scs^M7* 
 
 I 
 
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
REM I N I SCENCES 
 
 AND 
 
 REFLECTIONS, 
 
 REFERRING TO HIS EARLY MINISTRY 
 
 IN THE PARISH OF ROW, 
 
 1825-31. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 JOHN MCLEOD CAMPBELL, D.D. 
 
 EDITED, WITH A N INTR ODUC TOR Y NARRA TIYE, 
 BY HIS SON, 
 
 DONALD CAMPBELL, M.A., 
 
 CHAPLAIN OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1873- 
 
 All rights rescued. 
 
grzrctei at the tlnibrrsitg #ress 
 
 13Y ROBERT MACLEHOSE, 55 GLASSFORD STREET, 
 
 GLASGOW. 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 My father was engaged in writing this book during 
 the greater part of the last year of his life, and it 
 was left unfinished at the time of his death in 
 February last. 
 
 The incomplete state in which the book was left 
 has not been thought a sufficient reason for with- 
 holding it from publication. For it is probable 
 that these " Reminiscences " would have retained 
 something of their present fragmentary character 
 even if my father had lived to complete the task 
 which he had undertaken. From the first he dis- 
 claimed any intention of writing a systematic work ; 
 and his chief object was to place on record thoughts 
 which might prove helpful to others, rather than to 
 give a continuous account of his ministry at Row. 
 
vi TO THE READER. 
 
 He at one time entertained the idea of publishing 
 the book in separate parts, as he might be able to 
 complete them ; and the fact that he thought of 
 doing so seems to be an additional reason for not 
 hesitating to publish, even in its unfinished form, 
 that part of the work which he was permitted to 
 accomplish. 
 
 At the same time, it will be readily understood 
 that some difficulties have been encountered in pre- 
 paring what he had written for the press. The order 
 of writing was not the order of the thought ; and, 
 although some help was afforded by a memorandum, 
 in which he had recorded his "purpose as to the 
 order of topics," the help was available only for 
 a part of the book. 
 
 Wishing to spare no pains in making his meaning 
 clear, he often went back upon what he had already 
 written, and expressed many thoughts in several 
 different forms. With reference to such alternative 
 passages, it has been thought better to err on the 
 side of retaining than on the side of omitting. 
 While passages have been omitted which were 
 simply repetitions of the same thoughts in nearly 
 the same words, others have been retained in which, 
 
TO THE READER. yii 
 
 with some repetition, there was also something 
 peculiar to each passage which seemed worth pre- 
 serving. 
 
 It is unnecessary to explain in detail how far 
 the order in which these papers have been arranged 
 differs from that in which they were written. Some 
 particulars will be found stated in a note at the 
 end of Part II. 
 
 It has been thought desirable by those in whose 
 opinion I have confidence, that these "Reminiscences" 
 should be prefaced by a narrative of those facts 
 in my father's life with which the reader might 
 naturally wish to be acquainted. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to say that this narrative is not intended to 
 have anything of the character of a life. 
 
 D. CAMPBELL. 
 
 London, December, 1872. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE,. . . i 
 
 PART I. 
 STARTING-POINTS OF THE MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 L— REASONS FOR ATTEMPTING THIS RETROSPECT, . 5 1 
 
 II.— THE VAL UE OF THE MEMORY OF THE PAST TO OLD 
 
 AGE, . 6l 
 
 III.— ENTRANCE ON THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY COM- 
 PARED WITH THE DAWN OF LIFE, . 73 
 
 IV.— HOPEFUL BEGINNING OF MINISTRY A T ROW, . . 77 
 
 V.— ELEMENTS OF HOPE, 85 
 
 VI.— OPENING Q UESTIONS OF THE SHOR TER CA TECHISM, 92 
 
 VII.— ASS UMED HA RMONY OF REASON AND REVEL A TION, 98 
 
 VIII.— VINDICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES ASSUMED, . . 107 
 
 IX.— SOME CONSIDERATIONS WITH REFERENCE TO 
 
 « PREVIOUS QUESTIONS," . 114 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. 
 PROGRESS OF THOUGHT AND TEACHING. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 J.— CHARACTER OF EARLY TEACHING, 123 
 
 II.— DIFFICULTIES FOUND TO EXIST IN EARNEST 
 
 MINDS, 130 
 
 III— MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH DIFFICULTIES, . 135 
 
 IV.— ON SOME PREVAILING FORMS OF RELIGIOUS 
 
 THOUGHT AT THIS TIME, ...... 145 
 
 V.— "ASSURANCE OF FAITH" AND " UNIVERSALITY OF 
 THE ATONEMENT," 
 
 VI.— FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY L UTHER, . 
 
 VII.— ESSENCE OF THE TEACHING NOW RECALLED, 
 
 VI II.— REASONS FOR NOT JOINING A PARTY, . 
 
 IX.— SALVATION BY FAITH, 
 
 152 
 
 158 
 170 
 l8l 
 188 
 
 PART III. 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 I.— FAITH AND DOUBT, 197 
 
 II.— RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE, .... 220 
 III.— MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY, .... 254 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 71, line 11 — For " if more deeply a self-realized, destroying desfair" read 
 if more deeply realized, a self -destroying- despair. 
 
 Page 83, line 8 — For (( intensify," read intensifying. 
 
 Page 85, line 6 — For " look out the scene," read look out on tJie scene. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 John M c Leod Campbell was born at Ardmaddy 
 House, near Kilninver, Argyllshire, on the 4th of May, 
 1800. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Donald 
 Campbell, who had lately -been appointed Minister of 
 the United Parish of Kilninver and Kilmelford, but 
 had not yet taken possession of the Manse. It thus 
 happened that Kilninver was not my father's birth- 
 place, although it was his home almost from the first. 
 His father, who was born at Corlarach, near Dun- 
 vegan, in Skye, was educated at the University of 
 Aberdeen, where he was the fellow-student and friend 
 of Robert Hall and James Mackintosh. He took a 
 high place at college, and acquired that familiar ac- 
 quaintance with Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, which was 
 afterwards turned to good account in the education 
 of his son. He retained through life a strong regard 
 for his old Professor, Dr. George Campbell, the cour- 
 teous antagonist of Hume. He married Mary M'Leod, 
 
 A 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 youngest daughter of M'Leod of Raasay. She died 
 in April, 1806, leaving three children, John, Donald, 
 and Jean Mary. 
 
 My father attended the Parish School, but he 
 seems to have received the most important part of his 
 early education from his father. At the age of eight 
 he was reading Caesar, and his Sunday task, a few 
 years later, was to learn by heart one of George 
 Buchanan's Latin Psalms. 
 
 In November, 181 1, he and his brother were taken 
 by their father to Glasgow, and matriculated as 
 students of the University. The first six years of my 
 father's course were spent in the "Arts Classes," and he 
 gained prizes in Logic (18 15), and Moral Philosophy 
 (1816). In 1817 he entered the Divinity Hall. At 
 this point begins that series of letters to his father, 
 which forms a continuous autobiography until his 
 father's death in 1843. 
 
 In these letters are recorded many interesting 
 passages in his student-life; but the limits of this 
 sketch will permit only a very sparing use of these 
 materials. In one letter, written from Johnson's Inn, 
 Canal Basin, Lochgilphead, we find the two brothers 
 on their way to College. "A good fire, a bad pen, 
 a wretched sheet of paper " were "the only substitutes 
 for a comfortable bed." After describing the group 
 seated by the fire, he adds : — " My dear father, 
 I assure you it makes me very dull to think of 
 your loneliness at Kilninver. I hope you may 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 really take a share of our Christmas goose in 
 Glasgow ; but don't on any account come by 
 the ferries : they must be extremely dangerous at 
 that season. . . . You will direct to me as ' Student 
 of Divinity.' " 
 
 In a letter written in December, 1817, we have 
 the following account of his studies : — 
 
 " I never had so much to do. I rise at six and sit up 
 till twelve. The following is the distribution of my time : — 
 From six to eight in the morning, French at home; from 
 eight to half-past nine I walk (but this hour will soon 
 be occupied with the Natural Philosophy, where I must 
 make up what I lost last year *) \ to ten breakfast ; ten to 
 eleven, Hebrew \ eleven to twelve, read some English author 
 at home ; twelve to one, Divinity Hall ; one to two, Private 
 Latin \ two to three, French Class ; three to four, dinner ; 
 four to five, Natural History Class ; from five to six, read a 
 chapter in the Greek Testament (and if I fall behind during 
 the week make it up on Sunday); six to eight, Hebrew; 
 eight to nine, Political Economy ; nine to twelve, supper 
 and reading for the Divinity Hall. Thus I am completely 
 engaged, even though I have my preparation for the French 
 done with candle-light in the morning. If ever I am to get 
 into habits of study, 'tis this winter — and I hope I may 
 continue them." 
 
 It will be noticed that, with the exception of 
 Hebrew and Divinity, these subjects lay outside 
 of the prescribed course of study ; they were taken 
 
 * The allusion is to a fever which prevented him from attend- 
 ing College during part of the Session 18 16- 17. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 up simply from the young student's eager thirst 
 for knowledge. In the " Reminiscences," he speaks 
 of the life of boyhood and youth as "succeeded 
 by years of active self-culture, and the consciousness 
 of responsibility for the use made of time" — words 
 which refer, doubtless, to such studies as are detailed 
 in this letter. 
 
 In January, 1818, his father's mother died at 
 Kilninver at the age of ninety-six. She had spent 
 the last twelve years of her life in her son's home, 
 having left Skye soon after the death of her husband. 
 In a letter written to his father at this time, he 
 speaks thus of her death : — " All her tenderness 
 to us came to sadden the thought that she was 
 not again to receive us with the fond welcome which 
 used to greet our return to Kilninver. ... I cannot 
 but feel a pleasure in thinking that she had your 
 presence to sweeten the last drops of the cup of 
 life." 
 
 "We are all very busy" (he says in the same 
 letter). "I had the pleasure of reading a chapter 
 of the Bible in the language in which it was first 
 written for the first time last Sunday. It was 
 revising what we had done during the week. I 
 find the Hebrew a pleasant, and not a difficult 
 study. I am continually finding coincidences be- 
 tween it and the Gaelic which are very striking." 
 
 About the beginning of 18 19 his sister left for 
 India. The long letters which he wrote to her 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 after her departure shew how keenly he felt the 
 pain of separation. 
 
 On the ist of May, 1820, he completed his course 
 at Glasgow, gaining a prize for an essay on Hebrew 
 Poetry. About the same time, he passed the first 
 of his "trials" before the Presbytery of Lorn. All 
 that remained to complete the necessary preparation 
 for receiving licence as a preacher, w T as the " partial 
 session." " I mean, however," he writes, " to make 
 next winter a full session in order to have it in my 
 power to attend other classes, to which I have not 
 yet given my attention." He carried out this in- 
 tention — not, however, in Glasgow, but in Edinburgh. 
 Political Economy, Natural History, and Chemistry, 
 were some of the subjects which he studied, either 
 in Edinburgh or Glasgow, in addition to his theo- 
 logical reading. 
 
 His most intimate college friend was William 
 Penney, now Lord Kinloch. Their friendship dated 
 from the day when they were competitors for the 
 same prize in the Logic Class in 181 5; and he is 
 the "valued friend" of whom he speaks (in Part II., 
 Chap, viii.) as having given him a copy of Edwards 
 on the Religious Affections, which he studied "for 
 his sake who gave it," as well as on account of its 
 authorship. 
 
 On July 16th, 1821, he was licensed to preach the 
 Gospel by the Presbytery of Lorn, and about ten 
 days later he preached his first sermon, in Gaelic, in 
 
INTRODUCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 the Parish Church of Kilninver. "I delivered my 
 Gaelic sermon," he writes, "without my paper, and 
 got through it pretty well. I believe the people were 
 pleased : they were, I know, prepared to be so ; and 
 it would have been difficult for me to have sent them 
 away much dissatisfied. ,, 
 
 In another letter (to his sister) he says, " Every eye 
 was fixed on me, and yet there was so much kindness 
 and friendly interest mingled with the curiosity of the 
 look that, after the first moment it encouraged me. . . 
 I did not, however, possess myself during the whole 
 service. . . . The only person* to support me was 
 my friend William Penney. His presence was a 
 great comfort." 
 
 During the four years that elapsed before his ordi- 
 nation as minister of Row, my father had no fixed 
 sphere of work, such as those preachers have who act 
 as assistants to parish ministers, — an office which 
 seems to have been less common in those days than 
 it is now. He was not, however, idle : he frequently 
 preached for his father, and for other ministers in the 
 neighbourhood. Part of the year he spent in Edin- 
 burgh, preaching occasionally for his friend Dr. Muir; 
 and he continued to read diligently, not limiting his 
 attention to theological works. This appears from a 
 letter dated Edinburgh, 14th February, 1824, which 
 contains the following : — " I am at present very busy 
 reading various books which, if called hence, I may 
 * His father was from home. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 not have at my command. I had a very rich treat 
 lately in your friend Dr. Campbell's ' Lectures on 
 Rhetoric/ Had he written directly and professedly 
 on the philosophy of mind, he would have left a more 
 valuable system than Reid, Stewart, or Brown. I 
 feel a peculiar delight in Campbell. From his having 
 been your professor, I feel as if he had been my own. 
 1 Butler's Analogy ' is also a most able and a most 
 valuable book. I never was busier, though I don't 
 compose any. But I take notes in reading the Bible 
 and also keep a book for all the general views which 
 occur to me." 
 
 It was in the spring of 1824 that my father first 
 went to England. After a stormy passage in a 
 smack, he sailed up the Thames on a Sunday morn- 
 ing. His feelings were hurt " by the little effect the 
 coming in of Sunday had on the river;" he was u per- 
 fectly shocked by the sight of four men suspended in 
 chains at Blackwall ;" then " enchanted with Green- 
 wich Hospital," where he landed. On his way back 
 from London, where he spent some weeks, he visited 
 Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, and Chester. 
 
 In May, 1825, he was presented to the parish of Row 
 by the Duke of Argyll — the uncle of the present Duke. 
 
 In September he was ordained minister of Row. 
 He never forgot the testimony borne to him on 
 that occasion by his father, in the presence of his 
 future parishioners, — that his son had never caused 
 him one moment's pain from his birth till that day. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 We have now reached that part of my father's life 
 which is the subject of this book. The readers of 
 these " Reminiscences " will find that they refer to 
 the principles which guided his life at Row rather 
 than to the outward events and incidents which 
 marked its progress. My father's reasons for abstain- 
 ing from personal details have been partly explained 
 in the opening chapters, especially at the end of 
 Chapter II. In a letter written to me in October, 
 1 87 1, he says, "I have read over again the introduc- 
 tory part of my MS. I hope it may stand — but con- 
 densed. As to the character you would like to be 
 given to this retrospect, your mother agrees with me 
 in the opinion that it is not in my way, or what I 
 could do wisely for myself, even as to accuracy of 
 memory." 
 
 An additional reason is hinted at in the passage to 
 which I have referred in the words, " Note R. H. S.'s 
 book." This intended note was not written ; but I 
 have reason to know that what my father chiefly wished 
 to say was this, — that he considered that Mr. R. H. 
 Story, in his life of his father, had given a faithful 
 and trustworthy account of "the Row Case ;" and that 
 it was superfluous for himself to go over the same 
 ground, even if he had had " more strength for such a 
 task than he felt now to remain." 
 
 As, however, many readers may not have it in their 
 power to consult Mr. Story's most interesting work, it 
 seems right that this volume should contain some 
 
MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 account, however brief, of the outward circumstances 
 of my father's life and ministry at Row. Happily 
 such an account can be given, for the most part, in 
 his own words. Near the end of this period (on the 
 first day of 1831) he wrote to his brother in 
 India a very long letter, which contains an out- 
 line of the history of his teaching since his coming 
 to Row : this letter will be embodied in the present 
 chapter. 
 
 Besides this narrative we have his weekly letters to 
 his father, — of which there remain more than a hun- 
 dred, written while he was at Row. Many of these 
 letters will, it is hoped, be published in due time, 
 together with the rest of my father's correspondence. 
 For the present it will be enough to give such short 
 extracts from them as may either supplement the 
 narrative, or illustrate passages in the " Reminis- 
 cences." 
 
 The ministry at Row falls naturally into three 
 periods of somewhat unequal duration. The first 
 extends from September, 1825, to December, 1827; 
 the second from the latter date till March, 1830; and 
 the third includes the last year of his ministry, ending 
 with his deposition by the General Assembly in May, 
 183 1. These periods are marked off by two critical 
 points in the narrative : — one the beginning of opposi- 
 tion on the part of the clergy ; the other the initiation 
 of formal proceedings in the Church Courts. 
 
I o JNTRODUCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 The following is the opening passage of the letter 
 to his brother above referred to : — 
 
 " In September, 1825, I was placed in the Parish of 
 Row. I cannot say that there was anything then to 
 mark my theological creed. As to Church politics, I 
 was distinguished, to my own mind, among the young 
 ministers my contemporaries, by a deep conviction of 
 the practical evils which had arisen from party feel- 
 ings, and by a determined purpose to hold personally 
 a perfect neutrality. 
 
 " As to pastoral feeling, I was then conscious to a 
 single and strong desire to be the instrument of good 
 to the flock over which I had been appointed over- 
 seer ; but beyond the purpose of entire devotedness 
 this desire took no distinct form, nor had I any theory 
 or view, peculiar to myself, as to the reason of the 
 want of living religion, to the prevalence of which my 
 eyes now in a measure opened. As to personal 
 religion, I can, in looking back, trace the elements of 
 that which I have since felt certain is vital godliness, 
 and know that the apprehension of a good-will in God 
 towards me, expressed by the gift of Christ, and of 
 the desire of that good-will as being personal godli- 
 ness, and of my need of strength through the Holy 
 Ghost, in order to accomplish in me that desire on the 
 part of God, were indistinctly but truly in my own 
 mind, mingled with erroneous views of the relative 
 places of seriousness and true holiness, and of the 
 importance of religion as distinct from its intrinsic 
 
MINISTR Y AT ROW. TI 
 
 excellence ; while, as to doctrinal views, the fact 
 of an Atonement, and the necessity of Regeneration, 
 were the only points which had any distinct promin- 
 ency as realities in my mind. I cannot now say that 
 I had any distinct weighing of the question, whether 
 Christ had died for all, or only for the elect, or any of 
 the other questions on this subject which have since 
 so engrossed my attention. 
 
 "As to Election, I was content to hold it simply as 
 a matter of fact, and to excuse myself for not con- 
 sidering it much, by regarding it as a mystery ; and I 
 believe that in point of fact I was practically and in 
 real feeling unfettered by it, in declaring to my fellow 
 sinners so much of God's love as I then knew myself. 
 
 " Two circumstances in the character of the labours 
 on which I immediately entered, appear to me to have 
 had an important influence in leading to subsequent 
 results. The one was my having been led to form 
 the resolution, and act upon it, of using no assistance 
 in my preparations for the pulpit but the Bible. I 
 never read any sermons on the texts which I selected 
 before beginning to write myself ; nor did I consult 
 any Commentary, unless in seeking to ascertain the 
 precise translation of the original. I think I took for 
 granted (because of my ignorance of God, and inex- 
 perience in the faithfulness of that word i He giveth 
 liberally and upbraideth not') that I would, at no 
 distant date, run out of matter, and exhaust my 
 resources ; in which case — but in which case alone — I 
 
1 2 INTRODUCTORY NARRA T1VE. 
 
 purposed availing myself in some shape of the labours 
 of others, though not of course in the way of pla- 
 giarism. But having been led, whenever I had 
 difficulty of any kind in my preparation for the 
 pulpit, to go to God in prayer, instead of feeling that 
 I had run out of topics or illustrations, I found the 
 preparation for each successive Sabbath occupy less 
 time than that of the previous one : until at last it was 
 a very common thing with me to write out fully two 
 discourses of from 35 to 40 minutes' reading each on 
 the Saturday. The other circumstance was my pro- 
 ceeding, immediately on my induction, to visit my 
 parish with the resolution — which I was also in a 
 great measure enabled to act upon — of giving the 
 character of ministerial visits to all my intercourse 
 w r ith my people, and avoiding the error of making 
 religious discourse the topic only at seasons set apart 
 for the purpose. The practice thus adopted had a 
 powerful influence in increasing in my own mind the 
 feeling that religion was a thing truly of all times and 
 of all seasons ; and it contained a demand on my 
 people, which, in the way in which it wrought upon 
 them, soon made it apparent how much it was the 
 fact that though willing — so to speak — to give a little 
 of their time to God, that they might with the less 
 disturbance from conscience enjoy tliemselvcs in the 
 rest of it, they had not yet been taught to ' count all 
 things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of the 
 love of God in Christ Jesus/ 
 
MINISTR Y AT ROW. 
 
 13 
 
 "These two circumstances — my exclusive study of 
 the Word of God, and my exclusive intercourse 
 as the servant of God with man — increased rapidly 
 my acquaintance with the extent of the demands for 
 personal religion on the part of God, and with the 
 little measure of compliance with these on the part of 
 men, and rendered my meditations chiefly researches 
 into the reasonableness of the former, and the conse- 
 quent sin in not meeting them, and the various devices 
 of Satan by which men were enabled to live at peace 
 in an evil way ; and my discourses contained the 
 exposition of the discoveries on these subjects, which 
 were daily making to me, along with such personal 
 warnings, and practical exhortations to my people as 
 these discoveries suggested." 
 
 At this point may be introduced some extracts 
 from letters written to his father during the first year 
 at Row. They reflect something of the brightness of 
 that dawn of which he speaks so often in the Re- 
 miniscences. It was a dawn of which the memory 
 remained with him till sun-set. 
 
 * * Shan don (Spring of 1 826 ). 
 " ... I am just now again proceeding with my visiting, 
 and finding much comfort in it, and in many other occur- 
 rences. One case I may shortly mention : — a highly re- 
 spectable man came to me the other night to say that 
 he was longing to see me, but that I had not yet come 
 to his house (in Helensburgh); but, being passing, he 
 could not but call to tell of how much comfort I was 
 the source to him. This man has lately come to feel 
 
14 
 
 INTRODUCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 the power of the truth, and the history of his change 
 and its fruit are both alike pleasing. In attempting to 
 teach another, he came to feel his own ignorance, and 
 thus was led to hear the Word and to pray, and he at 
 last came to a clear and soul-composing view of the truth." 
 
 It will interest the reader to know, that, only a 
 
 few weeks before his death, my father visited the 
 
 house of this old parishioner; it was the last time 
 
 that he crossed the Gareloch. 
 
 " Shandon Cottage, 
 June 1 8, 1826. -| 
 
 "I this day gave out the Sacrament for the fourth 
 Sunday in July — the day in this parish for a long time 
 past. I shall have no assistance on the Sunday (ordained 
 I mean) excepting Norman * and Story." 
 
 " 22nd June. 
 
 "... I really have much to do ; much to write and 
 much to speak before the Sacrament, preparing young 
 communicants, &c. \ you know how laboriously I do these 
 things, and it will prodigiously press me to go to you 
 next week." 
 
 " 13M July. 
 
 " I do not intend to give a large dinner on the Monday — 
 as is the usual practice of this country, but a practice that 
 does not at all meet my approbation. I shall have nobody 
 but my assisting brethren. 
 
 "... My not going (to Kilninver) arises from that 
 being the day I meet my young communicants in this 
 end of the parish for the last time. I have, upon the 
 
 * His cousin, Norman M'Leod, father of the late Dr. M'Leod of the 
 Barony. 
 
MJXISTR Y AT ROW. 
 
 15 
 
 whole, had much comfort in them, though more in the 
 anxiety to know than in their actual knowledge. But 
 by next year I hope to have them better prepared. The 
 number is unusually great — about thirty-five." 
 
 « July. 
 "I am again on the Monday obliged to make a very 
 hurried communication of the comfort with which, upon 
 the whole, I may say I have been supported through 
 the duties of my first Sacrament. Though my dearest 
 friend was not with me, M'Leod thought himself entitled 
 to act as his representative; and, in his anxiety to make 
 all comfortable, he took a great deal of duty, as much 
 to his own credit as I hope it was to the edification 
 of my poor people. I had also the presence of Penney, 
 and Story you know is all sympathy and kindness." 
 
 The "sympathy and kindness" of his friend Mr. 
 Story, Minister of the neighbouring Parish of Ros- 
 neath, formed an important element in my father's 
 life at Row. He proved a faithful friend in dark 
 and trying times, no less than in those brighter 
 days to which these extracts belong. 
 
 A few months later we find the following in a letter 
 to his father: — "I have just finished a delightful 
 little volume, ' Shepherd's Private Thoughts,' given 
 me the other day when at Jordanhill by your friend, 
 Mrs. Smith. You should be very grateful, when 
 he is so far from you, that God is providing your boy 
 with so many kind friends, but, above all, that God 
 is granting some of the light of His countenance, — 
 the peace and joy in believing, which is worth more 
 than all the gold of all the Indies." 
 
1 6 IXTRODUCTOR Y AARRA TIVE. 
 
 About the same time he writes : — " I am very- 
 happy — have had a most delightful meeting (of 
 heritors) — have got 320 more sittings for my church, 
 and all agreed to a new manse." 
 
 One letter of this first year contains what may 
 be called an anticipation of a future friendship and 
 of more distinctive teaching : — 
 
 "Row, Feb. 25, 1826. 
 
 11 1 have lately been reading a book which I shall take 
 home with me, 'Erskine's Internal Evidences/ which is 
 the only book with that title which deserves the name, 
 as it is really an extracting of evidence from the peculiarities 
 of the scheme itself; and in it a topic on which we once 
 had some conversation is put upon its proper basis, — I 
 mean the connection between the doctrines and the 
 morality of the Gospel. ... I have daily many proofs 
 that no one will ever have a sufficiently high standard 
 of morality who does not rest his hopes exclusively on 
 the merits of Christ. Such a one sees no limit to duty, 
 and — to use a comparison of your own in your Synod 
 sermon— actually ' shoots at the heavens ;' whereas, while 
 there is any trusting to our own merits, there is a constant 
 lowering of the Divine requirements — such a lowering 
 as is necessary in order to our feeling that we have any 
 merit." 
 
 It was during the second year of his ministry — 
 that is, between the autumn of 1826 and the autumn 
 of 1827 — that his teaching came to have that dis- 
 tinctive and individual character which at first simply 
 
MINISTRY AT ROW. 17 
 
 intensified its interest, but which afterwards aroused 
 opposition. 
 
 The history of his thinking at this time is most 
 fully explained in the Reminiscences, Part II. It 
 is therefore unnecessary to dwell upon it here ; it 
 will be enough to give the continuation of the narrat- 
 ive in a slightly abridged form. It proceeds thus : — 
 
 "The first doctrinal and practical subject on which 
 I remember to have felt that much light was given 
 me was repentance. I was led to see how much 
 of that little repentance which was to be found, was 
 merely regret for the personal evil consequences of 
 having exposed oneself to the wrath of God. So- 
 called confessions of sin were, in truth, confessions 
 of folly and imprudence* The superiority of religion 
 to irreligion was acknowledged because of the greater 
 importance of eternal as compared with temporal 
 interests, not from any perception of the intrinsic 
 excellence and beauty of holiness and love, and the in- 
 trinsic deformity and hatefulness of sin and selfishness. 
 
 "When this subject was opened up to me, the 
 
 hollowness and hypocrisy of the profession made of 
 
 repentance, in men's approaches to God, appeared to 
 
 me most awful. ... A similar mockery of God I was 
 
 at that time made to see in those verbal tributes 
 
 of admiration to God as just, holy, and good, which 
 
 men offer in their prayers, not because their hearts 
 
 are full of His excellence and enamoured of His 
 
 * In this sentence and the next the exact words of the narra- 
 tive have not been retained. 
 
 B 
 
j 8 INTRO D UCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 beauty, but because they think it will please Him 
 and recommend themselves to Him. At this time I 
 laboured hard to make these distinctions visible 
 to my people, and to give them a true standard by 
 which to measure themselves, and tests by which 
 to detect the deceptions of their own hearts. I did 
 not at that time, however, see any great fruit of 
 these labours, and was often subjected to the pain 
 of hearing persons, whose demeanour indicated that 
 they were not new creatures in Christ Jesus, express- 
 ing the strongest approbation of sermons which, it 
 appeared to me, were peculiarly fitted to disturb 
 their false peace. And I found the higher I raised 
 the standard, I only the more stimulated the efforts 
 of a self-righteous and self-deceiving spirit to personate 
 — in the way of acting as in a dramatic exhibition 
 — the character of excellence held forth. 
 
 " Meditating with prayer on this painful ministerial 
 experience, I was gradually taught to see that so long 
 as the individual is uncertain of being the subject of 
 love to his God, and is still without any sure hold of 
 his personal safety in the prospect of eternity, it is in 
 vain to attempt to induce him to serve God under the 
 power of any purer motive than the desire to win 
 God's love for himself, and so to secure his own 
 happiness ; consequently, however high the standard, 
 correspondence with it may be sought under the 
 influence of mingled selfishness, making every ap- 
 parent success only a deeper deception. And thus I 
 
MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 x 9 
 
 was gradually led to entertain the doctrine commonly 
 expressed by the words 'Assurance of Faith] having 
 first seen that the want of it precluded singleness of 
 heart and eye in the service of God, and then having 
 found in studying the Epistles to the first Christian 
 Churches, that its existence, in those addressed, was 
 in them taken for granted, and in every practical ex- 
 hortation was presupposed. I accordingly began to 
 urge on my own people, that in order to their being 
 free to serve God — in order to their being in a condi- 
 tion to act purely, under the influence of love to Him, 
 and delight in what He is, their first step in religion 
 would require to be, resting assured of his love in 
 Christ to tJiem as individuals, and of their individually 
 having eternal life given to them in Christ 
 
 " I think this w T as the character of my preaching in 
 the latter part of the year 1826, but I cannot easily 
 fix; and in the summer of 1827 I think it first was 
 that I understood that offence was taken with what I 
 taught. This however, for some time, amounted 
 merely to the complaint that I ' carried the subject of 
 Assurance too far/ and no one ventured to advance 
 the charge of heresy. It was at the same time also 
 that I first enjoyed the happiness of seeing many 
 awakened from their false security, and not a few to 
 delight themselves in the Lord : and what my pres- 
 sing of high attainments, as the fruits of faith had 
 been unable to accomplish, I now found produced by 
 the earnest demand for the true faith itself 
 
2 o INTRO D UCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 "Towards the end of 1827, at the time when my 
 summer parishioners returned home, the report carried 
 up to Glasgow of what they had been hearing at Row 
 produced a considerable sensation there, in what is 
 called the ' religious world.' In consequence of this, 
 a minister of Glasgow selected as the subject of essay 
 in the theological society, ' The Assurance of Faith/ 
 Knowing that many misrepresentations of what I 
 had taught on the subject had reached my brethren, I 
 felt it my duty to attend and hear the essay read ; 
 and if the opportunity was given (for I was not a 
 member of the society), to reply or explain, as it 
 might appear right. The essay was exceedingly 
 temperate, but full of what I knew to be false 
 principles. I was asked, and gladly accepted the 
 invitation, to speak ; and after they had all spoken, 
 and very courteously, I was again permitted to reply. 
 I went away thankful for the indulgence I had ex- 
 perienced, and full of expectation as to the result 
 of their meditating on what I had been enabled 
 to say. 
 
 "The following week I preached a public sermon 
 on a week day for one of the Glasgow charitable insti- 
 tutions ; and I remember, in order to preclude the 
 charge of Antinomianism, while, at the same time, 
 as affording the opportunity of setting forth the 
 practical importance of the Assurance of Faith, I 
 selected as my text John xvii., v. 17, " Sanctify them 
 through thy truth." Most of the ministers of 
 
MINISTR Y AT ROW. 
 
 21 
 
 Glasgow were present, and from this occasion I date 
 the opposition of my brethren. I had fondly hoped 
 that the explanation given in the clerical society 
 would have removed prejudices, and commended the 
 truth. They, however, had calculated on my being 
 changed by what had come from them, and, in conse- 
 quence, were much offended to hear me so shortly 
 after state so fully what they had condemned ; and 
 for many Sabbaths, most of the ministers in Glasgow 
 were preaching with pointed reference to what I 
 taught. There was as yet, however, no organized 
 opposition in the parish of Row." 
 
 Before passing on to the second period — the time 
 of growing opposition — it may be well to give a few 
 short extracts from letters written during 1827. 
 
 " 2%th January. 
 
 " I have commenced with my young communicants, — a 
 most promising class, between twenty and thirty, and most 
 anxious to receive instruction. ... A most unusual and 
 comforting circumstance is that half the number are young 
 men." 
 
 "Feb. 11. 
 
 " I am just now very active. I visit parochially two days 
 in the week, and pass a third among the sick (of whom my 
 list is six or seven just now) and sometimes— indeed, in 
 general — a fourth, which leaves two for study : quite enough 
 if unbroken — which, however, they never are. But I am 
 enabled always to be prepared. I am getting on well with 
 my young people : I meet them Sunday after sermon, — 
 about thirty, very promising." 
 
INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 " Shandon Cottage, April 3rd. 
 
 " I kept my engagement in Glasgow on the Wednesday, 
 and was strengthened to preach at considerable length to a 
 large audience; and I have cause to bless God for the 
 result in removing prejudice from many minds." 
 
 " 2$rd July. 
 
 "My class, with whom I was at so much pains, have 
 given me much satisfaction. Very few of them have come 
 forward, but this rather gives me pleasure ; because, though 
 in the state of their theoretical knowledge I could not and 
 would not have kept them back, I did not think them pre- 
 pared. They have, however, greatly gained by the class, 
 and are longing for its re-commencement. Of my people 
 in general I can say nothing, but that on the Sabbath their 
 demeanour was unusually solemn and proper." 
 
 [Without date]. 
 
 "I had the intermission of a day from preaching last 
 Sabbath, which I did not regret, as my pulpit was occupied 
 by my young friend Mr. Scott.* I heard him with very 
 peculiar delight. His preaching, though his second Sab- 
 bath, was with a sober, solemn composure, that would have 
 seemed a delightful attainment in a man of much experi- 
 ence. The progress he has made already in the divine life, 
 the elevation and clearness of his views, the spirit of love 
 which he breathes in every word, and the single-eyed de- 
 votedness to his Master's glory, are to me most delightful 
 illustrations of the power of simple faith. Few old ministers 
 are so intimately acquainted with the Bible, or have so ex- 
 amined the import of its words; and this just because the 
 love of Christ constrains him, and makes it his happiness 
 
 * Mr. A. J. Scott, afterwards Principal of Owen's College, Manchester. 
 
