mind. During the last ten j-ears of the eighteenth century, the Moderate party were in the height of their power. In the General Assembly of 1796, for example, missionary societies were condemned ; Dr. Hill, the leader of the Mode- rate party, calling them " highly dangerous in their tendency to the good order of society at large " ! It was not wonderful, therefore, that when Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, Rowland Hill, and James Haldane " went everywhere" through Scotland "preaching the Word," the General Assembly resolved that none of these " vagrant teachers," as they were contemptuously called, should be heard in the pulpits of the Established Church. In 1799 an Act was passed to this effect, and thus the Church of Scotland practically cut itself off from all the other churches of Christendom. In 1842, this Act was repealed by the Evangelical majority, on which occasion we find Mr. Guthrie saying, " I look upon this Act 1799 as one of the blackest Acts the Church of Scotland ever passed, and I rejoice with all my heart that this motion has been made. I hold it was passed, not to exclude heresj^ from our pulpits, but to exclude truth." The fact is not without significance, that on the Disruption taking place, the old law was at once re-enacted by those who remained iu the Establishment. (See "Lives of the Haldanes," 1871, p. 23G.) 40 MEMOIR. as to this among the party at that date is evident from the following letter which Mr. Guthrie wrote to the Rev. Jas. McCosh, then a minister in Brechin : — "■list October, 1842. " We had a long meeting to-day, and saw more dayhght on the subject than I bad yet seen. There is no difference among us here as to principles — as to our resolute determination, at all hazards and risks, to maintain our ground, set at nought and treat as waste paper the hostile invasions and decisions of the Civil Courts. But there has been, and is, considerable difference of opinion what, besides that, it is the duty of the Church to do, since the late Auchterarder decision. " Some of us entertain very decided opinions about the unlawfulness of the Church continuing in connection with a State which insists on Erastian conditions, an"cl draws the sword of persecution against the reclaiming Church. Our idea of the Church's duty is this : — that on many accounts she should not rashly proceed to dissolve the connection, but should go to the government of the land, explain how the terms on which she was united to the State have been altered to all practical purposes by the late decisions, how the compact has been therein violated, and how she cannot continue to administer the affairs of the Establishment unless she is to be freed fi*om invasion and protected against persecution ; that therefore, unless the Government and Legislature shall, within a given and specified time, redress the wrongs we complain of, we shall dissolve the union, and leave all the sins and consequences at the door of an Erastian and oppressive State. There is some hope that in this way, were such a determination signed and sealed by some hundreds of ministers, the Government would be compelled to interfere and grant redress, rather than run all the risks to the civil and religious institutions of the country which a refusal might bring Avith it. " There are others, such as Brown, Elder, and Begg, who are not prepared to take this step ; their idea is to remain in the Establishment till driven out, doing all the duties that belong lo them. Well, our manifest duty, under the idea of remaining, is to purify the Church of Erastianism, and presei've it from it. So they agree that at tliis convocation the ministers should resolve to admit no Erastian into the Church, to license no Erastian student, to translate no Erastian, and to thrust out of the Church without any mercy every man and mother's son that THE CONVOCATION. 41 avails himself of these Erastian decisions, acknowledges them as binding the Church, or would in any way apply them in the face of our own laws. •' We, who would dissolve after due warning, can have no conscientious objection to continue for a time doing this work of excision. At the Convocation we may agree on that ground ; but we still think our plan the best of the two. It may secure a free and pure Establishment ; the latter plan must inevitably and certainly, though slowly, lead to the casting out of our party ; it can in no case gain the object we may, gain — a pure Establishment. We must cast out of. the Church by the second proposal all that preach for, or in any way by overt acts countenance, the deposed of Strathbogie.* We must cast out of the Church the Moderate majority of the late Synod of Aberdeen, and in less than two years we have all the Moderates declared to be no longer ministers of the Church of Scotland. They constitute themselves into law presbyteries, depose our clergy within their bounds, declare their parishes vacant, ordain ministers of their own on the presentation of patrons, and then claim the stipends, and they are given them ; and so without the glance of a bayonet or ring of a musket — the appearance even of a law functionary — we are most quietly dispossessed and put down. This plan — and if we are to remain in the Church for any time we are bound to take it — this, you see, cuts us down in detail, disposes of us most quietly and peaceably for our opponents ; and then we produce DO effect on the land, on the Government, on Christendom, or on an ungodly world, by bearing the noblest testimony ever borne for the truth. I believe the bold course would save the Church — under God, I mean; and if it did not, men could not say we died struggling for a stipend. If it did not, the history of it would fill the brightest page in Church history. It would do more to recommend religion as a vital, eternal principle than all the sermons we will ever preach. "I pray you turn over the subject in your mind, and talk of it with your friends, and let us pray that the Lord would bring us all to one opinion." This letter alludes to a " Convocation " then in view. The bearing of that remarkable gathering on the * The seven ministers, having continued to defy the authority of the Church Courts, had been deposed by the Greneral Assembly of 1841. Immediately after the Disruption they were reinstated in their charges, and two of them still (1873) survive as ministers of the Established Church. 42 MEMOIR. Disruption, and all that has followed it, cannot be over- estimated. We have repeatedly heard Dr. Guthrie, in conversation with Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England, express his conviction that, without it, the combined action taken at the Disrujption had not been possible, and his regret that in their case such a con- ference for mutual counsel as to the path of duty did not seem to be considered possible. But, until the Convocation met, Mr. Guthrie was not without considerable anxiety as to the result. Writing to his brother. Provost Guthrie, he first indicated the points on which there was general unanimity, and then proceeds — " Supposing we have come to one mind on these branches of the subject, then comes the rub. In the event of the State refusing within reasonable time to redress our wrongs, and apply the remedy we judge to be indispensable, what is the duty of the Church in these circumstances ? Unless God is remarkably gracious to us, and shall make our assembly some- thing like another Pentecost, I look for nothing but a fatal division. " Some of our brethren say the State has no right to change the terms of the union, that they are entitled to their stipends on the old terms, and can never, however the State may alter its mind, be compelled to give them up. There, I think, they are utterly wrong. We hold the Church to be supreme and sovereign in spirituals, the State to be so in temporals. It may be sinful, yet it is competent for the Church to change in spirituals : if we got what we fancied to be more light on any point of doctrine, the Church is free to change the Confession of Faith to-morrow, and, of course, in doing so, she would run the risk of losing her connection with the State and all its advan- tages. And what is free to the Church is free to the State : it can change its terms to-morrow, of course running the risk of losing its connection with the Church and all its advantages ; and when, on a representation from the Church, the State refuses to interpose between its servants and us, it homolo- THE CONVOCATION. 43 gates their acts and principles, and, of course, at present the principle of the Auchterarder decision, which all our party hold to be pure Erastianism. " Some of our country brethren say that we would not be justified in giving up endowments, consecrated by our pious forefathers to the support of the truth. That is sheer non- sense. They were left by our blinded fathers to the support- of error, to pray their souls out of Purgatory. "They say we cannot be justified in leaving our people. They never find any difiiculty, most of them, in doing that, if translation offers abetter stipend, or what is commonly called ' a larger sphere of usefulness.' Besides, they are not called on to leave their people, but only their jxiy ; since they can have a cottage at i£3 a year, and betaking themselves, if there is no other way of it, to tent-making, they may remain with their people to their dying day : at any rate, if they are per- secuted in one city, they have liberty from Christ to flee to another. *' I admit their temptations to be very great. It is a serious and painful, a very serious and painful, prospect for men with wives and families to leave their certain emoluments and com- fortable homes and go they know not where ; but it is a very easy thing for men in these circumstances to delude and deceive themselves : and that, I am afraid they are doing, and are about more publicly to do. " Whatever resolution such men may come to — and we are determined to force the Convocation to a resolution on the subject — we have made up our minds what to do. Unless the brethren can be brought to see it to be their duty to take up this position, we must take it up by ourselves and those who will adhere to us. How many these may be, remains to be seen. Chalmers, Gordon, Bruce, Candlish, Brown, Sym, Tweedie, Buchanan, Cunningham, and myself among the City ministers, and a number of the Chapel men, with Dr. Clason, are those of us here who have made up their minds that, unless our wrongs are speedily redressed, we must give the State to know that we consider the connection sinful, and cannot, in common honour and honesty, receive the pay of the State on conditions we cannot fulfil. " What grieves me and distresses me is to think of the triumph of the ungodly, how they will tell it in Gath, when many remain in, after a considerable section — and these not the meanest men in the Church — have left. The damage this will do to the cause of religion no tongue can tell ; and the men who remain from really pure motives, who cauiiot see that in con- X 44 MEMOIR. science they are free to leave, will be much to be pitied. The world will give them no credit for any conscience in the matter. They will live with impaired usefulness, and go down to the grave with a damaged, at least suspected character. " I will urge no man to go. Unless he in deliberate judgment, and with a clear conscience, sees it his duty to go, we don't want him. For the sake of religion I trust they may be brought to see this to be their duty. But for tlmt, the fewer that go the better for us ; we have no temporal interest in getting many to go. " Dunlop, Hamilton, Candlish, Gordon, and others do not entertain the most remote expectation of the State listening to any, even the most reasonable demands we may make. They look on the fate of our party as sealed. Would three or four hundred men stand true to their principles, and show them- selves ready to march, I would not despair ; but of any such number I confess I desj^air. Lord Cockburn said yesterday to Hamilton that the Church must go down, and that he has been satisfied of that for two years past. " Chalmers told me the other day that he knew one gentle- man who was to give £200 per year to us, if we were obliged to go, and of three or four men who had resolved to give up their carriages, &c. He is in high feather, go or stay. " May the Lord listen to the prayers of His people ! " Predictions tliat the Convocation would prove a failure were widespread. Thus Mr. Guthrie writes : — " Mait- land* has been saying to Craufurd* that it will be a complete failure. * What,' said Craufurd, ' would you call it a failure if two hundred were to attend ? Would you call tliut a failure ? ' * No/ says Maitland, * but catch two hundred of them coming up for such a purpose ! ' " The actual result was all the more remarkable. Not two hundred, but four hundred and sixty-five ministers, and these out of every county from Caithness to Wigton, appeared in Roxburgh Church, Edinburgh, in the gloomy Afterwards Judges of tlio Court of Session, under the titles of Lord Dundrennan and Lord Ardmillan. THE CONVOCATION. 45 month of November. It was the largest number of ministers (elders were on this occasion excluded) that had ever met in council in Scotland. " The numbers, however/' says Lord Cockburn in his Journal (I. 337), "are infinitely less material than the public character of the men. This band contains the whole chivalry of the Church." In order to give to the deliberations a practical cha- racter and a definite aim, two great questions were singled out for discussion. First, What is our grievance and the remedy for it? Second, What, if that remedy be refused, is it the duty of the Church to do ? The pro- ceedings were strictly private, and no detailed record of them has ever been published. From Mr. Guthrie's very full letters to Brechin we select some passages : — " Edinburgh, 19^7* November, 1842. " The first point was the full bearing of the Auchterarder decision, &c., and the element or elements indispensable to a remedy, without which we would submit to no Bill. This pointed to a complete security of all interference of the Civil Coui'ts in our Courts Ecclesiastical,* complete independence of jurisdiction. We were all agreed on the bearing of the decision, and the multifarious invasions of the Civil Courts. * That is to say, in so far as these Courts confine themselves to spiritual matters. The Church never denied that her courts might go wrong just as she averred the Civil Courts had done; she admitted that they might trench on things civil just as the Court of Session had done on things spiritual. But, contrary to the Popish view, she franklj'^ conceded to the Civil Courts what she claimed for herself — their right to refuse civil effects to such encroachments as she re'used spiritual. In addition, it must be observed that in Scotland (whatever may have been the case in other countries) there has never been found any practical difficulty in distinguishing between the civil and spiritual provinces. There was no such difficulty bef ire the Disriiplion : the judges themselves admitted that the acts they interfered with were spiritual in their nature. 46 MEMOIR. "Dr. McFarlane opened the subject in a statement of some half-hour long, to a convocation of some 460 men. I cal- culated right. I calculated 100 of our party who coulA not come, another 100 who would not come. After him Garment and some of the gi-ey-heads spoke. Then came the tug of war. Paul of the West Church tabled a Liierum Arbitrium motion as the remedy. Smith of Lochwinnoch seconded it, and in doing so denied that our constitution was injured, or could he so, and for that gave four reasons, enlarging on them. Then came Begg, who was acting for Wilson of Carmyllie, &c., and some extreme men like himself, men not prepared to take their stand on this ground — that they would cut the connection unless speedily relieved from these invasions and shackles of the civil tyranny, — and he tabled an anti-patronage motion. *' Now what we wanted to settle was not only what was the best settlement of the question, but what was that without which," unless speedily granted, we would renounce our connection with the State. At this point I struck in, clearing the ground of Smith and his four points, and then taking up Begg and his party. The result was that to-day, after a good deal of speak- ing, and a most admirable speech from Chalmers, and some verbal alterations, both Paul and Begg withdrew their motions, and, amid much thankfulness, the House came to a unanimous con- clusion in favour of the resolutions, only six men declining to vote. " Chalmers, who has great practical wisdom, but sometimes pushes things too far, and who was dead-set on the Convoca- tion attending only in the meantime to the point of the en- croachments (though he avowed anti-patronage sentiments, and would rejoice to support them in proper time and place), made a most ingenious and earnest speech, to the efiect that we should record nothing in our minutes about anti-patronage ; Paul saying that he would not agi'ee that anything should be recorded. I spoke again, to the effect that I could not comply with Chalmers's request, giving my reasons for it, and as to Mr. Paul I gave notice that if he persevered in his opposition, I would also on Monday night divide the house, and insist that the relative numbers should be sent up to Government. Dr. McFarlane declared if this were done he would leave the Convocation. I was backed by Candlish, &c., and so it was agreed to, and then, amid much joy and thankfulness among all, we joined in singing and prayer, and so closed this day about three o'clock. " The resolutions are abundantly stringent, and we bind ourselves not to submit to any measure which does not THE CONVOCATION. 47 thoroughly and effectually guard the Church against all pains and penalties, encroachments, &c., claiming all our indepen- dence, adhering to our fundamental principle, and condemning the Act of Patronage as unjustifiable. The fact is, that we claim a jurisdiction so independent, that the State will never grant it from anything but the fear of a total disruption, and I think we have well prepared for Monday, because, unless our party will now resolve between this and the Assembly at farthest to declare that, unless this is granted, they will dissolve the connection, there is not a shadow of a chance of our getting what we ask." {To his brother Patrick.) "Edinbvkgh, 21si! Koremler, 1842. " I wrote Patrick on Saturday, and you would see our pro- ceedings down to that day. " The resolution then adopted has, in my opinion, settled our course. We have demanded our full jurisdiction — the most oU'ensive demand we could make. I believe we would have fewer difficulties to overcome in seeking the total abolition of patronage. Our deputations all said that there was nothiog so offensive to the mere politicians as our demand for full security from the review or interference of the Civil Courts. Lord Cottenham, the only friend we have among the chancel- lors, was full of urbanity and kindness till the jurisdiction was touched on, and then he bristled up like a hedgehog, and quite lost his temper. " Some of our friends are now convinced of this, and are thereby more inclined for the high step of declaring that we cut unless our grievances are speedily and thoroughly re- dressed. Unless they do this in such numbers as to tell on the country and legislature, we have not a shadow of a chance of getting what we demand ; and I am happy to say that the hand of God is seen in a great change in the minds of many since they came here. " I don't think I will speak again, unless very needful. I was thankful that I had rendered some effective service by my speech on Friday ; and, unless very much needed, don't think it proper again to speak when there are so many other men in prominent places who have not yet opened their mouths." {To Provost Gutkrie.) The necessity which Mr. Guthrie did not anticipate actually arose on the following day. His letter referring" 48 MEMOIR. to it has not been preserved ; but we find an abstract of bis speech in a private record of the Convocation proceed- ings to which we have obtained access. The question of the Church's grievances and its appro- priate remedy having been disposed of, the more difficult point remained for consideration, — what, if the State refuses the remedy which we consider essential to our efficiency as a Christian Church, is it our duty to do ? A set of resolutions (concurred in by 354 ministers) was passed, setting forth " that it is the duty of the faithful ministers of the Church not to retain their endowments or to persist in their present conflict with the civil power, after the State, by refusing to redress the existing grievances, shall have virtually made it a condition of enjoying the temporal benefits of the Establishment that they shall be subject to civil control in matters spiritual, and bound against their consciences to intrude ministers upon reclaiming congregations." In support of these resolutions, Mr. Guthrie said — " Mr. spoke as if we intended to drive men to a conclusion now. So far from that, I beseech no one to go out with me without a clear judgment and a true conscience, just because I could not expect the blessing of God on that man's conduct. My friend seems to think it a mere matter of expediency whether we shall go out just now or not. Sir, it is much more than that. I hold that, as an honest man, I cannot take the State's pay without doing her bidding ; and, therefore, our opinion is, that the State should just have a reasonable THE CONVOCATION. 49 time to decide what she is to insist on our doing ; and after that reasonable time, if she refuse redress, I must cut my connection with her altogether. Some people would say this would, be no declaration of hostiKty on the part of the State. I wonder what they would call a deelaration of hostility ? When I go to the State com- plaining of its servants, and the State not only refuses to protect me, but takes the very sword with which it swore to protect me and points it to my breast, if this be not a declaration of hostility, I ask what is ? " Now in regard to the question of expediency, how does the case stand ? What are we to do with all who decline the Church's authority ? Are we to allow the reins of discipline to lie in the dust ? I have heard men say we ought to suspend these sixty rebels of the Synod of Aberdeen from their judicial functions ! Suspend them from their judicial fmictions ! Why, sir, suppose a British subject had done some wrong, and that he were to call in a body of French soldiers to his assistance, and these French soldiers were to interrupt the officers of justice and resist them in their attempts to punish the criminal — what would the authorities do to them ? Sus- pend them from their judicial functions ? Aye, sir, they would suspend them, but it would be hy the neck ! (Laughter.) Let any man who would be for going on with the discipline of the Church consider where he would be driving us to. Let Mr. Elder consider what state religion would be placed in in this town if he had to go to St. Stephen's to depose Dr. Muir, and then Dr. VOL. II. E so MEMOIR. Miiir would come to St. Paul's to depose him ; or if I had to depose Mr. Hunter, and then Mr. Hunter should depose me. Why, this is a deed that my hand will never do. " What Mr. Begg said about lawsuits was really amusing. He said we should be done with them. I would be done with them with all my heart ; but the rub is, they won't have done with me, and that's enough to settle the point. " Sir, it has been my dream by night and my thought by day (and intensely have I thought upon it), that there is just one thing my Eeverend Fathers and Brethren should take into account, — not what is their duty to the Established Church, but what is their duty to the Church of Christ. Let us not take thought for the temporalities. I am indifferent to them, and I don't care a straw for 's speech last night. I have a higher speech from the Master I serve, who said : * There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time and in the world to come life everlasting.' " "■ Edinburgh, IQith November, 1842. "I am sure that you would all be greatly delighted and refreshed Avith the proceedings of our Convocation. Its result is the most remarkable event that ever came within my experi- ence, and can be accounted for only on the belief that God has remarkably answered the prayers of his people in a remarkable eflfusion of His grace and spirit. " There were many very natural and exciting reasons why the brethren should have come to another decision, or, at least, why they should not have come to this with such remarkable THE CONVOCATION. 51 unanimity. There was a pretty strong jealousy among them (encouraged by their fears and fanned eagerly by our enemies) of the Edinburgh clergy, or 'clique,' as it has been called. Many of them came to town with the secret purpose of com- mitting themselves to nothing. Most of them came up most averse, if not doggedly and resolutely opposed, to our plans ; and even after they came here they had not scrupled to oppose, nay, even in some measure to speak of them with scorn. Their regard (a false regard, no doubt) to consistency, their prejudices, and, above all, their very natural fears of future support — these all stood in the way of them' agreeing to our bold and determined plans, and all these were overcome. This we are all taking as a token for good ; and though I long stood alone in entertaining any hope at all of a favourable issue, hope in the hearts of many is now beginning again to stir, and give an expression of itself. Many of the enemy are confounded, and are covered with shame. May their shame be followed by repentance ! " Maitland thinks that PeeJ will weigh well the matter before he treats such a declaration as a piece of waste paper. We are now, in a sense, in the situation in which they required us to be before they would entertain our demands — admitting, as they called it, ' the claims of the law.' There were two ways of doing this. One, to stay in and obey — that we could not do ; the other, since we could not obey, to go out as soon as it is ascertained that the deeds and principles of the servants are approved of and homologated by their masters. " We had usually three prayers at every diet ; and I never heard such and so many remarkable prayers. When comparing our Convocation with the Assembly, and looking round on a body of men all holding the same principles, and more or less animated with the same spirit, we all felt that it would more than counterbalance many of the privations we might have to suffer, to be rid of the Moderates, of whom, indeed, we should, if possible, have been rid long ago. " , poor fellow, I was very sorry for. Though he would not acknowledge it, he had his fears for his family to contend with. He was clean careworn and cast down ; but since he has done the deed, crossed the Rubicon, he is now better in spirits, but very keen to cling to hopes that Sir Robert Peel will be compelled to set things to rights. He has the courage of a man who would die bravely enough amid the excitement of a battle-field, but whose firmness fails him amid the still and solemn quietness of an execution. It was an act doubtless of great grace and courage with many ; E 2 52 MEMOIR. and I am happy to say that it was done by almost all with no hope of our grievances being redressed. This was not held out to them : the whole drift and bearing of the addresses were to prepare men's minds for expulsion." Following on the proceedings at the Convocation it was resolved that the people, over the length and breadth of Scotland, should be made thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the crisis, and the resolutions taken by the ministers of the Churcb. "Edinburgh, \^th December, 1842. " We, the clergy, have apportioned out the whole land, from Maiden Kirk to Cape Wrath, to different bodies of men. Every parish, whether it be in the possession of friend or foe, is to be visited ; and men must lay their account with being some two or three weeks away from their pulpits and people. I picked out the Presbyteries of Haddington and Dunbar. The first is a very sound one, so far as the clergy are concerned ; but the lords and lairds are very fierce, and most of the big farmers are against us. " The people here (not excepting the folks of the Bow and Grassmarket) are in a very lively and resolute state. For example, Lord Medwyn's servant, whom I accommodated, you may remember, in my seat, came over to me last week with £2, for the service of the Church. I proposed that, instead of giving it away at present, I would, with her leave, put it in the bank ; when she told me that I might do so if I chose ; ' But,' she added, ' I am laying by money at present in the Savings Bank for that very purpose.' Yesterday a Highland woman (a namesake of our own, from the braes of Lochaber), a member of my Church and a servant in town, came with eight shillings for the sei'vice of the Church also ; though I learned by cross-examination that she had her father in the Highlands to support. My parishioners have fixed on the site of two old houses for the new church, and I hear of tradesmen who are resolute to give their £1 per year for a sitting. I have no doubt, from the way that public feeling is rising and running, that our opponents will be astonished by-and-by. Dr. Alton was breakfasting with me this morning. He is clean frightened, and anticipates nothing but sheer ruin to his own — the Moderate party — if wc go out. . . . ROUSING THE COUNTRY. 53 " Few men agree with me, yet I don't altogether despair of a settlement. Peel will, I am persuaded, bring in a Bill which, if it won't please us, will be made so as if possible to entrap us." {To his sister Clementina.) " Prestonkirk, 27th Jamcari/, 1843. ** Last night I set off to Stenton, and addressed about one thousand people in a magnificent barn. I kept them up for two hours and a half, and five hundred of them were on their feet for three hours and a half, and this after working all day, and many of them travelling some four o!r five miles. It was a noble meeting. To-night I address the folks here, and a larger audience is expected. I never stood an expedition half so well as this. Before facing the night air, and after • sweating like a horse, I always drink a great dose of very hot water qualified with a little milk, which keeps me in a glow till I get home. I have never spoken less than two hours, I am beginning to think that I will, after the trial of this nightly work, be a capital itinerary preacher, and will match Whitefield himself ! The real secret is, eat plenty, lie eight or nine hours in bed ; and, above all, drink nothing stronger than cold water. . . . " , in view of my meeting last night, made some state- ments to his people on Sabbath which have fairly finished him. He had the downright idiotism to tell them that with his large family it was no easy matter to say that he would go out. Poor man ! as if God could not fill ten mouths as well as two ! " (To Mrs. Guthrie.) " The last act of this eventful drama," says Dr. Buchanan, the historian of tlie *' Ten Years' Conflict," "was now at hand. When the curtain closed on the Convocation, it had become evident to thinking men that the next time it was raised it would reveal a still more striking scene. Already, behind the screen of that temporary obscurity into which the actors retired when they disappeared from Roxburgh Church and withdrew into the privacy of their own parishes and homes, tbere might be heard the busy preparation and the 54 MEMOIR. hurrying tread of those whose next movement was destined to consummate the Disruption of the Church of Scotland." One thing alone remained to be done : the decision of the Crown and the Legislature must be obtained. The Crown had been appealed to in the Church's " Claim of Rights," forwarded to Her Majesty in May, 1842, but, up to the end of the year, no answer was received. Little hope, however, was entertained that the reply would be favourable. It had become evident, in the course of the many negotiations with both Whig and Tory governments, that Ministers were unable to comprehend, not to say sympathize with, the position of the Church of Scotland. Nor did they know the kind of men they had to deal with. They seemed unable to estimate the depth of conviction among the Evangelical clergy ; and believed, on the testimony of some persons in Scotland who should have known better, that, by determined resistance to the Church's claims, the vast body, when the testing time came, would yield, and remain where they were.* What Mr. Guthrie felt most keenly of all was the * History often repeats itself. It was the same in 16G2 when Charles II. — not contented with the despotic maxim of his royal contemporary Louis XIV., " L'etat c'est moi," but adding to it this other significant sentence, " L'eyUse c'est moi" — restored Prelacy and the Royal Supremacy in matters spiritual. Bishop Fairfoul, when urging on the act, assured Commissioner Middloton that there would not be ten in his diocese who would not prefer sacrificing their principles to losing their stipends. Commissioner Middleton believed him ; and the result was that, on the first Sabbath of the winter of 1662, there were 200 parish churches shut up in Scotland, while 376 ministers in all vacated their livings. FALSE SURMISES. 55 suspicion thereby cast on tlie honour of his brethren. At a meeting in 1842, he said — " Some say — Oh, there's no fear of any mischief — the danger is all imaginary. How so, pray ? ' Oh,' said Mr. So-and-so (a person of some influence and power), the other day, to an acquaintance of mine,' ' the fact is, there's Candlish, and Cunningham, and Brown, and Guthrie, and some five or six more firebrands, — we have only to quench them, and all will be peace.' Now, my lord, I do think that if the Ministers of the Crown believe this, they stand on the very brink of destruction to the country ; and if I had a voice that would go to London, I would tell them of their miserable infatuation, — I would tell them not to think of thrusting put merely some five or six of us. In my heart I wish they were told that, if there is to be any thrusting out at all, if men are honest, it must be an out- thrusting of five or six hundred." * At another meeting, held a month before the Dis- ruption, he referred to the same calumny : — " Our opponents went the length of saying that we were anxious for the glory of martyrdom. Sir, there are some men who cannot comprehend the feeling of the ancient Roman, who spurred his horse into the gulf, that Rome might be saved. As to martyrdom, I believe it is no better than it is called ! Sir, I have been in the Calton Jail- — -not as a prisoner, however, although I once expected to be there as a prisoner — f but I am certainly one of the men, who, according to the old saying, ' would rather hear the laverock [lark] sing, than the mouse cheep,' any day. * Shortly after the Disruption, Mr. Guthrie thus expressed himself : — " Down to the day of the Disruption the Government and the leading men in Scotland did not helieve that ahove thirty or forty ministers ■would leave the Church. Had they only imagined that there would he a secession of 500, I believe we should not have been here." He adds, " I don't regret, however, being here. Far from it. I am a happier man than ever I was. I always coveted the condition of the Volun- taries at the very time I was combating their principles." t Mr. Guthrie, in breaking the Strathbogie interdict, had rendered himself liable to imprisonment. 5 6 MEMOIR. " One thing, however, I may observe, and it is this, that the low secular calculations made, regarding the number of the clergy who are to go out, reconciles me, more than ever, more than anything else, to the thought of making the sacrifice. Alas ! the ministerial character is sunk low indeed when men could believe that five hundred ministers — notwithstanding their sacred ofiice, notwithstanding their most solemn vows, notwith- standing their written, repeated, published pledges — would give up their principles, to keep theu' pay. I say, if we had done BO, we would have set an example of public profligacy such as Las seldom been paralleled even among the mei'e politicians of the world, and such as in infamy never would have been surpassed — no. Sir, not even in the House of Commons in the days of Walpole — and a blow would have been inflicted on the very vitals of evangelical religion such as it never sustained before. " Talk of fines and imprisonments, there is something worse — and we suffer what is worse when foul suspicions are enter- tained, that, notwithstanding all we have said and done, when what Wodrow calls ' the choke ' comes, we will after all give way. Now, Sir, we are waiting for the Greneral Assembly, and I am thankful that the day is not far distant when these sus- picions shall be rolled away, and when the world, if they would not believe it before, will believe it when they see it ; and when, Sir, if they do not confess, they at least will feel, that they have done me and my brethren cruel and gross injustice." At last, on 4th. January, 1843, a reply was received from the Crown to the Church's Claim of Rights. It was signed by Sir James Graham, and was evidently designed to be conclusive. Pronouncing the Church's claim to be "unreasonable," it intimated that the Government " could not advise Her Majesty to acquiesce in these demands." Nothing now remained but to obtain a judgment from Parliament itself as to whether the Civil Courts or the Church Courts were constitu- tionally right in their respective contentions. Should the hostile voice of the Crown, uttered through the THE QUESTION DECIDED. 57 executive Government, be supported by a similar utter- ance from either of the two Houses of Parliament, the Church must then hold that the question was decided, and that her share in this protracted and painful warfare was at length at an end. The subject was brought before the House of Commons on 7th March, 1843, by the Hon. Fox Maule. " Grave as the question was, and momentous as were" the interests which it involved," we read in an account of the scene, " it did not succeed in collecting as many as half the members of the Lower House of Parliament to hear it debated. A railway bill has often proved a more potent spell with which to conjure members from the clubs and dinner-parties of the metropolis than a cause on which there hung the integrity and stability of a great national religious insti- tution, and the worldly fortunes of hundreds of ministers of Christ." Yery differently was it viewed in Scotland. " Eventful night this in the British Parliament ! " wrote Robert McCheyne to a fiiend, within a few days of his own death — " Once more King Jesus stands at an earthly tribunal, and they know Him not ! " That night found Mr. Guthrie speaking in the City Hall, Glasgow, to an audience of four thousand per- sons : — " Would to God," he said, "that He would this night take into His hand the hearts of our senators, and open their eyes - before it be too late ! ' The knell,' Lord Dalhousie said a few years ago in the General Assembly, when it vindicated anew the principle of the Veto Act, ' the knell of the Church of Scot- land is now rung.' It was not rung then, but I believe it is ringing this night in London. The eleventh hour has struck. S8 MEMOIR. The last battle is now, at this moment, fighting on the floors of Parliament. The voices of Maule, and Rutherfurd, and Stewart — and I can hardly mention, in that House of five hundred men, more than these three that will stand up for our rights — they are pleading our cause ; and did I not know that God rules on earth as well as in heaven, you might write ' Ichabod ' already on the brow of Scotland. I confess I have no hope. My motion says it is our duty to use every lawful effort to avert this calamity. Now we have used every lawful efi"ort. We have petitioned— we have remonstrated — we have negotiated. . . . We have resolved never to give up our principles. We shall leave the Church. We shall give them their stipendsj their manses, their glebes, and their churches. These are theirs, and let them ' make a kirk or a mill ' of them. But we cannot give them up the crown rights of Christ, and we cannot give them up our people's privileges. " I stand here, and make the confession that I have made in many assemblies. I now doubt whether, in the present ungodly state of this world, a union betwixt Church and State is an expedient thing. I say here, our fathers have all along been compelled to contend for their religious liberties. John Knox fought for them, when he cradled our Church of Scotland. The history of the Church of Scotland has been a history of aggres- sion on the part of the State, of sufi"ering and resistance on the part of the Church ; and if this night, in Parliament, they refuse to hear our claims — if they turn a deaf ear to our remonstances — if this night, in Parliament, they say you must sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, then I say I am done for my lifetime with the Establishment." Mr. Maule's motion for a Committee of Inquiry was lost upon a division by 211 to 76 ; but it is noticeable that, of the 37 Scotch members present at the division, 25 voted with Mr. Maule. "What then remained for us?" said Mr. Guthrie. " We could not continue the painful and unseemly spec- tacle of remaining in the Establishment, and resisting the orders of the State. Much as we loved the walls of EIGHTEENTH OF MAY. 59 our old Church, unwilling as we were to leave them, we felt compelled to go. And, as the Pilgrim Fathers, the old Puritans of England, the founders of the great American Pepuhlic, crossed the seas, and sought, in the untrodden forests of the New World, the liberty they were denied at home, we went forth under the old banner to enjoy that freedom without the Establishment which we were denied within its pale." The General Assembly, on which such important issues hung, was convened on the 18th of May, 1843. On the morning of that day, as, with a friend, he was quitting the door of his house in Lauriston Lane, Mr. Guthrie turned round for a moment to his wife, and said in resolute yet cheerful tones — "Well, Anne, this is the last time I go out at this door a minister of an Established Church ! " Looking back through the vista of nearly twenty years, he thus spoke in 1862 : — " There is something more eloquent than speech. I am bold to say that Hall, Foster, or Chalmers never preached a sermon so impressive or sublime as the humblest minister of our Church did on the 18th day of May, 1843, when he gave up his living to retain his principles, and joined the crowd that, bursting from the doors of St. Andrew's Church, with Chalmers at its head, marched out file by file in steady ranks — giving God's people, who anxiously thronged the streets, occa- sion to weep tears, not of grief, but of joy, as they cried, 'They come ! They come ! Thank God, they come.' . . . We did not come out a small and scattered band ; but, on 6o MEMOIR. the day of the Disruption, burst out of St. Andrew's Church as a river bursts from a glacier — a river at its birth. In numbers, in position, in wealth, as well as in piety, our Church, I may say, was full grown on the day it was born. Above all, and next to the prayers which sanctified our cause, we were followed by a host of countrymen, whose enthusiasm had been kindled at the ashes of martyrs, and who saw in our movement but another phase of the grand old days that won Scotland her fame, and made her a name and a praise in the whole earth." In times more recent, we have seen the clergy of another Church compelled to forego the advantages of State connection ; but in Scotland, thirty years ago, the spectacle presented was that of nearly five hundred ministers disestablishing and disendoicing themselves; — lajing on the altar of conscience a revenue of more than one hundred thousand pounds a year, — a sum which, if capitalized, amounts to fully two millions sterling. " These men are mad, and the pity is, there is no lunatic asvlum big enough to hold them I " said one of their bitterest opponents. It was a poor joke. How difierent the tone of the Premier of Great Britain, when, on the floor of the House of Commons in 1870, he described the Free Church of Scotland in its exodus as *"' a body to whose moral attitude scarcely any word weaker or lower than that of majesty is, according to the spirit of his- torical criticism, justly applicable." The number of ministers — four hundred and seventy- WEIGHTY TESTIMONIES. 6i four — who quitted the Establishment for conscience sake was great. But the quality of the men was even more noteworthy than their number. Within their ranks was contained beyond controversy a very large proportion of the talent and piety of the Scottish ministry.* It has been sometimes alleged that the step these men took was the result more of excitement and popular clamour than deliberate conviction. Had that been so, the ministers in the great cities might have gone forth ; but their brethren in the remoter parts of the kingdom should have remained undisturbed. What was the fact ? In the distant highlands of Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness — districts where the tone of religion and morality is excep- tionally high — three-fourths of the whole ministers quitted church, manse, and stipend at the Disruption, and were followed by their people almost to a man. A fact still more significant remains. Were one asked to single out from among the ministry of a church the men of special consecration to Christ's cause, and who from their very circumstances were removed from all influence of party excitement, he would name the labourers in the foreign field : the decision of the missionaries of the Church of Scotland was, therefore, naturally looked forward to with special interest by both parties in the Church. Speaking on the 24th of May, 1843, and before * ''Mr. Norman McLeod complains (in the Established Church Assembly) that we have kindled a fire in the old house and left them to put it out. It is my opinion that we have taken away well-nigh all the fire along wiih us. And I will just say that, if there is any fire remaining, we have left plenty of cold-water engines to put it out I" Speech of Mr. Guthrie in the Free Church Assembly, 2-tth May, 1S43. 62 MEMOIR. the course they were to pursue could be ascertained, Mr. Guthrie said : — " The missionaries have not yet opened their mouths on this question. They must, within a period of three months, raise their voice, and I venture to say — I will stake the whole cause on it — that not the voice of one single missionary will be lifted up for those we have left but for us." It was a bold and, some thought, a rash prediction ; yet the result fully verified it. With Dr. Duff at their head, every foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland in 1843 sent home his adhe- rence to the out-going party. The attitude of sympathy assumed by the Evangel- ical Dissenters was peculiarly gratifying ; for, as Mr. Guthrie said, " their pecuniary interest was that we should stay in. And how ? I'll tell you how. If we had stayed in, many of our people would have gone out. Yes, sir, if we had broken down in Edinburgh, there "would not have been a vacant sitting in any Evangelical Dissenting Meeting-house ; every one of them wovild have been filled to the very door." On the first Sunday after the Disruption, Mr. Guthrie found shelter with his congregation in the Methodist chapel in Nicolson Square, and there he preached till his new church on the Castle Hill was erected. Out of a kirk-session of twenty- four members, only two were left behind, and the pro- portion of the congregation who remained was equally small. The crash of the Disruption resounded over the whole kingdom. The Nonconformists in England — Independents, IRISH SYMPATHY. 63 "Wesleyans, and Baptists — and the Calvinistic Metliodists of Wales hastened to offer their sympathy and admiration, and poured many thousands of pounds into the treasury of the Free Church. The Irish Presbyterian Church sent its deputation, as of old, to address the General Assembly in 1843. "When they reached Edinburgh they had to choose between remaining with the Established Church or following the Seceders to Canonmills. Their resolution was taken without hesitation. In Mr. Guthrie's own words, spoken towards the end of that Disruption year, " When they came, as one of them said, they had to go in search of the Church of Scotland ; and where did they find her ? Up yonder, sir ? Up yonder they found the dragoons, and they found the Commissioner, and they found the boys, sir, with powdered heads and little swords ! But, whatever the Irish Deputation found, they did not find the Church of Scotland up there." Christians in other lands joined in the tribute. " The Scottish Church Question," by the Rev. Adolphus Sydow, Chap- Iain to the King of Prussia, is a very powerful argument, and one peculiarly valuable from the impartiality of its author. Mrs. Gordon, in her " Home Life of Sir David Brewster," tells how her illustrious father — himself an enthusiastic Free Churchman — on hearing that a friend had taken the opposite side in the controversy, remarked, *' It CAN only be because he has not studied the subject ; he must read Sydow." In June, 1843, Mr. Guthrie formed one of a deputa- tion which visited the chief towns of England to expound 64 MEMOIR. the principles of the Free Church : — " The people of England," he said, in a speech on his return, "did not help us out of pity, but on principle. We made no lachrymose stories to them. In fact, it was suggested to us by one of our best friends — I mean Mr. Bunting, son of the celebrated Dr. Jabez Bunting — that we were not the right sort of deputation at all ; that we were far too merry-looking men ; that the deputation ought to have been composed of rueful, lachrymose-looking fellows — men more like martyrs than we were, who would have had a much greater effect upon the people of England. Why, my lord, a clear conscience makes a sunny face, and it is not easy for a man to look unhappy who feels himself far better with a hole in his coat than a hole in his character any day ! " "EDiNBrRGH, 16th August, 1845. " I very sincerely sympathize with you in your present delicate position. You know well that I am no bigot, and in these times we should do all we can to heal the wounds of coutroversy, and draw all sound-hearted men of all Evangelical denominations together ; for, unless I mistake entirely the signs of the times, we are driving on one of two positions — the endowment of all (error as well as Divine truth), or the endowment of none ; and most fervently do I hope and pray that the Lord's people in the Established Churches both of England and Scotland may get grace to say we will take no VOL. II. H 98 MEMOIR. share in a system, lend no countenance whatever to a system, which, in effect, puts Antichrist on the same level with our Divine Lord Jesus Christ. " I would do all I could with a clear conscience, therefore, to pour oil on the troubled waters of strife among good people ; to prove that I did not deny other men's Christianity, because they in all things walked not with me ; nay, even while I think that the Scottish Establishment has greatly failed in her duty to the Head of the Church, greatly sinned in the matter of the past controversy, and that it is the duty of Christ's people who are within her to come out of her — still, I don't on that account deny to her the title of a Church of Christ ; and I would not, therefore, refuse in ordinary circumstances to join in worship with her. We must, however, take care that our good is not evil spoken of. In present circumstances, my appearance within her walls would be made a bad use of ; it would be turned against that cause for which we' risked and left so much, and occasion would be taken to say (as is much tried) that there was never occasion for our going forth, and that, in fact, there is no difference between us. " It does not, however, follow that others, in other circum- stances, are bound down by the same difficulties. What I would advise only is, that in case you go to worship with the Esta- blished Church, you should let it be distinctly known to both parties, in any way you judge best, that you go, not because you are not a decided adherent of the Free Church, but on grounds of Christian Catholicism. May the Lord direct you in this and all other matters, and give you daily supplies of peace and grace, so that others seeing your light may be led to glorify God, and you yourself may be built up in every Christian grace. " I am just about to set off for the north, else I had filled two sheets ; and would have enjoyed to hold on thus talking to you. The Lord, in the matter of the manses, is blessing us amazingly. I have been working four weeks or so in the west ; save in Dunoon and Rothesay, my labours have been confined to the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, and from that Synod alone I will report at least £35,000 to the Inverness Assembly. I send you a copy of a speech. May the Lord, my dear friend, most I'ichly bless you and all dear to you. With very great affection and esteem, I commend you to Him." From the spirit of this letter, it is manifest that while Mr. Guthrie, by his exertions to raise the Manse Fund, THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 99 was then doing his very best to build up his own Churcli and strengthen her position in the land, he had no sympathy with the attitude assumed by some of his brethren towards the Church which they and he had alike quitted. His sentiments on this point come out still more unmistakably in another letter written a few months after the date of the above, whilst still in the thick of his Manse Fund work, and breathing, as may be supposed, a purely Free Church atmosphere. The proposal to form an Evangelical Alliance having been started, its programme was taken exception to by certain ministers of the Free Church because it was proposed to include ministers of the Scottish Establishment; and a small but pugnacious minority of Mr. Guthrie's ' brethren attempted to put the Free Church into the odious posi- tion of standing aloof from the proposed Alliance on this ground. "Edinburgh, I'oth February, 1846. *'I am taken up with our present awkward position as to Evangelical union with other churches. Next week we are to have a conference on this subject, and for the first time since I have begun my Manse scheme I have called a halt, that I might attend that conference and protest against the dangerous, fatal, and, in my opinion, as impolitic as unchristian position into which some of our tierce and narrow-minded men would drive us. I had a talk with Chalmers about it at Kirkhston, and with Candlish to-day. " First : I protest against having my Christian liberty inter- fered with by , and such like, or by any Church Court whatever in this matter. Secondly : I protest in toto against the uncatholic sentiments of these men, even as to the Residuaries.* Thirdly : I protest against the rule that I must withdraw myself from Christian Communion with all Chribtendom (save the * The ministers of the Established Church. h2 loo MEMOIR. ministers and members of my own Church) because I cannot get all Christendom to adopt my views of the Residuaries. The question is not, will you invite the Residuaries ? but, will you withdraw from holding brotherly communion with all Chris- tendom because they will not agree at your request to exclude the Residuaries ? " I have been warning my friends against committing them- selves to a false and uncatholic position. The circumstances of the first Seceders I have held up to them as an awful warning. These good men rashly declared that the Established Church was little better than * a synagogue of Satan.' They refused to admit Whitefield into their pulpits because he refused to agree to their demand that he should not enter the puljiit of an Established Church. Well, the revivals of Kilsyth, &c., took place. They were driven to choose one of these two alterna- tives: either admit the}' were wrong in denouncing the Estab- lishment as a synagogue of Satan, or declare these revivals not to be manifestations of the Spirit, but delusions of the devil. Pride, and prejudice, and passion prevailed. They chose the latter, and grievously sinned. Some of our men are about to run the same course. " If these principles are to be adopted, then we shall shrivel into our own shell, and become a mere narrow-minded, despic- able sect, having flung away advantages of no common kind,, and abandoned, I would say, the leadership of Evangelism in this and other lands. It is curious that it is the men in general who have sacrificed nothing for the Free Church, as well as those who hesitated about coming out, who are the loudest in their outcry." When Mr. Guthrie reached Inverness, he announced to the General Assembly which met there in August, 1845, that from the western districts of Scotland alone he had obtained subscriptions for the Manse Fund to the amount of £37,650. During the following months of September, October, November, and December, he visited the Synods of Moray, Eoss, Aberdeen, Perth, and Angus. Reaching Edinburgh at length, he addressed, on 11th December, 1845, an enthusiastic audience of 4,000 people in the THE MEETING AT CANONMILLS. loi vast low-roofed hall at CunonmlUs, where the first Free • Church Assembly had met : — " I have no fear for the ultimate result of our movement," he said. " I saw three hundred ministers within these walls sign away their earthly all, and even then I did not believe that God would desei't His own servants. I felt then, as I do now, that, beg who may, under God, the hand that signed that Deed of Demission never will be held out for the world's cold charity, and that to the sons and daughters of these men God will be a Father. " I call upon the people of Edinburgh to do their duty to these noble men and to this noble cause. I have been blamed for being too urgent in this matter. It may be ; but let those who say this, remember where I have stood; let them re- member what I have seen ; I would not envy the man who, having had the same opportunities of being acquainted with the facts, would not be as urgent and as importunate. Had they entered, as I have done, the Highland hut — had they stood on its clay floor, and under its black rafters, and seen the man of God living in a mere hovel — had they heard the trembling voice of the father tell that the last time he had seen his children they did not know him, he had been so long away from them — had ■ they seen the father who told me his last work overnight was / to stop up the openings through which the wild winds blew upon the couch of his dying child — had they seen those things, they would not have blamed me for being too importu- nate. " Sir, I could stand the beating of the tempest of oppression, did it beat only on my own head ; but to see the hectic flush on a child's cheek — to see the withering of a sore consumption — to carry to the grave the mother of a man's own children — to come back from the churchyard to hush the wail of a motherless infant, crying for a mother who was no longer on earth — these are trying afilictions, and that is what some of our homeless and houseless ministers have had to bear. May that right hand wither when I desert my brethren! " At the close of the meeting, Mr. Guthrie intimated that nearly £80,000 of the £100,000 aimed at had been subscribed. No wonder that such a result, in so short a time, excited much surprise and much thanksgiving. 102 MEMOIR. " On the Sunday immediately preceding the great Manse Meeting at Canonmills," writes Hugh Miller, in the Witness of 2J:th December, 1845, " there sat in Mr. Guthrie's church in Edinburgh, in the forefront of the galleiy, immediately opposite the pulpit, a pale, spare little man, marked chiefly by a quick, watchful eye, who seemed very attentive to the discourse, and who, judging from appearances, must have been particularly struck by at least one of the announcements made by the preacher. He had been leaning slightly backwards, until nearly the close of the service, in the easy attitude of a person accustomed to listen with small effort ; but only a few minutes ere the congregation broke up, the preacher succeeded, it was evident, in making a great impression on the little man. He sat bolt upright, looked sharply and suddenly forward, with something as like a stare as eyes so very watchful, and lips so compressed and so acutely defined, could be at all expected to express, and then dropping slowly into his former position, he seemed to be pondering over in his own mind the statement which had so roused him. It was simply to the effect that the preacher had already succeed^3d in procuring, in various parts of Scotland, subscriptions to his Manse scheme to the amount of nearly eighty thousand pounds ; and that, though not sure what his own congregation would do for it, he was yet inclined to hope the best, partly from the circumstance that he had found time to call on just seven of them, and that the joint contributions of the seven amounted to thirteen hundred pounds, " The little spare man had detected in the statement a startling and a yet most solid theology, which, it was obvious, he could perfectly understand. He had met, too, in the course of the day, with several other things of a kind suited to impress him. In the morning he had attended service in the High Church — the hona fide High Church, for Dr. Gordon had brought only the congregation with him and not the building — and he had found it very cold and very empty ; whereas, in forcing his way into Free St. John's, he had been almost squeezed flat in the lobby by a besieging crowd of brawny Scotchmen, and he had found every passage and corner densely occupied within. The little spare man was Lord John Russell, the leader of the Whigs." Througli the months of winter and early spring, Mr. Guthrie continued his "begging tour," visiting the THE LAIRD OF MONBODDO. 103 Synods of Fife, Lothian, Merse and Teviotdale, Dumfries, and Galloway. If Madame de Stael's definition of hap- ' piness — " the active prosecution of an enterprise in which one finds himself making constant progress " — be well y founded, Mr. Guthrie had very much to make him happy ; while the anxiety and fatigue of that exciting year were alleviated by the friendships he formed in every class of society, and in every corner of his native land ; for he found a welcome alike in the cottages which gave a temporary shelter to his country brethren, and under the gilded ceilings of Taymouth. His work, too, was greatly lightened by the readiness with which the contributions — alike the maximum of £5,000 from Lord Breadalbane and the minimum of £5 from a working-man — were universally given. We remember him telling, among many other incidents of his tour, how often his fears were disappointed and his hopes exceeded in regard to subscribers. Dining one evening at Monboddo House, in Kincardineshire, with the late excellent Captain Burnett, previous to his addressing the Free Church congregation of which his gallant host was an elder, Mr. Guthrie was somewhat disconcerted by the evident fiurry and annoyance into which Captain Burnett was thrown by the disappearance of a pair of spectacles. "Too bad! Too bad!" he exclaimed more than once, " those glasses cost me four- teen shillings last year in London, and now the money's gone ! " " This don't look well for my subscription-book to-night, was my mental reflection," added Mr. Guthn'e, 104 MEMOIR. in telling the story ; — " if the loss of a pair of spectacles be counted so serious, how am I to look for £50 ? But what was my surprise and delight when Captain Burnett headed the list, after my speech, with a subscription of £200 to the Manse Fund ! " In public, Mr. Guthrie bore testimony to the readiness with which subscriptions were given : — " I could bring forward instances," he said, " in which I have actually restrained people from subscribing. In fact, wherever I went, I found I was no beggar at all. Ours were the generous grapes, and not the husks to which it is necessary to apply the screw. So far from pressing, I have often been struck with the way in which many a one put down his subscription. When my heart was full and I was ready to express my thanks, many and many a time have I been answered, * You have not to thank us, Mr. Guthrie ; but we have to thank you for giving us the opportunity to subscribe.' " At length his work was done ; and when the General Assembly met at Edinburgh, he had the high satisfaction, on 1st June, 1846, of announcing as the result of his year's labour that one hundred and sixteen thousand THREE hundred AND SEVENTY POUNDS had been sub- scribed.* " The amount is larger than I ever expected," said Mr. * The total number of subscribers being 6,610, the average subscription was thus £19 ; " which," as he himself said, " brings out very satisfactorily the fact that the Free Church, while she rejoices in having a host of the humbler classes in her communion, also counts among her devoted ad- herents a large portion of the middle classes of the people." FINAL SUCCESS. lo^ Guthrie. '* When I undertook this scheme last year, it was with no small fear and trembling that I went forth. I did not say it then, because I knew I would do my cause no service by a state of terror or alarm. But I say it now. Last year at this time, with the exception of a small sum of money, Ave had no Manse Fund at all. When I went first to Glasgow, Dr. Buchanan will remember he met me at the railway-station, and saw me with nothing but a flower in my buttonhole ! But I knew I had a good cause, — I knew I had good clients, — and I knew that, having a good cause, God would bless me in this enterprise. I felt confident that if I could only get the ears of the people, I should not fail of success. I was much disposed to say with the poet Pope, when on one occasion he said he would address a field of corn. The people wondered what he would say ; when Mr. Pope, taking ofl' his hat, and bowing to the nodding corn, said, ' Gentlemen, give us your ears, and we shall never want bread.' In like manner, I was satisfied, if I could but get the ears of the Free Church people of Scotland, we should not want manses any more than bread. " Were I not most thankful, I would be the most unthankful of men. I have personal cause of thankfulness, for I have gone out and come in in safety from all my journeyings. I have also domestic cause for thankfulness. A sword was brandished over my house for months ; and many a time when I went away, it was with the fear that I would have another house to come to on my return. But God, in His great and undeserved mercy, put away that sword, and delivered mine from a disease that has ravaged many a dwelling. "An artilleryman at Waterloo was asked what he had seen. He replied that he saw nothing but smoke. I have seen, how- ever, a great deal more than smoke. The artilleryman was next asked what he had been doing. He replied, that he had ' just blazed away at his own gun.' Now I have been like the artilleryman, blazing away at my own gun ; and if I have failed to attend to many matters brought before me during the last ten months, and neglected many letters sent me by my brethren, I hope for their pardon. " I once thought — seeing that I have made a fortune of d6116,000 in twelve months — of getting a ticket posted, with the words ' Retired from Business ' printed on it in large black letters ! I have now only one request to make of the Church, and that is, that they would let me alone 1 " The raising of the Manse Fund was Mr. Guthrie's io6 MEMOIR. greatest service to the Free ChurcTi, and many a sweet dwelling by seashore and in highland glen will long remain his monument. In the course of his journey ings in after-years, even in the Ultima Thule of Shetland, he had the unique satisfaction of seeing sub- stantial dwellings he had helped to rear, surrounded by their gardens and greenery, and occupied by men of God and their families whose comfort he had been honoured to promote ; and we can testify to the loving welcome he received from the peaceful groups at these manse fire- sides. The following extract from a letter of a highland minister gone to his rest presents a sample of many similar effusions of grateful hearts : — " Free Church Maxse, " BoNAK Bridge, Sutherlandshire, Zrd Decemher, 1846. " Deae Mr. Guthrie, — .... You certainly ought to be amongst the first, if not the very first, to hear from a new Free Church manse the moment it is occupied by a living, speaking, grateful, mortal man. It is now some days since I came here from my endeared wee thatched house on the banks of the Sutherland Kyle. Though the change was to a comfortable mansion in a very pretty situation on the wooded banks of the river, I left the tiniest manse in the Free Church not without regret. There I was a free man, breathing the free air, amid a free and attached people, pitying the tenant of my former beautiful manse and garden, — scenes of much happiness and deep sorrow to me. " Your portrait, presented to me by a friend in Edinburgh, has already its niche in this house. We don't mean to make you a tutelary divinity — a domestic * lar ' — but sure I am your name ought to be, and will be, familiar at our firesides as a household word. To how many scattered and spoiled groups you have been the honoured, favoured instrument of giving a comfortable and permanent resting-place! *' With afiectionate respect, '* Yours very faithfully, " H. Allan." GRATITUDE OF HIS BRETHREN, 107 The gratitude of Mr, Guthrie's brethren ere long took a practical shape. They knew that the man who had raised so many manses for others, had not, as a town minister, any manse of his own ; and when, in 1848, his health gave way, a movement was set on foot to provide him with a dwelling-house, to be raised by the contributions of ministers of the Free Church. Before the matter had gone very far, it came to Mr. Guthrie's ears; whereupon he wrote the following letter to the Eev. J. R. Glass, of Musselburgh, the convener of the Committee : — "Edinburgh, IZrd Novemher, 1848. " My dear Mr. Glass, — A bird of the air carried to me the unexpected news that there was a movement to provide with a manse the ' Big Beggar Man ' of the Manse Fund *' Such a testimony of the kindness of brethren, you will believe me when I say it, I never looked for, and that when I undertook that mission I acted from no motive but a sense of duty to our Divine Head, and of aflection for my esteemed and suffering brethren, and for no end personal save that of the satisfaction of seeing our Church strengthened, and those who had borne such noble testimony to the truth with good warm walls around them and a wind and water-tight roof over their heads. " Though my tongue has been tied, and my hands shackled for months gone by, yet my eyes have not been closed, nor my heart, I hope, dead and frozen. Now, I have, within these few weeks or days past, been grieved to see that our India Mission and other schemes, and even the Manse Fund itself, have such difficulties to contend with in these difficult times ;* and I feel it to be wrong that I should allow anything personal to me to stand as the smallest obstruction in the way of doing our full duty to the cause of our Master, our brethren at home, and the pei'ishing heathen abroad. " And so, my dear Sir, with my most cordial and unfeigned thanks to you, and those other kind friends who have interested * Trade was still paralyzed by the effects of the railway crisis in the previous year. io8 MEMOIR. themselves in this cause, I have to request that you will call your Committee together, lay this communication before them, and then (as Dr. Chalmers used to say was the office of Committees) consign this aflair to a quiet and decent grave. I take the will for the deed, and pray you, with affectionate regards, &c." Ultimately, Mr. Guthrie's objections to receive some token of his brethren's gratitude were removed ; and, for the last seventeen years of his life, he occupied a villa in a suburb of Edinburgh, one of whose attractions in his eyes was, that part of the purchase-money was a thank- offering to him from his country brethren. CHAPTER VII. RAGGED SCHOOLS. It has been remarked with truth that it was the same element of his nature — compassion — which enh'sted Dr. Guthrie * in the enterprise of providing homes for the children of outed country ministers, and of rescuing from starvation and ignorance the outcast children of the city streets. A connecting link may thus be traced between his Manse Fund Mission, which terminated so success- fully in 1846, and the Ragged School enterprise, on which he entered in the following year. The rationale of the latter movement is now well known, and widely appreciated. One aspect of it has been forcibly presented by Charles Dickens. In an eloquent letter, addressed in 1846 to the Daily News, Dickens described the Ragged Schools then begun in London as " an effort to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion ; to com- mence their recognition as immortal human creatures, * Mr. Guthrie did not receive the degree of D.D. till 1849 ; but, for the sake of convenience, we speak of him throughout this chapter under his more familiar designation. no MEMOIR. before tlie gaol cLaplain becomes tbeir only scbool- master ; to suggest to society tbat its duty to this wretcbed tbrong, foredoomed to crime and punisbment, rigbtfully begins at some distance from tbe police-office ; and tbat tbe careless maintenance from year to year in tbis capital city of tbe world of a vast bopeless nursery of ignorance, misery, and vice, a breeding-place for tbe bulks and gaols, is borrible to contemplate." Tbe scbeme is one of tbe latest developments of Cbristian pbilantbropy. Prison discipline bas, since tbe days of Jobn Howard, undergone a tborougb reform ; yet, wbile tbe condition of our prisons was ameliorated, until a comparatively recent date, strange as it may seem, little or notbing was attempted to diminisb tbe future supply of prisoners. Year after year, a fresb crop of miserable young creatures was suffered to grow up, for wbom no man seemed to care. Passing tbrougb tbe various stages of juvenile delinquency, tbey developed ere long into bardened criminals, and so, continuously, tbe process went on ; nor was it until tbe cbildi'en of tbe streets bad committed crime, and found tbem selves witbin tbe grim walls of a cell, tbat tbe comitry tbougbt of providing tbem witb clotbing, or food eitber for mind or body. To ai'rest a main stream of sin and sorrow at its very fountain bead — to lay bold of tbose wbo are " ready to perisb " ere tbey bave got bopelessly beyond our reacb — is an endeavour as wise and patriotic as it is Cbristian ; and few men nowadays will dispute tbe need or tbe value of Ragged Scbools. SHERIFF WATSON AND DR. GUTHRIE, in Let it be understood tliat a Ragged Scliool — in the sense of the term used by Dr. Guthrie — implies a school where, along with education both sacred and secular, food, clothing, and industrial training are gratuitously sup- plied. The honour of having devised those admirable institutions belongs to Sheriff AVatson,* who in 1841 opened in Aberdeen the first Ragged (or, to use his term,) Industrial Feeding School. The progress of the movement has been marvellous since that date ; and although Dr. Guthrie — as he willingly acknowledged — only followed in the footsteps of his friend, he did more than any other man to popularise the scheme, and b}' his pen and voice to draw towards it the attention of the whole country. It is not without justice that Mr. Smiles, in " Self-Help," has denominated him " the Apostle of the Ragged School movement," for he raised such a tide of sympathy in their favour, that now there is scarcely a town of any importance in Britain which has not such a Bethesda for the little waifs of the street, while at ten of our seaports are stationed training- ships, which are neither more nor less than Ragged Schools afloat. The condition of the children for whose rescue these schools have been opened painfully impressed Dr. Guthrie at an early period of his ministry. " Five-and- thirty years ago," he wrote, in 1872, " on first coming to this city, I had not spent a month in my daily walks * Dr. Guthrie's third son, Patrick, married in 1S60 a niece of Sheriff "Watson — Mary, daughter of Laurence Anderson. 