MINISTR Y AT ROW. 
 
 23 
 
 to study and inquire into all that connects itself with the 
 religion of his Master. Oh glory be unto God for sending 
 such a labourer into the harvest ! and Oh that He would 
 send many such ! " 
 
 " Row, December 24th. 
 
 " I preached last week in Glasgow. The collection was 
 much more than was anticipated ; but this is a small matter. 
 I had a numerous and attentive audience, including most of 
 the Glasgow ministers ; and much conversation and, I may 
 trust, serious inquiry has been the result. My text was 
 1 Sanctify them by thy truth.' . . . 
 
 " Many of those who are most looked up to as orthodox 
 men think my standard too high; but this by no means 
 surprises me. May God give me grace to be wise and 
 prudent as well as faithful, for many eyes are upon me. I 
 am weak, but Christ has promised, saying, 'Lo! I am with 
 you always/ and that is enough." 
 
 To these extracts from his own letters may be 
 added one from a letter written by his father to 
 his sister in India. 
 
 "Kilninver, 19//& Dec., 1827. 
 
 "I heard lately from John. . . . He is so wholly en- 
 grossed in his own labours that a visit from him is a great 
 favour. . . . He is most attentive in writing me, and in 
 every letter he gives the skeleton of his discourse the pre- 
 ceding Sunday. . . . 
 
 " Your [brother is certainly the most uncommon young 
 man I ever was acquainted with. His talents are very 
 good, but little to his zeal and industry in his great work — 
 the salvation of souls. He seldom writes a discourse now, 
 
24 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 \ 
 
 but his time is constantly occupied in examining his people, 
 visiting the sick, and preaching to his friends in private, 
 with a view to awaken them to their great interest. He is 
 thought rather strict by some people, and he and I do not 
 entirely agree in some points ; but would to God that all of 
 us in the same holy office had our hearts so deeply and 
 thoroughly impressed as he is with the truth and power of 
 sacred things." 
 
 His own narrative proceeds thus : — 
 
 "The controversy in which I was constantly en- 
 gaged in almost all my intercourse with my brethren 
 urged me to examine narrowly the foundation fur- 
 nished by the communications made in the Gospel for 
 Assurance of Faith. This led directly to the closer 
 consideration of the^extent of the^Atonement, and the 
 circumstances in which mankind had been placed by 
 the shedding of the blood of Christ ; and it soon 
 appeared to me manifest that unless Christ had died 
 for all y and unless the Gospel announced Him as the 
 gift of God to every human being, so that there 
 remained nothing to be done to give the individual a 
 title to rejoice in Christ as his own Saviour, there 
 was no foundation in the record of God for the 
 Assurance which I demanded, and which I saw to be 
 essential to true holiness. The next step therefore 
 was my teaching, as the subject-matter of the Gospel, 
 .Universal Atonement and Pardon through the blood 
 of Christ. 
 
 5 It may appear strange to any one unacquainted 
 
MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 25 
 
 with these matters, that those who had been most satis- 
 fied with my teaching on the subject of Assurance — 
 namely, some sects that urge this subject much — now 
 became opposed to me, and strangely held that, if I 
 regarded the Atonement as universal, I deprived the 
 individual Christian of all assurance ; while those who 
 objected to the urgency with which I pressed personal 
 assurance, now held that doctrine to have become 
 still more dangerous when connected with that of 
 universal pardon. 
 
 "Such opposition made more and more apparent to 
 me the want of true religion in the land. I was made 
 to mourn over many whose strong confidence, along 
 with their outward propriety of conduct, had made 
 me hope well of them, when I saw by their opposition 
 to the universality of the Atonement that their assur- 
 ance had been very much its own basis, — that their 
 faith had not been the belief of a record of God, true 
 whether believed or not, but had been the assumption 
 of a fact, for which they had no other proof but that 
 they had assumed it ; and that instead of resting in 
 the character of God as revealed in Christ, they looked 
 upon the death of Christ as so much suffering — the 
 purchase-money of heaven to a certain number, to 
 whom it infallibly secured heaven. And I was made 
 to mourn over the opposition to the doctrine of 
 universal pardon taking, as it did, such forms as, ' If 
 all are forgiven, then we need not repent, or be sorry 
 for our sins, or think of a future judgment, and we 
 
 ~A 
 
2 6 INTRO D UCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 may do what we please:' for it was thus apparent 
 beyond all my previous fears that what men called 
 repentance was not a real sorrow for sin, but merely 
 something offered in exchange for safety ; and I was 
 shocked to hear men avow that if they were certain 
 their Heavenly Father forgave them their sin they 
 would feel it unnecessary to grieve because they had 
 offended Him ; and, instead of being led to repentance 
 by the knowledge of this His goodness, would be 
 encouraged by it to sin more and more. It was, how- 
 ever, rather as w r hat others would be likely to say, 
 than as what they would say themselves, that men 
 uttered such things ; but it was manifest that, though 
 speaking in the third person, they spoke of themselves. 
 While I was labouring to remove objections, the 
 bringing of w r hich made such painful discoveries, it 
 became more and more apparent to me that men 
 objected because they wished to object ; that they 
 hated the light, and only sought to excuse themselves 
 to themselves, — I mean, to find apologies of a specious 
 kind for rejecting a doctrine which they felt too 
 searching ; and I was struck to find thus illustrated 
 our Saviour's declaration that while it was for 
 righteousness' sake that His followers would be hated, 
 the form in which that hatred would manifest itself 
 would be speaking evil of them falsely. No man will 
 admit a thing to be holy, and at the same time object 
 to it. He must first call it, and find some excuse for 
 calling it, unholy, and then he can condemn it (see 
 
MINISTRY AT ROW. 27 
 
 Isaiah lxvi. 5 ; John xvi. 2); and thus, while rejoicing 
 in being taught of God the secret of the prevailing 
 ungodliness, — that it was the simple unbelief of God's 
 manifested character in Christ, — and while urging the 
 faith of forgiving love as that which purifieth, I found 
 myself charged with Antinomianism, and with setting 
 forth doctrines leading to licentiousness ; and, as if to 
 stamp the character of the opposition awakened, it 
 first took an active form, in the parish, in the persons 
 of some individuals of much practical ungodliness." 
 
 This passage explains very distinctly the transition 
 from the earlier to the later form of his teaching at 
 Row. During 1827 the nature of faith had been the 
 most prominent subject ; during the two following 
 years he dwelt rather on the object of faith, — namely, 
 Christ's death for all men, forgiveness in Christ for all 
 men. In other words, he first taught that that only can 
 be truly called faith which produces the fruit of peace 
 with God ; and he went on to teach that the assured 
 faith, which of necessity produces this fruit, must have 
 as its object that which is true whether it be believed 
 or not. Many said, " Believe in the forgiveness of 
 your sins, and they will be forgiven :" he said, " Believe 
 in the forgiveness of your sins because they are for- 
 given.'' Many said, " Believe that Christ died for you, 
 and your faith will be an evidence to yourself that 
 you are one of those for whom Christ died :" he said, 
 "Believe that Christ died for you because He died for 
 all mankind." 
 
28 INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 The letters of this period furnish many indications 
 of the course of his thought and teaching. 
 
 In April, 1828, he writes: — "I am daily more im- 
 pressed with the awful state of our Church. The 
 prophets speak words of false peace, and the people 
 wish to have it so. ... I am in truth of opinion 
 that the Protestantism of our day is as much in 
 need of reformation as the Catholicism of the days 
 of Luther." 
 
 It was in the summer of this year that my father 
 became acquainted with Edward Irving. Mrs. Oli- 
 phant quotes a letter dated June 10th, in which Irving 
 speaks of preaching at Row on the preceding Sunday: 
 u I was much delighted," he says, " with Campbell 
 and Sandy Scott, whom I have invited to come to 
 London." On the same day my father writes : " I 
 have the prospect of preaching the glad tidings of free 
 pardon in London. . . . Mr. Irving has been with 
 me and is away. I have had much pleasure in his 
 short visit. His peculiar views are new to me, as to 
 others, and too important to be suddenly taken up, 
 but I feel much cause of thankfulness to be given me 
 in the possession of his most Christian friendship. . . . 
 
 Tell ; of my going to London, and that I am to 
 
 preach in Irving's pulpit." In a letter written some 
 years later I find the following : — " I remember when 
 first we met our parting was in Glasgow ; and after 
 we had prayed together, in separating he said to me, 
 1 Dear Campbell, may your bosom be a pillow for me 
 
MIN1STR Y AT ROW. 
 
 29 
 
 to rest upon, and my arm a staff for you to lean 
 upon.'" 
 
 The visit to London was accomplished ; and 
 Irving wrote that his Kirk-Session " were loud in their 
 acknowledgments to Mr Campbell," 
 
 In August we find him hard at work in his 
 parish : — " I preached in a glen which has about a 
 hundred inhabitants, among whom I knew only of 
 
 one who had received the Gospel They 
 
 had bestowed a day from their work upon the call to 
 meet me. Accordingly I spoke at very great 
 length, and in the most familiar way, mingling 
 as much affection as I possibly could with the 
 greatest faithfulness in telling them what I thought 
 of them. The appearance of impression was con- 
 siderable, and when I came out there was not a head 
 of a family present that did not press to shake 
 hands with me. ... I propose preaching every 
 Thursday in some corner of the parish while 
 the season is favourable." 
 
 Passing on to 1829 we find the following : — 
 
 " 14//; January. 
 
 "I have no wish whatever to leave the Church of 
 Scotland : — not for the sake of the living which is now 
 coming to me as a member of it ; — if I saw it God's will 
 that I should leave it I could have no hesitation in going 
 out, trusting all to Him ; — but because I honestly feel that 
 there is no body calling itself Christian to which I could 
 join myself in preference." 
 
3° 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. 
 
 To his sister. 
 
 "Row, 22nd Feby., 1829. 
 
 " My mind is at present somewhat burdened about the 
 petition to the Presbytery, but as, through grace, I am 
 conscious of the single and unmingled desire to act as may 
 be most for the glory of the truth, I can cast my burden on 
 the Lord." 
 
 This petition was signed by three or four indi- 
 viduals, only two of whom appeared before the Pres- 
 bytery. " Of these the name of one was struck off 
 the petition, as it appeared that he had for many 
 years been refused Church privileges, and conse- 
 quently could not be considered a member of the 
 Church." I quote these words from a book entitled 
 " The Whole Proceedings in the case of the Rev. J. 
 M'Leod Campbell," published at Greenock in 1831. 
 
 To his sister. 
 
 "Glasgow, 27th March, 1829. 
 
 " He who has the hearts of all men in His hands, has put 
 it into the mind of some of my parishioners without having 
 any communication with me, to send in a counter-petition. 
 This is signed by all the most respectable people in the 
 parish, including Lord John Campbell and the two Buch- 
 anans. It ought certainly to make it easier for my brethren 
 to come to the resolution of rejecting; and at all events is 
 such a tribute, I understand, to my personal character as 
 will be a practical testimony to the truth."* 
 
 * The adverse petition was withdrawn!. 
 
MINISTR Y AT RO W. 
 
 31 
 
 In May he preached a course of sermons on the 
 nature of faith, and of good works : the former he 
 explained as " nothing more or less than the belief of 
 what God says to us ; " the latter as " nothing more 
 or less than the effect of knowing the truth of what 
 God says to us." 
 
 In August he writes, — " I am just setting out for 
 the Parish of Old Kilpatrick, where I am to place the 
 new minister, Dr. Fleming, to-morrow. I look for- 
 ward with much interest, but without anxiety to this 
 opportunity of preaching the Gospel in the hearing of 
 my co-presbyters. At present opposition seems very 
 much subsided, but very few are receiving 'with 
 cordial faith the tidings which we bring/ " 
 
 Opposition had subsided, but only for a short time. 
 
 In November he writes, — "I was at Glasgow a 
 fortnight ago, attending a meeting of our clerical 
 society, and had the pain of hearing an essay against 
 the Gospel, from Dr. H., which all received with 
 plaudits but myself." 
 
 From this point onwards the letters contain indications 
 of a conflict which was daily becoming more intense. 
 
 In January, 1830, he writes to his sister in India — 
 "What Scotland is full of, you must hear even 
 on the banks of the Ganges. Many of the strangers 
 here in summer went away rejoicing in the Lord. 
 They are spreading the good news in their several 
 homes, and this has produced the natural reaction : 
 the pulpits of Edinburgh now as well as Glasgow 
 
3 2 IXTRODUCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 are spoken from with much keenness against what 
 they call the Row Heresy. Dr. Thomson has 
 preached a series of sermons on the subject which are 
 now in the press. . . . Some who agree with me as to 
 the great truth have had some difficulty in adopting my 
 language. This has made me consider and re-consider 
 it, but I have seen no reason to alter it. If the 
 objections so violently urged had turned upon words 
 it would have been more difficult to adhere ; but in 
 every case they have turned upon principles clearly 
 and decidedly fundamental." 
 
 The next extract (which will be the last referring 
 to this period) is from a letter to his father, dated 
 Row Manse, 14th February, 1830: — "A sho rt-hand 
 writer has for some time past been taking notes of my 
 sermons, and the first thing that is to be done in the 
 way of disabusing people's minds as to the truth, is 
 the publication of a volume* of these notes, selected 
 with the object of shewing the erroneousness of the 
 impression, that repentance and personal holiness are 
 not inculcated, and that the character of God as 
 righteousness as well as love is forgotten. Notes of 
 sermons preached before these publications {i.e. y Dr. 
 Andrew Thomson's book and others) will shew that 
 these charges were brought in ignorance of what was 
 supposed so dangerous." 
 
 * This volume of Sermons passed through three editions, and 
 both it and a second volume subsequently published have been 
 long out of print. 
 
MIXISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 33 
 
 It will be impossible to give, within the limits of 
 the present narrative, a detailed account of the 
 ecclesiastical proceedings in the Row Case : nothing 
 more than an outline will be here attempted. 
 
 For the earlier stages of these proceedings — as far 
 as the end of 1830 — we have the closing passage of 
 the long letter to his brother, which is as follows : — 
 
 " The individuals in question,* joined by a few who 
 had the reputation of orthodoxy, — and who had there- 
 fore some status to lose if these views were adopted, — 
 made several successive attempts to make my preach- 
 ing the subject of Presbyterial enquiry. By one 
 circumstance or another two several petitions were 
 made to fall to the ground. At length in March last 
 a petition signed by twelve parishioners was received 
 by the Presbytery and became subsequently the 
 foundation of a Presbyterial visitation and ultimately 
 of the libel which I sent you. This complaint gave 
 occasion to a representation signed by almost all the 
 heads of families in the parish expressive of their 
 strong desire that I should not be disturbed in my 
 labours among them, as they were quite satisfied with 
 the way in which I discharged my duties. It also 
 gave occasion to that painful expression of feeling on 
 the part of my brethren in the General Assembly of 
 last year which I think I detailed in a letter to Jean 
 Mary, and to similar things in the Presbytery since ; 
 and the Presbytery are now acting under an authority 
 
 * See the close of the preceding extract from this letter, p. 27. 
 
 c 
 
34 IXTRODUCTORY NARRA TIVE. 
 
 given by the Assembly, and beyond what they con- 
 stitutionally have, and which, being justified on the 
 ground on which a suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
 is justified, affords the strongest expression of the 
 alarm which the cry of ' heresy ' has awakened. 
 
 " The first thing to be disposed of in any such trial 
 is the relevancy of the libel. My answers contain 
 all that I urged on that point. You will be struck 
 when I tell you that they were absolutely and ex- 
 clusively my own, unaided by any legal friend ; that 
 they were dictated in the course of two days and 
 nights, one clerk supplying the place of another when 
 exhausted ; that they went first to the Presbytery 
 and afterwards to the press in the original scroll, there 
 having been no time for copying. This I mention 
 that you may know how the Lord hath helped me in 
 this His own cause. 
 
 " Notwithstanding my answers the Presbytery found 
 the libel relevant. I protested, and so the relevancy 
 will come to be discussed in the next General 
 Assembly, and this is the question. This protest does 
 not however ' sist ' proceedings, as it would have done 
 but for the act of last Assembly to which I have re- 
 ferred ; and they are about to lead proof of the 
 statements ascribed to me in the libel. At first they 
 seemed satisfied with my own confessions, as well 
 they might for I confessed all ; but finding that my 
 answers which I circulated among my brethren 
 (though not at liberty to publish them, — at least, 
 
MIXISTR Y AT RO IV 
 
 35 
 
 restrained by delicacy) were producing a favourable 
 impression on many, they are now going to try and 
 prove something more offensive than what I have 
 admitted. I trust to be able to disappoint this 
 wish, — for such I grieve to say it is, — and to make 
 the truth of my honesty and candour manifest* 
 This step in the process is fixed for the 16th of Feb- 
 ruary. Supposing them to fail in attempting to give 
 the case any new feature, the Assembly will have to 
 judge me altogether on the answers in your posses- 
 sion. These being sent to all the Ministers of the 
 Church by this time, there is ample time for delib- 
 eration, and He who alone can, may bless my 
 statement so widely as to give a new turn to things, 
 and make the coming a contrast to the last Assembly; 
 but it is only in the event of a great revolution in the 
 mind of the Ministers that I can expect being per- 
 mitted to remain in the Church a day subsequent to 
 the next Assembly." 
 
 The following account of the proceedings, subse- 
 quent to the date of this letter, has been abridged 
 by Mr. Story from one of the chapters of his life of 
 his father : — 
 
 The Presbytery having decided that the libel was 
 relevant, i.e. y that its charges, if proved, were valid and 
 
 * The hope here expressed was amply realised; and he often re- 
 called with satisfaction the fact that the Presbytery had recourse 
 to his own statements, and not to the evidence of witnesses, for 
 the strongest expression of the obnoxious doctrines. 
 
3 6 IXTROD UCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 would infer ecclesiastical penalty, proceeded to hear 
 the proof. Several days were occupied in the 
 examination of the witnesses, and at the close the 
 Presbytery by a majority found the libel "proven," 
 and farther " Find that the defender has entertained 
 and promulgated the doctrine of universal atonement 
 and pardon through the death of Christ, and also the 
 doctrine that assurance is of the essence of faith and 
 necessary to salvation." The case was appealed to 
 the Synod, where it was in vain pointed out, on 
 behalf of Mr. Campbell, that in the sense in which 
 he understood and used these terms, they could not 
 be proved to embrace doctrines contrary to Scripture 
 or to the Confession. His opponents had affixed a 
 meaning of their own to them, and would recognise no 
 other. 
 
 The tone of the Synod was unfriendly, and there 
 was not even the appearance of patient dispassionate 
 attention to the claims of the accused. Only one 
 voice was raised on his behalf — that of the Rev. John 
 Wylie, minister of Carluke. " Dear Mr. Carlyle " (his 
 counsel), says Mr. Campbell in a letter to his father, 
 " spoke for three hours and ten minutes, and gave a 
 far better and fuller analysis of the proof than at 
 Dumbarton ; but they went almost all out while Mr. 
 Story and he spoke, and only returned towards the 
 close of the speaking from the bar." Mr. Campbell's 
 appeal, which he supported personally in a compre- 
 hensive speech, was not entertained, but the whole 
 
MINIS 'TR Y AT ROW. 
 
 37 
 
 case was referred, without any formal decision on 
 the Synod's part, to the General Assembly. 
 
 To the Assembly he looked forward with little 
 hope. On the day after his return from the Synod he 
 w r rites to his father : " I never came to Row Manse 
 with so heavy a heart as last night, and unless by 
 such a miracle as the stopping of the sun I can expect 
 nothing but the most awful things from the Assem- 
 bly. ... I shall write again before I go ' home.' 
 That word will soon return to its old exclusive mean- 
 ing. Oh, my father ! I am afraid my letter has had 
 too sad a tone. My afflictions do indeed abound, but 
 I can assure you that through the grace of God my 
 consolations do more abound." 
 
 The proceedings in the Assembly began on Tues- 
 day, 24th May. It was long after midnight before 
 tbe preliminary points were cleared away, and the 
 merits of the case reached. These, however, can 
 hardly be said to have received any judicial considera- 
 tion, for though the evidence, on which they rested, 
 extended to nearly 500 pages of print, the decision of 
 the Assembly was pronounced before the house ad- 
 journed. Dr. Cook, the leader of the " Moderate" 
 party moved, as soon as the pleadings at the bar were 
 over, that Mr. Campbell should be deposed. The 
 Rev. Lewis Rose proposed the milder sentence of a 
 temporary suspension from his office. 
 
 Dr. Campbell, his father, then spoke : — " I have in 
 my hands," said he, "a letter from a most respectable 
 
IX TR OD UCTOR Y XARRA TIVE. 
 
 individual in the parish of Row, well known to many 
 in this house, accompanying a petition from many of 
 the parishioners on behalf of their minister. The 
 petition is signed by 420 individuals, 150 of whom are 
 heads of families, composing (if you except Dissenters) 
 nineteen-twentieths of the whole population. It was 
 stated from the bar that Mr. Campbell's parish was 
 against him. I have read these papers that the house 
 may see this to be untrue. Moderator, I am the oldest 
 father at present in this house. I have been forty 
 years a minister in the Church. It is gratifying to 
 my feelings to state what I have now done, and it 
 ought to be gratifying to yours — for you should be 
 glad to hear that any one of your brethren has been 
 useful in his parish, and is beloved by his people. 
 
 " A great deal was said from the other side of the 
 house about dealing leniently with Mr. Campbell. 
 Now I would just ask where is the leniency if you go 
 into the motion on the table and cut him off, brevi 
 manu, from the Church ? You have not done Mr. 
 Campbell justice in attending to what has been this 
 day laid before you. You have heard him this day in 
 his own defence, and he has told you that he just 
 teaches that i God so loved the world that He gave 
 His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;' and 
 with regard to universal pardon, he has told you that 
 he just means by it that sinners may come to God 
 through Jesus Christ as to a reconciled Father. Now 
 
MIXISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 39 
 
 I am sure there is none among us all who has any- 
 thing to say against this. And with regard to Assur- 
 ance, what he says is no more than this — that a sceptic 
 is no Christian, — that doubting God is not believing 
 Him. And he has told you that he abhors what are 
 called the Antinomian doctrines of the 'Marrow;* 
 and I can say that I never heard any preacher more 
 earnestly and powerfully recommending holiness of 
 heart and life. It was certainly what I never ex- 
 pected, that a motion for his immediate deposition 
 should have come from my old friend Dr. Cook ; but 
 I do not stand here to deprecate your wrath. I bow 
 to any decision to which you may think it right to 
 come. Moderator, I am not afraid for my son ; though 
 his brethren cast him out, the Master whom he serves 
 will not forsake him ; and while I live, I will never be 
 ashamed to be the father of so holy and blameless a 
 son." 
 
 These simple and affecting words of remonstrance 
 uttered, the sentence of deposition was carried by 119 
 to 6. 
 
 It was in May, 1871, just forty years after his 
 deposition by the General Assembly, that my father 
 began to write the " Reminiscences and Reflections" 
 which are contained in this volume. This long interval 
 must now be passed over very briefly, for it has no 
 direct bearing on the subject of this book. It will be 
 enough to state a few facts which may connect the 
 
4o 
 
 INTRODUCTORY XARRATIVE. 
 
 past, which is recalled in these reminiscences, with 
 those months of repose and meditation during which 
 they were written. 
 
 The General Assembly could exclude him from the 
 pulpits of the Church, but they, could not hinder 
 him from continuing to proclaim to his countrymen 
 the Gospel of Forgiveness. It was in a field on the'" 
 outskirts of Helensburgh, on the 15th of August, that 
 he preached his farewell sermon to the people of Row. 
 "My dear hearers," he said, "and beloved people, I ' 
 desire now to be enabled of God, under the blue sky 
 which He has spread over us, to speak to you in faith- 
 fulness and in love." On another occasion, when J 
 saying farewell to a smaller gathering of his people, 
 he bespoke a kindly welcome for his successor :— 
 " When I remember how much the kind welcome I 
 experienced among the people when I came first 
 among them drew me to them, and made me wish to 
 be taught myself that I might teach them, I feel that 
 it is not only for his sake but for your own that I call 
 on you to receive in all prayerfulness the man who 
 comes." 
 
 Both in the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scot- 
 land great numbers came to hear him as he went 
 about preaching the Gospel. About the beginning of 
 1833 he thought it his duty to devote his energies 
 mainly to the work of ministering to a fixed congre- 
 gation in Glasgow, although he still preached else- 
 where on week-days. To this congregation he con- 
 
LATER YEARS. 
 
 41 
 
 tinued to minister — with occasional interruptions on 
 account of his health — until in the spring of 1859 
 failing strength obliged him to retire. He had no 
 desire, however, to form a sect ; and it was in every 
 way according to his wishes that many of those who 
 had belonged to his congregation joined, on his retire- 
 ment, the congregation of the Barony Church, where 
 they were cordially received by Dr. Macleod. 
 
 In 1838, when first laid aside by bad health, he 
 spent some months in Paris with his friend Mr. 
 Erskine. Dr. Chalmers also was in Paris at this time, 
 and the three friends were much together. My father 
 retained many bright recollections of this intercourse 
 with Chalmers. 
 
 His marriage took place in September of this year. 
 
 Early in 1843 occurred the death of his father. In 
 a letter written so late as May, 1871, I find these 
 words : — " For no mere creature-gift of the ' better 
 Father' have I been so indebted and so grateful to 
 Him as for the earthly father, whose being what he 
 was filled that name with so much meaning for me." 
 
 About three years after his father's death he 
 travelled with his brother in Italy and Germany, and 
 his home-letters written at this time record his keen 
 enjoyment of such pictures as Leonardo da Vinci's 
 Last Supper, which he used to study by himself for 
 many hours in the early morning. 
 
 In 185 1 he published a small volume on the subject 
 of the Eucharist, entitled, " Christ the Bread of Life," 
 
42 INTRODUCTORY NARRA TIVE. 
 
 and five years later appeared his best-known book, 
 the " Nature of the Atonement." In preparation for 
 writing on this subject, he was at pains to make him- 
 self acquainted with the teaching of Luther, as well 
 as with the earlier and later Calvinists. He entered 
 upon this study about the beginning of 1854, and his 
 book was completed before the autumn of the follow- 
 ing year. 
 
 From time to time my father visited England. 
 When in London he enjoyed the friendship of Pro- 
 fessor Maurice, whom he accompanied, on one occasion, 
 to his lecture-room at Kings College ; and although 
 they met only at long intervals, the warmth of their 
 regard for one another remained the same to the last. 
 It was during one of these visits to London — in the 
 summer of 1852 — that he had some intercourse with 
 two men remarkable in different ways, Baron Bunsen 
 and Archbishop Manning. Some traces of his inter- 
 course with the latter will be found in the Remin- 
 iscences, where he speaks of having been " pressed by 
 an advocate of the doctrine of the Church of Rome, 
 as to the relation of faith in the Scriptures to faith 
 in the Church." 
 
 During the later years of his life my father took an 
 increasing interest in the theological questions which 
 were agitating the Church of England ; and in a series 
 of letters to myself, extending over more than eleven 
 years, are recorded many of his thoughts with reference 
 to such questions. 
 
LATER YEARS. 
 
 43 
 
 In 1862 he published "Thoughts on Revelation," 
 in which he discussed such subjects as Inspir- 
 ation and the Supernatural, — subjects which were at 
 that time engaging much attention in connection with 
 the controversies which followed the publication of 
 " Essays and Reviews." 
 
 Before the close of this period a very considerable 
 change had taken place in the religious mind of 
 Scotland, with reference to such teaching as that for 
 which he had been condemned. Two tokens of this 
 change may be mentioned. In 1868 the degree of 
 Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by the 
 University of Glasgow ; and when, two years later, he 
 removed his home to Rosneath a number of repre- 
 sentative men, both lay and clerical, combined to do 
 him honour. 
 
 It was when this change of residence was fixed 
 upon (in 1869) that he wrote as follows to Mrs. Story, 
 the widow of his old friend : — " I am now looking 
 forward to, I trust, a quiet evening of my day where 
 I passed its troubled noon — the shore of the 
 Gareloch ! So I speak : yet I may never know more 
 perfect quiet in the highest sense than was granted to 
 me in that troubled noon-tide, — the light of the 
 Eternal Day shining brightest inwardly when the 
 sky of my outward life was most overclouded. . . . 
 This morning it came into my mind, — lying awake, 
 thinking of past, present and future, — that I should 
 write to you on this occasion, to you who are there 
 
44 
 
 IXTR OB UCTOR Y NARRA Til r E. 
 
 the one chief living link with the past, and attraction 
 of the present plan. It is impossible not to pass from 
 the memories of my former Gareloch life (now 
 naturally crowding about my spirit) and of the much 
 loved friend who was an element in that life, to the 
 thought of the welcome with which, were he still with 
 us, he would receive me back again, — the intense 
 brightening of that ever-bright welcome which so 
 abides with me, and will abide ; for there was in it a 
 ray of the Eternal Light as well as that warm sun- 
 shine of a loving heart naturally formed for friend- 
 ship." 
 
 In the spring of 1870 occurred the death of that 
 friend of whom he used to speak as " my beloved "Sir. 
 Erskine." He then wrote as follows to Mr. Duncan 
 of Parkhill, Forfarshire : — " As one of the two my 
 friendship with whom had its first commencement 
 forty-three years ago, in the joy of seeing eye to eye 
 in that light of the love of God to man w T hich each of 
 us had known before we met in it, and as with that 
 other (our dear Scott) my original fellow-helper in 
 the Gospel, my bond with him was very special, and, 
 since one of us three was taken, exclusive. You, I 
 know, will give me your sympathy, while you have 
 mine, in that sense of loss which I know w T ill deepen 
 by and by." 
 
 Soon after this letter was written the intended move 
 to Rosneath w r as accomplished. On his seventieth 
 birth-day he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Macnabb : — 
 
LATER YEARS. 45 
 
 "Achnashie, Rosneath. — Since I came down here I 
 have been so well and so able to meet many little 
 demands on me in connection with our flitting and 
 settling here, that my own feeling has seconded the 
 thought that seventy is not so great an age as it used 
 to look to me. But these are surface thoughts either 
 way. ' We are dead and our lives are hid with Christ 
 in God.' This, which so soon after my former coming 
 here I was taught to know and believe, I thank my 
 God I have, in these forty-five years, been learning to 
 
 feel This place is beautiful beyond my 
 
 picturing of it" 
 
 Here, then, at Achnashie, the field of peace, he 
 spent the evening of his life, in a repose which was 
 not idleness. In May, 1871, he began a w r ork 
 which he was not to be permitted to finish — that 
 of recalling tiie beginnings of his life-long ministry, 
 and reviewing the past in the light of the present. 
 The fruits of this interrupted labour form the contents 
 of the present volume. 
 
 On Tuesday the 20th of February he was engaged 
 in writing that passage which forms the conclusion of 
 this book. Before the dawn of the following Tuesday 
 he had rested from his labours. During his short ill- 
 ness he suffered much, and, especially towards the 
 close, he was to a great extent unconscious. When 
 first taken ill, early on the morning of Wednesday the 
 2 1st February, he said there was something in the 
 pain that he had never felt before ; but he added, 
 
46 INTRODUCTOR Y NARRA TIVE. 
 
 u God will give me strength to bear what he sees good 
 for me; and then, what a rest to know that I am in 
 my Father's hand! He knoweth my frame." He soon 
 after quoted the words (so often referred to in the 
 Reminiscences), " Man's chief end is to glorify God 
 and enjoy Him for ever." " I never saw," he said, 
 " so much meaning in these words before." On one 
 of the later days of the week, my mother asked him 
 whether he was able to think of his absent sons. 
 " All my thoughts," he answered, " are on God and 
 on Christ." 
 
 At his death-bed were present his wife, his 
 daughters and his eldest son, and to their comfort 
 Mr. Duncan, his faithful friend for forty years. 
 
 The services at Rosneath Church, on the day of 
 the funeral, were conducted by Dr. Macleod and Mr. 
 Story, the sons of the two friends who had assisted 
 him on his first Communion Sunday, in 1826. With 
 them there stood at his grave his old friend Dr. 
 Wylie who had spoken on his behalf in the Synod 
 and the General Assembly. Funeral Sermons were 
 preached by Dr. Macleod and Mr. Story : — the 
 former, alas! too soon to follow his "oldest and 
 dearest friend." From Mr. Story's Sermon I quote 
 these closing words : — 
 
 " And now he rests, in a spot dear to his own heart, 
 and closely linked with his memory. You can 
 from his grave see, a mile away, the hills of his old 
 parish. A few steps from him, lie the ashes of the 
 
LATER YEARS. 
 
 47 
 
 friend who shared all his counsels and stood by him 
 in his trials, long ago. Within the now broken walls, 
 which cast their shadow on his resting-place, he 
 often preached the Word of Life to that friend's con- 
 gregation, the fathers and kindred of many here. 
 
 " May he rest in peace until the Resurrection of the 
 just, and may we have' grace to be followers, even 
 afar off, of such as he !" 
 
PART I. 
 STARTING-POINTS OF THE MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
I. 
 
 REASONS FOR ATTEMPTING THIS 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 Achnashie, May 187 1. 
 
 I AM now to attempt a retrospect of my early teaching 
 during my brief ministry in the Church of Scotland — 
 at least of so much of my teaching as was called 
 in question by the Church, and was the ground on 
 which my deposition proceeded. 
 
 I engage in this attempt with a purpose purely 
 practical. 
 
 An interval of forty years separates the present from 
 the past which I wish to recall, and as to which I wish 
 to state what it was both in form and in essence, and 
 how in the retrospect I now regard it. 
 
 What I now attempt for a wider circle I have often 
 done partially, in a fragmentary way, in responding 
 from time to time to the interest of individuals. I 
 have also from time to time done it for the satisfaction 
 of my own mind. 
 
 For these forty years have brought in their course 
 many calls to such meditation on that past, to which 
 
52 REM1XISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 belonged my first free and earnest thinking ; while my 
 isolated position has also made it easier for me to go 
 forward in the path on which I had thus entered. 
 The solemn result of my first step demanded much 
 reconsideration, and in itself the time has been 
 increasingly one of a revising of all beliefs and 
 all past conclusions of thought, a time in which many 
 most assured faiths have been relegated to the region 
 of open question — nay, latterly a time in which to 
 begin with doubt has been assumed to be the most 
 sacred duty. 
 
 This assumption may indeed be so interpreted as to 
 be only the saying in other words what the Apostle 
 enjoins when he bids us " prove all things ;" while it 
 may also be, — and in many cases seems to be, — the 
 assertion of an obligation to question those fixed 
 starting-points of thought, without which thought is 
 impossible. But, apart from this extreme, the liberty 
 to think, nay the obligation to think, has been continu- 
 ally more and more asserted during these forty years ; 
 and this in many has been only the awaking to our 
 abiding calling to be children of the light, together 
 with a proper estimate of our relation to the past, as 
 the " heirs of all the ages." Not to ignore our advan- 
 tages, but to make the wise use of them, — not to 
 abstain from thinking (at least beyond the thinking 
 implied in the choice of some authority to which we 
 shall blindly submit), but to think thoroughly under 
 the awe of truth proper to those who inquire what 
 
RE.1S0XS FOR THIS RETROSPECT. 
 
 S3 
 
 is, not speculate about what should be — this I believe 
 to be our proper part. And the obligation which I 
 have recognised I have endeavoured to meet. This 
 as to many new questions continually arising, but 
 also as to those questions my own early solution of 
 which had so affected my life — I was going to say, 
 had cost me so much, but the gain had infinitely out- 
 weighed the loss. 
 
 For what questions of religious or philosophical or 
 of political interest could be agitated, that did not 
 take the mind back to the questions, " How are we 
 to conceive of the mind of God in relation to man?" 
 and, "What is that attitude of the mind of man 
 towards God, to which the knowledge of the mind of 
 God towards us calls us ?" 
 
 Our thoughts in relation to these two questions lie 
 at the root of all our thinking, and, according as they 
 are true or false, must affect it all for good or for evil. 
 But these questions on their part address us as indi- 
 viduals ; and the first and primary interest of the 
 Gospel is in the personal answer to them which it gives. 
 
 Certainly it was in their individual relation to my- 
 self, and to the people committed to my charge, that I 
 felt their pressure in that past which I would now 
 recall. 
 
 The opening question of the Shorter Catechism 
 (which is the Church of Scotland's first teaching to her 
 children), viz., " What is the chief end of man ?" was 
 to me the practical personal question, " What is the 
 
54 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Divine Will as to myself individually, and as to these 
 my flock ? " and the answer, " Man's chief end is to 
 glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever," I recognised 
 as the statement of the true interest of existence, 
 determining at once the proper aim of my life as a 
 whole, and of my life as a minister. 
 
 In the light of this conception of life I realised the 
 inestimable value of the Scriptures as the gift of God 
 to teach us how w r e may glorify and enjoy Him ; 
 teaching (with this end) "what man is to believe con- 
 cerning God, and what duty God requires of man." 
 
 The practical result was, on the one hand, an 
 habitual seeing of myself and my people in relation to 
 what God willed us to be, and, on the other hand, a 
 constant study of the Scriptures for the light which 
 tliis made needful. 
 
 As to the claim for the Scriptures, contained in the 
 expression, " the only rule" I do not remember that I 
 was detained to consider it. I accepted them as a 
 divine revelation, and as the highest yet granted to 
 man, and which could not contradict, while they would 
 make clearer all other utterances of the mind of God, 
 in nature, in providence, in conscience. 
 
 Nor do I remember that I waited to consider how 
 that first question and its answer were intended to be 
 regarded, — whether as stating something known apart 
 from Revelation, and as the light in which we must 
 naturally desire a revelation and welcome it ; or as a 
 part of what we first learn from Revelation itself. I 
 
REASONS FOR THIS RETROSPECT. 
 
 55 
 
 suppose the former conception was implicitly if not 
 explicitly present in my reception of that first question 
 and answer; and if so, the word "only" could have to 
 me but a qualified and relative sense — the sense of 
 adequate and perfect. 
 
 At all events, I knew and saw the conception of 
 the chief end of man being to glorify God and enjoy 
 Him to be what commended itself by its own in- 
 ternal light when once before the mind, — a light 
 which I took with me to the study of the Scriptures, 
 that preparation for understanding them which there 
 was in some true conception of the end for which 
 they were given, — yet a light consistent with the con- 
 sciousness of a need of more light, which made Re- 
 velation welcome, not superfluous. 
 
 Here, then, was the recognition of Reason and 
 Revelation ; but a recognition which brought with it 
 no practical embarrassment; for Reason and Revela- 
 tion were to me as two witnesses to one Truth, 
 necessarily in harmonious concord, because of their 
 one origin, even God, and therefore what must be felt 
 to be so in so far as they were both understood. 
 
 Accordingly I seemed to myself to find that as 
 the purpose of God for man became clearer to 
 me the teaching of the Scriptures became more 
 intelligible ; and, as the Scriptures were better under- 
 stood, that Divine purpose became clearer. This was 
 to be expected ; but I notice it and attach value to it 
 as an experience, because what were to me two 
 
5 6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 concurring witnesses are to so many rather two 
 masters, between whose claims to obedience they have 
 to choose — either subjecting Reason to Revelation, or 
 taking Revelation to the test of Reason. Thus two 
 schools are formed, one claiming to be scriptural, the 
 other to be philosophical ; each seeming to itself to 
 move in an open free path, ignoring as of no account 
 the difficulties which the other school encounters: the 
 student of Scripture recognising Divine authority only 
 in the teaching of Scripture, and holding it pride of 
 Reason to pause when any teaching of Scripture 
 seems opposed to Reason; the philosophical school 
 thinking with an independence of Revelation which 
 could only be reasonable if the claim of the Scriptures 
 to be a Divine Revelation had been altogether dis- 
 proved. 
 
 A delusive sense of freedom and of easy progress is 
 the result in both cases : a felt necessity for the dis- 
 cernment of the harmony that subsists between 
 Reason and Revelation is unquestionably a powerful 
 drag on the wheel of the mind's progress, often 
 demanding even long pauses. But I have never found 
 it an ultimate loss to have submitted to this restraint ; 
 for in time, on the one hand as the mind has entered 
 more and more into the Divine counsel, and on the 
 other hand as the true teaching of Scripture has been 
 reached, harmony has revealed itself where there had 
 been seeming contrariety; and a pure and salutary 
 light has at last been attained, the path to which 
 
REASONS FOR THIS RETROSPECT. 
 
 57 
 
 would have been shut up long before if what has 
 proved to be but a show of Reason had been bowed to 
 as conclusive, or what has come to be seen as an 
 erroneous traditional interpretation of Scripture had 
 been accepted as the word of God. For a mere show 
 of Reason is as often misleading to the thinker who 
 rashly mistakes free thought for thorough thinking, 
 as a mere traditional understanding of the Scriptures 
 is to men who set themselves to bow to the authority 
 of Revelation without realising the many sources of 
 error as to what the Scriptures really teach; Protes- 
 tants quoting texts in the sense the Church — or their 
 section of the Church — has given to them, as con- 
 fidently as Roman Catholics though with a less 
 consistent confidence. 
 
 These are here the dangers on either side: — (i) 
 accepting conclusions of Reason, not reached in the 
 pure light of Reason, but adopted in the rash confidence 
 and superficial thinking in which, under the assertion 
 of a right to think for ourselves, self-confidence is 
 thinly veiled; and (2) accepting the authority of 
 texts of Scripture without the exercise of that cau- 
 tion as to what is the real teaching of those texts 
 which the ever accumulating mass of human com- 
 ment so imperiously demands, and which the Babel 
 of conflicting interpretations renders so difficult. 
 (3) There is, indeed, a third danger to which w r e may 
 be exposed by much realisation of the other two ; for 
 we may so realise them both as to be tempted to seek 
 
5 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 refuge under the shadow of an infallible church, as of 
 a great rock in a weary land. 
 
 And this third danger appears to be increasing daily 
 as the confusions of lawless thinkers on the one hand, 
 and the confusions of conflicting interpretations on the 
 other wax more and more oppressive and perplexing 
 to earnest minds. 
 
 But the faith of a purpose of God that we should 
 glorify and enjoy Him, and of a Divine Revelation to 
 teach what we are to believe concerning God, and 
 what duty God requires of man, this faith is the door 
 of hope to us in our earnest craving for light, which 
 to see and which to welcome may be our gain from 
 all the distressing operation of our questioning time. 
 
 But that past which I seek to recall did not start 
 from any matured conclusion such as this. I pro- 
 ceeded on the reality of the alleged purpose of God 
 for man, and on the justness of the claim made for 
 Revelation in connection with that purpose ; and if, 
 in any important measure, I escaped the dangers 
 now noticed, it was not at all because I saw these 
 several wrong paths and avoided them. I took the 
 path which seemed open before me, as steering the 
 right course will save the mariner from hidden rocks 
 on either side, though he knows not of their existence, 
 neither has any chart on which they are marked ; 
 while they may be afterwards painfully revealed to 
 him by the wrecks of ships which, coming after him, 
 have deviated to the right or the left. And such a 
 
REASOXS FOR THIS RETROSPECT. 
 
 59 
 
 mariner's thankfulness is mine in this retrospect ; for 
 my faith as to the chief end of man, and the relation 
 of Revelation to that end, — my faith in the harmony 
 of Reason and Revelation, — did not spring from any 
 discernment of the results of doubt here. 
 
 I then began my ministry, having no doubt as to 
 the will of God that my people should glorify and 
 enjoy Him, and no doubt as to the inestimable value 
 of the Scriptures, in their relation to this divine end, 
 and ordered in the providence of God in subservience 
 to it ; while I received the Bible as from the hand of 
 God, — a divine gift suited both to my need as a minis- 
 ter, and to my need as a man. 
 
 A younger generation of earnest men may feel as 
 if I ought to have paused as I did not; — at least 
 that they have previous questions to answer as to 
 both the points that were so clear to me, — questions 
 physical and metaphysical to be settled before we 
 can say to ourselves that we know anything of God 
 with certainty — know that He is, or, if He is, whether 
 indeed He has intended that we should know and 
 enjoy Him ; questions, again, of criticism — historical, 
 philological, psychological — to be settled before we 
 can receive the Bible as teaching what it is said to 
 teach with reference to the great end of our being ? 
 even assuming that end to be knowable and to be 
 known. 
 
 I do not feel the less tenderness for all earnest, 
 truthful dealing with these questions by those to 
 
6o REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 whom they present themselves here as previous ques- 
 tions, that they were not such to myself. May they 
 think honestly — that is, under the awe of truth. 
 May they think freely — that is, giving place to no 
 biassing influence; free to hear all true voices, free 
 to welcome all true light. 
 
 I could not, in one sense, place myself in their 
 standpoint, because that would be to me, as to much 
 of the thinking in question, to seek solutions of the 
 known in the unknown. But I have attempted to 
 conceive what their standpoint is, and to see what 
 elements of right reason are left out of account in 
 proposing to occupy it. Without judging another, or 
 venturing to assume that his doubt is cherished in 
 actual resistance to that light which sustains our faith, 
 we must still feel that that light to which we are 
 trusting is uncertain, — that it is not really light, if 
 questions which are insoluble may yet be reasonably 
 urged as previous questions. 
 
II. 
 
 THE VALUE OF THE MEMORY OF THE PAST 
 TO OLD AGE. 
 
 I. 
 
 The memory of the past is always an important 
 element in the present. It is increasingly so as life 
 advances, until late in life it is not an uncommon 
 experience to live more in the past than in the present. 
 The value of that possession of the past which memory 
 continues to us, is indeed real and manifold. But our 
 wealth in this kind is, like mere material riches, too 
 often idly wasted, or worse. 
 
 But it need not be so : the memory of many years 
 is in itself very precious, — rightly used yielding plea- 
 sure and profit — the purest and most healthful plea- 
 sure — the highest good. 
 
 This is, of course, not understood when decay of 
 power for working in the present, and the growing 
 necessity to be contented to stand aside and look on 
 are complained of. 
 
 This high estimate of the value of past life as 
 
62 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 providing old age with interest, has no reference 
 to the differences between one man's life and 
 another man's life. It is justified, and justified only 
 in that light in which life has to us its right interest, 
 and memories — as all else — are valued according as 
 they are fitted to do us good, — good in that sense in 
 which it is true that all things work together for good 
 to them that love God. 
 
 Once having our hearts directed to the love of God, 
 we see our past as well as our present in the light of 
 our relation to Him; and then even a past which has 
 been darkness in respect of the light of life is recalled 
 as what, though wasted, is still redeemable. We are, 
 in some sense, as the spendthrift to w r hom the pain of 
 coming to see that he has wasted an inheritance comes 
 accompanied by the discovery of a way in which he 
 may still redeem it. 
 
 Something like this is the double effect of the love 
 of God falling on the memory of even the most god- 
 less life ; — the same light in truth in w 7 hich the most 
 godly life must be reviewed if the present possession 
 of it through memory is to be a healthy happiness or 
 profit. 
 
 The redeemableness of the past — that however 
 wasted, it may yet, in being recalled in the light of 
 the love of God, yield the highest good — is an element 
 in the joy of him who, late in life, finds the pearl of 
 great price. The gratitude which God's goodness had 
 failed to awaken day by day, as it was flowing out on 
 
MEMORY OF THE PAST. 63 
 
 him, the memory of it now quickens in him. The 
 wisdom which God's chastenings had failed to teach, 
 when he had been visited with them, they now teach, 
 being recalled while he is learning to " strike each 
 error with his Maker's rod, and by self t knowledge 
 penetrate to God." * 
 
 But the life in which there has been the earliest 
 and the most unbroken responding to the drawings 
 of the Divine love, and in which every measure of 
 rebuke and correction has been most readily under- 
 stood and recognised as another form of love, must 
 still be recalled with a sense of shortcoming in either 
 aspect, which is accepted as a call now to deeper 
 thankfulness, to renewed self-abasement. 
 
 .... Too often the memory of the past is to 
 the old only the material of dreamy thought, as idle 
 and profitless as the day-dreams of youth. But past 
 experience is more substantial than the visions with 
 which hope fills the fancy-future. 
 
 According as advancing age more and more unfits 
 us for active life in the present, are we called to a 
 meditative life in the past, — a life rich in the true and 
 proper interest of all life, a life which can go far to 
 redeem the failure of the past life of action. No 
 doubt in one view these failures are usually irre- 
 * Gambold. 
 
64 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 mediable: practical errors of youth or manhood con- 
 tinue to bear their proper fruit even after we have 
 come to see them to be errors — "Had I at such or 
 such a crisis determined differently life might have 
 been so different:" — But this light has come too late-. 
 We in this sense find no place for repentance though 
 we seek it carefully with tears. 
 
 But in another, and that the highest view, there is 
 nothing irremediable. The most important aspect of 
 all events, in so far as they are acts of ours, is their 
 aspect as seen in the light of righteousness, — the light 
 of God, — the light of the kingdom of God which is 
 in us. And the past, recalled in that light and 
 judged in that light, will yield to us a present and 
 abiding gain which makes the memory of it a part of 
 our mental riches. 
 
 3- 
 
 This meditative life attracts us, not only as filling 
 a void, but as continuing in a new form the element 
 in the life of action which was its highest value, viz., 
 the development of our eternal life. 
 
 We speak sadly of the irrevocable past. The past 
 is doubtless out of our reach as to its time-aspect, 
 but memory continues to us a possession of it of ines- 
 timable value — a possession in the right use of which 
 we extract good from the past beyond all it can have 
 yielded to us in passing ; even though in passing it 
 
MEMORY OF THE PAST. 65 
 
 has yielded the same good in measure, — as it must 
 have done in so far as ours has been a well-spent life. 
 Even in such a case, life retraced adds unspeakably 
 to our highest gain from it as it passed, all its lessons 
 now heard in a stillness and a light in which they 
 are better understood, entering into us more deeply. 
 
 But how many of these Divine teachings through 
 things pleasant and things painful will now be under- 
 stood for the first time, awakening a tardy response, 
 and a long-delayed thankfulness to the Great Teacher, 
 — a response and a thankfulness which, we bless God, 
 are still in time, still welcome to Him, still life-giving 
 to our spirits. 
 
 But all this reminiscence and reflection belongs to 
 that inner life in which we are alone with God. 
 However large their space in that hidden life, how- 
 ever valuable as seen in the light of that kingdom 
 of God which is within us, they arise in us, and do 
 their good work, and we give thanks for them as 
 meat which endureth unto eternal life without out- 
 ward sign. And it is usually well that they be suffered 
 so to be. Our past recalled and judged in the light 
 of God is safely spoken of to God. But not so safely 
 to man ; unless, indeed, God's searching eye be still 
 felt to be upon us. Otherwise our honest self-blame 
 may, in being spoken aloud, become unconsciously 
 self-complacency. 
 
 Some, doubtless, while so speaking aloud, have 
 so lived under God's eye, and- so purely sought by 
 
66 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 speaking to help others, that their confessions have 
 not hurt themselves while they have been profitable 
 to others. But the meditative life to which old age 
 calls, as the capacity for active life ebbs from us, is 
 in general and rightly a hidden life, saved from the 
 sense of loneliness, and from any unsatisfied craving 
 for sympathy by that feeling of the Divine presence, 
 and that reference to the Divine favour which is its 
 essential interest. 
 
 For this is true, whatever the youth and manhood 
 have been which old age is thus recalling. Found 
 even late in life, the kingdom of God is that pearl 
 of great price which is discovered with joy. 
 
 This is over and above what time, as it has passed, 
 has wrought in us of preparation for eternity. That 
 remains with us, — its measure according to the mea- 
 sure in which we have lived in the light of the truth 
 of things. But I speak of what is to age still within 
 its reach in the irrevocable past, good still to be 
 extracted from it, though itself cannot be recalled, — a 
 good still within the reach of age, which it is the special 
 business of age to discern and make its own, — a 
 present use of the past, which in value may far tran- 
 scend its use in passing. And thus even the passing 
 use has had in it an abiding element of good, — has 
 been not meat which perishes only, but also, in some 
 measure, meat enduring unto eternal life. As when, 
 in early youth, the sunshine of the heart — which has 
 shed its light on all things, giving added brilliance 
 
MEMORY OF THE PAST. 67 
 
 even to the light of the sun — has in some measure 
 been raised to a high and divine brightness by early- 
 piety ; and when, as life has advanced, God has been 
 acknowleged in His gifts, and His teaching, outward 
 and inward, been received with some measure of the 
 response of faith, so that all things were usually 
 taken to His light ; — even when it has been so in a 
 high degree the retrospect will extract good from the 
 past beyond what it yielded at the time, — more grati- 
 tude than was then awakened by God's goodness, 
 more humiliation than was then felt under His re- 
 bukes. This will be true as to our best memories, 
 while how much more will it be so as to the remin- 
 iscences of drawings of Divine love not yielded to, of 
 searchings out of evil in us by the Searcher of hearts 
 not meekly welcomed ; not to speak of countless out- 
 ward blessings which we have enjoyed without that 
 giving of glory to God which is in being thankful. 
 Nor is it only in what belongs to our relation to 
 God that the past of the best spent life may furnish 
 old age with much which may be thus turned to good 
 account, yielding in the retrospect higher moral and 
 spiritual profit, but partially or not at all known at 
 the time. The review of what we have been in our 
 relation to men, also, will be found fruitful of the 
 truest gain. Here, too, the retrospect will reveal 
 short-comings in right-mindedness which we see with 
 regret, — it may be, with much self-reproach. But the 
 right feeling, as it is now cherished, comes with some 
 
6S REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 solace. This value, which is found in the memory of 
 the past, when it is seen in the light of that kingdom 
 of God which is within us, belongs properly to that 
 inner life which we live in our relation to that 
 kingdom, our gain in such recollections of the past 
 being strictly moral and spiritual. But that gain is 
 true and pure, and the diligent acquisition of it an 
 employment of the enforced leisure of old age happy 
 and healthful. For that light of God to which we are 
 taking our past, saves us from a deceitful self-com- 
 placency in our retrospect, or a hopeless self-reproach. 
 The divine ideal for us, with which we are comparing 
 ourselves, forbids the one ; the divine forgiveness, 
 which is as the blue sky over us, forbids the other. 
 For it is a part of that secret of the Lord w r hich is 
 with them that fear Him, that the Holy Love, whose 
 purer light reveals so plainly the shortcomings and 
 unworthiness of the best to which we ever attain, at 
 the same time delivers us from the self-despair which 
 the sense of this unworthiness might produce. 
 
 4- 
 The highest interest in the past is that which it has 
 when seen in the light of that kingdom of God which is 
 within us. Reminiscences and reflections, as these 
 belong to that inner hidden life in which we are each 
 alone with God, are a present form of the meat which 
 endureth unto eternal life. Happy hours enjoyed in 
 
MEMORY OF THE PAST. 69 
 
 youth or manhood, if their happiness can bear the 
 higher light in which it is recalled, awaken a fresh 
 thankfulness, if, while they were passing, we were 
 giving God the glory of being thankful, — if that glory 
 was at the time withheld, it will be fully rendered 
 now. In either case, the unenlightened, almost 
 rebellious, regret that the past is past will be forbidden 
 to us reaping a rich present gain from that irrevo- 
 cable past. Sorrows, which, having been rightly 
 borne, have yielded fruits of righteousness, will, in 
 being recalled in the present calm, add to that precious 
 fruit. All Divine lessons, whether first received in 
 some of God's best and sweetest gifts, or in painful 
 unmistakeable chastenings from our Father's Holy 
 Love, will, in the retrospect, be clearer and have 
 their impressions on us deepened when they are 
 thus repeated. 
 
 And such processes the same memories recalled 
 over and over again, will over and over again repeat. 
 Thus will it be with passages in the former life in its 
 relation to our God personally, and thus will it be 
 also with passages in our past life in its relation to 
 men, our brethren, according as in these we have 
 borne ourselves in that highest aspect of the relation 
 of man to man, viz., our conformity to that second 
 commandment of love to our neighbours, which is the 
 spiritual corollary of love to God, — the first and 
 greatest commandment. 
 
 As to such reminiscences, also, the right feeling that 
 
7 o REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 was present in the past recalled is now intensified, — 
 what was wanting then is now supplied. There is 
 one touching difference between remembered offences 
 against the second commandment, and what we recall 
 of offences against the first : — as to the latter 
 there is not only space for repentance, but also for 
 confession and the prayer for forgiveness ; as to the 
 former, while there is still room for repentance, the 
 opportunity of confessing and asking forgiveness 
 exists no longer, distance placing beyond our reach 
 the brother whose forgiveness we would humbly 
 ask and gratefully welcome. It may be death that 
 has done this. In such a case the aged man may, in 
 thought and feeling, seek his place beside the child 
 of the hymn — 
 
 " Oh ! if she would but come again, 
 I think I'd vex her so no more." 
 
 Yet sad as is the feeling of powerlessness to reach 
 the heart we have wounded with the atonement of con- 
 fession, the presence of the true Comforter brings the 
 promised healing, according to the words, " Confess 
 your faults that ye may be healed." So in the light 
 of the Divine holiness and the Divine forgiveness, the 
 past, as it is recalled, fills the present with blessing, 
 and we grow at once in holy confidence towards God 
 and lowly self-abasement. Thus the light of Christ 
 does what the light of the law could not do. 
 
 In considering the 139th Psalm, we see the secret 
 
 
MEMORY OF THE PAST. 
 
 71 
 
 of such a realisation of God's knowledge of us in the 
 faith of God's precious thoughts concerning -us (v. 17). 
 In the fourth chapter of Hebrews we find the secret 
 of the power peacefully and hopefully to meditate on 
 God's searching word, in the knowledge that we have 
 an " High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, 
 the Son of God." But no light of the divine idea for 
 man, as declared in law apart from the Gospel, can 
 do more than produce, if imperfectly apprehended, 
 a delusive self-righteous hope, — if more deeply 
 a self-realised, destroying despair. 
 
 The reminiscences and reflections so profitable in 
 the kingdom of God that is within, have their proper 
 region there. We know them, we profit by them, 
 being alone with God. They are no part of that 
 memory of the past which sometimes gives such a 
 social interest to old age. If they being in him make 
 the old man esteemed, it is because they affect what 
 he is, not because they have a place in what he says. 
 It is best that this remain so. There may be excep- 
 tions. The autobiographies of some men who have 
 walked with God, often present to us portraits of their 
 inner life ; and while we read we feel that that sense 
 of the presence in which they have felt what they 
 record has so remained with them in recording, that 
 they have not in giving it to us suffered loss them- 
 selves. But in general to offer for interest to others 
 outside what has been most purely felt in our inner 
 world is full of danger, — what was inward true self- 
 
7 2 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 abasement passing into self-complacency in going out 
 from us, as it passes from beneath the smile of God 
 to seek that favour of man which bringeth a snare. 
 
 These reminiscences and reflections are not a chapter 
 of autobiography. Had I more strength for such a 
 task than I feel now to remain, I would shrink from 
 such a task — would shrink from it in its most outward 
 aspect, but still more in that inward aspect of self- 
 revelation of which I have been speaking, had I been 
 conscious of rich material, which I am not. 
 
 The reminiscences and reflections here offered have 
 no such personal reference, nor do I offer them as a 
 contribution to the history of the Church of our time. 
 (Note R. H. S's. book.) * 
 
 But it has naturally happened to me, in the course 
 of the long interval since the past, to which the re- 
 miniscences and reflections refer (now upwards of 
 forty years), to give in conversation in a fragmentary 
 way what I now record more fully and in order ; 
 and the interest which such recallings of the past have 
 awakened, — together with my return in the evening 
 of life to dwell on the shore of the Gareloch opposite 
 to my former parish, with perfect leisure, seconded also 
 by the wishes of friends, — has induced me to attempt 
 at least a form of usefulness that seemed still open to 
 me. But I speak thus with my work still to do. 
 * This reference is explained in the Introductory Narrative, p. 8. 
 
III. 
 
 ENTRANCE ON THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 
 COMPARED WITH THE DA WN OE LIFE. 
 
 I. 
 
 REMI^ T ISCE^XES of the commencement of my ministry- 
 come to me now with some of the feelings with which 
 we recall the dawn of our life. They belong to what 
 was the dawn of a new life, bright with a sunshine of 
 its own — a new hope, and a new promise for the future. 
 The life of boyhood and youth is, it may be said, in- 
 dividual, even after the period of passive opening 
 to influences from surrounding circumstances, and an 
 unreflecting development has been succeeded by years 
 of active self-culture, and the consciousness of respon- 
 sibility for the use made of time. But it is otherwise 
 when the time for preparation for some sphere of 
 active life is ended, and active life with its special 
 relationships and responsibilities is come to us : then 
 thoughts and plans embrace others as they did not 
 before, and the change brings, or, at least, should 
 bring with it an unselfish care of others, causing them 
 
74 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 to be embraced in our hopes and fears, and to have a 
 share in the fruit of our use of any powers we possess. 
 This difference of character between the life of the 
 youth and the man is more strongly marked in the 
 case of one entering on the pastoral care of a parish 
 than in any other transition such as I refer to. Here 
 the very essence of the new life is care for others ; 
 its business, ministering to others. Individuality pass- 
 ing into membership must lose much of its former 
 special character ; — the membership is headship. The 
 sunshine that brightens the dawn in this new life is 
 indeed new also. The instinctive unreflecting hope 
 which gilds these first years, — the "sunshine of the 
 breast," which, though before experience, and also 
 not from faith, is, as we say, natural and beautiful in 
 its season, — yet differs essentially from that higher 
 hope, cherished in conscious light, which is fed by 
 faith and not by mere instinct. But that very light, in 
 some sense, hides the future almost as much as the 
 instinct of youthful hope. The joy of the merchant- 
 man who has found the pearl of great price, though 
 enough to strengthen and enable him to sell all that 
 he has that he may buy that pearl, leaves him much 
 to learn, in the subsequent process of parting with all, 
 that has not been anticipated. 
 
 2. 
 
 The light, with which hope brightens all things in 
 early life, has something that corresponds to it in that 
 
EXTRA XCE ON THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 75 
 
 promise for the future which gives courage and strength 
 to the young minister ; a bright dawn also to be often 
 overclouded, so that looking back after many years it 
 is seen as a bright past with many seasons of darkness 
 between. 
 
 But, though this parallel is in one view one of 
 likeness, it is much more one of contrast. The hope 
 which has its root in the natural but unenlightened 
 instinct of youth, and whose promise experience has 
 not yet contradicted, is a perfect contrast to that hope 
 which has its root in faith, and which in its essence 
 experience ultimately ever confirms. The joy which 
 accompanies all revelations of the kingdom of God — 
 the pearl of great price making the sale of all that a 
 man has that he may possess it easy — is, w T e know, 
 often followed by many deeply-felt sorrows in the 
 course of the subsequent process of duly following up 
 that sale. But, whatever these sorrows be, they never 
 make the sale to be repented of, being but the successive 
 trials of the faith in which the sale was made — trials 
 which, rightly used, only deepen our sense of the value 
 of that inestimable pearl which is costing us so much. 
 
 Some have looked on the instinctive hope which 
 gladdens youth as what in the highest light we may 
 contemplate with pleasure, regarding it not merely as 
 beautiful and seemly while it lasts, but as in some 
 sense an implicit promise from Him who has given us 
 a being, that existence will prove a good gift, though 
 in a form far other than the day-dreams of the young 
 
7 6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 stranger on the earth picture. And seeing children as 
 God's offspring, our faith that it is good for them that 
 they have a being rests on higher ground than any 
 consciousness of their own, or anything visible in the 
 world into which they are born. But what that early 
 consciousness really amounts to, or what there is in 
 human memory to justify in sober truth the beautiful 
 and fascinating Ode, Intimations of Immortality, which 
 says that " trailing clouds of glory do we come from 
 God who is our home," I do not venture to pro- 
 nounce : only I cannot understand how, if faith has 
 translated us out of darkness into the kingdom of the 
 Son of God, we can ever thus go back to the dawn of 
 life for the " fountain light of all our day," the ''mas- 
 ter light of all our seeing." Not because of rays radi- 
 ating from that point is the path of the just as the 
 shining light that shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day. 
 
 The Christian ministry, as one form of the Christian 
 life, is a progress in hope, not a surviving of hopes ; 
 but still, as I have said, a certain brightness as of bright 
 dawn marks its commencement, and is so recalled in 
 the far retrospect, though the recollection of it be 
 saddened by reminiscence of much that has been be- 
 tween. Still the prevailing feeling is thankfulness 
 that all things, whether in themselves joyous or griev- 
 ous, work together for good in the measure in which 
 love to God has been the life in which they have been 
 passed through. 
 
IV. 
 
 HOPEFUL BEGINNING OF MINISTRY AT 
 ROW. 
 
 I. 
 
 I RECEIVED ordination from the Church of Scotland, 
 and was inducted to the Parish of Row, on the 8th 
 of September, 1825. 
 
 I had been a probationer since July, 182 1, 
 when I received the license of the Church as a 
 preacher. But these reminiscences do not go further 
 back than my entrance on the work of a parish 
 minister, when the responsibility and experience of a 
 pastor came to give to thought and teaching a more 
 vividly practical character, as well as the benefit of 
 practical testing. 
 
 The long period of half a century, to the beginning 
 of which I go back, has been one of very marked 
 character in relation to Religion. This, I think, is felt 
 by all, and not by those only who have lived through 
 it, and to whom it has the special importance which a 
 time has to us from beincr our own time. There can 
 
7 8 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECT10XS. 
 
 be no doubt that religious questions engage more 
 thought and more anxious thought now than they did 
 fifty years ago. This is so with very varied results — 
 some undeniably good, others which in their present 
 aspect we must feel to be evil. The mental attitude 
 of the time, as a whole, is such as makes any fore- 
 casting of our near future at least anxious and per- 
 plexing, — throwing us back for rest of mind and 
 reassuring hope on our faith in the almighty and 
 all-wise love that orders all things. 
 
 Personally, my circumstances have been such as 
 have made the swelling tide of the course of thought 
 on religion have, with all its eddyings, a special 
 interest, — I mean, beyond what it has to every 
 religious man ; and my reflections have often had 
 such a relation to my early experience as a religious 
 teacher as to seem to me to have something of that 
 claim to attention which belongs to experience, if real 
 and intelligently weighed. Reminiscences, and the 
 reflections suggested by them, have thus from time to 
 time come to be offered in conversation for their 
 consideration to friends, especially to younger 
 brethren in the ministry, — which I have hoped might 
 be some contribution to their thinking. And it has 
 sometimes been the case that they have met with a 
 response, which now induces me to seek the attention 
 of a wider circle. 
 
 This volume of Reminiscences and Reflections 
 must, however, be received as quite fragmentary, and 
 
 
HOPEFUL BEGINNING OF MINISTRY AT ROW. 
 
 79 
 
 in no way an attempt at a developed expression of a 
 system of thought. 
 
 I had been, as I have said, " licensed as a 
 preacher,", in 1821, but had had no fixed sphere of 
 work as a preacher, nor special relation to any people, 
 such as preachers, when " assistants," have. Conse- 
 quently, the weight of the care of a people came on 
 me for the first time now. 
 
 But whether freshly felt, or after some preparation 
 from sharing in the charge of a parish, the weight of 
 the responsibility of his new position does not usually 
 prevent the young minister from accepting that posi- 
 tion with welcome, and entering on his work hope- 
 fully. Many things, which it would be foreign to my 
 purpose here to notice, contributed to this welcome 
 and this hopefulness in my own case ; so that to 
 recall the commencement of my ministry is to me to 
 recall the bright dawn of a new life. 
 
 Ordinary life, as it is a temporal life embracing 
 time interests, may be said to have two dawns, — that 
 of childhood and that of manhood. The first of these 
 always looks brightest in the retrospect. An early 
 youth while life is still — as one may say — individual, 
 and also passive, is fullest of hope and has scarcely 
 any cares. Manhood usually brings responsibility for 
 others and the obligation for action and for discretion 
 
80 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 in some form of business, as succeeding individual 
 education. And though hope be present in entering 
 on this new life with its needed powers to nerve our 
 courage, it is not as the unreflecting instinctive hope 
 which gladdened our young days. 
 
 If the commencement of our conscious life as the 
 children of God and heirs of eternal life be parallel to 
 the dawn of youth, the commencement of one's 
 ministry may be said to be parallel to the conscious 
 anxious life of manhood. 
 
 The parallel which the retrospect on which I now 
 enter thus suggests is, however, fully more one of 
 contrast than of likeness, — the contrast, I mean, be- 
 tween that light of hope which belongs to the life of 
 time and that light of hope which belongs to the 
 eternal life. The instinctive hopes of childhood, pure 
 and free from care because anterior to experience, — 
 the more considered and reasoning hopes of early man- 
 hood, which when brightest are qualified by the fear 
 of possibilities which are but too often afterwards 
 realised ; — these ar£, indeed, contrasts to the hopes 
 which, as individual or as belonging to the relation to 
 others of pastoral life, belong to that better part which 
 is not taken from those who make choice of it. In all 
 its forms, — whether as it is an individual life in which 
 we are alone with God, or as it is a life of member- 
 ship in which, if one member suffers, the other mem- 
 bers suffer with it, — the contrast between the Eternal 
 Life and the life that perishes is according to that 
 
HOPEFUL BEGINNING OF MINISTR Y AT ROW. 8 1 
 
 word of the Lord, — " He that drinketh of this water 
 shall thirst again." 
 