112 MEMOIR. in our Cowgate and Grass-market without seeing that, with worthless, drunken, and abandoned parents for their only guardians, there were thousands of poor innocent children, whose only chance of being saved from a life of ignorance and crime lay in a system of compulsory education." But he saw as clearly, that even were such a system obtained (of which the prospect then seemed far distant), the attempt to teach children who were starving and in rags would prove hopeless. A hu.mble man in England had dealt with this difficulty on a small scale ; and Dr. Guthrie has related how, indirectly, that attempt stimulated him- self to deal with it on a much greater : — " My first interest in the cause of Ragged Schools was awakeued by a picture which I saw in Austruther, on the shores of the Firth of Forth. It represented a cobbler's room ; he was there himself, spectacles on nose, an old shoe between his knees ; that massive forehead and firm mouth indicating great determination of character ; and from beneath his bushy eyebroAvs benevolence gleamed out on a group of poor children, some sitting, some standing, but all busy at their lessons around him. Interested by this scene, we turned from the picture to the inscription below ; and with growing wonder read how this man, by name ' John Pounds,' by trade a cobbler, in Portsmouth, had taken pity on the ragged children, whom ministers and magistrates, ladies and gentlemen, were leaving to run wild, and go to ruin on their streets ; how, like a good shepherd, he had gone forth to gather in these outcasts, how he had trained them up in virtue and knowledge, and how, looking for no fame, no recompense from man, he, single handed, while earning his daily bread by the sweat of his face, had, ere he died, rescued from ruin and saved to society no fewer than five hundred children. " I confess that I felt humbled. I felt ashamed of myself. I well remember saying to my companion, in the enthusiasm of the moment, and in 'my calmer and cooler hours I have seen no reason for unsuyiug it, ' That man is an honour to humanity. A CITY ARAB. 113 He has deserved the tallest monument ever raised on British shores ! ' Nor was John Pounds only a benevolent man. He was a genius in his way; at any rate, he was ingenious ; and, if he could not catch a poor boy in any other way, like Paul, he would win him by guile. He was sometimes seen hunting down a ragged urchin on the quays of Portsmouth, and com- pelling him to come to school, not by the power of a police- man, but a potato ! He knew the love of an Irishman for a potato, and might be seen running alongside an unwilling boy with one held under his nose, with a temper as hot and a coat That visit to Anstruther occurred in 1841, two years before the Disruption. The excitement of the Churcli question, and the share he had to take thereafter in consolidating the Free Church, diverted for a time his energies and thoughts into other channels. Still, the condition of these city waifs recurred often to his thoughts. " One night I went with one of my elders to the police office. In a room hung with bunches of skeleton keys, dark lanterns, and other implements of housebreaking, sat the lieutenant of the watch, who, seeing me handed in at the midnight hour by a police commissioner, looked surprise itself. Having satisfied him that there was no misdemeanour, we proceeded to visit the wards, and, among other sad and miserable objects, saw a number of children, houseless and homeless, who found there a shelter for the night. Cast out in the morning, and subsisting as they best could during the day, this wreck of society, like the wrack of the sea- shore, came drifting in again at evening- tide. " After visiting a number of cells, I remember looking down from a gallery upon an open space, where five or six human beings were stretched on the stone pavement buried in slumber ; and right before the stove, its ruddy light shining full on his face, lay a poor child, who attracted my especial attention. He was miserably clad ; he seemed about eight years old ; he had the sweetest face I ever saw ; his bed was the pavement, his pillow a brick, and as he lay calm in VOL. II. I 114 MEMOIR. sleep, forgetful of all his sorrows, lie might have served for a picture of injured innocence. His story was sad, not singular. He knew neither father nor mother, brothers nor friends, in the wide world ; his only friends were the police, his only home their office. How he lived they did not know ; but there* he was at night ; the stone by the stove was a better bed than the steps of a cold stair. I could not get that boy out of my head or heart for days and nights together. I have often regretted that some eflbrt was not made to save him. Before now, launched on the sea of human passions and exposed to a thousand temptations, he has, too probably, become a melan- choly wreck ; left by a society, more criminal than he, to become a criminal, and then punished for his fate, not his fault." It was with clelig-lit and the deepest interest Dr. Guthrie heard of Sheriff Watson's work at Aberdeen, as well as of a school established on the same principle in the fol- lowing year at Dundee. In Edinburgh, meanwhile, Mr. Smith, the excellent governor of Edinburgh prison for the last thirty-five years, had in 1842 laid before the Inspectors of Prisons a proposal to establish a school of industry for juvenile delinquents in Edinburgh ; in 1845 he printed a circular letter calling the attention of the Edinburgh ministers and magistrates to the lamentable fact that seven hundred and forty children under fourteen years of age (and of that number, two hundred and forty-five under ten years old) had been committed to prison during the three previous years. In Edinburgh itself, therefore, the Ragged School move- ment had a pioneer in Governor Smith, but it was left to Dr. Guthrie to rouse the community at large to its duty. It had been ascertained that at least one thousand FOOD AS A MAGNET. 115 boys and girls were growing up in that city ignorant in the midst of knowledge, savages in the midst of civilisa- tion, heathens in the midst of Christianity ; many of them orphans, some of them — ^worse off than orphans — with drunken and cruel parents. They lived in dark, squalid rooms, or were driven to the streets to sleep in some stair or empty cellar. These were the children whom afterwards he named " city Arabs," a designation which has found a place in our vocabulary. The power of food as a magnet, which Pounds the cobbler had employed in Portsmouth to attract destitute children to school, had been confirmed by the experience of Aberdeen and Dundee ; and Dr. Guthrie has narrated a dialogue on this very point with two subjects of the class he sought to save : — *' Strolling one clay" (probably in 1845 or 1846) " witha friend among the romantic scenery of the crags and green valleys around Arthur Seat, we came at length to St. Anthony's well, and sat down on the great black stone beside it, to have a talk with the ragged boys who pursue their calling there. Their * tinnies ' were ready with a draught of the clear cold water in hope of a halfpenny. We thought it would be a kindness to them, and certainly not out of character in us, to tell them of the living water that springeth up to life eternal, and of Him who sat on the stone of Jacob's well, and who stood in the Temple, and cried, ' If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.' By way of introduction, we began to question them about schools. As to the boys themselves, one was fatherless, the son of a poor widow ; the father of the other was alive, but a man of low habits and bad character. Both were poorly clothed. The one had never been at school ; the other had sometimes attended a Sabbath school. " Encouraged by the success of Sheriff Watson, who had the honour to lead the enterprise, the idea of a Ragged School was then floating in my brain ; and so, with reference to the scheme, I 2 ii6 MEMOIR. and by way of experiment, I said, ' Would you go to school if — besides your learning — you were to get breakfast, dinner, and supper there ? ' It would have done any man's heart good, to have seen the flash of joy that broke from the eyes of one of them, the flush of pleasure on his cheek, as — hearing of three sure meals a day — the boy leapt to his feet, and exclaimed, ' Ay, will I, sir, and bring the haill land,* too ; ' and then, as if afraid I might withdraw Avhat seemed to him so large and munificent an ofler, he exclaimed, ' I'll come for but my dinner, sir ! ' " During the larger portion of 1845-46, as explained in the preceding chapter, Dr. Guthrie was absent from Edinburgh ; but he had not long returned from his Manse Fund tour till he embarked on this new mission of mercy. It was in 1847 he first became known to the world as a philanthropist, by the publication, in the beginning of that year, of his (first) " Plea for Ragged Schools." The circumstances which led to his writina* o it are thus related by himself : — " My congregation of Free St, John's, after building their church, found themselves in possession of a large room in its underground story. We had to consider to what good 13urpose this under building could be turned. The neighbour- hood swarmed with hundreds of ragged children, who, obliged to steal or beg their food, or starve — neither went nor could go to any common school ; and, with the view of saving a few of these, I proposed that the congregation should set up and maintain a ragged feeding industrial school for some twenty or thirty waifs. The proposal was agreed to, and orders given for the necessary apparatus of soup-boiler and porridge- pot. Some of our oflice-bearers, however, became alarmed, not very unnaturally, at the responsibilities we were about to incur : and in consequence the attempt was abandoned. " I was cast down at this. Indeed I never was so much cast down in all my life : I felt the vexation and grief of a man who, having launched a good sturdy boat, sees her before she has * All the children in the same " laud " or tenement of buildinff. PUBLICATION OF HIS "PLEA." 117 taken ten strokes from the shore seized by a mighty billow, flung back, and dashed to pieces on the strand. But it was not a time to sit and wring my hands. These poor, wretched, ignorant, neglected children were perishing around me, and something must be done. I could appeal to the public, so that instead of having a small cock-boat with the flag of Free St. John's hoisted at its peak, I could build a frigate with a Union Jack flying from its mast-head : I accordingly wrote my first appeal, and made my first appearance in print." "I published my Plea" (he wrote to Mr. Garment, a year and a half thereafter) " with fear and trembling, and but that I was, with yourself, a very vehement advocate of Ragged Schools, I would never have ventured on such a walk. If a man's fire is kindled and passion up, he'll run along the narrow ledge of a precipice, where, in his cooler, calmer moments, he would not venture to creep." And we have heard him mention more recently, in illustration of how little a man sees before him, his own experience in connection with that brochure. He was at the time almost without experience as a writer, and extremely diffident of success. " I remember," he said, " of returning homQ after com- mitting the manuscript to the printer, and thinking, Well, what a fool I have made of myself ! " How was he mistaken ! Every post brought in, from all kinds of persons, letters of thanks and laudation, and (what he valued much more) substantial proofs that his appeal had gone home to the writers' consciences and hearts. " I was astonished at the result of my first Plea for Ragged Schools. It fell like a spark among combus- libler ; it was like a shot fired from the Castle, and it :i.i8 MEMOIR. brought me more volunteers to man my boat than she could well carry." When Dr. McCrie published his great work, the Life of Knox, he was surprised one day, on the opening of his study door, to see Dugald Stewart enter, and after that famous metaphysician had explained the object of his visit, and pronounced a high encomium on the book he had just finished reading, McCrie rose, bowed modestly, and said — " Jucundum est laudari a laudato."* With feel- ings somewhat similar. Dr. Guthrie received the follow- ing letter from the greatest of British critics : — " 24, MoEAY Place, Sunday, March lii/i, 1847. "Rev. and dear Sir, — You must have had too many thanks and compliments from mei'e strangers, on your late thrilling appeal on behalf of our destitute schools, to feel any surprise at finding among the bearers of such offerings one whose name probably is not unknown to you, and of whom you may even have heard as one of the humblest and least efficient promoters of the great and good work to which you have rendered such memorable service. " I have long considered you and Dr.tChalmers as the two great benefactors of your age and country, and admired and envied you beyond all your contemporaries, though far less for your extraordinary genius and eloquence, than for the noble uses to which you have devoted these gifts, and the good you have done by this use of them. In all these respects, this last eflbrt of yours is perhaps the most remarkable and important ; and among the many thousand hearts that have swelled and melted over these awakening pages, I think I may say that none has been more deeply touched than my own. If I were young enough to have the chance of tracing his passage to manhood, I believe I should have taken a boy on your recommendation ; but, as it is, I can only desire you to take one for me, and to find him a better superintendent ; and for this purpose I enclose * " It is pleasant to be praised by one who is liiuiself the object of praise." LETTER FROM LORD JEFFREY. 119 a draft for £50, which I request you to apply in the way you thiuk best for the advancement of your great experiment. " I trust that the object I have in view will be sufficient apology for the trouble I may be giving, and beg that you will believe me, Reverend and dear Sir, with all good wishes, " Very respectfully and faithfully yours, " F. Jeffrey." Almost every newspaper gave extracts from the Plea, while (an honour which seldom falls to. the lot of a sixpenny pamphlet) it formed the suhject of an article in the Edinburgh Review. Subscriptions to the extent of £700 were in a few weeks in Dr. Guthrie's hands ; an interim committee was formed ; and a room hired in a house on the Castle Hill.* To himself, one of the most delightful features of the way in which his Appeal had been met, was the sympathy with the object in view shown by persons of every Evangelical denomination in the city. Forgetful of all distinctions in the greatness of the emergency, they combined in offering him ready aid. " Some people at first suspected it was to be a Free Church job. A distinguished man called upon a friend of mine, when I took it upon myself to summon the community of Edinburgh on behalf of those poor children, and said to him, 'I've got a summons from Guthrie to attend a meeting; I don't think I'll go.' ' Oh,' said my friend, ' I think you should go, the object is good.' 'But,' he replied, 'I'm afraid it's a Free Church job'!" * About the same time, a feeding-school for the poorest class of chil- dren was established by the Rev. Dr. Robertson in the New Greyfriars parish. " It matters little," were Dr. Robertson's generous words after Dr. Guthrie's death, " who it was that established the first Ragged School in Edinburgh or in Scotland. It is not the single school which Thomas Guthrie established under the shadow of our ancient fortress which is his real monument, but the hundreds of Ragged Schools which tlie poweiful pleading of his eloquent tongue and pen has planted in half the cities of the British empire." 120 MEMOIR. At tlie preliminary meeting of wliicli he liere speaks, and which was held on 22nd March, 18J:7, he said — " I and my friends who originolly moved in this matter are desirous to be lost sight of, and to be merged in a general committee containing a full and fair representation of all classes in the community, I am anxious to retire altogether from further public management of this matter. If anything I have done can be the means of promoting such a blessed scheme, I shall count it one of the happiest circumstances of my life ; and it will be some amends for the hours of misery, and almost of agony, which I have endured in this city, in being compelled to look on temporal and spiritual misery which 1 found myself altogether unable to relieve." At that meeting, a general committee was accordingly nominated by the Lord Provost, Mr. Adam Black. That committee, which contained men of all shades of opinion, political and ecclesiastical, forthwith prepared a constitution and rules for the new Association. These were as follows — (and we quote them here, that the reader may understand the unhappy controversy to which their interpretation afterwards gave rise) : — " It is the object of this Association to reclaim the neglected or profligate children of Edinburgh, by aflbrding them the benefits of a good, common, and Christian education, and by training them to habits of regular industry, so as to enable them to earn an honest livelihood, and fit them for the duties of life. The general plan upon which the schools shall be conducted, shall be as follows, viz. : — " To give the children an allowance of food for their daily support. " To instruct them in reading, writing, and arithmetic. "To train them in habits of industry, by instructing and employing them daily in such sorts of work as are suited to their years. " To teach them the truths of the Gospel, making the Holy Scriptures the groundwork of instruction." AN IRISH DIFFICULTY. 121 On 8tli April, 1847, at a public meeting held in the Music Hall, this constitution was unanimously approved. " For some short while, matters went smoothly enough. There was confidence within our committee and no cloud without, and the happy, I will say the holy, spectacle was seen of men, who had been at war, now cultivating the arts of peace, forgetting differences in a common object, and meeting with swords turned into ploughshares, to break up the ground which had long been fallow. We began with a small number, but were gradually filling up, when symptoms of that controversy began to appear which ended in an open rupture." The circumstances which led to that rupture were these : — In the school, when first commenced, about one- half of the children were of Irish and so, presumably, Roman Catholic parentage. Ere long, it was asserted by an anonymous writer in a newspaper that Catholics were excluded from the school. This being easily dis- proved, it was next asserted, that the constitution of the Society was violated, and the school so conducted as virtually to exclude Roman Catholic children. Whatever Dr. Guthrie may have suspected regarding their influence, the priesthood in Edinburgh were not the ostensible movers in the matter, as they had been in Dun- dee, and as Cardinal Wiseman was at a lifter date in Lon- don, when in a sermon he denounced the Ragged Schools there. Had Roman Catholics come boldly forward in Edinburgh, Dr. Guthrie would not have been seriously disconcerted ; but what he felt was the delicate position 122 MEMOIR. in which this misunderstanding placed him towards parties who had shown a real interest in his enterprise, and whose talents and social position gave them weight in the community. He was most ujiwilliug to contem- plate a separation (if it could possibly be avoided) from these gentlemen, in respect to a matter where he and they had much in common ; but he felt the question was one of conscience, and he determined to maintain, at all hazards, the ground he had taken up from the first. To THE Eight Hon. Fox Maule, M.P. "June 2Wi, 1847. " It is a verj' sad thing that one cannot attempt the salva- tion of these poor outcasts without interference from parties who were leaving them quietly to perish. People who will do nothing themselves for the education and amelioration of these unhappy children, however slow at giving money, are swift at finding fault. Our schools are on a footing truly Catholic ; but because we will not permit them to be made a Popish machinery, the priests oppose them, and because we will not part with God's Word and banish the Bible from these schools, the falsely so-called Liberal Educationalists throw cold water on the h.o\y fire we seek to kindle. These schools are intended for the children who are the outcasts and offscourings of our lowest sti'eets, and we consider ourselves as much in the place of parents to them as if, in place of sending them to these schools, we opened our doors to them and received them into our families. The priests are at the bottom of this movement, and using others as their tools. " I hope the day will never come when, in this free and Christian land, we shall be deprived of the liberty of feeding and training up in the fear of God a poor outcast with our money without consent of a dominant priest. You will see from a copy of rules which I have ordered to be sent how really Catholic we are. We cannot consent to be Roman Catholic — while we leave them full liberty to pursue their own plans. The truth is, it is an utter abuse of terms to call these children either Protestant or Catholic. They are steeped in all the darkness of heathenism, and more than all its vices. In the CONSTITUTION OF THE SCHOOLS. 123 event of any child of a poor, decent Catholic being admitted into our schools, we are perfectly willing to intrust that child to its parent on the Sabbath day to take to chapel." " The Acting Committee," wrote Dr. Guthrie, " in their own defence, and in answer to the charge of introducing a system of religious tests into the schools, and of excluding in Roman Catholic children the largest portion of those children for whom the schools were designed, published a statement. Though the efforts of the Committee were successful in satisfying a large portion of the public, there still remained some of our original subscribers, between whom and the Committee there was an important and, as it proved to be, an irreconcilable difference. These gentlemen requested the Lord Provost to call a meeting ' for the purpose of having it clearly ascertained, whether the schools will be conducted on a system which must necessarily exclude children of the Roman Catholic or any faith which differs from that of Protestant teachers ? ' It was now feared, though not openly proclaimed, that an attempt would be made to exclude the Word of God from the Ragged School, and limit the education to secular instruction, leaving the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties to manage the religious interests of the children as they best might. The battle, which had begun in Aberdeen and Dundee, had now extended to the capital, and the public meeting which had been called by the Lord Provost was, more than any meeting which had been for a long time held in Edinburgh, looked forward to with the liveliest 124 ' MEMOIR. interest by the warmest friends of Bible truth, and the wisest friends of these unhappy children." The day of the public meeting, July 2nd, 1847, arrived, and those who were present will not soon forget the scene. It had all the excitement of a pitched battle. The Hall was filled to the ceiling long ere the speakers appeared. On either hand of the Lord Provost were ranged the opposing parties ; Lord Murray, Professor Gregory, and Mr. Simpson, advocate, — representing the " Liberal Protestants," — on the one side ; and Dr. Guthrie, Sheriff Speirs, and Dr. Lindsay Alexander on the other. " These Eagged Schools," said Dr. Guthrie, in the speech he made on that occasion, " are pecuHar schools. They are not intended for the children of ordinax}^ decent parents. Their very existence, the crying necessity for them, arises from the existence of a class in our cities who are in fact nothing at all. It is an utter abuse of words to call these children Roman Catholics or to call them Protestants. They are outcasts, regardless of all religion — without even the profession of any ; and it is in that light and character I must look at them here. " Mark how I stand. I say that the responsibility of the religious upbringing of the child lies upon the parent ; and if there be no parent, or none to act a parent's part (if the parent, for instance, be a worthless, profligate mother), on whom does the responsibility next lie ? I join issue with the Catholic here. He says that it lies with the priest. I say it lies with the good Samaritan who acts the parent's part. I say that it neither lies with the priest nor the Levite who passed by upon the other side ; it lies with the man who resolves, b}- the strength of his own exertions, to save the poor outcast child. I shall never forgive myself in this w^orld that once I did not save a child from ruin. Had I attempted it (there being then no Ragged School), what should I have done ? I would have brought it, a homeless, helpless outcast, to my own home, and before God and man would have felt myself bound to give it AN OPEN BIBLE. 125 the Bible I give to my own children. What is a Ragged School hut a gatherer of such miserable outcasts ? They are cast upon my care to share in the blessings of my humanity and Christianity. " What difference is it to me whether I save a poor child from the wreck of society or from the wreck of the sea ? Let me put a case. A ship has stranded on the stormy shore. I strip, and plunging headlong into the billows, buffet them with this strong arm till I reach the wreck. From the rigging, where he hangs, I seize and save a boy. I bear hijn to the shore, and through the crowd, who watched my rising and falling head, and blessed me with their prayers, I take him home. What happens now ? Forth steps a Roman Catholic priest, and, forsooth, because yon ship contained its Irish emigrants, claims the child, the prey of my humanity, the half-drowned boy that clings" to his preserver's side ; he would spoil me of my orphan, and rear him up in what I deem dangerous error. I have two answers to this demand. My first is, I saved the boy ; the hand that plucked him from the wi'eck is the hand which shall lead him in the way to heaven. My second is, to point him to the wreck and the roaring sea ; I bid him strip and plunge like me, and save those that still perish there. ** I rejoice that the cloud which hung over the Ragged Schools is now dispelled. Thez'e were some who doubted before whether they would have a decidedly religious school of a decidedly Bible character. Thanks be to God for this storm ; it has cleared the atmosphere. Above the door of these Ragged Schools men shall henceforth see an open Bible, this glorious text upon its page, ' Search the Scriptures.' No man feels a more lively interest in these schools than I do. I have thought and pondered over them. I have prayed over them, and I am not ashamed to say that I have wept over them ; but, dear as they are to my heart, I say, perish the Ragged Schools, if they are only to be kept up by parting with the Bible. I would rather that we were found like the body of the sailor boy which lay on the lone sea-shore. A handkerchief was tied around it, and when the spoiler came, he thought it was gold ; he tore it open and found the Bible which his mother gave him with a mother's blessing. And now, if other men won't do it, these hands of mine shall do it ; I shall bind the Bible to the Ragged Schools, and committing this cause to the care of Providence, there I take my stand." 126 MEMOIR. After tlie speakers on both sides liad been beard, tbe Lord ProYOst put tbe question to tbe meeting, and in support of tbe views tbus expressed quite a forest of bands was beld up in every part of tbe building. " Witb tbe exception," writes Dr. Gutbrie, "of a very small portion of tbe audience, tbat immense and influential assembly, embracing Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, expressed its entire and bearty approval of tbe step wbicb tbe committee bad taken, in resolving tbat tbe Word of God sbould be taugbt during the ordinary school hours. Edinburgh never uttered its voice more distinctly or more decidedly on any question or on any occasion. It was a blessed sigbt to see Protestants of all Evangelical denominations, and tbose of tbem wbo but a few years before bad been arrayed against eacb otber in tbe Voluntary and Non-Intrusion controversies, now fighting side by side, rallying around tbe Bible with the kindness of brethren and the keenness of men in earnest." To Provost Guthrie. "Edinburgh, Jiihj 1th, 1847. " The fight came off gloriously last Friday. I was in a delicate position, very much annoyed about the matter. Well, I never went to a meeting so anxious, and never left one so thankful. All men think it is the most important and the most successful meeting which has been held here for days and years. The lords, I take it, won't come back in a hurry to have their coats dusted before an audience in the Music Hall. We had unspeakable cause to bless the Lord. ' The men of might ' (on the other side) ' have not found their hands.' My known liberality gave a force to my blow, which no talent would have given to the arm of a bigot or narrow-minded man. As I told Tweedie and Candlish, by way half joke half earnest, RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. 127 people would say, * Well, if Guthrie won't swallow this proposed dose of Dunfermline and Murray, it must be very bad indeed.' " The reference in the latter sentence will be understood when it is explained that Dr. Guthrie was considered by certain persons to take somewhat low ground as to the value and results of the religious instruction communi- cated in ordinary day-schools. He did not .certainly rate these so highly as some of his brethren ; because in the case of children whose parents were church-going and well conducted, he trusted much more to home and pas- toral training than to the ordinary day-school teacher for instilling divine truth. And if he were asked, Why refuse, for these Ragged Schools, arrangements with which you are satisfied elsewhere ? this was his reply, " Con- sidering the condition of the children, and the character of the parents who are living without the fear either of God or man, and do not even make a profession of reli- gion, the principles which might rule a national system of education are not applicable here." It was on this very account that he felt great anxiety to secure qualifications of a special kind in the Ragged School teachers and officials. " What I desiderate in all our officials," he wrote in a letter to Miss Louisa Hope, " is sincere piety ; a warm Christian affection for the souls of these poor children ; a mind which will not be content with a perfunctory discharge of duty, not even with remarkable success in the way of improving their intellects and reforming their outward habits ; but a mind and soul which burns with love to Christ, and 128 MEMOIR. will be satisfied witli nothing short of seeing these children converted and saved."* The result of the discussion was, that those gentlemen of the committee who disapproved the principles of Dr. Guthrie and his friends instituted another school, which they named the United Industrial, on the principle of joint secular and separate religious instruction. The general funds of that school are devoted to secular in- struction alone ; while at a certain hour the children are separated, the Protestants to receive religious instruction from a Protestant teacher, the Roman Catholics from a Catholic. To the close of life, Dr. Guthrie remained unshaken as to the soundness of the principle on which he had taken his stand in refusing to allow the Poman Catholic faith to be taught within his school — viz., that he and others had virtually assumed the position of parents to the hap- less children there. In 1857 he put the case thus : — " If a vicious, drunken, dissipated, and unnatural parent shall cast his oifspring on the public — shall do what a brute beast won't do, refuse to maintain his own child — the * " We obsprve," wi'ote the Rev. "William Arnot after Dr. Guthrie's death, "that the organs of the more secular sections of the community admire the talents and character of Dr. Guthrie and pay a hearty tribute of respect to his memor}'. Some of them, at the same timp, through a mental perversity allied to colour-blindness, refuse to recognise the fountain where the stream of his chanties sprang. They own the great- ness of his benevolent work, but knowingly intimate that, in order to perform these blessed services to the commuiiity, ho came out of his theo- logical circle, and left his C alvinism behind him. This is precisely the contrary of the truth. The stream of his benevolence flowed from the well-spring of his faith. It was the love of Christ that constrained him to visit the widows and orphans in their alEiction." SISTjEI^S of charity. 129 most monstrous thing I ever heard of is, that that parent shall not only throw on me the burden of maintaining his child, but shall attempt to lay on my conscience the far heavier burden of teaching that child what is not, according to my conscience, the Word of God." In the very last speech he made on behalf of these schools, in December, 1871, he illustrated his position by an inci- dent from his own experience : — ** I spent," he said, " some weeks, seven j^ears ago, in Brit- tany, '\\\ France. I went out one evening to look at a Foundling Hospital, one of those institutions which, however creditable to the humanity of the founders, are found to be detrimental to morality. By the gate was an opening in the wall ; in that opening stood a box that turned on a pivot, beside which hung a bellrope. A woman waiting for the cloud of night, stealing under the shadow of the wall, approaches the door with noise- less steps, and taking her infant from under her shawl, she places it in the box and pulls the bell. At that signal, round goes the box bearing her child inside. There she parts with it for ever, and then, with some natural tears, withdraws. Assum- ing that woman to be a Protestant — and there are a few Protestants in that very Roman Catholic country — and that, although she had fallen from the paths of virtue, she. had not forgotten the lessons learned at her mother's knee, and that she, along with the child, puts in a paper requesting the nuns and l^riests and sisters of charity within this Foundling Home to bring up her child in the Protestant faith, would they do it ? I should like uncommonly well to see the nun, priest, or sister of charity who would comply with such a request. They would be Sisters of Charitt/ indeed! What would their answer be ? (I respect them for it, for it were one according to their conscience ; and I respect everybody, be he Pagan, Papist, or Protestant, who acts according to conscience.) Their answer would be what ours in such circumstances is : — ' You have cast. your child on us ; we feed it, we house it, we clothe it, we teach it, we are in the room of parents to it, and in conse- quence we cannot do otherwise than train up the child as if it were our own, according to what we believe to be the true faith.' VOL. II. K 130 MEMOIR. "That was our position in the beginning, and some people thought we were rather dour and obstinate in maintaining it. I did not sympathize with those who thought so. Some of us foresaw, in the attempt then made to drive us from our posi- tion, the introduction of the thin end of that wedge which Popery but waited time and opportunity to drive home, removing the Bible from the schools, and the children altogether away from every liberal and Protestant influence. In Ireland they are at that now. They were too astute here, twenty years ago, to show their hand at once. They kept themselves in the background. We heard beautiful speeches about what a pretty thing it was to see Protestant children sitting cheek-by-joul on the same bench with Roman Catholics, learning the same lessons. Was it vot brethren dwelling together in unitg ? Now, if we look to Ireland, what see we there? The time has come when Cardinal Cullen and the Roman Catholic hierarchy think they can let the cat out of the bag ! It is out, and what have we ? Cardi- nal Cullen and the priesthood demanding of the British Govern- ment that, while the schools are maintained out of the public purse, there shall be no mixing of Protestants and Catholics in school ; that these schools shall be entirely Popish. A demand this, which I hope the Government of this country will resist." "I may have been right," he wrote to Mr. W. Cham- ters of Glenormiston, who took the opposite view from himself, " or I may have been wrong. The day will declare it. But I look back to no struggle in which I was ever called to engage wdth a clearer conscience than to the one in question." He rejoiced, nevertheless, to know that multitudes of children were, by means of the United Industrial School, rescued from a career of crime and wretchedness, and he never viewed that Charity as, in any other than an honourable sense, a rival to his own. " I do not find fault," were his words after the heat of the collision had passed away, "with others who difier from us in theu' principles and plans. Let every man be fully per- ECHOES OF THE DISCUSSION. 131 suaded in his own mind, and let all men try wlio shall do most and best for those that are ready to perish. I am thoroughly convinced of the soundness of our views ; I adhere to them strongly ; I hold them to be of high importance. But I will make no attempt to throw odium on those who are honestly following out their own convictions. In pity for human wretchedness, in the desire to promote the welfare of the unhappy — to pluck these children from circumstances of most affecting misery and a life of certain wretchedness and crime — we are brethren, and let there be no strife between us. I say to them, as Abraham did to Lot, ' Is not the whole land before thee ? If thou ^vilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.' " The discussion in Edinburgli made itself felt over the whole country, and, so far as we know, there is not one of the hundreds of Ragged Schools in England and Scotland but has adopted the principles of Dr. Guthrie as regards the unrestricted use of the Holy Scriptures ; (in his own words), "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible ; the Bible without note or comment — without the authoritative interpretation of priest or presbyter — as the foundation of all its religious teaching, and of its religious teaching to all." "London, February Wth, 1856. " Our Reformatory Meeting was held on Friday ; I fancy one hundred present. Among other public men, Marquis of Salis- bury, Lord Cecil, Monckton Milnes, Sir John Pakington, Adderley, Ac. It was the old fight, save that it assumed a less determinate shape. ** The resolutions were drawn up by Macgregor. Milnes, Pakington, and Adderley maintained that the introduction of the words ' Holy Scriptures ' would operate to the exclusion of Papists. This, Lord Shaftesbury (a mistake on his part) denied. I agreed with the former, and differed with Shaftesbury, giving them the history of our Edinburgh business in proof of it ; and argued for retaining these words just because we could not co- K 2 132 MEMOIR. operate witli Roman Catholics in this matter. An attempt was made, in order not to appear so exclusive, to alter some of the practical parts of the resolutions. We resisted it, decided and kept the scheme intact by a great majority. Thev are now on the right rail, and I have no doubt will go on trium- phantly." By the end of 1847, three schools had been esta- blished in Edinburgh under Dr. Guthrie's auspices — one for boys, another for girls, and a third for children of both sexes under ten years of age, with a total atten- dance of two hundred and sixty-five children, who received food, education, and industrial training. While glad to know of some hundreds of Ragged Schools in London, Dr. Guthrie desiderated a much more complete carrying out of the system than many of these are able to adopt. " In regard to London, six-sevenths of the Ragged Schools are not feeding-schools at all ; the children are taken in two or three hours in the evening, and the attendance is most irregular. A Lord Mayor's Day to a considerable extent clears out the schools. I venture to say, that there is not such regular attendance anywhere as in our Ragged Schools, because the children know that they get no porridge unless they come there. I remember, on going down the High Street early one morning, of seeing a number of our children coming up. One of them was borne on the shoulders of another, and, on my asking the reason, he said that the little fellow had burned his foot the night before and he was carrying him to school. That would not have happened in any other school in Edinburgh. (Evidence before the Royal Commission on Scotch Education, December 5th, 1864.) Few things delighted Dr. Guthrie more than to act as FELLOW-LABOURERS. 133 cicerone, and accompany visitors to his scTiools ; for, with a natural partiality, he maintained that of all the sights in Edinburgh, there was none so worthy of a visit as the schools on the Castle Hill. To hira the eyes of these poor children shone brighter than the jewels of the old Scottish Crown in the neighbouring castle ; and cer- tainly no thoughtful man who remembei;'s their past history can look without emotion at these rwvs of bo3'8 and girls, cheerful, tidy, and intelligent, when at dinner- hour they stand up to thank God for their plain but wholesome fare. Among those most intimately associated with him in the earlier stages of his Kagged School work, and who shared in his own enthusiasm, were the late Sheriff Jameson ; Mr. Smith, the Governor of Edinburgh prison ; Dr. George Bell ; and, in a more private but not less efficient capacity, the late Miss M. Eliott Lock- hart,* of whom he wrote — "She has been my 'right hand' in benevolent work for years." In his first " Plea for Ragged Schools," Dr. Guthrie had urged it as a powerful argument in favour of his scheme, that it harmonized the diverse theories of two very eminent philanthropists as to the projjer mode of dealing with a degraded population. "Our scheme," he wrote, " furnishes a common walk for both. They meet * It was to her that Dr. Guthrie thus dedicated his "Seedtime and Harvest of Ragged Schools: "— " To M. E. L., who has her name graven at full length on the grateful hearts of many children saved by means of that Original Ragged School which has owed so much of its success to her generous, zealous, aud untiring labours." 134 MEMOIR in our scliool-room. Dr. Alison comes in with his bread — Dr. Chahners with his Bible : here is food for the body — there for the soul." When he wrote thus, in February, 1847, the friends of Dr. Chalmers looked forward to some years longer of honour and usefulness in store for him ; and had he been spared to witness the controversy to which the religious constitution of the Original Ragged Schools, gave rise, few can doubt which side he would have espoused. Within four months of the publication of his friend's " Plea," all Edinburgh was saddened as, on the morning of the 31st of May, the news passed from Up to lip, " Chalmers was found dead in his bed this morning." Dr. Guthrie was deeply moved. For his great "chief" he had a profound admiration. "Ah," said he, "men of his calibre are like mighty forest trees. We don't know their size till they are down." " I intended " (he wrote on the 14th of June, to Mr. Fox Maule) " to have written you immediately after the death, and entered into the detail of such particulars as had come to my knowledge; but the truth is, I was utterly prostrated by the blow, and felt an aversion to do anything but ruminate on the past, measure the vastness of the loss, and speculate on the future. " We will now need to be more cautious, foreseeing, and circumspect than ever. Chalmers, for the last three years, has not been so much, indeed, a moving power; but he has been a great balance-wheel. His very presence among us had a most combining, harmonizing, happy influence. " Dr. Candlish is likely to be put into a college chair. Gordon resolutely refused, and a man may as soon move Arthur's Seat as move him. I think it likely that Cunningham will be made Principal." On the day of the meeting in the Music Hall which DEATHS OF CHALMERS AND SPEIRS. 135 decided the constitution of the Ragged School, no lay- man rendered Dr. Guthrie's side such eifective service as Mr. Graham Speirs, Sheriff of Midlothian. (See Autobiography, p. 208.) Before that year (1847) had run out, he too, a man in life's prime, had followed Dr Chalmers to join the Church above. " Dec&niher l%lh, 1847. " I cannot say how deeply I have felt Mr. Speirs's death. He was such a friend : I don't know whether I esteemed or loved him most. And then in the Church, what an ornament to religion, what a pillar of the temple ! May the Lord give you and others in your place all the more grace now, since a great standard-bearer and champion has been borne off the field. It melts my heart, and opens afresh the fountain of my tears, to think that we shall see his face no more. It were a great mercy and blessing if a man of a kindred spirit can be appointed to his place. The Whig party lost nothing, but gained much, by having in him a man Avho, to their views in politics, brought the advantage of a decided and high religious char- acter." {To Mr. Vux Maule.) In the year following the first establishment of Ragged Schools in Edinburgh, Dr. Guthrie was laid aside from the active duties of his ministry by a serious illness ; and for many months the schools with which his name had become associated were deprived of his fostering care. But his pen was not idle. On the 10th of January, 1849, he issued a " Second Plea for Ragged Schools," in which he explained the working of the system, demon- strated how inadequate the existing Ragged Schools in Edinburgh were to overtake the destitution, and besought increased support. In that Plea he appealed to indvibit- able statistics in proof of the success which had attended the scheme. Each successive year, that success became 136 MEMOIR. more apparent. The fifth report (for 1851) tells of two hundred and sixteen children sent out into the world from the Original Ragged Schools, and known to he earning their livelihood by honest industry. In direct proportion as the various Ragged Schools filled, the portion of the jail appropriated to juvenile delinquents emptied. The following facts and figures speak for themselves : — In 1847 (the year in w^hich Ragged Schools were founded in Edinburgh) more than five per cent, of the whole number of prisoners in Edinburgh jail were under fourteen years of age, — 315 out of 5,734 ; in 1851, the proportion had fallen to less than one per cent., that is to say, while there were 5,869 prisoners, only fifty-six of these were under four- teen years of age. "From careful observation of the operation of the Ragged Industrial Schools," wrote the Governor on 25th December, 1850, "I can have no doubt that they have been the principal instruments in effecting so desirable a change." " I do not know," was Dr. Guthrie's characteristic comment on this, " I do not know whether, if matters go on at this rate, my good friend Mr. Smith won't find some difficulty in deciding what to make of that department of the jail. By-and- by we may sec (what I once saw in an old burgh in the kingdom of Fife) a jail in a most happy condition. The door was wide open, the hinges were rusting on the Btones. Not only that, but the measured sound of little feet and the cheerful noise of a fiddle announced that the prison had been turned into a dancing-school ! " CASE OF COMPULSORY ALMSGIVING. 137 The public are not generally visitors of the prison ; they could not, therefore, so readily appreciate the evi- dence which empty cells afforded as to the working of Ragged Schools ; but there was another way in which their advantages became patent to every one who walked through the city : — " Before these schools were established, the streets swarmed with boys and girls whose trade was begging, and whose end was the jail. They rose every morning from the lower dis- tricts like a cloud of mosquitoes from a marsh, to disperse them- selves over the city and its suburbs ; and some of them had become most expert at their trade. I one day witnessed an instance of this at a time when typhus fever was raging in Edinburgh : — "I was in Hanover Street when a vinegar-looking old lady was toddling along, with a huge umbrella in her hand. A little urchin came up who had no cap on his head, but plenty of brains within ; no shoes on his feet, but a great deal of under- standing, for all that. Very well, I saw him fix upon that venerable old lady to be operated on, and Dr. Bell never, I will venture to say, performed an operation with half the dex- terity with which that ragged boy ' skinned ' the old lady. He approached her with a most pitiful look and whine. Her response was a snarl and poke of her umbrella. He saw there was no chance of getting at her purse through her philanthropy, so he thought to get at it through her selfishness. In an instant he rolled up the sleeve of a tattered jacket to the elbow of his yellow skinny arm, and running up displayed it, crying out to her, ' Just out o' the Infirmary, ma'am, with typhus ! ' It was a ruse got up for the occasion ; but the acting was perfect — the effect sudden, electric. The poor old body started as if she had received a shock. Diving her hand to the very bottom of her pocket, she took out a shilling, thrust it into his palm, and hobbled away, glad to get the little rogue out between the wind and her nobility ! " All manner of ways did they try to fleece and bleed the public. At last, forth came police-bills warning the public not to encourage street begging. But the magistrates of Edinburgh might as well have attempted to roll back the tide at the pier of Leith, as to prevent me from giving money to a poor, starving, wretched child. That was not the way to moot 138 MEMOIR. the evil. I was told about the evils of mendicancy ; they w^ere in the distance, whilst close at hand the evils of starvation were looking out of those hollow eyes. But how did ive put down street begging ? We set up our Ragged Schools. Some urchin now comes to me, and asks me for money. ' Not a sixpence, sir — not a half-penny. You go to the Ragged School and say Dr. Guthrie sent you.' That put down street begging, and nothing else could." In his Second Plea, Dr. GutTirie had shown that, after deducting the pupils of all the Ragged Schools of the city, there were still in Edinburgh at least fifteen hundred children " growing up to disturb and disgrace society, and destined to entail, in their future career of crime, an enormous expense on the country." And if this were true of Edinburgh, the same condition of things existed in proportion all over the kingdom. Much, therefore, as private benevolence had effected, it was apparent that the necessities of the case wonld never be met in this way alone. So long as the success of Ragged Schools was problematical, their friends were contented to depend for their supjjort on the Christian public (and from that source about £2,000 had been subscribed annually for the Original Ragged Schools) ; but when, at the end of some years, the advantage of such institutions was no longer matter of experiment, but of experience, their advocates felt justified in claiming for them the favour and the fostering aid of the country. The State had, in bygone years, spent millions in punishing criminals, and the success of prisons as reforming agencies had been grievously small. '* You will in vain endeavour," said APPEAL TO GOVERNMENT. 139 tlie Lord Advocate of Scotland, when presiding at tlie meeting of Dr. Guthrie's Ragged School in 1852 — " you will in vain endeavour, hy prison discipline, mild or severe, by all your courts of justice, and by all your penal settlements, to diminish by one hair's breadth the amount of crime that prevails in the country." It seemed high time that some aid should be given by the State to arrest the process by which criminals are made. That Ragged Schools were operating successfully in that direction was now admitted by the most com- petent judges ; the directors of the Edinburgh Original Bagged School accordingly resolved, along with other friends of the cause, to appeal to Government in their favour. " January 2nd, 1850. " You all know the object of my proposed visit to London. Dr. Bell, our Secretary, and Mr. Smith, governor of the jail, accompany me. I expect Sheriff Watson will join us from Aberdeen ; and that in London we will be joined by Hastie, M.P. for Glasgow. We go up to Government, specially to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who is President of the Privy Council, in order to get a clause into the Minutes of Council on Educa- tion, embracing our Ragged Schools, for the purpose [of] giving us aid out of the public funds. " We hold our public meeting here, on Monday the 14th, and we will have a most satisfactory report of our Ragged Schools this year. Since our schools were instituted there has been a regular and steady decrease of the number of juvenile criminals. In 1847, the proportion of these to the whole commitments was five per cent. ; in 18-48, four per cent. ; in 1849, only three per cent." {To his brother Patrick.) Of his visit to London, Dr. Guthrie tells — " We met together in the morning, to consult as to the course I should adopt in bringing our case before Lord Lansdowne. I said, I shall tell him that every chi d left to become a criminal costs the country £300. ' Now,' says Mr. Smith (with all the 140 MEMOIR. caution of a canny Scot), ' take care ! If you cannot prove it, it is better not to state it.' .... Lord Lansdowne sat with his back to a window, so that I could not see his face ; but as I had to sit with my face towards it, he could see mine; . . One of my friends told me afterwards, that I was sitting on a chair three times the breadth of this table away' from him, when I began to address him ; but that as I got on, I edged nearer and nearer, till at last I was clapping him on the knee ! I gave it to his Lordship in a speech of nearly an hour long, at which he seemed lost in astonishment. " ' Look, my Lord,' I said to him, ' at the expense of rearing up a number of criminals in the country. Forget altogether that these poor children have souls ; forget altogether that they have hearts that can be trodden and trampled on, and crushed as our own ; forget that they are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ; forget their misery and wretchedness. I beg your Lordship to look at the money question alone. We take one of these children oft' the street, which is the open way to the jail, and place him in our school. We clothe and feed, and train and educate him, we hand him back to society a useful and valuable member of the community, and the whole expense of doing this is £25. But leave him alone, let him run his course — and instead of costing only £25 to make him a useful member of society, you do not close and finish with that boy, either by hanging or by penal settlement, without paying ^6300.' I had become warm with my subject, and out bolted the £300 before I was aware of it ! " I was afraid I had done wrong ; but on the following night I was reassured by a conversation I had with Mr. Pierce, the gentleman at the head of the Bow Street police. He said, ' It is a waste of money and means to try and save the country other- wise than through the children, by giving them a sound educa- tion.' ' But how are you to get hold of the children and give them the education you speak of ? ' After some reflection he said, ' Well, I do not see any way in which they can get that, unless you feed them.' It was worth going to London to hear, from a person so well qualified to judge, such an opinion in favour of the system pursued in our Ragged School. ' But,' said I, * what do you think of punishment ?' ' Punishment ! ' he replied ; * I never see a boy placed at the bar of the police court but I say to myself. Well, my lad, you will cost the country £300 before we are done with you ! ' — echoing the very thing I had said in Whitehall the day before. " That same night we explored St. Giles's along with Mr. A BEN OF THIEVES. \\i Pierce and two of his officers. The accounts they gave me of the state of London were perfectly frightful. I felt as if this city were sleeping over a volcano. After shoulder- ing our way amid the rough and horrible strollers on the streets, we reached a shop. Mr. Pierce, without ajiy other introduction than his own appearance, which ii' pretty respectable (standing, like myself, somewhere about six feet two without the shoes), entered at once, and said, * Well, Missis, how many lodgers have you got to-night ? ' She informed him, and Mr. Pierce having got a candle, we first went along a dark passage, and then we got to the top of a corkscrew stair which led down to the bowels of the earth. As we were going down we heard laughter and the sound of uproar and riot coming up. I do not know what my friends felt, but I believe they were rather nervous like mj'self. The walls of the apartment we entered at the bottom of the stair were as black as a chimney, and beside the fire sat a colossal negro — one of the greatest ruffians in London. Kneeling on the ground near him were a number of men, to whom he was dealing out a pack of cards as black as his own paws. The room was filled with the worst of women, and with the most degraded-looking ruffians I ever saw. Some of those present had a guilty look, and shrank into a corner, while others, knowing that they were clean and clear of the police book, had a face and front of brass. " Mr. Pierce asked, ' Have you got a girl here with green rib- bons on her bonnet ? ' (We wei'e not in search of any girl, with either green or black ribbons ; but that was said as Mr. Pierce's excuse for going in.) Their bonnets were produced, to show that they were not of the fatal colour. Then my attention was turned to some children whom we found there. It was their only home. Some were orphans, some had been deserted by their parents ; and into that horrible place they were floated every night, paying for their lodgings with the proceeds of their beggary and theft, flung out again on the bosom of society, and flung back again perfect wrecks as night fell." At the close of his interview with the President of the Privy Council, Dr. Guthrie was requested by Lord Lansdowne to embody his statements in writing. He did 80, and the result was a Memorial, which was printed and forwarded to head-quarters in 1851. In this care- 142 MEMOIR. ^ fully prepared statemen/fc. Dr. Guthrie rests the claim of Hagged Industrial Schools for Government" support on two grounds : first, the success of the scheme ; second, the verdict of the public in its favour. In 1852, a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the condition of " criminal and destitute juveniles in this country, and what changes are desirable in their present treatment in order to supply industrial training, and to combine reformation with the due correction of juvenile crime." Dr. Guthrie gave evidence before this Committee in February, 1853. " 22, Bury Street, St. James's, London, February \9)th, 1853. *' I was at least two hours and a half before the Committee yesterday, and, unless I had heen a man of no small presence of mind, I would have got into a pretty mess of confusion, for when I was going on to enter upon the particulars of our own Ramsai/ Lane School, the one bundle of my papers that belonged to that was amissing. It had, in some most unaccountable way, slipt from the parcel of papers I carried down in my hand, or I had been the victim of jurenile delinqtiencij ! . . . So we went on and got into the wide ocean ; sometimes I agi'eed with the Member questioning, and sometimes 1 did not. I had a difficulty with one of my examiners, in making him. understand that we had no set form of prayers read in school. We did not actually go over the ground of Lord Murray's battle, but were on the borders of it sometimes. I told them how the Roman Catholic parents hardly objected at all ; that children, when withdrawn, we had reason to believe were removed through the influence of the priests ; that the parents, whether Protestant or Papist by name, were, in point of fact, heathen savages, or not much better. I mentioned my plan of having a church, and also a catechism ; then we had a great deal of questioning about the kind of it. I expounded my catholic sentiments and views. One member of the Committee asked mo whether it would be such as Roman Catholics would agree to. I must have put my answer in a sort of ludicrous light, for the Duke of Argyll, who was behind me, got out wil^ a yii Jaw ; I HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMITTEE. 143 forget the exact expressions — but my reply was to the effect that the Roman Catholics would agree to it, for it would contain all the truth that they had, and that they would not, for it would contain none of their superadded errors. Another asked whether it would be such as Jews or Unitarians would agree to. I said, certainly not. Then I gave them a brief epitome of the grand doctrines of the Gospel, showing them that it would be a Christian catechism, to which, of course, those parties could not agree. Sir John Pakington, Sidney Herbert, Monckton Milnes (the litterateur), with the chairman, were my principal catechisers. " Signor Nicolini called here, and walked as far as Stafford House with me. I forgot, ere I left him, the name of this street, so asked him ; he told me, and laughed much at my oblivion. I was afraid I would forget it again ; and so it happened ; for, on leaving, I began to think. Where did I live ? I knew it was a street close by St. James's Street, but I could not recall it ; tried and tried it. What was I to do ? Thought of going back, explaining my dilemma, and taking refuge in Stafford House all night ! At length applied to a policeman, told him how I was non- plussed. He answered most discreetly, seeing I was as sober as a teetotaler ; named a number of streets. No, these were not the thing. At length out came Bury Street. ' Ah ! ' said I, ' that's it,' thaiiked him, and bade good night." {To Mrs. Guthrie.) In his evidence, Dr. Guthrie not only entered into a full explanation of the working of the Original Ragged School, but indicated clearlj^ both the kind of pecuniary help which he desiderated from Government, and what legislative assistance was needed to secure the attendance at such schools of the children who needed them most. "We subjoin a portion of his evidence : — 379. Mr. Monckton Milnes. You do not think that your scheme, or any other scheme which would give a refuge to destitute children, gives any direct encouragement to parents to leave their children destitute ? Rev. Dr. Guthrie. I am thoroughly convinced it does not. It is said that there are some savages who cannot count more 14+ MEMOIR. than ten, the number of their fingers ; — I believe the mass of these people never look ten hours before them ; they have neither forethought nor reflection. 398. Sir John Pakinrfton. What is your system of religious teaching in the school ; is it according to the Presbyterian form of worship ? No ; I am happy to say that it is based on broad Catholic principles ; we have Episcopalians, Established Church, Free Church, United Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists on the committee of management. In fact, I have had a good deal to do with it myself, and I took special care that all the different religious denominations should be represented on the committee of management ; and so anxious are we to avoid anything like sectarianism in the management of our school, that we do not even teach the Catechism that is in use in all the parish schools in Scotland — in ninety-nine out of one hundred of the other schools. 399. Suppose the case of a child who had left your school after eight years' teaching in it, he would be unable to answer what section of Christians he belonged to ? Perfectly so ; he would be able just to say that he was a Christian. 400. If he could not say what denomination of Christians in the country he belonged to, would he be able to say whether he was a Protestant or a Roman Catholic ? That would depend upon himself: we teach the Bible without ever touching upon that subject. 402. Mr. M. Milnes. Would it be probable that if the children to whom you are alluding had remained in the state in which they were, and had not gone to your school, they would, when they came to a mature age, have been able to tell what Christian denomination they belonged to ? . They would most certainly have been able to say, as I believe the celebrated Grimaldi put on his door on one oc- casion, '* No religion at all." 412. Sir J. Pakington. What is your religious teaching now ? Our religious teaching is based on the Word of God. 413. What does it consist of? They read through the Bible regularly. To begin at the beginning, they are taught to say grace at meat, and to return thanks after meat ; then they receive oral instruction from the Bible in the main doctrines of Christianit}', man's fallen state, the doctrine of the Trinity, the atonement, sanctitication by the Spirit of God, justification through the righteousness of HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMITTEE. 145 Clirist, — in point of fact the contents of a Catechism, without the formal appearance of a Catechism ; then they read so many chapters in the Bible every day, they are examined upoQ these, and they commit passages of Scripture to memory and repeat them ; so many passages every day. 414. By whom is that instruction given, and those examina- tions made ? By the teachers. 415. Not by ministers of religion ? No ; we are so careful to avoid sectarian differences, that we have no minister of religion on the acting committee, with tha exception of myself : I am a sort of ex-ojjiclo member, without the name. The case being mentioned of children wlio had fallen into criminal habits : — 461. Sir J. Pakinr/ton. In fact they will not stay with you ? They will not ; and for that very reason, we want, by law, to have the power of compelling the attendance of those children at school. 498. Chairman (Mr. Baines). You are of opinion that there is a great want of further provision of this kind in Edinburgh ? Very great want ; even in Edinburgh, which is one of the best supplied, there are not above a third of the children provided for. 499. And the case is a fortiori as to other towns ? Yes. 500. What is the practical suggestion which you would make upon this head ? The practical suggestion that I would make is, not that the Government should come forward and supersede our local efforts ; I should look upon that as a great calamity ; I think that parties in the locality manage such schools as these better than they could be managed through a central Board here in London, and through Government agency. I think, too, that it is better for the children ; because we get ladies and gentle- men connected with the management of these schools to take a special interest in the children themselves, and to take them by the hand. For instance, by way of illustration, there are a number of families of the higher and wealthier classes in Scot- land who pay so much a year for keeping so many children in the school, and they take an interest in their future welfare. Independently of that, I think it is a great benefit to us in the VOL. II. L 146 MEMOIR. locality to have this good work to do ; therefore I should look upon it as a very injurious system to put the Ragged Schools under the sole management of the Government. I do not wish the Government to supersede our efforts ; what I wish the State to do is, to supplement them. 512. Chairuuni. You want to have the burden divided, so that the State should bear a part, and that the other part should be borne by voluntary zeal ? Yes ; and that the State should not supersede us, but supple- ment us. 513. Mr. Sidney Herbert, You retaining the control of the schools ? Under Government inspection ; so that the Government shall have the power to withdraw the grant whenever they choose, if they are not satisfied. 557. Do you intend to make a separation between children committed for oliences, and the rest of the children in the school ? We do not find at all any necessity for a separate establish- ment for children committed for offences, if it is the first offence ; and it so happens that the children do not look down upon any child who is sent to the school by a magistrate for the first olience. But I should think it necessary that a child who had been convicted of two or three ofi'ences should be in a separate estabhshment from the others in the Ragged School ; for we have found the influence of what we call a thorough juvenile offender very pernicious, and we are very unwilling to receive them. 558. Then do you contemplate having two establishments ? What I contemplate is, first, a Ragged School, for the purpose of catching children before they reach prison ; and then a Reformatory School, for the purpose of telling upon the children who have already become criminals. If any State institution is established,.! think that there should be two such schools. 570. In fact, you would have a Ragged School in order to anticipate and prevent crime, and you would have another school that would be a reformed and improved sort of prison for children ? Just so ; one preventive and the other reforma;tory. I think the first the most important — the preventive. 677. Would you proceed against the parent to recover the cost of the maintenance of the child equally in both schools ? I would hold that the State is bound in its own defence to take measures to secure that no child should grow up a nuisance REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE. 147 to society ; and the party that ought to bear the responsibility should be the parent. 578. Mr. Tufnell. Are there many parents who pay for the support of their children in your schools '? There are a few in Dundee. In Edinburgh there are very few. 579. Mr. S. Herbert. Are there many that ought to pay ? There are a number, but not very many ; most of them are utterly dissipated. I believe if there was a white slave-market in Edinburgh they would sell their children for drink. 591. Mr. Adderley. Do you suppose that a great number of those children are led into crime by actuixl destitution ? There is no doubt about it — that poverty being often brought on by the dissipated habits of the parents. One of the greatest curses which we have in our country, and which, as long as it exists, will increase exceedingly the need of Ragged Schools, is the quantity of dram-shops that we have in the large towns in Scotland, and the great extent of drinking. The Committee reported on the 28th of June, first, that Reformatories, to be instituted and supported entirely at the public expense, ought to be established ; and, second, that the existing Ragged Industrial (or preventive) Schools ought not any longer to be excluded from the aid of the National Grant, under the distri- bution of the Committee of Council, for Education. Encouraged by this Report, the supporters of Ragged Schools continued to press their claims upon Govern- ment. Many causes seemed to warrant the hope of a favourable reply. Thus the Duke of Argyll writes : — " Cleveden, Aiiffusi 1st, 1853. "My dear Dr. Guthrie, — .... There is no danger of the great social question now escaping attention. Transportation is virtually at an end, and the public attention, from motives of self-preservation, is now being earnestly directed to the safest mode of dealing with our criminals at home. Out of evil, at least out of circumstances of great difficulty and embarrass- ment, is coming this great good. I doubt whether, without L 2 148 MEMOIR. this urgont necessity, the reformation of juvenile delinquents would not have been a postponed and disputed question for some years longer. But now it is a sheer necessity, and that, you know, is the mother of invention. This ought to be a Government subject." In little more tlian a year after the date of tliis letter, two Acts were passed dealing with the whole subject. The one, commonly called " Lord Palmerston's Act," applied to the case of criminal children, and was applicable both, to England and Scotland ; tbe other, introduced by Dr. Guthrie's early friend (see Auto- biography, page 208), was named "Dunlop's Act," and dealt with vagrant children. This latter measure applied to Scotland alone. Hitherto, if a magistrate followed the strict letter of the law, he had no alternative but to commit the youngest child, if convicted of the most petty theft, to jail. Now, by Lord Palmerston's Act, power was given to the magistrates to send that child, if under the age of sixteen, to a Reformatory School. By Mr. Dunlop's Act, again, without any necessity for previous imprison- ment, powers were conferred upon magistrates to com- mit to a certified Industrial School, and to detain there for five years, " any young person, apparently under the age of fourteen years, found begging, or not haring any home or settled j)lnce of abode or i^roper guardian- ship, and having no visible means of subsistence ^ound irandering, though not charged with any actual oifonfeby* , Under both Acts, powers were given to enforce partial payment from the parents of ** committed " children. MR. DUNLOFS ACT. i49 These measures were keenly canvassed in their passage through Parliament. Mr. Dunlop's Bill, especially, en- countered the strenuous opposition of the Irish Roman Catholic members ; Mr. Lucas, the member for Meath, going so far as to say that, " It was because he believed that the moral nature of the children sent to such institutions as that presided over by Dr. Guthrie would be more perverted than it would be if they were left on the streets, that he opposed the bill."