 Yet within the experience of that life whose hope 
 maketh not ashamed are seasons in which a bright 
 past is recalled under the shadow of a present cloud ; 
 — not indeed a shadow which contradicts that remem- 
 bered brightness, as if its hopeful promise had failed. 
 On the contrary, it is ever shadow which rightly con- 
 sidered only reaffirms that bright hope, for such 
 shadows are the trials of faith by which faith is 
 developed and strengthened. 
 
 And thus it is that to look back through an interval 
 of nearly half a century to the commencement of my 
 ministry is like the ordinary retrospects of life, in 
 which bright beginnings, whether of youth or man- 
 hood, are recalled. Like, though — blessed be God — 
 most unlike. But so far like, that sad feelings are not 
 wanting ; though most unlike, in that the more the 
 path in which we have been led is seen in its proper 
 light, the more speedily does the sadness pass away. 
 
 3- 
 The formation of the pastoral relation between a 
 minister and a people is to both parties — the one and 
 the many — an event of solemn interest, as it is also 
 one of hopeful promise, the solemnity and the hope 
 varying according as the importance of the relation 
 entered into, and the encouragement to expect good , 
 from it, are realised. 
 
 F 
 
82 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 But when the transaction is earnest and real — one 
 also in which the mutual attraction and confidence 
 are felt, which the expression, "an harmonious 
 settlement " should imply — whatever interest religion 
 has hitherto had to either party will be greatly 
 intensified, and the sacred awe and joyful hope 
 blended together will be the greatest of which pastor 
 and people are found capable. The responsibilities 
 that now arise are more clear and palpable, as they 
 are those of the pastor ; though they are not exclu- 
 sively his by any means. Therefore, anxiety will 
 divide his mind with hope, while their expectation 
 will be more unalloyed. 
 
 But as his anxieties are proportional to his 
 earnestness; and as that earnestness always tends to 
 open men's hearts, and make their welcome more 
 cordial; and as the welcome with which his gift of 
 himself .is accepted is an important element in his 
 hope of usefulness; — his very anxiety becomes the 
 occasion of encouragement. 
 
 In the retrospect all anxieties and encouragements 
 are seen as a bright past — a time of sober but real 
 joy of heart, which Memory now gilds even more 
 than Hope did then ; even although many anxieties 
 have been justified, and some hopes have not been 
 realised. 
 
 4- 
 Entrance on the life of a pastor, as the entrance on 
 
HOPEFUL BEGINNING OF MINISTR Y AT ROW. S 3 
 
 a new life has (as we have seen) its proper dawn of 
 hope — a dawn which continues, like that of life, 
 bright to memory, whatever the day may have been. 
 If, however, that dawn of hope has been such in any 
 measure because of rays from the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, no subsequent experience can ever be — as is too 
 often the case with the remembered brightness of our 
 early days — a painful intensity of the bitterness of 
 disappointment. Neither can this dawn of hope be 
 like that in which hope is a blind instinct, which 
 anticipates no clouds in its day. On the contrary, 
 however bright the expectations of the young pastor, 
 his heart is visited with many misgivings, were it only 
 from his own conscious weakness and inadequacy to 
 the work before him. These, doubtless, bring their 
 own antidote, when they only cast him more simply 
 on that strength, not his own, in which he is called to 
 go forward. But his sense of weakness in himself 
 may often exceed the strength of his faith. The 
 hopeful welcome of the flock is indeed reassuring ; 
 and it is an instance of the law of compensation that 
 the measure of his own sense of responsibility and 
 weakness, blending with his hopeful trust, so deepens 
 both his earnestness and the awe on his spirit, as 
 greatly to contribute to his attraction to his future 
 people — making their hope from his ministry all the 
 brighter, and so their encouraging welcome all the 
 more cordial. 
 
 The sense of responsibility which rightly belongs 
 
84 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 to the forming of so important a mutual relation as 
 that of pastor and people, is naturally greater on the 
 side of the one than of the many : both because his 
 realisation of that importance is likely to exceed 
 greatly their average feeling at least ; and still more 
 because his consciousness is that of one engaging 
 in a work, — theirs that of receiving a helpful gift. 
 Nevertheless, my nearer subsequent acquaintance with 
 my people made me to know that the sense of 
 responsibility, as belonging to the new relation entered 
 into, was not, on the day of my induction, so dis- 
 tinctively my own as it seemed to me, — that the 
 pressure of hand with which I was acknowledged as 
 their pastor at the church door had a deeply serious 
 as well as kindly import. This, even as to the young, 
 I learnt to have been the case by reference long after 
 to that day in my intercourse with my class of young 
 communicants. This I record for encouragement to 
 young ministers who may read these pages, — a class 
 of readers who will be much upon my mind while I 
 write. 
 
V. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF HOPE. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN recalling the elements of hope, which gave its 
 brightness to the commencement of my pastoral life, 
 I intend to notice only such as belong to " the 
 common Salvation ; " for these alone have a claim on 
 the interest of my readers. 
 
 I now, when I write, look out the scene of my early 
 labours. The special associations- with persons and 
 incidents, which now touch the chords of memory 
 as they then did those of hope, — I mean kind 
 welcomes of the young minister, — these I note 
 not, being personal. Yet were they naturally 
 and rightly valued at the time as elements of 
 hope, — real encouragements to go forward. And let 
 every young minister be thankful for such encourage- 
 ment, however secondary and subordinate. 
 
 But it is for the elements of hope which are primary 
 and are also the same to all, and not more or less to 
 individuals, as the case may be, that I claim a place 
 
S6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 in these reminiscences. The scene on which I now 
 look out speaks of the personal past, as past, by the 
 very changes that it presents. Not only is the 
 generation that then welcomed me almost all passed 
 away, but the part of most human interest of the 
 scene itself, so to speak — the dwellings on the shores 
 of this beautiful Gareloch are changed ; and this most 
 on what was my side of it ; — changed, — progressed 
 with the progressing time. 
 
 It more accords with my purpose in writing, to 
 turn from the elements of early life which remain in 
 my heart as memories of kindness, and from the 
 spots that recall these to lift my eyes to the everlast- 
 ing hills which abide unchanged, and to that over- 
 canopying heaven which now as then is the symbol of 
 the over-canopying love of God, — the love in the faith 
 of which I met my people and parted from them ; in 
 the faith of which such meetings and such partings 
 can be peacefully looked at together, because finding 
 their place together in the counsels of Him who does 
 all things well, ordering all things according to the 
 counsel of His own will. 
 
 I venture to say that I met my people under the 
 over-canopying love of God, the shadow of His 
 wings, although I saw not the Divine Love as I came 
 afterwards to see it, and though the faith of my 
 people in God's precious thoughts concerning them 
 was in general less enlightened than my own. I may 
 say also that they met me in some dim feeling of 
 
ELEMENTS OF HOPE. 87 
 
 that love, — that their very welcome of me coming to 
 them as their minister, no less than my hope in ac- 
 cepting that relation to them, had root in some faith 
 however vague in the hope that is in God for man. 
 
 In now meditating on that commencement of my 
 ministry to which I look back as to a bright dawn, 
 the considerations which ask attention, as having been 
 elements in the expectation of usefulness with which 
 I entered on my work, are these : — 
 
 (1.) The practical character of the interest with 
 which my people regarded me. 
 
 (2.) The common ground on which we were meeting. 
 
 In these there was nothing peculiar or distinctive in 
 my case. They are the hopeful aspects of entrance 
 on the ministry. But there may be some advantage 
 in dwelling on them for a little, as I see them now. 
 
 (1.) My relation to my people had a strictly practi- 
 cal import and interest. I was given to them as a 
 help towards being what they ought to be, — what 
 they ought to be in their relation to God, and also in 
 all human relations. Need of help in what concerned 
 their relation to God was, however, most present to 
 their minds in welcoming me to be their minister ; for 
 the confession that they came short in what they 
 owed "to God would be more readily made than the 
 corresponding confession in relation to their fellow- 
 
SS REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 men, for the relation of the second commandment to 
 the first is seldom realised. 
 
 It was a promise of good that I was welcomed as 
 bringing a needed help and with a warmth pro- 
 portioned to the impression of my earnest desire and 
 purpose to be such a help. This was so, although the 
 interest in religion which this implied might not be 
 very deep, and although the ideal of Christianity to 
 which my people were taking themselves might, in all 
 various measures, be short of the true ideal. (My 
 own indeed was yet far short of what I subsequently 
 learned to press on their faith as God's reasonable 
 service.) But the obligation of religion, however 
 dimly apprehended, was recognised ; and this would 
 secure some measure of openness of ear for me as a 
 teacher seeking to illustrate and enforce that obli- 
 gation. 
 
 (2.) We were meeting on common ground. This 
 more in words and forms of thought, doubtless, than 
 in the clear light of the truth of things. But some 
 meaning right words had to them, even when a most 
 inadequate meaning. 
 
 The answer to the opening question of the General 
 Assembly's Shorter Catechism is this — " Man's chief 
 end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." 
 
 It would indeed be too much to assume that early 
 familiarity with these well-chosen words implies being 
 consciously in their light, or the habitual sense of the 
 excellence of the gift of life, and the sacredness of all 
 
ELEMENTS OF HOPE, 89 
 
 life. But early acquaintance with these words — though 
 they may have been at first repeated by rote — may 
 have a part in the sense of the obligation of religion 
 which gives his interest to a new minister in the eyes 
 of his people. Whatever be its origin, and however 
 feeble or vague it may be, that sense of religious 
 obligation opens for him many ears and hearts ; and 
 he must therefore ever set himself to keep it alive by 
 ministering to it its proper food. 
 
 He must say to himself, " Here my people and I 
 are met on common ground; I desire to help them to 
 be what God wills them to be ; my position among 
 them has this meaning or none at all. They also, on 
 their part, welcome me as given to them to help them 
 to be good, — to shew them what they ought to be. 
 Our use of common words here really expresses a 
 common meaning in the large view of the matter; 
 though, doubtless, I cannot assume that the right 
 words here have all the meaning, as used by them, 
 that they have as used by me." On his own lips he 
 indeed knows that they have a meaning far short of 
 the great reality to which they are related. He also 
 knows that, while he may in this view be in advance 
 of the average mind of his people, there may be those 
 among them who are far in advance of him; and 
 such a thought will be one of encouragement. 
 
 I have never lost the feeling of the impression 
 made on me on the very first day of my Parochial 
 visiting — at the close of that day's work — when the 
 
9° 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 aged inmates of the last house to which I had been, 
 came with me to the brow of the height on which 
 their cottage stood ; and the one solemnly said, " Give 
 us plain doctrine, for we are a sleeping people;" and 
 the other solemnly quoted the words, " Be thou faith- 
 ful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." 
 
 However, in the case of any really earnest ministry, 
 the supreme importance of the practical obligations 
 implied in the call on men to be conformed to the 
 will of God is likely to be felt by the pastor as by 
 one standing on a higher level than those to whom 
 he ministers; and this even when his sense of short- 
 coming in his personal response to that call may be 
 most humbling. 
 
 And, here I would notice — what, in recalling the 
 past, I feel to be important — the value of the habitual 
 realisation of the will of God in relation to man, as 
 profitably determining a man's consciousness of his 
 own position as a pastor, and the character of his 
 teaching, both as to pulpit ministration and personal 
 intercourse — a present will of the ever-present God 
 over-canopying himself and his people as the blue 
 heaven. 
 
 This if his faith habitually realises — and in the 
 measure in which he realises it — will quicken his 
 ministry with its proper life, and will also best help 
 him to know what to speak and how to speak it It 
 will minister to him matter and tenderness, with due 
 urgency, and at the same time patient discretion. 
 
ELEMENTS OF HOPE. 
 
 91 
 
 One has spoken of preaching as what should be 
 speaking, " as a dying man to dying men." The mean- 
 ing has been good, as expressing the weight which the 
 near sense of eternity gives to the call to prepare for 
 eternity. Yet may I not say that in the light of the 
 love of God, and the will of that love to bless us in 
 God, to preach as living the eternal life to men to 
 whom God has given eternal life in His Son is the 
 truer conception of our high calling ? 
 
 I have used the word practical above, in relation to 
 religious obligation, and as expressive of the essence 
 of the value of the help given to people in the gift of 
 a pastor. In so doing I use the word in the highest 
 sense which it can bear : — I mean in its relation to 
 the question, " What ought I to be ? " 
 
 " What ought I to think ? " " What ought I to 
 do ? " — these also are practical questions ; and in 
 special relation to " What ought I to be ? " belong 
 to the same high region with that question, — while 
 in some sense the one question precedes while the 
 other follows. 
 
VI. 
 
 OPENING QUESTIONS OF THE SHORTER 
 CATECHISM. 
 
 There were many elements in the bright hopeful- 
 ness with which I entered on my ministry [some of 
 these have been already enumerated] ; but I notice 
 here only my conviction as to the will and purpose of 
 God for man, and as to the Divine gift of Revelation 
 in its relation to that purpose. These convictions I 
 cannot state briefly in more fitting words than those 
 with which from my childhood I had been familiar, 
 as the answers to the opening questions of the Gene- 
 ral Assembly's Shorter Catechism. They are as 
 follows : — 
 
 Question i. — What is the chief end of man ? 
 
 A?iswer. — Man's chief end is, to glorify God, and to 
 enjoy Him for ever. 
 
 Question 2. — What rule hath God given to direct us, how 
 we may glorify and enjoy Him ? 
 
QUESTIONS OF THE SHORTER CATECHISM. 93 
 
 Answer. — The Word of God, which is cont lined in the 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is th i only rule 
 to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him. 
 
 The process by which words expressing the highest 
 truths become known realities to us is usually 
 unconscious and unmarked. Many influences co- 
 operate in bringing this to pass, when it does come 
 to pass. Submission to authority passes into walking 
 in light, and we may not be able to say when, or at 
 what point, the confidence with which truth is held 
 has ceased to be trust in light of others, and has 
 become our own light. 
 
 I have likened to myself this difference between 
 what was and what is to that between the life of the 
 chicken in the egg, and its life after it has broken the 
 shell ; or in vegetable life, to the germinating life in 
 the grain while it yet draws nothing from without, 
 and that same life when, in the language of the 
 husbandman, it has " come off the pick." But in 
 truth, higher life, whether spiritual or only moral, is 
 not even from the first a mere movement of sub- 
 mission to authority. The father charges his boy to 
 speak the truth. He is not alone in so charging his 
 child. Some sense of the rightness of the word is 
 present, sealing the authority with which that word 
 is spoken. Of this moral germ in the child we may 
 say that it is the living word of the true Father, 
 though not yet known as such 
 
94 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 I do not remember that I at all fell back on these 
 questions and answers, as if they were my authority 
 either for the conception of the will of God for my 
 people in the light of which I was ever to see them, 
 or for the confidence with which I w r as to use the 
 Bible in the relation to that will claimed for it. But 
 I believed and did not doubt that I was warranted in 
 teaching my people that the end of their being w r as 
 to glorify God and enjoy Him ; and I accepted the 
 Bible, as given to my people and myself, in reference to 
 this end, — our common ground as teachers and taught. 
 
 This, as the first teaching of the Church of 
 Scotland, has been contrasted with that simple 
 statement concerning God, and our relations to God, 
 which is the first theological teaching of the Church 
 of England. 
 
 There may be an advantage in leaving the end of 
 man's being to be an inference from the fact of God's 
 relation to man, — an inference sure to be practically 
 felt under the power of faith in these relations, even if 
 not formally contemplated. But it is no small thing 
 that such a conception of the end of man's being in 
 relation to Him who has given man a being, should 
 thus be the axiom and postulate with which a Church's 
 teaching of religion begins. 
 
 No man to whom the expressions "glorify God and 
 enjoy Him for ever" have their high meaning, can 
 
QUESTIONS OF THE SHORTER CATECHISM. 95 
 
 mistake the ordinary feeling as to the importance of 
 religion, as if it implied any true apprehension of 
 that as the end of man's being which is here acknow- 
 ledged to be so. Yet something of this conception 
 underlies men's habitual admissions on the subject of 
 religion. 
 
 Not to enumerate such admissions, I may refer — as 
 to that which indeed includes them all — to the admis- 
 sion that we ought to love God, that God's will is that 
 we should love Him. To love Him would surely be 
 to glorify and to enjoy Him. Of course I do not 
 trace men's admissions on the subject of religion to 
 their early familiarity with this first question of the 
 Shorter Catechism and its answer ; but that familiarity 
 has a place among the many influences which have 
 contributed to keep alive what sense of the religious 
 obligation is still among us, and is that in the people 
 which gives interest to their relation to their pastor. 
 
 And as a sense of the importance of religion is 
 common ground to the pastor and his people, how- 
 ever great the distance between his thoughts on this 
 subject and theirs, so the value of the Bible, as 
 relating to religion, is to him and them common 
 ground, however different may be the measures of 
 their light here also. Strong words on the subject of 
 this relation also have, as we have seen,* been put 
 into the mouths of our children by the General 
 Assembly's Catechism ; and however these words or 
 * See the Answer to Question 2, as quoted above. 
 
96 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 the former may be learnt by rote, they have had their 
 part in producing that atmosphere of faith in Revela- 
 tion which is, we may say, the mental atmosphere 
 which in this land we breathe from the first There 
 is, no doubt, as great a distance and gulf between an 
 enlightened appreciation of the Bible and the ordinary 
 acceptance of it, as there is between a true apprehen- 
 sion of the end of man (as being to glorify God and to 
 enjoy Him) and the vague feeling present in men's 
 concessions as to the importance of religion. Yet he 
 who most painfully feels this distance may still be 
 thankful that his people are prepared to go with him 
 to the Bible as to a revelation from God, divinely 
 ordained and fitted to forward His own purpose in 
 giving them a being. 
 
 I do not know whether we may accept the order 
 observed in these two opening questions of the Shorter 
 Catechism as some recognition of the revelation to 
 Reason as being itself light from God, — a light which 
 Revelation assumes, and to which it addresses itself. 
 Is the recognition of the end of man's being axiom first, 
 because it is here the axiom or postulate from which 
 we are to proceed ? And is the recognition of this 
 foundation-conception of God's will for man that 
 which justifies the claim of Revelation on our atten- 
 tion, that claim being its relation to this Divine will ? 
 This should be so, and I hope we may so think of it. 
 Indeed, however much it has been long a tendency to 
 depreciate natural religion in order to exalt revealed 
 
QUESTIONS OF THE SHORTER CATECHISM. 97 
 
 religion, — to make little account of what we know of 
 God independently of the Bible, in order to make us 
 value the Bible more highly, — the logical conclusions 
 from the strong things said in this sense have rarely, 
 if ever, been avowed. 
 
VII. 
 
 ASSUMED HARMONY OF RE A SOX AXD 
 REVELATION. 
 
 i. 
 
 The expression "only rule" in the answer to the 
 second question of the Catechism may suggest more 
 than it really has been intended to assert. At least, 
 that conception of the relation of the gift of Revelation 
 to the end of our being (as intended to glorify God 
 and enjoy Him), which gives its value to the Bible, 
 to pastor and people, and makes it their common 
 meeting-ground, is not inconsistent with the due 
 recognition of those elements of religion which are 
 distinct from Revelation — I mean a capacity of know- 
 ledge of God as in men, and also dealings of God 
 with men which universally address that capacity. 
 
 That God had never left Himself without a witness 
 was, doubtless, the faith of those who selected the 
 words of this answer — as it is the assertion of the 
 Bible itself. Perhaps the expression "only rule" 
 would have been explained as a claim for supremacy 
 
RE AS OX AND REVELATIOX. 
 
 99 
 
 and perfect adequacy. Certain it is that much that 
 man is to believe concerning God, while taught by 
 the Bible, is — it would be admitted — appealed to 
 in the Bible as an antecedent and universal light. 
 What God requires of man — his religious and moral 
 obligations — while taught from the Scriptures, and 
 enforced on the authority of Revelation, it was felt 
 allowable and reasonable to connect with Reason 
 and Conscience, and in accordance with the Lord's 
 own words, "Why, even of yourselves, judge ye not 
 that which is right?" The common ground on which 
 I met my people did, certainly, as to my conscious- 
 ness, embrace Reason and Revelation; and, however 
 little they had defined such matters to themselves, 
 they were prepared to accept an appeal to either — or 
 I should rather say, to both. 
 
 Both — for they would always be thought of as one 
 as to their ultimate authority and their obligations. 
 And this rightly on the assumption that Reason and 
 Revelation are both light from God. Their common 
 origin taught this; but still more, if possible, their 
 relation to each other. For Revelation assumed 
 Reason, and came as its supplement; while, if a real 
 Divine supplement, it could not be other than wel- 
 come to Reason, meeting a need likely to be more or 
 less felt — sure to be recognised in the light that God 
 gave to meet it and supply it. 
 
 And yet we know that the light of Reason and the 
 light of Revelation are not always thus accepted as 
 
i oo REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOy r S. 
 
 from one fountain of light. On the contrary, two 
 diverging tendencies of thought have here originated 
 two opposite schools. 
 
 Our Divine Teacher addresses Himself to one 
 capacity of being taught — first partially, and then 
 more fully; the fuller utterance sealing and con- 
 firming the less full — so putting all honour upon it, 
 while making claims on faith beyond what it had 
 made. This is the conception on this subject which 
 underlies ordinary religion; and, on the assumption 
 that Reason and Revelation are severally what they 
 claim to be, we should expect nothing else. 
 
 Nevertheless, within the circle of those who worship 
 the one God, and who accept Reason and Revelation 
 as teaching His worship, two tendencies are discern- 
 ible, having their ultimate development severally in 
 two schools — of which the one so depreciates Reason 
 in honouring Revelation, and the other so depreciates 
 Revelation in honouring Reason that, listening to 
 them, we seem to have two teachers offered to us, 
 between whom — though both from God — we have 
 to choose as between two masters. 
 
 If the teaching of the pure Reason and that of un- 
 adulterated Revelation were heard together, no such 
 choice would present itself. So far as they spoke of 
 the same thing, both teachings would be one; Revela- 
 tion sealing Reason — Reason securing acceptance for 
 Revelation — their oneness declaring one Divine source; 
 while, in that which Revelation added to the light of 
 
REASON AND RE VELA TION. r 1 
 
 Reason, there would be harmony with what was 
 common, yet a development and progress which would 
 justify the addition as not uncalled for, but having all 
 the value of a further light to which it laid claim. 
 
 But, Reason — what men call Reason — is not always 
 pure Reason, nor entitled to that obedience of faith 
 to which pure Reason is entitled. Nor, on the other 
 hand, is that which is to men a revelation the pure 
 Revelation which God has given, or entitled to the 
 faith which is the due response of the human spirit 
 to the very voice of God. We may, as men speak, 
 propose to ourselves to read the Bible without note 
 or comment, and be open to the simple, natural im- 
 pression of its words. But, can we do so ? At least, 
 who does so ? The Bible is there before us without 
 note or comment. Of what avail is this ? The notes 
 and comments are already in our own minds. We 
 take them with us to our reading of the Bible. These 
 have been in process of writing on the pages of our 
 minds from our childhood. 
 
 Our Reformers took the Bible from the Church, 
 and translated it into the vulgar tongue, and bade 
 every man read for himself — read, understand, and 
 inwardly digest. But they straightway began them- 
 selves to supplement the Bible by expositions, inter- 
 pretations, catechism, and creed. 
 
 These mental prepossessions with which we go to 
 the written Word vary greatly according as we 
 have been taught ; and this might cause us to suspect 
 
102 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 this influence, while we find the plain meaning of 
 Scripture one thing to one mind, and another to 
 another; and it is not in general difficult to put the 
 ringer on the prepossession which, in either case, has 
 made the meaning appear so plain. 
 
 This has, doubtless, greatly interfered with the 
 practical value of the Scriptures, and may in part 
 have caused that turning from Revelation to Reason 
 to which I have referred. But here, also, between us 
 and the voice of the pure Reason there is as much 
 interposed as in the case of Revelation; for, what are 
 men's reasonings but comments on the utterances of 
 pure Reason. How shall we shut out all comments 
 of man to hear what God is saying to us ? We may 
 not depreciate Reason because of the difficulties in 
 our way, any more than we are to depreciate Reve- 
 lation because of the corresponding difficulties there. 
 But the strange fact is that, though we might expect 
 the difficulty in either path to be most felt by him 
 who takes that path, it is not so. On the contrary, 
 the very reverse of this is found to be the case. 
 
 2. 
 
 In accepting these conceptions of the end of man's 
 being and of the relation of Revelation to that end, as 
 determining the real character of the life of the 
 ministry on which I was entering, and the hope in 
 which I was to enter on it, I was only entering at 
 
REASON AND REVELATION 
 
 103 
 
 what was to me a door which stood wide open before 
 me. 
 
 In now recalling the freedom which I then felt, with 
 no other misgivings than such as are common to all 
 earnest young ministers — to whom the greatness of 
 the work before them is in one man encouragement, 
 in another the natural source of many discouraging 
 self-questionings — I may just notice here my assump- 
 tion of the harmony of Reason and Revelation.* 
 
 Apart from experience and what we know of 
 the history of thought, this assumption needs no 
 justification. The harmony assumed seems inevit- 
 able. Reason and Revelation are forms in which 
 the one Divine light comes to us. Revelation 
 assumes Reason while it professes to supplement 
 it, and this relation, while in one view it sub- 
 ordinates Revelation to Reason, in another recog- 
 nises a most important dependency of Reason on 
 Revelation. Yet the harmony which this should 
 imply has been so far from being assumed that men 
 have seemed to act as if these two utterances of the 
 one Divine will were practically two masters, between 
 whom w r e have to choose. And thus it has arisen that 
 there is a class of minds who take Revelation to the 
 bar of Reason in a way that is a practical denial of its 
 
 * It will be noticed that this section contains some repetitions 
 of thoughts expressed in the preceding section. It has not, 
 however, been thought desirable to omit or abridge either of 
 these passages. 
 
104 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 claim to be a Divine Revelation at all ; while another 
 class of minds ask for a subordination of Reason to 
 Revelation, nullifying Reason altogether as a voice 
 of God, nay, making it — I should rather say chang- 
 ing it into — a source of self-deception and error, 
 against the misleading of which we have to be on our 
 guard, and whose suggestions it may often be true 
 faith in God's teaching to reject. 
 
 Of these two opposite errors the latter seems logi- 
 cally the more dark and hopeless, — that which, 
 logically followed out, leaving us in the most hopeless 
 darkness, takes away the possibility of faith ; — unless 
 indeed a faith which is neither trust in Reason nor 
 trust in Revelation, but trust in the infallibility of a 
 man made infallible by miracle for this end. This 
 third — though believed to be in their option by so 
 many — I do not wait to consider here. I am going 
 back to a dawn of ministerial life, and considering 
 this element in its sunshine, that I had undoubting 
 confidence in the teaching of pure Reason and also 
 undoubting confidence in the teaching of Revelation ; 
 and of those who fail to see here two utterances of 
 one unerring teacher I say, that the alternative 
 which seems most to honour faith in Revelation 
 simply makes such faith impossible. For if Revela- 
 tion finds nothing in man to which it can appeal, 
 how is it to communicate itself to faith ? He who, 
 speaking to man in the name of God, depreciates 
 Reason, is taking away the ground from under his 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 
 
 105 
 
 own feet. He who, under whatever misconception, 
 deprives me of Revelation may still leave me Reason, 
 but he who takes Reason from me, in so doing takes 
 away Revelation also. 
 
 The most obvious explanation of this uncalled-for 
 choosing between Reason and Revelation is — that 
 however we may assume their harmony as both 
 Divine in their source, we only see and know their 
 harmony when we are in the clear light of both. 
 Revelation, really understood, can never seem to 
 contradict Reason also understood, but it is obvious 
 that if either is misunderstood a seeming contradiction 
 may well arise : still more if, as is often the case, 
 neither is really understood. 
 
 He who puts its true price upon wisdom is thankful 
 for this relation of Reason to Revelation, wherein there 
 is so manifest a protection from misconception. But 
 he finds that 'while it is a certain protection from 
 error, it makes the quest of wisdom to be felt more 
 difficult, — though only because it saves from the hasty 
 acceptation of that as wisdom which is not wisdom. 
 In this land — where the authority of Revelation is so 
 generally recognised, and where indolence or thought- 
 lessness often prevents men from digging for wisdom 
 as a hidden treasure — we more frequently see an 
 unenlightened and superficial trust in Revelation 
 working evil. Men appeal to the Bible and its 
 authority with confidence, who have never duly 
 weighed what in any case is a previous question, — 
 
] o6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 Do they understand what the Bible says ? They 
 assume that they do ; they say that they take it in 
 its plain and obvious meaning. They consider not 
 how traditional interpretations have power to make a 
 meaning appear plain and obvious, which may yet 
 not be the true meaning. No student knowing the 
 history of religious thought and of creeds can be 
 ignorant of this. 
 
 A man may indeed know in his own experience 
 what it is to accept that as the plain and obvious 
 meaning, which yet he afterwards comes to see was 
 not the meaning at all. But whether a man has or 
 has not had this experience in his own studying of 
 the Bible, he cannot be ignorant how differently the 
 teaching of Revelation is understood by men who 
 recognise the Divine origin of Revelation. It is 
 surely marvellous how little this fact gives men 
 pause. The Romanist insists on fixing our attention 
 on this, and if he, by so insisting, cause us to consider 
 wisely he does us an important service. We may — 
 and if we understand the matter we must — refuse his 
 inference that we must accept the authority of the 
 Church for which he claims infallibility, or — as now — 
 the authority of an infallible head and mouth of the 
 Church — the Pope* 
 
 * This section was left unfinished. 
 
VIII. 
 
 VINDICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES 
 ASSUMED. 
 
 I HAVE said that it was something, as an element in 
 the hopefulness with which I entered on my ministry, 
 that I could at that time assume, on the part of my 
 people, a sense of religious obligation, however vague, 
 and a value for the Bible and recognition of its divine 
 authority, however unenlightened. 
 
 How, then, do these elements of hope appear to me 
 now ? Was I justified in looking on my people as in 
 the will and purpose of God intended to glorify God 
 and enjoy Him for ever ? Had the Bible that 
 reference to this Divine purpose which I believed it 
 to have ? and was I justified in making these assump- 
 tions in teaching my people, and in availing myself of 
 the degree in which there were in them any corres- 
 ponding convictions, however imperfect ? 
 
 I may not be entitled to answer these questions to 
 
I0 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 myself on all the grounds that are embraced in my 
 present knowledge. Certainly I did not, at the time 
 which I am now recalling, see as I now do so high a 
 purpose of God for man, as is implied in our being 
 His offspring. 
 
 Some light there was, indeed, in the very conception 
 itself of such a purpose of God which seemed to 
 commend it. But, doubtless, my conviction on the 
 subject was in part what may be called traditional 
 faith, though it never was, in any season of earnest, 
 serious thought, merely a faith resting on authority. 
 On the contrary, the external authoritative teaching 
 derived most of its weight from the inward response 
 which it awakened, just as all teaching as to right and 
 wrong did. By the time, indeed, which I am recall- 
 ing the independent personal conviction had advanced 
 greatly, and had very much got out of the shell of 
 authority. And if it had been asked, "What 
 certainty have you that the Father of your spirit 
 wills that you should glorify and enjoy Him ? " I 
 think I would even then have answered, " I must 
 believe it, if I believe in Him as the Father of my 
 spirit at all." 
 
 But the many years, through the vista of which I 
 look back, have brought with them many trials of my 
 first faith, both intellectual trials and what I may call 
 providential trials; — trials I mean in the demands of 
 thought, and trials in God's own dealings with me, 
 
VINDICATION OF PRINCIPLES ASSUMED, 
 
 109 
 
 by reason of which the faith of that early time is 
 now, in my own consciousness, as gold tried in 
 the furnace seven times heated; for they prove its 
 claim to be a solution of the problem of existence 
 and of all the problems which the details of the 
 mode and circumstances of my existence present to 
 thought and to feeling — a solution, every fresh use 
 and application of which has added to the certainty 
 that it is the true solution — God's own solution — given 
 in love, along with that gift of thought by which He 
 has made us to need a solution of the great mystery 
 of life. 
 
 I cannot fairly, I feel, justify my early teaching on 
 the ground of all I see and know now. Yet what 
 further light is the fruit of all God's teaching in all 
 these long years does in one view justify that early 
 faith, in that it has been the development of the faith 
 quickened in me then. Nay, I may say that it has 
 been but the more distinct apprehension of a Divine 
 teaching even then dimly seen, — the clearer hearing 
 of a Divine voice that spoke to my spirit then : the 
 dimmest vision, the faintest hearing, already justifying 
 faith, already making responsible for faith. 
 
 That this is so is implied in the very nature of 
 faith as a life. A creed or doctrinal faith may grow 
 and be strengthened by the processes of a mere 
 historical and Biblical criticism, or other intellectual 
 labour implied in constructing a theology. And later 
 
I IO REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 attainments in these ways need not have been in any 
 sense implied in first convictions, — which, indeed, 
 they usually modify, and not unfrequently overturn. 
 But it is not so with the faith in which the life of 
 sonship is quickened in man. The still small voice 
 which says, " My son, give Me thine heart," not only 
 comes to me from the heart of God, whose precious 
 thoughts concerning me are in number as the sand of 
 the sea, but is now saying, implicitly, all that is 
 contained in these countless precious thoughts. For 
 could I see the heart of God which is uttering itself in 
 the words, " My son," — could I know the will and 
 purpose of God for me which is declared in the 
 demand, "Give Me thine heart." "My son," this 
 tells what I am to the heart of God ; " Give me thine 
 heart," this tells the will of God concerning me, what 
 the Father of my spirit desires as to me His offspring, 
 with what manner of blessedness the blessed God who 
 has given me a being would make my existence 
 blessed. 
 
 All accessions of Divine light, all progress in the 
 knowledge of the love of God to man, in whatever 
 form these come to us, while they shed light back 
 on the " beginning of confidence," do so only as 
 revelations of what was in that first word of God 
 which first quickened the life of sonship. 
 