* That their oppo- sition proved fruitless was due, in large measure, to the extraordinary success which the already existing Ragged Schools had achieved. " We owe many thanks to Mr. Dunlop," said the Duke of Argyll at the annual meeting of Dr. Guthrie's School, in Edinburgh, in 1857, " for his exertions in this cause ; but I believe the great merit of that Act is dae to those who estabUshed these schools on the voluntary principle, and who have conducted them with such great success. I will venture, without hesitation, to affirm that if the duty of Mr. Dunlop had been, not merely to go to Parliament, saying, ' Here are schools already existing, the effect of which has been abundantly proved in past years ; ' but if it had been his duty to go to Parliament to devise schools for educating the vagrant and criminal children, he would have been utterly unable to get any law on the subject passed. He would have been met with all the difficulties which have attended every proposal for a general scheme of education. He would have been asked, What is the religious principle on which you intend to educate these children ? What are the rules which you intend to lay down in the schools to which you are to send children by force of law ? But Mr. Dunlop was able to go to the House of Commons and say, ' You have nothing to do with founding schools ; they are founded for you, and all that I ask is, that when children have been found in a vagrant condition, and likely to perpetrate crime, it shall be in the power of the * Hansard, vol. cxxxiv., page 1481. ISO MEMOIR. magistrate, instead of sending them, as formerly, to prison, to send them to these schools.' " While tlie requisite legislation had thus been ob- tained, the pecuniary aid for which Dr. Guthrie had asked was also in fair measure afforded. By Minute of the Privy Council of 2nd June, 1856, a capitation grant of 50s. a year was allowed for every child in the certified Industrial Schools, whether committed by magis- trates or not. The publication of that Minute of Privy Council gave a great impetus to the Pagged School movement throughout Great Britain. The year 1856, indeed, might almost be called its new starting point. Schools already in existence proceeded to enlarge their sphere of operations, and schools were started in new centres of population, so that the cause seemed to have received a permanent impulse. It was, therefore, with surprise and alarm that the announcement of the recall of that Minute was received ; and when, on 31st December, 1857, the Privy Council issued a new Minute, the worst fears of the friends of Ragged Schools were found to be realised. " I do not wish to speak evil of dignities," were Dr. Guthrie's words, " but there are some things in respect of which it is difficult to keep one's temper, and this is one of them. We have leaned on a bi'oken reed. For a brief period, in answer to importunity like the widow's, we got fifty shillings a y«ar for every child of the abandoned classes trained within our school — only one-third of the cost. But now, and all in a day, these fifty shillings have been I'oduced to five. Five sliillings in the year comes to about half a farthing in the day; and one half-farthing per day is the eucouragement and help wo AiV UNEXPECTED OBSTACLE. 151 get toward saving a hapless, helpless creature from crime, the prison, the hangman ! Munificent donation ! " Incredible mockery as this seems, such is the fact. I am not aware that there is anything to match it in any other department of public affairs. Its injustice and folly are still more plainly brought out by the contrast between the liberality shown to those institutions which attempt to reform the child who has committed crime, and the niggardliness dealt out to such institutions as ours, that, reckoning prevention better than cure, seek to destroy crime in the very bud. To the man who, like a fool, postpones education till the -child falls into crime, and is brought out of the gaol to school, the Government gives one shilling per day ; and to the far wiser man who, catching the child, so to speak, on its way to the prison, by education destroys crime in the egg and germ, the Government grants but one half-farthiug per day. What a monstrous state of matters ! " One reason the Government give for withdrawing the grant is that they want to check an abuse of the public money. No one can be more clear than I am for having a check to prevent an abuse of the public money, but it is marvellous to me that the Government don't see that they have a sufficient check under the former Act. Why, Government liberality to oui Ragged School is little more than £G00, and the expense of the school over and above that amounts in all to £2,262. Has not the Government, then, a very good check, when, for every pound that they give, the supporters of the school must pay two ? " But another reason for what the Government has done is, I believe, because they have got alarmed at the amount of money voted, year by year, by the House Commons for the interests of education in this country. A number of years ago it only amounted to £60,000, but now it has increased to about £500,000. That is a large sum ; but what a much larger sum is spent in the punishment of crime ! And why, if there must be a retrenchment, begin with the Ragged School ? " As might be expected, steps were at once taken, both by individual Ragged Scbool Committees and- by combined action, to prevail on the Privy Council to reconsider the matter, and restore the former grant. Dr. Guthrie accompanied one of the deputations sent to London for 1 52 MEMOIR. this end, and thus describes an interview with the Eiffht Hon. C. B. Adderley, Vice-President of the Committee of Privy Council on Education. "Manchester, March 18th, 1859. " We met in a hotel close by Downing Street an hour before the time fixed with Adderley. Lord Grosvenor * came up and claimed acquaintance with me, and I was introduced to a lot of English members whom I did not know. Besides Ragged School directors, from various towns in England as well as Scotland, we mustered some twenty-one members of Parlia- ment. At the preliminary meeting they moved me into the chair. The plan of battle was then arranged, and the matters that we were to press on the Government discussed. They appointed me to take the lead and lay the subject before Adderley, and they would supplement. Mr. Black was fixed on to introduce the deputation. " Well, away we set, up the street hke a column of soldiers, and entered the Treasury buildings. The room in which we were received was crowded to the door. I stood at the table beside Mr. Adderley. I had prepared nothing beyond marking down and arranging points to speak to. I believe I got quite animated, and, instead of addressing Adderley, found myself repeatedly addressing the deputation! I was carried into this by their general cries of ' hear, hear,' which gave it something of the air and aspect of an oration in the Music Hall. I judge from what others of them said, in afterwards pressing the matter on Adderley, that they are not accustomed to such orations on such occasions. Mr. Black, too, got quite animated in pressing our claims, and so was the member for Newcastle. It had a good deal of the character of what in America they call an Tndujnation Meeting. " Notwithstanding our fever and vehemence, Adderley fought very shy ; and I should not wonder though we have to bring the wrong for redress before Parliament. I had a long talk afterwards, when we returned to the House after dinner, with A. Kinnaird and Cowper f (the latter, Palmerston's stepson). The deed was done when he was Vice-President of the Committee of Privy Council. I think I convinced him (Mr. Kinnakd was convinced before) that the thing must be undone ; * Now Duke of Westminster, t Now Mr. Cowper-Temple. INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS ACT, 1861. 153 and they left me to talk with Adderley anent the matter, and try to get the Government to yield." {To Mrs. Guthrie.) It was shortly after this that Dr. Guthrie issued his third Plea for Ragged Schools. This third Plea was bound up with the two former, and the volume entitled, "Seed Time and Harvest of Ragged Schools." It was reviewed in the Times of 28th September^ 18G0, from whose notice we transfer one or two sentences : — " Dr. Guthrie is the greatest of our pulpit orators, and those who have never heard him will probably obtain a better idea of his wonderful eloquence from his work on Ragged Schools than from his published sermons. Several years ago he issued two pamphlets, which he has now followed up by a thu-d, on behalf of these institutions. They are the most finished of his compositions, and are well worthy of his fame. It is impossible to read them unmoved. The writer is himself under the influence of a mastering passion, and he carries his readers along with him, by the help of a strong, clear style and a boundless store of illustrations. ... We are inclined almost to rank him as the greatest living master of the pathetic." In the end of 1860, "Dunlop's Act" was repealed, and Government introduced what was known as the "Industrial Schools Act," which became law on 7th August, 1861. By the operation of this Act, the reduced capitation grant of five shillings per annum was alto- gether withdrawn, and those children in Ragged Indus- trial Schools, loho had not been committed hy a magistrate, ceased to receive any assistance whatever. On the other hand, the allowance for " committed " children was mate- rially increased ; but, then, from their number (in pro- portion to the whole number of children in attendance) being comparatively small, Dr. Guthrie's school, and 154 MEMOIR. others in like proportion, were serious losers. By the Privy Council Report for 1861, it appeared that of the 6,172 children in the Ragged Schools of the country, only 242 had been committed by magistrates, either as criminal or vagrant, leaving 5,930 who now wholly ceased to receive any support or assistance from the State. An opportunity for an influential protest soon occurred. In 1860 the Social Science Association held their annual meeting in Glasgow, at which both Sheriff Watson, the founder of Ragged Schools in Scotland, and Dr. Guthrie, their chief advocate, were present. The proceedings were opened by the President, Lord Brougham (then eighty- two years of age), in the course of whose address a pointed reference was made to the sutyect which had spe- cially induced Dr. Guthrie's attendance at the Associa- tion. "The refusal," said Lord Brougham, "to assist in pre- venting pauperism and crime, by diUgently educating and training the class of children from whom vagrants and criminals are bred, is, perhaps, one of the greatest economical, let us rather say social, mistakes ever committed. It is an abdicatioa of the most imperative duties of a State— that of helping those who cannot help themselves^ — as well as the self- destructive economy, the gross impolicy of withholding a little outlay, in schooling, from those on whom it must afterwards spend largely in the way of gaols and workhouses." Dr. Guthrie spoke in the " Punishment and Reforma- tion Section." He denounced what he regarded as the unjust treatment his poor 3'^oung clients were receiving at the hands of those who held the State's purse-strings ; but, in the midst of all his earnestness, his humour SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING. 153 breaks oitt as usual : — " Mr. Lowe, who had declined to give another farthing from the Privy Council, proposes to throw us on the Home Office, and with that proposi- tion I find no fault — seeing that we may say with the Irishman, who, on being asked by the Commissioners sitting on the state of Ireland, why he and his country- men, when so poor as they represented themselves to be, married so early, said, ' Sor, we think we may be better, and are sure we cannot be worse ! '" ^'September 29th, 1860. " We have had a very interesting time of it. I was asked one morning to a breakfast given by a Glasgow club to Sir John Lawrence.* We had much interesting conversation. He is a great and earnestly good man, one who, all say, should be made Governor-General of India. He agrees with me entirely in my views as to the army, and he and Arthur Kinnaird urged me to publish on the subject. " We had a grand discussion on National Education. Sir J. K. Shuttleworth very kindly introduced himself to me, and asked me to speak. He delivered a most noble address, and it was very interesting to see Lord Brougham — to whom Kinnaird introduced me — sitting in such company, and presiding, while Shuttleworth and Kinnaird opened three days with thoroughly rehgious addresses. " On the day I read my paper on Ragged School claims for Government aid, I had a great audience ; and, though the paper was only some quarter of an hour long, I made it, with mterlarding, three-quarters. It was very funny (though I did not know it till I was done), that M'hile I was laying my taics on the back of the Government, one of the ministers was at my side, in the Hon. Mr. Cowper." "Edinburgh, October 1st, 1860. " My dear Mr. Logan,! — . . . I hope those meetings which have been held in Glasgow will result in much good ; they are full of promise. It was a wonderful thing to see yon old man, * Now Lord Lawrence. t Author of the " Moral Statistics of Glasgow." 156 MEMOIR. Brougham ; and it was pleasant to see how, in his old age, he was breathing a purer atmosphere than in the days of his youth. It was fine to see him sitting under the address of Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, while the latter was delivering himself of so many Christian sentiments, and pronouncing the body * the temple of the Holy Ghost.' I hope Brougham will get good to himself. How marvellous to see that his sun, so far down the sky, is brilhant and clear as ever ! " With best thanks and great esteem, " Yours sincerely, " Thomas Guthrik." A public meeting was convened in Edinburgh in November, 1860, to consider what steps should be taken to meet the serious deficit of £700 in the funds for the year, of the Original Hagged School, caused by the withdrawal of the Government grant for non-committed children. On that occasion, Dr. Norman MacLeod feli- citously exposed the mistaken policy of giving aid largely to Reformatories which received children only after they had become criminals, while withholding it from Ragged Schools, whose aim was to save them from being crimi- nals at all : — " It is monstrous that Government, who would not give sixpence to save a man's leg, would quite willingly give twenty pounds for a wooden one after the leg was taken off ! " * " What I wish the public to understand," said Dr. Guthrie in concluding his appeal, "is this, — you must either help us in our present extremity, or we must cast seventy of these poor children overboard. Now, who is to select these * Dr. Guthrie had invited Dr. JlacLend to dinner after that meeting on behalf of the "City Arabs." In reply, Dr. IMacLeod wrote, " I thank you for your kind invitation to a place in your tent. I would rejoice to eat salt with the Arab Chiefs you mention, or with one only, my old and esteemed friend Ur. Ilauua." CHEERING SYMPATHY. 157 victims ? I will not do it. I sympathize with Hagar, when, after doing her utmost to sustain her son, she withdrew, not choosing to see him die. It will be a black day for Edinburgh when these children are cast into the streets. God says, 'Room in heaven for the guilty ;' here they ciy, ' Room in the prison for the innocent ; ' and when these poor creatures have gone their horrid march from our blessed school to yon dreary cells, let them put upon the door of the prison, ' Under the patronage of the Privy Council.' * * * * - * " I have been three times at Downing Street, and it is a shocking cold place. I have seen a bunch of grapes put into a well, and, when you took it out, instead of a bunch of grapes it was a bunch of stones. There are such things as petrifying wells, and I have seen a kind good-hearted man go into office in Downing Street, and the next time I saw him he was as hard as a stone. ***** " I will blush for my country and for Protestantism if these poor children are not fully cared for. I will be ashamed to look in the face of a poor Papist Irishman whom I saw in a house in the Cowgate some years ago. When I asked if one of the children, a fair-haired lassie, was his, he said, ' Oh, no, plaze your riv'rence, she's nothing of the kind ; but her father and mother died next door, and she had not a creature in the wide world to care for her ; so, though I had plinty childer of my own, I said to Mary, we'll take her in, — and, plaze your riv'rence, we've never missed the lassie's bit o' food.' Now, I say to you, you'll never miss the ' bit of food ' of these children. The alternative is, for these boys, vice or virtue; for these girls, purity or prostitution." At tlie subsequent annual meeting of the Charity he thankfully related the result of that appeal : — " We asked £700, and, to the everlasting honour of the people of Edinburgh, we got £2,200." Two items in this amount particularly gratified Dr. Guthrie. One, a sum of £157, was raised entirely by domestic servants in Edin- burgh ; the history of the other he thus detailed — rs8 MEMOIR. To THE Editor of The Witness. "'EmyBvnG-H, April 5fh. 1862. " On being invited last year to Biggar Fair, to help those who sought (by substituting tea for toddy, and the attractions of a public meeting for those of the public-house) to prevent the evils incident to such great gatherings, I went, — deeming nothing beneath the dignity of a servant of Christ which was calculated to keep men and women from the ways of sin. The scheme was a great success. This year, as an additional attraction, our Ragged School musical band was taken out, and fifes, drums, and bugles entered Biggar, on a fine spring morning, playing the march of new and better times. It was a gala day to our poor boys ; their shining faces were radiant with dehght. It was a sight worth seeing, and would have made a capital picture: — our dozen or fourteen little fellows standing in front of the Corn Exchange, converted for that day into a temperance hotel; around, a gi'eat and eager throng formed in circles — the first, of children about the height of our band ; the second, of ' haflins,' boys and girls in their bratvs for the market ; the third, of stout lads and blooming lasses ; and behind these, fathers and mothers, and patriarchs of the hills, men and women with heads as grey as their own mountain mists. " When the sorrows of these children are told in Music and City Halls, I often see pity glistening in the eyes of women, who go home and send me money in letters, sealed, some with coronets, some with thimbles ; but I never saw anything more beautiful than the kindness which beamed in the countenances of these honest country people, as they gazed over each other's heads on the group of little fellows whom, with God's blessing, we had rescued from hunger and cruelty, and crime and death. A kind heart is a jewel, and you expect to see it in woman ; but hands there, that might have felled an ox, were lifted to brush off the tear that silently rolled down the cheeks of stout and stalwart men. "The awakening of such gentle feelings in these people was good for them, and it also proved good for us ; for the over- flowing of kindness, like that of the waters of the Nile, always leaves a blessing behind it. I had no doubt it would make their hearts softer and better ; still, I had no expectiition of reaping such an early and abundant harvest as I write this letter gratefully to acknowledge. In my address at the public meeting on the ' fair ' day, I said to the crowds that thronged the church and left the public-houses all but empty, that if BIRMINGHAM CONFERENCE. 159 they felt inclined to send us any aid, I would gratefully accept it;* adding, half jocosely, half seriously, in the common style of beggars, that the smallest donation would be thank- fully received. How great my astonishment to receive, and my pleasure to report, the following sums .... making Sni 19s. 8f/. May this example lead others to go and do likewise ! The Christian kindness which prompted this gift will ever impart a beauty in my eyes to the hills and dales of that neighbourhood more splendid than when they are bathed in the glories of a golden suuset." On the 23rd of January, 1861, a Conference of the friends of Ragged Schools was summoned to meet at Bir- mingham, under the presidency of Sir John Pakington,t wlio liad all along headed the party in the House of Com- mons which desired to see these schools receive an increase of State aid. On that occasion Dr, Guthrie moved the second resolution, to the effect " That neglected and destitute children constitute a very large class of the community, yet that no educational aid is given for their education, from the Parliamentary grant, comparable to that which, is given to such classes of schools as already receive Government assistance." * Few letters he ever received gratified him more than the following, which he read at one of the annual meetings of the Ragged School : — '• , January 2nd, 1860. *' Sir, — I feel a good deal ashamed in writing you Iheis few lines as I am in the humbeler spear of life and you are so high, but I have been reading your Boock of late, the City its Sins and iis Sorrows, and I was BO much struck, that I have sent you theis 10 shillings for the Ragged Schools. " I am a poor farm servent and it is all that I can spare at present as I have a widow mother to support and I am the one son. I do not ■want my name down in any of the records. — Your sincere well wisher for your scheams, " ." t Now liOrd Hampton. , 6o MEMOIR. For five years longer, however, tlie state of matters remained unchanged. At length, in 1866, a new " Indus- trial Schools Act" was passed, whereby these institutions were placed upon their present footing. By means of this Act, increased facilities are given to magistrates for committing children accused of petty thefts, as well as vagrant children not accused of any actual crime ; and thus, through the increased number of " committed " children. Ragged Schools receive a proportionally larger annual allowance from Government than they ever formerly enjoyed,* Dr. Guthrie was naturally thankful for this ; but there still existed a mass of ignorant, uncared for, destitute children, whom none of all these legislative enactments reached. Accordingly he wrote, in the same year which saw the passing of the Industrial Schools Act, to the Lite Dean Hamsay — " MossFENNAN, Rachan Mill, December 15tJi, 1866. "My deak Mr. Dean, — . . . . The most important view which I take of our position and action is that we are the pioneers of a great movement; that we are and have been carrying on a series of experiments for the purpose of meeting our social evils, which, if successful, will force the principles and plans we advocate into universal favour and application. Let our schools be amply supplied with funds and wrought with the highest vigour, and ere long we will compel the country to apply on the broadest scale, and in a great measure at the public expense, what has proved the best and kindest and cheapest and most Christian code for its misery and crime." The true solution of the problem Dr. Guthrie looked * For example, in 1873, out of 241 children in the Edinburgh Original Rugged S(;hools, 111 had been "committed" by magistrates, and for thuae £1,120 was paid by Govcrnmout to the funds of the school. THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE. i6i for In a National Education measure, containing a com- pulsory clause : — " There is no prospect in the distant horizon," he said in 1866, "that I rejoice in more than in this, that in the course of less perhaps than another quarter of a century this country will declare by the voice of Parliament that no child within the shores of Britain shall be allowed to- grow up without a good, useful education. But here "we are in the meantime ; we have hundreds of children in this town for whom, at the present moment, no provision is made, and, as you know, the object of the Ragged Schools is to meet the case at present, until society takes it up on a large and proper scale." Two years thereafter, it liad become plain that the legislation he desiderated was nearer at hand than he had ventured to believe. " We are on the eve of a great change In this country," were his words in 1868. ** We have been driving over a dark, rough sea ; we have been battling with tempest and difficulties. Al- though I am no prophet, or prophet's son, I see, within a very short time, a system of education established throughout the whole of this country, that will not shut up the Ragged Schools, but will open up many a Ragged School, and embrace the whole children of the country." At length, by the passing of the Scotch Education Act of 1872, the "great change" to which Dr. Guthrie thus alluded was at least inaugurated. Under that Act, School Boards are empowered to establish Industrial Schools for " committed " children ; but, for the large class, equally necessitous, whom magistrates cannot commit, no pro- vision Is made. As yet (1875) School Boards have not chosen to exercise even the limited powers thus con- VOL. II. M 1 62 MEMOIR. ferred upon them ; and the existing Ragged School organization is, therefore, as necessary now as before. It was in view of the uncertain future of his own school that Dr. Guthrie wrote on 31st December 1872 : — "Will the friends of those that are 'ready to perish' — of poor, ragged, starved, emaciated, ignorant, and neglected children — allow me from my sick-bed to close the year with what will probably be my closing plea on behalf of the Edin- burgh Original Ragged School ? ***** " This Education Act, whereby the Local Boards are obliged to look after and provide for the education of every child within their bounds, will place our Ragged Schools in a new position, but not render them or their Christian machinery less necessary than before. Local Boards, however well constituted, and the ordinary teachers of schools can never supply the place of those Christian men and women who, as directors, visitors, managers, and teachers in our Ragged Schools, are in loco parentis — in room of kind Christian parents — to those children, — orphans, or worse than orphans. " I hope some arrangement will be come to between the Local Boards and our Ragged Schools, whereby, while the State shall sweep all neglected children into these schools and compl parents to pay for them — in any case, laying the burden of maintaining them more equally on the shoulders of the public — they may continue to be managed under those same moral and religious inHuences in which they had their origin, and to which they have chiefly owed their remarkable success." From 1847 onwards, Dr. Guthrie's name became widely associated with Ragged Schools and all kindred institutions. He visited many chief towns both of England and his native country, to plead a cause which lay very near his heart. On 6th February, 1855, he lectured on this subject for the London Young Men's Christian Association to an audience which filled VISIT TO A FLOATING RAGGED SCHOOL. 163 every corner of Exeter Hall. His address on that occasion lias been called '* the high-water mark of his powerful and pathetic oratory." "Birkenhead, 4, St. Aidan's Terrace, June Wth, 18o9. "Yesterday we visited the Akbar, under the wing and guidance of Mr, Brougham, who is at the head of the Bank- ruptcy Court here, and who takes a great interest in the work carried on in that ship.* She is an old man-of-war, and was given by the Government as a sort of floating Ragged School — or rather Reformatory School — boys convicted of offences under Lord Palmerston's Act being sent there to be trained for seamen. They get 7s. a week for each of these youths, so that, with a little additional aid, they are able to meet all expenses, " Our party set off in a river steamer to Rock Ferry, where we expected to find boats from the Akbar, and were not dis- appointed. Two eight-oared barges were manned by ten boys each, all dressed alike, with sailor's cap, white trousers, blue dress trimmed with white, and on the breast, wrought in white, the word Akbar. They received us with ' tossed oars,' as they are called, and, so soon as we were seated, dropped on their benches, and at the word of command given by the steersboy, crack, all in time, went the oars, and away we went. We had not got half way across the Avater when the great ship that lay asleep on the river changed all of a moment, — an honour, as well as the tossed oars, they paid to me, corresponding to that they pay in the navy when an admiral comes on board. On the shrouds of each of the three masts you saw a hundred and fifty blue jackets and white trousers running up like cats or mice ; some on reaching the first yards streamed along them ; others held on and up to the second yards, and so many streamed along them ; the rest held up and on still higher, till they had climbed to the higher yards, ranging themselves along these. So soon as we got on deck the boatswain piped the word of command, and down they came rattling at a rate which it frightened one to look at, I thought some of them would topple over into the water, or be squeezed to a pancake on the deck ! * At a later date, Dr. Guthrie visited another of these "floating Ragged Schools," the Mars, when lying in the Tay, and on lOih January, 1870, spake at a great meeting in the City Hall, Glasgow, held in connection with the Glasgow Foundry Boys' Religious Society and the Clyde training ship, f^timberland, in whose juvenile crew his friend Mr. Burns of Castle Wemyss takes a peculiar interest. M 2 1 64 MEMOIR. " We spent some two hours on board, and were deeply inter- ested. The boys looked very healthy and happy ; though not a few of them had the features of a sunken and degraded class, the effect produced by two or three generations of a low and brutal condition. I found below decks some two or three dozen with the teacher engaged in reading the Bible, and gave them a brief address, to which they were exceedingly attentive. The Chaplain is a jewel of a man, so aft'ectionate and sensible, and vigorous and enthusiastic. He is an ordained clergyman of the Church of England. " We saw the boys put through a number of their manoeuvres. They set sails and furled them, and it was amazing to see, after the signal was given, how rapidly they climbed up, and up, and still up, till they were on the highest yard, lying over it and unloosening the rolled-up sail. Nor was I least en- tertained or interested to see the worthy grey-haired com- mander, Captain Wake, renew the feats and vigour of his youth. He is, meanwhile, a volunteer substitute for Captain Fenwick, their regular commander, and is a delightful specimen of a naval officer as well as a Christian philanthropist. He mentioned a gratifying fact, — that it waS my ' Plea ' which first led him to take an interest in the cause of these outcasts." (!Zo his son Patrick.) "London, April ith, 1861. " Yesterday I had, in the shape of a bit of paper, a million sterling in my hand, and was in a room where I stood among forty millions of money. I came forth from these treasuries of the Bank of England to see two boys at its gates with arms and legs bare, and just some rags round their foul and emaci- ated bodies. Wealth and Want, Repletion and Starvation, side by side ! ' There is something rotten,' said Hamlet, ' in the state of Denmark.' But I say there is much rotten in the state of England, and I shall tell them so at Hanbury's meet- ing on Tuesday." {To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) During- the following week he made a special pilgrim- age, for old John Pounds' sake, to Portsmouth. " April I3th, 1861. " We went through the Victory and saw the cockpit, three stories below the quarter-deck, where Nelson expired. This was interesting, but to me it was more interesting still, when we k'ft scenes associated with Nelson and his battles, THE COBBLERS SHOP. 165 to go away to an old-fashioned humble street, and in a small shop, in a two-storied house, built of wood, not above seven feet broad and some fifteen long, to stand on the scene of John Pounds' labours. He would have, sometimes, thirty or forty boys there ; the place so crowded with chil- dren (whom he was saving from ruin without fee or reward, and, indeed, long without the notice or praise of any man), that they occasionally sat outside on the street. It was the humble birthplace of a great scheme. Next to what was his shop, now lives his nephew, who was brought up by John. He is Pounds also by name, and also by trade a cobbler or shoemaker. We went and had a long talk with him, and I made your mother buy a pair of shoes. He told us some interesting things about the old man. . . . He had often said to his nephew that, if it pleased God, he hoped ' to drop like a bird from its perch.' And so it happened ; for he died all in a moment." [To his dawjhter Clementina.) "10, Upper Gkosvenor Street, London, Ajiril iTih, 1861. "Last night we drove off to Willis's Rooms — a grand scene. In the lower room the various Ragged Schools and Refuges were represented by one or two inmates from each, engaged in their different works. Up-stairs was a brilliant hall, round the walls of half of it stalls with ladies — the middle and upper part crowded with a brilliant assembly of ladies and gentlenfen in full dress — a divan at the upper end occupied by the Bishop of London, Earl Grey, Vice-Chancellor Napier, and myself. Burgess of Chelsea opened by prayer, and all at once the Bishop threw me in. I expected others to begin, but had to commence, and no one else spoke. I intended to be short, but gave them a full dose of it. Lord Shaftesbury was with us about the middle of my address. I saw also Sir John Lawrence and some others whom I knew. " This morning I went to call on the great and good Dr. Lushington, who wished to see me, and who was most gracious and kind. He was the coadjutor of Wilberforce. He became a member of the House of Commons in 1806 — three years after I was born ; sat then with a Mr. Hussey, who had been a member of the House in the reign of George II. He spoke much of the change for the better in our country since his early days. " Mr, Gladstone and our morning party had much interesting talk about politics, divinity, colleges, Ragged Schools, &c., &c. He was vexed he had not seen me before we went to Salisbury, 1 66 MEMOIR. as he would have given me a letter to the Bishop, I have secured his influence with Sir George Lewis not to oppose Northcote's motion in the House of Commons for a Committee on the working of Ragged Schools." {To his daughter Clementina.) " Inchgrundle, Lochlee, June \9th, 1861. " I may have to go to London to be examined by Sir Stafford Northcote's committee. The ministry, or, rather, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, was to oppose his motion for a committee of inquiry as to Industrial Feeding Schools. I spoke both to the Chancellor (Gladstone) and to the Duke of Argyll on the subject. They saw no reason for opposing it. Mr. Black put forth all his activities to raise a force sufficient to out-vote Lewis. He got me to write a letter on the subject, printed a part of it, and circulated it among the M.P.'s." (To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) la August of the same year, 1861, Dr. Guthrie was in Geneva at the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance ; and there, before an audience of many nation- alities, enlarged on his favourite department of Chris- tian philanthropy. " Many thanks," wrote the Rev. Dr. Macduff of Glasgow, who was present on that occasion, " for your Geneva speech ; it stirred a chord in many hearts. I wish that old John Calvin had heard it. Ragged Schools would have had a chapter in the ' Institutes ! ' '* Various other visits to the Continent he turned to a similar account. He spent a long day in the spring of 1864 at the famous French Reformatory of Mettray, near Tours, of which he had frequently heard and read ; and when in Amsterdam, in 1867, he once more addressed a General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance on the reclamation of destitute and criminal children. THE HARVEST TIME. it-j Ever and anon he found that the arguments and appeals of his "Plea" were bearing fruit in unexpected quarters, sometimes far beyond the limits of Great Britain. We find among his letters correspondence about a Ragged School in Jamaica ; and the following letter from Mr. Smith, Governor of Edinburgh prison, presents an illustration still more striking of how far good seed may be wafted, or, as in this case, floated : — ^^ January 9th, 1865. " My dear Dr. Guthrie, — I heard something the other day which I may not longer delay telling you, as I know that it will gladden your heart. " In 1848 a gentleman, a merchant in Barbadoes, visited Scotland in the way of his business. He took out with him about £2,000 of goods, was wrecked on one of the West Indian Islands, and escaped only with his life. The only thing recovered was your ' Plea for Ragged Schools.' It was washed ashore, and his name and address being written on it, it was forwarded to him. It was handed about, and was the cause of a Ragged School movement in that far-off isle of the sea. All comment to you on this is, of course, needless. ' Verily Hts judgments are a great deep.'" " One needs sometimes no common measure of grace," wrote Dr. Guthrie to Miss Mill in 1866, "not to be weary in well doing. Yet it is not 'successful,' but 'good and faitliful servant,' that are the words of our Lord." The blessing of success was in his own case, however, largely superadded to the grace of faithfulness. For four-and-twenty years he was spared to see the fruit of his labour, as well as to enjoy the blessing of those who were ready to perish, and the affection of a grateful community : — i68 MEMOIR. " On Tuesday last," he told the Annual Meeting of his Schools in 1858, " I was in the West-end of the town when there came on one of the fiercest storms which has blown all this winter. My clothes were thoroughly soaked, and as I came round the south side of the Castle, I don't think I ever faced such a blast. When I got to Nicolson Street, I saw, standing on the flooded gutter, a little child, seven years of age, his thin, miserable clothes glazed with rain, and, while the storm pelted on his young head, raising his miserable song in the midst of the tempest. I felt indignant at the sight ; my indignation burned against the monster of a father or mother who could send out an infant on such a day, and as I had no doubt for such a purpose — to get money (as I ascertained was the fact) to go and spend it in vice, instead of spending it on that poor infant. I stopped and gave him a little charity. I could not resist doing that, though contrary to my rule. I shall not for- get his red emaciated hand when he opened it ; it was trembling, and I found he had a halfpenny in it, poor thing. ' Go home, my boy,' I said to him, ' go home immediately ; ' upon which I heard a voice say, * That's richt, sir, send him to Dr. Guthrie's Ragged Schule.' Whereupon I turned, and saw the speaker standing beside me. Buttoned close up to the throat, with a cap pulled over his brows, he had the appearance of a sober, well-conditioned mechanic. I could not resist saying- to this man, whose whole heart was in the matter as much as mine, * Friend, I am Dr. Guthrie.' You should have seen how luminous, though begrimed with smoke, the man's face became, and how he thrust out his horny hand and grasped mine — a compliment I accepted as from a duchess. All honour to the moral worth and honest kindliness that glowed in the man's look, and that were felt in a grip like the squeeze of his own vice ! " As life advanced, he continued, as chairman of the Committee by whom the Original Ragged Schools were managed, to watch their progress with an interest that no one else could fully share. It was with thankfulness he read in 1872 the following Report from Mr. Smith, Governor of the prispn : — " Contrasted with the state of matters in 1847, when the Original Ragged School SAMPLES OF THE GRAIN. 169 was started, there is now just one juvenile committed to prison for &ix at that, time." Since the day when Ragged Schools were first opened in Edinburgh, how many hundreds of children who were ■ on the road to ruin have passed out of their doors with a knowledge of God's word, and fitted to lead creditable and happy lives ! In the year 1867, careful inquiries were made with regard to the fate of sixty boys who had passed through the school, and with what result ? Four of the sixty had fallen back — of whom one was in prison, and three were in reformatories — four others remained unaccounted for; but of the remaining fifty- six, two were in the army, two in the navy, while forty- eight were in Edinburgh as apprentices, their united earnings amount- ing to £700 a year. " That fact, alone," said Dr. Guthrie, "is a recommendation for Ragged Schools greater than any speech that could be made by the most eloquent orator." * The pecuniary saving effected to the country by these Schools can be shown in a manner equally striking. Since their establishment at least one thousand children have been sent out into respectable positions in the world. Suppose (and the number is probably far below what the actual result would have been) that but one-half of these children had become . criminals : what then ? * The Eeport of the Government Inspector (Eev. S. Turner), given in on December 31st, 1873, shows that in the Original Ragged School of Edinburgh, the proportion of children who have turned out well has been between 80 and 90 per cent. {^Scotsman, Aug. 25th, 1874.) lyo MEMOIR. " Since the expense of each criminal," to quote Dr. Guthrie's words, "on an average amounts to £300, the saving of five hundred children will eventually save the country the enormous sum of £150.000, after deducting all the expenses which the public, through our society, has incurred on their behalf! * Nor is this the whole pecuniary advantage which society has de- rived from our schools alone. These five hundred children, turned into useful, productive citizens, are a positive gain and profit to the country. Say that the net value of the labour of each is but £20 a year, and suppose that they live on an average as productive members of society not more than twenty years, what is the result ? The result is this, that not only does the country save £150,000, but it gains by the life and industry of the whole number the enormous sum of £200,000." "WTien, in Switzerland, lie visited the late Dr. Guggen- huhl's institution for the cure of cretin (fatuous) children, he was struck by the ingenious mode that benevolent man had adopted for showing at a glance the benefits of the institution. A series of duplicate photographs hung on the walls of his room, each pair presenting the same child at two different stages : the first, as the boy or girl was on entering the institution — the lineaments of humanity scarce recognisable ; the second, after years of care and tuition, tidy in person, the countenance ex- hibiting a fair share of intelligence, a child fitted to go forth in quest of a livelihood. Dr. Guthrie delighted, after a somewhat similar fashion, to set forth in word- pictures the blessed change which came over many of his proteges, from the time of their being lifted " out of the * The Lord Advocate of Scotland stated at the Annual ]\Ieeting in 1852, when the Original Ragged School had been but five years in existence, that supposing the children, who had been rescued up to that date by the agency of the school, to have run an ordinary couiso of crime, they would have cost the country £64,8U0. LOOK ON THIS PICTURE AND ON THAT! 171 gutter," till at the end of their school training they were sent forth to fight their own way in the world. Here is such a duplicate : — "I was up lately (at the Ramsay Lane School) and saw a child brought in from the police-office, a lean, withered creature of a girl, who had been picked up for some petty oflence, and had been sent, not to prison, but to the Ragged Schools. She was dressed in an old tattered gown made for soijiebody a great deal bigger than herself, and it was curious to see her little withered face away deep in the hollow of a great black bonnet. Poor soul ! it was plain she had never been in such a place before ; she sat perfectly amazed, confounded, dumbfoundered, immovable, as if she had been cut out of stone ; the only thing about her that seemed to have life was her eyes, and they went continually rolling round and round in blank amaze. In fact, she had all the look of a new-caught hare ! Yet in three weeks you could not have recognised that child, such a mar- vellous change do the allied powers of patience and porridge work." It may not have been this same girl, but just such another, whom, after some years of kindly Christian train- ing in these schools, he found in the house of his elder, Mr. George Duncan, and of whom he thus tells — " 0 with what gmd did I eat my dinner when I learned that that neat modest girl serving us had passed through our Ragged School ! and that my friend had not only opened his heart and hand to our cause, but had opened his house to this poor child, where she had found a comfortable and Christian home. I say let others go and do likewise." Nor did he offer an advice which he was not pre- pared to practise : — " InCHGRUNDLE, LOCHLEE, 1866. " I have brought a Ragged School boy with me this year. I thought some five weeks here would be a great enjoyment for him, and that he would be helpful in the house, at an oar, and by the waterside in carrying the basket. He has been a great 172 MEMOIR. pleasure to us, and is quite a favourite with the people here. A smarter, more courteous, every way finer boy I have not seen anywhere for many a long year and day. He is very docile, of quick memory, a capital reader, of a bright buoyant tempera- ment, can swim like a trout, and already handles the oars like a Shetlander or a Polynesian. He is in great extasies when a trout of any respectalaility is caught — pronouncing it to be * a salmon ! ' " (To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) Above all, it gladdened Dr. Guthrie's heart to receive from time to time testimonies to the influence of his schools in tlie highest sense : — " We believe tbat we can trace the salvation of the souls of some of those children to the Bagged Schools ; some of tbem have shown evi- dence of a decided change, not of outward conduct only, but of heart." Letters now lie before us, written from Australia by girls who had been in the Edinburgh Ragged School, one too from a young soldier in Shorn- cliffe camp, that bear true and touching evidence to the influence of these schools on the eternal welfare of some of the scholars. The more immediate advantages which others have reaped from them came constantly under the notice of their foimder. The following illustration is no doubt an exceptional one, but none the less note- worthy : — " I was pre;5ent, at a graduation ceremonial in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, when there came forward to be 'capped,'* by the Chancellor, ministers as doctoi's of divinity, lawyers and liUeiatcurs as doctors of law, others still as doctors of medi- cine, and lastly a number of fine-looking young men as masters of arts. Who was there, think you ? I never was * The degree is conferred by touching tlie head of each graduate with an antique flat bonnet of black velvet. A RAGGED-SCHOOL HARVEST HOME. 173 so affected all my days. It took me by surprise, and, I am not ashamed to confess it, it brought the tears to my eyes, for I saw among those ' capped ' that day, as master of arts, a youth uho had been one of my Ragged School boys." One of the happiest evenings of an unusually happy life was spent by him in December, 1856 : — ** When constituents "were giving banquets to their members, and joyous cities were feasting the heroes of the Russian war, we resolved to pay some honour to those who, in then* own field, had had as hard a battle to fight and as difficult a part to play. Cards of invitation were accordingly issued to such of our old scholars as we could find in town. We did the thing handsomely. Our largest room in the school was brilliantly lighted ; ivy, branches of laurel, and holly with its coral berries, festooned the walls ; while long tables groaned under ample stores of coffee, tea, cookies, buns, and cakes of all sorts. It fell to me, as a kind of head of the house, to do the honours. "The hour of reception arrived. The tread and shufiling of many feet rose on the stairs. The living stream set in, in a constant succession of sober, well-to-do-like young men and women. Wives, once Ragged School girls, were there with blushes and honest pride, introducing their husbands to me, and husbands, once Ragged School boys, their wives. There they were, all well dressed, some even genteelly ; without a rag on their backs or trace of wretchedness in their bright and happy faces, self-supporting, upright ; earning, by honest industry, wages that in some cases reached the thirty or forty shillings a week of the skilled workman, shopman, or clerk. "It was a marvellous sight! I was ready to ask. Are these my Ragged School children ? The Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are glad. They were a hundred and fifty in all. What happy faces theirs were ! How joyous to meet again within these walls ! With no stronger stimulants than tea and coffee, their spirits rose to the highest pitch, and what a merry ring was in their laugh ; what heartiness in their fun, and also in their feeding ! How they did enjoy themselves ! One of my daughters, who pre- sided at a table, told me of a boy who drank an ocean of tea — ten cups at the least ! The evening flew away on lightsome wings : songs were sung, good counsels given ; prayers were offered, and blessings asked. We lingered over the scene. 17+ MEMOIR. Nor could I look on that gathering of young men and women, so respectably clad, and wearhig such an air of decency, and think what, but for the Ragged School, they would have been — without tears of joy, gratitude to God welling up to the eyes. It was a sight worth living for. It was our Harvest Home. Our joy was according to the joy of harvest, and as men re- joice when they divide the spoil. Such are Ragged Schools ! Trees of life ; let them be planted in every city : their leaves are for the healing of the people." Nor are the benefits of such schools confined to this country. Numbers of the children — girls especially — have been assisted to emigrate, and some of the most blessed results which the school has yielded are to be gathered from the subsequent history of those young persons, delivered from associations of a dangerous kind, and separated from ill-doing relatives in the old country. The Rev. James "Wells, of Barony Free Church, Glas- gow, who went out in 1867 as a deputy to the Presbyterian Churches of the United States, writes to us : — "At the close of a service which I conducted in the Scotch Church, New York, a very respectable-looking man, with his wife and two or three children, came to speak to me. He inquired particularly about Dr. Guthrie, and expressed his great regret that he had not been able to make out his visit to America. He then used, as nearly as I can recollect, the following words : — ' I was a friendless orphan on the streets of Edmburgh. and my prospects were as dark as they could be. I was one of the first boys that Dr. Guthrie took into his Industrial School ; and all I have for time and eternity I owe to that school. It has been one of the great desires of my life to shake hands with Dr. Guthrie, and thank him before I die ' He had prospered in business, was a member of the Scotch Chui-ch, and I remember that he had his pew Bible in his hand as he spoke to me, and he used it with an energetic gesture." So ample indeed was the testimony to the general RAGGED-SCHOOL CHILDREN ABROAD. i-js well-doing of those who had left the Ragged School for the colonies, that Dr. Guthrie was indignant at the un- kind suggestion sometimes thrown out, that these boys and girls, for the sake of the colonies, had better remain "at home." The following passage-at-arms on the subject, as described by himself, is characteristic : — " Westminstek Palace Hotel, London, Jult/ I9th, 1871. " I have just come from a meeting where I have had a pretty row with the late Attorney-General of Australia. *' The meeting was that of a colonial society, and took place in the large hall of this hotel. In seconding a vote of thanks to Jenkins (author of' Ginx's Baby'), I made some remarks touching the colonies as a field for our Ragged School children, which were greatly cheered. After me came said Attorney- General, who opposed the idea of sending out, as he chose to charac- terize my proposition, ' the scum of the country ' to the colonies. Tliis set up my hirse. I waited till he was done, then craved and gave him an answer. My finisher, the coup de grace, was furnished by a sheet of paper lying on the table before the Chairman (the Duke of Manchester). Seiz- ing it, I held it out before the meeting, by that time pretty well wrought up in sympathy with myself, saying, 'this was once the "scum" which the gentleman charged me with wishing to introduce into the colonies — once foul, dirty, wretched rags. In it — now white as the snows of heaven — this gentleman (who spoke, I believe, in sheer ignor- ance of the subject) may see an emblem of the material we would send to the colonies, of the work our Ragged Schools have achieved.' So, tossing down the paper, and bowing to the Duke amid the cheers of the audience, taken by surprise, and manifestly pleased with this illustration, I left, thankful to God that I was ready-witted enough for the occasion : the last words I heard as I left the room to scribble off this letter being, ' Well done, Guthrie 1 ' " {To Mrs. Guthrie.) For twenty-four successive years, the Annual Meetings of the Original Ragged School were looked forward to with eagerness by the Christian public in Edinburgh, 176 MEMOIR. and invariably secured a bumper bouse in tbe Music Hall, " Tbe movement wbieb began in a loft, in a mean street in Aberdeen, bas now attained sucb pro- portions, tbat nobles feel it an bonour to preside at our public meetings." Tbese were " red-letter days " in Dr. Gutbrie's year. At an earlier period, anti-patronage, non-intrusion, and Free Cburcb platforms bad been familiar witb bis stalwart form ; in later years, be felt most in bis element at tbe Annual Meeting of bis Ragged Sebool. Seated witb beaming face on tbe cbair- mau's left band, be was surrounded by a compact pbalanx of ministers and laymen of every evangelical denomination in tbe city. On tbe orcbestra bebind bim, stood row above row tbe tbree bundred boys and girls of tbe sebool, and wben tbeir clear voices rang out in tbe opening bymn, few could look on tbe spectacle witb- out emotion and tbankfulness. At tbese gatberings. Dr. Gutbrie's was naturally looked for as tbe speecb of tbe day. His oAvn manifest feeling and fervour carried tbe audience irresistibly along witb bim ; and tbe effect of bis appeal was sometimes evidenced before tbe meeting ended in tbe most practical of all ways. After sitting down exbausted, it refresbed botb bis body and spirit to receive, as we bave seen bim do, a scrap of paper from a gentleman in tbe audience, witb tbese words pencilled on it, " My dear Doctor, please put me down tbis year for £100." " I never engaged in a cause," was bis testimony at tbe Birmingbam Conference, " as a man and a Cbristian A THANKFUL RETROSPECT. 177 minister that I believe on my deatli-bed I will look back on witb more pleasure or gratitude to God, than that He led me to work for Ragged Schools. I have the satisfaction, when I lay my head upon my pillow, of always finding one soft part of it : and that is, that God has made me an instrument in His hand of saving many a poor creature from a life of misery and crime." May we not fitly add the lines which he quoted in so many of his speeches, and termed " My favourite Motto " ?— " I five for those that love me, For those that know me true, For the heaven that smiles above me, And waits my coming to ; ^ For the cause that needs assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance For the future in the distance, For the good that I can do." VOL. II. M" CHAPTER VIII. THE MINISTRY. " I AM glad to get rid of controversy. I wish to devote my days to preaching, and to the pastoral superintendence of my people." It was thus Dr. Guthrie expressed him- self in the first Assembly of the Free Church, imme- diately after the Disruption had brought to a close the *' Ten Years' Conflict." He found indeed, as time went on, that he had to take his share of controversy on other fields ; still his wish was largely granted ; and for the succeeding twenty-one years, from 1843 to 1864, the larger part of his time and toil in Edinburgh was devoted to pastoral and pulpit work. To the outside world Dr. Guthrie was chiefly known as a preacher ; none the less was he a devoted pastor. The members of his flock saw him at their firesides in hours of grief and hours of gladness, and their love for the tender, faithful minister equalled, if it did not sur- pass, their admiration for the pulgit orator. Often did he express his regret that, from the size of his con- gregation in Edinburgh, he could not acquire the same intimate acquaintance with individuals as he did with the flock in his country parish. We have heard him tell PASTORAL VISITATION. 179 of being stopped in the street by some one on whose face the blush of hesitation was followed by a look of surprise and disappointment when Dr. Guthrie said, "But who are you, my good friend?" and it distressed him to to hear the reply, "Sir, I thought you would have known me. I am a member of your congrega- tion ! " Nevertheless, he tried to overtake the stated visitation. ' of his people ; persevering in it, when little able to climb the " weary stairs," as he called them, of Edin- burgh houses. His congregation was scattered over the whole city, and many a day, especially from 1850 onwards, he returned to his house prostrated by this work. One Sunday afternoon, in 1849, when leaving his church-door after public worship (which at that time he was unable himself to conduct), he found a private car- riage waiting to convey him to the death-bed of an aged officer. An agent of the Scottish Sabbath Alliance, having observed him enter this carriage on his return to his own house, addressed to him next day by post a serious remonstrance. Dr. Guthrie preserved a copy of the reply he sent to the worthy man : — "My dear Sir, — I have received your letter, and would at once relieve your mind from any fear that I would take offence at your doing what you consider your duty. I admire zeal in a good cause, even when I think that it may, through mistake and misapprehension, have taken a wrong direction. " I am not a member of the Sabbath Alliance for what I consider good and substantial reasons, and though it is not necessary I should explain them now, I may just say that they are not in any degree of a Secularist character, and that I feel sure there is not a member or agent of that Alliance who holds n2 i8o MEMOIR. the Sabbath in more value than I do. It is just to prevent a prejudice being created against that sacred cause, that I would warn you with the utmost kindness against drawing hasty and harsh conclusions. " I have been for nearly a twelvemonth and a half an invalid, laid aside from all pulpit duties. You saw me come out of a house in Queen Street and enter a carriage on the Lord's day. Now allow me to say that if you had looked at the plate on the door, you would have found that the house was not mine, and if you had looked at the bell you would have seen a paper hanging at it with the ' Ring geyitJy,'' which is the sign of danger and disease within the dwelling, and from these two things common sense and common charitj' should have drawn the conclusion that I had been there on a visit of mercy. All this would have saved you the trouble of sending me a letter with an ' Address against using Carnages for attending PuhJic Worship.' When you saw me, I was entering the carriage of the dying man to return to my own home ; and without the use of that carriage I could not have gone on that visit of mercy. I am not uncharitable enough to believe that any member of the Sabbath Alliance would save horse-flesh at the expense of men's souls, or preserve an outward form to the loss of the spirit and love of the Gospel. " I wish men would recollect more than they do, that the same Bible which inculcates the observance of the Fourth Commandment, enjoins that charity which hopeth all things, and believeth all things." The emotional, sympathetic nature with which he was endowed made his visits to homes of sorrow and tlie bedsides of the sick greatly prized. There are very many in whose memory will ever live not only his faithful words, but the tender tones, the tearful eye, the hand laid so kindly on the shoulder as he spoke. " October 23rd, 1847. " I have had and still have a more than usual number of my people labouring under serious and formidable maladies. . . . This morning has cut off one of these from my list and the land of the living. . . . Typhus fever showed itself distinctly in her about a week ago. I saw her repeatedly. Two days THE SICK AND SORROWFUL. i8i ago, I thought she would get safe across the bar — the crisis. God ordered it otherwise ; the disease suddenly took a fatal turn, and she entered eternity this morning. I have been seeing the family who are plunged into grief, but not mourning as those who have no hope. The parents were remarking the mercy of God in the midst of their judgment. One of their family had exhibited more softness of heart, and seriousness, and attention to divine things than any of the rest, and that one was she whom they have no more here. The tree was shaken, and the ripest fell. " May we be growing in ripeness for eternity'and glory day by day. What a happy meeting and blessed welcome waits the wanderer at his Father's house ! When one has be^i long and far away from an earthly home, what a happy sight to see brothers and sisters all crowding to the door to bring us in. What is that but a dim image of what will be seen at the gates of glory ? " {To Miss G. Hay ; now Madame de la Harpe.) Sometimes afflicted members of his flock, when absent from Edinburgh, expressed a longing desire to see him ; and he would allow no inconvenience to stand in the way of his complying with such an intimation. The fol- lowing was written to the bereaved father of one whose death-bed he had visited several times, travelling far into England on this special errand : — " You are very kind to write to me in the midst of your grief. In your case I can both weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice — weep with the living and rejoice with the dead. I am so glad to hear that died in the full enjoyment of a felt peace in Christ. When I left her, she was lying at His feet — a safe posture and position ; still it was well to see her reposing on His bosom. I am very grateful to God for any good or comfort I was made the means of communicating to her." i82 MEMOIR. I j "When himself absent from his flock, lie sent frequent I I letters or messages of sympathy to those of them whose cases lay near his heart at the time. The following reference is to one who had been recently afflicted with the loss of sight : — *' I was so delighted to read in yours of my good friend Miss Ross. Your note about her was like cold water to a thirsty soul. Give her my most affectionate regards. She and her brother have been kind friends to me. With you and them and others, I have been blessed with friendships beyond most men. I pray the Lord to give Miss Koss patience under her prolonged trial, and that though the sun has ceased to shine to her, He who is the Sun of Righteousness may shine on her with His face. To this world and that sun soon will all our eyes be dark. Blindness is but a short anticipation of what awaits us all. How blessed if we can hope that, when our eyes are shut on earth, we shall open them on glory ! May such hopes sustain my dear friend, and cheer her on in her darkened path ! " \To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) Every faithful pastor could probably recall, in the course of a lengthened ministry, so many scenes of varied interest, and illustrations so striking of man's sin and God's grace, that the least eventful of such lives would afibrd material for an instructive narra- tive. But it is not every minister who could write Biichsel's " Ministerial Experiences " or Spencer's " Pas- tor's Sketches." Scattered through Dr. Guthrie's writ- ings there are numerous passages which indicate how remarkable a volume he might have compiled, had he set himself to give his experiences as a pastor to the world.* Here is one, which he describes as " a scene which I have not forgotten, nor can forget : " — * In his "Out of Harness" (1867), under the title of "Unforgiving MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCES. 183 " Alone in the garret of a dilapidated house, within a wretched room, stretched on a pallet of straw, covered only by some scanty, filthy rags, with no fire in the empty chimney, and the winter wind blowing in cold and fitful gusts through the broken, battered window, an old woman lay, feeble, wasted, grey. She had passed the eleventh hour ; the hand was creeping on to the twelfth. Had she been called ? It was important to turn to the best account the few remaining sands of life ; so I spoke to her of her soul, told her of a Saviour — urging her to prepare for that other world on whose awful border her spirit was hovering. She stared ; and raising herself on her elbow, with chattering teeth and ravenous look, muttered, ' I am cold and hungry.' Promising help, I at the same time waj-ned her that there was something worse than cold and hunger. Whereupon, stretching out a naked and skinny arm, with an answer which if it did not satisfy the reason touched the feelings, she said, ' If you were as cold and as hungry as I am, you could think of nothing else.' The cares of the world were choking the word." * Or take this other incident : — " With reluctant steps I have approached the house of a young wife to communicate tidings of her husband's death. There is not a cloud in that summer sky ; nor, as she thinks, in hers. The air rings with songs of happy birds, and the garden amid which her home stands is full of smiling beauty ; and fair as the flowers and happy as a singing bird comes that bride forth, rushing out to bid me welcome to her sunny home. With such tidings, I felt like an executioner. I thought of victims going with garlands to the sacrifice. With Jephthah, when his child came forth with dances and delight to meet him, I was ready to cry, ' Alas ! my daughter ; ' and when the truth was told, the knife plunged into her heart, and she, and Unforgiven," he says : — " In all my experiences as a minister, I never stood by a death-bed so appalling. I had seen people dying in many dif- \ \ ferent frames of mind — some in callous indifference, others in eager \ ' anxiety, crying, ' What shall I do to be saved ? ' not a few with their heads pillowed on Jesus' bosom, enjoying a calm and blissful peace ; one or two in an ecstasy, in celestial transports, rejoicing in the Lord. But this woman was dying in the blackness of darkness ; hers, the only death- bed I have seen, during a ministry of six-and-thii-ty years, of blank despair." * "The Parables," page 307. (Strahan and Co., London. 1866.) i84 MEMOIR. springing to her feet, with one wild long piercing shriek, dropped on the floor at mine a senseless form, I felt it hard to have such offices to do. I could not give her back her dead, nor at her wild entreaties unsay the dreadful truth, or admit, poor soul ! that I was but playing with her fears." * The readers of Dr. Guthrie's Autobiography may remember the account lie gives of his Bible-class in his country parish (p, 155). It was to be expected that a department of pastoral diligence to which he attached such value there, would be diligently cared for in Edin- burgh. The account which one of its members (now the Rev. T. Cochrane, of Pleasance Free Church) gives, indi- cates that it was conducted very much on the Arbirlot model. The note-books used by Dr. Guthrie in con- nection with his examination of young communicants now lie before us. In these he recorded his impressions of the spiritual condition, as well as doctrinal knowledge, of each, with a minuteness which indicates the care and pains he took, during his Edinburgh ministry, in this solemn part of a pastor's .work. In St. John's Free Church, he was surrounded by a willing band of elders, deacons, and Sunday-school teachers. But he would have liked, had that been possi- ble, to have seen every individual whose name stood on the communion roll included in his congregational staff of assistants. His motto was, " to every man his work;" — to every woman hers. Looking down from his pulpit on the crowded pews, he said : — " A thought that presses on me when I cast my eyes over some such great assem- • "Speaking to the Heart," page 13. (Strahan and Co., London. 18G2.) CONGREGATIONAL WORK. 185 bly, and see all these human faces, is this — "What power is here ! what an immense moral power ! We talk of the power latent in steam — latent till AVatt evoked its spirit from the waters, and set the giant to turn the iron arms of machinery. It is impossible to over-estimate, or rather to estimate, the power that lies latent in our churches. And why latent ? Because men and women neither appreciate their individual influence, nor estimate aright their individual responsibilities." It cheered him to find increasing numbers, year after year, not only of the office-bearers but the private members of his flock, engaging in some form of Christian work. When on Sunday afternoons the benediction had been pronounced, and the crowds slowly melted away, and the church doors were closed, the work of the day at St. John's was by no means over. Mr. Guthrie was himself indeed so exhausted, that complete rest was a necessity for him on the evening of the Lord's day, and he spent it generally among his younger children by the fireside ; but he felt the liveliest interest in the labours of those who returned to his church at night to work for the Master.* * Besides a congregational Sunday-school held in the morning, there was another of 300 children, gathered from the poor and squalid neigh- bourhood around, and conducted in the evening under the superinten- dence of D. Duncan, Esq. Two senior classes were likewise held beneath the church: one, containing 100 young women of the humbler class, was taught for years by Miss Greville (now Mrs. Hogarth), a member of the Church of England ; the other, a class of from 70 to 90 working-lads, who had otherwise been lounging on the street, was collected and con- ducted by one of the elders, Maurice Lothian, Esq., then Procurator- Fiacal for the county. While these were being taught dowu-stuirs, the 1 85 MEMOIR. Other congregations of the Free Church in Edinburgh were wealthier than Dr. Guthrie's. With a fair share of persons of means, it contained a number of plain people ; * and among the crowds drawn from all parts of the city who filled the pews, he continued to regard with special interest those poorer members of his flock whom he had gathered in originally from the locality around, and who had followed him up the stairs of the Lawnmarket to " Free St. John's." But the nature of his pastoral work was materially changed after 1843. "I laboured for six or seven years," he said, "as a home missionary, and, in so far as by the Disruption I was driven out of that position, it is the only thing I regret." In 1850, under the guidance of his colleague, Dr. Hanna, the congregation resolved to select a destitute district in the Old Town, and to work there on the terri- torial system, carrying out as far as possible the plans which Mr. Guthrie himself pursued when he laboured among the poor and ignorant as a parish minister in Old Greyfriars and St. John's. " I advise my own elders," were his words, "instead of attending at two diets of worship on Sundays at Free St. John's, to devote a part of the day to visiting such districts as the church itself was occupied by Bible-classes for young men of the con- gregation, taught by tliree young Ltwyfra attached to Mr. Guthrie's min- istry, viz., W. G. Di'kson, Esq., now Shrriff of Lanarkshire, Thomas Ivory, Esq., Advocate, and John Garment, Esq., S.S.C. * Considering its mixed character, therefore, it is remarkable that from 1843 to 1864 his congregation should have raised not less than .£58,000. HOME-MISSION WORK. 187 Pleasance,* and to try what good they can do. I advise every man and woman to do that ; and I should be happy to see my church partly empty, if I thought the people were so engaged." In a letter written thirteen years after that home- mission work had been commenced, we find Dr. Guthrie narrating its results in circumstances of interest : — « Malvern, bth May, 1863. " On Thursday I breakfasted in London with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone), in Carlton House Terrace. Breakfast was after a curious fashion. In a very spacious room, instead of one table, there were set out in different parts of the room three tables. By this arrangement, every table, including but seven or eight guests, formed one talking-party. Lord Lyttle- ton presided at one table. Mr. Gladstone made me sit at another where he and Mrs. Gladstone were, and where we bad Lord Stanley (Derby's son). Sir David Brewster, the Dean of Westminster (Trench), and a young lady who has a great deal to do with the Biblewomen, and efforts to evangelize some districts of London. " We had a deal of interesting talk anent the scheme in- augurated by the Bishop of London at a great meeting the day before that of our breakfast, for raising one million of money for the evangelization of London. I was able, from our Pleasance and Edinburgh experience generally, to throw some important light, and open up to them new views, on the subject. These met so much the ideas of the Dean of West- minster, that, apologizing for giving a busy man more work, he asked me to communicate to him by letter my views and experience in the matter, which I promised to do. The aspect of the case I pressed on them was the importance of tacking on a poor locality to a good and rather wealthy congregation, such as was done when The Pleasance was taken up and wrought in * The Rev. T. Cochrane, of Pleasance Free Church, whojegarded Dr. Guthrie as God's instrument in lending him to dedicate his life to the Gospel ministr}-, lias piihli*hed a narrative of the encouraging result of twenty-one years' work in that Mission district, entitled " Home Mission Work." There have been admitted to church ineuihership 2,108 peis^ns; 1,500 of whom had either never been members of any Church before, or had wholly lapsed from ordiniinces. 1 88 MEMOIR. the first instance by St. John's people. . . . One of those present started a difMcuIty as to how they would do with the West-end congregations in London, when I stated that we worked on a poor district with a wealthy congregation, and made the abundance of the one supply the want of the other, and the piety of the one meet the impiety of the other. ' Ah ! ' said he, ' how could we get a West-end congregation to deal with St. George's-in-the-East ? ' on which Mr. Gladstone, with ready ingenuity, said, ' That is settled by the Underground Railway.' " {To his son Thomas.) " Christ sent me," wrote St. Paul, " not to baptize, but to preacb tbe gospel." However much he would have shrunk from naming himself with the great Apostle, Dr. Guthrie felt that preaching was the vocation to which he too had been specially called. " No readier speaker ever stepped upon a platform," writes his colleague, the Rev. Dr. Hanna ; " but such was his deep sense of the sacredness of the pulpit, and the importance of weighing well every word that should proceed from it, that he never trusted to a passing impulse to mould even a single phrase. Yet, in the manuscript, there were often phrases, sentences, illustrations, that one on hearing them could scarcely believe to have been other than the suggestion of the moment, linking themselves as apparently they did with something that was then immediately before the speaker's eye. The explanation of this lay in the power (possessed in any considerable degree by but few, possessed by him in perfect measure) of writing as if a large audience were around him ; writing as if speaking, realis- ing the presence of a crowd before him, and having that presence as a continual stimulus to thought and constant moulder of expression. The difference in fact that there almost invariably is between a written and spoken address, was by his vivid imagination and quick sympathies reduced to a minimum, if not wholly obliterated. Herein lay one secret of his great power as a preacher." He was not long in Edinburgh till ho learned in a curious way how much the character and variety of his ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING. 189 illustrations served to gain tlie attention and awaken the interest of all sorts of hearers : — ''September llih, 1838. " I was preaching in St. Andrew's Church on Sunday night, and have been greatly amused at two observations which were told me to-day, — the one by Catherine Burns, who was in the back seat of the gallery and heard a man (in allusion to my nautical figures) say to his neighbour before her, ' He is an old sailor ; at least he was a while at sea ! ' And Miss Gilfillan heard one say to another as he came down the stair, 'If he stick the Minister trade, yon man would make his bread as a surgeon ! ' " * We remember his visiting the studio of an artist on whose easel lay an unfinished historical picture. He suggested some change, and ventured somewhat freely to criticize some object or attitude on the canvas, when the artist, with just a little warmth, in- terposed— "Dr. Guthrie, remember you are a preacher and not a painter." "Beg your pardon, my good friend— I am a painter; only I paint in words, while you use brush and colours." Writing of the import- ance, when rightly used, of the pictorial faculty in a preacher, he remarked : — " While this faculty is not to be allowed to run away with a man — to be over indulged — (in which I have no doubt I have often sinned), it is a telling one, and valuable for the highest ends." " Observe either to draw your pen entirely through, or to alter any passage which you find it very difficult to commit. A thing * The accuracy of his medical and scientific illustrations has been fre- quently remarked. " In his logic you might often detect a flaw," it has been said ; " in his illustrations, never." I go- MEMOIR. is easily remembered which is striking, and retained which is sticking ; and what does not impress your own mind in these ways, and therefore is committed with difficulty, you may be sure won't tell on the minds of your hearers. An illustration or an example drawn from nature, a Bible story or any history, will, like a nail, often hang up a thing which otherwise would fall to the ground. Put such into your passage and you will certainly mend it. "Deal in pure, pithy Saxon. Never use a word with Greek, or Latin, or French root if you can find one with the same meaning in your mother tongue. Use as few adjectives as possible ; they load and cumber the truth. " Mind ' the three P's.' In every discourse the preacher should aim at Proving, Painting, and Persuading ; in other words, addressing the Reason, the Fancy, and the Heart. "The more easy your manner, without losing the character of seriousness and solemnity, so much the better. Vigour and hirr, without roaring and bellowing, are ever to be aimed at." {To the Reo. J. W. Lawrie, Tulliallan.) During his studying days of the week he used to retire to the vestry of his church, after breakfast, to secure freedom from interruption. "At St. John's vestry," he mentions in a letter of 1847, "I have often had one unbroken spell of nine hours' work." But sometimes he composed at home ; and then, all the while, we could hear his voice resounding from within his study. The explanation of this he gives in the same letter from which we have already quoted : — " Don't commit by repeating your discourse aloud. I write aloud ; but I commit in silence. If you do otherwise, the matter will become too familiar to your own ear, and it won't rouse you during the delivery ; and, if it don't rouse you, it , won't rouse the people. The advantage of writing aloud is, that it teaches to write a spoken style — a great point that." Not being himself a " reader " in the pulpit, he had no DISLIKE OF READ SERMONS, 191 patience witli the habit in others. Thus, to a young minister who had preached for him on one occasion, he wrote on the following day — "One thing you must shake off,— and that is your chain. I mean 'the paper.' I wished all the time that you had swept it down into the Elders' pew. Perhaps you don't read commonly,— so far well ; but you should read never. You will find one among a thousand who can read so well that it does not mar the effect of the matter— not more. To talk of the popular objection to 'the paper' as being a groundless pre- judice is all stuff; it is founded deep in the feelings of our nature. It, I may say, universally produces more or less of monotony,— so much of it, as to act like mesmerism on the audience. To keep an audience wide awake, their attention active and on the stretch (without which how are they to get good?), all the natural varieties of tone and action are necessary— qualifications incompatible with the practice of reading. " Besides, I have found by experience, that the practice ot committing is to the preacher one of the best means of in- structing him how to prepare for the pulpit My experience has been that what 1 found difficult to remember has commonly fallen flat upon the people. Finding it blunt, I have set myself to give it point and grind it to a sharper edge. Finding it heavy, I have joined it to a figure, an example, an illustration,— something which, like a balloon, would make it rise. , • 11, 1 " One other immense advantage of not 'reading, is that you are more free to avail yourself of those thoughts and varieties (improvements of expressing even what is prepared) which the animation and heat of the pulpit naturally give. When the soul is excited, thoughts and even language acquire a fire and brilliancy which they have not in the calmness of the study. " The difficulties are quite surmountable. I don't say m a day ; but no great thing is done in a day. With such a help as I use, there is no difficulty,— a piece of paper with the heads and such words written as mark the progress of the discourse and its prominent points." * {To the B^v. A. Maxwell, Kings- kettle.) * The sermon of which we present the abstract on the opposite page is printed in the " Way to Life," 1862, p. 156. 192 MEMOIR. Dr. Guthrie was neitlier a political nor controversial preacher. "In times like these" (to quote from Dr. Fraser of Marylebone's tribute to his memory), " when many court popularity by affecting secular themes in sacred places, it is well worth remembering that the most popular preacher of this generation always dealt . with simple Gospel truths." Yet in presence of what lie considered public wrongs he could not be altogether silent. His denunciations of slavery, for example, were unsparing. Writing in 1853, at the season of year when Edinburgh is crowded with tourists from all parts of the world, he tells of "a crowd of strangers on Sabbath ; among others, an American slave-holding lady, who charged Dr. Simpson [afterwards Sir J. Y. Simpson], who brought her, with having told me that she was to be there — I happened to come across her 8hins by a sentence about slavery."* One might have heard Dr. Guthrie preach for years without ever discovering him to be a man of humour ; and it is only once or twice in his printed sermons that the reader will light on a sentence where it gleams forth ; so strictly did he keep under restraint, while in the pulpit, a faculty he possessed in no ordinary degree, and to which he gave full scope on the platform. " Few clergymen," writes Dr. Hanna, " of churches in * One of the first sermons he ever published was " The War in some of its social, political, and religious aspects." (A. & C. Black, Edinburgh, 1854) Running coijnter as it did to the popular enthusiasm regarding the Crimean War (then at its height), it exposed its author to consider- able misrepresentation. STYLE AND SUBSTANCE OF HIS SERMONS. 193 wliicli large 'liberty of prophesying ' in tlie pulpit is permitted, and who were as great humorists as Rowland Hill or Dr. Guthrie, have been able to restrain their natural propensity so far that a rippling and sup- pressed smile has not been seen occasionally stealing over the faces of their congregations. But I never saw the shadow of a smile pass over the congregation of Free St. John's." * " What multitudes," says Dr. Cairns, " have heard the pure gospel of the grace of God from his lips, adorned but not disguised by the thousand hues of his exhaustless fancy, gushing forth from the tenderness of his own sympathetic heart, and laden with a wealth of anecdote and incident that brought in all human experience, dark and bright, of saint and of sinner, to reinforce its lessons ! .... As in the parallel case of Bunyan, the Gospel was not diluted, only simplified, vitalised, intensified by these gifts. The strait gate was as strait as ever, only the approach to it from the City of Destruction was lighted up. The narrow way was as narrow as ever, only bright- ened by waymarks, and cheered by emblems and parables in the Interpreter's House, and by glimpses of the Celestial City from the Delectable Mountains. "f Every reader of his sermons may perceive that "the * " In the pulpit," we quote from a Scotch newspaper, " one half of his rich nature was necess;irily restrained. He could be pathetic there, but not humorous ; though we did once hear him begin a sermon by eajnng that God, on one occasion, used an ass to preach to a sinner, but that he was not in the way of using asses when he could get better instruments ! " t " Dr. Guthrie, as an Evangelist," by John Cairns, D.D. 194- MEMOIR. preac"her sought out acceptable words ; " but bis primary aim was to declare wbat be believed to be " all the counsel of God." Some migbt not like bis Calvinism ; but none could mistake wbat be believed and taugbt concerning man's ruin by sin, and God's electing grace in Christ Jesus as bis only hope. Still, Calvinist as he certainly was, he emphatically disapproved any attempt to square Scripture with the supposed requirements of a doctrinal system. "John," to quote a sentence from one of his discourses, "uses^a very broad expression. * Jesus Christ,' he says, ' . . . .is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.' * The whole world ' — * ah ! ' some would say, 'that is dangerous language.' It is God's language ; John speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. It throws a zone of mercy around the world. Perish the hand that would narrow it by a hair's breadth ! " ** I worshipped in yesterday. I was much shocked and hurt at the tone and style of the preacher ; such austerity and forbidJuu/ness (to coin a word) never, in my hearing at least, clouded the gracious gospel. He declared he did not envy the state of those — he had a bad opinion of their condition — who did not rejoice that God's enemies icere destroyed, and that uith a destruction nithout remedij ; and he laid such emphasis, I would say savage emphasis, on the word ' rejoice,' and his eye flashed such fire while he announced a proposition which would require the utmost and most careful explanation, that by way of contrast the words of Paul rose to my memory, ' of whom I tell you even weeping ; ' as also the touching picture of our blessed Saviour when from the Mount of Olives he looked down on Jerusalem, and fell a weeping, saying, ' Oh ! Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! ' " I really felt exceedingly indignant, and very little more would HIS NEW CHURCH. 195 have tempted me to leave the place. There was not a word of tender encouragement dropped to a poor sinner ; I thought I saw the man stamping with his foot and putting out the smoking flax. It was a horrible caricature of the gospel ; it hadn't an echo of the song the angels sang to the shepherds of Bethlehem ; I hope never again to hear the like of it. My opinion is, that the best do the glorious gospel miserable injustice ; and so far as my judgment on myself is concerned, I feel that so strongly, that I sometimes feel how happy I would be to retire from the great work and give place to others better fitted to do it justice. But when the field is so large, and the labourers so iew, the cause can ill spare any ; and therefore I would rejoice to be back again to my pulpit to tell of Jesus and His love to man." {To Mr. G. M. Torrance.) For two years after the Disruption, Mr. Guthrie's congregation assembled in the large chapel of the "VVes- leyans in Nicolson Square. A new church, to accommodate twelve hundred sitters, was meanwhile being erected on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, in the immediate vicinity of the parish created for him in 1839, and after whicb it was named St. John's Free Church. The sum of £6,000, which the congregation subscribed for its erection, could not secure a very imposing building ; and therefore Mr. Guthrie's anxiety was that the able architect* should expend his strength chiefly on the interior. It was opened on 18th April, 1845. "The sun rose bright on Friday," he wrote to Mr. Fox Maule. " We had an overflowing audience. The church looked beautiful. Everybody was delighted with it. After sermon I made a short address ; in which, * Thomas Hamilton, who designed the High School on the Calton Hill. o2 196 MEMOIR. among otber matters, I set myself frankly and fairly to defend and justify the ornate character of our church, telling my hearers that * there is no sin in beauty, and no holiness in ugliness,' " " I know," be wrote to another correspondent, " considering the character of our church, some of my excellent and beloved friends look on me, as rather too much inclined to these sort of outward things. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly convinced of our wisdom in building such a reputable place of worship, I believe that the cause of those who have separated through the influence of conscientious motives from the Church of England (in many instances the cause of gospel truth and liberty) has suflered much from the mean houses in which they have met for worship. " It is an injury to religion to associate it with meanness in amj way. It is a right expression of a right feeling, to serve God with the best of everything. I sympathize entirely with the sound feelings of our good old Presbyterian peasantry who reserved their best dress for the Sabbath, and their very best dress for the Sacrament, I remember a number of good old bodies, both in Brechin and Arbirlot, who continued, amid their deepest poverty, to keep an unsoiled, old-fashioned gown (perhaps their marriage one) for the Sacrament, in which — with snow-white linen cap and red plaid hood, and a bible folded up iff" handkerchief in the one hand and a bunch of thyme or rosemary in the other — they came tottering forth once or twice a year, to sit down at the table of our Lord, Such sights leave a healthy impression on young minds, indeed on all minds." {To Mr. G. M. Torrance.) But while he admired the tasteful interior of his church, he was specially pleased at that being secured without the sacrifice of requirements more essential to a place of worship. "The children of this world," he wrote to a friend, "are wise in their generation. Theatres are built for good sight ; bow many churches are not ? — Stuck full of pillars, roaring with echoes, and God's light of day so dimmed and diminished SCENE IN ST. JOHN'S FREE CHURCH, 197 in passing through painted windows that the Bible or Prayer- book is read with difficulty, the features of the preacher are lost, and he himself appears like a distant object looming through mist. No men appear to be more ignorant of their profession than church architects. I remember, for example, the echoes in St. Stephen's Established Church ; you seemed to hear some mocking imp in a corner of the gallery mimicking the tones of Dr. Muir ! And at Dunfermline, when I preached in the Memorial Church of Robert the Bruce, I was told to speak slowly and deliberately. So, when (sick of dropping my words like laudanum out of a bottle) I went ofl' in my usual style, the people in the gallery just heard something like the rumble of thunder among the rafters overhead!" The scene when he preached in St. John's is photo- graphed on the memory of multitudes. What a hush of expectancy on the upturned faces of the people, as, entering from a side door, the preacher is seen pressing with eager step through the crowd who fill the passage from the vestry to the pulpit ! The swing of the broad shoulder, the head bent forward, the look of earnestness on the flushed countenance, all tell of a man who feels he has come forth on an important errand, and is straitened till it be accomplished. The opening psalm and first prayer over, the doors, within which the strangers in the school-rooms below the church had been pent up, are thrown open ; and, swarming up the stairs, the eager crowd now pours into the church itself, till, in a few minutes more, every foot of standing room is filled. Dr. Guthrie's appearance and oratory have been often described : — " He had all the external attractions of a pulpit orator ; an unusually tall and commanding person, with an abundance of easy and powerful, because natural, gesture ; a quickly and 1 98 MEMOIR. strongly expressive countenance, which age rendered finer as well as more comely (for in early and middle manhood it was gaunt, with a dusky complexion, overshadowed hy lank black hair) ; a powerful, clear, and musical voice, the intonations of which were varied and appropriate, managed with an actor's skill, though there was not the least appearance of art." Lord Cockburn, himself a most persuasive speaker, thus describes Dr. Guthrie : — ■ " Practical and natural ; passionate without vehemence ; with perfect self-possession, and always generous and de- voted, he is a very powerful preacher. His language and accent are very Scotch, but nothing can be less vulgar, and his gesture (which seems as untbought about as a child's) is the most graceful I have ever seen in any public speaker. He deals in the broad expository Ovidian page, and is compre- hended and felt by the poor woman on the steps of the pulpit as thoroughly as by the strangers who are attracted solely by his eloquence. Everything he does glows with a frank, gallant warmheartedness rendered more delightful by a boyish simplicity of air and style." Numerous anecdotes have been put in circulation of the effect of Dr. Guthrie's pulpit power. Some of these are probably exaggerations, but the two which follow may be relied on : — A friend, who when a medical student in Edinburgh used often, with some others of his class, to attend Free St. John's, remembers how, one Sunday afternoon, he was borne irresistibly onwards along the passage until within a few j^ards of the foot of the pulpit. There stood immediately in front of him a rough short-set man, past middle life, who, if one might judge by the plaid, odorous of peat smoke, which crossed his broad back, and his whole appearance, seemed a Highland cattle-drover — a HIS PULPIT ORATORY. 199 stranger manifestly both to the metropolis and to Dr. Guthrie. From the very first, the drover was riveted — a pinch of snuff every now and again evincing his inward satisfaction. Towards the end of the sermon, and just as the preacher was commencing a prolonged illus- tration, the stranger applied to his horn-mull. Arrested, however, he stood motionless, his hand raised with the snuff between his fingers, his head thrown back, his eyes and mouth both wide open. The instant that the passage was completed, and ere the audience had time to gather their breath for a space, the drover applied the snuff with gusto to his nostrils, and, forgetting in his excitement alike the place and the occasion, turned his head to the crowd behind, exclaiming quite audibly, " Na, sirs ! but I never heard the like o' that ! " The following is in the words of an eye-witness, the Rev. George Hay, for many years missionary in the congregation : — " During one of Dr. Guthrie's powerful appeals to the unbeliever to close with the free offer of salvation through Jesus Christ, he described a shipwreck and the launching of the lifeboat to save the perishing crew in such vivid colours, that the dreadful scene appeared actually to take place before our eyes. Captain C , a young naval ofiicer, who was sitting in a front seat of the gallery, was so electrified that he seemed to lose all consciousness of what was around him. I saw him spring to his feet, and begin to take off his coat, when his mother took hold of him and pulled him down. It was some time before 200 MEMOIR. he could realise where he was. He told ine a few days after, in his mother's house, that he became oblivious to everything else ; that the scene described appeared so real that he was entirely carried away, and rose to cast his coat and try to man the lifeboat." It is told of a famous preacher, that being informed of some eminent persons by whom his sermons were much admired, he said, " Ah ! let them not put me off with admiration ; it is their salvation I want." To a similar anxiety Dr. Guthrie was no stranger. In a letter written in 1857 to his sister Clementina, he thus expresses himself — " There are few things that give me such distress among my own people, as to see how ready they are to be dissatis6ed with their heavenly food, when they don't get it in the dish most to their choice. To say the least of it, it minds me of those bygone days when we were children and used to quarrel with our porridge and the servants, if it was not served up in our own wooden ca-p. This is a ludicrous comparison, yet it is very true ; and I sometimes think that little good is doing here among us, because the people are apt to exalt the servant above the Master. Let us all be abased, so that Christ may be exalted." Having in view the vital distinction between a success- ful ministry in man's esteem and in God's, he longed to see his preaching more fruitful in the highest sense, and mourned that, after all, more hearers left his church-door charmed than changed. There were manj'', nevertheless, who were " seals " of his ministry. Some of the most valued friends he had in Edinburgh were endeared to him by a more hallowed tie than that FRUITS OF HIS MINISTRY. 201 they were members of his flock ; they were his own children in the faith, and he loved them as such ; and, now that his ministry is accomplished, the unlocking of his repositories has furnished abundant proof of the blessing with which the Master honoured it. These letters are, of course, sacred, but they afford precious evidence of the power of God's grace : the bow was drawn at a venture, but the shaft was impelled by another power and guided by another skill than man's. From such communications Dr. Guthrie learned of some who came to scoff but remained to pray, and of others, drawn in the first instance by no higher motive than curiosity to hear a famous preacher, . who had been led to Christ. Some wrote from distant lands to tell that they are there preaching the gospel, to whose power and value they were awakened years before in that church of his in Edinburgh. No words can express the encouragement these letters gave him, nor the thankfulness with which they were treasured up. During 1845-46, as explained in a former chapter, Mr. Guthrie was absent from his congregation nearly twelve months on his Manse Fund Mission. He had not long returned to his pulpit, ere ominous symptoms indicative of impaired action of the heart manifested themselves. The protracted strain his nervous system had sustained during the Manse Fund tour, followed by the excite- ment inseparable from the stormy commencement of the 202 MEMOIR. Ragged Sctool enterprise, were telling too plainly now on his vigorous frame. In the autumn of 1847 it became manifest that he must (to use a favourite phrase of his) " call a halt." He obtained leave of absence from the Presbytery for several months, to try what entire rest would do, but at the end of that period was wholly unfit to resume work. He sufi'ered from distressing attacks of faintness, excessive languor, and prostration of the whole system. To himself and to his friends it seemed not improbable that his preaching days, if not his days altogether, were near a close. He was at that period comparatively a poor man. With a family of nine children, all under age, dependent on him for support, it needed no small faith to rise above the anxieties in which his circumstances placed him ; not to mention the keen trial of being " shelved," to a man now in the zenith of his pulpit influence, and with the Ragged School needing his personal oversight in its experimental stage. Having gone north to Brechin to consult his brother, Dr. A. Guthrie, on whose skill he justly placed great reliance, he thence wrote Mrs. Guthrie — " Novemher 6th, 1847. " I think I am able to leave the case in the hands of God, and desire patiently and cheerfully to acquiesce in His will. Whether I am or am not to be restored to that health needi'ul for past public duties, whether life is to be long or short, spent henceforth in more private and quiet duties, or as before, — may we get grace to live to the Lord. " I commend the children to the grace of God. I hope that the elder part of them are remembering me in prayer, and the HIS HEALTH GIVES WAV. 201? circumstances of trial in which we are now placed. Take care of yourself." And to Miss G. Hay, a day or two thereafter — " I desire to submit myself entirely to the will of God, and moreover that He would sanctify this monition and trial both to me and mine. On coming here, I was led, through my youngest boy's behaviour, to see what a blessed thing it is to receive the kingdom of God ' as a little child.' My little fellow, about four years old, whom I brought with me, gave himself no trouble amid the boats, omnibuses, and railway coaches, on sea, land, and in dark tunnels : his father was at his side, and never a care, or fear, or doubt, or anxiety had he. May we have grace to be led by the hand, and trust to the care and kindness of a reconciled God and Father ! " On his return to Edinburgh, lie was examined by Dr. Alison, Professor Miller, and his family physician, Dr. Fairbairn; and his case was deemed by them so serious as to demand that he should at once give up all active duties. This advice he was very unwilling to take. Twice in January, 1848, he preached to his people ; but the subsequent exhaustion proved the risk he was run- nino-, and at last he consented meanwhile to give up both pastoral and pulpit work. "Edinburgh, February 1st, 1848. " I am now sensible that while other people, looking at my bulk and the apparent ease with which I spoke, took me for beincT much stronger than I really was, I myself attempted to do much more than I was fit for. There was clearly no call for me to work on till I was often so exhausted that I could not eat, and could not sleep, and often in family worship at night felt such exhaustion that with difficulty I got spoken out a short prayer." {To Provost Guthrie.) The generous sympathy shown by his people and 204 MEMOIR. friends touched him deeply. His physicians had ordered him to leave home; but how was the expense of a lengthened absence and journey to be met ? In the month of February, 1848, a gift of one hundred guineas was presented to Mrs. Guthrie, and shortly thereafter there came £500 more,* to enable her husband and herself to leave home and travel with a view to his recovery. The winter and spring of 1848 Mr. Guthrie spent in various parts of England ; the summer and autumn in the Scottish Highlands. For nearly two whole years his active ministry was interrupted His place in St. John's was meanwhile filled by a succession of friends in the ministry ; among others, by Dr. Wood, now of Dumfries, Rev. R. Taylor, now of Norwood, Rev. J. She wan, now of North Ber- wick, and by Dr. Hanna, whose connection in this way with the congregation resulted, as we shall see, in important issues to it and to Mr. Guthrie. Though during that long interval of absence his lips were sealed, his hands (to use his own expression on another occa- sion) were not tied ; and many of his letters were read to his people from time to time. "BiRKELAND HoUSE, 9, PORTLAND StREET, LeAMINGTON, February, 1848. " My dear Dr. Irving,! — In coming here, we spent a day in Newcastle, my object being to visit the Ragged School * These sums were due in no small part to the fri-endly exertions of two members of his Kirk session, G. M. Torrance, Esq., and George Dalziel, Esq., W.S. t The late Ddvid Irving, LL.D.,one of his elders; — the learned Libra- rian of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. NEWCASTLE AND FORK. 205 there, and see what progress they had made in their work. After threading and picking our way through lanes as dirty and confined as any in Edinburgh, we climbed an old fashioned stair, and, among some forty or fifty unwashed, ragged urchins, we found ourselves in the Ragged School. The accommoda- tion was poor, but I am glad to say that they are preparing new premises in a chare, not far ofi", but in a better part of the town. The more respectable closes in that town go by the odd name of chares : perhaps your learning may help you to the origin of the word. Its meaning, they tell about Newcastle, puzzled one of the English judges (it could not be Lord Eldon, for he himself was born in one of these very chares in that very town of Newcastle). On a trial for murder, to the amazement of the judge, one of the witnesses swore that he saw two men go in at the top of a chare, and when sternly called to con- sider and explain what he said, he only made the matter worse by hastily adding, ' It's quite true, my lord ; and I saw them come out at the bottom ! ' " Leaving Newcastle, we next pitched our tent for two days in York. I also wished to see the Ragged School in that ancient city, having had a good deal of correspondence with some of the friends of the cause there, as well as at Newcastle. As we were hesitating to which hand to turn beneath a grey gateway, a boy without a cap, with unwashed hands and face, ragged from the shoulders to the heels, darted by us, and gam- bolled up the stair. There was no mistaking that sign of a Ragged School ! — so, following without question, we found our- selves in an old room of an old college — in the Ragged School of York, It had only been opened two days before ; and, so far as we saw, things promised Avell. "Afterwards I met my correspondent, and he alarmed me by announcing that he had asked some of the friends of the cause to wait on me at our Inn, that I might address them on the subject. There is no refusing a kind, generous English- man when he is set on a good object ; and though I protested that if I had been able to speak I should not have been in York at all, I found that there was no help for it but go and face this meeting. There were two of the episcopal clergymen of the city, and a goodly number of gentlemen. I was amused to find the very fears, in York, which in some measure alarmed some of our good friends in Edinburgh. These, however, I must say, were presented to me, not as objections of the gentle- men who waited on me, but as those they had to meet and fight with. " The Roman Catholics — though I have not heard of any 2o6 MEMOIR. proselytes — nnmber a very considerable body here (Leaming- ton), consisting chiefly of servants and the higher classes. They are about, I was told, to open a school for the (jrads education of any who choose to attend : at hearing which, to the astonishment of some good peojile, I expressed my sincere delipiht. Now, don't start at my apparent heresy. The truth is, it is high time for Christian Protestants to bestir themselves to meet the wants of those poor children whom they have left to crime and misery, negligent both of their bodies and souls, allowing them to grow up criminals, and then punishing them for being so. I am happy to say that the zeal of the Papists is more and more stirring up the slumbering energies of the Pro- testants, and that all denominations here have started on a race with each other in the cause of education. May God speed the work ! " " LEAMrNGTON, February 26(h, 1848. " I have seen Dr. Jephson, and got a most kind reception from him. He says that he never saw a clearer case. Looking at me with his great piercing eyes, he said, ' You have had one foot in your grave, sir, and with the other you have been kick- ing the bucket.' He told me I had been as near gone as man could be ; but that there was nothing mortal in my case, unless I chose to make it so by refusing to abstain for a long time from all mental exercise and excitement. The action of the heart he pronounced unusually feeble ; he had never almost found it so feeble. " After the examination was over, he sat down at the table to write a prescription. But, in place of immediately doing so, he began with some cases in illustration of the restoring efl'ects of his applications, and the stage has not a more perfect actor. He gave us an American quaker lady to the very life ; Matthews could not have beat him in putting on the vacant stare of a half paralytic ; in truth he is a man of very versatile and extra- ordinary talents." " Leamington, March \st, 1848. " Jephson said to-day, ' We must get you made better, for J have been more bothered with letters about you than any man. If I don't make you better, they will take ofi" my head ! ' . . . " My diet is a total abstinence from all stimulants to the body and mind ; no coffee, no tea, no ale, no porter, no whisky, no brandy, no wine. Nevertheless, I am in the best of spirits. I rise in the morning with a spring and freshness of mind ; no gloomy views, hot hands, darkness, LEAMINGTON. 207 nervousness, which it needs a cup of strong tea or coffee to dispel. Jephson declares we all load the springs of nature, — even moderate eaters, as the world would call Iheiu ; and that I believe to be true. I grant you for the first day or two it was rather trying to see Miss Eliott-Lockhart and my wife at their luxuries, while I got no share. However, I made up in break- fast as far as I could. I have heard of some hon vivant who was restricted to one glass of wine per day : ' But,' said he, * there was nothing said about the size 9f the glass,' so he got one as capacious as a goblet ! Acting on this prin- ciple, while Jephson allowed one egg to breakfast, and had said nought al)0ut its size, we set off to look out for the biggest hen's, since we had no chance of getting an ostrich's. The mistress of the shop where we at last found eggs of a more than ordinary circumference, assured us that they were fresh, for she got them thx-ee times a week from a farm in the neighbourhood where they kept an ' 'undred 'ens.' " On Sunday afternoon a heavy shower came down, as I was close on the fine Puseyite Church, I sought a house of refuge there ; grand singing — the choir, men and boys, dressed in white, their voices sometimes like the clang of trumpets. After pi-ayers the curate proceeded to catechize the boys of the choir. He asked, ' How do we get a title to ever- lasting life ?' Answer, 'By the application of the blood of Christ.' Then this question — at which, from a lofty gallery where I was seated behind a great gothic pillar, I pricked up my ears and stretched out my neck to hear — ' When did we get that application of the blood of Christ?' An- swer, ' At our baptism.' This and such other stuff was bad. Another curate then mounted the pulpit. Poor fellow ! he was balder than I am, and still a curate. On the whole his discourse was good, serious, and devout ; — his subject, the parable of the Sower ; and I really felt edified, and I hope im- proved, by the sermon. "You cannot send us too many letters. How can you better spend a part of an hour and the whole of a penny?" "Leamington, March 4th, 1848. "This French revolution is certainly the most marvellous event which has occurred in my day. The scenes shift in France as fast as on a playhouse stage. I remember, since 1814, Napoleon dethroned ; then Napoleon again restored ; then the elder branch of the Bourbons enthroned again ; then, in 1830, Louis Philippe crowned ; and now, the Republic cleared from 2o8 MEMOIR. the rubbish of half a century and set up again ; the scenes you saw with your boyish eyes looked at through your spec- tacles ! These make five Revolutions in thirty years, which gives us a Revolution in that country at the average rate of every six years. In that period ive think under our old Constitution of electing a new Parliament ; they think of electing a new dynasty, and forming a new constitution. Their figure is hardly cold from the casting before it is broken up to be recast into a new mould. . . . Such a great change must be followed by greater commotions than have yet happened. Gourds that grow in a night go in a night. A thousand will agree about pulling down, when ten of them will not agree about putting up ; and it is to the last work that France has now to address herself. " I had a long discussion here the other day with Lady on Millenarianism, telling her, among other things, that I had had so much practical work to do in this world that I had had no time for these inquiries and speculations; which I intended as a gentle hint to her excellent ladyship, and others such as she, to address themselves and give their hearts amid surround- ing scenes of crime and ignorance and misery to the example of Him who ' went about doing good. ' " "Leamington, March 7th, 1848. " Jephson acknowledges that I am a first-rate patient, save that I get on subjects of interest and talk too much. He threatened yesterday that if I would not behave better he would bring a padlock for my jaws ! He is a great curiosity. He and I get on amazingly : he abuses the Free Kirk to Mrs. Guthrie when my back is about." (3'o Miss Mary Stoddart, now Mrs. Reid.) "Leamington, 6th April, 1848. " If the mass of the people had more intellectual cultivation and religious knowledge, England were the grandest country the sun shines or ever shone upon. But they are wofnlly ignorant. There is a smart, active servant in this house who comes from Birmingham, and who told me the other day at dinner, when I was catechizing her about the church she attended there, that she was a Unitarian. We were con- vinced she was in total darkness about the whole matter : and so it turned out ; for to Miss Lockhart, who agreed to catechize her when alone, and who, as if she wished to know what her creed was, asked her what the Unitarians believed, she LEAMINGTON. 209 replied with great simplicity, ' Oh ! we just believe the Bible, ma'am, but not the Prayer-Book! ' «' We thought it best that Miss L. should endeavour to give her some instmction ; but it is ill getting people to understand these things whose powers of thinking have never been culti- vated ; her answer to Miss L. on one occasion being, that 'cook' said it was imposs/Z^/t; there could be three persons in the Godhead.' Melancholy as it is, it would make you laugh to see ' cook,' her theological authority ! * * * * * " We three, with a boy to row, boated it down the other day to Warwick Castle, a distance of two miles, in the most cockermme thing you ever saw. It was really and truly a canoe, and had I known, what I found out when we were fairly in the middle of the waters, that they were six, seven, and eight feet deep, we never would have ventured into this concern. After sounding the depth, and feeling that when- ever I stirred or made the slightest motion (or, as Mrs. Guthrie said, even spoke), the boat ichamled to one side, and threatened to deposit our bodies (without even the glories of martyr- dom) where the Papists deposited the ashes of Wicklifte, I ceased to joke our small rower about the 'tempests and dangers' he was exposed to in the navigation of the Avon. . . . " So little do the people of Warwick sympathize with the modern taste of our cemeteries where the graves are levelled flat with the earth, that they take the utmost care to form the green grass hillocks, which to my eye look best of all, and which afibrded to a man of taste the occasion of this beautiful saying :— ' Death is like the mole : his progress is known by the mounds he flings up.' They heap up a large quantity of earth above the grave, and bind it together in a long hillock by the stems of the wild rose." "Leamington. "My dear Mr. Gunn,*— We attended forenoon service in the Methodist Chapel, where we had the pleasure to hear a most sound and excellent discourse. At its close, the mmister announced that the congregation would hold a Love If east in the afternoon. . ^ ***** * One of the masters in the Edinhurgh High School, and an elder of Dr. Guthrie's; afterwards LL.D. On his lamented death in " 1851, Dr. Guthrie preached the first and only funeral sermon he ev.r delivered. It was afterwards puhlished under the title of " Christ ard Christ Crucified." (A. and C. Black, Edinburgh.) roi. II. ^ 2IO MEMOIR. " While the scene left a solemn and holy impression on our hearts, it reminded me of a scheme which has often floated through my mind. I would like to see a real practical Love Feast provided for the poor of God's household every Sabbath day. One of the finest saints at whose feet I ever sat told me on her death-bed, how she had more than once worshipped with us in the Magdalene Chapel both at the forenoon and afternoon service without having ever broken her fast, and how she and her little daughter (then sitting on the floor wee] ling by her dying mother) had sometimes passed the whole Sabbath day without any other food than the Word of God. She is now joined to those who stand before the Throne, above dreary Sabbaths or pining hunger, and her orphan child is kindly cared for by some Christian ladies far away from Edinburgh. But this death- bed revelation made on my mind at the time a painful and what still remains as an indelible impression. " I have often thought it would be a grand scheme — a beautiful and Christian thing — to provide at least one decent and comfortable diet for our poor brethren and sisters iu Christ on the Lord's day. I have no sympathy with those who would make the Sabbath a day of gloom ; I would have the sun to shine brighter, and the flowers to smell sweeter,- and nature to look fairer, on that day than on any other ; I would have the very earth to put on her holiday attire on the blest morning on which our Saviour rose, and, on this day above all others, would like a flood ot comforts to flow in on the house- holds of our poor. It has always afforded me great satisfaction and delight to read how kindly and wisely David mingled earthly mercies with spiritual blessings. Does it teach us no lesson to read how, on the occasion of bringing up the ark, when he had made an end of ofl"ering up the burnt oflerings and the peace offerings, and blessing the people, ' He dealt to every one of Israel, both man and woman, to every one a loaf of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine ? ' " No man need hold up his hands and say, this is a wild, impracticable scheme, for I had the happiness to see a curious illustration of its practicability the other day at Warwick. That most ancient and interesting town, whei'e there stands one of the grandest castles England can boast of, is within half an hour's walk of Leamington, and we drove there on a Sabbath forenoon to worship. Well, when I had sat down and was casting my eyes about, they fell on an open press which stood under the organ gallery, and which was filled to the top of its some half-dozen s^roaninfi shelves with loaves of wheaten LEAMINGTON. 211 bread. It occurred to me that this might be on a small scale such a love feast as I had often thought of, and so soon as, after an excellent sermon, the blessing of the minister and the pealing of the organ dismissed the congregation, I made my way to this press, and found from the sexton that it was as I supposed. The loaves were gifted to the poor by various individoals, whose bounty was to be distributed on the Sabbath day, and each shelf told in gilt letters the names of the dif- ferent benefactors, with the number of loaves that each had gifted. "I am as ready to stand up for my country as any man, — but I am bound to say that it is highly creditable to the English people that their country so largely abounds with examples of kindness and benevolence. Here, in many instances at least, poverty is not dealt with as a crime ; nor, if it come from the hand of Him who setteth up one and pulleth down another, should it ever or anywhere be so. I am thoroughly per- suaded, could the matter be well arranged, that many Christian people would be found who would rejoice to send some of their superabundant comforts to the Lord's poor, on the Lord's day, when engaged in the Lord's more immediate service." " Leamingtox. " My dear Dr. Irving, — Though no more than yourself episcopally disposed, yet it is a matter of great thankfulness when one finds Episcopacy and Evangelism associated, for it is amazing the hold which the Church of England has of the people of this country. The Establishment here, and that with you in Scotland, are two very diflerent things indeed. The Establish- ment in Scotland might be torn up and rooted out without pro- ducing any very marked change upon the face of the country, or in the arrangements of society ; but, here in England, the Estab- lished Church has struck its roots so deep and spread them so wide among all orders of the people, that it will require an extraordinary convulsion to disestablish it. The people have become quite familiar with its evils, abuses, and bondage to the State. From all that I can hear, for example, the con- troversies connected with the gross Erastianism of the appoint- ments to the sees of Manchester and Hereford excited far more interest among the mass of our people in Scotland than they did here. " It would be hard indeed to say or foretell what it would require to rouse the English people from their apathy. The mass of them have no notion whatever of the doctrines of r2 212 MEMOIR. Non-intrusion or Spiritual Independence. I don't believe they would lose a good dinner for them, not to speak of their livings, far less their lives. " Nevertheless and notwithstanding, there is a great deal of good in the Chui'ch of England. We have heard some really noble preaching in its pulpits since we came here — preaching which for piety and power would do credit to any Church. England is enormoui^ly wealthy ; its people are brave and generous, open handed and open hearted, and if some hundreds of its ministers would but burst the fetters with which the State has bound them, and come forth a Free Church of England, they would form one of the greatest and most efficient Churches in Christendom. That must come some day ; but as one rousing event occurs after another, and the irons, as one would say, are driven farther and farther into their flesh, and we see them making no struggle to be free, we are inclined to exclaim, * How long, 0 Lord, how long ? ' " The Methodists here are as busy and active as they are everywhere else. I had the happiness and real profit to hear on a Sabbath afternoon one of their 'local preachers.' These are men engaged in common business, who, in lack of an educated clergy, preach in the more remote districts of the country ; they are the pioneers of the Church. This was a plain, decent-looking man, with a fine, lofty forehead silvered with grey, and whose hands bore evidence of the toil by which he earned his bread. Very modest, but quite col- lected in his bearing, he grew earnest and animated by the close, and preached to us a most stirring and fervent sermon, every word of which seemed to come from his heart. I never listened to anything with more pleasure. There was nothing outre, or out of the way, in it, save the occasional eflect of his Warwickshire tongue, as when, nearly to the upsetting of my gravity, he exclaimed, "Noah was a hare!" meaning thereby (for he was speaking of that patriarch and the covenant of grace) that he was an heir of the covenant. We have all our peculiarities : Dr. Chalmers had the strong accent of Fife, and if I might mention myself in conjunction with such a name, they tell me that I have a strong North Country tongue. Anyway, it was a fine thing to see this worthy man preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I went up to him when the service was over to express my thanks, and my hope that the Lord would bless the word, when he told me that he had been preaching for thirty years among the poor around. He fol- lows his Master, and goes about doing good. May we all be enabled to follow him as he follows Christ ! IMPROVING HEALTH. 213 ** On all our Churches, as the vicar of this town said to me, we have most need of all of a large and liberal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. My constant and daily prayer for my congrega- tion is that they may have much of God's Spirit and presence with them. I know, and bless God for it, that I have their prayers. They have my interest in their welfare, my joy in their joys, and my sympathy in their sorrows ; and better, far better, I commend them with all aiJection, and the earnestness of one who feels, in some measure at least, hi^ great responsi- bility, to the sympathy and grace and love of Him who hath said, *I will never leave you nor forsake you.' I have to entreat a continued interest in their hearts at the throne of grace." "Leamington, April, 1848. " I was always sure Leamington was not a place for me. It is all very well to say, ' Don't talk ; ' — but you might as well set a child into a garden with (jroserts, pears, and apples, and say, * Don't eat.' It is well to remember the clause of the prayer, * Lord, lead us not into temptation.' " We will set off for Devonshire this day week. We go hy Bristol, where I intend to stay a night, for the purpose of seeing my old friend and schoolfellow, Gibbie Lyon, on whom I have not set eyes for more tban thirty years, and who, as iax as I know, is the only surviving boy, save myself, of what Drummond used to call, ' Tom Guthrie's class.' " * "Ilfracombe, North Devon, April 2ith, 1848. "... This is a regular out-of-the-way, wild, romantic place, and would in all respects have suited me admirably but for the want of level walking, which, notwithstanding all my other improvements, I feel the need of. When I come to a brae. Miss Lockhart and David put a hand on my back, and then I get on very well. However I seldom venture out of the way of a level. In one respect, I am decidedly improved since I came here. I have been sleeping better than I have done for months, and I am now much rid of a nervous irritability, both of mind and body, which was often very difficult to restrain. I have a feeling of enjoyment of life which I take to be one of the best signs of returning health. I hold that I have great matter of thankfulness in the prospect of not being * laid on the shelf,' and I am filled with gratitude when I think how many * See Vol. I., p. 36. 214 MEMOIR. hard-wrought ministers have neither the comforts nor advan- tages which I have." " Lynmoijth, Devonshire, May, 1848. " I cannot convey a better general impression of this place than to say that I felt not a little mortified that they had a place in England which could hold its head so high beside our most beautiful Highland scenery. At Leamington and else- where I used now and then to indulge in the pati'iotic exclamation — 'England, thy beauties are tame and domestic To one who has rov'd o'er the mountains afar : Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic ! The steep frowning glories of dark Lochnagar.' But this place took the wind out of the bag ; and as I gazed up to the precipitous summits feathered with trees, festooned with ivy, and frowning with impending rocks, I felt very much as did the Queen of Sheba when she visited Solomon, — ' there was no more spirit in her.' " After spending the latter part of May near Harrow, under the roof of Mr. Eliott-Lockliart, M.P. for Selkirk- shire, he went north in June to Ballater, Aberdeenshire, wn'th his household ; and thus wrote to his congregation from thence — " I trust that, by the end of the season, I will be able to appear again in my pulpit and preach among j'ou the word of life ; and if my physical frame is not better fitted than once it was for that great and honourable work, I would fain hope I might be found in mind and heart more meet for the ministry of the Gospel of Christ, through the power and discipline of a sanctified affliction. " Oh, for more of the Spirit's help, and that we may look more 'to the hills from whence cometh our aid ' ! It is my heart's desire and daily prayer, that the God of all grace would richly bless the words of His servant, my much esteemed friend Dr. Hanna, now filling my place. May he be vastly more success- ful and blessed in winning souls to Christ than I have been. Surely it is enough to humble us in the dust, to think how ill we have done our work ; and other hope we have none than LONGER REST PRESCRIBED. 215 this, that Jesus stands surety both for preacher and people ; his blood is sufficient to wash away and blot out even the sins of the pulpit." "Ballater, June \%th, 1848. " You are perhaps aware that Sir James Clark waits on the Queen in our neighbourhood. He has been kind enough to see me here twice.* At our first interview he very quietly heard me talk of resuming some measure of work in a month or so, till he laid his ear to my chest, over the region of the heart, when all of a sudden he said, ' As to the preaching, we must consider about that.' He ended by an absolute interdict against resuming work as I proposed. My heart, he says, has not yet partaken in the general improvement, at least in any proportionate measure. According to him, my ultimate chance (so to speak) of being able to continue preaching depends in great measure, if not altogether, on my total absti- nence from all work and excitement of any kind for another twelve months. 'After that,' said he, 'we will be able to determine whether you may continue or must abandon the pulpit ; and if you are to continue that line of your profession, to what extent it will be safe for you to do so.' "Instead of telling you more fully what Sir James thinks, I send the letter he wrote to my brother after first seeing me. " All is in the hands of a gi'acious God, and I am thankful that I am enabled to feel no painfial anxiety about the matter. Meanwhile it is my plain and clear duty to use all possible means of restoring a shattered fabric ; and who can tell but that afterwards I may be fit for more work than medical men at present anticipate ? If not, then I will certainly feel it to be my duty, and indeed regard it as a call of providence, to retire ; it will be to me as the voice of my Master saying, ' Give place to another.' " Sir James Clark to Dr. Alexander Guthrie. " London, June 2nd, 1848. « j|t « « * « " I have seen your brother and examined him carefully. I am satisfied that he has no structural disease of the heart, nor any disease except that which is the consequence of over mental exertion and excitement and over bodily fatigue. He will require much longer rest, and I have great doubts as to his ever being able to preach again ; certainly he will never be able to do * Mr. Guthrie had previously consulted that eminent physician in Loudon. 216 MEMOIR. more than half of what he has done, without the risk of both heart and head being injured. " Your brother, if I estimate his character rightly, cannot do things calmly ; he must throw his whole mind into what he is doing, and so exert himself in a way that is not compatible with his circulation and nervous system. He must give up all polemics, and if he is to preach, preach calmly, and not too much nor too often." " Ballater, July I3tk, 1848. " When one calls up the past to review, and thinks what a solemn charge is that of a gospel minister and pastor, with what tenderness, faithfulness, anxiety, and assiduity he should deal with those committed to his charge, pleading for Christ with them, and for them with Christ, never feeling at ease so long as there is a lost sheep in the wilderness missing out of the flock, — in short, when one thinks what they have done, and what they should have done, — it sinks me into the dust, and would sink me deeper still, even into despair, but that Jesus is the refuge both for shepherd and sheep, and that His blood cleanseth from all sin. " It was the Father's pleasure that in Christ all fulness should dwell. This diceUing of the fulness appears to me a very precious truth. Here, in the ravines and gulleys of the mountains, floods have flowed, but all at present to be found is a bed choked up with grey glaring stones; — not water enough to slake the thirst of a hunted hart. It is pleasant to sit down on the heather bank, in the shadow of a great grey granite rock, with the beautiful red bells of the foxglove ringing around, and think that by such a brook you are not like a poor wandering, ■weary-worn sinner, who has at length reached the Saviour. In him all fulness ' dwelleth,' even the fulness of the Godhead bodily. " I commend my esteemed friend Dr. Hanna, with all who will be assisting him, to the prayers of the Lord's people. May he have cause to bless God through all eternity for the providence which brought him among you." CHAPTER IX. THE MINISTRY fcontinuedj . Mr. Guthkie's congregation had serious reason, in 1847, to fear that they might never see him enter his pulpit again ; and it was with thankful emotion that, on the first Sabbath of October, 1849, they heard his voice once more, after a silence of well nigh two years. A few months previously, his- honoured friend, Dr. DufP, had thus written from India — " Calcutta, Fehruarxj Ith, 1S49. " My dear Mr, Guthrie, — .... The whole of your remarkable career during the last few years I have been following with intense delight. Your Manse scheme and Ragged School have been bulking before my mind's eye in a way to fill me with wonder, ay and devout gratitude to the God of heaven, for having so extraordinarily blessed your efforts. It was saddening to think that such a voice was temporarily silenced. But it was the Lord's providential dealing ; and my earnest prayer is, that this may be the seasoning process for still more extensive usefulness in the vineyard of the Lord. It is the Lord's way. The seed must rot ere life come out of it. What is carnal in us must be mortified ere some fresh burst of life manifest itself. And from my own experience, I find that a season of afiliction and inward humiliation usually precedes some development of spiritual energy in advancing the cause of the Lord. " Yours affectionately, "Alexander Duff." In April of the same year, the degree of Doctor 2i8 MEMOIR. in Divinity was conferred on Mr. Guthrie by his Alma Mater, the University of Edinburgh. The name of another Non-established minister, Rev. J. Smart, of Leith, was associated with Mr. Guthrie's on this occasion ; and the personal gratification which the dis- tinction gave him was enhanced by the circum- stance that it was the first time since the Disruption that the Senatus had conferred a degree in divinity on any minister outside the pale of the Church of Scotland. The letter of Principal Lee, informing Mr. Guthrie of having proposed his name to the Senatus, was singularly graceful and kind. For one sermon each Lord's day Dr. Guthrie now found himself able ; — more he dared not attempt. He had judged rightly when, a year previousl}^, he wrote : — " God knows best ; still I have an idea, and it grows stronger instead of weaker, that I have that about my heart which I will carry with me to my grave. I will not henceforth be able for rough work ; and indeed I won't attempt it." It became thus of the greatest consequence to the congregation and to himself to secure a suitable co- pastor for St. John's ; and the circumstances which led to his being associated with his future colleague were oltcn dwelt on by him with gratitude to the wise providence of God. The Rev. William Ilanna, LL.D,, while engaged on his great work, the Memoirs of his illustrious father-in-law. Dr. Chalmers, had resigned his country charge. From June to November, 1848, he HIS COLLEAGUE, DR. HANNA. eig officiated in St. John's, during Dr. Guthrie's absence, with entire acceptance to the congregation ; and to him accordingly they now turned. The sanction of the General Assembly had first, however, to be obtained. Collegiate charges are by no means rare in the Free Church nowadays ; but at that early period of her history she set her face against them ; and the General Assembly made an exception in this case only on the ground that Dr. Guthrie had suffered the loss of health in the Church's service, and in consideration of his great exertions in connection with the Manse Fund. The matter came, according to Presbyterian order, first before the Free Church Presbytery of Edinburgh : — "EDiNBrKGH, February 2%th, 1850. ." I appeared for the first time these two years past before the Presbytery yesterday, with papers connected with our projected collegiate charge. Everything promises well. Un- less I had got the arrangement made, I would certainly have retii-ed from St. John's. We cannot get Dr. Hanna till the end of the year ; but meanwhile we can say as the Irishman did who had his cow on the bare top of a lofty hill : — when some one. said, 'I fear she has little to eat,' — ' Very true,' replied Paddy, ' but if she has poor pasture, she has a fine prospect. ! ' " if this arrangement takes place, I trust through the Divine blessing it will be a happy one to me, and a blessed one to my people." {To Mr. Fox Maule.) Dr. Hiinna was "inducted" on the 7th ISTovember, 1850. "It was my happy privilege," he wrote, after Dr. Guthrie's death, "counted by me among the greatest I have enjoyed, of being for fifteen years his colleague in the ministry of Free St. John's, Edinburgh. To one coming from a remote country parish, ten years' 220 MEMOIR. residence in wticli had moulded tastes originally con- genial with its quiet and seclusion into something like a fixed habit of retreat, the position was a trying one — to occupy such a pulpit every Sunday side by side with such a preacher. But never can I forget the kindness and tenderness, the constant and delicate consideration, with which Dr. Guthrie ever tried to lessen its difficulties and to soften its trials. Brother could not have treated brother with more affectionate regard." From the day of his return to his pulpit till his final retirement in 1864 his reputation as a preacher, instead of diminishing, seemed, if that were possible, to be ever on the increase. Again to quote the words of his colleague : — " I believe there is not on record another instance of a popularity continued without sign or token of diminution for the length of an entire generation. Nor is there upon record the account of any such Muds of crowds as those which constituted con- tinuously, for years and years. Dr. Guthrie's audiences in Free St. John's. Look around, while all are settling themselves ; you have before you as mixed and motley a collection of human beings as ever assembled within a church. Peers and peasants, citizens and strangers, millionaires and mechanics, the judge from the bench, the carter from the roadside, the high-born dame, the serving- maid of low degree — all for once close together." This description was most strikingly realised in the months of August and September, when Edinburgh is BISHOP WILBERFORCE AND THACKERAY. 221 filled with strangers, but when most of the city ministers take their holiday. "I think these two months," Dr. Guthrie wrote, " in a sense, the most important of the year. I know that many hear me then who are not in the way at other times of hearing a sound Gospel preached." So in another letter, written in a previous September, he tells of *' a vast number of strangers in church, among others , the great surgeon. Professor Miller, with whom he came, said that had not been in church before for thirty years." An English stranger would probably have been almost as much amazed to discover (as he might have done on more than one occasion) another celebrity, the late Dr. Samuel AYilberforce, when Bishop of Oxford, among the wor- shippers in that unconsecrated building. '■'■Edinburgh, 1851. " I should have dined with Thackeray, the celebrated littera- teur, at Professor Gregory's last week, but could not. He was iu church on Sabbath with Robert Chambers. Very odd it was, that I began my discourse by allusion to an awful and sublime picture, which appeared in Punch, some years ago, called, ' The Poor Man's Friend.' A wretched old man is pictured a corpse, on a miserable bed, in a miserable garret, with no one there but (wrapt in a winding-sheet with his skeleton face only seen) a figure of Death. I paid some compliments to the genius and humanity of the picture and author, but desiderated some evidence that that dead old man was a Christian, before I could say that Death was his friend. The idea, it appears, was Thackeray's, as also the lines illus- trating it. " Thackeray had never been in Scotland before, was struck with Scotch preaching, and wished to see me ; so they arranged that I should have an hour's talk with him at the Ragged School. There I ' charged ' him with my views of the remedies for our social ills (as I know that he has a deal of influence among the literary and upper circles of London). While talking to him, 22 2 MEMOIR. who comes in but Tufnell, one of the Privy Council. He was much interested ; and I have I hope sent them both up to do some service at head quarter^. Humane, kind-hearted man Thackeray, near as big as you. Tufnell, sharp as a razor."* (To Procost Guthrie.) But, apart from such notable strangers as thus came casually under Dr. Guthrie's influence as a preacher, there were among his regular hearers some with whose names Scotland and Edinburgh will long be associated. *' There was in the crowd at St. John's," writes Dr. Hanna, " always one conspicuous figure. Looking only at the rough red shaggy head, or at the checked plaid, flung over the broad shoulders, you may think it is some shepherd from the distant hills, who has wandered in from his shieling among the mountains to hear the great city preacher. But look again ; — the massy head, the broad projecting brow, the lips so firmly closed, the keen grey eye, and, above all, the look of intelligent and searching scrutiny cast around, all tell of something higher than shepherd life. It is Hugh Miller, the greatest of living Scotchmen, never to be missed in this congregation, of which he was not only a member but an ofiice-bearer." Of Dr. Guthrie's sketch of that remarkable man a few sentences have been already quoted, f The remainder may be best inserted here : — " Much of * This letter omits to mention how much Mr. Thackeray was touched by the spectacle he saw in the Ragged School. Turning to Dr. Guthiie, as we have heard the latter tell, with the tears in his eyes he said, "This is the finest sight in Edinburgh ! " t lu Chapter V. HUGH MILLER. 223 Miller's power lay in the way the subject on which he was to write took entire possession of his mind. For the time being, he concentrated his whole faculties and feelings on it ; so that, if we met a day or two before . the appearance of any remarkable article in the Witness newspaper (of which he was editor), I could generally guess what was to be the subject of his discussion, or who was to be the object of his attack. From what- ever point it started, the conversation — before we were done — came round to that ; and, in a day or two, the public were reading in the columns of the Witness very much of what I had previously heard from his own lips. The subject took possession of him, rather than he of the subject. " This reminds me of an occasion on which Macaulay showed the same power and peculiarity. I was sit- ting one night in the House of Commons, when he, observing me, left his seat, and came to sit beside me. An extraordinary talker, he did not leave me a chance of hearing what was going on in the House ; but poured forth into my ear in full flowing stream his views on National Education, — the subject which had taken me at that time to London, and which the House was to take up for discussion in a day or two thereafter. Well, I was not a little interested, and much amused, to find in the newspapers I bought on the morning of my leaving London, the very sentiments — in many instances, the very expressions — addressed to the House, which Macaulay had already spoken in my ear. 224 MEMOIR. " There was another remarkable point of resemblance between Miller and Macaulay, as well as some other two or three eminent men I have known (as, for instance, Sir George Sinclair and Principal Cunningham), — they seemed never to forget anything they had seen, heard, or read. " Cunningham's memory was wonderful, even to the holding fast of what might be considered unimportant and uninteresting details. On our way to London, after the Disruption, to raise friends and money there in support of our Free Church, we took a route that was new to me. He had travelled it once, though a con- siderable number of years before ; yet — telling us that at the next turn we should see such and such a hill, or such and such a church, or such and such a house — he seemed to be as well acquainted with the road as any coachman of a public stage is with the one that he travels every day. "Then, during many years of intimacy with Sir George Sinclair, and occasional holidays spent with him at Thurso Castle, I never ceased to be astonished at his amazing stores of knowledge, and the propriety and readiness with which he revealed them.* It was hardly possible to start any topic for discussion which he did not garnish and adorn with some apt quotation from a Latin, or French, or German poet. * In 1851 we find Dr. Guthrife writing to Sir George:— "I have long wondered at the oxtniordiiiary power you have of happilj- and pitliily applying Siriptui-e. Many ye;irs ago I remarkfd, in the writing on your Bible, signs of close and careful study. In addition to this, have you followed any plan to which you can refer the enviable faculty you have ?" HUGH MILLER. 