 I have in this view often felt, in hearing discussions 
 as to the place and value of Historical Christianity, 
 
/ r INDICA TION OF PRINCIPLES ASSUMED. i T i 
 
 that had God imparted to us by intuition all that by 
 Historical Christianity He teaches us, we should, in 
 that Divine light, have anticipated Historical Christi- 
 anity. We should have seen, that is, in the fountain 
 of the Divine love all that we believe as the form and 
 manner of its outflowing. We should have anticipated 
 the Incarnation and the Atonement, — our life of son- 
 ship, — the gift of the Holy Spirit, — the communion 
 with the Father and the Son in the Spirit, — our being 
 heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. This, in- 
 deed, is only saying that if we knew by intuition the 
 love of God to man, we should know the form which 
 it would take — has taken. 
 
 Is this a thought which makes Historical Christianity 
 less divine to me, — makes it possible for me to con- 
 ceive of it as a myth, — permits me to congratulate 
 myself on what it has taught me of the love of God, 
 and, at the same time, to make little account of the 
 facts of the Divine procedure in the light of which I so 
 know God, nay, to refuse credence of them as facts ? 
 Nay, the more I am by them raised into that light of 
 Divine love in which I should have anticipated them, 
 the more is their certainty as realities assured to me. 
 A light in which I could have anticipated that they 
 would have been is the absolute establishing of the 
 faith that they have been. 
 
 I say, therefore, that the fuller light of the love of 
 God, in which I now recall the confidence in which 
 
1 1 2 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 I met my people on the ground that the end of man's 
 being is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever, is 
 justified to my own mind in the retrospect by all 
 subsequent development and enlargement of my faith; 
 because, in truth, progress here has been, in one view, 
 development. 
 
 I have been only coming to understand now what 
 was implied in its being the end of man's being that 
 he should glorify and enjoy God for ever. That 
 postulate or axiom, implicitly present in all religious 
 teaching, has been contained in all true doctrine — 
 all reasonable practical exhortation. What was I 
 labouring with my people to bring about as to them ? 
 Was it not from the first and ever to lead them to 
 glorify God — to teach them to enjoy God ? Would 
 anything short of this be Salvation ? What other 
 than this is the meaning of Salvation ? 
 
 I have used the words "postulate or axiom," be- 
 cause Christianity is, to my mind, related to our 
 relation to God as His offspring, as the whole super- 
 structure of mathematical truth is to the postulates 
 and axioms first offered to our acceptance. These 
 have all subsequent demonstrations implicitly present 
 in them. It is said of Newton that he read "The 
 Elements of Euclid" right on, and saw the truth 
 of the propositions without the help of the demon- 
 strations. Such a mathematical intuition, whether he 
 had it or not, would be parallel to such an intuition 
 
VINDICATION OF PRINCIPLES ASSUMED. 
 
 "3 
 
 and love as would read and receive the whole Gospel 
 of the grace of God in the light of that word of God 
 to man — " My Son, give Me thine heart." 
 
 But we do not set out in this fulness of the light 
 of divine love : the parallel is rather with the slow 
 progress of ordinary students of mathematics. Only 
 the soundness of the foundation laid in axioms is ever 
 increasingly proved by the superstructure it bears of 
 mathematics pure and mixed 
 
IX. 
 
 SOME CONSIDERATIONS WITH REFER- 
 ENCE TO "PREVIOUS QUESTIONS." 
 
 The assumption of the purpose of God for man, and 
 of the relation of Revelation to that purpose, was the 
 natural starting-point of earnest minds at the time to 
 which I am going back. I trust that, to most, it is so 
 still. But half-a-century has brought changes in this 
 region of thought beyond what any half-century can 
 have brought before; and the earnest thinkers of a 
 younger generation find themselves called to deal 
 with questions not discussed then, or known only to a 
 few as forms of German thought. The errors which I 
 have noticed above, namely, the subordinating of 
 Reason to Revelation — the subordinating of Revela- 
 tion to Reason — and the subordinating of both to the 
 Church assumed to be infallible — are, as distinctive 
 of three schools of thought, developments of a time of 
 increased interest in theology; while other deeper 
 questions — or, at least, of seeming depth — are enter- 
 
" previous questions:' i 1 5 
 
 tained which offer themselves, in reference to what 
 was our starting-point, as previous questions, demanding 
 to be settled first. 
 
 The many forms of thought, from Calvinism to 
 Socinianism, which found place within the compass 
 of the acceptance of the Scripture as a Divine Reve- 
 lation — leaving room for questions as to what the 
 Bible taught, but no room for a question as to the 
 authority with which it taught — all this is separated 
 by a wide gulf from the questions to which I now 
 refer. I mean such questions as these: — " Is the 
 supernatural believable ? — Is a revelation possible ? 
 — Do we know enough of God to enable us to take 
 this question to the light of His character, or to 
 entitle us to say what is worthy of Him ? — Do we 
 know God at all ? — Is He known ? — Is He knowable? 
 — Do we even know that He is ?" 
 
 The paths by which these questions are reached 
 are several, and severally stop at different points. 
 These paths are: — Historical Criticism, Science, Psy- 
 chology, Metaphysics — all names of important realities 
 which have a true claim to be branches of human 
 knowledge — paths of thought not forbidden. There- 
 fore, no one who believes in God, and who accepts 
 the claim of the Scriptures to be a revelation from 
 God to man, can regard any evil results attending on 
 these paths as inevitable — or such as can be escaped 
 only by shutting them up. There must be a mind 
 in which they can be trodden in safety — a single eye 
 
i 1 6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 with which if we tread them, we shall walk in light. 
 As permitted regions of thought, we cannot hesitate 
 to recognise Historical Criticism, Science, Psychology, 
 Metaphysics — even while we painfully feel that many 
 minds visit them to their great loss; nor, because 
 men have met doubt where the necessary harmony 
 of all truth might have justified the hope that they 
 would have found increase of certainty, is any con- 
 clusion justified but this — that, in these cases, the 
 paths ventured into have not been really adhered to. 
 
 But this is not all. These enquiries, however open 
 to us, are not paths on which we are called to enter. 
 They are the few who are called to enter on any of 
 them, — scarcely any are qualified to enter on them 
 all. Therefore, none of the questions which belong to 
 these regions can be previous questions in reference to 
 that faith as to the chief end of man's being, and as 
 to the relation of Revelation to that end, which makes 
 its claim on all men, and which, therefore, must make 
 that claim on grounds which all can understand, and 
 the truth of which all can know ; — know with a cer- 
 tainty fitted to bear the weight of the great practical 
 decision involved, for that decision is the bestowal of 
 ourselves — of our hearts — of all our powers. 
 
 This is certain : and seeing that it is so we must 
 feel called, in a time like this, to direct the attention 
 of the few to whom I now refer to that which asks the 
 acceptance of all on grounds appreciated by all, rather 
 than to admit — even to the smallest extent — the 
 
" previous questions:' t i 7 
 
 justness of the claim to be here entertained as previous 
 questions, which is set up for the questions with which 
 these few are occupied, whether wisely or unwisely. 
 If wisely, we believe that they are in the way of 
 receiving confirmation of that which, without reference 
 to their studies, we call on all to believe : if unwisely, 
 then whatever be these divergences from true thought, 
 their best hope of being brought right is to come down 
 from any fancied vantage-ground which they have 
 seemed to themselves to occupy, to the land on which 
 the common salvation commends itself to common 
 man. This is the practical conclusion to which I am 
 led in relation to a generation of earnest minds tried 
 by questions by which I was not myself tried, but as 
 to which I truly desire to come under their burden in 
 all tenderness of spirit. They have fallen in one 
 view, on an evil time ; but this is so or not according 
 as they take it. It is the time chosen for them as that 
 in which they are called to fight the good fight, and 
 lay hold on eternal life ; and this choice for them is 
 His who suffers not men to be tempted beyond what 
 they are able to bear, but with every temptation 
 makes a way of escape. 
 
 2. 
 
 The instinctive belief in an external world common 
 to man and beast, on which all action towards things 
 without the sentient being proceeds, may be theoreti- 
 cally put aside as unphilosophical or unscientific, and 
 
n8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 a theory as to sensation and the external cause of sen- 
 sation be accepted as a development of Berkeleyanism. 
 But, however a paper like Huxley's * may use the 
 language of faith in such a theory as if we knew 
 nothing but modes of our own feeling and thought, all 
 actual life will ignore such a theory, and those to 
 whom it most commends itself practically bear them- 
 selves as if they had never heard of it. 
 
 So also, as to all metaphysical relaying of founda- 
 tions in the region of Religion, were the destructive 
 process ever followed by a constructive process that 
 satisfied the destructive intellect, such constructive 
 result could never meet man's universal need in his 
 relation to God. 
 
 Is it not obvious that such reconstructions must 
 remain at the best available only to the circle capable 
 of weighing the previous destructive processes and 
 passing through their deep waters to firm land 
 beyond ? Would not the mass of men have either 
 to abide on the old ground of instinct, proved by 
 hypothesis to be fallacious, or to take the new ground 
 for granted on the authority of those few who were 
 assumed to understand the matter ? In such a pro- 
 ceeding the metaphysicians must needs stand in the 
 same intermediate position between truth and the 
 many who are asked to believe, in which the Church 
 stands according to the Roman Catholic dogma. 
 
 * See the paper entitled, "On Descarte's ' Discourse/" in 
 Professor Huxley's " Lay Sermons." 
 
' ' PRE VI US Q UE ST IONS. " 119 
 
 In such a case as the substitution for the habit of 
 thinking of the sun as going round the earth, of the 
 true faith that the earth turns on its axis, ordinary 
 acceptance of the seeming contradiction to sense is a 
 faith in men of science ; and those who accept the fact 
 are as little embarrassed as those who understand the 
 demonstration, by the sun's seeming rising and 
 setting. 
 
 But it would be very different if what would be a 
 parallel subverting of all the assumptions of Religion 
 were demanding our faith. For all practical purposes 
 the earth feels as solid under our feet, the light of day 
 as adequate to our need of light, whether our faith be 
 the old or the new. But to part with a living God 
 for a system of unchanging law, or even to part with 
 a Father of our spirits for an unknown source of our 
 being, or even to part with God revealed in Christ for 
 any form of simple theism ; — such changes realised, 
 accepted in faith, telling according to their proper 
 nature on our minds, affect practically our conscious- 
 ness of existence and its interests, and our ideal of 
 ourselves and what we ought to be. 
 
 Note. — A fuller discussion of the subjects referred to in this 
 chapter will be found in Part III., under the heading, ' Faith and 
 Doubt.' 
 
i 
 
PART II. 
 
 PROGRESS OF THOUGHT AND TEACHING. 
 
I. 
 
 CHARACTER OF EARLY TEACHING. 
 
 i. 
 
 I ENTERED on my work as a parish minister in the 
 unquestioning faith that the chief end of man is to 
 glorify God and enjoy Him for ever. In the light of 
 this faith I saw the people committed to my charge, 
 as I saw myself; and my interest in their well-being, 
 as in my own, had thus its spring in the Divine 
 fountain of a will of God concerning us, which — while 
 it was the true key to all practical life and all its 
 relations — was very specially connected with our 
 relation to each other, being in truth the very ground 
 on which we stood together as a minister and a 
 people. 
 
 Further, I entered on my work in the unquestioning 
 faith of the Divine gift of Revelation, and of its 
 inestimable value in connection with the will of God 
 that we should glorify and enjoy Him. 
 
 As to the mutual action of these two beliefs, and 
 
124 
 
 KEMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 the preparation for understanding the Scriptures 
 which there is in the faith of the will of God that we 
 should glorify and enjoy Him, and the strengthening 
 and enlightening of that faith which is received in 
 reading the Scriptures as given for this end : — this I 
 rather experienced than thought of. But I did 
 experience it with the result of a conscious raising of 
 my conception of the Divine Ideal for man, and an 
 ever-deepening sense of the adaptation of Revelation 
 to the end of helping the realisation of that ideal. 
 
 Many years afterwards, when pressed by an 
 advocate of the doctrine of the Church of Rome, as 
 to the relation of faith in the Scriptures to faith in the 
 Church, with the appeal — " You object to our saying 
 that we receive the Bible from the Church and on the 
 authority of the Church : let me ask you, how do you 
 Protestants receive it ? is it not really in the same 
 way ? " — while I could not deny that it was so practi- 
 cally if not theoretically, I felt able to reply that it 
 was not so, however, in my own case ; that my faith 
 in Revelation had this root that I recognised the God 
 who spoke to me in my own heart as speaking to me 
 in the Bible. 
 
 I had only gradually come to occupy this ground 
 consciously and clearly ; and at the first, had such an 
 appeal been pressed, would probably have rather 
 turned to questions of Evidences, such as engage us 
 in our preparatory studies. But implicitly, though 
 not explicitly, this manner of confidence in the Divine 
 
CHARACTER OF EARLY TEACHIXG. 
 
 '25 
 
 authority of Revelation was in me early, being greatly 
 developed by the exclusive study of the Scriptures to 
 which I confined myself in my pulpit preparations, — 
 not of set purpose, saying to myself that I would not 
 take help from the thinking of other minds, but 
 because I found the Scriptures speaking clearly 
 enough for my need ; and as to what remained dark I 
 was contented so to leave it. 
 
 The importance — as guiding us as teachers — of 
 the principle contained in the Apostle's words, 
 " Commending ourselves to every man's conscience 
 in the sight of God," I did not indeed then see as I 
 have since come to see it. But the experience of 
 receiving all that was life to my own soul in this way, 
 and my conviction that it was not received in this way 
 by those whom I taught — was not really received 
 with a living faith — had practically the same effect on 
 my teaching as would be produced by a purpose to 
 leave all that I had ever read on the subject of 
 Evidences out of account, counting only on the 
 internal authority of truth. 
 
 How often have I in later years — since the subject 
 of Evidences has become one of so much more diffi- 
 culty than I in those days knew it to be — been 
 thankful that from the first my teaching proceeded 
 on ground which Historical Criticism could not touch! 
 — ground also which it was righteous and reasonable 
 to take in dealing with a people in possession of the 
 Bible, and whose responsibility as to accepting it or 
 
i 2 6 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 refusing it must turn, not on its history, of which they 
 were incompetent to decide anything of their own 
 proper knowledge, but on its contents, and what it 
 teaches man to believe concerning God, and the duty 
 God requires of man. 
 
 The natural effect of having the mind fixed on the 
 end of man's being as the glorifying of God and 
 enjoying of Him, and the unquestioning acceptance 
 of the Bible as a divine gift having its value in con- 
 nection with this end, was to give special interest 
 to those portions of Scripture, and those aspects of 
 truth, which most obviously and unmistakably con- 
 nected themselves with this end. And the practical 
 exigencies of pastoral work, as distinct from abstract 
 speculative thought, favoured this result. 
 
 Thus large portions of Scripture were left out of 
 account in my teaching, both in preaching and in 
 private intercourse, — not of set purpose, nor at all 
 in the way of making distinctions as to the inspiration 
 of the several parts of the sacred volume ; neither as 
 refusing, as yet, the accepted interpretation of such 
 passages as by that interpretation were rendered 
 mystical, or relegated to the region of thought to 
 which the subject of Predestination and Election 
 belong; though many passages, long passed by as 
 
CHARACTER OF EARLY TEACIIIXG. 
 
 127 
 
 not practical, because assumed to contain this teaching, 
 have subsequently been seen in that light of their true 
 meaning in which they prove to be most practical 
 enunciations of the Gospel. But at that time I did 
 not engage my people's attention with questions 
 which even those who attach most importance to 
 them would rather keep in the back-ground in dealing 
 with minds just awaking to the importance of Salva- 
 tion, — asking, " What must I do to be saved ? " and 
 so often distressed themselves and embarrassing their 
 teachers by taking up the subject of Divine decrees 
 with a personal reference to themselves. 
 
 It illustrates this character of my early teaching 
 that in " Diets of Catechising " I chiefly dwelt on the 
 offices of Christ as a Prophet, a Priest, and a King, as 
 expressing the relation in which all were to regard 
 Him in reference to themselves * 
 
 What God wills man to be, and what God has 
 done, is doing, and will do if we yield ourselves to 
 His will, in order that that will may be realised in us : 
 — this, in few words, was the sum and substance of my 
 teaching. I had great sympathy with the seventeenth 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles;-)" and w T hile I did not 
 
 * See Questions 23-26, in the Shorter Catechism. 
 
 t The reference is probably to these words of the Article, — 
 " For curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, 
 to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's 
 Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall." 
 
i 2 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 question the Tightness or the healthfulness of the 
 comfort which advanced Christians derived from 
 meditation on Election and the connected faith of the 
 perseverance of saints, the necessity which pressed on 
 me was the need of my people of whom I could not 
 think as having attained to this high level. 
 
 I have since come to see this subject in the light of 
 such words as — " Whose house are we, if we hold fast 
 the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." * 
 But I was not dealing with persons who had even that 
 " beginning of confidence " of which the Apostle 
 speaks ; and the first marked step in my course as a 
 teacher was connected with this very point, — that 
 beginning of confidence which a true apprehension 
 and acceptance of the Gospel implies. 
 
 It was here that I found myself coming to con- 
 clusions, and making consequent demands on my 
 people, as to which my teaching was first called in 
 question, and was subsequently condemned as error 
 under the name of " Assurance of Faith." 
 
 This, then, is the first thing of which I have here to 
 speak. How did I come to the convictions as to 
 Assurance of Faith at which I arrived ? and what was 
 their practical importance in my mind that I so 
 earnestly urged my own convictions on the faith of 
 others ? 
 
 I feel it important to any value which this retro- 
 * Heb. iii. w. 6 and 14 (combined.) 
 
CHA RA C TER OF EARL Y TEA CHIXG. T 2 9 
 
 spect may possess to fix attention on the fact, that the 
 path here was not speculative but practical ; — that is 
 to say, it was in the endeavour to teach men to glorify 
 God and enjoy Him, and to turn the discoveries of 
 Revelation to their proper account in reference to this 
 result, that I came to see — as I believed, and continue 
 to believe — the subject of Assurance of Faith in its 
 true light. 
 
II. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES FOUND TO EXIST IN 
 EARNEST MINDS. 
 
 All earnest occupation with our relation to God 
 naturally leads to self-knowledge, and some true 
 estimate of what we are in the light of Conscience 
 and of Revelation. The immediate result is sure to 
 be a greater or less measure of self-condemnation. 
 We find we are not what we ought to be ; and as we 
 see more and more clearly, and our spiritual eyes 
 become made to the light which we are letting in on 
 our inner man, our perception of the distance between 
 what we are and what we see to be the Divine ideal 
 for us becomes more painfully humbling. We may 
 shrink from this unwelcome self-consciousness, and 
 there will not be wanting voices from without to 
 second the temptation within to question the authority 
 of what claims to be the united judgment of Con- 
 science and Revelation ; and we may seek escape 
 from its imperativeness by some unmeaning admission 
 of the abstract excellence of the ideal which condemns 
 
DIFFICUL TIES IN EARNEST MINDS. j 3 1 
 
 us, combined with the self-excusing refusal to accept 
 it as applicable to ourselves, on the ground that it is 
 too high an ideal for us circumstanced as we are and 
 frail as our nature is. 
 
 We may, however, resist this temptation : as we 
 consider more we may come to see the truth to be, 
 that an ideal lowered to what we are would indeed be 
 no gain to us but a fearful loss, — would be indeed the 
 shutting out of all high hope. And thus the con- 
 demnation so shrunk from may be more welcome 
 than the assumption that we are all that God wills us 
 to be. But, as we advance in this path, either of 
 two things will happen, according as the will of God, 
 to the light of which we are resolutely taking our- 
 selves, is to us a law or a gospel. 
 
 As a law, and simply a righteous demand on God's 
 part, the will of God for us is a light which only 
 reveals what is wrong, but brings no deliverance — no 
 help to becoming what is right (Romans vii.); while, 
 as the Gospel, the same will has in itself the power, 
 being welcomed in faith, to realise itself in us. 
 
 Seeing this (dimly but with gradually increasing 
 clearness), I laboured to combine the pressing of a 
 high standard as to what God calls us to be, with an 
 equally earnest pressing of the power of the Gospel 
 to accomplish the will of God in us. But this 
 teaching, as a whole, I found practically working 
 more as a law than as gospel; that is to say, I found 
 the ideal of what men ought to be realised more 
 
132 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 ^ 
 
 in fear than in hope. And this more and more in 
 proportion as that ideal came to be the true ideal, 
 such as the words of Christ contemplate — " God is a 
 Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth." 
 
 Anxiously considering this result (and with the 
 help of that freedom of expression as to those diffi- 
 culties which their own anxiety prompted on the part 
 of the most earnest), I came to see that, in reality, 
 whatever I preached, they were only hearing a demand 
 on them to be — not hearing the Divine secret of the 
 Gospel as to how to be — that which they were called 
 to be. Of this they themselves had no suspicion ; they 
 said, and honestly, that they did not question Christ's 
 power to save, neither did they doubt the freeness of 
 the Gospel or Christ's willingness to save them ; all 
 their doubts were as to themselves. 
 
 This meant, it was clear, that between them and 
 the comfort of the consciousness of a personal 
 possession of Christ as a Saviour they vaguely 
 conceived of a something by which_ they were to 
 make Christ their own, — a condition proposed to 
 them, the consciousness of compliance with which 
 would introduce them to the enjoyment of sal- 
 vation. This something they attempted to speak 
 of as repentance, faith, or love, or " being good 
 enough," which last expression gave really the secret 
 of their difficulty. Christ w r as to be the reward of 
 some goodness — not perfect goodness, but some 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN EARNEST MINDS. 
 
 133 
 
 ) 
 
 goodness that would sustain a personal hope of 
 acceptance in drawing near to Him. In this mind 
 the Gospel was practically a law , and the call to trust 
 in Christ only an addition to the demand which the 
 l aw m akes,— an additional duty added to the obliga- 
 tion to love God and to love man, not the secret of 
 the power to love God and to love man. 
 
 Seeing this clearly, my labour was to fix their 
 attention on the love of God revealed in Christ, and 
 t o get them into the mental attitude of looking at . s //") 
 God to lear n His feelings towards them, not at them - ^^ 
 selves to consider their feelings towards Him. As to 
 these, I taught them to be consistent in their admission 
 of their not being what they should be, and also to 
 know that they could not by any blind effort make 
 themselves what they should be — however a sense of 
 the importance of salvation might move them to the 
 effort, — and so to come under the natural power of the 
 love, the forgiving, redeeming love which was set 
 before them. 
 
 Those who are familiar with our Scottish Theology, 
 and know how early it is taught to our children, 
 may, perhaps, be inclined to trace to Calvinistic pre- 
 conceptions the difficulty found in endeavouring to 
 lead these earnest minds to look simply at the 
 discovery of the mind of God towards sinful man, 
 which He has made w T ho came to reveal the Father. 
 I do not remember that it was so, though I have had 
 theological fatalism fallen back upon when other 
 
J 34 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 attempts to evade my urgency in pressing the obliga- 
 tions of religion have consciously failed ; and, while 
 the excellence of the ideal of what ought to be was 
 not denied, the obligation to be it was rejected on the 
 ground of Divine predestination. 
 
 What I met with in the earnest minds to which I 
 refer was different. It was a difficulty in rising to the 
 conception of free grace, — that is, to the apprehension 
 of a love in God to us which is irrespective of what we 
 are, and is sustained by the contemplation of what He 
 both wills us to be and is able to make us. This 
 apprehension attained, Christ is no longer thought of 
 as intended to be the reward of anything in us indivi- 
 dually, according to the vague thought that moves to 
 blind efforts to appropriate Christ by some mental 
 movement on our part. He is known as ours by the 
 grace of God, according to the love which, while we were 
 yet sinners, gave Christ to die for us. The subtlest 
 form of self-righteousness is that which it presents when 
 self-condemnation is made a reason for not venturing 
 to trust in Christ with a rejoicing confidence. I found 
 no way of dealing with it so effectual as the demand- 
 ing from those who seemed to themselves to have no 
 doubt of the " all-sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour," 
 the feelings of peace and joy in believing in Him 
 which could alone accord with the reality of such a 
 faith, — the actual knowledge of such a Saviour as 
 theirs by the gift of God. 
 
III. 
 
 MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH 
 DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 I. 
 
 I WAS dealing with minds that had no misgivings as 
 to the claims of religion; neither had they the feeling 
 that these as I urged them were anything else than 
 what they were accustomed to hear preached. They 
 were taught to be good ; they were taught to believe 
 in Christ. Now whatever vague suspicions they 
 might have had that they were not meeting the call 
 to be good were being confirmed, and the distance 
 •between what they were and what they ought to be 
 was having a light shed upon it for which they were 
 unprepared, and which gave them pain while still 
 they felt it to be light ; but there was not along with 
 this any 'corresponding discovery as to their faith in 
 Christ, or any fresh light bringing the help to their 
 hope as Christians, which the deepened sense of their 
 own sin and need of a Saviour made so desirable. 
 On the contrary, they were assuming that they knew 
 all that they were asked to believe as to Christ, and 
 that they believed it all. 
 
136 
 
 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 It was an exceedingly great relief and comfort to 
 perceive, as I saw clearly, that they were deceiving 
 themselves; that, while the evil of their own state and 
 consequent need of Christ was becoming more a true 
 consciousness, all their supposed faith in Christ con- 
 sisted in empty words — the form of an unrealised 
 dogma — their holding of which availed them nothing, 
 or only increased their painful self-condemnation, 
 taking the form of an addition to the amount of 
 undischarged duty, adding the obligation to trust in 
 Christ to the obligation to love God and man, instead 
 of finding in Christ the fountain of love to God and 
 man. 
 
 The simplest and most direct course in dealing with 
 this form of self-deception — by which the Gospel was 
 nullified as a gospel, and came to be only an addition 
 to the burden of the law — was to fix attention on 
 what the Gospel revealed to faith — its claims to be 
 a gospel, and to insist on the response of feeling 
 which accorded with its nature, refusing to acknow- 
 ledge as faith in it anything that did not fulfil this 
 condition. 
 
 This was the teaching which, under the name 
 " Assurance of Faith," came subsequently to be called 
 in question ; not, however, because the possession of 
 peace and joy in believing was considered impossible 
 or dangerous by those who taught that a man's con- 
 fidence towards God was to be entirely a trust in 
 Christ and God's acceptance of him for Christ's sake. 
 
MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH DIFFICUL TIES. 1 3 7 
 
 Given a pure simple trust in Christ, and all peace and 
 joy in believing was held warrantable — nay, natural, 
 and a true giving of glory to Christ ; and when uttered 
 on a death-bed, or, it might be, the expression of a 
 freedom reached after a period of much distress on 
 account of sin, or attained after years of earnest re- 
 ligious living, men could rejoice at it and give thanks 
 for it. 
 
 How such looking altogether away from self and 
 personal deserving, and finding peace and joy purely 
 and simply because of what was seen in Christ, could be 
 the ideal of Christian faith, and yet the experience of 
 it be thus limited ; — how (looking at the limitation 
 recognised) such peace and joy in believing should be 
 safe on a death-bed and not safe in the fullest vigour 
 of life, or allowable after the previous history specified, 
 and not safe irrespective of such history, if indeed true 
 in itself and a present reality : — this it is difficult to 
 understand, looking at the elements of the faith in 
 question viewed simply in itself. 
 
 If I am in a light in which I see and confess my 
 own sin, and neither excuse it nor think by any act or 
 feeling of-mine to atone for it, and if I am also in the 
 light of the forgiveness of God in Christ, and so shut 
 out from self-trust by the one knowledge, and so em- 
 boldened to trust in God by the other knowledge, 
 that I am really delivered from self-trust, and having 
 a living trust in God quickened in me, — is not my 
 state sound and right before God, and in perfect 
 
I3 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 accordance with His grace in Christ ? Am I not 
 strong for all good abiding in it ? Is not my one 
 danger not abiding in it ? Can its safety or health- 
 fulness depend on anything else than what it is in 
 itself? " Salvation will God appoint for walls and 
 bulwarks." 
 
 But it would be unfair to say that such a mental 
 attitude towards self and towards Christ would be 
 regarded with mistrust, or its claim to be that abiding 
 in Christ to which we are called. It was the danger 
 of self-deception that was feared. 
 
 As to this, I saw (i.) that the light of life is its own 
 protection. He that so knows himself and Christ in 
 the light of Christ has the witness in himself. 
 
 (2.) I further saw that the natural and direct test 
 of such a faith was its natural and immediate fruit, 
 namely, being reconciled to God, conscious harmony 
 with God, rest in God; the natural inevitable welcome 
 of our dependence on Him, of all His Will as to us; — 
 as to that which is within, His choice for us become 
 our choice for ourselves ; as to that which is without, 
 that welcoming of His ordering of what concerns us 
 which is natural and inevitable in the light of the gift 
 of Christ. 
 
 (3.) I saw the evil consequences of distrust in 
 the witness which he that believes has in him- 
 self — of which the elements are just the elements 
 of eternal life. This distrust had led to a regular 
 system of testing faith by its fruit. Fruits of faith 
 
MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 139 
 
 are, indeed, given as a test to be applied to 
 the professions of others, or — it may be — to the 
 doctrine they teach. But how can our own faith 
 be thus tested ? We may, and we should, so test 
 what we are called to believe; and we must have 
 evidence of its tendency before submitting to it, or 
 accepting it as of God. But to ask me to stand in 
 suspense as to my trust in Christ — whether it is a 
 right and saving trust — making this depend on the 
 consciousness of fruits of holiness in myself, — this is 
 really to suspend trust — that is, to suspend faith — until 
 I am conscious of the effects of faith : a process which, 
 if intelligently followed, obviously makes fruits of 
 faith impossible. 
 
 The interest was very deep and solemn with which 
 I saw many awaking to a real sense of the importance 
 of their relation to God, and to the painful conscious- 
 ness that they themselves were not, in that their 
 highest relation, what they ought to be. However 
 little the confession that it was so might amount 
 to, or however dim the light in which it was made, 
 that light w r as a dawn of true light for which to be 
 thankful; although, in many cases, the intense self- 
 condemnation awakened so long preceded any 
 glimpse of the light of what God is in His relation 
 to us as revealed in the Gospel, that it made my part 
 as a teacher a very anxious one. 
 
140 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 I was, however, seeing clearly the hope that was in 
 God for these, though they were not seeing it them- 
 selves. And to this I laboured to raise their thoughts, 
 not questioning the justness of their self-blame, nor 
 by word or look of indulgent sympathy seconding 
 the delusive self-comforting suggestion that they were 
 not worse than others — that the Divine ideal for them 
 was less than, in the light of Conscience and Revela- 
 tion, it was beginning to be seen; but, accepting all 
 their hard sayings against themselves, and admitting 
 that they might be much harder and yet true, I 
 comforted them by reminding them that these dis- 
 coveries of their own sinful state, though discoveries 
 to them, were not discoveries to God — or anything 
 not contemplated in the Gospel — or anything the 
 consciousness of which could rightly hinder their 
 joyful welcome of the Gospel, which assumed that 
 they were sinners needing mercy, and revealed the 
 very mercy which, in the judgment of God, met 
 their need. 
 
 There is much confusion incident to our first earnest 
 thoughts in this region, but in itself there is nothing 
 difficult to understand in the statement — that the 
 peace with God to which the Gospel calls us is simply 
 the contemplated result of the discovery which the 
 Gospel makes of the love of God in its. relation to us 
 as sinners; that, therefore, it has no reference to 
 degrees of sinfulness, or anything in this view in 
 which one person differs from another. 
 
MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 141 
 
 But, in experience, I found it the most difficult thing 
 to make such language even intelligible when I was 
 most anxious to impart the comfort of this great truth. 
 Habitual ease of mind on the subject of Religion, 
 in which faith in the Divine forgiveness is no element 
 — the need of it not being felt — does not, in passing 
 away, easily give place to a peace of so opposite a 
 nature as that which, in the deepest realisation of our 
 need of Divine forgiveness, the faith of that forgive- 
 ness brings. Indeed, faith in a true forgiveness 
 becomes difficult in proportion as a real need of it 
 is felt. 
 
 We easily believe that God will forgive while we 
 do not feel that there is much to forgive. But we are 
 far indeed from having any conception of the pure 
 forgiving love which we really need, and which the 
 Gospel reveals. This the teacher soon has forced on 
 his conviction, in finding any form of conditional 
 mercy more readily believed than free grace. 
 
 But it is only in the full light of the glory of God, 
 in the face of Jesus Christ, that any true apprehension 
 of our own sin can co-exist with perfect peace with 
 God. 
 
 3- 
 
 There is nothing strange in the statement that "the 
 
 peace with God to w T hich the Gospel calls us is 
 
 simply the contemplated result of the discovery which 
 
 the Gospel makes of the love of God in its relation to 
 
142 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 us as sinners, and has no relation to degrees of sin, or 
 the difference in this respect between man and man;" 
 for that " God hath concluded all under sin that he 
 might have mercy on all." On the contrary, it is so 
 natural an account of a salvation for sinners, that 
 when we apprehend it, we feel that if salvation was to 
 be it must have this character ; and this connection 
 becomes no unimportant element in any faith. For 
 so regarded, the glory of God, and the power to save 
 man which belongs to the Gospel, become visible to 
 us ; and more and more so as our own spiritual under- 
 standing is developed, and that name of God which is 
 said' to be glorified and the nature of that salvation 
 which is said to be bestowed, are understood by us, — 
 ceasing to be mere words, or at best intellectual con- 
 ceptions, and become to us the spiritual realities which 
 they are. " O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, 
 but in Me is thy help found," is felt to be the only 
 hope-quickening w r ord that could come forth from 
 God to self-destroyed Israel. 
 
 This necessary character of freeness, as opposed to 
 having any conditions attached to it, was early clear 
 to me. The end to be accomplished was that men 
 should glorify God and enjoy Him. The revelation 
 given in connection with this end seemed to approve 
 itself as from God in nothing more unequivocally than 
 in its fitness to accomplish this result of the love of God 
 to man which commends itself as this, that while we 
 were yet sinners Christ died for us. The power of the 
 
MODE OF DEALING WITH SUCH DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 143 
 
 
 faith of such a love to reconcile man to God seemed 
 very clear ; while it was as clear that in order to do 
 this, the human heart and spirit must be placed under 
 its power by a personal faith, — a faith in which the 
 love revealed was as personal to the individual man 
 as the sense of his own sin was, because of which this 
 special form of Divine love — love to sinners — was 
 needed by him. 
 