225 *' Let it suffice that I give one example illustrative of Miller's gigantic memory. We were sitting one day in Johnstone's (the publisher's) back shop, when the conver- sation turned on a discussion that had recently taken place in the Town Council, on some matter connected with our Church affiiirs. Miller said it reminded him of a discussion in Gait's novel of * The Provost ; ' and thereupon proceeded, at great length, to tell us what Provost this, and Bailie that, and Councillor the other, said on the matter ; but when he reached the * Convener of the Trades,' he came suddenly to a halt. Notwith- standing our satisfaction with what he had reported, he was annoyed at having forgotten the speech of the Convener ; and, getting a copy of the novel from the shelves in Johnstone's front shop, he turned up the place and read it, excusing himself for his failure of memory. But what was our astonishment, on getting hold of the book, to find that Miller had repeated pages almost verbatim, though it was some fifteen years or more since he had read the novel ! " Hugh Miller's death by his own hand, though I felt it as an awful shock, distressed more than it surprised me. Even before his brain was examined, and other circumstances made the fact clear, I never had the shadow of a doubt that he was insane when he took away his life. " The news of his death was waiting me at the railway station on my return from a public dinner, given at Perth, in honour of Mr. Arthur Kinnaird. I imme- VOL. II. Q 2 26 MEMOIR. diately hurried down to Miller's house in Portobello, but did not know, till I had left it, that his death was the work of his own hand. Whatever suspicions might have passed across my mind, 1 refused to yield to them, believing, as Mrs. Miller and the family then did, that his death was accidental. But that night I learned, to my horror, from his step-brother, that it could not have been so, there being no mark showing that the bullet had passed through the thick seaman's jersey which he wore. " On my return to the house next day, I had two very painful duties to perform. " The first was, at the request of his eldest daughter, a very amiable as well as able young creature, to go up to the room where her father lay, and cut off a lock of his hair for her. I shall never forget the appearance of the body as I entered the room and stood alone by the dead : that powerful frame built on the strongest model of humanity ; that mighty head with its heavy locks of auburn hair ; and the expression of that well-known face, so perfectly calm and placid. The head was a little turned to one side, and the face thrown upwards ; so that it had not the appearance of an ordinary corpse, but wore something of a triumphant, if not a defiant, air, as if he were still ready for battle in the cause of truth and righteousness — defying his enemies to touch his great reputation as a man of the highest eminence in science, of the most unblemished character, of the most extraordinary ability, and, more than any one of his com- peers, entitled to be called a defender of the faith. HUGH MILLER. 227 " In justice both to him and to religion, it was con- sidered necessary that a post-mortem examination of the body should be made — that if, as was probable, the brain should be found diseased, that might be made known, and thus, along with other circumstances, remove the last lingering suspicion against Miller whjch the event might have raised, or his enemies been ready to take advantage of. Mrs, Miller, still ignorant of the real nature of the case, was averse to the body being touched, in the belief, on her part, that his death ^vas purely accidental. In order to get her consent, I had to undeceive her by producing that fond but fatal note which he had left on his desk, addressed to her, expressed in terms of his highest confidence in Jesus Christ, but at the same time plainly intimating his intended purpose, probably executed be- fore the ink on that paper was dry. I shall not soon, indeed I shall never, forget the face that looked up to mine, and the cry of agony with which the news, though communicated on my part with all possible delicacy, was received. " Next day the examination was made by Professor MiUer. To his study Dr. Hanna and I went at an appointed hour to wait his return and receive his medical report, with the view of Dr. Hanna's embodying it in an exquisitely beautiful and able article which he had prepared for the columns of the Witness newspaper. The hour came, but not the Professor ; and it was not till after one, and another, and another additional quarter of an hour had passed, that the door flew open, and, with q2 2 28 MEMOIR, a countenance pale as deatli, he, rusTiIng in, astonished and alarmed and horrified us by throwing up his arms to heaven to exclaim, * Tragedy upon tragedy ! ' Finding the revolver, which had killed Miller, in the room beside the body, he had brought it away with him in his pocket. Passing a gunsmith's shop in Leith Walk, he went in to have the pistol examined. He put the revolver into the shopman's hand ; saw him look down one barrel after another ; then, a loud explosion ! — and the living man, without cry or sigh or groan, folded in two and dropped on the floor dead as a stone. " Having satisfied ourselves, we published documents which satisfied the public that Hugh Miller's reason had given way, and that he was in no respect responsible for the deed he had committed." Not far from the spot in St. John's Free Church where Hugh Miller sat, the stranger could scarce fail to take note of another head as large, and with locks as shaggy, as Miller's, but raven black. It belonged to another member of Dr. Guthrie's congregation. Sir James Y. Simpson, whose name will be ever dear to suffering humanity. Miller and Simpson sat in the area of the church — almost beneath the pulpit ; and as we lift the eye to the gallery on the left, two other remarkable countenances attract attention. The eyes of both are piercing and brilliant, and, with a gaze that never relaxes, are fastened, from the commence- LORD COCKBURN. zzg ment of the sermon to its close, on tlie preacher. Both are judges of the Supreme Court in Scotkiid ; the younger of the two, Lord E-utherfurd,* who had fought alongside Fox Maule the battle of the Church on the floor of the House of Commons ; the other, with the high dome-like head, and solemn, almost pqnsive air, is Henry Cockburn. " Cockburn," wrote Dr. Guthrie, " was a man of fascinating manners and fine genius ; the greatest orator, in one sense, I ever heard. His looks, his tones, his language, his whole manners, were such as to make you believe for the time that he spoke ab iino j^cctore, — he himself believing every word he said. " On one occasion, indeed, he failed to convince the judge and jury of the innocence of a man for whom he "was counsel, and who had committed an atrocious murder : * " "Walking down from church with Lord Rulherfurd, after hear- ing Dr. Guthrie," writes Lord Ardmillan, "we were speaking of a passage in the sermon of which, so far as I recollect, these were the words: 'Professions are easily made, but trial tests sincerity. Any man can be the friend of religion when religion is respectable or fashion- able, and a man's worldly prospects are improved by a religious profession. Give me the man who is the friend of religion when her back is at the wall. I see before me two soldiers on a day of review. Both are armed and helmed and plumed alike ; each has a soldier's g;trb, a soldier's bear- ing, and a soldier's arms ; but on that day of peaceful pageant I cannot tell which has a soldier's heart. I see them both again on a day of battle ; the one, foremost amid the brave, mounting the deadly breach, "seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth!" the other, foremost too, as with trembling limbs and pallid cheek ho is borne onwards, like a weed on the surface of the billows, by the crash of gallant men behind him ; on that day of trial how easy to tell beneath whose martial dress there beats a soldier's heart ! ' Speaking of this passage, Lord Rutherfiird, an admirable judge and critic of eloquenci^ remarked, 'Any man could have painted the coward hiding or flying, or keeping in the rear ; but to describe him as foremost in the onset, against his will swept on and sustained by men braver than himself, was a stroke of rhetoric of the highest order.' " 230 MEMOIR but lie did something still more extraordinary, — lie convinced tlie murderer himself that he was innocent ! Sentence of death having been pronounced, and the day for execution fixed (say the 20th of January) , as Cockburn passed the culprit, not yet removed from the dock, the latter seized him by the gown, saying, * I have not got justice, Mr. Cockburn ; ' whereupon, Cockburn, who coidd not resist passing a joke on any occasion, replied, as he shrank from the murderer's touch, ' Perhaps not : but you'll get it on the 20th of January.' " A still more famous Scottish Judge, with whose name Cockburn's is closely associated, was Francis Jeffrey. A former chapter presented evidence of that eminent man's esteem for the subject of this Memoir; in the succeeding one, the reader will find Dr. Guthrie's account of a meeting between Jeffrey and himself in a fragment designed for insertion in his Autobiography ; — its concluding paragraphs may best be given here : — " I was asked by his family to officiate at the funeral of Lord Jeffrey — a request that put me in a more trying position than almost any circumstance in my life which had occurred before or has occurred since. Fortunately for me, the gentleman, a near relative of the family, who was the bearer of their request, was a devout Christian and an able man. I frankly unbosomed myself to him, telling that while I considered this request an honour, I felt it one which imposed on me a very difficult duty. Lord Jeffrey was a member of no Christian Church ; he did not even attend any ; and from these and other cir- L ORD JEFFREY. 2 3 1 cumstances many believed him to be a confirmed sceptic. * I am anxious,' I explained to tbis gentleman, ' on tbe one band, in my prayers and otberwise, to avoid tbe use of one word that could burt tbe feelings of bis family ; on tbe otber, I am bound in duty to my Master and to tbe trutb, and to tbe interests of tbose wbp are present — all of wbom will keenly watcb wbat I say in tbis matter, and some of wbom will watcb for my baiting, as a flatterer or a time-server — to say notbiug tbat migbt encourage scepticism, or make it appear a matter of indif- ference wbetber a man did or did not make a Christian profession.' " Tbis brought out to me a very interesting account of Lord Jeffrey and bis state of mind, — leading me to draw up a prayer, tbe only one I ever formally composed and committed carefull}^ to memory.* I was assured then, as I bad been assured by Lord Dundrennan years before, tbat, however much he migbt differ from me and others on some particular points, Lord Jeffrey was not an unbeliever. Professor Miller, who was his physician, told me some time thereafter, tbat when in attendance on him during bis lingering illness, he found him engaged in reading tbe Bible, on which be descanted with mani- fest pleasure and amazing volubility. The gentleman who waited on me at the request of the family, told me that Lord Jeffrey entertained some peculiar views, stag- * That prayer had struck the late excellent Mr. Cleghorn, Sheriff of Argyllshire, so much, that among his private papers, opened after his death a few months ago, the substance of it was found written from memory after his return from the Dean Cemetery. 232 MEMOIR. gered at some doctrines or points usuallj'- accepted by Christians ; but what they were, not any of Lord Jeffrey's most intimate friends ever certainly knew. Given out to the world, they might have disturbed the faith and confidence of some good Christian people ; so, not considering them of sufficient importance to warrant the risk and chance of doing that, he had resolved to keep them to himself and have them buried with him in his grave. ** What a beautiful contrast does this forbearance and silence of Lord Jeffrey, — this tender regard for the feel- ings, the peace, and hope of many good Christians, — present to those who are constantly running after novel- ties in religion, casting out their doubts on the most sacred subjects, disturbing the peace of Christians, and giving utterance to crude and undigested notions and nostrums of their own on the divinity of our Lord, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, the extent and nature of the atonement, — notions which they may be found holding to-day and abandoning to-morrow ! " To " testify the Gospel of the grace of God " was to Dr. Guthrie always and everywhere a hallowed joy ; and, while he felt more at home under the gothic canopy of open-work which surmounted his own pulpit than anywhere else, be proclaimed the unity of the faith both in this and other lands by gladly preaching for ministers of almost all the evangelical churches, and welcomed them MINISTERIAL COMMUNION. 233 when they preached for him. In a letter of 1856, after mentioning that on the previous Sunday fore- noon a clergyman of the then Established Church of Ireland had filled Dr. Hanna's place, he adds : — " In the afternoon I recommended the cause he is here to advocate, dwelling strongly on the pleasant spectacle of an Episco- palian in our pulpit. I did so with special satisfaction, as Mr. Gladstone was in my pew." One natural result of the Disruption was, to bring the ministers of the Free Church into greatly closer intimacy with their dissenting brethren. After 1843, consequently, we find Dr. Guthrie often occupying their pulpits. It was on occasion of one of these friendly services that a ludicrous incident occurred, which he thus described in writing to Provost Guthrie — "November 5th, 1844. *' I preached the other Sabbath evening in Albany Street Chapel.* " I took John Towert (his beadle), as usual, with my gown, cassock, bands, and thin shoes ; and was in the act of pulling oif my coat, when I saw some of the deacons eyeing my para- phernalia very sad like. Immediately it occurred to me that they might not like a gown. ' Gentlemen, any objection ? As to me, it is a matter of moonshine.' ' We would like you, sir, as well without.' So away go the gown and cassock. Mechanically I began putting on the bands, and saw them looking at me as if I were cutting my tbi-oat. ' Any objection, gentlemen ? ' * We would be better pleased without them.' Away go the bands ; and then John (who was looking awfully wicked at the honest men) produced my thin shoes. ' Any objection to these, gentlemen ? ' as I held the slippers forth. This fairly tickled them ; and these grave deacons exploded into a laugh most loud and hearty." * A Congreg!itionalist place of worship, where all distinctive pulpit costume was avoided. 234 MEMOIR. But while tlie Disruption drew Free Churcli ministers into more cordial relations with other nonconformists,* their attitude towards the Establishment which they had quitted was, in the case of the great majority, one of estrangement in corresponding degree. An interchange of pulpits between ministers of the Free and Established Churches is, nowadays, at least an occasional event ; but twenty years ago scarcely to be thought of. I^ay, when, on a certain occasion in 1856, Dr. Guthrie consented, at the request of the Committee for Moravian Missions, to preach a public sermon on their behalf in a large city church belonging to the Establishment, although the service was on a week-day, so seriously annoyed was the eminent minister who had left that church at the Dis- ruption, that he wrote Dr. Guthrie a remonstrance on the following day. Here is Dr. Guthrie's reply : — • " My dear Doctor, — None who happen to know (and it is pretty generally known) the steadiness with which, throughout the Church controversy, I adhered to what many accounted extreme views, but which events have proved to be sound ones, will suspect that I have abandoned ' the truth, on account of which we took up our position.' 1 embraced these opinions in * The remark applies to Nonconformists across the border likewise. Dr. Guthrie preaclied lor English Unit' d Presbyterians, Bup'ists, and Independents frequently ; and in the '/ atchma», the official organ of tlie Wesleyan Methudists, we find the folliwini; statement : — " Dr. Guthrie's cordial love of Wesleyans, and tlie VVeslcyan Churches, was uniform and practical; he symp^lhized with us, affected our suciety, and loved to mingle in our assemblies. He was wont to welcome to his house, year by ye:ir, the lieputations to Scotland from tlie Wesleyan Missionary Society. On two occasions he preached the annual Friday moininij: seiiiKm before the Society, and more frequently than in tlie CMse of any other denomina- tion, except his own, occupied Wesleyan pulpits, both in the metiopolia aud in the larger provincial towns." MANY OPEN DOORS. 235 early life, 1 have adhered to them through foul and fair weather in manhood, and, unless I am aheady dnttleil, I am not likely to desert them now in my grey hairs. That is the way the public will reason. " The sooner we get our people to understand (if they don't understand it already) that our principles are in no respect compromised by doing what I did in Old St. George's, and what I had done months ago in South Leith, by preaching for a Christian mission in the building belonging to, any Christian denomination which the parties interested in the Mission con- sidered most convenient for the purpose, so much the better — so much the better for the interests of Christian love, of Pres- byterianism and of Protestantism, and so much the better also for the success and extension of the Free Church. I may be wrong in this, but such is my deliberate opinion ; and as yoa have been frank and kind enough to let me know your views, I think it but a right return to let you know mine. " Be assured that nothing will suffer from the business but the dresses of the ladies and gentlemen. I sympathize with them in their complaint. They brought away from the seats an extraordinary quantity of dust ! *' Yours with great regard, *' Thomas Gutheie." Few ministers of any denomination have enjoyed opportunities more varied than Dr. Guthrie of preaching the gospel in interesting and unusual circumstances — at sea and on shore, at home and in foreign lands. AVhat strange variety, too, in the audiences he addressed ! But, for them all, he had one and the same message ; and his experience in the ministry ever deepened his con- viction of the Divine adaptation to human need of that instrument which meets with equal fitness every case, how diverse soever the outward surroundings may be. Writing home, while on a visit in 1854 to a noble family in Rutlandshire, he tells : — " On Thursday even- ing I held a ' conventicle ' in the great room of the old 236 MEMOIR. Hall. Strange to say — or as the old barons who He there in marble, had they the power of hearing and speech, would have said, * strange to hear ' — the parish church bell rung for our conventicle. We had the parish organist to precent. All in this house attended, and, besides some two hundred or three hundred people, we had two Episcopal ministers and a Wesleyan. . . . The glades among the wide- spreading oaks of the park here (Exton) are exquisitely beautiful ; and as the herds of deer go bounding on the green sward below, I am ever and anon reminded of Robin Hood and his ' merrie men/ or of the opening scene in ' Ivanhoe.' " It was with peculiar interest that Dr. Guthrie occa- sionally returned to his old parish in Forfarshire, and broke again the bread of life to the country people there. In a letter to Mrs. Guthrie from Arbirlot, dated 25th May, 1857, he described one of these occasions, and added : ■ — " It is very sweet down in the Den (dell) here. The first morning I got up at four. There were the doos cnrrooing ; the primroses dotting the opposite bank; the plane-trees ; the song of larks overhead, and the musical rush of the Elliot at the old mill ; all the same, apparently unchanged, as we used to see and hear them twenty-seven years ago. It was very strange to look out on all this, and difficult not to fancy that the intervening period had been a dream ! " Four years thereafter, he happened to preach in Arbroath, the neighbouring town. "I intimated at the close," he writes, " that I would like to see any of my old Arbirlot people, and had a gathering of them. PRE A CHING IN MANY PL A CES. 2 3 7 It was very gratifying, solemn, and affecting. Boys and girls grown up into fathers and mothers ; the stout and mature, now grey and bent, stooping to the grave." {To Mr. J. B. Dymoch.) Again, from Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, August 12th, 1858— " The chapel in whose opening services I was called to take a part is a perfect delight to preach in. Wonderful to see, in the afternoon of a busy harvest day it Avas filled, and in the evening crowded to overflowing. I never preached with more pleasure — seldom with so much, A fine, intelligent-looking people ; they had a deal of lively Methodist feeling in their faces, and seemed ready often to burst out into an audible assent or expression of sympathy. I could not but envy the state of mind of one man especially who was right before me. He sang the hymns with a face luminous as Stephen's, and, as I preached, every feeling that passed over his heart was ex- pressed in his countenance. I was much gratified by not a few men and women coming up to shake hands with me and thank me when the services were over. " Yesterday, at dinner, we met a very agreeable and excellent man, the vicar of , who said to some of them how vexed he was, that owing to the prejudices of his Church and brethren he dared not come and hear me. What a wretched system of bondage ! " Dr. Guthrie's influence as a minister was largely aug- mented by the estimation in which he was held alike for his philanthropy and catholic spirit. It was his position in these respects, probably, as much as his eloquence in the pulpit, which led to his being selected to open the Tricentenary of the Scottish Reformation held in Edin- burgh by a sermon in 1860, and in the previous year to perform a similar service at the inauguration of the Chambers's Institute at Peebles. 238 MEMOIR. He had an abhorrence of war ; yet few things did he enjoy more than to read narratives of sieges, or to hear one of his elders, an old Waterloo captain, describing the memorable 15th of June, as he " fought his battles o'er again." A favourite brother of his own had been an oflScer ; and for soldiers, as a class, he had a great liking. He visited Aldershot Camp in 1861, on the invitation of an old friend of Brechin days, Rev. Francis Cannon, Presbyterian chaplain to the troops ; and was accompanied on the occasion by Mrs. Guthrie. How much interested he was by the glimpse he then got of camp life, and still more by the evidence he found, in godly officers and men, of a true " Church in the Army," the following letter shows : — " London, April I5th, 1861. "My i>ear Tom,— Your mother and I left the Camp this morning with the good wishes of a number of worth}', kind, and new acquaintances. At night, Aldershot is as quiet as Inchgrundel. You are among thirteen thousand soldiers, and there is not a sound, save, when you get outside, you may hear the tramp of a sentinel. " At half-past five a.m., yesterday, I was lying awake, when, all of a sudden the earth seemed to explode. Such a roar and shock ! It was the morning gun, which stood but a few yards from Mr. Cannon's hut, where your mother and I were sleeping. On Saturday evenin'g I attended a religious meeting of a number of the officers, over which General Lawrence generally presides. I was much gratified to find in a large hut a number of officers seated round a table, each with his Bible in hand, going over a passage of Scripture. On Sabbath morning at eight o'clock, large bodies of troops marched past our window to the Roman Catholic chapel close by, the priest of which lives next to Mr. Cannon. I was introduced to him this morning — a pleasant fellow. " Yesterday, at half-past eleven, 1 officiated for Mr. Cannon. si:r vice a t aldershot. 239 There is no Scotch regiment at present here, which Mr. Cannon was glad of, because it made room for others. We had the Church (a large one, u^sed immediately before our service by the Episcopalians) full to the door. Cannon was quite happy. He had never had at the Scotch service such a congregation. There were men and officers belonging to all the difl'erent corps of the service in their different dresses. Dragoons, Lancers, Artillery, Engineers, the line, and lots of civilians. Some fifty people came from Guildford, which is about thirteen miles away. I was startled when they rose to prayer, they made such a rattle of iron with their swords and scabbards. General Lawrence made me promise to return, and is to give me a h'lUet. I have been strongly urged to return by many, and am seriously, more seriously than ever, thinking of addressing the public on the army ; once, God sparing me, I get ragged schools safely settled. " I returned from forenoon service to have dinner, and Lieutenant called on me ; an uncommonly fine youth. I told him of the Saturday evening prayer-meeting, and I hope he will join it. In the evening I preached at five, and had again a capital congregation. I never preached to audi- ences more attentive ; it was quite refreshing to see their fa^-es. After the evening service a Major and another officer came in to tea. Last, but not least, arrived Corporal Macdonald, who came up from Guildford, and whom my ' Ragged Pleas ' set a- working. He has two Sabbath schools of young men and young women, amounting in all to three hundred, and is at this moment ' a light ' in Guildford.' You can fancy then — with my preaching twice, and talking all day, when I was not preaching, to Generals, and Majors, and Captains — that when half- past ten came, and the good Corporal left, I was thoroughly tired — slept only through last night by snatches " I saw a most appropriate name for its keeper over one of the great ' gin palaces ' here, namely, ' Death.' " We add one illustration more of tbe varied audiences to which Dr. Guthrie was privileged to proclaim the ** glad tidings," taken from the last year of his life ; the sermon which this letter describes was in fact one of the very last he ever preached : — 240 MEMOIR. " 39, Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, W., Fehruanj 6th, 1872. "As a probationei" and an ordained minister, I have been preaching now, in God's good providence, for forty-seven years, but never to such a congregation of sin and misery as I had on Sabbath last : — four hundred hoary and youthful tramps, beggars, thieves, and ruffians, ragged forms, crushed and hope- less-looking beings, homeless and even houseless wanderers, many of whom looked as if their hearts had never beat with hope, nor their countenances been lighted by a smile. " The place of meeting was an upper room, in the third story of a large brick building, which has been got up chiefly through the efibrts of our excellent host and hostess, Mr. and Mrs. FuUer-Maitland. Here, on week-days, meets a ragged school ; and, on Sunday, they have the service I engaged in, as well as a great variety of other meetings. The building stands in a court ofl' James Street, in a very low neighbourhood. A sign at the door of a barber and hair- dresser affords a remarkable but pretty accurate test of the sort of folk that haunt the neighbourhood or have their dens there. As we di'ove along, Mrs. Maitland directed my attention to it ; and I read, besides the name and usual notice of barber above the door, on a board which stuck out from the upper part of the door jamb, ' Artist in Black Eyes.' On our return, after the service was concluded, we passed the door of the Artist in Black Eyes, and, to be at the bottom of this mysterious announcement, I resolved to go in. Apologizing for my intru- sion, I explained the reason to the perruquier. I said I hoped he would pardon me, and have the kindness to inform me whether his art lay in so painting eyes blackened in a rmv as to give them quite a natural appearance ? Whether he thought I was making provision for some future contingency on my own account, or had a friend who stood in need of his skill, I don't know — but the ' artist ' was very civil, informing me, Avith an elegant bow and a handsome flourish of his razor in the air, that I had understood his sign aright. " But to return to the mission and mission-house. The service I went to perform is intended for the ' Casuals,' as they are called^ — those floating wrecks of London, many of whom have slept on Saturday night in wards appro- priated to their use in the London Unions, or Workhouses. As we drove up to the archway that led ofl" from James Street, we saw at once we had reached the place. One, and another, and another miserable-looking creature was slowly, heartlessly taking their way down the lane : there was neither life in their looks nor spring in their Avalk ; it seemed all one THE " CASUALSr H^ to them whether they lived or died; they thought fortune LTaZ^ its worst with them, and never would do better. ''On asceiXg the stair we turned into a large room where On ascei an g ^^^^^,^ ^^^^ addressmg ^^ woLt and she was addressing them to good ™se, as I found when I prevailed on her-for she had htdJous spectacle ; and as^ I looked on their emaciated, sallow o bloated faces, ^Vith their hopeless or furtive expression, and the atte red U of threadbare shawls and dirty gowns they wore I ound it difficult to believe that they bad ever been Zlung infants, or gay, laughing ^^^H^Py' ^gJ^'S of'\hem n was a verv sad sight ; and a sad thought to thmk ot them in Teh^ht either of thi world or the next. No remedy for such a ca ' as Ibey presented but the gospel. What would a ra^on- alS or even a Broad Churchman do m such a place? How utterlv powerless his preaching to such a company . ' Leavb.. the women to Miss Stewarts mstruction and affec^rale^appeals, we ciiuibed another na^.w^^^^^^^^^ sta r and the close foul a r which met us at the top F^parea us lui be cene-a long low-roofed hall, closely seated and fil edjo thP back wall with four hundred male Casuals. On a platlorm a sed at JnTend stood Mr, Hanbury, and on each si e o him sat the workers in the various good agencies that aie cair ea on there When Mr. Hanbury had finished reading from the B^We and they had sung a hymn. I ascended the T atform to Took my hearers in the face, a thing it was ^^PO^^^^e to do lithout'^feeUngs of the profoundest pity ^f . ^J^^f J;,,^,^,^/ change from either of the two assemblies ^^^d last aadiesstd and that but a few days before ! It was difficult foi me to be lipvP that those before me were as much ' bone of my bone, ana fl h ot ly fleth,' with naturally as kind hearts and good heads : the leai^ed and accomplished men I addi^ssed ^-^^Jlf^l Temple, or the splendid company that crowded &t James s miu "I could not but think, as I stood and looked on these Casuals how mlny ruined and unhappy homes, broken-hearted pEs m«cy to the chM ot sincers, and a. able to kmdle hope in the bosom of despau-. VOL. II. ^ 242 MEMOIR. " I have been in madhouses, but don't think they offer so sad a sight as this. Yon poor maniac who sits with a i^aper crown on his head and a peacock-feather stuck in it, imagining him- self a king — j'on dame who sweeps by you with pride in her Btep and vanity in her looks, imagining herself a duchess, is not unhappy; happier perhaps than those who really are what these fancy themselves to be ! But here, those I was about to address felt the iron that had entered their soul : they h\ew theii* misery. I preached long years ago in the Edinburgh jail in a chapel of a semicircular form, with the pulpit in the centre, and the congregation placed opposite, in ranges of large cells, open but barred, three stories of them, — eiyht or nine cells in each story, where the prisoners saw no one but the preacher and the ten or dozen companions each of these cells contained. When in that prison chapel I rose to give out the psalm and look my congregation in the face, the sight of these ruffian- looking men and women, with their eyes glaring at me through the bars, like those of wild beasts in the cages of a menagerie, made a great and painful impression on one who had not long before left the healthy, open, honest faces of my country congregation. But (though turned to a bad use) there was passion and power in the look of these reprobates, — that which, with God's blessing, if got hold of and turned in a new and right direction, might save them. But my audience last Sunday — these four hundred Casuals — looked as if the very life had been crushed out of them ; and that for me to make them, an offer of the gospel was like throwing a life-buoy, not to a man who is making a desperate struggle for life, but to one who, before he sinks for ever, is floating for a little in a state of entire insensibility. " I was soon, however, relieved of this depressing feeling. I got their eyes and cars ; the attention of all, and the mani- fest emotions of some cheered me up, and helped me on. Yet the sight was so pitiful and painful that it subjected my nervous system to a severe strain ; thus I accounted for it that I felt more exhausted all through the following hours of the day than I would have done though I had preached twice or thrice to an ordinary congregation. "The conclusion of the service was followed by what re- called the kind consideration of our Lord and the feast on the side of the grassy mountain. He would not send away the people who had waited on His ministry to hunger and faint by the way. Nor do the kind Christian friends of the Casuals. Hastily leaving the platform, I pushed my way through those who were slowly descending the stairs, till I got to the foot of THE " CASUALSr 243 them. There I found one of the agents of the good work at his post of duty. To each Casual, as they reached the bottom of the stairs, he gave half a loaf of bread. Some put it into their pockets ; some buttoned their tattered, threadbare coats over it, some more hungry v^^retohes buried their teeth in it the instant it passed into their hands. " I left the foot of the stair to take my stand outside in the court where I might have a talk with the Casuals as they turned into tlie lane that opened on James Street. They were all very civil, poor fellows. Among them all, I am thankful to say, I found but one Scotchman (though perhaps the greatest sinner of the lot). I was sorry for my poor countryman, who was a man apparently sixty years of age, and, whatever he may have been, had, more than most of them, a (ioMce-like look. " Unpromising as this field of labour is, I was glad to hear from some of the agents of the Mission that now and again those who have come there, driven by fell hunger for the bread that perisheth, have found the bread of life. These good men have found again the seed they cast on these running waters ; — I say runniiKj waters, for (made up as it is of the wandering creatures that fill the casual wards of the unions) there is not a third of the congregation I addressed last Sunday who will be there next Sabbath day. Out of these gutters and dust-heaps of Loudon, gems are to be found for Jesus' crown, to be to them also a crown of joy and rejoicing on that day when He makes up His jewels. " Some few object to the plan as inducing these poor starve- lings to come to hear the gospel from mere worldly motives ; — an excuse ready enough to be employed by those who are ashaiued to own their selfishness and niggardliness. I sought, in a conference with two of the agents, to see whether they might not, by giving the loaf first, and olfering any the liberty of going away who did not choose to stay till the religious services began, give no ground or pretence for this objection. I told them how anxious Dr. Chalmers was to separate the spiritual from the secular, lest people should be tempted to sail under false colours, and pretend, for the sake of food, money, or clothing, to be other than they were — in fact to become hypocrites. I related to them a little of my ex- perience in the Cowgate, — the story, among other things, of the old woman who, after I had spoken to her' and prayed with her, burst out into an eulogium on my prayer, ending the same with this plain and unmistakable hint, ' Eh, sir, there was a man used to come and gie me a bonny prayer just like yours, and he never gaed awa' without leavin' me a shilling ! ' R 2 244 MEMOIR. " The worthy men pronounced any other arrangement in the circumstances impossible, and quoted the case of our Saviour, who wrought a miracle to feed the multitude who had followed him to the desert, listening to his words of life : and though I was more anxious than they seemed to be to keep the spiritual and temporal — wherever possible — apart, I furnished them with another authority, though an inferior one, in the anecdote related of William Guthrie, when minister of Fenwick. Like some other Gu'thries, he was fond of fishing. One day, in a lone and remote part of his parish, he found a man plying the craft by some upland stream. He proved to be one of Guthrie's parishioners, but one whom the minister had never seen at church. He frankly avowed himself to be one who was not, as they say, 'kirk-greedy.' To induce him to come, Guthrie pro- mised him half-a-crown — a big sum in those days — every time he came to the house of God, and afterwards to the manse to ask for it. Next Sabbath he was there, and came duly for his half-crown, — the following twt) Sa'bbaths the same, but he never came to the manse afterwards. God blessed the word to him, and he became an eminent Christian — taken as it were, to use Paul's words, ' by guile.' " So ended this remarkable Sabbath. May the fruit of it appear, though it be many days hence 1" But numerous and varied as were the audiences Dr. Guthrie addressed in churcli and out of it, lie reached, through means of the Press, a multitude more nume- rous and more varied still — many of whom never heard his voice or saw his face. He had passed middle life considerably ere he became an author of religious works. It is told of a certain powerful preacher that, when asked why he did not publish his discourses, he replied, " I cannot publish my manner along with them." No doubt this consideration had its weight with Dr. Guthrie ; but other difficulties stood in his way. FIRST VOLUME OF SERMONS. 245 " Brechin, July 8th, 1848. " Above any kind of printing, I have been averse to the idea of printing modern — I don't say moderate— sermons, thinking that for sermon-composition the men of the present day are not fit to hold the candle to the masters of the seventeenth century. I resisted, and intended to continue resisting, all proposals of the kind, till, laid aside from anything like full pulpit service, I was led to think whether it might not serve some good purpose were I to address God's people and sinners through the press. Then, secondly, though vastly inferior to others in solidity and divinity, I knew that, owing to their peculiar character and style, my sermons had, for youth, servants, and plain people some attractions. I thought, and had reason to believe, that they would read me when they would not read others far better worthy of it ; and so, on a second consideration of the matter, I considered it my duty to try and serve my Master's cause with my pen. I contem- plated the probability of any poor service of mine henceforth being chiefly in that way. Now, I am so much better that I expect, God willing, by-and-by, to be able again for something like a fair measure of labour. * * * . * * " May the Lord richly bless you, my dear friend, and do more than that — fulfil His promise to you He gave to Abraham, bless you and make you a blessing. " With sincere esteem, "Yours most truly, " Thomas Guthrie." John Garment, Esq., Edinburgh. It was not in reality till 1855 tliat his first volume appeared. Considering the reputation in which he was held as a pulpit orator, and, further, that his Pleas for Ragged Schools, published in 1817 and 1849, had proved how attractively he could write, it is remarkable that he had been for twenty-five years an ordained minister ere his first volume of sermons was given to the world.* * Before this time, in addition to the two Ragsjed Snhool Pleas, Dr. Gulhrie had published nothiug except a short Memoir prefixed to yermoiia 246 MEMOIR. "Edinburgh, April 22nd., 1855. "In addition to full hands with ordinary work, I am in the Press ; and what wiih writing out from a hhtthered MS. all full of corrections and transpositions and interlineations (so that after some weeks it looks like a roll of papyrus du^ out of some Egyptian tomb), and what with correcting the proofs twice over, I have been kept so hard at work that I did not attempt for a fortnight to answer a letter, unless it was as clamorous as an ' Iriah beggar.' " {To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) It is notorious that booksellers find volumes of sermons slow to move from their shelves ; but Dr. Guthrie's first book, " The Gospel in Ezekiel," at once became popular, and is now (1875) in its fortieth thousand. No wonder that he was stimulated by its success. In a letter to Provost Guthrie, 12th February, 1856, he says : — "I am encouraged to launch my bark again, and indeed, if spared, will, for three reasons. First : Good may thus be done to many whom the living voice does not reach ; and good done when the living voice is silent in the j^rave. Second : This mode of doing my Master's work and my duty to the Church suits my age better than galloping about to meetings and ccenes of excitement over the length and breadth of the land. Third : The money it brings in suits my family and circumstances." His next work, " The City ; its Sins and Sorrows," appeared in 1857, and, after having a lai;ge circulation, was handed over by him to the Scottish Temperance by the Rev. R. Coutt>f (1847); "Christ and Christ crucified," a sermoa on occasion of the death of W. M. Gunn, LL.D. (18.31); a pielaiory memoir to a new edition of Berridge's " Christian World Uniiifisked " (1852) ; and a sermon on "The War in some of its social, political, and religious aspects " (ISS-l.) I^A'ASOIVS FOR PUBLISHING. 247 League, to be issued in a cheaper form, to which he was urged by the consideration that in this way its influence to stem the tide of drunkenness and irreligion would be widely increased. As issued by the League, its circulation has run up to fifty thousand copies. His third volume, " Christ, and the Inheritance of the Saints," was published in 1858 ; it is to it he refers in the following letter to Mrs. Guthrie : — • "Brechin, November \Oth, 1858. "I don't expect that I will ever get so much for any future publications as for the past. The public get tired of any one man, and crave variety. Supposing even that he can keep up to his first eft'ort, any succeeding ones don't have the charm of novelty. Even Chalmers never had a sale for any of his dis- courses equal to his first volume. " There was a reason, on the other hand, for publishing the volume now in the press, in this — that I have at this moment a position, in England especially, which will help the sale of it, and out of "which I may be jostled in a year or two by the appearance of new men ; — and as some addition to our former means and- provision for the family was of im- portance, the opportunity was not to be lost. I hope that the Blacks have not printed too many. If in the course of time they should sell these 10,000, we would thereby add to our capital, and, considering the way ministers are paid, something was to be risked for that. If there were no objects to be looked at but those belonging to a world with which we shall all soon be done, thei'e were reasons for publishing, though they should add nothing to, but rather diminish, my fame. I have got enough of that, and hold it cheaper than some would suppose. I prefer the fruits of it, if they are to be got in securing a decent provision for you and the children, and helping my friends if they need it. Anyway, I hope that the forthcoming book will be blessed to the honour of Christ, who forms its principal theme, and that He will use for his glory and the good of souls what I desire to lay at his feet as an offering." Shortly after the publication of that book he wrote to 248 MEMOIR. his son-in-law, the Rev. Wm. Welsh, on December 7th, telling him of favourable criticisms which had appeared in some of the leading journals, and added — "I am thankful that, in the judgment of these parties, I have not fallen below my 'Ezekiel.' I don't want to go out like an old candle, — and will stop so soon as I see any marked sign of that. It has a bad smell, and one would rather clap on an extinguisher ! " The sale has been already great, — about 8,000. In all this, I have great cause to be thankful. I hope these volumes will be blessed to do men good, and redound to the gloi'y of our Divine Master. That first ; — and next, they will help to render unnecessary any appeal to the public for my family when I am dead and gone." Two other volumes appeared before his retirement from the active work of the ministry — " The Way to Life " and " Speaking to the Heart," — both published in 1862.* God was pleased to give Dr. Guthrie abundant assu- rance that his writings were a source of blessing to souls both at home and far away. Dating from a distant military station where he was on duty, a non-com- missioned officer wrote him in 1864 : — " About eighteen months ago a friend directed me to where I would find * In April, 1868, there appeared "The Street Preacher, heing the Autobiography of Kolert Flockhart, edited by Thomas Guthrie, D.D." (A. and C. Black.) In the memoir prefixed to this remarkable narrative, Dr. Guthrie writes : — " Robert Flockhart had been a great sinner, and He, ■who in other daj'S had changed the bitterest persecutor of the Church into its noblest preather, changed him into a great saint. This brave olii soMier united the most ardint piety and untiring zeal to indomitable couiage, and had no idea ot llinching, whether he was called to tight the Fiencli at Port Louis or, for Christ and God's truth, face ribald crowds in the High iStreel of Ediubmgh." •♦ "HAIL WAV READING r 2 4 q your * Gospel in Ezekiel.' I may say, any hope I have of eternal happiness (and I trust my hope is well founded) is derived under God from it. Although I have never had the pleasure of seeing or hearing you, I can scarcely restrain a strong feeling of looking upon you in the light of * a father in the gospel.' " " In the summer of 1865," writes the Rev. A. G., j^acGilli- vray, "I passed a foi'tnight in Paris, at a boarding-house in the Rue de Castiglione. There sat beside me at dinner, day after day, a most intelligent and genial old English squire. He talked to me a good deal about Scotland, and in the first even- ing of our acquaintance asked me, ' Do you know anything about a Dr. Guthrie or Gut-ry, who lives in Edinburgh?' I answered, ' I know a Dr. Guthrie, a minister in Edinburgh.' *A minister? — ah, a clergyman. Is he a good preacher?' ' A most admirable one ! In Scotland we all know Dr. Guthrie.' * Ah,' be said, ' that's the man. How I should like to know him ! I never travel without having a volume of Dr. Guthrie's to read in the carriage. Why, sir. Dr. Guthrie is the only man I ever heard of who has written sermons which one can read pleasantly in a railway carriage.' " When we parted he shook my hand heartily, saying, ' Do you expect to see Dr. Guthrie shortly ? ' I told him that I did. ' Give him my affectionate good wishes, and say that I pray God to bless him for making the grand old gospel as simple and as fresh to me at the age of threescore and ten as it was when I first listened to it as a child at my mother's knee.' " Some weeks thereafter I was in Edinburgh, and dined at Dr. Candlish's, where I met Dr. Guthrie. Shortly after dinner Dr. Guthrie rose from table, and chatted with a friend at the fireside. I then told the stor}' — to Dr. Candlish's great delight, and, when almost done, he called out, ' Guthrie, here's some- thing for you ! Hear this story of MacGillivray's.' Dr. Guthrie turned round good-humoured'y. He laughed heartily at his being described as ' the only man who had ever written ser- mons which could be read with pleasure in a railway carriage.' But when I gave him the old gentleman's parting message he did not utter a word, but looked kindly at me with an expres- sion of solemn thankfulness on his face." It was with a like feeling of gratitude to God that 2 50 MEMOIR. Dr. Guthrie heard of the favour his writings enjoyed in the English-speaking Colonies — of their circulation in the New World,* where many of them are as well known as in the Old ; of portions translated into the tongues of Holland and of France ; and it cheered him, as life advanced, to know of the ever-widening circle which, through his printed works, was brought within the influ- ence of his midlist ry. ^• Here is one incident from many in his own expe- rience— "Penzance, Aprilith, 1868. "Mrs. Guthrie and I devoted yesterday to the Land's End. The day was brilliant, and (but that the air was sharper) the blue sea and transparent sky and bright sunshine almost made us fancy that we were sojourning, as three years ago, on the shores of the Mediterranean. " But before starting I saw a grander spectacle than Nature at her loveliest can present — a Christian whose soul was ' dwell- ing at ease ' in most trying circumstances. " I was told that close to our lodgings there was a man near to the gates of death, or rather of glory, who felt a strong desire to see me. He had read my books ; and when he heard that I was here, he thought that his wish might^be gratified before he died. " In his room I iound his mother and a sweet young wife of some twenty years old ; he himself was sitting pillowed in a* chair, a picture of ' decline,' — the bright red and white, the large lustrous eyes, and the emaciated face and hands. He could speak only in the lowest whisper, but he received me with a heavenly smile of most perfect peace. Never have I seen a more beautiful example of the words, ' Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.' It was a grand sermon on that text — more eloquent and touching than any sermon ! " {To Rev. W. Webh.) * <' I owe more to the writings of your father," was the remarlc to us lately of the honoured evangelist, Mr. D. L. Moody, " than to those of any other man. I expected to sea him when across here in 1868. I was so disappointed — he wua sick — and now that .1 have come again, he is gone." PREACHING IN INDIA BY PROXY. 251 Br. Lowe, now Superintendent of the Edinburgli Medical Mission, writes us — " During a considerable portion of my missionary life in India, when, each Thursday, our Catechists and Evangelists came to the Home Station (Neyoor) to give in their weekly reports, I adopted the plan of spending an hour in the forenoon, helping them to prepare a discourse for the following Sabbath. On one occasion, having been too much engaged to prepare a sketch cf a sermon for them myself, I gave them the divisions, the subdivisions, and several of the graphic illustrations of one of your father's sermons. His imaginative style struck a chord of sympathy in the Oriental mind, and the sermon, preached to somewhere about sixty congregations on the following Sabbath, produced quite a sensation. A few days after, several of the educated natives came and asked me to read the Doctor's sermons to them in English on the Sabbath evenings. I gladly consented to do so, and they were so much impressed with them that they urged me to prepare one regularly for the agents when they met on report-day, so that they might use them on the Sabbath. I did so ; the substance of the sermon being translated by me into Tamil, and written out legibly on the black board ; the agents then copied it for themselves on their oleys or palmyra leaves, and it was made the subject of exposition and prayer for the remainder of the hour, while they worked it out thereafter, in their own way, in their Sabbath ministrations to their respective congregations. Thus, for many months, almost every Lord's day, one of Dr. Guthrie's sermons, adapted, so to speak, for an Indian audience, was preached in the congi-ega- tions throughout the Neyoor district, and they were much blessed to the people. Several of the sketches, clothed with the Doctor's own vivid conceptions, were translated and published from time to time in our monthly Christian Messenger. " I remember telling the Doctor about the native agents thus using his sermons ; and I can never forget how, his face beaming with joy, he raised his hands and said, ' My dear sir, I thank God for such tidings. I rejoice to know that in some measure I have helped to tell the sons and daughters of India the story of the cross.' 'The Gospel in Ezekiel,' * The Way to Life,' and ' Speaking to the Heart,' " adds Dr. Lowe, " are books more used perhaps than any others by Christian laymen in conducting religious services in those parts of India where the regular ministrations of clergymen are not available." 252 MEMOIR. In 1862 Dr. Guthrie was unanimously elected, in succession to Dr. Candlish, Moderator of the General Assembly — the highest honour which the Free Church has to bestow on any of her ministers. To his son Alexander, then in a mercantile house in Liverpool, he humorously writes of the externals of his anticipated office : — "Edinbltegh, ^^r(7, 1864. ** We have begun to make arrangements for the Assembly. I have to stand in old court-dress on the Thursday evening, at what they call a ' Reception.' Shorts, buckles, shoes, cocked hat, and the whole old-l'ashioned dress are ordered ; and I say I am to make a fool of myself to please my fi-iends. I wanted to be rid of all these paraphernalia, but nobody would let me ; Lord Dalhousie, by way of lun, threatening he would move I should not be elected, unless I would consent to conform to ancient customs ! Your mother and I will have to shake hands with some fifteen hundred people at the door. Pity our hands, if they all shake with the vehemence of the deacon ! Then, we will have to breakfast about 1,500 people, 200 each morning. " We were very glad indeed to hear of your promotion, and that you had begun to climb the ladder. Seek by daily and earnest prayer that you may be one of Christ's true and loving followers, and, like our blessed Saviour, may grow in wisdom as in stature. May the Lord, my dear boy, keep and bless you! " Your affectionate father, " Thomas Guthrie." The honour of presiding over the deliberations of the Supreme Court of the Free Church during the ten days of its Session involves an opening address, the return- ing of thanks as the Church's mouthpiece to deputies from sister and foreign Churches, and likewise a second address at the close of the General Assembly's pro- ceedings. Dr. Guthrie embraced the opportunity this last duty afforded him of delivering his views on a SUPPORT OF THE MINISTRY. 253 subject -which had long appeared to him one of primary importance — viz., the necessity of a more adequate support for the Christian ministry. " I have had this subject," he said, " long in my head, and long on my heart." Speaking in 1846, he said, "I pressed this subject upon Dr. Chalmers ; " and, in a letter ten years thereafter to Dr. Candlish, he thus expressed himself — " Edinburgh, October 2Srd, 1856. •' I wish to see your talents and influence directed to a subject which stands much in need of them. It is, that unless we get our ministers secured of a better and more suitable provision than they at present enjoy, the elfect will be disas- trous in the end ; and, unless you put your shoulder to that wheel, I cherish no hope of our getting forward. I have been grieved although not surprised to see the disinclination, even of religious parents in the more respectable ranks of life, to educate children, who give signs of grace, for the ministry." The more he became acquainted with the condition of matters in other Churches, the more he felt that lihis was a subject which all of them had need to face. This convic- tion was painfully impressed on his mind by an incident that occurred to him when in London in 1848 : — " On arriving at Mr. Nisbet's, the well-known publisher's, in Berners Street, a private carriage was leaving his door, from which I saw a large bundle given out. On passing this bundle, which lay in the lobby, Mr. Nisbet touched it with his foot, saying, ' You'll not guess what that is ? That contains cast-otf clothes for the families of poor clergymen of the Church of England. I receive and distribute a large quantity of them every year, and they are most thankfully received.' I stood amazed at this ; that men of education and accomplish- ments, of refinement and piety, who were devoting their strtngth and talents to the cause of our Redeemer, should be placed in such humiliating cu'cnmstances. It was a shame ; but the 254 MEMOIR. shame did not belong to them. I could not have been more grieved, but I should have been less astonished, had I known then, as I do now, the utterly inadequate provision made for many of the ministers of that Church. At this moment, out of 5,000 curates, most of whom have the feelings, and have re- ceived the education, and are expected to make the appearance, of gentlemen, many do not receive so much as the salary of a junior clerk, or the wages of a skilled artisan ! " The warning and appeal whicli he addressed to his own Churcli from the Moderator's chair in 1862 was unusually telling and impressive ; and we are induced to give longer extracts from it than we should otherwise have done, from the circumstance that, on his death-bed, eleven years thereafter, Dr. Guthrie not only referred to the subject, but expressed an anxious desire, if God should spare him, to press this whole matter once more on the Christian people of the land : — " Fathers and Brethren, — I intend to speak out my thoughts fully and frankly on this matter. My ministry is well nigh run ; the voyage of life draws to its close ; I seem to see the lights and hear the voices on the shore ; grey hairs, the long shadows, and the fast-thinning band of compatriots are voices in my ears saying, ' Work while it is called to-day ' — * Speak while it is called to- day'— 'The night cometh when no man can work, and thy tongue shall be silent in the dust.' Standing as I do here, not far remote in the course of nature from the verge of another world, I feel myself above suspicion of personal or selfish motives. " The calamity which I stand in dread of, — next to the withdrawal of the Divine blessing, the greatest a SUPPORT OF THE MINISTRY. 255 Cliurcli can suffer, — is that the rising talent and genius and energy of our country may leave the ministry of the gospel for other professions. Under God, there are three grand powers now moving the world — the Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit. I have no jealousy of the press and platform ; but if they are allowed to monopo- lize the talent and genius of our country, it will be bad for the country, bad for them, bad for the Church of Christ ; — a fatal day when our pulpits are proverbial for dulness, our Sabbaths are a weariness, and the highest of all professions has the smallest of men to fill it. " ' A scandalous maintenance,' Matthew Henry says, * makes a scandalous ministry ; ' and if so, I'll give you another sentence which, though my own, is as pregnant with truth as Matthew Henry's : * The poverty of the manse will develop itself in the poverty of the pulpit.' Genteel poverty ! — may you never know it ! — genteel poverty, to which some doom themselves, but to which ministers are doomed, is the greatest evil under the sun. Give me liberty to wear a frieze coat, and I will thank no man for a black one ; give me liberty to rear my sons to be labourers, and my daughters to be domestic servants, and the manse may enjoy the same cheerful contentment that sheds its sunlight on many a pious and lowly home. But to place a man in circumstances where he is expected to be generous and hospitable, to have a hand as open as his heart is to the poor, to give his family a liberal edu- cation, to bring them up according to what they call genteel life — to place a man in these circumstance, and 256 MEMOIR. deny him the means of doing so, is, but for the hope of Heaven, to embitter existence. " An honest weaver in my native town whose minister was a highly esteemed * Old Light,' and, what is more, a true light, was clear for keeping the minister's stipend down at the lowest figure ; and he alleged in proof of the advantage of a poor stipend that the Church never had better, nor so good ministers as in those days when they wandered in sheep-skins and goat- skins, and in dens and caves of the earth. If any sympathize with the weaver, I answer that I have an insuperable objection to 'dens and caves,' — they create damp; and, secondly, as to the habiliments, it will be time enough to take up that question when our people are prepared to walk Princes Street with Dr. Candlish and me, not in this antique dress (that of the Moderator), but in the more primitive and antiquated fashion of goat-skins with the horns on! So I dispose of all such wretched evasions, t "I would not hold out any lure to avarice ; 'I would tempt no man to enter the Church by the hope of wealth ; but I wish no man to be deterred from it by the certainty of poverty. That stands as a barrier at this moment — I don't say between the Church and the higher classes, but between the Church and the middle classes ol society. I want to remove that barrier. How many noble, generous, large-hearted, Christ-loving elders have we in our Church ! Yet I wish to know how many of these gentlemen (engaged in Glasgow in commerce, or in Edinburgh in the honourable pursuits of the law) are ADDRESS AS MODERATOR. 257 at this moment training tlieir sons for tlie ministry ? They give us their silver — I want their sons. And why do I want their sons, but that the pulpits of the Free Church may be filled with a fair representation of the position as well as the piety of the Free Church ? No man will suspect me of undervaluing the humbler classes of the people. If I have lived for one thing more than another, it has been to save and raise the very poorest of the poor. I believe the humbler classes of the people, in their political and religious views, to be sounder, take them all and all, than any other class. Nevertheless, I tell you plainly that to me it seems most important and desirable that there should be at least a fair number of what we call well-born and well-bred men in the ministry, to give it a tone removed from all vulgarity ; or that thing still more offensive, called vulgar gentility. And let me say for the upper classes in our Church, that the humbler have no reason to fear that they will betray their interests. The men that went out to the hill-side in the days of the Covenant, and preached in the face of CMver- house's dragoons, were many, if not most of them, what they call well-born men. The Erskines and Moncrieffs, the first leaders of the Secession, were also men of family and position ; and it deserves to be mentioned that while before the Disruption there were three clergymen in the Established Church who were the sons of baronets, in 1843 they went out with us to a man. "What I desire is, to see all classes in our pulpit — the piety and genius and talent of every class. VOL. II. 8 258 MEMOIR. " One tblng I would venture to suggest. The evil of small stipends throughout the Church will take years to mend. But what I want to know is this, why those congregations which have numbers and wealth enough to provide their minister with such an income as his position requires, and his talents entitle him to, don't do it ? Why should talent and genius not insure the same measure of competency in the Church that they do in every other profession ? Will any man tell me why one who brings the richest gifts and the richest graces to the highest office should be the only man so inadequately remunerated that, when his coffin is paid, the family have nothing left, and an appeal must be made to the gene- rosity of the public ? I admire the generosity that answers the appeal, but I would admire more the justice that rendered it unnecessary. I see that an elder in Glasgow has proposed that there should be some three or four Free Church livings in Edinburgh, some three or four Free Church livings in Glasgow and elsewhere throughout the Church, up to the mark of £1,000. I am not astonished at the proposal. It is every way wise. I can lay my hands on men in the Church who, if they had gone to the Bar, would have risen to the top of it, and not £1,000, but £5,000 a year would have been their income ; and here (laying his hand on Dr. Candlish) is the man ! * ♦ ♦ * ♦ ♦ " Did our youth, some years ago, leave titles, estates, luxurious mansions, kind fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, ADDRESS AS MODERATOR. 259 and blooming brides, to tbrow tbemselves on the stores of tbe Black Sea, and face frost and famine, pestilence and the iron shower of death, before the walls of Sebastopol ? And shall piety blush before patriotism ? Shall Jesus Christ call in vain for less costly sacrifices ? I trust, fathers and brethren, that the words I have uttered will teach our people what is due to them who watch for their souls ; and, while stirring up pious parents to give their children to the Church, will induce the children of grace and <>enius and talent to give themselves to the ministry. "Let me speak to them of my Master. I have served Him for more than thirty years ; my head has become grey in His service ; but I can say, even when I saw how much richer I might have become in other professions, and when I felt the greatest hardships of my own, I never regretted my choice. I have been a poor servant ; I have a thousand infirmities on my head, and sins on my conscience, for which I look for pardon only through the blood of Christ ; but, fathers and brethren, poor servant as I have been, I can stand up this night for my Master, and say Christ has been a good and • blessed and gracious Master to me." 83 CHAPTER X. TOTAL ABSTINENCE. While a country minister, Dr. Guthrie had, happily for himself, little or nothing to do with the habitually intemperate. Arbirlot, as he describes it in his Auto- biography was a favoured parish. There was indeed a small ale-house in the village, and a public-house at one extremity of the district ; but, out of a population of a thousand people, there were only one or two indi- viduals, at most, anywise addicted to the bottle. Never- theless, he was from the first on the watch against the destroyer. He had not been in Arbirlot a year till the ale-liouse door was closed ; and though he failed in a similar attempt to get the one public-house removed, he used his influence successfully to prevent the existence of a second. No wonder, then, that on coming to a large city parish, the vigilance he displayed in Arbirlot was redoubled. It needed not many days' visitation among the parishioners of Old Greyfriars, to discover that nine-tenths of the abounding poverty, wretchedness, and Sabbath-breaking were traceable to what he called " that detestable vice of drunkenness." Each year of the seven during which he DRINK'S DOINGS. 261 laboured among tlie Edinburgli poor increased bis impres- sion of tbe extent and appalling consequences of tbis vice in tbe localities wbere tbey dwell. " I went down to tbe Cowgate, Grassmarket, St. Mary's Wynd, College Wynd, Brodie's Close ; — and I found drink meeting me at every corner, defeating me in every eflfort." Tbis experience not merely filled bis beart witb sorrow, but it " wrougbt " in bim for bis wbole future life, " indignation, fear, zeal, yea revenge " against tbat vice. Nor was it only amid tbe degraded dwellings of bis parisb tbat be encountered its ravages : as minister of a large congregation, tbe evil tbing met bim in many an unexpected quarter. " Let tbe reader accompany me to a respectable part of tbis city ; and supposing us to be now standing by the door, let me inform him that the house is inhabited by two sisters, one of whom is the widow of a gentleman who belonged to a most respectable profession. Having gone to visit the unmarried sister, I was engaged reading to her a portion of God's Word when the widow entered the room ; and although my eye as it glanced from the book caught something strange in her bearing, I suspected nothing till we knelt in prayer, when the wild muttering at my side convinced me that drunken- ness was there profaning the presence of God. Abruptly breaking off, I hurried from the apartment, and having left the widow in the room, took an opportunity of expressing my pain and sorrow to the sister, who had followed me to the door. There, blushing with shame and trembling with agitation, the bitter tears streaming down her face, she briefly told me her melancholy story. ' How kind my sister used to be ! but now she is a drunkard.' " When half-way down-stairs, I heard screams sounding as if they came from the house which I had left ; I stopped and, as I listened, they became louder and louder. I hurriedly retraced my steps, and, being fortunate enough to find the outer door open, suddenly entered the room from which the cries came. I can never forget the spectacle — • it is calotyped in my mind, and is as fresh as if it had been 262 MEMOIR. seen but yesterday. The widow lady stood in the middle of the floor ; her cap, which had fallen off in the struggle, lay on the carpet, her long grey hairs were streaming over her shoulders, and her eyes were shooting fire ; she was the very picture of a demon. With one hand she grasped her sister by the throat, and with the other was beating her on the head with a large key, while the blood streamed over her face and dress." Experiences such as this forced on him ere long the inquiry, What ought I, a minister of the Gospel, to do ? During the earlier years of his life in Edinburgh he did not answer the question in the way of personally renouncing the moderate use of stimulants ; he took that step at length, however, and in doing so may be said to have been indirectly a convert of Father Matthew's : — " I was first led," he told a temperance meeting in Belfast, in 1862, "to form a high opinion of the cause of temperance by the bearing of an Irishman. It is now some twenty-two years ago. I had .left Omagh on a bitter, biting, blasting day, with lashing rain, and had to travel across a cold country to Cookstown. Well, by the time we got over half the road, we reached a small inn, into which we went, as sailors in stress of weather run into the first haven. By this time we were soaking with water outside, and as these were the days, not of tea and toast, but of toddy-drinking, Ave thought the best way was to soak ourselves with whisky inside. Accordingly we rushed into the inn, ordered warm water, and got our tumblers of toddy. Out of kindness to the car-driver, we called hira in ; he was not very well clothed — indeed, he rather belonged in that respect to the order of my Ragged School in Edinburgli. He was soaking with wet, and we offered him a good rumme-r of toddy. We thought that what was ' sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander,' — but the car-driver was not such a gander as we, like geese, took him for. Hq would not taste it. 'Why?' we asked ; ' what objection have you ? ' Said he, ' Plaze your riv'rence, I am a teetotaller, and I won't taste a drop of it.' " Well, that stuck in my throat, and it went to my heart ; and (in another sense than drink, though !) to my head. Here was a humble, uncultivated, uneducated Roman Catholic carman ; HE BECOMES AN ABSTAINER. 263 and I said, if that man can deny himself this indulgence, why should not I, a Christian minister ? I remembered that ; and I have ever remembered it to the honour of Ireland. I have often told the story,* and thought of the example set by that poor Irishman for our people to follow. I carried home the remembrance of it with me to Edinburgh. That cir- cumstance, along with the scenes in which I was called to labour daily for years, made me a teetotaller." " When I was a student," he said on another occasion, "there was not, so far as I knew, one abstaining student within the University, nor was there an abstaining minister in the whole Church of Scotland." Even in 1841, when he met the poor Irish car-driver, there were very few persons in Edinburgh above the position of working men who were abstainers, and these few were regarded as well-meaning enthusiasts at best. Nor might he have taken his place among them, but for an ever-growing conviction that, on grounds of Christian expediency, a stand must be made against tliose customs of society which, in his belief, lay at the root of the * Very probably on the following occasion, of which an eye- witness, the Rev. H. T. Howat, of Liverpool, writes : — "On no platfonn was Dr. Guthrie more at home than on that of total abstinence, and to no cause did he render more trenchant and effective service. The welfare of the poor cabmen of Edinburgh had a warm place in his heart, and one sight in this connection, engraven on memory's page, I see before me now. It was a cabmen's supper-party at twelve o'clock at night. Miss Catherine Sinclair gave the entertainment; Dean Ramsay was in the chair. Dr. Guthrie had agreed to speak. He rose at two o'clock in the morning. With these poor but honest men before him, that great master of human emotion struck the chord he knew so well — their homes, their wives, their children, their very horses. The sleeve of many a rough coat was raised to many an eye. The chord was changed, and peals of merriment rang out from these strong throats. These much- neglected men were thrilled, and many a wife and child — ay, and many a po'ir dumb animal itself, I can well believe, — got the benefit of that thrill for many days thereafter." 264 MEMOIR. evil. The incident whicli follows must have happened in the year 1844 or 1845 : — " The first time that I met Lord Jeffrey in private, was at a dinner-party in the house of my very kind friend, Mr. Maitland, of Dundrennan, — afterwards, and for far too short a time. Lord Dundrennan. This was rather a trying occasion for me, in so far as it was the first on which I was to declare myself as belonging to the — at that time — despised sect of total abstainers or teetotallers. I had become convinced that my power to do good among the lapsed classes lay in standing out before them as one who, in following Christ and for their sakes, was ready to take up his cross daily and deny himself. If I was to prevail on them to give up the whisky, I myself must first give up the wine. I had known so many instances of the sons of ministers, and of Edinburgh ministers, going to the bad ; I had seen so many of my old Divinity Hall acquaintances placed at the bar of the General Assembly, and deposed for drunkenness, and other crimes which it leads to, that, with an eye both to the good of my family and of my parishioners, I resolved to stand out before the public as a total abstainer, and to bring up my children in the habits of that brotherhood and sisterhood. I well remember yet the day and place when I screwed up my courage to the sticking point. From how great a load of anxiety and care in respect of the future of my children it relieved my mind ! " But I confess I felt it hard to have my principles A GOOD CONFESSION. 265 put to so severe a strain, before they tad time to acquire fibre and firmness, as tbey had to stand at Mr. Maitland's dinner-table. Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, with their wives, and others of the elite of Edinburgh literary and legal society, were there — people who might have heard of teetotallers, but certainly had never seen one before, and some of whom probably never dreamed of denying themselves any indulgence whatever for the sake of others, far less for the wretched and degraded creatures who haunted the Cowgate and Grassmarket. "But by my principles I was resolved to stick, cost what it might. So I passed the wine to my neighbour without its paying tax or toll to me, often enough to attract our host's attention, who, to satisfy himself that I was not sick, called for an explanation. This I gave modestly, but without any shamefacedness. The company could hardly conceal their astonishment ; and when Jefirey, who sat opposite to me, found that in this matter I was living not for myself, but others, — denying myself the use of luxuries in which all around were indulging, and to which I had been accustomed, and which had done me, and were likely to do me, no harm, that I might by my example reclaim the vicious and raise the fallen, and restore peace and plenty to wretched homes, — that generous-hearted, noble-minded man could not con- ceal his sympathy and admiration. He did not speak, but his look was not to be mistaken, and, though kind and courteous before my apology, he was ten times more so after it. This was to me a great encouragement to 266 MEMOIR. persevere in tLe line in whicli I liad entered, and whicli I continued to follow for twenty years. " Independent of the good it did to my family and others, it was a great personal advantage to myself. It made my health better, my head clearer, my spirits lighter, and my purse heavier. I feel sure that all parents, though they themselves might not be able to shake off their old habits (a very easy thing after all to one who has not become the slave of drunkenness), if they but knew the load taken from my mind when I first resolved to bring up my family in total abstinence, would rear their children in the total disuse of all such dangerous stimulants." When, in 1847, Dr. Guthrie took up the case of the outcast children of the streets, he found that, in eight cases out of ten, their miserable plight was due to the drunken habits of their parents.* " Believe me," were his words, " it is impossible to exaggerate, impossible truthfully to paint, the effect of this vice on those who suffer from it — most of all on those poor innocent children that are dying under cruelty and starvation, that shiver in their rags upon our streets, that walk unshod the winter snows, and with their matted hair and hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes, and sallow countenances glare out on us, wild and savage-like, from these patched and dusty windows." * In the Report of the Edinburgh Original Ragged School for 1848-49 it is stated that, out of tliree hundred and seventy-nine children whose names had appeared in the School Register during that year, three hioidrtd and twenty-seven had been ascertained to be the offspring of drunken parents. HIS POSITION AS AN ABSTAINER. 267 His Ragged School work, therefore, instead of diverting his attention from "drink's doings," greatly strengthened his dread and abhorrence of them. He lost no oppor- tunity of inculcating everywhere the two conclusions to which he had come, viz. : first, that for personal safety it were well for all to abstain ; and second, that in view of the condition of society. Christian men, and especially Christian ministers, should in this matter set an example before those who are exposed to greater temptations than they. Still, though an earnest abstainer. Dr. Guthrie never joined those who, regarding stimulants as 2Jer se and in all circumstances evil, banish them from their houses. When alone with his family, no liquor was to be seen on his table, but he did not make his own practice a rule for his guests. They had liberty to take or decline wine, as they thought fit. Together with Dr. Grey, Dr. Burns of Kilsyth, Dr. Horatius Bonar, Mr. Arnot, and others, he was one of the founders of the Free Church Temperance Society, whicji at one period numbered between 200 and 300 ordained ministers, and he watched with interest the progress of similar societies in connection both with the Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church. " I would rather," he declared, " see in the pulpit a man who is a total abstainer from this root of all evil, drink, than a man crammed with all the Hebrew 'roots' in the world." From 1850 till laid aside from active work, he spoke on the subject in many varied circum- stances. A Students' Temperance Society had been 268 MEMOIR. formed in the University of Edinburgh, the existence of which was due to the Lite Professor of Surgery, James Miller, one of Dr. Guthrie's dearest friends, and, with himself, one of the first of the more prominent men in that city to adopt these views. " I speak what I know," said Dr. Guthrie in addressing the students. " I have seen no fewer than ten ministers deposed from their office for drunkenness. With some of these I have sat down at the table of the Lord, and all" of them I numbered in the rank of acquaintances and friends. This accursed vice has changed into ashes the laurel crown on the head of genius ; and — the wings of the poet scorched by its hell-fire flame — he who once played in the light of sunbeams, and soared aloft into the skies, has basely crawled in the dust." On another occasion we find him in the Normal School, addressing a gathering of those who are in training for teachers, and again, at the cavalry barracks, speaking to the dragoons. '* Four weeks ago," he told, " I was at Biggar Fair, and the week after next I am going to Calder Fair — not to buy siceetics, far less to drink whisky-toddy ; but recollecting what I wit- nessed in my early days at the two hiring markets in my native town of Brechin, and the scenes of drunkenness, dissipation, and disorder there enacted, I will go there for the purpose of doing what I can to stop them with God's help. I believe I succeeded at Biggar Fair in keeping some hundreds of people sober, and sending them home sober as judges, ay, and more sober than judges have sometimes been ! " He was ever ready to accompany deputations to the magistrates to press for a reduction in the number of licensed houses in Edinburgh. Nothing seemed to him THE LICENSING COURT. 269 more monstrous tlian that low public-houses should be planted in greatest numbers just where the poverty is at a maximum and the power of resisting temptation is at a minimum. "Think of an Edinburgh BaiHe," he writes, ''the chain of office gleaming on his ample paunch, himself ceiftainly a sober, benevolent, and worthy man, telling us, some years ago, that he would oppose any reduction of the licensed whisky shops ; and why ? because, forsooth, he knew a lady whose chief means of maintenance was the high rent which such a shop brought in. With magisterial dignity he struck his staff on the pavement, and demanded to know if we wished to break the widow's bread ? Who but the worthy magistrate could have been ignorant of this, that the arijumentum ad miseri- cordiam lay all the other way ; — that for one widow such shop maintains, it makes widows by the score; and that, to maintain one family in affluence, it reduces many to penury and clothes hundreds in rags ? " While holding pronounced views in favour of entire abstinence as a practice expedient for all, and a clear duty in the case of many, he gladly co-operated with those who were not prepared to go that length, in various movements aimed at the diminution of intemperance. He was one of the founders, in 1850, of the Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness, the members of which were all more or less influential per- sons, but scarcely any of them save himself abstainers. In order to leaven the public mind, the first step this Association took was to issue some short, telling state- ments as to the extent of the vice in Scotland, and the remedial measures judged necessary. 270 MEMOIR. "AuffHst l6tJ>, 1850. ** Candlish, Norman MacLeod, Begg, Dr. Alexander, &c., have been engaged to prepare a series of publications on the different branches of the subject — each is to set up and fire a battery. Besides these large guns, we are to keep up a rattling fire of small arms. " We are not ignorant of the difficulties and greatness of the work we have undertaken, but the evil is so monstrous and, to use your appropriate term, so appalling, and the very well-being of the country is so manifestly in peril, that I cherish great hope of ultimate success. I hope God has not so far left us but that we will act with the sense and vigour of ' The Duke,' who on one occasion sent forward a body of trusty men to knock on the head not some thousand men, but some thousand barrels of wine, which lay in the way of his march, and to which he was more afraid to lead up his troops, than if every barrel charged with wine had been a cannon charged with shot. It is high time to ' start ' the spirit casks." {To Mr. Fox Maule.) Dr. Guthrie himself opened the campaign ; writing in 1850 a lengthened pamphlet, entitled, " A Plea on behalf of Drunkards, and against Drunkenness."* " Edinburgh, iVo!»««ier \st, 1850. " I must go out to-day f although it be only to the vestry, that I may get through with my anti-drunkenness pamphlet, which I hope will do good. Let us all pray it may be so, and be the means of saving those who are ready to perish. With sermon-writing, correspondence, a constant influx of people about this thing and that, I have not had my eyes on print for a fortnight and more — save within the boards of the Bible and on the newspaper pages. " Lord Ashley was kind enough to come here and see me last night. We discussed many matters, I urged him strongly to commence a lay movement for the reform of the Church of England, to which he expressed himself much inclined." {To Miss M. E. Lockhart.) * That paniplilet he followed up by three New Year's Tracts, — "New Year's Diinkiug" (18.31), "A Happy New Year" (1852), and "The Old Year's Warning" (1853). t He had been confined to liis Ijouse bj' illness. THE FORBES MACKENZIE ACT. 271 The Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness has no longer an existence ; but one important service which it rendered was in taking the primary steps to secure a legislative measure now widely known as the Forbes Mackenzie Act, whereby the hours for the sale of spirits have on week-days been curtailed (no public-house in Scotland being allowed to open before eight a.m., or to remain open later than eleven p.m.),. and which has secured the closing of drinking- shops during the whole of the Lord's day. Dr. Guthrie longed for the time when a similar measure shall be extended to England and Ireland. He gave evidence before the Royal Com- mission appointed to investigate into the working of that Aet, and rejoiced when, as the result, the pubLcans and their friends were defeated, and the stringency of its provisions increased. He thought that the Legisla- ture might go much farther than they had ever yet done in the way of dealing with intemperance and the intem- perate ; and, among other measures, desiderated an Act giving power to place habitual drunkards under restraint, and to treat them as lunatics for the time being. Not content with denouncing sin in general terms from the pulpit, and convinced that intemperance was a sin, above all others, insidious, widespread, and destruc- tive, he preached a series of sermons on that vice as it exists especially in great cities, setting forth the duty of parents to train their children in total abstinence. These sermons were afterwards published in 1857 imder the 272 MEMOIR. title of "The City; its Sins and Sorrows."* None of his writings made a profounder impression, and none has been more extensively useful. It was given over by its author to the Directors of the Scottish Temperance League, and published by them at a reduced price; its circulation has exceeded 50,000 copies. For the Scottish Temperance League he wrote two New Year's Tracts, "A Word in Season" (1859) a4id "The Contrast" (1860), which have been circulated to the number of 450,000. Their design was to sound a warning note against the old but odious custom among the working classes in Scotland of introducing the new- year by an outbreak of dissipation. The moral of the latter tract was drawn from a tragical incident, the sight of which made a great impression on his own mind, and which, fresh from the scene itself, he thus narrated in a letter to his eldest son — "Blairgowrie, Maxj \%ili, 1859. " I addressed a great audience here on Wednesday evening. My address extended the length of two hours. The mipression was wide in favour of Total Abstinence, and tlie result was a resolution to form a Congregational or Free Church Society. Next day horrified all the town by an event which, horrible as it is, will promote the cause here beyond all speeches, and which, c. niing after my address, has fastened it as by a nail driven down into the heads and hearts of the people. " A wretched, ill- doing, drunken baker had come on Thurs- day morning by the train from Dundee. He had been working there, and for some days past drinking hard. He had two * This book was published by Messrs. A. and C. Black ; and Dr. Guthrie was one day much amused, when in conversation wilh the lato Jlr. A. Black, M.P., in his publishing warehouse, North Bridge, Edin- burgh, to hoar a youth who had been sent from a bookseller's asking for " twenty copies of Gulhrie's 8ins I " DRINK, MURDER, AND SUICIDE. 273 children here, boarded with a woman, for whom, spending his money on drink, he had not been paying regularly. The woman, by letter, had dunned him for their board. The two innocent bairns were crossing the bridge on their way to school in the morning when they encountered their father. He bade them go up with him and see their grandmother, who lived some mile or so up the banks of the Ericht. "It was a roaring flood, and he was mad and moody after his days of debauchery. He took his lassie in the one hand, his boy in the other. About 1,000 feet above the bridge and the town, the banks approach, the bed grows rocky, and the whole body of the water shoots among horrid rocks, forming great black, deep, swirling pools, through a very contracted channel. They reach the place. He takes off the laddie's cap and, thro\ving it on the ground, says he'll buy a better for him ; does the same with his lassie's bonnet, then, standing on a rock about eight feet above the boiling flood, he seizes his boy and throws him in, — he is shot ofl' like an arrow. Some twelve feet farther down, there rises up from the black depths a rock which lifts its head about a foot above the surface, the stream roaring on each side. By a most merciful Providence the boy was whirled within reach of it ; he caught it, hung on, and got upon the rock. " This must have been the work almost of a moment ; he was safely there before the wretched drunkard had had time, I fancy, to complete his work, for the boy saw him next seize his little sister, and leap with her into the jaws of death. The poor laddie called to her to make for the rock. She cried, as she floated by along with her father, that he ' wad na' let her ; ' and at that moment the boy saw the drowning monster actually raise his hand and press her poor head below the water, and then, in a moment, both vanished from his sight while he stood screaming. A woman heard his cries ; the alarm was given, a ladder was thrown from the bank, it reached the rock — a man passed over and rescued him. He told his story to Mr. John Chalmers, who saw him and found him a most intelligent child. " Since Thursday morning, with boats and poles and creepers, they have been seeking for their bodies. To-day Mr. Taylor,* Miss Stoddart, and I went to see the place. As we were return- ing, and had concluded that in these deep dark holes with their swirling waters that have scooped out caverns below the rock the bodies might lie for ever, I saw a commotion among the * Rev. Robert Taylor, at that time of the Free Church, Blairgowrie, now of Norwood, Loudou, whose guest Dr. Guthrie then was. VOL. 11. T 274 • MEMIIR. people that were scattered in groups all along the banks. A few steps brought me in sight of what I never shall forget. A deep hole lies behind a dam-dyke. A man had thrust a long pole into it, and when I got to the spot he was up to the middle in water, making his way to the shore, bearing in his arms the poor dead body of a bonny lassie. Her arms were extended, her head was lying on his shoulder, her face was ruddy, I thought it was a girl that had fallen in, and was not dead. But the outburst of grief, the cries and tears of women and children soon undeceived me. The body of the poor bairn, her yellow hair parted back from a sweet forehead, with a comely face, looking calm as if asleep, the face full of colour, but the little hands and arms deadly white, was laid on the bank. The sight was overwhelming enough to drive one mad with sorrow, rage, pity, horror, indignation. I spoke out to the multitude against drinking, and when one spoke of the body of the man lying, perhaps, in the same place, I said i^ it were found it should be hung up in chains; to which, to the credit of humanity, there was from some a loud and hearty assent. " The only thing that calmed me was to look on that poor corpse, and think that, poor thing, this lassie was better dead than living, — with God, and in His arms, than to live and have a drunkard for her father, I expect God will bring much good out of tnis most horrid and unnatural tragedy. Strange that ministers will meet in General Assemblies and discuss this thing and that thing, nor address themselves aright and with self-denial to this spring and well-head of miseries and mur- ders, the damnation of souls and the ruin of our land ! "Though I would rather not have seen all this, it is well perhaps that I did — profit to others may come out of my pain." During the last ten years of his life, Dr. Guthrie was less able to prosecute the public advocacy of the total abstinence cause, — not because he had in any degree lost faith in those principles of patriotism and Christian expediency on whicli he had long defended it, but because of his own failing health, and the consequent necessity, under medical orders, to take a certain quantity of wine daily to aid the feeble action of his heart. Without ever disputing the value in certain cases of ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 275 alcohol medicinally employed, lie yet repeatedly, during his later years, tried whether he could not do without it, returning to his former practice of total abstinence, and so prevent his position from being misapprehended :— "Edinburgh, March 29th, 1869. " My dear Dr. Mackenzie,— A friend of mine is at present Ivincr in a very low and critical state, and so entirely do i sympathize with you in your opinion of the use, or rather abuse, doctors make of alcoholic liquors, that I never ask how many glasses of wine he has taken in the last four-and-twen y houi-s, but how many tumblers of beef-tea he has drunk. Indeed, I regard as quite shocking the quantity of spirits they pour over the throats of young people. -1 have re*i your letter anent the poor and Poor Laws with deep interest. I have come to be of opinion that we should have no Poor Laws at all. They are eating out the heart of Scottish domestic virtue. I wish you would publish your views and experiences. We have an Association here for improving the condition of the poor. I have just been writing one o its most distinguished supporters, that such improvements as they aim at they will never accomplish so long as drmking-shops stand thick as forest trees. The taproom is the taproot ot nine-tenths of all the poverty and wretchedness of our country and all will profit nothing so long as the dram-seller sits at the gate. , ,i 1 1 i " May the Lord long spare you and greatly bless you to bless humanity. . , . , *' Yours, with the highest esteem, " Thomas GuTmiiE." John Mackenzie, Esq., M.D., of Eileanach, Inverness. Every time he returned from the Continent he be- wailed the contrast which the comparative sobriety of its gay and godless capitals presented with the shocking sights he witnessed in the streets of London or the High Street of Edinburgh.* But he hailed the dawn of better * In defending his Light Wines Bill in the House of Commons,^ Mr. Gladstone said on May 7th, 1860, "I have found a testimony which is T 2 276 MEMOIR. days for our own land. Amid much apathy, both In Churcli and State, and but tardy progress in the public mind towards the adoption of the radical measures he desiderated, he often referred with thankfulness to a distinct change in the tone of speech and feeling on the subject of total abstinence, the subject being discussed with a candour, and abstainers spoken of with a respect, which at one time they would not have been. He was very hopeful when the Church of England directed serious attention to the subject, and was speci- ally interested in the action taken by Convocation in the Province of Canterbury. Mutual sympathy in this cause brought him into friendly intercourse with not a few English clergymen in latter years ; — among others, Dean Close, Mr. Eardley of Streatham, and Mr. Wight- man of Shrewsbury, who has been so efficiently aided by his admirable wife. In a letter of 27th March, 1871, in which he described various persons with whom he conversed, when at Windsor Castle on occasion of the marriage of Princess Louise, he tells of *' one clerical -looking man in the prime of manhood, who, coming up to me before luncheon, said, ' I must intro- duce myself to you, Dr. Guthrie.' This was Mr. Ellison, entitled to great weight, coming from a man pledged by his sacred pro- fession, eminent for his eloquence, distinguished and beloved for his \irtiies — Dr. Guthrie. That gentleman, in a series of remarkable sermons wliich he wrote, called 'The City, its Sins and Sorrows,' testified that he had been both in Paris and Brussels, as well as in other paris of France and Belgium, on occasions of great national festivity, and during a period of seven weeks he had not seen, whether in mountain hamlets or mighty cities, so much drunkenness or disorder as might be seen in Edin- burgh or other large cities of oui' own country in seven hours." OTHER REMEDIAL MEASURES. 277 the Vicar of Windsor ; and we sat down on a conch to talk over the temperance cause, and what should he done to cvire our people of the vice of drunkenness. Mr. Ellison takes a deep interest in these subjects. I recommended shutting up public-houses, as we do in Scotland, all the Lord's day, and going to the Legislature to demand that it should allow no shop to be open which is opened for the mere purpose of drinking wines, spirits, or ales ; that if people will use stimulants, they must buy them to use in their own houses." Desiderating all along the entire abolition of the drink trafl&c, because he believed that, next to the Gospel, this was the only radical remedy, he gladly countenanced any movement devised with a view to lessen drunkenness by removing temptations to it. He hailed, for instance, the efforts made to secure better dwelling-houses for the working classes, and became a shareholder in a building investment company. In Edinburgh, he aided the now-successful movement for securing a weekly half-holiday, and would have liked to have seen the same boon secured for country people likewise. Early in 1859, the present Sir Andrew Agnew addressed a letter to " Ministers of all denomi- nations in Wigtownshire," urging them to advocate a movement for a Saturday half-holiday for agricultural labourers, embodying the definite proposal that em- ployers should on ordinary occasions be satisfied with seven hours' work on Saturdays. This^ proposal was not well received by the farmers generally, though on 278 MEMOIR. the wliole the idea was favourably entertained by the press. The subject attracted Dr. Guthrie's attention, and Tie addressed the following letter to his friend: — "Edinburgh, Januarxj Z\st, 1859. " My dear Sir Andrew, — I have read your letter with the greatest satisfaction : it is full of truth, and advocates a cause which will eventually ride over all opposition and difficulties. Why should the inhabitants or workers in manufacturing and commercial places have their half-holiday, and not the rural population ? " I believe that your proposal, besides serving a most holy and important purpose in promoting the better observance of the Lord's day, would also promote the morality of the districts. At present, slaviiuj as they do, lads and lasses can only meet when the day is over, and under the cloud of night. This is the only time they have to visit each other and carry on their courtships. This leads to a vast deal of mischief. A Saturday afternoon and evening, which they could call their own, would offer opportunities of decent visiting and courtship which they now have not. " May the seed you have sown speedily spring up, and bring forth good fruit ! If you could get some half-dozen to begin, the practice would become infectious, and it would force its way. Don't despair because it finds opposition in the first instance, and yields no immediate return. The country people are proverbially apathetic and slow of change ; but hold on, and it will be as with a worm we have got hold of on the morning of a fishing-day — if one does not pull too hard, but gives time, and holds on, it comes to hand at last." Dr. Guthrie knew human nature too well to imagine that the incitements to intemperance are to be met suc- cessfully by repressive measures ; he felt that amuse- ment of some kind people will have, and should have; he cordially sympathized therefore with every movement which aimed at devising counter attractions to those of the public-house — on this condition, however, that these can be shown to be of a healthful and innocent kind. DANGEROUS AMUSEMENTS. 279 While in London in 1870, lie thouglit it his duty to visit a number of the lower class places of amusement, to judge for himself whether and how far they could be regarded as answering to such a description, and whether drunk- enness were likely to be diminished by their influence. The opinion he formed was unfavourable in the last degree : — " Anything more disgraceful and scandalous than the licensing of such houses on the part of the magistrates of this Christian country it would be dif- ficult to discover. These places, licensed for dancing and drinking, are hells of iniquity ; nets where thou- sands are snared ; rocks where thousands — to the grief and death of broken-hearted parents and their own present and eternal ruin — make shipwreck. To know their results, and what intolerable ho^h and humbug it is to speak of them as innocent amusements, of which, having respect to the liberty of the subject and the relaxation of the sons and daughters of toil, we are not to deprive them, — to see, I say, the utter and wicked nonsense of that, you have only to see, as I did, the company that frequents them. ** I wish the magistrates — by virtue of their office, instead of trusting to the reports of policemen — were compelled so many times a year to visit every place they license. We should have, I am sure, most of these places shut, and the key turned in the door of all the gin-palaces of respectable London, and of all the low drinking-shops of her mean and vulgar streets." {To his son Patrick.) 28o MEMOIR. The fact that too many so-called places of amusement were turned to a bad account did not lead Dr. Guthrie — as some good people have been led — to give up all personal interest in the question of social relaxation ; on the contrary, his anxiety was increased thereby to encourage and develop svich as he could approve. With this end, he took part more than once in instituting "■ Working Men's Clubs," and heard with special interest of the endeavour made so successfully in Leeds, and since imitated in Edinburgh and elsewhere, to establish what are called " British Workman public-houses with- out the drink." So too, when, in 1855, a series of cheap concerts were started in Edinburgh, and Dr. Guthrie was asked to countenance the attempt, he went ; believing that, minister though he was, and Saturday evening though it was, he was not stepping out of his way in leaving his study and sitting for an hour among the sons of toil, to listen to a piano or violin, and the singing of some simple ballads. An English friend hearing of his presence on that occasion, addressed him immediately in terms of sorrow and surprise. Dr. Guthrie wrote in reply : — * "EniNBrKGH, Kovemher, 1855. " My deae Sir, — ... In my day I have had a full share of misrepresentation and abuse, and have been content to bear it, believing that I could be better employed than in setting such matters right ; and that the fair character of a man engaged in a good cause would sooner or later, like a lifeboat, right itself. t * This letter was afterwards published under the title of "Popular Innocent Eriterliiiiiments" (Scottish Teirjperaiice League, Glasgow, 1856). t " I have given up long ago putting myself to the trouble of killing INNOCENT AMUSEMENTS. 281 " You ask me whether I think that amusements require stimulus. I reply, I don't think that they require stimulus, but I do think that they require direction The love of excitement is so engraven on our nature that it may be regarded as an appetite. Like our other appetites, it is not sinful unless indulged unlawfully or to excess. It is the duty of patriotic and Christian men to restrain these within due limits, and direct them into innocent channels. Indeed it would appear that God has implanted such a feeling in all his creatures for the purpose, no doubt, of ministering to their happiness. Did you ever see a kitten chasing its own tail ? Were you ever amused with that ? Those who are shut up for life in large towns, and never see horses but in the yoke, nor any of the feathered tribes but a sooty, begrimed, and melancholy sparrow, may be ignorant of the habits and happiness of the lower animals ; but who, accustomed to tbe country, has not seen the crows on a summer evening, wheeling, chasing, and darting at each other in the blue sky overhead, and the trouts amusing themselves, much after the same fashion, in some glassy pool ? " To frown on the love of excitement and amusement, as if it were a sin, appears to me a reflection on Providence. I will not reject any gift which God has given, but take it thankfully and try to use it well. Take the case in hand — the musical entertainments in Dunedin Hall — which, although their harmony has been followed by so much discord, I shall continue to support so long as they are conducted as they have been begun. If the devil gave man an ear for mu-sic, and the pleasure in music which those gifted with such an ear enjoy, then let the whole affair be denounced ; but if this is a gift of God, let it be consecrated to His service in the Church, and out of it also, by being used not only as a source of inno- cent, thankful enjoyment, but as a means of weaning or keeping ourselves and others from debasing and forbidden pleasures. This is a noble use to mate of music ; and I cannot take blame to myself, either for the end I had in view or for the means by which I sought to gain it, when I countenanced the entertain- ment in Dunedin Hall. " Liable as I am, with others, to err, I might have sus- pected myself of being drawn to that Hall less by a desire for all the lies thej' tell, — or, indeed, any of them. A man might as well slay away at all the midges which buzz and bite at him in the wood of a Highland glen on a summer evening ! " (^Letter to The Right Hon. Fox Maule, June 2ith, 1847.) 282 MEMOIR. the public good than my own gratification, but for a circum- stance which I have been accustomed to regard as a small misfortune : — I only know that a precentor or performer goes wrong when he sticks ; the bars and quavers, and semi- quavers, and demi-semi-quavers of a musical piece are as unin- telligible to me as Egyptian hieroglyphics ; and I would sooner hear a blackbird pipe out his evening song from the top of a cherry-tree than hear the grandest orchestra of fiddles, fifes, flutes, horns, clarionets, and drums execute the grandest pieces of Mendelssohn or Beethoven. '* Who, however, is ignorant of the powerful attractions of music ? With the friends of total abstinence and the half- holiday movement — among whom, as true friends of humanity, povverlul allies of religion, and conservators of the holy Sabbath, I think it an honour to rank myself — I felt that if we could get up an entertainment which would gratify tastes that God has given, we might preserve many from the dangers of the theatre, the snares of the dancing-saloon, and the dissi- pation of drinking-shops. We have public entertainments of the same kind for the upper classes in the Music Hall ; and I desire to know why the working classes should be denied the same pleasure ? Why make their lot harder than it is ? To me, one of the most pleasant aspects of railway trains and the penny post is that they have given a wider disti-ibution to happiness, and bestowed blessings on the humbler classes which were formerly, in a great measure, the exclusive pro- perty of the rich. The men and women who earn their honest bread honourably with the sweat of their brow have no room for pianos and organs in their humble homes, nor can they atibrd the time or the money for forenoon concerts, and their only evening for relaxation is at the end of the week. Get them another : I would approve of that ; but let us rejoice in everything which gives them a share (after all it is a scanty one) in the benefits which their more fortunate, not more deserving, neighbours possess. I only wish that these were more equally distributed. " I am not surprised that you and some other good people should disapprove of the step I have taken. I took it in the ■full foreknowledge of the cost. Elsewhere than on railways, collisions produce a shock ; yet I hope to see as great a revo- lution in the minds of good people on this subject as on that of total abstinence societies, for the advocacy of which we were denounced by many whose piety I could not but respect, but whose folly I pitied when they charged us with countenancing an anti-Gospol principle and an infidel movement. It was INNOCENT AMUSEMENTS. 283 nothing to me to hear it told that better ' ministers than Dr. Guthrie took their two or three tumblers of whisky-toddy,' or tohear of the visible horror which sat on the countenances of some brethren, when a minister, a friend of mine, who is an abstainer, rose from the table, with its steaming mug and toddy-tumblers, to seat himself at a piano, and sing a sweet, pure Scottish melody " Most respectfully, but very earnestly, would I beseech you, and others like-minded, to consider whether the interests of religion and morality are not more likely to be promoted by ministers and religious people taking an interest in such inno- cent amusements, than by their standing aloof with a sour face and a frown on their brows, or by their endeavouring to dam up waters which, if not directed into pleasant and profitalile channels, will break out in some mischievous, immoral, and destructive way. Some things are lawful which are not expe- dient ; but, I, for one, have no general sympathy with the notion that other people may righteously take part in enjoy- ments from which ministers should be excluded for decorum's sake. That is but another phase of the old loathsome times, when gentlemen got the ladies away to the drawing-room to talk what it was not fit that a decent woman should hear. I hold that a good man should take part in no entertain- ment, to be present at which would raise a blush on a modest woman's cheek, or make a minister of the Gospel feel that in being there he was out of place. What is not fit for a lady or a minister to see or hear, or take part in, is an entertainment not fit for any decent, respectable Christian man. That is common sense and God's truth, or I am greatly mistaken. " Yours very respectfully and faithfully, " Thomas Gutheie." CHAPTER XL NATIONAL EDUCATION. It is a trite remark, that men are not to be made sober, by Act of Parliament : no legislative measures, however well directed, can eradicate a deep-seated moral sore; but Dr. Guthrie looked with great hope to Government action in dealing with another matter essential to his country's well being — the education of the people — and the banishment thereby of that ignorance which is so closely connected with crime. Writing from London on 12th November, 1870, with reference to the English Education Act, he said : — " I have now seen the other curative means from which people here hope so much. I have calculated the proportion between the diseases and the remedies, and the second is to the first as a mere drop in the bucket. My great hope is, under God, in the Educa- tion Act passed last Session. If, as I hope and think, it "will be fairly and vigorously wrought out, it will, I tell them here, prove itself in time the most important and blessed measure passed in Parliament since the Reforma- tion." His acquaintance with the degraded classes, and the interest he had lono: taken in the education of the JOHN KNOX AND THE PARISH SCHOOLS. 285 poor, deepened his conviction that out and beyond all the efforts which Churches and private benevolence can make, the necessities of the case never could or would be met until the State addressed itself to the question ; and he hailed the attainment at length in Scotland of a National Education scheme, for which he had worked and waited more tTian five-and-twenty years. From the date of the Reformation, thanks to the enlightened Christian patriotism of John Knox, Scotland possessed a system of education, nobly planned to supply religious and secular instruction to every child in the country ; a school having been planted in each parish, and placed under ecclesiastical superintendence. From the growth of the population, however, and the many social and ecclesiastical changes which had occurred in the interval, the existing parochial schools had long failed to overtake the needs of the country. The Disruption came, and those parochial schoohnasters who cast in their lot with the Free Church were no longer suffered to retain their position in the parish schools. To provide for them, and at the same time meet to some extent the ever-growing needs of the community, the Free Church instituted, in 1843, an educational scheme of her own. The great majority of her ministers at that period were impressed with the importance of keeping up the old connection between the school and the church. Dr. Guthrie, however, had no sympathy with this view. " I have come, on mature reflection, to believe," he wrote to the late Dr. Gunn, of the Edinburgh High School, 28b MEMOIR. " that Churclies, as such, have nothing to do with secular education, beyond giving to it, as to the various schemes of patriotism and philanthropy, all due encouragement. I am opposed to the attempt now making to bring all educa- tion, secular as well as religious, into the hands of clergy and Church courts, thinking that the Church of Christ cannot be too careful to keep within her own province — strictly, sternly within it — for this among many other reasons, that, doing so, she will then with more grace, more sympathy, and certainly more success, repel all foreign aggression on her own sacred and peculiar domain." Holding these views, he contemplated, with no small regret, the circumstances which led the Free Church to erect schools of her own, and so to establish a denomi- national scheme. "While Dr. Candlish, the distinguished convener of the Free Church Education Committee, spoke of the Education scheme as ** one of the most vital and important of the Free Church's undertakings," Dr. Guthrie was unable to regard it in any such light. On this matter. Dr. Begg and he parted company with most of their leading brethren in the Free Church, and were exposed to not a little misapprehension and obloquy in consequence. Immediately after the accomplishment of his Manse Fund work, and before he had taken up the case of Ragged Schools, his mind was turned specially to the question of a national scheme of Education. Thus, in 1846, he wrote Mr. Maule, from St. Andrews, where he was spending his annual holiday : " St. Andrews, September 5lh, 1846. " Mr. Rutherfurd * was so kind as ask me to spend a few days with him, when we might talk over a very interesting * Lord Advocate of Si-Otlund at tbe time. NATIONAL V. DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS. 287 matter that we just entered upon — I mean education. If I am so fortunate as to be in town when you return to London, I should like much to have some conversation with you on that matter. It is one of vital importance, and presents your Ministry an opportunity of earning for themselves the highest honours and conferring on the country the most valuable benefits. I had a long and rather keen discussion with Dr. Candlish and some others anent the matter. I am confident his scheme won't succeed, and convinced, moreover, that it should not. '* In the way of a general system of education not exclusively secular, Ireland presents an almost insuperable difficulty : the people, who are divided into two parties, have two Bibles. In England, next, the way is not without great difficulties. Divided into, say, three great sects, Episcopal, Wesleyan, and Independent, though they are all agreed in the same version of the Bible, they have three catechisms. In our land, the way is, I may say, cleared and clear of such stumbling-blocks. Divided into three greatparties of Established, Free, and ordinary Presbyterian dissenters, we have one Bible and one Catechism ; there is no reason why we should not all meet in the same school to-morrow, the situation of teacher being open to the competition of all. If your Government are not yet prepared to dissever the present parochial schools from their existing connection with the Established Church and the heritors, some such system as the above might be applied in supplying those educational wants of town and country which the present parochial machinery does not meet. " I intend to bring the whole matter before the Presbytery of Edinburgh shortly after my return to town, and, from all that I can learn, I will find myself backed by the great body of the laity belonging to our Free Church, and its happy Presby- terian constitution may show its healthful character on this as on other great occasions, I am quite satisfied that the great body of our ministers will, by-and-by, come to view this matter in the same light." An unhappy collision whicli arose out of tlie refusal of Dr. Candlish and the Free Church Committee to sanc- tion the appointment of the late Dr. Gunn (whose views were in favour of a national as opposed to a denomina- tional scheme) to one of the Government Inspectorships 288 MEMOIR. connected with the Free Church schools, increased the breach between Dr. Candlish and himself on the general question : — To Dr. Canulish. "Edinburgh, November \2lh, 1850. * * * * . * " I never liked controversy all my days, and such experience as I have had of it does not recommend it to me. I frankly say, for myself, that I have found it indispose me for higher duties, disturb my peace, stir up the baser passions of my nature, and expose the parties engaged in it to the risk of quarrels and alienated affections. I am now less disposed for it than ever ; and, last of all, I am thoroughly averse to have any controversy with you. My love and affections are all against it. I say all this in the honesty of my heart. . . " If there is to be a public controversy, nothing but dragging will bring me into it. May the Lord give peace in this matter ; if not. His will be done. Come what may, believe me, with great regard, " Yours ever, '* Thomas Guthrie." Dr. Guthrie was fully sensible of the energy with. which the Free Church scheme was prosecuted, where- by an admirable Christian education for 65,000 children was provided ; but his conviction ever deepened that the very existence of the Free Church schools tended to retard the attainment of a national measure. To Sir W. Gibson Craig, M.P. " Edinburgh, October Ihth, 1850. "... Thinking that the Free Church, by some of her edu- cational movements, was rather hindering than facilitating a Catholic and comprehensive plan, I retired from the Com- mittee. . . The present arrangements may undergo a great change in less than a few years. I hope very soon to see at least the Free Church and the Dissenting community at one on this subject of education. I don't even despair of the Estab- lished Church, although they will take, in the course of things, longer time." THE " HAPPY FAMILVr > 289 "I do not deny," te wrote twenty years later, "but am happy to know that our Free Churcli schools have done much good ; still, I thought they were founded on a wrong basis, in such a country as ours at any rate, and that had we gone in for a national system, an opening up and extension of the old parochial system, when these Free Church schools were started, nearly thirty years ao-o we would have won the battle in a few years, and been rid of the difficulties with which we are now per- plexed." Not only did Dr. Guthrie object to the Free Church Education scheme, on the general ground that the education of the young is the business rather of the State than of the Church, but he objected to allow the divisions which separate the various Churches from each other to affect education in any shape or form. The advantage of bringing the children of different sects together in school, he thus illustrated in one of his speeches — " Did you ever see the ' happy family ' ? The last time I was in London I saw animals of the most antagonistic natures living together in perfect peace, because they had been reared together when young, — fed, bred, and nursed to- gether. I saw the mavis asleep under the wing of a hawk ; and an old, grave, reverend owl looking down most compla- cently on a little mouse ; and, with the restless activity of his species, I saw the monkey sitting on a perch, scratching his head, for an idea I presume, and then reach down his long arm to seize a big rat by the tail, and, liftmg it to his breast, dandle it like a baby 1 This is what early training will do. Now I just put it to you— suppose these animals had been brought up according to the sectarian system, and then brought together in one place, what a row there would have been ! VOTi. II. U 2 90 - MEMOIR. "' I am sure it is good for children to be edncated in every possible way with the children of other denominations, and I will tell you why. I know, from my own experience, that it is good for men to be brought into contact with men of other denominations. I have felt the good of that myself. I have had my corners and my crotchets in my day ; and I think I am very free of them now. I believe that if you bring a man into contact with others, it tends to round off his corners, and rub off his crotchets like the stone on the sea-beach when it is washed and rolled about by the daily tide ; it makes a nobler and a better man of him." To Mr. Maule, in 1850, lie wrote: — "The jealousies and bigotry and narrow-mindedness of many are sicken- ing. These men are uever without a pair of Free Church spectacles. I suppose they sleep with them on ! " But what most of all distressed Dr. Guthrie was, that while denominational schemes of Education tended to widen the breach between the diflferent Churches, out and be- yond the influence of any Church, a multitude of children ■were growing up in Scotland wholly without instruction. " I long and pray for the time," were his words, "when such unfortunates will be educated by the State; nor from such prayer will I ever come down to consider schemes of sects. I don't care, if the people are saved, whether the scheme crack the crown of St. Giles', or hurl Free St. John's down the West Bow. I love my Church as well as any one, but I love my country more than I love my denomination." * "My distinctive * " The appeal to the human sympathies of his audience was his chief source of strength as a speaker. ^Vht■n his strong voice shook, and a glance of the tcndersst pity flashed Irom liis eyes, few were not moved to tears. Speaking one day about an Education Bill just brought in by tlie Lord Advocate, the thoui;ht flashed across him that the Free Chunh had been accused of suppoiting it for sectarian reasons, when he suddtuly JOINT ACTION A NECESSITY. 291 points will look small enough when I am lying on a bed of death ; and my distinctive points look little, too, when I go down among my poor fellow-creatures ; and sure I am, that if some of my friends would come with me, and spend one short forenoon in these places where I have been till my heart was like to break, and I could hardly eat the bread on my own table, it would make them agree almost to anything." In his anxiety to secure the attainment of a national scheme. Dr. Guthrie was willing to co-operate with parties from whom, on other matters, he seriously differed. To this he refers in a letter addressed to the Editor of The Witness in the beginning of 1850, and in that letter, too, as will be seen, he foreshadows the very system which, twenty-two years thereafter, and at the close of a long fight with prejudice and privilege, has become the law of the land : — To THE Editor of The Witness. " EniNBURGH, January \2th, 1850. " My inclination, in the first instance, was to turn to the Established Church, prepared, notwithstanding all that has happened, to bury in the grave of our country's welfare the animosity and irritation that may have sprung from the past. I find, however, with great regret, that our friends of the Establishment have thrown up a barrier in the way of our co- operation with them which it is impossible for us to surmount ; — they have identified, in fact, the very existence of their Establishment with the retaining of its supremacy over the broke oflF his argument, and, with tears running down his cheeks, ex- claimed, 'What care I for the Free Church, or any Church upon earth, in comparison with my desire to save and bless those poor children in the High Street !' An intelligent auditor afterwards said of this exclamation, *It was as though a shock of electricity had passed through the audience.' " — Daily News, February 2oth, 1874. u 2 292 MEMOIR. national schools, and the exclusion of all but their adherents from the office of teachers. *' Not entertaining any violent prejudices against the Estab- lished Church (holding, on the contrary, what some of my friends count such loose and latitudinarian views on certain matters of dispute, that I have not hesitated in particular cir- cumstances to send my children to an Established Church school *), I hoped better things of our friends in the Estab- lishment. Nor was it till I had seen with regret that none even of the most liberal of their leaders were prepared to abate one jot of their antiquated claims, that I felt myself constrained to abandon all hope of co-operating with them ; and, in addition, that I felt convinced it was now our duty to attempt co-operation with the voluntary churches in some scheme for national education, each party retaining their prin- ciples, and each agreeing to bury their points and prejudices. " Now in approaching our voluntary friends, we were not brought to a standstill by the barrier which prevented co- operation with the Established Church. They, forming, like that other party, but one- third of the population, met us with no claim to exclusive power; on the contrary, we and they were agreed in this, that over the National Schools the Esta- blishment should have no exclusive superintendence, and to the office of their teachers no exclusive claim. Then, in regard to the religious element, on which we were at one with the Establishment, there appeared a common path on which we could approach the State in company with our voluntary brethren. Had they stipulated that the State not only must not include, but positively exclude religion, our negotiations must thfcn have taken end ; for it is plain that though some among us be of opinion that the interests of religious education would not suffer, but rather gain, by being devolved entirely on parents, pastors, and church office-bearers, yet our Free Church as a body would refuse its consent to any bill which excluded the religious element from the National Schools. But how stands the matter with our voluntary friends ? They propose no such clause of exclusion. So far as I know their sentiments, it is but justice to them to say that a bill with such a cliiuse introduced into Parliament by the merely secular educationists would meet with as cordial opposition from them as from ourselves. All that they stipulate for is this, that Parliament shall not meddle with the matter of religion at all, and that every * Dr. Gulhrie sent his youn{»er children for an hour or two daily to the parish school when at Lochlee, his summer quarters. CORRESPONDENCE : DUKE OF ARGYLL. 293 arrangement connected with that element in the schools shall be left to the judgment and discretion of the local boards ; and this they do with the anxious desire that these schools shall furnish religious and secular education, and with the confident expectation, moreover, that, under this arrangement, the Word of God and saving truths of the gospel will, in point of quality, be as purely, and in point of quantity be as abundantly, provided for as before. " For myself, I have that confidence in the religious feelings of my countrymen as to believe that in a bdard chosen by their votes, and therefore representing their sentiments, the religious interests of these schools will find as faithful guardians as they have ever enjoyed. My knowledge of many unendowed schools, and my experience of Ragged Schools, fully warrant me to believe that on this field Established Churchmen and Free Churchmen, Episcopalians and Voluntaries, may co- operate together in perfect harmony, and that here brethren may 'dwell together in unity.' In their denominational ele- ments, the local boards will very much resemble the com- mittee of our Ragged Schools ; and, if not in all, in almost every instance, a motion to exclude religion from these schools will meet with the same cordial opposition and certain defeat as would assuredly be ita fate at our board." Previous to writing tliat letter, Dr. Guthrie had been in communication with the Duke of Argyll, to whom the country owes in no small measure the final settlement of this difiicult question ; and it was shortly after the appearance of Dr. Guthrie's letter in the newspapers that the following correspondence took place between His Grace and himself: — The Duke of Argyll to Dr. Guthrie. " RosENEATH, January 1\st, 1850. " My dear Sir, — I have not yet had time to thank you for your letter respecting your educational views : and I am as glad that I have thus had an opportunity of seeuig your more extended explanation in The Witness. " Personally, and speaking only of what I should be most glad to agree to if we had a dean sheet of paper before us, I feel 294 MEMOIR. no anxiety to exclude from the schools any one of the Pres- byterian or Episcopalian bodies, provided only that religious education be secured, not as a separate, but as an integral part of the course of instruction ; and if this is to be so, I do not see how, even on such a plan, starting anew as it were, some tests could be altogether avoided. " But I wish to speak rather of existing circumstances aa affecting practically our course, and these, I do confess, you and your friends seem to me to take but little notice of. "Your plan, as I understand it, is to place everything, election of schoolmaster, laws of religious teaching, hours thereof, &c., all at the disposal of a local board. But how are these local boards to be appointed ? I agree with you that generally in Scotland the Bible would not be discarded by any board. But I am certain that anything approaching to a popular election would be a squabble of sectarian partisanship. The votes and intrigues would be divided by the law of Churchship. Your experience of the Ragged School Com- mittee, to which you refer, is wholly delusive, in my opinion. That is a committee of educated and enlightened men met together with the common understanding that Churchship is not to enter into the consideration at all, either in electing masters or in regulating the mode of teaching. "" 1.- does not apply to local contests, such as you would leave to be carried on between sects exasperated by petty feuds and bickerings. * * * * iij " Pray excuse this very hasty letter. I will not ask you to excuse what you may think the freedom with which I have stated my objections to the movement of your body, because, if correspondence is to be carried on at all, on matters of such great public importance, with the view of explaining the aspects in which they present themselves to persons in different relative situations, I hold that such correspondence should be free. . . •* My dear Sir, " Yours most truly, " Argyll." Dr. Guthrie to the Duke of Argyll. "Edikbukgh, February \d,th, 1850. " As to your Grace's remarks on the sentiments and speeches of some of our Free Churchmen (and some of these, I grant, leading Free Churchmen) I may say, I am ' not careful to LETTER TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 295 answer you in this matter.' Many things have been said by Free Churchmen with which it would be hard to saddle the Free Church. " I may, however, remark two things in answer to your Grace's defence of the resolution of the Establishment to abate none of its ancient claims. First, that granting that Dr. Candlish, &c., would have done the same thing had they been in the Establishment, it does not prove more than that they would have acted imprudently and unwisely in these circum- stances ; but, secondli/, the views even of Dr. Candlish and his friends (who are not the Free Church) do not afford ground for such assertion. I pray your Grace to observe that the Estab- lished Church insists that the candidate for a school shall not only sign his adherence to the doctrine of the Catechism and Confession of Faith, but that he shall sign the Formula, which binds him down to the membership, and subjects him to the discipline, of the Established Church. Now, though I do not agi-ee with my friends in many of their movements in the matter of education, I think it is but justice to them to say that they do not insist on their teachers, even at present, being members of the Free Church, and that at this moment there are parties holding schools under the Free Church scheme, who do not belong to the denomination of Free Churchmen. " Then I pray your Grace to observe that we are not incon- sistent in making demands now, which we would have resisted as against the Dissenters before the Disruption. Since that time, the tables, by that very event, are completely turned. The body belonging to the Established Church was then the un- doubted majority of the Scottish nation. The Established Church then contained within her pale two-thirds at lease of the whole population, and she had rights of a national and folitical kind when she commanded a majority, which she must lie jure lose when she passes into a minority. This argument may be pushed farther than the schools. I grant that the Act of Parliament establishing the present form of Church government goes on the footing that it is most agree- able to the ijeneraliUj of the people of Scotland, or some such terms, — so runs the Act which substitutes the present Estab- lished Church for Episcopacy. I have no desire to agitate these questions, so far as they touch the Church Establishment ; only I think that when, for the sake of an exclusive and invidious power, the Established clergy stand in the way of a great national system of education, they themselves will force on the people of Scotland the consideration of matters which go deeper than the schools, and I must repeat my surprise that the sensible 296 MEMOIR. men among them do not see that.* I pray your Grace to ohserve that, but for this exclusive claim to which you surely cannot expect that two-thirds of the nation will agree (the great majority of the people agreeing to leave the education of their children in the hands of a minority), — well, I say, but for this exclusive claim insisted on by the Established party, the country might be blessed, before another session has run, with a secular and a religious system of education adequate to the wants and necessities of a country where, at this present moment, some two hundred thousand children are growing up in deepest ignorance. '• It was with no evil designs to the Established Church that I penned my letter ; on the contrary, I hoped that it might catch the eye of some of their ministers and people. As to the latter, I have had expressions of their entire concurrence in my views from some, and, among others, one of the greatest orna- ments among the laity of the Establishment. As to the clergy, I have seen an account of but one of them (Gillan of Glasgow) who sympathized with me. He proposed that to others besides the clergy of his own Church the management of their schools should be open. He wished other orthodox denominations recognised ; and I am sorry to say his proposition called forth nothing but hisses. " I had hoped that the Established Church and Free Church might have acted together in this great question, and no obstacle stood in the way of that but the claim to exclusive jurisdiction. I would have rejoiced in such a union. I would have preferred a system, which would have saved us what may happen under * " At this time they will yield nothing," Dr. Guthrie told a puhlic meeting in 1854. "There was a sagacious man in this city, perhaps the most sagacious of her citizens — the late Sir James Gihson Craig — who, on one occasion, was dealing with a gentleman who insisted on having his last rights at law. Sir James advised him to yield a little; the replj' was, 'No, not a stiver!' 'Well,' said Sir James, 'let me tell you that tlie man that will have the last word and the last right at law is very like the man who will have the last drop out of the tankard ; the chance is he gets the lid down on his nose ! ' Now, if my friends of the Estah- lishi d Chuich would hear me, — and I know there are sensible men among them, hut I am afraid they are overlmrne by those who are not sensible ■ — lei them pluck up courage and take up another wiser and, fur thfir Church, a safer position. At the time of the Disrujition down came the lid ; at the time of the University Bill they would have the last drop — smack went the lid; now they will have the last drop ai^ain, and I say let thetn take care that the lid does not only hit the nose, but hit it off altogether ! " PRESBYTERIAL SCHOOL-EXAMINATIONS. 297 the new scheme — supposing it carried into effect, — a battle for the Bible, or Shorter Catechism in the schools (I ought to say at the ordinary school hours). " However, I must say that I think there are far worse things than an occasional fight, and one of these was the old system which invested the power and management of the parochial schools in the hands of the Presbytery. I had seven years' experience of that system, when I was in a country parish, and I strenuously supported the scheme for Government inspectors, before the Disruption, as some check to the useless, worthless mockery of former times.* " I believe that the sure way of having any scheme vigor- ously managed is to give those a considerable power at least in the management of it, who have a deep stake in the matter. The parents have the deepest stake in the schools ; and we may rest assured that they will watch and work them better than parties who have but a remote interest in their success." The scheme which this letter defends became the basis of ** The National Education Association of Scotland," founded in April, 1850, in whose movements he took a leading part. But while its programme met with his cordial support, in one particular he thought it defective ; for, far in advance of his time, Dr. Guthrie had already * In a speech he tells : — " I was seven years in the parish of Arbirlot ; and while I believe I was just as attentive as my neighbours, I do nut recollect of being three times in the parish school, though it whs next door to me, except on those occasions, once a year, when the Presbytery Comiiiiitee came to examine the school. The truth is, though I do not like to use a harsh expression — perhaps they are a great deal better since we left them— Presbyterial supervisioa was very much a decent sham. To be sure, if there were anj' old schoolmaster among the parish ministers, he pricked up his ears like an old hunter when he hears the sound of the horn ; but as for the rest of us, who wfere not accustomed to it, to sit for weary hours hearing ' A-b, ah — B-o, bo,' was the drievhest business I ever had to do with. And well do I remember to have seen how olten tlie watches were pulled out to see how the time went; and the truth is, if the ' diet of examination ' had not been followed by another kind of ' diet' at the manse — a committee dinner, and a sociable crack with the brethren — tliere would have bteu very few at the diet of examination !" 298 MEMOIR. become an advocate for a compulsory clause in any national measure wliich is to be eflfective : — " It was at one of the first Ragged Scliool meetings," we find him saying, " that I first enunciated the necessity of a compulsory system. I remember I was sitting beside the late Bishop Terrot, and when I had finished, the Bishop said to me, • So you are in favour of a compulsory system of educa- tion ? ' ' Yes,' I said, ' I am thoroughly satisfied that no educational system will reach the very lowest classes — the dangerous classes — but a compulsory one. What think you ? ' ' Oh,' said the Bishop, ' I am quite of the same opinion.' * Then why don't you stand up and say it ? ' * Stand up and say it ! ' he replied. * Why, the people would think me mad ! ' " As time went on, views more akin to bis own, as regards the desirableness of a comprebensive scheme, began to spread not only among the laity but the ministers of the Free Church ; and in a letter to bis brother, Provost Guthrie, on lltb April, 1851, be writes : — " You would be glad to see that Dr. Candlisb has taken a step in advance on the education question. This parts bim, and it is well, from Gibson and Co. It is most lamentable to see bow tbe best interests of the country and the Churches are sacrificed to extreme Establishment views on tbe one band, and extreme voluntaryism on tbe other. However, I hope for some national measure ere long, and if Melgund carry the second reading of bis Bill, it will help on matters to a favourable issue. It will frighten tbe Establishment people, some of them, at least, into their senses." Lord Melgund's Bill was in that same year thrown out ; but at length Government took up tbe question — NEGOTIATIONS WITH PUBLIC MEN. 299 a measure for a national scheme of education in Scot- land having been, in 1854, introduced by the Lord Advocate (MoncreifF). During the successive stages of the National Education negotiations, Dr. Guthrie was in correspondence with various influential persons, both in the Cabinet and out of it. Not only his reputation as a social reformer, but his known breadth of view gave his opinions weight. The Lord Advocate * — who, though he was not destined to carry through the final measure, did more than any other man to prepare the way for it, — writing to Dr. Guthrie from London in reference to the Bill he had introduced, thus expressed himself on 12th April, 1854 : — " I must press upon you the importance — to you I may not say the duty — of giving decided utterance to your real opinions. You have only to make one of your manly, fearless addresses, and you will confirm more waverers in the House than all the Voluntaries can shake. . . . Depend upon it, names weigh far more than numbers up here, and you and Adam Black would, single-handed, make all the agitators kick the beam." To Provost Guthrie. ''April 17 th, 1854. " I fancy, like myself, you have been thoroughly disgusted and sickened with the violence of the Established Church on the one hand, and of the extreme section of the Voluntaries on the other, in the matter of the Education Bill. ... I have let them know upstairs, and here also downstairs, that if the country cannot get education through a union with Non-En- dowed Churches I will next address myself to the Establish- ment and promote a Bill which will give them all they ask in • Now the Right Hon. Lord MoncreiflF. 300 MEMOIR. the matter of the parish schools ; and if, next, they are as unreasonable as the Voluntaries and won't come to terms, then I am prepared to say that Government must give us secular schools, leaving the Churches to look after the religious element. It is most melancholy that Christian men should act so as to threaten to drive us into such a position. " We were getting on most favourably, preparing the way for a union (in the long run, and I would have hoped at no very distant period) between us and the United Presbyterians. This Education question has in Providence rather come in as an ob- struction, men would say. I say, on the contrary, it proves most forcibly the need of union, and demonstrates the injury which the country and religion suffer from our divisions. " Sir George Sinclair was the originator of our conferences, and in his house and at Dr. Brown's we have had a number of them. Adam J31ack and I spoke very plainly to Dr. Harper and Mr. Duncan of the violence of their Voluntary friends anent Education. I told them distinctly that unless, in some way or other, they presented Voluntaryism in a less offensive light than as an obstruction in the way of saving our perishing masses, they would make it stink in the nostrils of patriots and enlightened Christians for a century to come, and put an end to all hope of union." Meanwhile, waiting for a better day to dawn in Scot- land, Dr. Guthrie was quite in liis element when, on a visit to England shortly after this date, he was brought in contact with some earnest educationists of different Churches there : — To Mrs. Guthrie. "Birmingham, November I2(h, 1856. " I have not been idle since I came here. I was waylaid when within four miles of this place, and had to appear and speak at a meeting of work-lads belonging to the greatest glass- works in the world. The proprietors, the Messrs. Chance, who are excellent Christian men, have magnificent schools in which the meeting was held. The room, which has a fine Gothic roof, was decorated with festoons of flowers, banners, and inscriptions. There was a large assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, and a large number of the clergy of the town. We had music, singing, and speeches ; and it was about twelve o'clock till we got home. EDUCATION IN BIRMINGHAM. 301 "Next day I was honoured by an invitation from the Clerical Society, which embraces almost all the Church of England ministers here. After attending their meeting, at which I made a short speech, I then visited an admirably managed institution established by the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Yorke* — one of the finest of men, with whom I have struck up a friendship. There I had to address some two or three hundred children. " That finished, there came a party of thirty gentlemen to dinner ; after which, with Lord Calthorpe in the chair, we began the business which brought me here — to consider what is to be done for the educational interests of this town, so as to secure a larger measure of education for those children who are sent too early to work, as well for the large number of those who are neither at work nor school, but who are growing up to swell the ranks of the criminal population. Besides Lord Calthorpe, we had some dozen ministers, among others Angell James, some dozen merchants and manufacturers, and some lawyers — among them their stipendiary magistrate, a fine specimen of a lawyer. Mr. Wintield, our host, opened the business by an able and admirable address. . . . We came to a most harmonious conclusion, and I think laid the begin- ning of a great and good work." While statesmen continued to bestir ttemselves, the complications caused by the misunderstandings and animosities of the various sections of churchmen in Scotland seemed to thicken. Two extreme parties ex- isted : one of whom would have no bill which did not enact the use of the Bible and Shorter Catechism by- express statute ; the other would refuse any bill which made allusion to the teaching of religion at all. " Like sailors in a storm," to quote Dr. Guthrie's figure as he contemplated the situation, " who quarrel about mend- ing some hole in a sail when the ship is on her beam ends, we have contended about minor matters, and even now are contending about theories of education, while * Now Dean of Worcester. 