 There was much that I did not then know as I 
 seem to myself to know it now : more especially the 
 nature of the Atonement, and its direct relation to 
 Christianity as the perpetuating in us of the life of 
 Christ, and of that mind in Him which was the 
 essence of the Atonement, and made Him a fit 
 foundation-stone and precious corner in that spiritual 
 temple which is the Church of the living God. These 
 have come to be clear to me, filling the words, " the 
 unsearchable riches of Christ " with a meaning far 
 beyond what they had to me at the beginning. Sin 
 and holiness, — not destruction and salvation in what 
 may be called their aspects of suffered pain or infinite 
 happiness, — were the great opposed realities which 
 gave its importance to my work as a minister of 
 Christ, and were to be found implicitly or explicitly 
 in all my teaching. But the conviction of the freeness 
 of the Grace of God possessed me early, as well as of 
 the safety and importance of keeping its character of 
 freeness always in the foreground. 
 
 I use the words " safety and importance," and in 
 
144 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 this order, because I first saw the safety of the con- 
 viction that God freely pardons all my sins as the 
 personal application to myself of the death of Christ 
 for sin ; because in this personal faith the power of the 
 love of God revealed in Christ pressed on the heart 
 and spirit with its full force — a power pure and holy 
 and saving in proportion to my spiritual apprehension 
 of sin and forgiveness, (that forgiveness which is 
 with God that He may be feared) ; but real and 
 effective in the measure in which it was personal. I 
 came to add " importance," because the unpersonal 
 character of the faith in Christ — if that be not a 
 contradiction in terms, as certainly it is in thought, 
 for that is not faith in Christ w T hich is not personal, — 
 the unpersonal character of the faith in Christ, which 
 was often professed, seemed to me the explana- 
 tion of its powerlessness, — its powerlessness to produce 
 the more immediate fruits of peace and joy in 
 believing, and also its further practical fruits in the 
 renewal of the inner man and the devoting to God of 
 the outward man also. 
 
IV. 
 
 ON SOME PREVAILING FORMS 01 RELIGIOUS 
 THO LGHT A T THIS TIME, 
 
 I. 
 
 I DO not mean unnecessarily to occupy the readers 
 attention with the subject of the religious mind in 
 Scotland at the time which I am recalling, or my own 
 relation to it. 
 
 That relation was one of sympathy with some 
 elements in it — repulsion from others. I mean the 
 actual feelings that existed and had more or less 
 practical power; — as to which the Westminster Confes- 
 sion of Faith or the Catechisms of the Church would be 
 quite misleading documents, if any proposed to accept 
 them as historical evidence with reference to the first 
 half of this century, — more misleading than they could 
 be as to the second half, in which, indeed, they could not 
 possibly be so used, the silence of the past — which 
 might be ignorantly accepted as acquiescence — having 
 now been succeeded by much questioning and much 
 protest. I shall notice w r hat I was met by at the 
 
146 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 close of the first quarter of this century, in so far as 
 doing so may help the reader s understanding of the 
 teaching which I am recalling. 
 
 A simple and exclusive trust in Christ as opposed 
 to trust in oneself in any form was insisted on by one 
 class of teachers ; and this to the extent of anxiously 
 guarding men against the danger, in ceasing from a 
 trust in good works, of being still self-righteous in the 
 form of a trust in our faith, — what was called " making 
 a Christ of our faith." This care I understood when 
 I found this danger common in the mental confusion 
 that ensued when a sense of sin and of the need of 
 mercy preceded any true apprehension of the free 
 Grace of God : — " I do not doubt Christ's power and 
 willingness to save me, I only doubt my own faith; 
 — am I believing as I ought ?" 
 
 A simple and absolute trust in Christ was taught ; 
 so also was the sufficiency of such trust to produce 
 peace with God fully recognised, and the more 
 abundant and the more joyful such peace in believing 
 the greater was felt to be the glory given to Christ. 
 This, assuming that there was no self-deception 
 present. Against such self-deception the felt near- 
 ness of death was accepted as a protection : a man 
 who, feeling himself dying, used the language of con- 
 fidence as well as trust in Christ, was the subject of 
 very special thanksgiving. But even in the full 
 possession of health and with the unclouded prospect 
 of prolonged life, an apprehension of Christ that could 
 
PREVAILING FORMS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
 147 
 
 justify joy in dying was admitted to be possible, and, 
 indeed, the purest light and strength for living to the 
 glory of God. (" The joy of the Lord is your 
 strength.") It was, therefore, no new teaching to call 
 on men to rise from the thought of what they were 
 in themselves to the contemplation of free grace re- 
 vealed in Christ, to believe and rejoice. 
 
 But that w T hich was welcomed in the dying and 
 admitted to be, if real, the highest strength for the 
 Christian life, was held to be the happy distinction of 
 a few. Was it not in its nature so related to faith in 
 Christ as to make it a contradiction to say that one 
 and the same faith might in one man be accompanied 
 by it, and in another man be without it ? The more 
 I meditated on the secret of the power of faith to give 
 peace in death, or strength for the Christian life, the 
 more I was convinced that there was here a real 
 contradiction, and that the faith which gave peace in 
 death and in life, — the faith which worketh by love, 
 and purifieth the heart and overcometh the world, — 
 had this power simply by reason of what it was in 
 itself, and not because of anything special and indi- 
 vidual in some men. 
 
 2. 
 
 The contradiction of which I am speaking came out 
 very strikingly in that supplement to the teaching of 
 absolute and exclusive trust in Christ which was in 
 the form of a system of Evidences. 
 
148 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Though peace with God might not be experienced 
 as the direct effect of faith, still, it was held, the faith 
 might be real and saving, and might be ascertained to 
 be so by its two other, and in some sense secondary, 
 fruits. These other fruits were in themselves doubtless 
 most important, and to others — to all outside — they 
 were the proper evidences of the reality of faith ; for 
 they were the elements of the new life — love to God, 
 love to man, all the Christian graces. But the 
 natural — indeed necessary — effect of this teaching on 
 the man himself, who anxiously questioned the reality 
 of his own faith, was to turn the mind in on itself and 
 its own consciousness of goodness, and with a most 
 discouraging result. 
 
 In faith the love believed flows into the mind 
 believing in it, with a transforming power ; and such 
 transformation may possibly remain even under a tem- 
 porary eclipse of the light of the love that has wrought 
 it. I can suppose that the man who, in knowing the 
 love of God revealed in Christ, has come himself to 
 love as he is loved, might retain the secret of the 
 excellence and blessedness of love, so as to continue 
 to choose it even were some dark cloud, — a morbid 
 feeling as to himself, or some form even of scepticism 
 as to revealed truth, — to come between him and his 
 God, and to cause him to doubt that the love in which 
 he believed, and by the faith of which the new life of 
 love was quickened in him, embraced him ; or even, 
 whether that love had really a living fountain in the 
 
PREVAILING FORMS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
 149 
 
 heart of a living God, or was only a mode of feeling 
 which, under some bright illusion, he had seen as the 
 revealed heart of the Father of his spirit, but which 
 he could now no longer refer to such a source. It was 
 beautiful, lovely in itself, and being seen, to be chosen; 
 but as a living love and not an idea, — the love of the 
 living God, — what proof did the idea that had come 
 to his spirit give that it had come from such a 
 fountain ? 
 
 As to such a suspension of the faith of Divine 
 love, — whether personal or general, — and the possibi- 
 lity of the love it had quickened still living on, I dare 
 say nothing. But the real order is — love believed 
 quickening love, and in continuing to be believed 
 sustaining and increasing love to higher measures ; 
 and the artificial suspension of personal trust in 
 Christ, even when that trust has been known, in order 
 to test its reality by the process of examining its 
 fruits, can only, be likened to turning off the water 
 which moves the wheel of a mill to see whether the 
 • motion generated be the right motion : — that is, in 
 effect, to withdraw the moving power in order to test 
 the character of the motion. 
 
 No wonder that the practical result has been 
 inability to find satisfactory fruits of faith, — a dis- 
 satisfaction with all that claimed to be fruit of faith 
 which was great in proportion as the self-testing was 
 earnest. On this followed a testimony from without 
 to make up for the lack of the desired inward testi- 
 
1 5 o REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 mony, — the very complaint of want of fruit being 
 accepted as itself fruit, and the minister hoping 
 favourably of his disciple, and uttering such hope with 
 a confidence proportioned to the self-condemnation 
 with which the man himself pronounced his search for 
 evidence to be fruitless. 
 
 An obvious objection to this whole system is that it 
 makes holiness, truth, love, to be desired not for their 
 own sakes, but as evidences of saving faith, — of a faith 
 which secures safety. This is evil; but, besides, it 
 makes the feeling of the want of these elements of the 
 Divine life to be accepted as actual evidence of the 
 existence of that life, and of the faith which quickens 
 it. Surely holiness valued for the sake of safety is 
 not holiness known as itself salvation ; and as surely 
 the pain felt in the discovery that I am unholy is not 
 holiness, while the holiness is desired for the sake of 
 safety. 
 
 But however clearly all suspension of peace and 
 joy in faith upon the consciousness of the personal 
 faith in Christ as their own Saviour to which men 
 are called is contradictory, and also has the evil 
 results now indicated, — the ultimate root of the 
 whole evil was misconception of the Gospel message 
 itself, and of the faith to which it invites. A 
 grace of God not in itself personal and seen to be 
 personal if seen at all, but which has to be made 
 individual and personal by some act of our own, 
 separating us from the mass of men, would reasonably 
 
PREVAILING FORMS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
 151 
 
 concentrate the mind's anxious interest on the act left 
 for it to do as the supply of the needed link. And 
 in connection with such a manifestation of grace the 
 real difficulty becomes the possibility of peace and 
 joy at all in believing. But the faith that Christ only 
 died for some — not all — necessarily made individual 
 joy in the simple faith of His dying love impossible. 
 
V. 
 
 "ASSURANCE OF FAITH" AND " UNIVER- 
 SALITY OF THE ATONEMENT" 
 
 It was to me a great practical deliverance when I 
 saw the unsoundness of this system of Evidences — 
 how it virtually denied the inherent power of a true 
 apprehension of the grace of God to give peace with 
 God, and to quicken that life that is in His favour, 
 and tended to neutralise the effect of all that was so 
 insisted on as to the freeness of that grace ; and how 
 it increased the confusion of mind in which the effort 
 to trust simply in Christ is made while the relations 
 of Law and Gospel are not yet understood. 
 
 The earnest minds with which I was brought into 
 near contact did, indeed, by their embarrassment, and 
 the difficulty of helping them, confirm my doubts here 
 — as, indeed, the attempt to help them had, in part, 
 suggested them. 
 
 I accordingly made the immediate and direct effects 
 of believing the test of the presence of real faith ; and 
 so was at liberty to say — when the absence of these 
 
ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 
 
 153 
 
 was admitted, and excused on the ground of doubt 
 as to whether the faith of the individual was of the 
 right kind — " It is not that you are not believing in 
 the right way. You are not really believing what 
 you are called to believe; you are not understanding 
 the free grace of God; you are not seeing what is 
 given to you in Christ; and your very anxiety about 
 how you are to believe is hindering you from looking 
 stedfastly at what you are to believe, to see what 
 it is." 
 
 In justifying this teaching, I dwelt much on such par- 
 ables as that of 'The Merchant seeking goodly pearls/ 
 and also on the corresponding fact of the recorded 
 joy of faith in the first Christians. But I also dwelt 
 on the holy power of the peace of faith, and the nature 
 of the Gospel as contemplating the quickening of love 
 by the faith of love — quickening love in sinners by 
 the faith of love as cherished towards sinners, and 
 manifesting itself in forgiveness. 
 
 Thus, while seeing so much evil in that erring 
 attempt to protect from false peace, which suspended 
 assured trust in Christ on a consciousness which is 
 properly the fruit of assured trust, I was thankful to 
 put a seal to all that was taught as to an evangelical 
 repentance, as distinct from repentance produced by 
 the fear of wrath; and all living illustration of the 
 power of faith working by love to purify the heart 
 and overcome the world, seemed to strengthen my 
 conviction that to bring the human spirit under the 
 
<54 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 power of the personal sense of redeeming love at once 
 imparts the true peace, and protects effectually, and 
 alone can protect, from false peace. Thus my teaching 
 came to be characterized as preaching Assurance of 
 FaitJi — words sometimes used in the true understand- 
 ing of what my teaching was, but often, and perhaps 
 more frequently, in a way that, more or less, con- 
 founded it with other teachings already associated 
 with this phrase, but really distinguished from mine 
 by important points of difference. 
 
 To these I shall afterwards refer, but let me first 
 notice another element in the teaching which I am 
 recalling — I mean the Universality of the Atonement, 
 or that the death of Christ for sin was a death for all 
 men, and not for an election from among men. 
 
 I had never thought otherwise of the Atonement ; 
 and whatever elements of Calvinism I was at that 
 time . accepting — and, indeed, continued to accept 
 until a date subsequent to my deposition — I do not 
 remember that I ever read the words, " God so loved 
 
 the world " " He, by the grace of God, tasted 
 
 death for every man," otherwise than in their natural 
 and obvious sense. I remember, at an early stage in 
 my brief ministry at Row, my sense of violent striving 
 for logical consistency, when a very devoted minister 
 — to whom I was much drawn by his zeal for religious 
 awakenings — maintained that, when it is said that 
 God loved the world, it is the elect world that is 
 meant It was, however, a natural result of my 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
UXIVERSALITY OF THE ATOXEMEXT. 
 
 iS5 
 
 feeling so strongly the necessity of a personal sense 
 of the love of Christ, in order to an effective action of 
 .faith on the human spirit, that I dwelt much on the 
 ^universality of the Atonement, as warranting me in 
 
 )ressing the Divine love therein manifest on each 
 
 idividual man as love to him. 
 Here I found myself in a large place, where my 
 Calvinistic friends, who most clearly saw the true 
 relation of faith to newness of life, and put most value 
 on assurance of faith in the exceptional cases in which 
 they could allow themselves to think of it as real, 
 were greatly straitened. How were they to har- 
 monise the recognition of a peace and joy in believing 
 which had no foundation and professed none but the 
 simple faith and clear vision of the love revealed in 
 Christ, with a system which, not recognising that love 
 as individual in the revelation itself, left it to be indivi- 
 dualised and appropriated by the man himself by 
 some movement of his own mind. A movement of 
 the mind itself faith implies, for such a movement 
 faith is ; but not a movement the consciousness of 
 which is any element in the faith, " Christ is my 
 Saviour, He loved me and gave Himself for me." 
 But clearly there was no room in their system for this 
 simple recognition of w T hat Christ is to each man. 
 Hence arose that substitute for an Atonement for all, 
 which took the form of saying that in a certain sense 
 Christ was the gift of God to all; that He belonged to 
 all by a Divine deed of gift, such as would be the 
 
 ftvfcjw^ 
 
156 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 giving of a man to a regiment as surgeon to the 
 regiment, in virtue of which gift each individual 
 feeling need of him would freely have recourse to him 
 for his help. 
 
 I know how such a shift to escape from a difficulty 
 in the way of our personal appropriation of Christ 
 created by their own system, and which would never 
 have been needed by any in the light of the grace of 
 God which brings salvation to all men, — I know how 
 it will look to those who rather ask, " What need 
 have we of Christ, or of forgiveness through Him?" 
 than " What right has God given us to appropriate 
 Christ to ourselves and trust Him as our own 
 Saviour ? " — and some who so feel may read these 
 pages. But, while I could not truly reproduce that 
 past which I am recalling without noticing this nearest 
 approach to the preaching of a free Gospel which 
 met me in combination with Calvinism, I notice this 
 form of thought on this subject because it indi- 
 cates how much these men — whose system of evi- 
 dences shewed that they dreaded an unholy and 
 antinomian trust in Christ — at the same time saw 
 how truly personal appropriation of Christ was the 
 great secret of the power of the Gospel to reconcile 
 man to God. 
 
 I felt placed, I say, " in a large room," by the faith 
 that Christ died for all, and yet their higher standard 
 of religion caused me to feel more in sympathy 
 practically with the narrower circle of extreme 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF THE A TOXEMEXT 
 
 157 
 
 Calvinists than with the far wider circle of those who 
 believed the universality of the Atonement. 
 
 That Christ had tasted death for every man was to 
 my mind the only clear and adequate foundation for 
 that personal peace with God to which in preaching 
 the Gospel I called men. But though this faith 
 gave me this freedom, which I saw illogically drawn 
 from the idea of a deed of gift of Christ to all 
 men, the same faith — in words at least the same 
 — was not giving the same liberty to others — the 
 many others — who, on the subject of the Atone- 
 ment, repudiated the narrowness of Calvinism. 
 When I urged the necessity of the recognition of the 
 universality of the Atonement truly to justify that 
 free preaching of Christ for the sake of which this 
 idea of a deed of gift was contended for, I knew I was 
 pressing on these zealous men what they seemed to 
 see already all around them, and to see a powerless 
 faith as far as any deep religious feeling was con- 
 cerned. I could not deny that there was much to 
 excuse them so judging my teaching, while I laboured 
 to shew in the inadequate conceptions of the results 
 of the Atonement which were seen in combination 
 with the recognition of its universality, the explanation 
 of the want of high religious power in that faith. 
 
VI. 
 
 FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY LUTHER. 
 
 The Law and the Gospel are really harmonious 
 utterances of the mind of God in relation to us, and 
 are in the light of love seen to be so. " Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God " could only be a demand 
 prompted by love, for love alone can value love ; and 
 if God did not love, He would not demand love from 
 us. Nay, love in God could alone make His demand 
 on us for love reasonable. If a man should give all 
 his house for love it would be utterly despised. And so 
 in perfect reverence we may say that if God were to 
 give His universe to us, not Himself loving us, and 
 were to ask for love on the ground of this infinite but 
 loveless gift, the demand would be unreasonable, 
 being for an impossibility. 
 
 Therefore the Gospel, as the revelation of the love 
 wherewith God loves us, is the necessary supplement 
 and complement to the Law which requires love to 
 God from us ; and it might indeed be anticipated — in 
 
FAITH AS UXDERSTOOD BY L UTIIER. 1 5 9 
 
 essence, if not in its details — by a spirit understanding 
 that God is love, and that in bidding us love He is 
 giving us the law of His own being to be the law of 
 our being. Indeed all these details, being the revela- 
 tion in Divine action of the love that is in God, might 
 in the perfect light of love have been anticipated, as 
 in that light of love which shines in them they com- 
 mend themselves to our faith, and by what they are 
 witness to us that they are God manifesting Himself, 
 not in word only but in deed also. This is so, and, in 
 proportion as we see it to be so, our faith is strengthened ; 
 and our faith in historical Christianity, known in its 
 historical truth and freed from incrustation of error, 
 identifies itself with our faith in God. 
 
 Nevertheless the law and the gospel present them- 
 selves in a sort of antagonism in their relation to us as 
 sinners ; the law shedding the light of condemnation 
 on what we are, while testifying as to what we ought 
 to be, — the gospel promising deliverance from what 
 we are in a gracious provision for our becoming what 
 we ought to be. So they are not really two streams 
 in respect of which God is shewn to be a fountain 
 yielding both sweet waters and bitter. There is so 
 much in our ignorance of God to permit them so to 
 seem that we — so to speak — would fly from God 
 the Law-giver to God the Saviour. And this move- 
 ment of ours would not have any evil result if indeed 
 we passed into the light of the Divine Salvation, for 
 we should in that light know the love which bade us 
 
160 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 love, in its identity with the love that enables us to 
 love. Nothing, indeed, has to us a more manifest 
 Divine unity than the Divine condemnation and 
 Divine salvation, when, in the full light of the Divine 
 salvation, we see the Divine condemnation and the 
 deep response of our spirits is an amen to both. But 
 that ceasing from self-trust and that trust in God, 
 w r hich is present in this amen, is perfect only when 
 that amen is perfect, and is present even in measure 
 only according as that amen is present in measure. 
 Yet it is present, though but as a grain of mustard 
 seed, when that amen is uttered — however feebly and 
 inarticulately, as in unutterable groanings. 
 
 Those of my readers who have read and entered 
 into the light of Luther's Epistle to the Galatians will 
 see, I may venture to say, its essence in what I have 
 just written. Others without that help, or any other 
 form of the same teaching, may have so themselves 
 heard the Gospel in the light of conscience that it has 
 been God saying, " Thou hast destroyed thyself; but 
 in Me is thine help." 
 
 But it is impossible to understand thus the right atti- 
 tude of the spirit or mind in relation to the law and the 
 gospel without having the fact palpable to us that it 
 is not an attitude of mind to be recognised in ordinary 
 Christianity. On the contrary, in the confusion of 
 thought in which men are contented to remain on the 
 subject of religion, misgivings are productive only of 
 blind attempts at self-help, conscious coming short of 
 
FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY L UTHER. 1 6 1 
 
 the demands of the law suggesting at the most only 
 more earnest efforts to meet its demands ; and God 
 remembered not as God the Saviour, but as God the 
 indulgent Judge, who will not be severe to punish. 
 Would any excusing of spiritual death be the 
 salvation which the quickening with spiritual life 
 alone is ? 
 
 From time to time this evil has been dealt with 
 in the light and in the strength of the faith of the 
 free grace of God and the saving power which is in 
 that grace alone, as by the Reformers and especially 
 by Luther, who saw man self-destroyed, and so taught 
 self-despair ; and saw the help for man that is in God, 
 and so taught justification by faith and by faith alone. 
 
 God raised Christ from the dead and gave Him 
 glory that our faith and hope might be in God. 
 
 Luther's great work, and the extent to which it has 
 influenced the thought and life of our modern Europe 
 and the world, has naturally raised the question, 
 " What was Luther's work in its essence ? For what 
 are we really debtors to him ? " Some answer, " he 
 taught us freedom of thought : " some, " he called to 
 a manly hearing and obeying of the voice of con- 
 science : " some, " he vindicated the dignity of the 
 individual man." And every one of these answers 
 has truth in it ; but they have truth in them because 
 another answer- — and one that goes more to the core of 
 what he was and what the pure light was that shone in 
 him — has to be given, — yet one which many, who, on 
 
162 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 the ground of these others — in the application they 
 make of them — hold him in estimation, will, I fear, be 
 slow to recognise as true, or if true not his highest 
 praise ; and that is, His faith and hope were in God, 
 and he called men to faith and hope in God. This 
 was his " justification by faith." He put man — the 
 conscious man, in all confused consciousness of good 
 and evil — on the one side, and God as He is revealed 
 in Christ on the other ; and he said, " Cease from man 
 — yourself — all self-trust. Trust in God, in His grace 
 towards you. Accept His will for you, and all His 
 provision in Christ for realising it in you. Balance 
 not your felt evil and seeming good in the hope to 
 find the latter more than the former. Neither 
 compare yourself with others to find some comfort in 
 saying, * I am not worse than they : it may be better.' 
 Turn from what you are, though God may have 
 wrought some good in you, to what God wills you to 
 be ; and not only wills you to be — this much the law 
 has told you — but provides for your being ; for this is 
 the revelation of the Gospel, — the good news of your 
 salvation." 
 
 This was Luther's own strength when he said, " I 
 can do no other, so help me God." He spoke as one 
 keeping a good conscience, but it was in the strength 
 of trust in God. He knew God and the help that 
 righteousness has in the righteous God. 
 
FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY LUTHER. 
 
 163 
 
 2. 
 
 Gambold says, "This is an edge so fine, 'twill 
 turn and warp."* 
 
 Luther's demand was for a faith that directly 
 and exclusively contemplated Christ, and had within 
 itself the perfect provision for peace with God, 
 irrespective of anything individual to the believer 
 in Christ; and his protest was against the teaching of 
 the Church of Rome, which demanded a faith per- 
 fected by charity. Not that Luther undervalued 
 charity, or believed that a true faith could exist and 
 charity not co-exist with it, but that he saw that to 
 make charity the supplement and complement of 
 faith, and that the consciousness of which was a 
 co-efficient with faith in peace with God, was to mis- 
 conceive both faith and charity, and their relation to 
 each other. A faith that brought not peace, irrespec- 
 tive of an individual consciousness of charity, was not 
 the faith of the cross of Christ, as Luther knew it. 
 A charity which could be developed in us, not by the 
 power of a faith which gave peace with God, but 
 apart from it, and as its supplement, was not charity 
 as Luther knew it. So he rejected the dogma, and 
 with it all the prescribed discipline by d which it was 
 expected to develop the charity which would perfect 
 faith. Dr. Newman has said of fasting, " Not that 
 
 * The point of this quotation is explained by the context, 
 which speaks of " a faith depending only on the blood of Christ." 
 The quotation is from " The Martrydom of St. Ignatius." 
 
164 REMINISCENCES AND REEIECTIONS. 
 
 we put fasting in the place of love; but that, by 
 fasting, we seek love." (I quote from memory, and 
 though sure of the meaning, am not of the precise 
 words.) That difficulty of holding to the simplicity 
 of faith, which Luther so realised personally as well 
 as realised as a teacher, is an abiding difficulty, and 
 becomes known to us personally in all our true en- 
 deavours to live by faith; while being aware of it, we 
 watch against it. 
 
 But, however clearly seen and uncompromisingly 
 denounced by Luther in the form in which it meets 
 us in Romanism, it has reappeared in Protestantism 
 in a form somewhat different, doubtless; but its 
 identity becomes manifest to any one who has true 
 discernment of its working. This result has been 
 greatly facilitated by the obscuration of the true 
 essence and light of Luther's Justification by Faith 
 in the dogmatic teaching of the Reformers. The 
 anxiety to escape from self-trust or self-righteousness, 
 and to secure to Christ the whole glory of man's peace 
 with God in faith, took the form of the doctrine of 
 imputation of righteousness ; according to which it was 
 not the faith of the revelation of God in Christ which 
 gave peace, but it was the assumed ascription to us 
 of what pleased God in Christ, as if it had been really 
 in us — the place of faith being the nexus — the link so 
 connecting us with Christ, as, according to the Divine 
 counsel, securing that God should so see us. To 
 make this assumed escape from self-righteousness 
 
FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY LUTHER. 
 
 165 
 
 perfect, faith was represented as a mere thread — 
 though a spiritual and divinely-formed thread, doubt- 
 less — but, still only a thread on which we were not 
 to fix our attention or think of it as acceptable to 
 God, lest we should so make (as it was expressed) 
 " a Christ of our Faith." 
 
 Salvation hath God appointed for walls and bul- 
 warks. To take measures to save one in the light 
 of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ from 
 self-righteousness is a purpose which could never 
 suggest itself in that light. No flesh shall glory in 
 God's presence, least of all if a man be seeing God 
 in Christ. Nevertheless, as I have said, precautions 
 assuming such a danger have found a place in Protes- 
 tantism, presenting a striking and instructive parallel 
 to that very departure from the simplicity of faith 
 against which Luther protested. I refer more 
 especially to the system of evidences which were 
 sought in order to assure us of the reality of our 
 faith in Christ. This system does not, indeed, propose 
 to add these evidences which are a moral and spiritual 
 consciousness of the elements of the new life to faith 
 to perfect it, but they — equally with the demand for 
 a perfecting of faith by charity — conjoin a special 
 individual consciousness with faith as entering into 
 our peace in our relation to God; and though the 
 expression " fruits of faith " may seem to preserve the 
 order of cause and effect, and to secure for faith its 
 exclusive character as the link that connects us with 
 
1 66 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Christ, such seeming soundness is delusive; for a 
 faith that does not give peace by virtue of what it 
 sees and embraces, but has its peace-giving power 
 suspended on fruits, is as far from the faith for which 
 Luther contended as that which suspended the peace- 
 giving power of faith on its having charity conjoined 
 with it. 
 
 No doubt this system of evidences does not hinder 
 those who adopt it from the admission of a possible 
 peace and joy in believing apart from the discovery 
 of evidences, as in the case of death-beds distinguished 
 by a triumphant joy in Christ taking all sting out of 
 death; for such joy is not retrospective, nor — so to 
 speak — introspective, finding oil for its bright shining 
 in any self-consciousness, but is the utterance always 
 of the full realisation of redeeming love — a joy in 
 Christ. And that it is what it says it is, and yet is 
 perfectly safe and sound Christian joy in God — and 
 that in transcendent measure — is gladly acknowledged 
 by those who value most the system of evidences. 
 Nor is the breathing of so free an atmosphere of faith 
 held to be possible in death alone. In health and 
 strength, with no suggestion of a near passing into 
 the invisible, men may, without question, express the 
 very same freedom of faith and joy in God through 
 Christ which gives such a holy interest to some 
 death-beds ; and when they have done so, it has been 
 the utterance of a present faith in the love of God 
 equally simple. 
 
FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY LUTHER. I 6j 
 
 But all such joy in God through Christ we may- 
 think of as having its probable counterpart in the 
 beatific vision for which the Roman system finds a 
 place; at all events, such special experiences are 
 marked off as distinct from ordinary Christian experi- 
 ences. Tliere the comfortable hope of faith is sought 
 to be reached by the addition of evidences, to what, 
 it is hoped, is faith; just as the ordinary Romanist 
 seeks to add charity to his faith, and to be at peace. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I. 
 
 LUTHER'S faith in the universality of the Atonement 
 gave him a freedom in preaching Christ which those 
 have not had who in Scotland have approached 
 nearest to him, both in his demand for an exclusive 
 trust in Christ, and in his vindicating for Christ the 
 glory of being the ground and source of perfect peace 
 with God to those who trust in Him. 
 
 Those among us who in this view have been nearest 
 to him have, as to the extent of the Atonement, 
 agreed not with him but with Calvin. Not that they 
 did not in many cases feel their Calvinism a bondage, 
 as appears from the attempt to reach the freedom 
 which the truth would have given them by the idea of 
 Christ being given to all men by a deed of gift, — con- 
 stituted a Saviour for all men, as the surgeon of a 
 
1 68 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 regiment is their surgeon to all the men in the 
 regiment, whether they employ him or not. 
 
 But they were still Calvinists ; and when Arminian- 
 ism was the prevailing faith of the Church of Scotland, 
 their seeming approach to a larger view on the subject 
 of the Atonement gained them no favour. On the 
 contrary, the most prominent among them incurred 
 the censure of the General Assembly in connection 
 with a book called " The Marrow of Modern Divinity." 
 This was in 1720. At the time to which I am now 
 going back — 1825 to 1831 — I do not know that any 
 stood exactly on the same ground. 
 
 2. 
 
 To Luther the great interest of existence was man's 
 relation to God. His controversy with Romanism 
 was that it was misleading men in that relation. 
 What he believed himself to have learned, and to be 
 set to teach, was the secret of occupying that relation 
 aright. And he had to do with a generation which 
 also felt that man's relation to God was the most 
 important aspect of existence, including eternity in 
 one view with time, subordinating time to eternity ; — 
 a generation, therefore, which valued and honoured 
 the Church and trembled at her voice, listening in 
 solemn awe to all she taught on the subject of the 
 favour of God, and proportionately startled and made 
 to wonder when one arose who questioned the 
 Church's teaching, — even denounced it as misleading 
 
FAITH AS UNDERSTOOD BY L UTHER. 1 69 
 
 and soul-destroying ; one whose appeals to conscience 
 and to the Scriptures, in justification of his startling 
 denunciation, were too powerful and authoritative with 
 the inherent authority of truth to be contemned ; 
 while his denunciation of the teaching which was 
 causing to err was accompanied by teaching in which 
 he declared truly the way of life, and indeed preached 
 peace by Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now, however, there are those who do not enter 
 into the divine interest of that which was Luther's true 
 controversy. In their case the living God and what 
 He feels towards them and how they are called to feel 
 to Him, — all this is a subject of thought which has 
 been emptied of its interest, either by conscious 
 unbelief or by absorption in what seem practical 
 questions, — questions which belong to the really tan- 
 gible and practical interest of man's relation to man. 
 Such persons cannot easily understand Luther and 
 his time, and may readily lower him and his work, 
 looking at them in relation to the objects to which 
 they are themselves devoted, as social and political 
 reformers, — to whom any ray of light shed on what is 
 due from man to man, or on man's claims on man, 
 has more value than any measure of light shed on 
 man's relation to God. 
 
VII. 
 
 ESSENCE OF THE TEACHING NOW 
 RECALLED. 
 
 DOUBTLESS man's relation to God and the relation of 
 time to eternity are the aspects of man, and of the 
 condition of his being, which give its proper interest 
 to such a book as I am now writing ; for they were 
 the interest of the teaching which I am endeavouring 
 to recall, not without hope of engaging profitably the 
 attention of my readers. And the past coming anew 
 before me as a living dealing of a man with men, 
 related to each other as teacher and taught, the whole 
 which I recall comes before me in the light of that 
 love of God to man which to my faith was over my 
 people and myself, as the glorious firmament is at this 
 moment to my bodily vision over the scene of my 
 early ministerial labours. In that light of the Divine 
 love, man's relation to God was seen as almost the 
 whole of man. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 
ESSENCE OF THE TEACHING. 
 
 171 
 
 with all thine heart, and mind, and soul, and strength/' 
 was felt as the utterance of that Divine love, claiming 
 the whole man. And " Ye are not your own, for ye 
 are bought with a price ; therefore glorify God in your 
 body and in your spirit, which are God's," was the same 
 voice of the Divine love repeating as the Gospel its 
 utterance as the Law, and now declaring what God 
 wills man to be in connection with what God has done 
 in Christ that man might be it. Yet this light, — which 
 as the Law claimed the whole man for God, and as 
 the Gospel revealed the Divine provision in Christ 
 for the full meeting of that Divine claim, — was light in 
 which not only man's claim on man, but also the 
 provision in Christ for the full meeting of that human 
 claim was seen in all its authority and all its beauty ; 
 — the commandment to love our brother man being 
 the corollary to the commandment to love God our 
 Father, and the strength for obeying it being known 
 in that faith of the death of Christ for man which 
 reveals the life of brotherhood in the life of sonship, 
 and reconciles us to each other in reconciling us to 
 God. The times and scenes and teaching which I 
 am now recalling come back to me in this light, as 
 they were lived in this light, and I must speak of that 
 of which I speak as seen in this light. 
 
 Proceeding to do so, the thought painfully suggests 
 itself, " How many of your readers will be unprepared 
 to see with you in that light of man's relation to God 
 and man's relation to man, in which the true value of 
 
172 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 what you hope to write can alone be seen ? Out of 
 that light, and still more in the darkness which is 
 more than its absence — is indeed its negation — what 
 you represented to your people as the all-important 
 aspect of existence will have no such character." But 
 the truth of things is not changed from what it was 
 in Luther's days, — what it had been in the days of 
 St. Paul, whose spiritual successor as a preacher of 
 Christ Luther felt himself specially to be. I know 
 that time is accepted by many as, I may say, man's 
 eternity ; that man's relation to man is accepted as 
 his one social living relation, to be occupied in the 
 light of man's own thinking concerning it, with no 
 recognition of light from God, clothed with His 
 authority. This, as the description of one portion of 
 the audience to which a preacher of Christ in this day 
 addresses himself, suggests a discouraging contrast 
 with the mind of Christendom at the Reformation, or 
 even with the mind of man — Jew and Gentile — as it 
 was when Christ was first preached. Yet it is also to 
 be said of this time, and indeed of this very day, as 
 compared with that past which I am recalling, that 
 occupation of mind with Religion is more widely 
 spread ; though so much of it is, so to speak, an 
 adverse interest, and though the question, " How am 
 I [to be at peace with God?" is in so many minds 
 become the question, " Is there a God whose peace I 
 ought to seek ? " Even men speaking such things 
 may be helped to a solution of their doubt — an 
 
ESSENCE OF THE TEA C HEX G. 
 