302 MEMOIR. ' my people/ says God, ' are destroyed for lack of know- ledge.' Thousands starve while we settle the shape and stamp of the loaf." Between 1854 and 1872, six Education Bills were in- troduced into Parliament, of which only one — the Act of 1861, abolishing the tests whereby parochial school- masters were necessarily members of the Established Church — ^became law. In regard to all these measures, one point caused Dr. Guthrie a certain measure of per- plexity ; the precise way, namely, in which religious in- struction would be best secured. "What was known as the " use and wont " in Scotch parochial schools, implied daily instruction both in the Scriptures and Shorter Catechism. "While Dr. Guthi^ie had perfect confidence, as we have seen, in leaving the matter in the hands of the people as represented by local boards, his feeling latterly was in favour of a clause enacting the reading of the Scriptures. He was opposed, however, to the pro- posal that a similar enactment should be sought for the Shorter Catechism ; not because he did not set a very high value on that manual, but because he dreaded objections to the use in National Schools of a catechism which might be termed denominational. His experience in the Original Ragged School at Edin- burgh, where no doctrinal Catechism is employed, led him thus to express himself in 1869 : — " I would not propose the Shorter Catechism, nor the W^esleyan Catechism, nor the Church of England Catechism, but a Catechism that would embrace all that is special in A CATECHISM FOR ALL. 303 religion ; all that it would be necessary to teacli the children in our schools. I believe that if you had shut up the late Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Dr. Bunting, and the late John Angell James in one room together — if you had shut up these three heads of the Episcopalian, Wesleyan, and Independent bodies, and told them that out of that room they could not get until they prepared a Catechism for use in the schools of the country, they would have accomjilished the task in five hours ! " In reference to this paragraph of his speech, Dr. Guthrie was both amused and gratified to receive the following note from Dean Stanley : — "Deanery, Westminster, Becemler Tlth, 1869. " My dear Dr. Guthrie, — The next time you make a pro- posal about the Catechism, pray resolve to have the Dean of Westminster included in the party that is to be shut up for five hours. He thinks that he should much enjoy it, and that he could even hasten the process ! . " Seriously, I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of your speech, and from sending you a hearty Christmas greeting (if you will receive it) out of Established and Pre- latical Westminster to Non-established and Presbyterian Free Church. " What a blessing to us both that our dear friend at Inverary has been restored to us ! *' Yours ever sincerely, " A. P. Stanley." Two years after that date matters in Scotland had ripened for a final solution of the question of a National scheme. Dr. Guthrie happened to be in London in the beginning of 1872 — shortly before the Bill of the Lord Advocate (Young) was to be laid on the table of the 304 MEMOIR. House of Commons — and when that measure, as well as the general question of national education, was being largely discussed in the circles in which he moved while in the metpopolis : — " 39, Philltmore Gardens, Kensington, January ZXat, 1872. was pretty severe on the Nonconformists, whom I so far defended. Indeed, I said distinctly that, in consequence of the position Cullen and the Roman Catholics of Ireland had taken up and the demands they are making, many in Scotland, myself among the number, were much inclined to give up all denominational teaching, such as the Shorter Catechism, in our schools in Scotland, as the only way of shutting the door against the Roman Catholic Catechism in the national schools of Ireland, I am glad now that before this storm rose, when I was at Lochlee, I had written the Duke of Argyll, in answer to his own questions, that I thought the best plan for Scotland would be, to give up the Shorter Catechism, leaving all denominational and sectarian teaching to parents and the Churches, through their ministers and otherwise, and have the Bible, and the Bible only, in our national schools. Indeed, I will remind the Duke to-day that I wrote him to that effect seven years ago, proposing that the national schools should in the main be modelled on our Ramsay Lane Ragged School, so far as religious teaching was concerned. I see by various letters as well as editorial articles in the Daihj Bcvieir, that these views are spreading fast among Free Church people. I had a letter yesterday from Dale of Birmingham (John Angell James's successor), saying that the League men, of whom he is a chief, had heard that my views were in accordance with theirs, and asking me to give them expression in the Times, &c. But, as I shall write him, I am, meanwhile, for the old platform of the Nonconfovmists, which was t© retain the Bible. " The great blunder of the Ministry was to allow twelve months — reduced afterwards to six months — for Episcopa- lians and Roman Catholics to build additional denominational schools : they should, on the very contrary, have aimed at absorbing those already existing, and so in every way fostered the National System. This agreeing to grant subsidies out of the public funds to all the denominational schools which sec- tarian zeal sets up within a twelvemonth after the passing of the Educational Bill, which has led to doubling the amount of SCOTCH EDUCATION ACT. 305 money to such schools, and the handing over a vast amount of the education of England to Episcopalians and Roman Catho- lics, has, and has justly, inflamed the wrath of the Noncon- formists. How the matter is to be remedied, if it admit of a remedy, is hard to say. Meanwhile it threatens to break up the Liberal party and unseat the Government." Soon after the date of that letter, the measure for Scotland which has since become law, the Education Act of 1872, was introduced by the Lord Advocate. In its main provisions, — which secure that the control of education be given to the people, and that religious in- struction, without being either prescribed or proscribed by the Act, be left to the decision of local boards — that Measure met with Dr. Guthrie's cordial approval, and he consented, at the request of various influential persons, to give public expression to that approval. This he did in the form of a " Letter to my Fellow-Country- men," which was circulated broadcast over the land. One or two of its paragraphs may fitly close this chapter : — "EDDfBURGH, April 9, also robed^nd caA-ying in one hand the priest's cap, and m the other a vessel with holy water and the ^^''^^^^He stepped to the middle of the floor, and then, openmg a book which he carried be began to read with amazing rapidity, the boy neie Tnd there singing out ' Amen.' Suddenly he seized the brush dipped it into the holy-water pot, performed a spunklmg, * The late Mr. Kirk, M.P. for Newry, who, with his daughter, Mrs. D. K. Guthrie, was of the party. 390 MEMOIR. galloped over a few more sentences, and then retired. I was sorry for the poor fellow. We tried to be as courteous to him as possible : he was a quiet, modest, meek looking lad. n' H^ 5(= n= -J= 5i< " We have seen Raphael's far-famed picture of the Trans- figuration. Our Lord's face is extraordinary in its conception, wonderful in its expression. At Bologna there is another very wonderful face of our Lord, where he appears as a ' Man of Sorrows ; ' that is the most affecting thing I ever saw in colours. It is impossible to look on the one without feelings of adoring reverence and confidence, or on the other without deep emotion, hearing, as it were, a voice appealing from the canvas : ' Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.' . . . '* People talk a deal of rubbish when they get into raptures about the ' Great Masters.' In my eyes, by far the greatest number of their paintings fail in any degree to move or elevate the mind or stir the affections. The old pre-Raphaelite masters did throw an air of devotion over their tableaux — and not a few of them were, I believe, really devout men ; but as to those about whose pictures people go (or, to be thought pos- sessed of fine taste, profess to go) into raptures, few of them move or elevate my mind, or stir my affections. Their men and women are sensuous animals, flesh and blood, but with little of real, homely, human life. Their very martyrs are poor creatures ; — hnnnie men and women, whom you think — (they are so placid and good-looking) — it was a pity to kill; that is all. I got clean tired trailing through long weary galleries, seeing pictures I was told I should admire and could not. There is more nature, life, and expression which come home to one's head and heart in some of Hogarth's and Wilkie's paintings, than in almost any of the famous pictures of these famous ' Masters.' I speak my own judgment ; and thousands talk of the ' Masters ' as a parrot would." "Naples, 211, Riviera di Chiaja, April 25th, 1865. " I wish, instead of dawdling away our time among the mummeries and flummeries of Holy Week at Rome, we hud come here earlier, and had more time to study the stupendous phenomena of a land which is so full of the power of God, and which, for the first time to me, illustrates these grand wT)rds of Scripture, ' He looketh on the earth and it trembleth ; He toucheth the hills and they smoke I ' " If anv one have six weeks to spend between Naples and LONGFELLOW. 391 Rome, I say let him give four weeks to Naples and its sur- roundings, and two to the Eternal City, as it is called. At Pfestum, you see, in the temples of Ceres and Neptune and the Basilica, far more perfect examples of old temples than any Rome possesses, with the exception of the Pantheon, All around Naples again, the country is exquisitely rich and lovely a garden of Eden, but for sin : the glorious Bay, with its cloudless sky and cerulean sea ; Vesuvius, the Solfatara, and other volcanic wonders ; and, above all, that most impressive of all cities, Pompeii— the City of the Dead, as Sir Walter Scott called it, — which makes you better acquainted with the habits and daily life of the old Romans in one hour, than you would be in Rome in a twelvemonth. "At Puteoli (Pozzuoli), in memory of the great Apostle, I bought an old Roman lamp from a priest who had abandoned masses to collect and sell antiques. He may be a suspended functionary — I don't know ; but he was very polite and plea- sant, and not more given to cheating than his countrymen, who will charge treble the price they will take, and whose dis- honesty and greed culminate in the cabmen, who are loud and demonstrative in their demands beyond the tariff, and to whom, as they follow me with their vociferations and gesticulations, I always roar out as loud as they, in good English which they don't understand, ' Summon vie to the jwlice court ! ' This has a wonderfully calming influence. They get no other answer ; they make nothing of it, and at length abandon the pursuit." " Flokencb, May I2th, 1869. "We met Longfellow the other evening at the house of Dr. Van Nest, the American Presbyterian minister here. He is very like his pictures, simple and quite unaffected in manner, mild and gentle, full of a quiet suavity. Mrs. Newall got out of bed on purpose, contrary to all my remonstrances, and, thou'^h groaning at every step, climbed the stairs, half creep- ing fike a snail, half carried up like a corpse. What will a hi'^h-spirited. enthusiastic woman not do-at least, not attempt . It°is this which gives value to their services in every good cause. On introducing my good friend to Longfellow, I told him that he should regard the presence of this pale, bent crippled admirer as one of the highest compliments ever paid him. Neither in his eye nor manner does he exhibit a spark of enthusiasm. But he is a very thoughtful-looking man. 392 MEMOIR. " Berne, nth June, 1869. " Like reading for the second time any hook of remarkahle goodness, heauty, and interest, this, my second visit to the scenes through which we have been passing, has afforded me, I think, more gratification than even the first. The surprise is less, the curiosity less, but the taste is more highly gi-atified — the last affording a nobler pleasure, being the higher feeling of the two ; less allied to the vulgar surprise and stupid wonder of the honest woman who, on seeing a blackamoor or negi'O for the first time, and, after gaping on God's image in ebony, exclaimed, ' Hech, sirs, there's mony a thing made for the penny ! ' . . . " We have seen the celebrated clock of Berne. With a number of other strangers, we were gazing up from the base of the old tower at noon. The hand approaches twelve. Bang ! there it strikes. We see the king, like a musical leader with his baton, signal the strokes with his sceptre ; we hear the cock, who bends his neck back to crow the warning ; we see the fool shake his head, and ring his bells ; while aloft, two giants hammer off with mighty strokes the mid-day hour on the great bell above the bartizan. It is a very old, very curious, and very ingenious piece of mechanism. My excellent friend, Mrs. Newail, afraid of the rain, did not venture out ; and, half in joke, half in earnest, pronounced it ' a toy.' Well, I was, and hope may ever be, child enough to enjoy such a thing ; enjoying everything — Punch and Judy among the rest — that brings a sunlight smile on children's faces." Intensely as lie relished tours like these for their own sake, Dr. Guthrie could not he satisfied to go ahroad merely to recruit and to derive enjoyment. He liked to comhine with these ends some definite purpose of Chris- tian usefulness. Latterly one of the British Vice- Presidents of the Evangelical Alliance, he was in thorough sympathy with its objects. On two occasions he left home in order, primarily, to take part in General Conferences of the Alliance, which he addressed at Geneva in 1861, and at Amsterdam in 1867, on his favourite schemes of Christian and social reform. THE CONTINENTAL CHURCHES. 393 In tlie Second General Assembly of the Free Church (1844) he was named as one of the Committee appointed to correspond with Foreign Churches ; and when, in after years, he had opportunity of personally visiting their spheres of labour, his interest in these Churches was greatly quickened. With many French Protestants, specially the Monods, MM. Fisch, Bersier, Bost, and Professor St. Hilaire,* he was on intimate relations. In Brussels he addressed the Synod of the Eglise Mis- sionnaire Beige, as a deputy from the Free Church, in 1867. In Switzerland, too, he held repeated intercourse with the late Drs. Merle d'Aubigne and Gaussen ; and in no house on the Continent were Mrs. Guthrie and he so much at home as in that of their much-loved friends. Professor and Madame de la Harpe, of Geneva. But the country in whose spiritual needs, during his latter years, he was led to feel the greatest interest was the Italian Peninsula ; and, of all the agencies there, his heart was chiefly drawn out to the ancient Church of the Waldensian Valleys. To every other agency at work for the evangelization of Italy he wished God speed ; but he was convinced that the finger of Providence pointed to that small but interesting Church as de- serving a foremost place in the sympathy of British and ♦ Prof. Rosseuw St. Hilaire published, after his friend's death, a graceful tribute to his memory, entitled " Thomas Guthrie : sa Vie son (Eiivre, et sa Mort." Paris, 1873. " Son jugement," is M. St. Hilaire's felicitous remark in. that brochure, " etait aussi calme, aussi but, que »on imagination etait bardie et vagabonde.'' 394 MEMOIR. American Christians, and a Benjamin's portion of their help. The Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Leghorn, Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly in 1874, when speak- ing of Dr. Guthrie's loss said, "I gladly seize this op- portunity of bearing testimony to the warm affection he bore to the ancient Italian Church in the Waldensian Yalleys ; to the hearty and efficient manner in which he advocated its interests both in Scotland and England, and was about to do so in America when death cut him off. During his last illness, fervent prayer was offered on his behalf in every parish in the Waldensian Valleys, and his death was mourned as that of a well-loved friend. His memory will long be cherished among them, along with those of Gilly and Beckwith, as their generous benefactor." Dr. Guthrie visited these Yalleys of the Cottian Alps two different years. Writing home in May, 1865, he thus referred to the tragic events of which they had been the theatre : — " This land of most beautiful and sublime scenery has asso- ciations and memories surpassing in moral grandeur those, perhaps, of any country on earth, save the Holy Land. Here, for long centuries, when darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people, when the whole world was like the land of Egypt during the plague of darkness, these Valleys were a Goshen. Other Churches, the best of them, have come out of the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Rome : the Vaudois Church, never. "In these respects, there is no Church in Christendom but should give place to this, the smallest and poorest of all the Churches. No Church has ever suffered for the truth or THE WALDENSES. 395 maintained it as this has done. With breathing-times, the Wal- denses were persecuted, often to the death, for nearly four hundred years. Their sufferings began long years before thosa of our Covenanters, and only saw their end, leaving them in the enjoyment of peace and liberty, a few years ago. Nothing but the hand of a special Providence could have kept the light burning here, or prevented it from being quenched in the blood of those who, rather than consent to become Papists, fought battles with unparalleled bravery. I have got out of the La Tour College Library an old account, by Leger, of their Church and its sufler- ings, and of scenes he saw with his own eyes and heard from undoubted witnesses ; and, as I went through the narrative, my blood boiled, and I prayed God to hasten the time of the downfall of Babylon. The book is now rare. The best idea I can give you of the harrowing character of its details is to men ion that the Vaudois, a meek and patient race, are not in the habit of putting it into the hands of their children while young, for this reason — viz., that their children, as they believe, could hardly read that narrative without having revengeful feelings roused within them against the Roman Catholics, and they wish their children to hate none, but live in love with all men. Well, I don't agree in the soundness of this view; nor did our forefathers, who highly esteemed the ' Cloud of Witnesses,' and such books, giving them a wide circulation. Only, I don't wonder at some so dealing with Leger's book and its dreadful prints of the cruelties inflicted on the Vaudois. " From the rocks, which I have but to lift my eyes from this paper to see, they tossed men and women, — having first stripped them "and tied their heads and heels together, — that they might go rolling bounding down, to lie at the bottom a crushed, bloody, quivering mass. Two days ago, I saw the spot on the hills where mothers fled from these ruffians, carrying the cradles with their infants on their heads, while their hus- bands and brothers did their best and bravest to keep the bloodhounds at bay, till the women and children had escaped to the shelter of the rocks, and the less dreaded rigours of a winter ni^ht, passed without other shelter than a cliff or cavern could offer ; when next morning came, the cold winter dawn showed eighty infants lying frozen to death in their mothers' arms; many of the poor mothers dead themselves. Thousands fell in battle ; thousands died in prison ; and this system of persecution was carried on for centuries. But the bloody perseverance of the persecutors was met by a magnani- mous and almost superhuman perseverance on the part of the persecuted; and at length God raised them up friends and 396 MEMOIR. champions to protect them. Among these, greatest of all, stood Oliver Cromwell, who sent word to the Duke of Savoy that, unless he would cease persecuting the Lord's saints, he would send a fleet over the very Alps to defend them and punish him 1 " Till a few years ago, they had no liberty to meet openly as a Church. When permission was at length granted them by the father of the present I^ng, a short while before his abdi- cation, to hold a Synod, a representative — of course a Popish one — of the Government must be there to watch over their proceedings, and see that they did nothing against the Church of Rome, the established religion of the country. That is now all passed away ; and on Tuesday last the Vaudois Church met in synod at St. Jean, a country church about two miles from La Tour, as free as any of our three great Presbyterian denominations in Edinburgh in this month of May." Dr. Guthrie and his eldest son were present as deputies from the Free Church of Scotland. That visit opened up to him a new source of interest for the remaining years of his life. He fell quite in love with the Waldenses, their valleys, their Church, and its mission work in Italy. Here is his own description of his first impressions of the locality — " Hotel dk l'Ours, Torre (or La Tour), Piedmont, "Italy, May 9th, 1865. " What a change a few days, and a few hundred miles, have made on our position ! A short while ago we were on the broad, level, lovely bay of Naples ; here, I lift my eye from the table where I write to a beautiful hill, clothed in the softest, richest green that vines, walnut and chestnut trees, can lend ; these rise to its rocky summit, fifteen hundred feei, like a pyramid of foliage, above and opposite to the hotel ; while high, but close above, is the cloud-capped peak of a mountain, out of whose mists I see broad patches and long streaks of snow descending its gorges and ravines. At whatever hour of the night I got out of bed and looked, at Naples, I heard the rumble and rapid driving of these Jehuites — ' The driving is LA TOUR. 397 like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously.' Here, about two o'clock this morning, I drew aside the window-curtain, and looked out at the open window — we always sleep with our windows open — and could have lingered there till daybreak. No footfall broke the quiet of the streets ; this ' hill city ' was sleeping in the bosom of the mountains ; the snow aloft was shining in softened moonlight ; a gentle murmur, like a lullaby, came up from the river ; and down from the vine-clad hill, with its walnut and chestnut- trees, came the voices of nightingales, most soft, sweet, and melodious." " May \2th, 1865. " I like above almost any other place to go to the markets, as there you see the peasantry ; not perhaps in their ' best and braws,' but washed and neat, and in attire which does their faces and forms some justice ; you see, moreover, the produce and staple commodities of the country. " We have spent an hour in the weekly market this morning. I bought a pair of spectacles ; your mother bought needles and a fan from market-s^nit/s on tbe street. The vendors of these articles could speak only the patois of the valleys. It is not French, it is not Italian, though more Italian than French, and is a sort of debris of the old Latin tongue. On going to pay, we came to a standstill ; the humble merchants we were dealing with did not comprehend our French. No sooner was tiie dead-lock reached, than it was opened by men, women, and boys, who knew both French and jmtois, stepping forward un- bidden, to interpret ; instead of, as some at home would have done, hanging back from sheepishness and want of the kindly frankness which we meet here among these lovable people, — or glowering and gnjf'awing at both parties. Almost nobody in this whole country is ever seen idle, with the exception of the daft folk, an idle chap of a shoemaker who spends more time dandling his bairn on the street than at his last, and an old Popish woman, who lives opposite our hotel, and, like me, gets up at five o'clock in the morning, and, like me also, spends a good deal of her time lying over the window. We look over to each other ; and this old body, with her grey hairs, toothless gums, and gold cross, and I keep each other in countenance." In La Tour, the little capital of their Valleys, the "Waldenses are mingled with foreign elements, and Dr. 398 MEMOIR. Guthrie was desirous to see them more nearly in their pure, primitive condition. For this purpose, he made an expedition to Massel, one of the remotest of the parishes, in the Val San Martino, a wild and thoroughly Alpine region. A special interest attaches to the locality, for it was there that Henri Arnaud, through the dreary winter of 1689, defended the famous Balsille against the troops of the Duke of Savoy. " Along our road the meadows and rocks were an endless source of interest and delight. The narcissus, our single white odorous lily, grew in beautiful profusion among the grass of the meadows. No one plants like God ! Set by His hand in these meadows, where few or none of its leaves are seen, these lilies looked much more graceful than in our gardens — they formed bunches and broad patches of beautiful white, showing their golden hearts and perfuming the air. A lovely primula, with a head of many purple, sometimes white, flowers, studded the banks ; columbines grew in abun- dance ; and a bright saponaria, like that which adorns our parterres, peeped out of a hundred crevices, clothing the rocks with its beautiful pink flowers ; then, the place of heather was taken by lavender which covers the hills here, as heath does ours. We were delighted to meet some old acquaintances, and ready to sing, on discovering beds of blae- berries on Piedmontese hills and under Italian skies, ' Should auld acquaintance be forgot ? ' I noticed, too, the asphodel and gentian, the latter of a most lovely blue, and the wild cherry, adding much to the beauty of scenes which, more than any we had seen, a9"orded us a perpetual delight, and raised our thoughts to Him whose praises seemed to be ever sounded amid these sublime solitudes by the voices of their many waters. Compared with these old temples of God's saints, where their psalms echoed amid the rocks, startling the eagle in her eyrie and the fox on the hill, we exclaimed, * What is St. Peter's ? how paltry its dome ! how poor its bits of marbles ! ' " The sun was about to set ; we had turned one of the most formidable corners we had had to face, happily not to force ; our path, not broader than a mule needs for its feet, turned sharp round the edge of the rock, along the face of which, MASSE L. 399 smooth and naked as a skin, it was cut a hundred feet or more above the torrent over vi^hich we hung, when we hailed the lonely hamlet of Massel. Its cabins were clustered on the steep slope aci'oss the gorge, wooded rocks overhanging them, while above the rocks rose long reaches of snow, that seemed to flow out from the clouds that rested on the tops of these Alpine mountains. Though we were at a height of six thousand feet, the hills close by rose at least three thousand feet higher stiU. " . . . . As if the sun had broken out through the mists which had by this time come creeping down into the upper valleys, such was the welcome we got at the minister's house. Though like its neighbour's, with a rude wooden balcony, and extei'ual appearance not much difierent from theirs, inside we found many unexpected comforts : a most kind and frank welcome ; a genuine lady in the minister's wife ; in him, an able man, a devoted pastor, an eloquent preacher ; in their eldest child, one of the brightest boys of three years old I ever saw ; and a bit sweet lassie, of nine months, in her mother's arms. Their hospitality and kindness might be equalled— surpassed they could not be — and so long as we live, Pasteur and Madame Cardon * will have a warm corner in our hearts. ****** " The church of Massel stands on the opposite side of the valley from the hamlet ; and we were away to it betimes on Sunday morning. George Robson f and David walked across ; your mother and I mounted our mules again, and so climbed up to the plateau on which, in immediate proximity to the Popish Chapel, it stands. The Papists don't number more than two hundred in this parish ; the Protestants, or Waldenses rather, some fifteen or sixteen hundred. As we got up to the church, we heard a clear young voice inside, reading the Scriptures. On entering, we found the house well filled ; the women sitting on one side, the men on the other; and in front of the pulpit, a boy, who stood up before a table on which stood a large Ostervald Bible, like that 1 used at Arbirlot, reading the Word of God to the congregation. On closing the chapter he did not close the book ; but, making his young pipe ring over all the church, read Ostervald's commentary on the chapter. On inquiring into the meaning of this strange but striking practice, I learned that this duty of reading the Scriptures while the congregation were * Now of Pignerol. t Now Eev. G. Robson, of the U. P. Church, Inverness. 400 MEMCIR. assembling, belonged to the regent, as he is called, — the dominie or teacher ; but that he sometimes, as on this occasion, employed some boy who was a good reader, as his substitute. It is a capital custom this ! Something like it (psalm-singing, I think) was once the custom in Scotland. The sooner it is revived the better — instead of having people (iluireri}i2 MEMOIR. may never be a cause of grief to me, but a joy and comfort. Not that I would have regard to me to be your highest spring of action : — your heavenly Father, the God and Giver of our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus himself, has done for you what neither I nor any earthly father could have done. " I am very thankful to God for the comfort I have had in all my children, so far as they have yet gone. They are much on my mind, as well when I am working as when I am praying, when I am abroad as when I am at home, when they are with as well as away from me. There is nothing I dread so much as evil companionship." Dr. Guthrie was permitted to maintain a connection with his congregation as pastor emeritus. He was thus nominally one of the ministers of St. John's Free Church till the close of life ; and while he no longer received any allowance from the congregational funds, this arrange- ment enabled him to draw his dividend from the General Sustentation Fund of the Free Church, as well as to retain his seat as a member of the Free Church Pres- bytery of Edinburgh. Before finally passing from the subject of his connection with his congregation, it is right to mention that a misunderstanding shortly after this date unhappily arose bet\^een himself and certain members of the Kirk Session ; one painful consequence of which was that his relations with his colleague, Dr. Hanna, became for a time less cordial than they had been. It is not needful here to enter into any detail, further than to add that, after the whole matter had been remitted for judgment to a committee of the Presbytery, of which Dr. Ilainy was convener, and after the deliver- ance given by that committee had been acquiesced in by both parties, the brotherly intercourse between Dr. Hanna THE SUNDA Y MA GA ZINE. 4 1 3 and Dr. Guthrie was at oijce resumed, the first step to- wards which was taken by the latter, who wrote the following lines : — " 1, Salisbury Eoad, Btcember 27th, 1865. "MydeakDr. Hanna, — The deliverance given in this day to the Presbytery removes the barrier which, for a short but very painful period, interrupted our long and happy intercourse. I am very grateful to God for this. I am very thankful that we have both been spared to see this done — a consummation so devoutly to be wished for. Had it in Providence happened otherwise, I believe it would have been to the -survivor, whether you or me, a sorrow long as our remaining life. " I propose to call on you to-morrow at ten o'clock — not that we may discuss nor even touch on the past, but, burying it in oblivion, resume our intercourse as of old. May this trial be sanctified to us both. It has been to me, and I have no doubt to you likewise, a source of much pain. But good, I trust, will come out of this evil, though it were in no other way than this — our showing the world that differences between Christian men are not deadly, and that they who preach bear- ing and forbearing, the duty of forgiving and asking forgive- ness, are able, through divine grace, as they praach, to practise. •'Ever yours affectionately, " Thomas Guthrie." In his farewell letter to his flock, as the reader will have observed. Dr. Guthrie alluded to the prospect of usefulness in God's service by means of his pen. This allusion had special reference to his having ac- cepted, shortly before that date, a proposal made to him by an enterprising London publisher (Mr. A. Strahan), that he should become editor of a religious periodical of the first class, for which it was believed there was then an opening, — to be entitled the Sunday Magazine. Such a position was wholly novel to Dr. Guthrie, and at first he hesitated about accepting 414 MEMOIR. it; but encouraged by the assurance that be would be aided by a staff of eminent writers of various Evan- gelical denominations, above all, by bis friend, tbe Rev. W. G. Blaikie, D.D., as assistant-editor, be consented. He bad already contributed occasionally to religious periodicals, botb Scotcb and Englisb. The following cbaracteristic note from tbe editor of Good Words, Dr. Norman Macleod, refers to bis connection witb tbat popular montbly : — " Now, dear Doctor, don't say nay ! I know I am a horrid bore. I feel sneaking, like a genteel beggar. But I will give you twenty million thanks (that is, I will give you my heart ivJiulesale, which is more than many thousand thanks in retail) if you give me four pages, each page a Sabbath-evening reading, on any texts you please. " Unless I get Stanley, Alford, Whately, &c., to take a share in this work, I won't yoke you with small men. I wish twelve men to furnish me with twelve months' Sabbath readings, such as men with head and heart will like. *' So, when my list is complete, if you don't like your coad- jutors, you can withdraw. Now, Doctor, mind, you have never yet given me a lift in any of my undertakings, and I have never been unwilling to give a hitch to even the Free Kirk when I could! Four pmjes! to be read by forty thousand readers! Is not that little seed and a great crop ? "Don't abuse me; I am an editor; that is worse than a ragged boy far ! " Yours in love and hope (or, as Falstaff says, ' Yea or nay, as thou usest me ! '), " N. Macleod." His own feelings on becoming editor of tbe Sunday Magazine be thus expressed in a letter to bis eldest son — "London, Fehrumy \^th, 1864. " If it had pleased God, I should have much preferred to live and die in the office of a preacher. His is the noblest of all offices. However, I must try and work by the far less agreeable, and, in some respects, less efficient, instrumentality EDITORIAL WORK. 415 of the pen ; and that, I may say, is now arranged. If God is pleased to smile on this scheme, I will be occupying a position of importance and influence. I will be still in harness, only of a lighter kind, and suited to my physical con- dition ; and have the pleasure of rising in the morning to my day's known work, light but fixed — a very diflferent and much happier condition than his who gets up of a morning and does not know what he is to do, or what he should do. " I cannot be too thankful that, in God's good providence, I have such a pleasant prospect before me — a suitable sphere of usefulness in the evening of my day. All this may be soon overcast and clouded. But that is in God's hands. I must close; only saying that we were at Spurgeon's last Sunday evening — a first-rate, plain sermon, and most magnificent sight. When at Stafibrd House yesterday, I told the grandees they ought to go to Spurgeon's occasionally — that he was a mighty power for good in London." Writing to another of his sons a few days thereafter, he adds — " Let all the family thank God most gratefully for His many great mercies to me, and may you all be enabled to praise Him b> lives conformed to His law and devoted to His service. One great object which I promise myself in leaving the pulpit and entering on this new and less exciting work is, that, in God's good providence, my life may thereby be prolonged to see you and Charlie and Tom settled in life, and that I may be the means of leading you all to Jesus. This is my greatest desire, that you may be Christ's, early giving yourself to Him. " I commend you to the care of a Father who will be always near you. " Your very affectionate father, "Thomas Guthrie." His position as editor of the Sunday Magazine was hy no means free from its difficulties and drawbacks. " I am flooded," he writes shortly after entering on his work, " with letters from England, Scotland, and Ireland, with offers of contributions from male and female volunteers.'* He found it hard to say nay ; and it was not easy, in- 41 6 MEMOIR. deed Impossible, in regard to the matter selected for tlie Magazine, to please everybody. He was not, indeed, always pleased bimself ; and it is just to bis memory to explain that articles did occasionally appear which fell below his standard — not that they were defective in literary execution, but that he desiderated matter more entirely in accord with the title and objects of the Magazine. Still, he had much happiness in his new position ; and, as one source of his interest in the Ragged School was the intercourse he enjoyed on its Committee with men of other Churches, so the thoroughly un- sectarian character of the Sunday Magazine gratified him, as did the friendship of many gifted men and women, his coJIahoratcurs on its staff. Ere the periodical had been a year in existence, Dr. Guthrie wrote : — " My time is very much occupied with correspondence connected with the Sunday Maga- zine, and preparing materials from my pen for each monthly number. Its success hitherto has been great, if not unprecedented. Strahan, from whom I had a letter the other day, calculates on a steady circulation for the first year of ninety thousand monthly copies ; that is, independent of the weekly issues." In discharging his duties as editor, he sometimes overtaxed his strength ; he was not satisfied if unable to take a fair share of the contents ; * and the very last * He was at the same time very sensible of the consi deration which he invariably received at the hands of the proprietors of tlie Magazine. During the earlier years of its ex'stence, Sir. Strahan did much to lighten hia Work. HIS PAPERS IN THE MAGAZINE. 417 literary exertion lie made was when, within ten days of of his death, he sat up in bed to correct proofs for the *' Leper's Lesson,"* at St. Leonard's-on-Sea. Besides continuous articles of a more directly devo- tional kind, and afterwards published under the titles of "Man and the Gospel" (1865); "The Angel's Song" (1865) ; " The Parables " (1866) ; " Our Father's Busi- ness" (1867) ; " Out of Harness" (1867) ; "Early Piety" (1868); "Studies of Character" (1868 and 1870) ; "Sun- days Abroad" (1871), — he had commenced what he designed to be a series of papers on the Charities of London, t a subject thoroughly congenial to him. Thus he wrote from the house of one of his sons-in-law : — " Copley, Neston, Cheshire, 17th October, 1871. My dear Mr. Maitland, — You may be sure your cripples will be limping over the pages of the Sunday Magazine : first, because this institution, with kindred ones, deserves a place in the London charities ; and secondly, because * Sunday Magazine for 1873, page 577. ■f So admirable did the directors of the great Institution for In- CUTiibles at Putney regard the description which he gave of the Home there, that they begged his permission to republish the article -separately, and gave him a right of five votes for elecli(m of applicants to the Institution. But he was very diffident about attempting articles of this more general kind : and in reference to the first paper of that description which he had prepared he thus wrote to his eldest son : — " Along with my MS., I sent a letter to Stnihan telling him that this was quite a new field to me, and that it might be I was too old to begin ; therefore I asked him, as I did not wish in my old age to make a fool of myself, and have people saying of me as of others, ' There is nne fide like an auld fule,' to look over the MS. and say most frankly, if he thought so, ' that it would not do.' I told him that I could afford to have it sent among the ' rejected addresses ' and would not be mortified. I would just, in that case, like a wise sutor, ' stick to my last.' " VOL. II E E 41 8 MEMOIR, Mrs. Maitland and you are so much, interested iu its welfare and success." {To Mr. J. Fuller Maitland.) Shut out now from his pulpit, an opportunity was afforded him month by month of addressing, from the editor's desk, an audience a himdred times as large as when, in the days of his vigour, he preached in St. John's. In a letter written after crossing the Channel in 1870, he described the company onboard, and added : — " ' Look at that man,' I said to your mother, directing her atten- tion to a tall, stout, muscular, intelligent-looking man who sat opposite to us on the deck, with a respectable- like woman, who had a child with her. ' I'll warrant,' I said, ' that is a Scotch engineer who has been in foreign service.' And sure enough our friend steps up to me by-and-by, to say, 'Are you Dr. Guthrie?' 'And who are you,' said I, 'friend?' He was an engineer, a Berwick-on-Tweed man, who had been years in Russia, and, though living at St. Petersburg, was a regular reader of the Sunday Magazine." " Give my kindest regards to your father " (the late Dr. Williams of York), he wrote to a friend. " I wish for him, what an old Christian gentleman once told me in simple and beautiful words he was enjoying. After he had been years off the streets (and, as I fancied, in his grave) I was surprised to encounter him one day. I did not let him see my surprise ; but contented myself with expressions of pleasure at seeing him, and questions PUBLIC TESTIMONIAL. 419 about his health. These he answered, saying, *I bless God, I have had a long day, and now I have a quiet evening.' " The "evening" of Dr. Guthrie's "day" was brightened at its very commencement by the expression, from many quarters, of love and respect which followed the announce- ment of his withdrawal from active service. Ere long, practical direction was given to that feeling by a proposal to present him with some substantial evidence of public sympathy. He had himself in previous years taken a leading part in raising testimonials to his eminent comrades, Drs. Cun- ningham and Candlish, and he rejoiced when the Free Church community set a noble example to other Christian bodies by presenting to these two surviving leaders of her exodus a sum, in the one case of £6,900, and in the other of £5,600. But the testimonial pre- sented to himself differed from these in this, — that it was not so much an expression of value for his services to the Free Church, as to the Church of Christ and the cause of suffering humanity. Alluding to the list of names of those who composed the committee,* one of the news- papers remarked, — " Probably no other man, certainly no other clergyman, in the three kingdoms could have gathered such an array of friends and admirers, both clerical and lay — * reverend,' ' right reverend,' and * right * The Honorary Secretary was the late Mr. Robert Balfour, C.A., a much-loved friend of Dr. Guthrie's, who had been associated with him for years in his Ragged School work. To Mr. Balfour's imtiring exer- tions the success of the testimonial was largely due E E 2 420 MEMOIR. honourable' — around Hm, vieing with each other to do him honour." A meeting was held in Edinburgh on 20th February, 1865, when a presentation of plate was made to Mrs. Guthrie, and a cheque for Five Thousand Pounds put into her husband's hands. Shortly before, when through the public prints the intended testimonial had become known to Dr. Guthrie, he thus wrote to Mr. J. R. Dymock from Lochlee : — " Some may fancy that this may blow me up. I have no feelings of the kind, not because I am above the ordinary feelings of our nature, or have not a great deal more corruption than I should have ; but such a thing sends a man back to think of his own unworthiness before God, and, if at all right-minded, humbles rather than puffs him up ; leading him, when he looks at himself or the many more blessings he enjoys than others not less unworthy and perhaps more deserv- ing, to say, * "What am I ? ' " In his public expression of thanks, Dr. Guthrie said — " When forecasting the future, — as a man will do, and should do, — and thinking of the time now come when I might be worn- out with the labours of this city, — whatever my hopes were, they never took the direction of this scene and these circum- stances. The most, as my wife knows, that I thought of was, when I was worn-out by city labours, of returning to some country charge to find, in a small flock, work I could overtake, and in the flov^ers of a manse garden, pleasures which I always enjoyed. But, to retire from the pulpit, the platform, and public life in iliis manner, was little anticipated " Some one, I have heard, complained that he never got what he asked. I can honestly and frankly say, whether it was place, or gifts, or honours, I never asked what I have got, — ■ my wife excepted My wife, who has been a help- THE PULPIT V. EDITORS DESK. 421 meet to me in every way, who has been a helpmeet to mo in all my philanthropic labours as far as her sex and position admitted, — is not accustomed to public speaking (whatever she may be accustomed to in the way of private speaking ! ), and, therefore, I beg leave to give thanks in her name as ^vell as my own. ... I do not despise the money ; I never did despise money. Many a day have I wished I had a great deal more money, for I would have found a great deal more happi- ness in doing good to others, if it were not needed in any other way; . . . . but, next to the approbation of God, of my blessed Master, and of my own conscience, there is nothing on which I set so high a value as the assurance this testimonial warrants me to entertain, that I have won a place in the hearts of other Christians besides those of my own denomination." " Did you hear," he wrote shortly after to his eldest son, "that Cassell's House (of London) proposed that I should write a ' Life of Christ,' which they would illustrate by the first artists of the day. I wrote them that I would give a definite answer in some ten days " I am not much inclined to commit myself to Cassell. It is a noble subject, and I would like to finish my public work in such a service ; but it will require great care and much time. I feel that I would like to preach more than work with the pen ; and I am so much better, that in quiet circumstances I might do something still in that way." Wide though the sphere of influence was which through the Sunday Magazine he enjoyed, he was often inclined to wish that he could, even in his advancino- years, quit the editor's desk and return to the pulpit. Occasionally, indeed, he did so ; for although, after 1864, he never again preached in St. John's, and but once or twice ventured on a large church, he gladly resumed at intervals his work as an ambassador for Christ.* The first service he attempted, after his retirement * Two or three times each year, for example, he occupied his son's pulpit at Liberton. near Edinlui-gh. 42 2 MEMOIR. from the ministry, "was in Rome. Writing from thence to one of his daughters on 10th April, 1865, he says : — " We had a very interesting day yesterday in the church which is meanwhile in Mr. Lewis's* house — his 'own hired house,' — as Paul spoke of in this very Rome. It was the Communion Sabbath ; and I had the great pleasure of having my mouth once more opened, and that anew, for the first time, at Rome, — Paul's city, and of all cities the most interesting to Christians, Jerusalem only excepted. I gave the closing address at our one * table ; ' — and was none the worse, but felt quite glad to have the ability and the opportunity of speaking for Christ where, with the great apostle at their head, thousands and thousands had laid down their life for Him." To another occasional service in interesting circum- stances he alludes in the following letter to the Rev. George Caie,t of St. John, New Brunswick : — "Edinburgh, 1, Salisbury Road, March 5th, 1866. *' My deae Mr. Caie, — ... I am happy to find you have taken up and thrown yourself into the Ragged Cause. Better it had been for many a poor child to have been born in the heart of Africa — barbarous, heathen Africa — than in our own civilised and so-called Christian cities. " My wife and I spent a very delightful week with the Duke and Duchess of Argyll in Septeml)er last at Inveraray. Almost all the family wore thei'e, Lady Emma also ; the Dowager-Duchess of Sutherland, the Chancellor of the Exche- quer (Mr. Gladstone) and Dean Milman (of Bt. Paul's), with their wives. It was brilliant weather and a brilliant time. * The late Rev. Dr. Lewis, the representative of the Free Church of Scotland in Rome. t Mr. Caio had formerly been tutor in the family of the Duke of -^yyii. DEAN MILMAN, 423 " I preached in the Grand Saloon, and got the Chancellor to lead the psalmody,"* "Inveraray, September, 1865. " The old Dean is a pattern to us all. He tells me that he is now seventy-five ; that, notwithstanding, he is at work every morning at seven o'clock ; that such has been the habit of his life ; that he counts his morning hours, when the body is recruited by sleep and the jnind is fresh, the precious hours of the day for study and acquiring knowledge, and that he owes to them, chiefly, all his acquisitions and his position in life. Now I wish all my children who read this letter to lay that up in their heart. " He is very clever and witty. In the course of conversa- tion to-day, Mr. Gladstone said to the Dowager-Duchess, * We shall ask the Dean ; he knows everything.' He did not catch the remark ; I did : whereupon I turned to him, saying, ' Mr. Gladstone wished you to answer him a question, whether there is not a passage in Cicero where he speaks of the Heathen Temples being supported from the income of estates far remote from the Temple itself'?' This Mr. Gladstone prefaced, laugh- ingly, by the remark, ' Mr. Dean, you know everything.' He could recollect no such passage ; but turned to me, saying, * The Chancellor, with his compliments, reminds me of a remark which I heard Sydney Smifh make of Whewell, who ' (added the Dean) ' really thought, what I am far from thinking of my- self, that he knew everything.' * Whewell' s/or/e,' said Sydney of him, ' is science ; his foible is omniscience,' " Alluding to the latter years of Dr. Guthrie's life, Dr. Candlish tli\is spoke : — " He grew, as I would desire to grow, more and more from year to year, in sympathy with all who love Jesus, and hold the truth as it is in Him. To our own Church he was to the last loyal and loving — none more so." It was in the evening of his life that he was led to interest himself specially in God's work on the Continent ; but his regard for the wel- * Dr. Guthrie preached once again at Inveraray Castle when, in August, 1871, the Marquis of Lorne brought home his royal bride. f24 MEMOIR. fare of his own denomination at home was no way lessened thereby. He never, indeed, had any special taste or capacity for being what an old Highland woman warned her pastor against becoming, " a buzness minister ;'* and, as years advanced, the state of his nervous system unfitted him altogether for the heat of debate, so that he seldom took part in the deliberations, either of his Presbytery or the General Assembly, But when any special service on behalf of the Free Church was sought from him, he willingly undertook it. At Dr. H. Buchanan's request, in November, 1871, he spoke at a great meeting of Free Church people held in Glasgow, to raise £20,000 towards meeting the spiritual destitution of that city ; and there again, in the following month, on behalf of the Free Church Ministers' Sons and Daughters' Society, on the solicitation of his friend, Mr. David Maclagan ; but in regard to almost all questions of debate his invariable expression was : — " I am content to be an inside passenger, if the ' leaders ' will only drive 'canny.'" One subject, however, which engaged the Free Church during the last ten years of his life drew him out — that of Union with the other Non-established Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, — which ultimately resolved itself into a keen discussion on the question of a union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches. One could easily have predicted what side Dr. Guthrie would take on such a question ; and when the movement was threat- ened with obstruction and arrest by a minority within UNION QUESTION IN THE FREE CHURCH. 425 the Free Church, he threw himself into the discussion with much of his old ardour, taking a more prominent part in connection with it than with any other ecclesi- astical question since the great struggle of 1843. It was twenty years after the Disruption that, on a proposal made to her by the United Presbyterian Synod, the Free Church appointed a Committee to negotiate with the other Non-established Presbyterian Churches, with a view to union. But the desire and expectation of such a step had been present to Dr. Guthrie's mind long before. Speaking at a great meet- ing in Canonmills Hall in the very year of the Disrup- tion, he thus referred to the position of the lately formed Free Church towards the Dissenters : — " We have points of difference, it is true ; but what is the use of constantly sticking them in each other's faces? You, Sir James,* used to wear a sword when you were Lord Provost ; but you were not always flisking it into men's faces. Some men are like hedgehogs ; you can't touch them but they set up their bristles. For my part, I believe that if hedgehogs would only love each other, they could lie closely enough together ! My motto is not * co-operation without incorporation.' I have no idea of that ; but co-operation until and unto incorporation." Ten years thereafter, the late Sir George Sinclair moved privately in the matter, bringing leading men of the various Churches together under his roof in • The chairman was Sir James Forrest, Bart., a staunch Free Churchman. 426 MEMOIR. EdinburgL, to discuss the matter at a series of break- fast parties. Dr. Guthrie attended these, and was cogni- zant of his host's plans and purposes from the beginning. " January 21th, \ 853. " My dear Sir George, — I return you Dr. Brown's * letter; it is most interesting, and quite like the man. It is to me a melancholy thing to see how the spirit and practice of unity have been and are sacrificed to an unattainable attempt at uniformity. The Churches that honestly hold the truth, and are at one on what constitute the vital and essential doctrines of the Gospel, have yet to learn or read the story of Charles V. and the watches ! I would give men more elbow-room, and on many points leave the members and ministers of the Church to differ ; among others, on the Voluntary question for in- stance. I am confident of this, at any rate, that in the course of another generation, the Free Church will be far on in that direction, — a right or wrong one. Such is the course which all bodies will take who are not enjoying the benefits of an Establishment — or are suffering its injuries, as a Voluntary would say. The States of this world are not such, and never have been such, as to encourage the Church to seek union with them." Four years thereafter, matters seemed to be ripening hopefully : — To THE Earl of Kintore. "Edinburgh, ^^rJ/8C/(, 1857. " My dear Lord Kintore, — Some two years ago we had various meetings here, at which Dr. Cunningham, Dr. Tweedie, Dr. Hanna and myself, associated with some of our lead- ing elders, conjoined with the leading brethren of the United Presbyterian Church, with the view of preparing the way for a union between our two Churches. We found that no sub- stantial obstacle prevented such a union, — such a desirable consummation. These meetings have been resumed this winter, to the delight and satisfaction of all who attended them ; and a series of resolutions have been carefully drawn out, and cordially agreed to by both parties, with the view of these being published, after being signed by some fifty or sixty of the leading elders and members of both Churches. * Late Kev John Brown, D.D., of the United Presbyterian Church. SIR G. SINCLAIR AND THE UNION. 427 " I should be happy to see all the Presbyterians of Scotland again united in one body. Meantime, there are ditficulties in the way of such a union with the Established Church, which only time and God in His providence can remove. But we feel that there is no real obstacle standing in the way of union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches. We agree to diflfer on some points that have ceased to be of any practical importance to us as an unendowed Church ; and we feel that such a union, while it would present to the world a beautiful spectacle of brethren living together in unity, would greatly promote the best interests of religion, and strengthen the hands of religious liberty in our country. " The movement has begun with the laity (as many great reforms and blessed changes in the Church have done), and it is proposed to confine the signatures to these resolutions in the meantime to them. These resolutions, when signed by a num- ber of the leading laymen of both Churches, are to be published : we hope in this way to prepare the public for a blessed re- union, which, whether it come in our day or not, cannot be far distant. ****** " With kindest regards to Lady Kintore, I have the honour to be, " Yours very sincerely, " Thomas Gutheie. " P.S. — Mr. Brownlow North is to preach for me. I have been much delighted with him ; he spoke of you all. — T. G." To Sir G. Sinclair. " Jult/, 1857. " My deak Sir Geoege, — I have all along entertained the opinion that yours is the hand which has been honoured to sow the seed of which another generation will reap the blessed fruit. You have great cause to bless God that you have laid the foundation of a great work. . . It is not true that Galileo, or Bacon, or Adam Smith * lived before their time,' because they were considered dreamers by many, and many years elapsed before the world embraced their views. They lived in their proper time, and did their proper work in the order of Providence, and so have you. If you don't live long enough in this world to see the building rise to its copestone, in heaven you will hear, coming up from this earth, the shoutings of ' grace, grace,' when it is laid amid the jubilant joy of brethren dwelling together in unity." 428 MEMOIR. At length the proposal took a distinct shape in the General Assembly of 1863. " One of my parents," he said on that occasion, " was a Seceder, a holy and sainted mother ; and how she would have rejoiced to see this day ! I have heen behind the scenes of the Secession body. . . I remember the time that when any man would not swear, and would not drink, and who held family worship, and would talk to a man about his soul, and rebuke a man for his fault, he was sneered at as ' a Seceder.' I remember very well being told by Dr. Burns, of Kilsyth, that he was once travelling in a stage-coach north of Aberdeen, where he encountered a fai-mer, who, it turned out, was on the way to see his minister about baptism. Dr. Burns seized the opportunity of putting in a word into his ear, and speak- ing to him about the importance of the ordinance ; where- upon the farmer looked at him astonished, and said, • Ye'll be a swceder, man ! ' and when Dr. Burns repudiated the connection, and told him that he was mistaken, that he was a minister of the Established Church, the man was more astonished still, and said to him, ' If you're no' a sinceder, then ye'll be frae the south.' He added, * We dinna trouble oorseis much aboot thae things here. The fact is, if the lairds are guid to us, we dinna fash oorseis aboot the ministers ! ' "I am in the very position to-day," continued Dr. Guthrie, " in which I stood in the year 1843, when I made my first speech as a Free Church minister in a Free Church Assembly .... I never will rest contented — I never will cease to pray and work until that end (union) is achieved ; and as I do so I wall bury in oblivion the memory of former contro- versies. I do not come here to make a confession, for I made it lung ago. I am not ashamed to confess that in the Voluntary controversy, while my opponents said things to me and my party that they ought not to have said, I also said things to them and their party which I ought not to have said." He believed that he knew his Voluntary brethren and their principles better than he did then, and he was heartily prepared to " let bygones be bygones." " That the men, I mean the greater part of the men," he wrote A DIFFICULTY FORESEEN. 429 to Sir George Sinclair, September 23rd, 1858, "who lived in the days of the Voluntary Controversy should feel less disposed than some of us to this union is but natural. Every man is not Sir George Sinclair, nor, I wiU add, your humble servant,— seeing I hold that I have one of those healthy constitutions, blessed with which, a man's wounds don't go on festering and suppurating, but soon heal." Although the proposal to appoint" a negotiating Committee was gone into unanimously in the Assembly of 1863, the tone of some of the speakers indicated that the future of the negotiations might not be quite smooth ; but the cloud was then no bigger than a.man's hand ; and Dr. Guthrie would not allow himself to believe that so reasonable a proposal (as he deemed it) could eUcit any serious opposition. So little, in fact, did he anticipate the blackened sky into which that little cloud was ere long to spread itself, that in the previous Assembly he had congratulated the Hoiu^e from the chair on seeing " no ranks frowning here upon ranks there — no right and left hand of the Moderator." He knew well that there was an important point on which one of the negotiating Churches did hold opinions diverse from those of the Free Church; the United Presbyterians being, as a body. Voluntaries, not only in practice, but in theory and by conviction. But he was early persuaded, and each year's investigation in Committee made it more apparent, that the Voluntary- ism of these brethren was not the kind of Voluntaryism 430 MEMOIR. which in old conflicts had been attributed to them ; that it was neither " national atheism," nor anything resembling it. With so many and cogent reasons for union, he could not regard it as other than a great evil that a difference on the one point of the magistrates' relation towards the Christian Church should keep the Non-established Presbyterian Churches asunder, — all the more that the difference concerned a matter which, in present circumstances, was neither a practical one nor ever likely to become so. Dr. Guthrie and his brethren on the union side were therefore amazed and grieved at the strength of opposi- tion which the comparatively small party within his own Church, hostile to the union, displayed. The Free Church, it was alleged, could not make the question of Establishments an " open " one without compromising her "testimony," and abandoning her distinctive prin- ciples. Further, it was maintained that the terms of admission to office in the Free Church bound all her ministers to a belief in the duty of the State to establish and endow the Church. No, replied Dr. Guthrie and his friends ; the formula which they sign on ordination has been expressly worded to avoid that. " When I met Dr. Macfarlane, of Greenock," said Dr. Guthrie, " one of the shrewdest and most eminent of the men who came out with us, I said to him, *I wish. Doctor, in arranging the formula of the Free Church, you woidd take care that there be nothing about endowments there, to hinder us from uniting with POINTS MAGNIFIED INTO PRINCIPLES. 431 the United Presbyterian Church when God's time has come ; ' and there is nothing of the kind in that formula. Our original Claim of Rights no doubt laid down two principles: — First, that the State was bound to maintain the Church of Christ ; and second, that the Church of Christ was bound to maintain the rights of His crown and His people against the State, should it encroach on them. The first of these is dropt out. There is nothing in our formula which binds our ministers, or any one else, to hold the principle of endowments." His conviction was, that if the opponents of union were allowed to make a belief in the State's obligation to establish a Church a term of ministerial communion, the tendency would be to shrivel up the Free Church into a contracted sect; "remarkable" (to use his own words) " only for her noble beginning, and her miserable end." He pointed, as a warning, to the fate of other denominations which had pursued a similar policy, magnifying points into principles. "Let the process of splitting go on, and if we are to split hairs on every point, where is it to end ? I called once upon a blacking-maker, in the Horse Wynd of Edinburgh, and conversed with him about various matters. I found out that he was a Baptist. * So you are a Baptist,' I said : * excellent people, — none I respect more.' And pointing to a Baptist chapel near by, I asked him, — 'Do you worship there ? ' Folding the paper for the blacking, he coolly replied, not so much as raising his eyes, * I once did, but not now.' * Where then ? ' * Well, you see, sir,' he 432 MEMOIR. said, * we split, and about thirty of us left.' ' And where do you go now ? * He said, * Nowhere. The others have left ; one man has gone to Glasgow, another man went to Greenock, a third to Dundee, and there are now just my wife and me/ Had I been wicked enough, I might have raised a controversy between this poor man and his wife, and split them next ! " This is not the place to record the history of the Union conflict within the Free Church : — suffice it to say, that after ten years of negotiation, the Union remains still un- accomplished. To that extent, its opponents can claim success. But its friends believe that they have achieved a better success ; that by a careful sifting of principles in committee they have proved the substantial oneness of the negotiating Churches, and reduced their points of disagreement to a minimum. It has been proved that the United Presbyterian Church holds, as substantially as does the Free Church, the doctrine of Christ's Head- ship over the nations ; and, while she denies the applica- tion of that doctrine which requires the State to legalise a particular denomination, that she is at one with other Presbyterians on the deeper question of the responsibility of civil rulers with respect to religion and the Church of Christ. A solid basis for future incorporation has thus been formed, and a practical result has meanwhile been gained in the passing of " The Mutual Eligibility Law" > by the General Assembly of 1873, whereby the Free and United Presbyterian Churches may now interchange their ministers. HIS VIEWS ON VOLUNTARYISM. 433 Dr. Guthrie would indeed have liked to have seen a much greater advance than this. He would, even at the risk of a partial secession from his own Church, have gone through with the union on which his heart was set. ** It clouds the evening of my days," he said, " to think that we cannot, while retaining our differences, agree to bury our quarrels in a grave where no mourner stands by — a grave above which I can fancy angels pausing on the wing, and uniting in this blessed song, * Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell to- gether in unity.' " AVhen in 1868 he preached Sir David Brewster's funeral sermon, he told how on his death-bed that Christian philosopher had spoken of this union, and with what ardour he longed to see it accomplished. To that eminent man's last testimony he was by-and-by to add his own ; during his last days at St. Leonard's the subject was repeatedly on his lips. Did Dr. Guthrie then, it may be asked, become in latter years a Voluntary? Theoretically he never abandoned the belief, that circumstances may exist in which it is lawful and expedient for a Church to receive endowment from the State. " I have no objection," he said in 1862, "to join the Established Church in point of principle. I believe our successors won't hold the high establish- ment principle that we do ; but I am to carry it with me to the grave.'* At the same time he frankly avowed a change in his views as to the value and desirableness of a State connection. " As to the duty of the State to bestow, and of the Church to receive, endowments" (to use VOL. II. F F 434 MEMOIR. his own words in 1872), " that is a matter of opinion. I had an opinion once on that subject. It is very much modified now, to say the least of it ; and the only thing I am sorry about is, that I cannot declare myself an out- and-out Voluntary, and see if they (the opponents of union with the United Presbyterian Church) would turn me out of the Church on that account ! " Did he look with hope to a provable reunion with the Established Church ? In 18G0 he thus expressed himself in a letter to the Duke of Argyll — "Edinburgh, January IMh, 1860. " My deae Duke, — . . . . As to a union between the Established and Free Church, I have been all along most anxious to see all Presbyterians united in our country, while at the same time I look with the deepest interest on the problem we are working out, viz., whether a Church under favourable circumstances is able without aid from the State to fulfil its mission with vigour and success ; its mission being that of every living being, viz., maintaining itself, and propa- gating its species. The pi'esent condition of the State is not that which our forefathers counted on when they married Church and State together, and as we in Scotland are in respect of position, wealth, and numbers in more favourable circumstances than any other denomination has been to give this experiment fair play, I am anxious to see it fairly tried, sufficiently tested. " I have a strong wish on the other hand to see all the Presbyterian parties united, and if that is to be brought about, it can only he in the way your Grace points at. Some two or three years ago the Marquis of Tweeddale was so kind as ask me to have a talk with him on that very subject. He was anxious to see the breach healed. I told him then that I did not'believe any Act of Parliament could be so drawn out as to redd the marches between, in all cases, matters civil and eccle- siastical, that in fact the disputes about jurisdiction rose up after the battle had begun in another quarter, that the oiiyo malonim, the root of all our secessions and disruptions in Scotland, was to be found in the law of patronage, and that, ON A RETURN TO THE ESTABLISHMENT. 435 were that Act to be abolished, I believed that the great hindrance to reunion would be removed. Were that done, I would consider the grand end of the Disruption accomplished, and if our having left the advantages and comforts of the Establishment should lead in the end to the restoration of the rights of the people, and more protection than any of the Churches now enjoy against the Edinburgh-made law of the Court of Session, I should be willing that we should vanish ; and would think our sufferings and sacrifices had been well endured. " I have the honour to be, yours very truly, " Thomas Guthrie." Did that letter stand alone, the views of the writer might possibly be misunderstood ; not so, when read in the light of his sentiments as expressed in more recent years. The words which follow were spoken from the Moderator's chair of the Free Church Assembly in 1862, and carry therefore all the weight of a care- fully considered public utterance : — " If it were said to me, suppose Government were to give you all that you asked, spiritual independence and the free choice of pastors, are you prepared to accept the terms ? "Well, committing nobody but myself, I reply, I have no objection on the score of principle ; but I am not prepared on the score of expediency to accept the terms. I was lately lamed, and was under the necessity for some time of using crutches ; and perhaps you will allow me to borrow an illustration from this circum- stance. Well, I am not prepared to give up going on my own feet to resume the crutches ; I am not prepared to do so for this reason, that after I had lost the power of walking, and had come to depend on the crutches, the State may do again what the State has done before, F f2 436 MEMOIR. knock them from under me, and leave me lying a help- less slave at her feet." The longer he li^ed, the less he cherished the ex- pectation of seeing Scottish Presbyterianism united on the basis of a reconstructed Established Church. It rejoiced his heart to hear of unions among the Presby- terian Churches in Australia, in Canada, and the United States, where Establishments have no existence ; and, looking to the future in Scotland, he repeatedly expressed the conviction which he thus illustrates in a letter to Sir George Sinclair : — " I have no doubt that the existence of Establishments is, just like that of the Mahommedan powers in Turkey, a question of time. Their founda- tions are year by year wearing away, like that of an iceberg which has floated southward into warm seas, and, as happens with that creation of a cold climate, they will by-and-by become topheavy, the centre of ^ gravity being changed, and topple over. What a com- motion then ! " He continued to take a lively interest in many matters of national as well as ecclesiastical concern ; * and though his relations with the public were now chiefly of a literary kind, his voice was not unfre- quently heard on public questions. " It is no exag- geration," writes an impartial authority,! "to say that * In 1869 he was electe>l a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. t Saturday Review, Marrh 1, 1873. THE WORKING CLASSES. 