 173 
 
 answer of their question — by any true words concern- 
 ing the God that is, and the secret of peace with Him; 
 and as such I trust to commend what I now recall to 
 every reader s conscience in the sight of God. This 
 hope is not forbidden to me even as to these extreme 
 cases. 
 
 But the wide circle of interest in religion is still a 
 favourable interest, inasmuch as it acknowledges the 
 primary importance of man's relation to God, — the 
 knowledge of the secret of a true peace with God as 
 the pearl of great price. I think a large circle will 
 agree with me in my conception of Luther and his 
 work, and as to his claim to a peculiar place in our 
 thoughts and in our hearts. And though my first 
 understanding of the true relation of works to faith, 
 and of the life that is in His favour to peace with 
 God, was not received through Luther, or any teach- 
 ing but that of the New Testament, I always remem- 
 ber the bright shining of the light of the Gospel 
 which there was to me in his commentary on the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, — an experience renewed many 
 years afterwards, when my reading on the subject of 
 the Atonement led me to re-peruse it with care as well 
 as with intense pleasure. 
 
 Seeing my people in the light of the Divine Love, 
 my one endeavour necessarily was to help them to 
 see themselves in that same light. In attempting 
 
i 7 4 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 this, the chief difficulty with which I had to contend, 
 after a real and earnest interest was once awakened, 
 was connected with the freeness of the grace of God 
 which the Gospel revealed. He who had in free 
 grace originally given us a being would — it might be 
 thought — be readily understood to be now in free 
 grace saving us from sin — the perversion of that being. 
 But I did not find it so. Sin which had brought the 
 need of salvation seemed to have brought an incapacity 
 for understanding that pure love which commends 
 itself in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for 
 us. This love was His whose ways are not as our 
 ways nor His thoughts as ours ; and that partial light 
 which was received to the effect of quickening con- 
 science, and revealing the righteous authority of the 
 law of God, at first worked in much remaining dark- 
 ness ; so that its first effect was to make the faith of 
 the Divine mercy only more difficult than it had 
 previously seemed to be. Not that the true mercy of 
 God, which is holy and seeks to make us holy, is ever 
 really understood while the sinfulness of sin is not yet 
 known ; but, in the vagueness of thought and feeling 
 on the subject of our relation to God which is so 
 usual, men seem to themselves to have a hope and 
 trust in God's mercy, — which yet fails them and 
 vanishes when an awakened sense of sin makes the 
 real need of mercy to be felt. 
 
 In point of fact, of the twofold teaching addressed 
 to them, in the endeavour to illustrate the law and the 
 
ESSENCE OF THE TEACHING. 
 
 175 
 
 gospel, the first part seemed to be more easily under- 
 stood than the second ; and men seemed to be quicker 
 in coming to know themselves as sinners than in 
 coming to know Christ as a Saviour. It has been 
 already explained* how faith thus came to be a 
 third commandment, as it were, instead of the secret 
 of the response to the other two. 
 
 It must be understood that the essence of that 
 which was insisted on in this teaching was the direct 
 and immediate relation of peace with God to faith, — 
 not the measure of peace and joy in believing which 
 might be attained. That would be according to the 
 measure of faith. But the assumption that the faith 
 was real and without misgiving, while there flowed 
 not from it peace with God through Christ, was the 
 conception which was rejected : — in other words, the 
 liberty to say, M I do not doubt Christ, I only doubt 
 myself." 
 
 Of course the case would have been altogether 
 different if any were to say, " I do not see in Christ 
 enough to trust to." But this was not the ground 
 taken. Though, doubtless, it was the fact ; for if 
 enough were really seen in Christ to justify the trust 
 called for, that trust would have been put in Him and 
 its necessary accompaniment of peace with God 
 enjoyed. 
 
 It is only in the light of the love of God to sinners 
 revealed in Christ, and under the power of that Divine 
 * See Chapter II., p. 133. 
 
i 76 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 love that it is possible to realise the feeling with 
 which — in the teaching which I am recalling — I was 
 constrained to urge on my hearers that that was not 
 the faith of the Gospel which did not bring peace and 
 joy in believing. I used to say, "If you knew the mind 
 of God towards you as the Gospel reveals it, — if you 
 only knew about yourselves what in the light of the 
 Gospel I know about you — knew as really your own 
 the unsearchable riches which you have in Christ, — 
 you must needs rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. I only ask you to know what now is. I 
 only labour to undeceive you in thinking that though 
 it does not give you peace you know it already. If 
 your words could be true, then indeed your case 
 would be hopeless. If you knew all that is to be 
 known, and yet knew not enough for your peace, then 
 whence could peace ever come to you ? " 
 
 I hope the difference between this teaching and a 
 demand for confidence, "for assurance — as if faith were 
 made saving by becoming assured — is sufficiently 
 palpable. Nothing is more deceptive than an effort 
 to keep up a feeling of assurance ; while nothing is 
 more a movement in light than our yielding our spirit 
 to the peace-giving power of the love revealed — freely 
 cherishing love towards God in the measure, and 
 just in the measure, in which that revealed love is 
 realised. This latter was my teaching. 
 
 The distinction which I seek to mark may be made 
 clearer by some notice of other forms of religious 
 
ESSENCE OF THE TEACHING. 
 
 177 
 
 peace with which what I taught was often identified, 
 but which rested on other grounds than the truth 
 revealed, — and concerning which it may be noticed 
 that those who held these forms of assurance could 
 not say to any doubting, discouraged brother, " If 
 you knew as to yourself and the mind of God towards 
 you what I know as to you, you would have peace." 
 I am not to attempt here anything exhaustive. 
 I think that the most marked of these forms of 
 personal confidence as to our relation to God (to 
 which I refer), are these three : — 
 
 (1.) That met in the extremest Calvinists, who 
 demand the assurance that a man's sins are forgiven 
 and the man accepted in Christ as the immediate act 
 of faith — a demand justified, not because of that 
 w T hich is a revealed fact as to all, but because power 
 to believe it is only given to the elect, as to whom it 
 is true. 
 
 As I write these words, I feel the difficulty which 
 those to whom this form of faith is new are likely to 
 have as to its possibility. But it does exist. Assur- 
 ance is thus made its own foundation, because the 
 being able so to believe is held to be evidence, that 
 he who is so enabled to believe is one as to whom 
 it is true. 
 
 (2.) Quite distinct from this is the assurance — more 
 or less pronounced — which meets us in combination 
 with Arminianism, where peace with God has always 
 a personal history and rests on a personal transaction, 
 
i 7 8 
 
 KEMIX1SCEXCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 — on forgiveness of God granted to the individual 
 man : as to which the cry for it and the answer to 
 that cry are held to be known, and to separate between 
 the individual and the mass of men. So that the man 
 is not rejoicing in what was the mind of God towards 
 him before he knew it, nor can he say to a brother 
 man seeking peace with God, " If you knew the mind 
 of God towards yourself as I know it as to you, you 
 would have peace." 
 
 (3.) A third form of confidence, distinct from both 
 these, rests on the consciousness of believing in Christ 
 and laying hold of the promise of forgiveness and 
 Divine acceptance made to faith. I am not here 
 considering this form of religious peace, farther than 
 to place it also in contrast with the peace which 
 springs directly from the revelation of God in Christ. 
 Bring it to the test of the thoughts with which the 
 man who has peace contemplates others who share 
 not this peace. He cannot say to them, " If you 
 knew about yourself, and the feelings with which God 
 is regarding you, what I know as to you, you would 
 have peace ; for the mind of God towards you which 
 is revealed in Christ is the same, which, in its relation 
 to myself, has given me peace." 
 
 The first of these forms of assurance is met in con- 
 nection with an extreme recognition of Divine 
 Sovereignty, in what is so far one with Calvinism, but 
 is held as more self-consistent than Calvinism, inas- 
 much as the Calvinism which recognises the chief end 
 
ESSENCE OE THE TEACHING. 
 
 179 
 
 of man to be to glorify God and to enjoy Him, and 
 then recognises decrees of election and reprobation, is 
 regarded as a contradiction. In this view the latter 
 idea is accepted and the former, as incompatible with 
 the latter, is rejected. The second form is met in 
 connection with Arminianism ; the last in connection 
 with what claims to be specially entitled to be 
 received as Evangelicism — whether more or less 
 Calvinistic. 
 
 3. 
 
 These three forms of peace differ from each other in 
 respect of that by which in each a man individualises 
 himself: — by the conscious history of a conversion, 
 and mercy sought and mercy granted ; or by the con- 
 sciousness of trusting in a promise made to faith in 
 Christ ; or by the consciousness of a direct faith in 
 forgiveness, held to be possible only to the elect, with 
 a special form of faith in election. But this is common 
 to them all, — that the confidence towards God which 
 is possessed is not a confidence quickened by simple 
 believing apprehension of the grace revealed. 
 
 At the time which I am recalling, the religious 
 thought on this subject with which I was most brought 
 into contact was of course that of the section of the 
 church in which I found myself. In a general view 
 it may be said that the prevailing creed was Ar- 
 minian, while there was a large minority of Cal- 
 vinists to whom Calvinism was in various measures 
 
!8o REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 a living faith. Any doctrine on the subject of 
 trust in Christ which approached what is suggested 
 by the expression assurance of faith was to be met 
 with in this minority. But my early habits of thought 
 had been formed in intercourse with that larger 
 portion of the Church who regarded the language of 
 assurance with distrust, fearing self-deception, and, 
 indeed, associating such language with fanaticism. 
 
 In my endeavour to bring my people into the light 
 of the Gospel, and to deliver them from the bondage 
 into which the law of God, not seen in the light of the 
 Gospel, was bringing earnest minds still in this broken 
 light, I found myself gradually more andmore attracted 
 to the side on which the demand for faith was the 
 prominent teaching — faith as opposed to works in 
 that controversy, the opposite parties in which seemed 
 to themselves, severally, to side with St. Paul or St. 
 James ; or at least the one party to read St. James by 
 the light of St. Paul, — the other to read St Paul by 
 the light of St. James. 
 
VIII. 
 REASONS FOR NOT JOINING A PARTY. 
 
 I. 
 
 MORE than one consideration determined me from 
 the first of my ministry in the Church of Scotland not 
 to attach myself to either of the two parties into which 
 the Church was divided. I was, indeed, chiefly 
 influenced by fearing that the fetters of party might 
 interfere with free obedience to light ; but, also, in 
 part, because the men of each party seemed to me 
 doing injustice to what good was in the other, and to 
 see its evil through a magnifying party-feeling. Their 
 watchwords, severally, were " Faith n and " Works ; " 
 but the former watchword did not imply any real 
 Antinomianism,' neither did the latter imply any 
 rejection of the Atonement as the ultimate ground 
 of man's acceptance with God. 
 
 When ministerial intercourse with my people in the 
 light of the love of God to man brought me into a 
 near acquaintance with the confidence of men on the 
 subject of their relation to God, in which so many are 
 
1 82 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 contented to live (and which, at the first, any awaken- 
 ing of mind to the importance of that relation only- 
 revealed without removing), two convictions gradually 
 gathered strength in me, and soon established me in 
 my isolation, viz.: — 1st, That the contention for faith 
 was combined with much inadequacy in the apprehen- 
 sion of the revealed object of faith ; and 2nd, That the 
 contention for works was connected with a very great 
 shortcoming in the conception of the practical demand 
 which the Gospel makes on us. In short, the demand 
 for faith was made in connection with the preaching 
 of an atonement limited to the elect ; and the demand 
 for practical conformity to Christ as our example was 
 made in connection with a superficial morality which 
 was not the worship of the Father in the fellowship of 
 the life of the Divine Son, nor was it a brotherhood 
 of man and man, in the fellowship of Christ the true 
 Brother's brotherhood with us all. So, while claiming 
 to make Christ our example, it contemplated no real 
 conformity to His life, no participation in that because 
 of which the testimony was borne to Him, "This is 
 My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; " and 
 the call to us added "hear ye Him." 
 
 To those who have not been disciplined to it, the 
 attempt to combine a free Gospel with a limited 
 Atonement will always appear unnatural and full of 
 practical difficulty. Yet this combination has been 
 effected without seeming misgiving, by many Cal- 
 
REASONS FOR NOT JOINING A PARTY. ^3 
 
 vinists whose personal religion has been of the highest 
 type, and who have been much honoured as members 
 of Christ and preachers of His Gospel. The com- 
 mand to preach the Gospel to every creature has so 
 far practically neutralised the faith that He died only 
 for some ; and this command, as it was felt an 
 authority justifying the preacher, was also urged on 
 the hearer to encourage the personal trust to which 
 he was invited. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 However affected by their views of the Atonement, 
 I found in some Calvinists a higher standard both of 
 faith and of the fruits of faith ; and I have ever 
 looked back with thankfulness on the intimate 
 acquaintance which, in the beginning of my ministry, 
 I made with such biographies as those of David 
 Brainerd, Henry Martyn and H. Dorney. 
 
 2. 
 
 The constant realisation of the love of God to them 
 determined the character of all my dealings with my 
 people as their minister. That love was a light full 
 of practical guidance. It kept before me the end 
 which the Gospel contemplated, and made clear the 
 fitness of the pure and simple faith of the Gospel to 
 
184 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 accomplish that end ; so that I had no misgivings in 
 inviting to the fullest peace and joy in believing, 
 having confidence in the moral and spiritual power of 
 the truth to be believed. My only care, therefore, 
 was to present clearly the message of free grace with 
 which I felt myself put in trust, and to fix attention 
 on it. " Salvation will God appoint for walls and 
 bulwarks " was my mental answer when guards and 
 cautions were suggested because of the risk of a false 
 peace. Once* President Edwards' book on The 
 Religions Affections was in this w r ay put into my 
 hands by the care of a valued friend, and, both for 
 his sake w r ho gave it to me, and in deference to the 
 Christian experience of the man to whom we owe the 
 Life of David Brainerd (to whom in another sense 
 Brainerd may have felt that he owed his life), I read 
 and weighed both the reasons for caution and the 
 suggestions for practical guidance to ministers ; — but 
 with the result of strengthening my conviction that 
 the light of the Gospel must be its own protection, — 
 that the minister's one care should be that the appre- 
 hension of Christ which gives peace is a true appre- 
 hension, that the peace possessed is really peace 
 produced by the light of the glory of God in the face 
 
 * January 1st, 1827. It has been already mentioned (see 
 Introductory Narrative, page 5) that this book was given to him 
 by his college friend, William Penney. Since the earlier sheets 
 of this book were printed, he, too, has been taken. 
 
REASONS FOR NOT JOINING A PARTY. 185 
 
 of Jesus Christ. Not that Edwards' care to guard 
 against a false peace was not fully justified by the 
 experience and observation which moved him to 
 write. This I quite felt. But it seemed to me clear 
 that in none of the cases which he details was it at all 
 the revelation of God in Christ that had given the 
 peace which the absence of fruits of faith had subse- 
 quently proved to have been a false peace ; but, on 
 the contrary, it was something individual, received as 
 an intimation to the individual. It was not a coming 
 into the light of the common salvation. I could 
 therefore profit by what was warning in this book, and 
 be made more jealous by it, without giving place to 
 any distrust as to the safety of the teaching which to 
 my friend had seemed dangerous : w T hile the safe- 
 guards suggested by President Edwards were so im- 
 pressed with tokens of the natural and necessary 
 working of that extremest Calvinism which he had so 
 fully accepted, that his having recourse to them only 
 made manifest the shortcoming of his creed, by 
 reason of which it left room for such self-deception, 
 in the effort to make that mercy personal and indi- 
 vidual which was not revealed as such. 
 
 This book was indeed — in the form of the ex- 
 perience of a mind of a higher order, and possessed 
 by a high standard of religion in dealing with the 
 subjects of his own awakening ministry — only the 
 ordinary system of evidences with which Calvinists 
 
1 86 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 supplement their preaching of the Gospel, according 
 to their conception of what it is to make our calling 
 and election sure. That system I may revert to 
 afterwards. I only notice here that that increasing 
 freedom, which a fuller apprehension of the free grace 
 of God, and the manner of salvation which is by faith 
 and not by works, was imparting to my preaching of 
 Christ, w r as only confirmed by the careful considering 
 of objections to such teaching ; — objections made by 
 some in distrust of anything that the words Assurance 
 of Faith suggested ; while others would not object 
 to the most confident expressions of peace and joy in 
 believing, if they could regard such peace and joy as 
 the fruit of a pure and simple trust in Christ ; — as in 
 the language of the dying, in whose case the felt near- 
 ness of death was supposed to be some protection 
 from self-deception ; or even in exceptional cases of 
 the higher type of religious life. Either as always 
 dangerous and akin to fanaticism, or only very ex- 
 ceptionally safe, that " beginning of confidence " and 
 immediate quickening of the life of sonship, which to 
 me was the natural effect of faith in Christ, was 
 regarded with distrust. Yet that distrust always 
 expressed itself in a way that showed that that which 
 was distrusted was so only because it was not under- 
 stood. 
 
 I found much to strengthen my confidence in the 
 reasonableness of my expectation that peace and joy 
 
REASONS FOR NOT JOINING A PARTY. ^7 
 
 in believing would spring from true faith safely, as 
 well as naturally, in such parables as the finding of 
 the pearl of great price, &c. (Note Gambold, with 
 Mr. Erskine's introduction.*) But it was the discern- 
 ment that faith worketh by love, purifieth the heart, 
 and overcometh the world, as a law of the kingdom 
 of God, which I always fell back upon. 
 
 * The reference is to the edition of Gambold's Works, with 
 an Introductory Essay by Thomas Erskine, which was published 
 at Glasgow by Chalmers k Collins in 1822. 
 
IX. 
 
 SALVATION BY FAITH. 
 
 AT the very threshold, and, as I may say, in the 
 entrance to even the outer court of the temple, the 
 necessity of preserving the divine order in teaching 
 Salvation by Faith was felt. Men awaking for the 
 first time to the importance of religion, or hitherto 
 meeting any demand for religion to which they were 
 conscious by an aggregate of good works and good 
 dispositions — with such response to the demand for 
 repentance and faith as is the usual fruit of conscious 
 shortcoming, and of the traditional habit of thinking 
 of Christ as the Saviour — need, above all things, to 
 be brought to understand their actual ignorance of 
 all that they seem to themselves to know, however 
 they may admit that they do not live up to their 
 knowledge. 
 
 The forgiveness that is with God that He may be 
 feared is not thus seen in its relation to fearing God 
 — is not known as that which, being known and 
 
SAL VA TION B V FAIT/7. z 89 
 
 tested, quickens in us that fear of God which is the 
 beginning of wisdom. And so the anxiety felt is as 
 to what must precede this forgiveness — some form of 
 fear of God which is to lead to forgiveness, not to be 
 justified by it. And the blind endeavour to attain 
 to this pre-requisite to forgiveness absorbs the mind, 
 with the result of preventing any entrance in of the 
 light of that divine forgiveness which, once under- 
 stood, reveals the vanity and the emptiness of the 
 preparation for mercy ignorantly sought, as well as 
 its superfluousness were it a possible reality; and by 
 virtue of what it is, and the elements of the name of 
 God which are in it, as given in Christ, it enables us 
 to believe in it and rejoice in it freely — introducing 
 to that peace with God, for the sake of which forgive- 
 ness was desired, and to infinitely more than in the 
 unaided endeavour to procure forgiveness had been 
 at all conceived of. 
 
 The value put on the forgiveness of God before it 
 is yet known is, indeed, no small thing, being rest for 
 the spirit in our relation to God as the righteous 
 Judge of man, and an Almighty Sovereign; and that 
 the forgiveness that is revealed in the Gospel imparts 
 this peace is a true element in its value; and that the 
 anxious self-condemned spirit that earnestly craved 
 for it, having found it gives thanks for it, is no utter- 
 ance of a blame-worthy interest in our own well-being. 
 Nevertheless, it is the least spiritual element in the 
 preciousness of the pearl of great price, and even it 
 
190 
 
 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 could not be held with an intelligent assurance were it 
 not known in combination with the other elements. 
 
 2. 
 
 I have said that the law demanding love, when seen 
 in the light of love, is seen to be the utterance of love 
 — what could proceed from love only. But, until the 
 light of the Gospel is shed forth on the law, what it 
 demands from us, and not what moves God to make 
 the demand, naturally engrosses the attention of minds 
 awakening to the consciousness of alienation from 
 God. Then the love of the Creator is known in the 
 truth of what it is, seen as the love of the Redeemer. 
 
 Therefore is it of such importance to take men at 
 once into the light of the Gospel, and to engage their 
 minds with the love of God as revealed in relation to 
 men as sinners. In the peace-giving light of redeem- 
 ing love we are able to look upwards to God and in 
 on ourselves, and accept the vision as truth in all it 
 includes, suffering it to mould us and renew us, ac- 
 cording to the Divine purpose for which it is given. 
 
 What first comes to us in this way is the discovery 
 that the first movements of our being, which a broken 
 light of the law acting on our fears has prompted, 
 have been blind efforts at what that light only showed 
 to be desirable but could not make us to reach. Thus 
 in the light of the forgiveness revealed in Christ we 
 see the vanity of the attempt to win or deserve it, 
 
SA L J r A TION B Y FAITH. T 9 1 
 
 — the necessity of its being free or not at all ; in the 
 consciousness of a true turning of the heart to God, in 
 love to Him who first loved us, we see the unsound- 
 ness of that effort at repentance which we made while 
 repentance was sought as a condition of forgiveness, — 
 the root-motive being the wish to be forgiven. Above 
 all, in the free and joyful and unshaken trust in Christ 
 which is quickened in us in the light of what He is to 
 us by the grace of God, the blind effort to make 
 Christ ours by trusting Him — which we hoped was 
 faith though it brought no peace or joy — is seen ex- 
 posed to us. The truth of forgiveness, of repentance, 
 of faith, being thus known, these as known have 
 another and higher value than that which they had 
 while earnest and anxious but blind efforts were made 
 to reach them. These efforts were prompted by the 
 sense of danger and desire of safety; but, now known, 
 they are found to be the introduction to eternal life. 
 There was not formerly — at the time which I am re- 
 calling — the same feeling about the desire of safety, 
 of escape from hell, w T hich so many now express. 
 That the interest of religion as the means of escape 
 from future misery or of securing future happiness has 
 nothing holy or spiritual in it is certain. It is but the 
 instinct of self-interest deferred to a remote future, 
 and cannot be placed higher than the same interest in 
 its relation to present and earthly things. But it is 
 not therefore to be confounded with that self-seeking 
 which is sin, — nor is the attempt to suppress it to be 
 
192 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 exalted to the dignity of self-sacrifice. Let it be kept 
 in its own place, and let not religious earnestness 
 which has no better root than the instinct of self- 
 preservation pass for that which it is not. 
 
 But, however we may have our eyes opened to see 
 that this is so, the cry for safety must be met, and the 
 anxieties which pertain to it must be removed, before 
 the field is open for the appearance on it of higher in- 
 fluences. This preliminary work is accomplished when 
 [we come to know] the forgiveness that is with God 
 that He may be feared, and the forgiveness which thus 
 stills the cry for safety by satisfying it — -stills it in the 
 embrace of the forgiving love of God bringing us 
 back to Himself — then reveals its own higher value, 
 the attraction of which is addressed to our highest 
 nature, as we are God's offspring. The Father of 
 our spirits is, I may say, hid from us in the righteous 
 God against whom we have sinned, while, in ignor- 
 ance of the forgiveness revealed in Christ, a sense 
 of danger and fear of the wrath to come is mov- 
 ing us to attempt, we know not how, to move 
 God to have mercy upon us. But the righteous 
 Judge loses His terrors to us — though in a way that 
 makes His righteousness more effulgent — when our 
 higher relation to Him is made known, and the 
 eternal Son gives us to know in our righteous Judge 
 the eternal Father. The faith of the free grace of 
 our God — with all the elements of holiness and 
 righteousness and truth, as well as mercy, which 
 
SALVATION BY FA I TIL 
 
 193 
 
 make the perfect light of the Divine love — does 
 indeed entirely change our whole mind on the subject 
 of our relation to God, — making that relation the 
 first and central interest of existence because of the 
 elements of well-being which it contains within itself. 
 
 Safety in God's universe is felt, but it is now 
 scarcely thought of, because the Father's heart in 
 which we are trusting is so full a fountain of other 
 and richer blessing that this, our cry before, is 
 scarcely thought of. And while safety sinks down to 
 its proper level, new desires and hopes take possession 
 of our hearts, set free for them by the remission of 
 sins, — the desires and hopes which pertain to eternal 
 life, now known in the truth of what it is — the know- 
 ledge of God the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ. 
 For this great change includes peace, doubtless, as to 
 all that had formerly distressed us in the thoughts of 
 God, according to the words " He that believeth shall 
 not come into condemnation, but is passed from 
 death unto life." But that which fills the conscious- 
 ness and is the joy of the Lord in us, is that we 
 have passed from death unto life : that we shall not 
 come into condemnation is rather known in the 
 change than inferred from it even as a promise. 
 
 We do not in this light of life indulge in hard 
 thoughts of those who yet know r no higher religion 
 than the fear of hell and the hope of heaven. Nor 
 do we attempt to set them free by telling them that 
 their religion is a form of selfishness. We know that 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 we ourselves have been raised to the higher level on 
 which we now find ourselves, not by the becoming in- 
 different to our own well-being, but by coming to 
 know our true well-being as given to us, not won by 
 us, — given in Christ. To be blessed in the life of love 
 quickened in us by the faith of God's love — this and 
 this alone is our true deliverance from the life of self. 
 If we seem to attain this deliverance otherwise — by 
 simply endeavouring to get above our interest in self 
 by a resolution and an effort — we either deceive our- 
 selves and mistake the effort for success, or w r e escape 
 self-deception at the price of a despairing con- 
 sciousness of failure. 
 
 Note. — The reader has now before him all that my father 
 accomplished in the way of explanation of his thought and 
 teaching at Row. These chapters were written in July of last 
 year (1871); and, although the work was resumed in October, 
 he did not continue what he had already written ; but, making 
 a fresh beginning, he wrote those chapters which form the bulk 
 of Part I. The "Reflections" contained in Part III. were in- 
 tended to belong to the introductory part of the book, but it has 
 been thought best to give them separately, both because they 
 are of the nature of digressions and because, if embodied in Part 
 I., they would have unduly increased its bulk. 
 
PART III. 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 In the attempt to come truly and sympathisingly 
 under the burden of the earnest thinkers of another 
 generation, there is necessarily much difficulty. In 
 that past, to which I am now going back, a young 
 clergyman who entered on his ministry, accepting in 
 unquestioning faith that conception of the purpose 
 of God in man of which I have spoken, and receiving 
 the Bible as in relation to that purpose a divine 
 revelation, would be admitted to be entering on the 
 right path — that lying open before him, and in enter- 
 ing on which he would be exercising the utmost 
 amount of rational religious liberty, and obeying also 
 the highest claim of the ministerial calling. Were 
 not all questions as to life and duty embraced in that 
 of the great end of man's being, and to be studied in 
 the light shed on them by Revelation ? 
 
 The first thought that arises in looking back from 
 amid the questioning of this time to the time I am 
 
198 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 now recalling is — Would that earnest young ministers 
 now were spared the ordeal of these questionings, and 
 found the path of ministerial labour open and unem- 
 barrassed as it looked to me when I entered on it ! 
 But this would be a hasty thought. This time has 
 been chosen for them — they have not made it what 
 it is. What they are called to is to bear themselves 
 rightly in it. So doing, it will yield to them the good 
 that is in it for them, which will be great in propor- 
 tion as the difficulty with which they have to contend 
 is great. 
 
 But, what is it to bear themselves rightly in this time? 
 
 To ignore altogether the questioning that is around 
 us — this would be to refuse to see any divine purpose 
 in reference to ourselves in it, or any good in this 
 form of the trial of our faith. But we cannot do so, 
 or doubt that the trial of our faith is precious, what- 
 ever be its form. 
 
 On the other hand, we must not forget that trials 
 of faith are not justifications of doubt. Be they what 
 they may — painful events, perplexing aspects of life, 
 or reasonings and questionings of other minds, or 
 springing up in our own minds — the utmost extent 
 of their reasonable demand is for a reason of the 
 hope that is in us. They never can, so to speak, 
 require the uprooting of the hope that is in us, even 
 for a moment, or as if the permission to plant it 
 again, after we had satisfied the doubt suggested, 
 were all that we could reasonably claim. 
 
FAITH A XD DOUP>T. 
 
 199 
 
 This, indeed, seems insisted on when all funda- 
 mental questions are required to be treated as really 
 open questions; as if we were bound by the sugges- 
 tion of a doubt to take the mental attitude of doubt, 
 and as if to do otherwise were to beg the question. 
 What is thus asked for is simply impossible. A man 
 is entitled to ask why I believe, and to canvass freely 
 my ground of faith. But I may not — and being in 
 light I cannot — go further to meet him. I cannot 
 make myself even for a moment share his doubt. I 
 can only do my best to understand it and to weigh it. 
 More would be to step into his darkness and suspend 
 faith, instead of accepting that darkness as a trial of 
 faith, certain to be dissolved in the light of true faith. 
 
 But, although a man in the light of truth (how- 
 ever small the measure of that light in his conscious- 
 ness) cannot really for argument's sake, or for a false 
 show of reasonableness, so to speak, make himself 
 uncertain, and must feel that the attempt would be 
 disloyalty to truth — he may, and he ought, according 
 to what capacity of so doing he may have, to esteem 
 it a sacred part of what he owes to other men to 
 endeavour fairly to weigh these questionings of his 
 faith, coming under their burden. 
 
 And in proportion as a man is really in light will 
 this practical tenderness to the doubts and difficulties 
 of others be easy; and, so to speak, natural to him. 
 I have seen it urged that we ought to be charitable 
 to others because of our own uncertainty. A most 
 
200 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 serious error lurks in this thought. No doubt, a 
 fair-minded man, conscious of uncertainty, would feel 
 his conscience smiting him — would feel himself, in 
 fact, a false man — in being intolerant to others, taking 
 their views to the bar of his own views which, in his 
 inmost soul, he knew might possibly not be the truth. 
 This I feel, while alas! it is also too plain, as a matter 
 of fact, that the toleration which we might expect on 
 this ground we do not usually meet with. On the 
 contrary, intolerance is not only what can co-exist 
 with secret misgivings, but is often produced by such 
 misgivings; and the eagerness with which men labour 
 to shew their opponents to be in the wrong, and their 
 anxiety to proselytise is, at its root, a craving for the 
 strengthening and confirming of their own position by 
 the reflex effect of succeeding in persuading others. 
 
 Not uncertainty but the certainty which belongs to 
 true light is the real fountain of toleration. In what- 
 ever measure this certainty is enjoyed, a man is saved 
 from the temptation to seek confirmation of his own 
 conclusions in the assent of others, to which I have 
 referred. But what most powerfully operates to save 
 him from intolerance is the conscious history of what 
 true light, be it more or less, he has himself attained. 
 He knows how slowly and gradually he has come to 
 know and accept truth as what has its light in itself; 
 how difficult he has found it to disentangle the per- 
 ceptions which have had a claim to this character 
 from opinions commended to him on what he has 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 201 
 
 come to see were superficial and extrinsic considera- 
 tions, — traditional creeds, or new forms of thought, 
 fresh and with a show of discovery. The history of 
 his knowing what he knows teaches him patience and 
 toleration : his consciousness of remaining ignorance 
 teaches him this also. How much of all he holds 
 and must practically act on, is in the region of ques- 
 tions which, he must confess to himself, have two 
 sides ; — questions all the bearings of which he does 
 not see, although he must proceed on what, on the 
 whole, seems probably right and wise ! 
 
 But what most teaches charity in that highest 
 region with which the question of charity most con- 
 nects itself — viz., Religion, is the realisation of the 
 divine charity, the divine patience, the divine bearing 
 with error, the divine giving of line upon line ; God 
 not demanding light but imparting it as He finds 
 men can receive it. With Him is no darkness at all ; 
 yet who so bears with man's darkness ? And how 
 important a part of our function as working His 
 work, fellow-workers with Christ to the glory of the 
 Father, consists in bearing with the darkness of 
 others in true fellowship with His long-suffering 
 patience! If we know God as teaching men, if we 
 have ourselves the experience of being taught of Him, 
 we are in the way of attaining to that true charity to 
 the errors of others, which is but one form indeed of 
 true love to them. 
 
 I say the true fountain of charity is conscious pos- 
 
202 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 session of light, not the consciousness of darkness, and 
 yet would that that consciousness of darkness yielded 
 all the charity it should. 
 
 2. 
 
 The consciousness of being in light is the true 
 fountain of right feeling towards others still in dark- 
 ness. But while it precludes impatience and high- 
 handed intolerance, and secures due tenderness in 
 dealing with doubt, it also secures the proper firmness, 
 and saves from that false indulgence to doubt which 
 would be due only if the most fundamental questions 
 which exercise men were ever open questions, and to 
 begin with doubt were a sacred duty. 
 
 It would be indeed a false charity to our brother 
 which would proceed on the imputation of unreason- 
 ableness, nay, unrighteousness to our Father, even 
 God. If faith is reasonable, and the demand for it on 
 God's part a reasonable demand, then to show our 
 brother the unreasonableness of his doubt must be 
 what we owe him, and the practical form which our 
 love to him will take. To encourage him to value 
 himself on his doubt will be to do to him the greatest 
 injury we possibly can. 
 
 Only let us be sure that we really reverence his 
 reason, and do not trample upon it in putting down 
 his doubt. We feel that nothing can be more ob- 
 jectionable than the attempt to put down questionings 
 by an arbitrary exercise of authority, or a demand for 
 
FAITH A XD DOUBT. 
 