437 lie could speak more powerfully to the mass of tlie Scotch people than any man since the death of Chalmers. He was so little of a Free Churchman in a sectarian sense that if Scotchmen had sought some champion to do battle against any great social wrong, the mass of them would, irrespectively of their creeds, have singled out Dr. Guthrie." ** I think," he wrote to Miss Eliott Lockhart, in November, 1869, " the longer I live, my burdens in some respects are growing greater — the weightier, as I am growing the weaker. Adam Black had agreed on Satur- day last to deliver a lecture to the working classes on unions, strikes, &c. His views on these subjects not being likely to correspond with those of many of the work- men, a row was expected, Adam wrote me to that effect ; and, trusting to me as (according to him) more likely than most people to be able to quell a tumult, he begged me to appear in Dunedin Hall on Saturday evening at eight o'clock. " There was a mighty crowd ; some four or five drunken fellows excepted, the people behaved remarkably well. I looked with great admiration on the fine broad fore- heads and intelligent faces of these sons of toil. You saw at a glance — right or wrong on the subject in hand • — these men were no weaklings or fools." The question of National Education, as indicated in Chapter XI., engrossed much of Dr. Guthrie's attention in his closing years, and the legislation to which it gave rise he hailed with genuine satisfaction as full of hope 4-38 MEMOIR. for the future. It was with very different feelings he contemplated the action of Parliament on another question intimately connected with public morals. The grounds, purposes, and results of the Contagious Diseases Acts involved details very distasteful to him. He thought it his duty nevertheless to investigate them carefully, and did not shrink from expressing opinions which, however unpopular in certain quarters, were the result of his deepest convictions. "... The police ought to have no more to do with infamous establishments but to break them up, regarding them as public nuisances equally dangerous and disgraceful to the community, not to be regulated but to be destroyed ; and dis- tinguishing between liberty and license, between an incentive to virtue and an incentive to vice, between those who follow an honest, and those who live by an infamous occupation, the police ought to clear our streets of all who are an oflence to decency and live by the wages of iniquity. • " Our chief magistrate, Lord Provost Chambers, has done so to a considerable extent here, much to his honour and to the satis- faction of the inhabitants ; nor is there a Mayor in England or Provost in Scotland but might, and should, follow his example. If they have not in all cases power to do so, let them apply to Parliament and get it. It is monstrous to see how they will haul up and punish, by fine or imprisonment, some poor decent creature who has thrown a heap of ashes on tke street, and yet allow it to be infested with living nuisances who, while cor- rupting the morals of the thoughtless, are a thousand times more revolting to the feelings of the pure and right-minded members of the community. " Not that I have any great faith in police action, even when most wisely, vigorously, and virtuously employed. The true i-emedy appears to me to lie in raising the moral tone of society ; and for this purpose, the press, the platform, and especially the pulpit, must speak out in plainer, louder tones than they have been accustomed to use." {To Mrs. Wills, BristuL) He regarded the introduction of the Contagious CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS. 439 Diseases Acts with mingled regret and indignation. He had no faith in their proving successful, even for the objects which primarily led to their introduction — but, in any case, he regarded their principle as radically wrong. Preaching some years before this date on the temporarily successful but " crooked " and eventually ruinous policy of .King Jeroboam — " Fatal success ! " he exclaimed, " which was followed by results which should teach our statesmen — whether they manage affairs at home or abroad — that no policy in the end shall thrive which traverses the word of God ; and that that never can be politically right, which is morally and religiously wrong." Of the measure itself he thus wrote — "Edinburgh, February ^th, 1871. ** My dear Dr. Mackenzie, — . . . This Bill is one of the most atrocious attacks which has been made in my day on the morals of our country. My hope is that it may tuTn public attention to the evils of a standing army, which, with its compulsory celibacy, I regard as a standing immorality. Pay our men, as Cromwell did, double the wages of a day-labourer (Henry VIII. did the same), give them the means and oppor- tunity of enjoying the blessings and practising the virtues of domestic life, and^ou need no Contagious Diseases Bills ; and since t^70 such men, I undertake, will licit any half-dozen of the deliascd and debilitated blackguards of our High Street, and St. Giles's, and Salt-markets, from the scum of which our armies are now recruited, you will be even cheaper in the end.* I * Dr. Guthrie had many communications with Sir Charles Trevelyan and with militaiy men on the condition of the army. Closely connected with his views as to an ia)proved condition of things among our soldiers, was his hearty sympathy with the Volunteer movement. At an interest- ing Volunteer fete at Lochnaw Castle, when on a visit to Sir A. Agnew, M.P., ha said, — " Two of my sons are already Volunteers, and shruld (which God iorhid) the enemy land upon our coast, I woxiid go with my sons to tlie hattle-field, not to fight, but to cheer them on aud share in their peril, iu duleuce of all we hold dear," 440 MEMOIR. stand on the principle of morality against the Bill, hiit it would be well could you smash its supporters by facts and details." He accompanied a deputation to Government on the question that same year. ** Westminster Palace Hotel, 19^A July, 1871. "Yesterday was the quietest day I have had for years. Save an occasional question to the guard and railway officials, I did not open my mouth, but at the dinner-table at York, from ten in the morning to ten at night ! " "July list, 1871. " The Times, which is on the other side, gives a brief account in this morning's issue of our interview with Mr. Bruce. You would suppose from reading it, that two hiindred men and women with flying hair and clenched hands, and screams of indignation and rage, carrying the Home Office by storm, burst in on the astonished Bruce ! The Times, you would see, speaks in complimentary terms of my appearance. I was thankful, when it was over and I found the impression that I had made, that I was borne up and through so well ; for I had nothing prepared, being prepared to accommodate my remarks to circumstances, and, indeed, said things which only came into my head when I was on my feet and in the thick of my address to the Home Secretary." [To Mrs. Guthrie.) From the time of his retirement, in 1864, Dr. Guthrie lived less continuously at home than in former years. The altered nature of his avocations permitted him to move about, and he found that variety of scene and of society conduced much to the maintenance of his general health. In 1866, he pitched his tent for the summer months on the shore of Loch Fyne, occupying the Free Church Manse of Inveraray.* One * In reniemhrance of that visit, a life-size bust has been jilaced in the external wall of the Manse, by the Duchess of Argyll, with an in- INVERARY AND LOCHLEE. 441 reminiscence, among many otliers, of that pleasant time, he has preserved in a speech made at the annual meeting of the Glasgow Foundry Boys' Society, on whose plat- form he appeared in 1870 along with Dr. Norman MacLeod. Some hundred and fifty of the lads had spent a day or two at Inveraray during " Glasgow Fair," and Dr. Guthrie invited them to the Manse : — " I remember on a beautiful summer eveninw, when the boys drank tea on the lawn before our door, they sang and we sang ; they cheered and we cheered back again ; and I can teli you, Dr. Macleod, that the ' clerical enamel ' was like to be rubbed off on that occasion, and I was disposed to say with regard to clerical dignity, what Shakespeare says of physic — ' Give it to the dogs ! ' " The perfect seclusion, however, which Lochlee afforded him, gave to his country quarters there one of their chief attractions ; and almost every season to the close of life he found his way back again to the Grampians. " We are all in the bustle of emigrants, being about, in an hour or so, to start for Brechin on our way to Lochlee. I could not but think and feel, Iiow different this morning from those when we used to leave town for the glen, fifteen or twenty years ago — a lot of bairns of all sizts, all on the qui vive, noisy and frolicsome, the elder ones trying to keep the younger in order; the doors of the railway cai'riage stuck full of heads, which, with the smoke of the engine and dust of the road, were, by the time they reached Brechin, begrimed enough ! Now, almost all are scattered, and yet, in God's mercy, all are spared. Johnnie lies in his quiet grave ; or, rather, is with Christ in heaven. But he was never in Lochlee — so that, with many pleasant and delightful recollections of all the family round us, and the happiness of other days, the glen has no melancholy memories." scription. The bust is by "W. Brodie, R.S.A., a member of Dr. Gu'hrie's congregation, who executed another in marble, which is placed -wilhiu St. John's Free Chui-ch. 442 MEMOIR. His own impression was, that the annual period of rest to body and mind which he enjoyed in that High- land solitude was to a large degree instrumental in prolonging his days ; but an accident which he met in 1867 threatened very unexpectedly to end them there. He recounts this adventure to his friend, W. F. Gumming, Esq., M.D.,* KinneUan — " Inchgrtjndle, Lochlee, June 20 - Dr. Ingram, and circulated it among some friends. The result was that an admirable pfjrtrait of the patriarch ■was secured for tlie Free Church College, Edinburgh, painted by Otto Leyde, A.R.S.A., while a smaller portrait and service of plate were pre- sented to Dr. Ingram for retention in his lamilj . EVENING SHADOWS. 455 tliat day, think they were never to hear his familiar voice from that platform again ! Cheered as the evening of Dr. Guthrie's life continued to be by much happiness and abundant prosperity, the lengthening shadows became more discernible to him each year. He felt increasingly the need of rest. " "We have not had a visitor to cross the door," he wrote to Mrs. Guthrie, in February, 1870, from his eldest daughter's house in Peebles-shire ; " and that is the ,life that now suits me, along with a good measure of ' vagabondarje ' — wandering about for that measure of pleasant excite- ment which the slow-going blood of age needs." "Very sensible are the old dogs," he wrote again, in allusion to bis advancing years, " who spend most of their time stretched out on a hearth-stone before the fire, or lolling on the doorstone on a sunny day ; but one would like to be doing something for our God and Saviour while he is here." CHAPTER XV. THE CLOSING YEAR. In 1872 Dr. Guthrie had reached his sixty-ninth year; and, though incapable of any severe exertion, he appeared so full of life and spirits, that his friends anticipated several years of usefulness yet in store for him. ** 1, Salisbury Road, Edinburgh, January 5th, 1872. " My dear Miss Beever, — We were delighted to receive your letter this morning. You never forget the poor [ragged] bairns. The two £5 notes came safe to hand. I need not say how warmly I feel to you for your steady and very valuable friendship to a cause I have much at heart. I will ask you to give my very sincere respects to your cook and housemaid.* Were the rest of mankind a hundred part as generous and self-denying, what good cause would have to complain of want of funds ? May the Lord bless them ; for (as the Apostle exhorted servants in his day to do) they certainly ' adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.' " I sympathize with you on the loss of the magpie, as told in one of your letters to my grandsons, Tom and Lawrence, — letters of which they are amazingly proud, each more anxious than the other that I should read Miss Beever's letter to him. Speaking of magpies, we were amazed at the number of these birds in Brittany ; they are there in flocks almost like crons (or, as you call them in England, rooks) in our island. Ours, by- the-bye, is, I suspect, the old English word ; this I infer from * Who for years had senf, and still continue to send, Ihrongh Miss Bcevur, nuarly £3 annually to Dr. Guthrie's Ragged Schools. LETTER TO MISS B ELVER. 457 the iitame they give the stick with an old ragged coat and a crown- less hat which farmers and gardeners use to scare oil" the rooks. It goes by the name, not of a scnre-rook, but a scare-crow.*' In Shetland, where I spent some three weeks in September last, I saw neither crow nor magpie ; but, in place of rooks, they have flocks of the ' hooded crow ' — a bird of prey. " I see you are watching for the first footsteps of spring. So am I. The other day I was welcoming some crocuses that were lifting up their heads in my garden to see whether winter was taking his departure ; to-day, they have learned that ho is here still. Ere this morning broke, came a heavy fall of snow, and now dale and hill are I'obed in spotless purity. The snow is glistening in the sunshine under a cloudless blue sky ; and anything more beautiful than j;he bushes and trees all feathered could not be. . . . "I enjoy better health than at an earlier or, indeed, any forrber period of my life. This maj^ in part, be due to having got almost entirely rid of a ' mouthful of teeth/ which have been, with intervals of rest and ease, an annoj-ance and often a torment to me, occasionally making life a burden. Talk of the Martyrs and their suflerings ! I have endured twenty times more pain than most of them, and that without the consolation of suftering in a noble cause ! Still, I have not settled this question in physiology — whether my bad health was due to toothache, or toothache to my bad health ? I fancy they acted and reacted on each other : anj' way, I can quote, with hearty approbation, the Scotch proverb, ' A toom (empty) house is better than an ill tenant.' " I will close with all the best wishes of the season for you and yours. May a gracious God richly and daily bless you with His precious love and grace. " Ever yours afiectionately, " Thomas Guthkie." (To Miss S. Beever, Coniston, Ambleside.) * Though no scientific philologist, Dr. Guthrie had a great taste for tracing affinities in diiFerent tongues, and for digging among the roots of words. We have heard him humorously disputing with friends from England about this very word crow. " A primitive people," he main- tained, " would naturally name birds as well as other animals from the sounds they utter {cuckoo, peeivit, crake, &c.). Apply this principle, and you will see that the original name of this bird must have been our Scotch form. You hear a glossy-black fellow, as he sits on a hiifh tree in spring, saying craw ! craw ! but when did ye ever hear one calling out erow ! crow ! " 458 MEMOIR. In this letter he refers to the improvement in his general health as life advanced. As he said, in writing to another friend, " If I am not good looking, I am at least uell looking." In his later years his figure had become fuller, and his countenance, formerly some- what haggard, and dusky in hue, had rounded, while the now fresh colour showed well by contrast with the long grey hair. Nevertheless, for years before his last illness he had little ability for any kind of muscular exertion. The ascent of a flight of stairs tried him, and a walk of even two miles left him quite exhausted. A friend who had not seen him for some time, meeting him one day on the street, remarked how robust he looked. " Ah ! my good sir," replied Dr. Guthrie, " I may say of myself what James Hamilton of London once said of a certain person. I should tell you, I had said to Dr. Hamilton, * AVhat can be the secret of 's reputation ? It has lasted now a number of years. Surely there must be something great about the man after all ? ' • Well,' said Dr. Hamilton in his quiet, quaint way, * no doubt ; he is a great impomtion ! ' Now, my good friend, I am just like . So far as my looks go, I am a great imposition ! " In the middle of January, 1872, he went to London, primarily with the view of visiting various of the great Charities there, of which he wished to tell in the Sunday Magazine. On the 14th he preached for the Rev. J. T. Davidson, and addressed an audience of 3,000 in the Minor Agricultural Hall, Islington ; while a few weeks THE MIDDLE TEMPLE. 459 thereafter, a proposal was made that lie should preach, to another congregation as interesting, if less numerous : — " 89, Phillimoee Gaedexs, London, January 26ih, 1872. " My dear Clementina, — We came up from Essex yester- day afternoon in time for iJie Templars' dinner. I drove to Mr. Anderson's, who is a Queen's counsel, and with whom (when, as a Scotch advocate, he was counsel for Rev. Mr. Macfarlane, a Chapel-of-Ease Minister, in Arbroath) I had many a con- flict more than thirty-six years ago. He and I walked to the Middle Temple, close by his chambers ; and he putting on his silk gown, and I putting off my two top-coats, in an anteroom, we were ushered by the officials into a lofty, richly decorated apartment, where the ' masters,' judges, and invited guests were to assemble. Here, I was introduced to one and another of the great dons of the law, as well as to Dr. Vaughan, Master of the Temple. By-and-by an official enters and marches us out by two and two, calling out our names — and then, on what an imposing scene did we enter ! At the upper end of a noble hall, one hundred and fifty feet long, I would say, and eighty high to the centre of its open, elaborately carved Gothic roof, stood a raised table, which was allotted to the Benchers, judges, and those of us who were marched up to it. The tables in the body of the hall were already filled by a company who stood up to receive us. They amounted to about two hundred, and consisted of barristers and some hundred and sixty students of law. I sat opposite Sir Thomas Chambers, who was in the chair, and who had Dr. Vaughan on his right and Lord Penzance on his left. On Vaughan's right sat the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. He looks old but wonderfully fresh, due to his rosy complexion and Scandinavian hair and face. ^ 5^ ^ «•< «i ^ "Hardly excepting St. George's Chapel on the royal mar- riage day, the spectacle was the grandest I have seen. The only toast given in the Grand Hall was ' Her Majesty.' It was very neatly and well done by Chambers. And, by-the-bye, I must not forget to mention a curious old ceremony. A massive silver cup, filled with wine, was passed from hand to hand at our upper table, each as he drank drinking to ' The pious memory of Master Worsley ' (or Bome such name) — the man who long years ago left the cup to the Templars and a fund to replenish it with wine, that he might thus, in a way, live in their memory for ever. " Dinner finished, forming such a procession on leaving as 46o MEMOIR. we observed on entering, we filed out, the students cheering, and calling out the names of some they most admired, and here I was astonished to find myself acknowledged, some calling out 'Guthrie, Guthrie!' which I take to have been done by some kindly Scots. We now entered a spacious room, to find tables garnished with flowers, furnished with wine and loaded with fruit. .Then the speechifying proper began. Chambers gave the Rev. Dr. Vaughan as Master of the Temple, in a com- plimentary speech. Vaughan replied in a very proper address for the ecclesiastical head of the Temple, which he closed by taking notice of my presence, acknowledging very frankly the Presbyterian as a sister Church, and saying that he would be pleased to see me in the pulpit of the Temple — a thing he did very courteously and handsomely, and was cheered. I sat mum. Thereafter Chambers gave the Lord Chief Justice and other judges ; whereupon they all rose, and Cockburn rephed for them, speaking in a slow, judicial-like style. Then came the healths of Lord Penzance and another judge, who in their turns rose and briefly acknowledged the compli- ment. It was my turn next ; so up rises Chambers, and with not a few laudatory words, proposes my health, taking occasion to applaud Vaughan's proposal that I should preach in the Temple. It was rather a formidable position for me, with an august company, comprising the talent and genius of the English bench and bar, to face. But I am thankful to say I never was moro in possession of myself; so I held on, as they showed no sign of weariness, making the longest speech on the occasion. It was quite unprepared, save that in case I would have to ' hopen ' my mouth, I had thought over two or three points — seria mixta cum. jocis — on my way in the hansom. The joci took admirably. I told them the story of Stewart of Goodtrees' epitome of Scotch Law — this, namely, 'Show me the man, ami HI tell you the laid' as contrasting our Scotch judges with the English in the olden time ; and somehow or other (I forget now how) I lugged in my story of Madame Hiver and her discovery of the man who, though he insisted on it that he was an Englishman, was found to be really an Irishman hy the way he peeled his potatoes ! I complimented Vaughan and the English judges ; had a fling, in passing, at the Archbishop of York and Wilberforce and their ' viUsion service,' which was remarkably well received ; told them how John Knox preached for years in the Episcopal and Established churches of Berwick and London, and avowed my readiness to accept the honour of preaching in the Temple church." CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS. 461 That churcli not being under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, no obstacle arising from ecclesiastical authority stood in the way. The day was even named for Dr. Guthrie's sermon, and it seemed for a time as if the spectacle were actually to be realised of a Scotch dissenting minister in the pulpit of the Temple Church. But unforeseen difficulties emerged, and the project was abandoned. •' 39, Phillimore Gardens, London, February \2th, 1872. " On Sunday evening we set oflf to hear a quondam clown preach. . . . " At the close of the service a young woman, whom I had observed singing the hymns with great fervour, and whose countenance wore the celestial expression which Fra Angelico gives to his Saints, stood by the inner door as we went out, distributing tracts. On holding out my hand for one, she said as she gave it, with a sweet smile on her face, 'I hope, sir, you love Jesus ? ' Some thought, considering my white neckcloth and venerable appearance, this was rather forward on her part, but it was well meant ; few Christians err in the direction of faithfulness. "From this hall, with its interesting services, we plunged at once into Oxford Street : and it seemed like leaving Lot's house to mingle with the crowd in Sodom. The pavements were swarming with wretched women, vapouring about un- abashed, in flaunting and gaudy dresses ; and gin palaces were blazing with gas, and crowded with customers. Such sights are a shame in a civilised, to say nothing of a Christian, country, enough to bring down the judgments of God on the land. However, let us be thankful for the prospect of better days, and do what we can to hasten them on." "EDrNBURGH, March 9t/i, 1872. " My dear Mrs. Wyld, — I am worn and wearied to-day ; so, being indisposed for hard and heavy work, I take, as to a pleasant employment, to writing you a letter, with any rambling account that may suggest itself, of my observations and expe- riences on the Thanksgiving Day * in London. * For ihe recovery of H.R.II. the Prince of Wales, 462 MEMOIR. "For weeks before, all London was in a steer. Nor any won- der. Nothing of the kind has been seen previously by any living, save, perhaps, a very few still lingering on the earth who saw George III., about the close of last century, go in state to St. Paul's to return thanks to God for the recovery of his reason. So the Thanksgiving had all the interest of a great novelty. But more than that, it was a great solemnity, which found a response in the heart of eveiy right-minded man and woman. Scoffers — all the ungodly crew who sneer at Providence and prayer — wisely held their tongues. Seated in the scorner's chair, they would have jibed at any minister who had proposed to call on God — on any one but Dr. Gull — or to acknowledge by an act of thanksgiving the power of prayer ; but where a Queen had to be confronted, — brought face to face with earthly Majesty, where was the courage of men that speak against the heavens ? Nowhere ; it had oozed out at their finger-ends. ^ ^- ^ :J; ^C ^^ " When we got into the ' city ' proper, within Temple Bar, we had to show our tickets to the guards. Into this space the East End, with all its rags, and drunkenness, and blackguardism, and misery, and sin, had poured, and with roughs of both sexes the pavements were so crowded and packed that, save here and there where they pressed forward so that it became a pushing match between them and the police, it seemed hardly possible to move a foot. When I looked on the sea of faces, which made one think of the Communists of Paris and the horrible crimes done there a year ago, and also of the monsters of the older Revolution, with their famous cry of Les jyretres dlalaiiterne, I confess I looked with more than ordinary complacency on the marines, the guards and other soldiers, and the police, who lined the streets. There, in that fierce-looking crowd, with faces expressive of bad habits and bad passions, was a magazine of gunpowder which it needed but a spark, some sudden and strong excitement, to explode ; and Church and State, Queen, Ministers of State, and Ministers of Religion, all things ancient, venerable, and holy, are blown into the air. Vice and misery were the prevailing characteristics of that sea of upturned faces. I never saw them collected in such over- powering masses before, and have no wish to see them again. Though the little fellows would not have been very effective in an eineute, yet at no part of the long lines of defenders along the route did I see a prettier sight than that formed of the boys from the soldier- boy schools and the training-ships. The one set dressed in the red uniform of the army, the other in the blue jackets of the navy, each youngster looking as full THANKSGIVING DAY. 463 of dignity and importance as if the fortunes of the day were in his hands, were a sight worth seeing ; plucky little chaps they looked. " I would linger long on the scenes of the streets ; they were full of interest and entertainment ; and we had abundance of time to make the survey, for, though we left Argyll Lodge at nine a.m., it was not till a quarter past eleven o'clock that our carriage reached St. Paul's. At the south gate we descended and threw ourselves into the stream of company that was pouring up ; and after a long climb, getting occasional glimpses of the interior, we reached the extemporised gallery of the South Transept " At length one o'clock struck, and hardly had people who knew our Gracious Lady's punctuality got time to get on * the tip-toe of expectation,' when an organ behind us, drowning the sound of cannon, made us all start, and the whole mass and multitude below, as of one soul, rose to their feet. My eyes seemed to be the only sense I possessed, and they certainly looked on the most lofty and impressive sight that could be imagined — such as they had never seen before nor expect in this world to see again. There was an assembly of all ' the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men,' of the greatest nation on earth, and, before these, their Sovereign, come to do homage to the God of Heaven, acknow- ledge His providence, and render the tribute of her own and people's thanks to Him for having heard the voice of a mother's and a nation's prayer, sparing the son, husband, and father, at her side. " It was a solemn act, that Thanksgiving, worthy of Him to whom it was rendered, and worthy of those who rendered it. It was most impressive to see her on her knees to whom all others kneel ; and when I looked on that august company, assembled with the Sovereign of an empire on which the sun never sets, to acknowledge God and to do honour to His Divine Son, my mind by way of contrast reverted to the day when the powers of earth conspired together, and the streets of Jerusalem rang to the fierce cries of Crucify hitn ! crucify him ! and they hanged Him (before whom Queen and country were reverently bending) between two thieves on an accursed tree." It was after he returned to Edinburgh, in March, that Dr. Guthrie's health first began to give way. An unde- veloped gastric attack hung about him throughout that 464 MEMOIR. montli and tlie one following, which, though it did not prostrate him at the time, predisposed him to the rheu- matic affection which, as summer advanced, aggravated the disease of the heart from which he had so long suffered. Still, when May arrived, he was so much better that he felt quite ready to go southward again, his primary object this time being to officiate in London at the marriage of his fifth son, Alexander, who had come for the purpose from San Francisco. This over, he returned to Edinburgh, to be present when Dr. Ilanna performed a similar service for his youngest daughter, Helen. ''June Mth, 1872. " Some days after Nelly's marriage, which, God willing, comes off next week, we will set off for Lochlee. " Ahout the middle of November Mrs. Guthrie and I set off for Rome ; we shall return home about the beginning of May, 1873. We then embark in August for Yankeedom, to attend the Evangelical Alliance ; and from the Eastern States we'll go to San Francisco, remaining there till March, '74. This we propose, ever seeking to remember the good old adage, ' Man proposes, but God disposes.' If I am spared to carry out these plans, I think I shall then cease my wanderings on the face of the earth, and hve quietly till they carry me home." {To Mrs. Wijld.) He went to Lochlee in June, as proposed. "Here I am in bed," he wrote from thence, " under what I may say is new to me, a rheumatic attack. I think I must have got it on the day of Nelly's marriage. Then I was wearied and worn out next day, attending Norman MacLeod's funeral, and the result of all these things rheums, which have got worse and worse, refusing to be arrested, far less removed." DR. NORMAN MACLEODS FUNERAL. 465 While on various points which he regarded as im- portant, Dr. Guthrie widely differed from Dr. Mac- Leod, their intercourse had been very cordial in later years ; and though far from well, he made a special effort to show the last mark of respect in his power to the memory of his distinguished friend. Writing on June 25th, he first gives some details of the recent joyous occasion in his own family, and then continues : — " Next day carried me, alas! to a very dif- ferent scene — to Norman MacLeod's funeral ; the biggest Glasgow ever saw. Amid our marriage festivities and the gay and happy scene in our house, I could not but think of the grief, silence, and desolation in his ; and how thankful we ought to be for the good- ness, the riches of the goodness, long-suffering, and for- bearance of Him who maketh one to differ from another. He was a man of singular generosity and geniality, and was, I believe, a genuine Christian and devout man Gifted with brilliant talents, and bent on doing good, he will prove a loss in many respects, one especially to the Established Church, not easily supplied. . . . May good be wrought by this sudden and sad event ! To me and others especially, but indeed to all, it is the voice of God, saying, 'Work, while it is called to-day. Be ye also ready.' " Dr. Guthrie's visit to his Highland retreat that summer failed to recruit him as in former years. When the various members of his family came in succession to visit him in the Glen, he welcomed us with his old VOL. II. H H 466 MEMOIR. sunny smile, and was, if possible, more tender and affec- tionate than ever ; but we could not hide from ourselves that much of the wonted spring was gone. He wandered to the river-side, but a few casts with the rod tired him. He planned our various mountain expeditions, but no longer proposed to join us. At length, on August 12th, he wrote : — " I had no idea of the tortures of rheumatics till now In six weeks I have not had one decent night's rest, wakening usually almost every hour. In consequence, I have felt much languor and lassitude, and I have written myself out of all my autumn engage- ments, both in England and Ireland." He was still, however, most unwilling to abandon one engagement he had formed — viz., to supply the station at Rome during the ensuing winter, 1872-73, at the request of the Free Church Continental Committee. He was to have for his colleagues that winter in the Free Church near the Porta del Popolo, two other eminent Scottish preachers, Dr. Macgregor and Dr. John Ker, the one of the Established, the other of the United Presbyterian Church. Nor was it until the middle of September that he gave up the plan as hopeless. The liord had ordered otherwise, and, ere that winter ended, called him to a higher ministry and a wider fellowship of saints in the only " Eternal City." Growing worse rather than better in the Highlands, it was resolved to try Buxton. The change of scene, the interest of visiting a new locality, and much pleasant intercourse there, were in themselves a benefit to him. BUXTON. 467 His colour was still fresh, and so he wrote from Buxton — " Jidy 20th, 1872. " Dr. Shipton complimented me on my looks, as everybody does. Even old Ingi-am in Shetland last year did it, bawling out at the top of his stentorian lungs, ' You look wonderful for your age ; ' adding, however, as became a man of ninety-seven, ' but you are ouly a boy compared with me ! ' "I have been writing two papers lately for the Sunday Maqazine — one will appear next month, the other in October — on 'the London Cripple Homes. But, for cripples, this place heats a ! Old and young hobbling about, some on crutches, some by help of one stick, some of two ; while others, making sorry work of it, affect to get along without^ any extraneous assistance ; and not a few, bowing to the inevitable, move about in Bath chairs. For all that, there are multitudes of wholesome and, among the young ladies, not a few winsome- looking people, the sight of whom, with picturesque hills, fine gardens, and bands of music, makes this a pleasant residence. " The place is one of no mean natural beauty. "VVe shall see to-morrow (Sunday) in what respect and to what extent it may be considered a garden of the Lord. I shall try most of the • Wells ' to see how far these may be called ' medicinal,' adapted to man's spiritual diseases and state." All his letters from Buxton were in the same genial strain. He continued to be interested in everything and everybody : — '♦ Buxton, Juhj Ibth, 1872. " Whom did we find but Dr. Keith ? * Charlie and I called on him between sermons on Sunday. There he was — a mighty man both physically and mentally. He was all alone, as bright and cheerful as a lark, with his Bible beside him, saying, ^ I never weary ! ' Next evening he was here, returning our visit, and pouring forth a flood of talk like an artesian well. " On Monday, when I went to the bath, one of the bathmen appeared particularly gracious. ' You were in our chapel yes- terday,' he said. ♦ Oh,' I replied, ' are you a Methodist ? ' ' Yes, and my father before me.' I complimented him on the sermon and the singing, which was of the heartiest — with what * The Eev. Alex. Keith, D.D., formerly minister of the Freo Church at St. Cyrus, author of many well-known works on Prophecy. hh2 +68 MEMOIR. vehemence they praised the Lord ! But what amused me was the complacency with which the honest man brought me down to his level, or elevated me to the honourable height of his. Telling me that so and so was inquiring for me, I remarked that I did not know any one of the name. ' Ah, Doctor,' he replied, ' I fancy it is with you as with me — many know us whom we don't know.' " "July 30th, 1872. " With such sensations as Livingstone's, when he, lying on the ground, had a lion gnawing at his arm, I tell the doctor and others here how I have been sufi'ering, and how, like the woman of the Gospel, I am rather worse than better of Buxton drinks and douches. They smile satisfaction, ure quite de- lighted with one's doleful miseries and recital of severer pain and new places attacked, saying, * Ah, that shows the waters are doing well,' — I being ready, under such circumstances, to take up the words of Job, and say to such friends, ' Miserable comforters are ye all ! ' " However, I should begin this letter otherwise than after this grumbling fashion ; having, notwithstanding I may have awoke some six or seven times, enjoyed the best night's rest I have had for a month past last night Anne * came here on Saturday, and remained with us, Uke a gleam of sunshine, till yesterday morning. . . . " We have just returned from Poole's Cave, one of the greatest natural curiosities I have seen, and which it were worth while any one's going fifty miles, or more, to see. It is so called because it was the asylum of an outlaw of that name in the time of Hemy VI. I asked the lad who was our guide whether it was Poole of ' The Synopsis ' that lived there and gave his name to the place ? He was not sure ! " I have had a call again from the Methodists, proposing now that, instead of preaching in their chapel, I should, for the sake of fresh air to myself and accommodation to the public, occupy the pavilion in the gardens, which would accommodate some two thousand people. Of course I declined. I would have liked to preach, and for this among other reasons — to prevent the natives from confounding Presbyterianism with the heresies of the Socinian 'shop' here, called the • Presbyterian Chapel.' " On his return to Edinburgh he both looked and felt better ; but although the pain of the external muscles * His daughter, Mrs. Williamson. HIS LA SI SERMON. 469 was nearly gone, the rheumatic attack of summer had done its work, by permanently injuring the texture of the heart itself. From the date of this attack, its action became continuously enfeebled. In August, Dr. Guthrie returned from Buxton to Lochlee for a few weeks, and there fulfilled his two last engagements, — the one being to take the chair at a tem- ■ perance social meeting and amateur concert got up by his family for the Glen people ; and the other, +0 preach in the Free Church there, on Sunday the 25th of the same month. His delight in preaching remained with him to the last. In the spring of that year he had written to Dr. Norman MacLeod, in the last communication which passed between them : — " I would prefer above all things else to give more of what time remains to me to the preaching of the Gospel ; and by going here and there to preach for worthy men, to help them to get rid of debts that burden their churches, or promote schemes of Christian usefulness which they and their congregations are engaged in." The audience he addressed on 25th August, 1872, in the little Free Church of Lochlee, presented, by an interesting coincidence, an illustration of the hold his pulpit power gave him over classes the most diverse. Sitting there almost side by side with the weather-beaten shepherds and simple peasants from the neighbouring farms, were a Prince of the Blood,* and the present Lord * H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh ; thon on a visit to the Earl of Dal- housie. Writing from Lochlee the previous year, 19th August, 1871, Dr. (ruthrie mentions : *' I diiied with Prince Alfred the other day at the Lodjje — very frank, easy, pleasant manners." 470 MEMOIR. Chancellor of England. " I am always thankful for this," he wrote of a somewhat similar occasion years before, " that when I get into the pulpit all men look much on the same level." His text was, " The just shall live by faith " (Ileb. x. 38). That sermon in Lochlee was the last he ever preached ; and when he descended from the pulpit he had closed a forty years* ministry. Very soon after his return to Edinburgh from the Highlands he was obliged finally to abandon his winter plans for preaching in Rome. "I have felt," he wrote on 13th September, "that though the rheumatism retired, my strength, which it ' weakened in the way,' did not return; this did not look or promise well; but, a week or so ago, worse symptoms began to show themselves, and diificulty of breathing supervened ; and this, instead of abating, has been growing worse, having become so bad, that last night, for instance, I awoke some fifty times with the sensations almost of a man who is suffocating. " Dr. Cumming's verdict is that there is as yet no water in the chest, or pericardium; but the texture of the heart has suffered damage, more than existed before the rheumatic attack. He hopes, with time and care, my heart may recover such tone at least as it had before I was attacked with rheumatism — but it may be otherwise ; things may get worse : and, no doubt, though he did not say so in as many words, they in that case would run on to a fatal issue." His own opinion was that the " beginning of the end " had come. He lost not a day in making all needful arrangements regarding his worldly affairs, making some changes in his will, &c. He seemed to hear the call, " Set thy house in order, for thou must die." These arrangements were just completed, when a sudden attack ALARMING ILLNESS. 471 of congestion of tlie lungs, in the last week of September, threatened an immediate execution of the sentence. Besides Dr. Gumming, his ordinary medical adviser, he was now attended by Sir Robert Christison and Dr. Warburton Begbie, and for a week his family and friends were kept in the most anxious suspense as to the issue. The inquiries at his house necessitated daily bulletins to be affixed to his gate. The daily press conveyed these to their readers all over the country, and the widespread concern and sympathy touched him greatly. If he had not known it before, he would have learned now, how deep was the personal affection cherished fur him by multitudes. From this attack he made a wonder- ful rally, and in ten days the apprehensions of immediate danger passsed away. From the Duchess of Argyll. "Inveraray, October Wi, 1872. " My dear Dr. Guthrie,— This is only a line to tell you how much our thoughts are with you, and with your wife. You must not write : when Mrs. Guthrie can give us a comfort- ahle account, I hope she will. You Imow, I trust, what a delight it is to us to remember all occasions of intercourse with you. We thank God for them. " I feel much for the distress the attacks of breathlessnes^ must give you. But I will not trouble you with many words. May God give you more ease and His own peace, my dear kind friend. " With much affection, yours very sincerely, " E. Argyll." From Dean Ramsay. " AiNsi.iE Place, Edinburgh, October 21th, 1872. " Dearest Dr. Guthrie, — You have been very ill, my good friend — near the gate we all have to pass. At such times, when we are approaching closer to the realities of the .aith, I cannot 472 . . MEMOIR, help thinking that the externals of Church Order and Church Service become comparatively insignificant, and we ought to h)()k for comfort and support more sure than the external modi- iications of the Faith. I trust, dear friend, you experienced that consolation in your day of weakness which you had pointed out to so many in your day of vigour. " I am older than you by several years, and am feeling the weight of age and infirmity. " By-aud-by, might you just receive for five minutes " Your old and truly afl'ectionate friend, " E. B. IIamsay." " Oetohcr SOth, 1872. " My dear Mr. Dean, — I have received many sweet, tender, and Christian letters touching my late serious illness, but among them all none I value more, or almost so much as your own. " How perfect the harmony in our views as to the petty dis- tinctions around which — sad and shame to thuik of it — such tierce controversies have raged. I thank God that I, like yourself, have never attached much importance to these externals, and have had the fortune to be regarded as rather loose on such matters. We have just, by God's grace, anticipated the views and aspects they present on a death- bed. " I must tell you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour. After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone, when I was seeking sleep and could not find it, a volume of my published sermons was tried, and sometimes very successfully, as a soporific. I was familiar with them, and yet they presented as much novelty as to divert my mind from my troubles. And what if this failed ? Then came the ' Remi- niscences ' to entertain me, and while away the long hours when all hope of getting sleep's sweet oblivion was given up. " So your book was one of my many mercies ; but oh how great in such a time the unspeakable mercy of a full, ticc, present salvation !" Another letter of sympathy and congratuhition he received was in the form of a "round robin," signed by the Rev. T. Binney of London and a number of other friends, met at the house of Sir Titus Salt, in Yorkshire. In reply he wrote to Miss Salt : — " 23rd " WEARISOME NIGHTS APPOINTED r 473 October, 1872 I was brought low, but am now so far myself again that I can write a brief note. The ship which was tliro\ATi on her beam ends is slowly but steadily righting herself. The doctors think I may have to go to the south of Europe in our severe sjiring months ; but I have so often, in God's good providence and through strength of a powerful constitution, cheated the doctors, that I hope I may not have to leave *my ain countree.' Little wearies me, so I must stop." Our fond anticipations of a return to moderately good health were not to be fulfilled. The digestive system now began to fail, in sympathy with the heart, and a tedious winter of weakness and weariness lay before him. Ilis buoyancy of spirits carried him through the day ; but sleeplessness, or, at best, rest procured by the use of sedatives (chiefly chloral), combined with an indescribable sensation of sinking or faintness when about to fall into sleep, made him dread the very approach of night. For four months continuously, it was necessary for some of his family and attendants to sit in the room with him through the night, trying to beguile weariness and induce repose by reading to him in a monotonous tone, or by softly singing a psalm or hymn.* "It was a blessed and is rather a curious thing," he writes on December 7th, " that singing should have had such a happy influence on me, who am so ' timmer- tuned,' as they say. As Arnot t once said, I may say, * though I * No. 13.5 of " Hymns Ancient and Modern," beginning " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almiiihty," he asked for oltener than any other. t llev. W. Arnot, editor of the Family Treasury. 47+ MEMOIR. never composed music, music has often composed me ! ' Sometimes, however, I get oif the rails, and am not to be charmed by the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely. So it has happened this morning ; and here am I seated, in an easy-chair, rolled up in blankets, with 'Noah'* at my feet, before a blazing fire, dictating to Clementina a letter to you between four and five of the morning." Still, we hoped against hope. Could we have foreseen that there was to be no recovery, we might have been tempted to wish that the time of weariness and distress had been shortened ; so distressing was it to witness the protracted struggle between a mortal malady and a powerful constitution, the former ever gaining the advan- tage ; to see a genial spirit fettered to a disabled frame — existence itself becoming at times a burden. But, through it all, " he endured, as seeing Him who is in- visible." The return of his fourth son from Buenos Ay res in January, 1873, after an absence of six years, afiected him very much, while he was rejoiced to welcome the young wife whom he brought with him from South America, and whom Dr. Guthrie used to present to his visitors as " a lady who has never seen snow." The tedium of his seclusion was much lightened, too, by visits of friends, and he greatly relished the conversation and prayers of brethren in the ministry — Dr. Duff, Dr. Candlish, Dr. Blaikie, Dr. Charles Brown, Dr. Ilanna, Mr. Philip (his successor in St. John's ♦ A favourite white Cuban leiritr. THE LAST WINTER. 475 Free Cliurcli), Mr. Robertson of Newington, and otliers, who visited and prayed with him. Through the winter, he continued to take the liveliest interest in all that was happening either in the Church or in the world. A visitor going in on him during the earlier part of the day would have found him sitting up in his bed (now moved to the drawing-room), his Bible on the pillow beside him, and the morning news- paper in his hand ; a favourite green paroquet preening its feathers as it perched on the rail at the foot of his couch, while his white dog lay beside him ; at such times his eye was so keen, his voice so fidl and strong, and the stream of his conversation so racy and rapid, that it was scarce possible to realise how weary the night had been, and his sleep how sorely broken. He continued almost daily to extend his Autobiography, to correct proofs for the Sunday Magazine, and dictate letters to his friends. In one of these he sent a minute account of his condition to his fifth son, in San Francisco, from which we extract the concluding sentences : — "December 3rd, 1872. " I get np about ten o'clocL-, and in favourable weather have a drive in the shut or open carriage, as circumstances suggest. Besides this exercise, I now take one or two turns each day in the garden, and am able, by help of a stick, and taking it very slowly, to walk from the front door to the bower, and from that round the back of the house to the top of the garden. This bloics and finishes me for the time. Though that is a poor achievement, it is a great deal more than I was able to do some time ago, and less than I hope to do ere long. " We have all cause to be thankful that I have been brought back, I may say, from the gates of death. May it teach us to 476 MEMOIR. be mindful of our latter end, which it is so easy to forget amid the pleasures and pursuits of the world. My condition when at the worst was a striking proof of the necessity for attending, while we are in the enjoyment of health and strength, to the things that concern our peace. There is no time more unfit for that, 'than when the body is suifering pain or agony, and the mind is weakened, and bodily suffering engrosses all one's thoughts. So, let us give heed to the saying, ' Be ye also ready.' To be ready is the only safe state for another world, besides being the happiest one in this. Pray God to sanctify this warning and affliction to one and all of us ; that it may not have yielded pain only, but much profit. " We are rejoiced to hear of the business you are carrying on. Let us praise the Lord for His goodness, and consecrate all to Him. To be a successful merchant is a good thing, but to be a Christian one a better. " May the gracious God our Saviour have Mary and you in His safe and holy keeping. To His care and loving-kind- ness I commend you both. " Your very afi'ectionate father, " Thomas Guthrie." " Deremher T^th, 1872. "My dear Miss Beever, — If it was at this season of the yeal that our Saviour was born, it has been by contrast that the scene in the fields of Bethlehem has been presented most forcibly to my mind, as seeking sleep and finding none, I lay in bed, listening to the howling of the storm. This is one of the most abnormal seasons in the memory of man, for rain and tempest, and weather that now, in the very depth and heart of winter, looks like genial spring. I do not know that it is good for health ; but certainly it is very enjoyable for the crows that I watch from my bed in the drawing-room here, wheeling through the air in joyous majesty, some broods of blackbirds that go hopping over the grass the live-long day, and an innumerable company of sparrows, that, bred in the i\ y that mantles many of my walls, hold a sort of parliament, jmlavei-th'mri, or public assembly, in the venerable thorn-tree which stands before my door, as the chief ornament of this place. " Though the weather here be comparatively genial, I am wearying to get away to the south of England, because there, at St. Leonards-on-Sea, where I have taken lodgings, I can spend much more time in the open air than I can do in Edin- burgh." ST. LEONARD' S-ON-SEA. 477 He arrived at St. Leonard's on January 31st, 1873, and from a bright, cheerful house in Eversfield Place he looked out with all his old interest on the sea. The sound of the waves, as they broke on the beach close beneath his windows, delighted him, and he enjoyed a daily airing in a Bath chair or carriage along the shore ; but his debility continued to increase so much, that at length he had to use a carrying-chair in passing from his sitting-room to the conve^'^ance at the door. As Ihe muscular power failed, the nervous system seemed to become morbidly sensitive. "The very quality," was his remark, with reference to his emotional temperament, " which used to be the source of my power, is now the seat of my weakness." In-passing through London, he had been visited by Dr. Walshe, eminent for his acquaintance with cardiac maladies. Dr. Walshe did not anticipate any immediate change in his condition. To this he refers, writing to his eldest son, from St. Leonards, on February 3rd — " I don't know that the verdict of Dr. Walshe on my case gave me any such pleasure as it might give my family. I have no pleasure in looking forward to living through such years as the last months have been. For a considerable portion and proportion of these hours, I may say, the days have come when I have no pleasure in them — pleasure other than the prospect of the oblivion which sleep and the bed afford. But death and the grave would do the same ; and ' with some good hope through grace of the favour and forgiveness of God, and of a saving interest in Christ's love and work, a long life presents no charm, and a sudden death no terrors to me. " Not that I wish to be parted from a family amid whom I have enjoyed an amount of happiness that seldom falls to the lot of man ; but my prevailing and supreme wish is that I and 478 MEMOIR. they, children and chiklren's children, may all find ourselves safely housed at last and together in the Kingdom of Heaven." On the lOth, he dictated a letter to Dr. Cumraing, of Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, in which he tells of an in- creased tendency to dropsy, novr too apparent, and asks — " With an appetite rather lessening than growing, with ability to walk about slowly abandoning me, and receding with- out any such promise of return as the tide gives when it leaves the shore, should I not regard this symptom as a precursor of the end '? and that, perhaps — through the accumulation of water over the whole system — not very remote end ? . . . No doubt, it matters little to a man idure, but everything Jiow, he dies ; and it is even of more importance still, not how he dicn. but how he lives. Still, if I were to die now, or soon, of this malady, I would rather do so under yoar than any other body's charge ; at home than abroad, in the bosom of my family than among strangers." When driving slowly through the old part of Hastings, he stopped to chat with the Sussex fisher folk, and pur- chase zooj^hytes, (tJgcp, and other specimens of natural histor}', prepared by a poor widow there. Along with the letter just quoted, he sent to Mrs. Gumming a prepared specimen of the young of the skate fish, varnished and mounted on cardboard, in which the eyes and mouth present a grotesque resemblance to a distorted human face. The short note accompanying this oddity was the last he ever wrote with his own hand — "20, EvERSFiELD Plage, St. LEONARDS, February \Qth, 1873. " My dear Mrs. Cummixg, — There is a woman here who keeps a sort of marine-curiosity shop : to keep you humble, I send you herewith a specimen, according to Darwin and CHRISTIAN FELIOWSHIP. 479 his system of development, of one of our remote and early ancestors, which I purchased of this worthy wife. " Yours very aflectiouately, " Thomas GaxMEiE." The gravity of the first communication and the play- fulness of the second may seem in strange juxtaposition, but the combination was entirely characteristic of the writer. The last time he was able to be in the open air was on the 16th of February. It was the Lord's day ; and in the morning, with Mrs. Guthrie, he accompanied some of his family on their way to worship at the United Presby- terian Church of Silverhill, two miles from St. Leonards. Driving slowly back he reached Eversfield Place much exhausted, and, after being carried in his chair into the house, went at once to bed, scarcely ever to leave it again. Ten memorable days, however, yet remained. All the members of his family who could reach him, were now summoned; and, for some days before he died, eight of his ten children were around his bedside. It was in keeping with his own catholic spirit, that when, in the providence of God, he was shut out by distance from further intercourse with brethren of his own denomination in Edinburgh, he should have his closing days at St. Leonards soothed by servants of God in other Churches there, not one of whom he had j^re- viously known. The Pev. T. Vores, Vicar of St. Mary-in- the-Castle, the Pev. J. Griffin,* of the Congregational, * In a note written by ^Ir. Griffin after Dr. Gulhrie's departurf. he says: "I esteemed it one of the most precious privilege, uf my li.e to 48 0 MEMOIR. and the Rev. G. Carr, of tlie United Presbyterian Churcli, visited and prayed with him frequently. As the veil which hides the other world grows more transparent to the believer, his intercourse with God becomes closer and more constant. The room in which Dr. Guthrie lay communicated by folding doors (one of which stood generally open) with the apartment where his family sat, and we could not but observe how much of his time was now spent in prayer. We frequently over- heard him, when alone, giving audible utterance to his fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Most touching and impressive were the ex- pressions of deep penitence that then fell from his lips, mingled with petitions for a further realisation of Christ's preciousness and for more love towards Ilim. His natural dislike to speak much of his inner experience and spiritual emotions passed in great measure away as the end drew near. A few, and these but a few, of his expressions were, unknown to him, taken down at the time he gave utterance to them : — " Thank God," he said, " my tongue has been unloosed." While we were beside him, he would break out in the midst of ordinary conversation into ejaculatory prayer, — using this one frequently : " 0 Most Mighty and Most Merciful, have have been with your venerated father again and again during the last days of his noble and God-honouring life We shall never forget Ihos'^ moments of pra\ er at his bedside, and the sweet, soft hymning of his fd.mi v aruuud Liin." HIS LAST ILLNESS. 481 compassion on me, once a great sinner, and now a great sufferer!" Bodily distress was more or less continuous ; not in- deed in the form of acute pain, but of what he himself termed "sore oppression." "Death is slowly mining away here in the dark," he said one day: — "I could almost envy a warrior struck down by a battle-axe in the midst of the fight. The only part of the English Church Service I could never join in was the prayer in the Litany, ' from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us.' " On another occasion : — " I often thought and hoped in past years, that God would have granted me a translation like Chalmers' and Andrew Thomson's ; but it would seem now this is not to be the way of it." Stretching out his arm with force on the 18th, he exclaimed, " Oh, the power yet in that right arm ! I doubt it presents the prospect of a long fight ; and if so. Lord, help me to turn my dying hours to better purpose than my preaching ones have been !" On the 19th : — " Oh that I could do some good in dying, and that this sad scene may be blessed to my family! But, were I to lie here all the days of Methu- selah, I would not think it anything when I remember the sufferings of my Saviour." " I have often witnessed death-beds," he said, — *' I have often described them ; but I had no concep- tion, till now, of what hard work dying really is. Had I known this years ago as I know it now, I would have felt far more for others in similar circumstances than I did." From this, he passed on to speak of our Saviour's VOL. II. 11 482 MEMOIR. personal experience of suffering and death, and of His having- thus become an High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. "Yanitas vanitatum ! " he exclaimed, one day. "A living dog is better than a dead lion ; and yet," he added, after a pause, " why should we wonder that this com- plaint of mine seems now past remedy ? In '48, Begbie, Simpson, and Miller all considered my usefulness ended — my life probably near a close, — ay, that is five-and- twenty years ago. I have outlived every one of them ; and though I have nothing to boast of, I have great reason to bless God that, dviring these years, I have been able to do something for God's glory and my suffering fellow-creatures. Need we wonder it should come to this now?" Every aspect of Christ's character was precious to him. His chief complaint was, that his affection towards the Redeemer was not warmer. " I have not wanted con- fidence in Christ," were his words on the 20th ; "but I have not loved Him as I ought." Then, after a pause — " as He loved me." On the 22nd, in conversation with Admiral Baillie Hamilton (an Episcopalian friend of former years, who visited and praj'ed with him daily), he mentioned the story of an old Scotch minister, who proposed to keep back from the Lord's table a young woman, whose knowledge he found grievously de- fective. Rising to go, the girl burst into tears. *' It's true, sir, I canna speak for Him, but I think I could die for Him." " So," said Dr. Guthrie, " I feel HIS LAST ILLNESS. 483 that though I cannot speak of Him as He deserves, yet if I were to lie here a thousand years, I would think nothing of it, if it were to honour Christ." Admiral Hamilton then knelt down by his bedside, and prayed fervently. Dr. Guthrie held out his hand to him as he rose, and said, " Thank you, my dear friend, thank you. May your prayers return abundantly into your own bosom." He derived very great comfort too from the converse and prayers of the Rev. W. Welsh, of whom, in one of his letters at a former date, he writes : — " Mr. Welsh, my son-in-law, is one of my many mercies ; and, indeed, when I look around me and see the misfortunes and calamities that gather like clouds over many families, I feel how thankful I ought to be for the kindness of God in my household relations." lleference being made to some recent speculations with respect to the sphere and influence of prayer, he expressed in the strongest terms his dissent from these, as both unscriptural and presumptuous, ending with, " Ha, these advanced thinkers ! they have not robbed me of my comfort." He dwelt much and often on the paternal aspect of God's character, and spoke with thank- fulness of the last sermon to which he had ever listened, in his son's church at Liberton, from the words, " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ?" " I am a father," he added, "and I know what a father's heart is : mv love to my children is no more to the infinite love of n2 484 MEMOIR. God, than one drop of water to that boundless ocean out there " (pointing to the sea, visible from the windows of the adjoining room). "I have no sympathy," he said, on another occasion, " with Broad Church views, but there h a sense in which I am a broad Churchman. There are some men who have no faith in the salvation of any beyond their own narrow sect. My belief, on the contrary, is that in the end there will be a vastly larger number saved than we have any conception of. What sort of eai'thly government would that be, where more than half the subjects were in prison ? I can- not believe that the government of God will be like that." One evening, the conversation turning to a Church question, the name of a public man was mentioned who had opposed Dr. Guthrie's views with acrimony ; on this, with a voice full of emotion, he said, " If any man who ever spoke or wrote against me were to come in just now at that door, I would be most willing to shake hands with him." His natural courtesy and charm of manner remained with him to the last. Expressing regret at what he termed " the trouble I am giving to you all," with a gleam of humour on his face, he said, " You remember how that old scoundrel, Charles II., begged his courtiers to excuse him for being ' such an unconscionable time in dying.' " He was peculiarly touched by the unwearied attentions of a young woman from Argyllshire, who had come from Scotland along with the family, and acted HIS LAST ILLNESS. 485 latterly as His sick-nurse. "Affection," he said one day, after slie had done some kindly office for him, " is very sweet ; and it's all one from what quarter it comes, whether from this Highland lassie or from a duchess ; just as to a thirsty man cold water is as grateful from a spring on the hill-side as from a marble foun- tain." The inquiries were very numerous which we received from all quarters by telegraph, as well as by the ordinary posts, during the last week of his illness. On the evening of the 21st, Her Majesty sent a telegram of inquiry and sympathy from Windsor.* When told next day of the Queen's message, he said, "It is most kind." When he heard how the newspapers over the kingdom had notices from day to day of his condition — " I give God thanks for the telegraph : it will serve as a call to God's people to mind me in their prayers." His love to his own family seemed to flow forth more abundantly as life was ebbing away. Once and again, he gave thanks to God aloud for his domestic mercies, and that his wife and he had been spared the pangs some Christian parents of their acquaintance had experienced in connection with their children. Looking round on the group who surrounded his bed one evening, he went back with grateful memory to the many happy family gather- • Tlie messiige, sent through the Duke of Argyll, who was at Windsor at the time, was in these words : " The Queen desires to know liow your father is, and feels much for his suffering." Her Slajesty was pleased to iiiaTiifest continued interest in Dr. Guthrie's state, anide HIS LAST ILLNESS. 487 me : " tlien having kissed her, it was a touching picture to see the little child chafing her grandfather's chilly- hand. Singing continued to soothe him. AVe generally chose some sacred melody ; but one evening, about two days before he died, he asked for some Scotch songs, especially "John Anderson my jo, John," the "Laird of Cockpen," and the "Land o' the Leal." A psalm or hymn sung in soft chorus to the piano in the adjoining room he often asked for, and in reply to the question what he would like, he would say, " Just give me a bairn's hymn." The calmness with which he contemplated his ap- proaching change surprised every one. He watched its symptoms almost as if he had been himself an onlooker by the death-bed of another. More than once he asked Dr. Underwood, of Hastings, his medical attendant, to tell him how long he judged he was likely to last, and whether towards the close coma might supervene ? During the last week, as the grey light came in each morning, he called for a hand mirror, and carefully scanned his countenance to see if he could detect any noticeable change in its aspect. He would sometimes even startle us by saying, " Look at me, and see if you think there is anything cadaverous yet in my expression." Finding his sight becoming dim: — "Ah! this reminds me of a story I was struck by. When Dr. Adam, the rector of the Edinburgh High School, was dying, and no longer able to see, the old man'? mind wan- 488 MEMOIR. dered ; he Imagined himself in his class-room, and called aloud, — * Now, boys, yovi may go. It's growing dark ! ' " As one of his daughters was sitting with him on the 18th, he told her he had begun to see two spots in the pattern of the wall-paper opposite his bed, where he knew there used to be only one. She tried to make light of it, and said it would pass away. *' No," he replied, " I take it as a symptom of death's approach. It minds me of^ the land-birds lighting on the shrouds, that tell the weary mariner he is nearing the desired haven." On Admiral Hamilton's coming into his room with the remark, " Do you know I think you are look- ing better this morning, Doctor," he replied, " Ah ! then a good man comes with evil tidino's." He spoke of the opening of his Eagged Schools, twenty-five years previously, and of his early associates in that work, dwelling most affectionately on the late Miss Eliott Lockhart. " There's no one I look forward with greater pleasure to meeting in heaven than her." Again on the 18th, referring to the one breach in his family circle (the death of his infant son in 1856), he said, — " Johnnie was a sweet lamb, though he didna like me ; he was long ailing, and aye clung to his mother. Perhaps, the greatest trial in all my life was when I lifted the clay-cold body and laid it in his little coffin in that front room in Laurlston Lane. He has gone before us all, though the youngest. Ay, though his little feet never ran on this earth, I think I see him running to meet me at the golden gate." In regard to the question HIS LAST ILLNESS. 489 sometimes raised, whether believers would recognise friends in heaven, he remarked, — " I have great sym- pathy with the old woman, who, when some one doubted the likelihood of her recognising her departed husband in the better world, exclaimed, ' Do you really think we will be greater fools in heaven than we are here?'" On the same day, he insisted on being lifted out of bed, and sitting up in an easy-chair before the fire. He then desired that all the family should be summoned ; and when we had assembled round him, he asked us to pray with him, shortly, one after the other. He then desired each of us to kiss him (an act quite unusual with him) ; and, though he did not say it in so many words, we judged that he meant this to be a special solemn leave- taking. Friday, the 21st, after the barber had finished shav- ing him in the forenoon, and was about to leave the room. Dr. Guthrie made a sign that he should be re- called, and, opening his eyes, stretched out to him his feeble hand while he thanked him, and in an earnest whisper, added, " God bless you, my friend." On that same day, in the afternoon, Mr. Vores visited him. Dr. Guthrie was not able to speak loud enough to be heard at any distance from the bed. He therefore whispered to one of his sons, " Tell him my journey is nearly ended. Ask him to pray that I may have a speedy entrance into heaven, and that we may have a happy meeting there, where we shall no longer have 490 MEMOIR. to proclaim Clirist, but where we shall enjoy Him for ever and ever." Sabbath, the 23rd February, was his last day on earth. His weakness was now so great that the doctor could scarce detect any pulse at the wrist, and marvelled at his tenacity of life. With this condition of body, the mind remained strong as ever. In the morning he put a medical inquiry to Dr. Underwood, and, as he was leaving, affectionately besought a blessing on his physi- cian. While one of his sons was reading to him the verse in the fourth hymn of the Scotch collection, beginning — " Hell and the grave combined their force To hold our Lord in vain," Dr. Guthrie interrupted him at the first line, saying, " That expression is unfortunate. It was not Hell into which our Lord descended, but ' Hades ' — the state of the dead." As the bells of St. Leonards and Hastings were ringing for morning service, it comforted him to be reminded that prayers were to be offered, that day, on his behalf in many of the churches and chapels in both towns, as well as in many other places. Lying quietly in the course of the afternoon, he was heard to say, " A brand plucked HIS DEATH. 491 .from the burning!" A tender Christian letter, which had just come from his friend and neighbour in Edinburgh, Rev. James Robertson, of Newington, being read to him, he said, "Send him a message from me — the kindest thing you can say." He had himself a dread that, from the original strength of his constitution, and the nature of his malady, the act of dying might be accompanied by distressing circum- stances ; but his prayer to be spared from these was most graciously answered. About ten o'clock on that Sunday evening, in reply to an inquiry, he responded in a whisper, but with all his old promptness and decision, " Crrtainly" This was the last word he uttered. Shortly thereafter he fell into broken sleep. As midnight approached, his breathing became noticeably easier than it had been for days, and we began to ask in whispers, " Can there be a change for the better?" Some of the family then retired to rest, while Dr. Guthrie continued to sleep quietly, supported by his faithful Highland nurse, one of his daughters watching by his side. About two in the morning, the maid whispered, " Surely the wrinkles on the brow are smoothing out ! " It was no fancy ; the whole countenance wore an expression of pro- found calm, and the traces of age, work, and weari- ness were literally passing away. But, though he still breathed, the gathering pallor told that life was ebbing fast. The other members of the family were hastily summoned, and we commended the passing spirit 492 MEMOIR. into the Redeemer's hands. Just then he left us ; but so gentle the depai-ture, that the moment could scarcely be noted when the sleep of exhausted nature passed into the sleep of death. " I HEARD A VOICE FROM HEAVEN, SAYING UNTO MK, WRITE, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD FROM HEXCEFORTH : YEA, SAITH THE SPIRIT, THAT THEY MAY REST FROM THEIR LABOURS; AND THEIR WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM." The remains were conveyed from St. Leonards to Edinburgh, on Wednesday morning, and interred on Friday, the 28th of February. Unless when Dr. Chalmers and Sir James Simpson were carried to the grave, Edinburgh had seen no such funeral in this generation. The magistrates in their robes of office, and various other public bodies, clergy- men of every Protestant denomination in Scotland, representatives of the Wesleyan Methodists from Eng- land, and of the Waldensian Church from Italy, passed to the Grange Cemetery through a living vista of 30,000 spectators. But the most touching feature in all the procession was the presence of 230 children from the HIS FUNERAL. 493 Original Ragged Schools, many of whom might truly have said, as one little girl of their number was over- heard to tell, " He was all the father I ever knew." *' The city weeps : with slow and solemn show The dark-plumed pomp sails through the crowded way. And walls and roofs are topped with thick display Of waiting eyes that watch the wending woe. What man was here, to whose last fateful march, The marshalled throng its long-drawn convoy brings. Like some great conqueror's when victory swiogs Her vans o'er flower-spread path and wreathed arch ? No conqueror's kind was here, nor conqueror's kui. But a strong-breasted, fervid-hearted man. Who from dark dens redeemed, and haunts of sin, The city waifs, the loose unfathered clan With prouder triumph than w^hen wondering Rome Went forth, all eyes, to bring great Csesar home." * At the burial-place, prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. Blaikie, and then the children of the Ragged School sang the hymn, " There is a happy land, far, far away." When the clear voices of these rescued ones rose on the still air, not many eyes were dry. The hymn ended, and the grave closed, the Superintendent of the schools led forward a little boy and girl who laid a wreath upon the green sod. On the following Lord's day, funeral sermons were preached in St. John's Free Church by Dr. Candlish in the morning, and by Mr. Philip, the surviving pastor, in the afternoon. No one who heard Dr. Candlish that day could have anticipated that, ere that year had run, he too was to be summoned to his rest and his * By Protessor John Stuart Blackie. 494 MEMOIR. reward. All the more impressive now the words lie then uttered — " Friend and brother ! Comrade in the fight ! Com- panion in tribuhition ! Farewell ! But not for ever. May my soul, when my hour comes, be with thinu ! " THE END. Date Due ! ''■>^mmmmm Wk Jk yv^'^^^ ^m. i ^ ^