 203 
 
 faith on any other ground than that on which God 
 invites it. But this error we shall be saved from, if, 
 simply as ourselves listening to and believing that 
 witness for God without which He has never left 
 Himself, we only invite others to listen and hear and 
 believe, according to that right to be believed which 
 is ever recognised in the voice of that witness when 
 heard. That what God is speaking to man's spirit in 
 spirit and in truth men have repeated not in spirit and 
 in truth, but as a dogma once enshrined in a system 
 of thought, and then handed down traditionally from 
 generation to generation': — this is no reason for re- 
 garding it lightly, or lowering it to the level of a mere 
 traditional dogma if God is speaking it to each hitman 
 spirit still. If He is speaking it now to us individu- 
 ally, and that we know that He is because ourselves 
 hearing Him, we must be allowed to hold the response 
 of faith to be reasonable, and the withholding of that 
 response unreasonable. In this view, to hold unbelief 
 reasonable is to hold belief unreasonable. 
 
 As we cannot hesitate as to our own response of 
 faith, we cannot be uncertain as to the obligation of 
 another human spirit, hearing as we hear, to give the 
 same response of faith. As true to this light we feel 
 that what is due from us to others is, first, the clear 
 utterance by word and deed of our own response of 
 faith ; and then, the helping others to disentangle 
 themselves from the perplexing confusions which 
 abound on the subject of truth and faith, and to 
 
204 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 recognise God's own claim to be Himself heard and 
 listened to in faith, — to be alone with God and 
 recognise His own utterance in them of His claim on 
 their faith, and to hear what He speaks to them. 
 
 But though we know that our own faith is but the 
 due response to a voice that speaks to others, as it 
 does to us, we know that in us and in them it is but 
 one of many voices; and though, being heard, its 
 claim to speak with authority is at once recognised, 
 and though the faintest hearing of it brings the feeling 
 that it ought to be listened to, — yet, in point of fact, 
 other voices are more listened to, and it is disregarded 
 with greater or less measures of blameworthiness of 
 which we may not judge, but with evil results from 
 which there is no true salvation but in being induced 
 to listen and hear and obey. 
 
 I say we are not to sit in judgment on the degrees 
 of blameworthiness which attach to men not hearing 
 God ; but the whole process of coming to hear is ever 
 accompanied by a measure of self-blame for having 
 been slow to hear, and our testimony from without 
 must be one with the testimony of conscience within : 
 we cannot offer our brother the deceitful comfort of 
 giving him credit for doubts which in the sight of God 
 his own heart condemns ; and, truly, we shall have no 
 temptation to do so if we realise the soothing, en- 
 couraging, forgiving love that is in the divine will 
 which at once blames unbelief and invites faith. 
 
 Coming back to the starting-point of ministerial 
 
FAITH AXD DOUBT. 
 
 205 
 
 labour of which I am speaking, as to the claims of so 
 many questions now subjects of discussion to be pre- 
 vious questions, demanding solution before it can be 
 assumed that the chief end of man is to glorify God, 
 and that the Scriptures are a divine revelation given 
 in relation to this the great end of our being, — are the 
 questions to which I refer really to be accepted as 
 previous questions ? In form they doubtless are ; but 
 are they so in reality ? that is, are these questions 
 which must be first taken up and disposed of before 
 this starting-point can reasonably be accepted ? I 
 believe they are not, because without having ever 
 taken them up we may know in a clear and absolute 
 light of truth that the chief end of our being is to 
 glorify God and to enjoy Him, and, I may add, we 
 may know with certainty the Scriptures as a re- 
 velation given to us by God in relation to this end of 
 our being. 
 
 In the light in which this is known the questions to 
 which I refer are implicitly answered, though they 
 have never been raised. Therefore when raised they 
 will in this light be at once answered, and whatever 
 show of reason has caused them to be entertained as 
 open questions will be fairly dealt w r ith, and whatever 
 departure from right reason or going out of the 
 legitimate ground of human thought there has been 
 connected with the raising of them will be made 
 manifest. But while harmless dealt with in this light, 
 they become fraught with evil when they are really 
 
206 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 accepted as previous questions, and when our accept- 
 ance of the faith, of which I am now speaking as 
 light, is suspended on our ability to respond to them 
 in the first instance, and on some ground which does 
 not assume what in this light we are accepting. 
 
 Let us here see that to suspend the faith that the end 
 of our being is to glorify God and enjoy Him, on the 
 issue of any metaphysical or scientific reasoning, such 
 as I have referred to, is not merely to suspend it ; 
 it is actually to give it up altogether. The pur- 
 pose of God that we should glorify and enjoy Him 
 implies that God has so constituted us that we may 
 know Him and enjoy Him apart from all metaphy- 
 sical questions or capacity of considering them. 
 In the light of eternal life we no more doubt that it is 
 the light of life than in the consciousness of our 
 temporal life we doubt its reality. When these so- 
 called previous questions are urged on our attention 
 we cannot, without being false to our own conscious- 
 ness, accept them as such. 
 
 3 
 To one who has long lived practically in the faith that 
 the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him, 
 and who, in seeking to attain to this great end of his 
 being, has assumed the Bible as a Divine revelation 
 given to him for his guidance and help, the questions 
 to which I am referring come simply as a trial of his 
 faith. However at first taken on trust from his 
 

 FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 207 
 
 parents and teachers it has long ceased to be so held. 
 He seems to himself in his acting on it to have proved 
 it. But his proving of it has never, strictly speaking, 
 been the mere testing of an hypothesis. It has from 
 the first dawn of what he would now dignify with the 
 name of faith been the " obedience of faith," that is, 
 a submission to the authority of light. The witness 
 of light has always accompanied what was true in the 
 measure in w r hich he discerned its truth. What ex- 
 perience added in the spiritual results of his obedience 
 of faith was an additional confirmation of that faith, 
 sealing it — as tasting that God is good goes beyond 
 seeing that God is good. For there are these two 
 steps : — God's testimony that He has given to us 
 Eternal Life, and the testimony that this is so which 
 he that believeth hath in himself in the consciousness 
 of the Eternal Life quickened in him in his believing. 
 And I say this consciousness is not to be regarded as 
 an hypothesis tested by experience, or an assent of 
 the mind on external authority merely. The Divine 
 witness to our spirits, as that which the words contain 
 " God has given to us Eternal Life," dawns on us, and 
 however connected in its coming to us with the external 
 testimony of man or book, is itself quite distinct from 
 that outward teaching which is the occasion of draw- 
 ing our attention to it ; and the inherent authority of 
 the Divine light is at once the real and ultimate 
 ground of faith and its justification. To this Divine 
 authority in truth it is that our Lord directs attention 
 
2o8 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 when He says, " If I speak the truth why do ye not 
 believe Me?" This Divine authority being responded 
 to with the obedience of faith which is due to it, then 
 follows that experience of the truth believed which no 
 mere historical or traditional acceptance of it as a 
 dogma can bring — from the very nature of things it 
 cannot : an experience which, in the language of 
 Scripture, constitutes the believer a living proof of the 
 truth of what he believes ; a proof in the first 'place 
 only to himself, and strictly speaking to himself only 
 absolute, but yet what makes him an important 
 witness in the matter to others, — a living voice to them, 
 calling upon them to taste and see that God is good. 
 The man to whom the path of life is known as to one 
 who has long walked in it, with the certainty that 
 it is no dream in which he lives, but the highest and 
 most assured reality, is being ever more and more 
 impressed by the cumulative evidence of the present 
 ever adding itself to the sum of the past, — is by his 
 own need ever called to the analysis which I now 
 make, or to say to himself, " Putting all this experience 
 aside, what antecedent to experience was there to 
 justify my entrance on the path in which I have been 
 having this experience ? " 
 
 But such a retrospect as I am now attempting — 
 and with the special desire to make it profitable to 
 those now standing where I stood half a century ago — 
 has naturally engaged me in this analysis, that I may 
 fix the attention on what there is antecedent to the 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 209 
 
 experience of the Divine life, to commend that life 
 and justify the choice of it, — what there is antecedent 
 to the proved effects of believing to justify faith. 
 
 More especially, and seeking to be as elemental as 
 I can, what is there to justify the faith that the end of 
 our being is to glorify God and enjoy Him, and that 
 in relation to this end a Divine revelation is given to 
 us ? In other words, what light has this conception 
 of the end of our being in itself? and, assuming 
 that light to be felt to be light, what is there in 
 Revelation when taken to that light to justify the 
 faith of the relation to that light in which Revelation 
 claims to stand ? 
 
 Approaching these questions with the utmost 
 
 singleness of eye to which 1 can attain, — and all 
 
 extrinsic considerations of authority without or 
 
 experience within apart — I seem to myself to 
 
 know surely that there is self-commending light in 
 
 the conception that the end of my being is to glorify 
 
 and enjoy God ; and that taken to this light the 
 
 Scriptures more surely connect themselves with it, 
 
 and in proportion as they are understood vindicate 
 
 their claim to be subservient to it. If this is really 
 
 so, then the seeing that it is so is here the right 
 
 starting-point ; and it w r as rightly the starting-point of 
 
 my ministry, and is the point from which I most 
 
 desire others to start, — whether as teachers, or, what 
 
 is first, as thinkers to whom the problem of the 
 
 end of our existence has all the interest of existence. 
 
 o 
 
210 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Are there then no prior questions ? and how are 
 what claim to be prior questions to be dealt with ? 
 If the conception that the end of our being is to 
 glorify and enjoy God have that light in itself which 
 I recognise it as having, there can be no prior 
 question, that is to say, no question to be taken up 
 before we can accept that light as light. I do not 
 say that the light there is in this conception of the 
 end of our being shines to us as the sun at noon-day, 
 forcing acceptance on all. Nor that, while it shines 
 on all, all who turn to it with open eye see it alike 
 clearly ; nor that any man, however brightly it shines 
 to himself, can insist on another's seeing it as he does, 
 or sit righteously in judgment on the measure of 
 blameworthiness inferred in not so seeing it, or even 
 in not consciously seeing it at all as anything other 
 and higher than mere human thought. What I say 
 is, that this light is shining for and in us all, and that, 
 being considered with the quiet, calm attention which 
 the bare statement of what it claims to be demands, 
 it reveals itself as light — it may be slowly, but with 
 steadily-increasing clearness. 
 
 If I have this faith about this light, why am I 
 anxious to resist all claim of other questions to be 
 prior questions ? Why do I practically claim the 
 priority for this question, and in truth desire that 
 the other questions, which it is sought to put before 
 it, should be left unconsidered until it is first met and 
 answered by its own light ? 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 2 T i 
 
 If this conception be the true conception it must 
 have its light in itself, and that a light shining for all. 
 Am I intended to glorify and enjoy God ? Then this 
 end of my being must be intimated to me by God in 
 such a way as makes it understandable to me as a 
 man, — be in fact a light lighting every man that 
 cometh into the world. The question — Is this indeed 
 the end of my being, or only some fond dream of fancy 
 wandering into the region of the unknown ? — cannot 
 wait for its answer like previous questions, such ques- 
 tions as metaphysics or science raise, — raise, but seem 
 unable to solve, or at least so to solve as that the solu- 
 tion given is intelligible to all, commends itself to all, 
 and enables men to move forward in the path of 
 existence with freedom in its light. Believing that 
 the true conception of the end of our being has its 
 light in itself, and being really grasped is surely 
 accepted, I can have no fear of questions metaphysical 
 or scientific, as if legitimately pursued according to 
 the true laws which hold in either region, they can 
 ever lead to reasonable doubt as to the trustworthi- 
 ness of what I recognise as light in the higher region 
 in which we now are. Truth in all regions must be 
 consistent with itself. And therefore no legitimate 
 conclusion of Metaphysics or Science can contradict 
 the Divine intimation to man of the Divine will for 
 man. But am I true to the constitution of my being 
 if I am tempted to turn away from all by which, and 
 in which, God speaks to me of His will for me, — 
 
212 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 speaks to me as a man because concerning what He 
 wills me to be as a man; therefore speaks what all 
 may hear and understand, — to settle first such so- 
 called previous questions as few can ever understand 
 when stated, — few can ever seem to themselves to 
 solve. 
 
 To say that this is right and due is really to say 
 that God has not intended man to glorify and enjoy 
 Him, and the great question which man would thus 
 suspend on previous questions would by the permis- 
 sion of such suspense be really answered in the nega- 
 tive, and have in truth no place at all. 
 
 This seems very clear to me. If a man is entitled 
 to say, " Before you believe that the end of your being 
 is to glorify God and to enjoy Him, you must first 
 solve such and such metaphysical and scientific ques- 
 tions," I must answer, If I must first solve these 
 questions, then it cannot be that the end of my being 
 is to glorify and enjoy Him. Such a necessity is in- 
 compatible with such an end. This, I say, seems- to 
 me very clear. But what may be clear enough, even 
 if this is not clearly seen, is that if God, intending 
 that we should glorify and enjoy Him, has really 
 never left Himself without a witness — many wit- 
 nesses addressing themselves to all men ; if he has 
 appointed the bounds of our habitation that we should 
 seek after Him; if the invisible things of God are 
 clearly seen ; if all things - in fact really witness for 
 God : — then to turn from all these teachers, and from 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 all the divine forms of answer to the heart which says, 
 " I am a stranger on the earth, hide not Thy command- 
 ments from me," and to ask an answer from Meta- 
 physics and Science, is the sure path to unbelief, 
 because it is putting from us the legitimate grounds 
 of faith. 
 
 4- 
 
 Whatever right interest Metaphysics or Science 
 have for us will remain to them though we refuse to 
 contemplate them as the proper and ultimate court of 
 appeal in religion, or to submit to the suspension of 
 our faith as to our God and our relation to Him and 
 His purpose for us on the determination of questions 
 of Metaphysics or Science. Such a demand would 
 find its only parallel in a demand to suspend our 
 faith as to our own and each other's personality, or as 
 to the existence of the external w r orld, on the question- 
 ings of Metaphysics. 
 
 Therefore I conclude as to the abiding right to 
 start from that faith as to the great end of man's 
 being from which I started in the path of teaching 
 fifty years ago. 
 
 As to the further faith concerning the gift of 
 Revelation and the " previous questions " here raised 
 by Historical Criticism or by Psychology, the true faith 
 here also is to me independent of such questions, and 
 whatever attention they may rightly claim is not 
 
214 
 
 XEMIXISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 due to the fundamental interest belonging to previous 
 questions. 
 
 Surely the right issue here is this : — I read the 
 Bible and I accept it as teaching me to glorify God 
 and enjoy Him. Am I justified in doing so ? or do I 
 deceive myself in recognising this Divine power as in 
 it ? or can I know certainly that the Bible is teach- 
 ing me to glorify God and enjoy Him ? And as to 
 this I say that we know in point of fact that the 
 deepest convictions as to this claim of the Scriptures 
 on man's faith — the most living certainty — has always 
 been quite independent of historical criticism and of 
 psychology. 
 
 The psychological question of the possibility of 
 God's so speaking to men by men as that the result 
 will be pure light given and received, — the limits of 
 humanity in speakers and in hearers being had re- 
 spect to by the Divine Wisdom, — this possibility, 
 however it has been questioned by psychology, can be 
 no question to the man in whose experience the 
 possibility is a realised fact; and it is so in the case of 
 every man who is consciously led by the Scriptures in 
 a path of self-evidencing light. And then, as to 
 Historical Criticism, if God in the Scriptures so speaks 
 by men to me, a man, that the conviction that He does 
 so is warranted by my conscious experience, then I 
 have a certainty that what I am receiving is of God, 
 and that the response of faith to it is due from me 
 which is independent of the actual history of what I 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 215 
 
 read, and is what I neither dare to suspend, nor — 
 without doing violence to my own being — can sus- 
 pend on the issues raised by historical criticism. 
 
 But it may be asked, " Is not this independence 
 of historical criticism at all events individual and 
 exceptional, even if it be no delusion, or mere 
 self-confidence and a trust in one's own judgment; 
 and has not the accepted process of teaching been 
 the commencing with historical faith ? and has not 
 historical criticism come into disfavour only since 
 it has begun to yield results adverse to accepted 
 opinions ? " I know, and do not forget, that the 
 great repulsion felt to historical criticism by so 
 many is repulsion to the fruits it seems to be 
 bearing, while I also know that such indepen- 
 dence of it as I now speak of is exceptional, and 
 that those who are most offended by its alleged 
 results, are more in the way of endeavouring to meet 
 it on its own ground, and seek to correct its assumed 
 erroneous conclusions by a more perfect form of 
 itself. I am far indeed from doubting that the evil 
 may be so dealt with successfully, but I feel it every 
 way important not to take this course in dealing 
 w T ith previous questions. The claim of the Bible to 
 be what we accept it as being must be independent of 
 historical criticism, or it does not exist at all. Its 
 claim is addressed to all, and must rest on ground 
 appreciable by all. That ground may remain uncon- 
 sidered, and an acceptance on traditionary grounds 
 
2 1 6 KEMIA ISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 may be given so unquestioning that the need of 
 weighing the true ground is never felt ; and when it 
 is asserted that our people accept the Bible as 
 Mahommedans the Koran, or Hindoos the Vedas, that 
 which is asserted is painfully true. 
 
 But have our people no other or higher grounds 
 accessible to them ? Is not, indeed, other and higher 
 ground forced on them by the Bible itself? "What 
 is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord ? Is not my 
 word like as a fire, and like a hammer that breaketh 
 the rock in pieces ? " If men accept the Scriptures 
 because of their traditional prestige, which is common 
 to them and the Koran and the Vedas, and not because 
 their response in conscience justifies their claims to 
 be from God, this is not as it should be. And if the 
 difficulties of historical criticism as applied to our 
 sacred books, and the manifest superficiality and 
 unwarranted character of a mere traditional faith, are 
 at present so urged as to shake men's seeming faith 
 and suggest painful misgiving — often with the result 
 either of giving up Christianity or coming to keep 
 hold of it only as witnessed to by an Infallible Church 
 which puts its seal to the Scriptures and to its own 
 tradition together — this sad condition of things will 
 not be without its compensating good if men are led, 
 as in the sight of God, to consider, with what spiritual 
 capacity they have, what this Book which claims to 
 be a revelation from God has, in what it is and what 
 it teaches, apart from historical criticism, as well as 
 
faith a xd nounr. 
 
 2 17 
 
 apart from mere tradition, to justify its claim, — to justify 
 a response on our part to that claim. 
 
 And is not this in reality just to begin at the point 
 where the most successful historical criticism, did we 
 attain to it, would place us ? Suppose all historical 
 difficulties most satisfactorily disposed of ; suppose 
 that on grounds of pure criticism I had come to 
 receive the Gospel with that unquestioning certainty 
 as to all I read with which our children read them, 
 justified to my own mind on pure historical evidence 
 in accepting the words of Jesus as if I heard them 
 from His own lips — His deeds as if I saw them — the 
 Epistles of Apostles as if I were hearing them read in 
 the Churches to which they were originally written — 
 (and surely the most successful critic could do no 
 more for me) — would not the claim of the Bible on 
 my acceptance still ultimately be what it is in itself? 
 I was only brought to stand where they stood who 
 heard and saw what I read, and He, whose words 
 have been so successfully verified, Himself said to 
 those that heard Him, " If I speak the truth why do 
 ye not believe me ? " 
 
 Let us not then be persuaded to come down to the 
 lower ground of historical criticism for the justification 
 of our acceptance of the Bible, seeing that we have 
 higher grounds to stand on, — and that the only sure 
 ground after all. 
 
 The internal evidence of Christianity must be the 
 ultimate ground for faith. Miracles, apart from the 
 
21 8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 light in that teaching to which they awakened atten- 
 tion, and of which they were an accompaniment in 
 harmony with its nature, would not be foundation 
 enough, — no, not even a resurrection from the dead, 
 apart from that life to which it has been the Father's 
 seal. " God raised Christ from the dead, and gave 
 Him glory that our faith and hope might be in God." 
 But had not His faith and hope been in God — had 
 not His words in death, " Father, into Thy hands I 
 commend My spirit," been the voice and utterance of 
 all His life, how could the mere fact of His resurrec- 
 tion from the dead make us wise unto salvation, or 
 have the central and foundation-place which it has in . 
 that volume which has been given to teach us how we 
 are to glorify and enjoy God ? 
 
 Apart from what Jesus was and spoke and did, His 
 resurrection from the dead would be no light of life to 
 man. Assuming such a fact apart from such a his- 
 tory of it and all the inspired interpretation of it, it 
 would have been at most but an inexplicable mystery, 
 a perplexing addition to the natural history of 
 man, — believed, or not believed, of no practical im- 
 portance. 
 
 I therefore begin at the point where the round of 
 historical criticism, however confirmatory of the simple 
 faith of childhood, would place me ; and that a point 
 which I dare not refuse to stand on, whatever the 
 seeming " destructive" action of historical criticism 
 may be. Born in this land I am placed face to face 
 
FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 219 
 
 with the Bible, and cannot refuse its high claims, or 
 refuse to weigh them but at my peril. And I cannot 
 say that I cannot weigh its claims. In the gift of 
 conscience my God has put the needed — the only 
 needed — scales into my hands. 
 
II. 
 
 RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE practical aspect of the relation of a pastor to 
 his people is what is most present to their minds, 
 as well as to his, in the formation of that relation. 
 He is given to them to be a help to them in meeting 
 aright the highest practical demand which life makes 
 on them— viz., to be what they ought to be in their 
 relation to God, and in all human relations also, as 
 seen in the light of God, — forms of obedience to that 
 second commandment of love to our neighbour which 
 is as corollary to that first commandment of love to 
 God. 
 
 No doubt in regard to this highest practical view of 
 life the value of a pastor is only that of a supple- 
 ment to the higher aids for meeting His will concern- 
 ing them which God has granted to the people; — and 
 a supplement, we believe, by no means essential, or so 
 related to the higher aids as that the right use of 
 these requires his intervention as their interpreter. 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 221 
 
 Reason and conscience within, the outward wit- 
 nesses also external to man himself without which 
 God has never left Himself, and finally that Divine 
 revelation which is addressed to reason and to con- 
 science, and seals the testimony of nature and provi- 
 dence while it goes beyond them ; — these all belong 
 to the people, and are theirs apart from, and inde- 
 pendent of, their pastor. They could be used without 
 him, — nay, must be used in receiving him, for from 
 these he receives honour, not they from him. If a 
 true pastor, and in the measure in which he is a true 
 pastor, they will be his witnesses; while in relation to 
 them he is only as one listening to Divine voices 
 along with his people, and as one to whom they are 
 more familiar, helping them to understand, and there- 
 fore, in so far as he is successful in this, helping them 
 to independent conviction. 
 
 Nevertheless, the pastor's relation to that direct 
 light which alone has authority is such as rightly 
 invests him with, in some sense, a sacred interest in 
 the eyes of his people, of the special and delicate 
 character of which, indeed, it behoves them and 
 him to be tender lest its "fine edge warp;" for the 
 transformation of a help towards itndcrstanding into 
 an autlwritative interpreter is but too easy, and the 
 indolence of mind which prefers to bow to authority 
 rather than think is at least as great a snare to the 
 taught as the pleasantness to the flesh of " being 
 called master" is to the teacher. But as together 
 
222 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 scholars in the school of Christ, the one Master, they 
 will avoid these snares on either hand, while all true 
 obligation for help in hearing Christ's own voice will 
 be felt according to the inestimable value of such help. 
 
 But in now recalling, as the essential element in 
 the mutual interest and attraction of a pastor and a 
 people, the practical aspect of their union, a more im- 
 portant consideration still presents itself — one which 
 I desire much to commend to the special attention of 
 any of my readers in whose case their own position 
 as pastors and teachers may give a special interest to 
 these reminiscences ; — I mean the direction which is 
 given to all a minister's thoughts and labours by the 
 habitual realisation of his own calling as being to help 
 his people to meet a demand which God is making on 
 them. Their dimmer sense of this demand, which is 
 his right hold of them, he will tenderly cherish, while 
 he will seek for himself increasing realisations of that 
 demand, — knowing that the measure in which he 
 realises it and understands it will be the measure of 
 his fitness to help them. Here great simplicity is im- 
 parted to his task, great singleness to his eye, by the 
 knowledge that the demand of God which he is called 
 to study is addressed equally to himself and his 
 people. It is one and the same lesson — learning 
 what he is himself called to be, and what he is to call 
 on them to be. 
 
 Here difficulty will first be felt in the seeming dis- 
 appearance of what had been to him at first a com- 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AXD PEOPLE. 
 
 223 
 
 mon ground with his people, the ground on which 
 they had met him and welcomed him. He had come 
 to them as one who would help them to know 
 God's voice and to obey it ; they had welcomed him 
 because they desired such help, desired to know God's 
 voice and to obey it. On coming to know them more 
 nearly he finds that the same words have not always 
 the same meaning to them and to him, and that while 
 some there may be in whom their right meaning is 
 more realised than it yet is by himself, in the general 
 case the reverse holds. He could find no more fitting 
 words to express his highest conception as to that will 
 of God concerning man which alone gives meaning to 
 his own existence as a pastor and teacher, than those 
 with which his people have been familiar from their 
 childhood — I mean the answer to the opening ques- 
 tion of the General Assembly's Shorter Catechism. 
 But they are likely to be comparatively a small num- 
 ber of his flock whose habitual consciousness as to the 
 end of their own being, as seen in the light of God, 
 accords with this language ; while the greater number 
 would be found unable to give any intelligent ex- 
 position in expansion of the mere meaning of these 
 beautiful and well-chosen words. 
 
 Yet, the conclusion would be hasty and dangerous 
 that they knew nothing of the subject — that the words 
 which they repeated by rote had no meaning to them; 
 or, at least, that the assumption of their truth, and the 
 endeavour to connect them with reason and conscience, 
 
2 24 
 
 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 would have no response in them. On the contrary, 
 such an endeavour would in this land be at least as 
 hopeful as that of the Divine appeal by the mouth 
 of the prophet, " If I be a Father, where is mine 
 honour? If I be a Master, where is my service?" 
 The young pastor, — brought, in obedience to new 
 responsibilities, into nearer contact with the inner 
 life of the members of his flock than he may have 
 previously known while only a preacher — has here 
 a narrower path to tread. He could certainly commit 
 no graver mistake than to assume, either from the 
 personal acceptance of himself or from attention to 
 his preaching, that the sense of the importance and 
 obligation of religion thus manifested implied any 
 such understanding of the end of man's being, or any 
 welcome of the grace of God through which that end 
 is within their reach, as it must be the object of his 
 teaching to lead them to. Some, doubtless, there 
 may be as to whom this assumption would be justified. 
 Yea, some he may recognise as already far before 
 him in the path in which he is himself walking, and 
 in which he seeks to induce all to walk; and this may 
 be the case also where he has no discernment of it. 
 But there is nothing more apt to occur at the com- 
 mencement of a ministry than an over-estimate of the 
 value of the interest it may be awaking. 
 
 At the same time it is most needful to guard 
 against the reaction that may come when the amplest 
 admissions as to the claims of religion are found to 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 22 5 
 
 have so much less meaning than they ought to have; 
 and also to be made in so much confusion of mind 
 and darkness — often full of contradictions. To sepa- 
 rate between what, in these admissions, is a real 
 hearing of the voice of God in conscience, and what 
 is a blind effort to harmonise such hearing of God's 
 voice with misconceptions both of the love that is 
 speaking and of the way in which its demand can 
 alone be met, — this is a delicate and difficult task; 
 yet full of hope if he who attempts it is careful to 
 prove, in the keeping of his heart with all diligence, 
 the practical discrimination to which he would help 
 his people. 
 
 Much that comes back to me in this connection 
 may better receive attention in recalling later minis- 
 terial experience than that of my entrance on minis- 
 terial work. I here insist only on the importance of 
 abiding in one's proper place in relation to all the 
 elements of the direct divine teaching in every 
 attempt to teach. I mean preserving the mental 
 attitude of listening, and inviting the people to listen 
 also, as to that which, if they listen, they can hear, and 
 will hear continually more and more distinctly the 
 more they are exercised in patient, reverent listening. 
 
 If the teacher is really in any measure successful in 
 
 what respects himself here, he will be found in that 
 
 measure speaking because he hears ; and the awe of 
 
 hearing, and the confidence that comes in being 
 
 taught of God, will impress that character on his 
 
 p 
 
226 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 teaching which will give it the right authority, and no 
 more. No more, because it will be felt to be an 
 appeal to an authority, not an independent authority, 
 — an appeal which forbids any assent beyond what is 
 really consciously yielded to the authority appealed 
 to. 
 
 I cannot doubt that of this nature was the authority 
 with which our Lord Himself taught, "I can do 
 nothing of myself — as I hear I judge. My words 
 are not mine but His that sent me." "It is written in 
 the prophets they shall be all taught of God. Every 
 man therefore that hath learned of the Father cometh 
 unto me." 
 
 The pastor will promise his people that in waiting 
 on God's teaching they will grow in the discernment 
 of God's voice, if this is his own experience, — if the 
 will of God that we should glorify God and enjoy Him 
 is becoming continually more and more luminous to 
 him by the Divine light that shines in that conception 
 itself as what God is and what He has given man to 
 be — creating him in His own image — is more and 
 more realised, — if the witness without which God has 
 never left Himself, in all that from without addresses 
 our inward capability of faith, is ever becoming to him 
 more distinct and articulate. 
 
 2. 
 
 It imparts great simplicity to the task of the pastor 
 that he and his people are together the sheep of the 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 227 
 
 Lord's pasture, for whom one and the same food is 
 provided. The will of God, the bread of life, is not 
 one thing in his case and another in theirs. That 
 Divine voice in respect of which it is said " Hear, and 
 your souls shall live," is in his inward ear and in 
 theirs ; and according as he is hearing it, and under- 
 standing what it says to himself, he is hearing and 
 understanding what it says to them ; and so he is 
 qualified to fix their attention on it, and to help them 
 in distinguishing between it and the many other 
 voices asking their attention. 
 
 But not as one on whose authority they are to 
 proceed in listening to this voice rather than to other 
 voices. The authority — the right to be listened to — is 
 in the voice itself. It is knowing and feeling this that 
 he bows to it; and therefore it is in knowing and 
 feeling this that he expects them to bow to it ; thus 
 coming to recognise that inherent authority in it, which 
 he is recognising. The advantage of his position, as 
 compared with theirs, is that the hearing of this 
 voice, the weighing of what it speaks, the considera- 
 tion of all to which its teaching tends, is to him the 
 great business of his life in a special sense and in 
 special circumstances which favour his hearing and 
 understanding ; while in his so engaging he listens 
 not for himself only, but for them also. For because 
 of his relation to them, when he listens for himself he 
 listens for them also, and as one to whom it pertains 
 to realise all special hindrances to their hearing, that 
 
228 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 he may help them concerning these. Life being what 
 it is and its distractions what they are, it is not 
 difficult to see how it may profit the many that one 
 should have it as his special calling, so to listen to 
 what TGod says to all as to combine with his own 
 hearing and obeying an understanding of the position 
 of others, which shall qualify him for helping them to 
 hear and understand that they may obey. 
 
 If he hears clearly and understands, the simple 
 utterances in clear speech of what he hears will help 
 them to hear ; and all in his speaking which accords 
 with his attitude as one hearing the voice of God, and 
 not speaking of himself, or expressing his own opinion, 
 w r ill tend greatly to placing the hearers consciously 
 in the attitude of being called to discern God's voice, 
 and will bring with it the safeguard of healthy awe, and 
 the solemn sense of responsibility which is according 
 to the truth of things, — " For what is the chaff to the 
 wheat ? saith the Lord." 
 
 The pure enunciation of truth in the light of truth 
 and in living oneness with it, has a special power to 
 reach the ear for truth that is in man, even when this 
 may be all. But the knowledge of the hindrances to 
 true hearing, and of the temptations not to listen with 
 an open ear, which will come with much earnest 
 weighing of the difference between what men are and 
 what God calls them to be, will fit him who speaks 
 God's words for further much-needed help. 
 
 Of course, I describe an ideal rather than any real 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 229 
 
 religious teacher ; but it is well to contemplate the 
 true ideal, and seek in measure to realise it, and the 
 attempt will have many desirable results. A brief 
 notice of some of these is all to which my retrospect 
 leads me here. 
 
 1. This being a region of truth, with realities to be 
 known, I need scarcely say that the first obvious 
 result as to the teacher himself, and with correspond- 
 ing gain to the taught, will be his becoming more 
 at home among the realities with which he is occupied; 
 that is to say, the abiding will of God for man will be 
 more and more realised, and the self-evidencing 
 authority of light which belongs to it, be more and 
 more recognised and responded to. Then all the 
 aids to faith which God has here provided, — those 
 witnesses for what He is in relation to man by which 
 God seals His expectation from man, and without which 
 He has never left Himself, will be ever more clearly 
 understood. I mean such witness as the Apostle 
 appeals to (Acts xiv. 17, Romans i. 20), and our 
 Lord's own appeal, " Consider the lilies." He hears 
 St. Paul, he hears the Lord speaking to him, not 
 these recorded words of theirs. He feels the appeal 
 to the Divine light within. He responds to it. 
 
 2. But he must needs realise more and more what 
 obedience to the Divine Will will make him. Blessed 
 are the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart — these 
 are the meditations on the Will of God fulfilled in 
 man and the seal of the Divine authority of that will. 
 
23° 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFIECTIONS. 
 
 A corresponding meditation on the other side is what 
 we have in such words as, " The transgression of the 
 wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of 
 God before his eyes." 
 
 3. The relation to the will of God concerning man 
 of the means which God employs in order to the fulfil- 
 ment of that Divine will in man, — this he becomes 
 capable of appreciating as that Divine Will itself is 
 more and more embraced by his intelligence and his 
 faith. Doubtless the means employed shed light on 
 the end contemplated no less truly than the clear 
 apprehension of the end contemplated is the true 
 mental initiation to the understanding of the means. 
 Faith grows in dwelling on the mutual light of both ; 
 and he whose life's work it in a special sense is to 
 come into full contact with the things that are, and 
 look them in the face that he may be qualified to say 
 to himself and others seeing them, " these things are 
 so," will continually rejoice and give thanks that he is 
 knowing what is, — not speculating what may be or 
 should be. 
 
 3- 
 The habit of an immediate transition from the per- 
 ception of truth in the region of religion to the 
 practical demand which the light makes is mani- 
 festly widely apart from speculative thought. That 
 on which light falls may be turned into a subject of 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 231 
 
 abstract speculative thought, but the demand which I 
 assume to be responded to is not a call to think so 
 and so, but a call to do so and so, — in the highest 
 reference, not a call to think so and so of God, but 
 a call to feel so and so towards God. 
 
 What is being learned is of the nature of an ad- 
 dition to our knowledge, not of the facts with which 
 our attention is occupied, but of their relation to our- 
 selves, — to our hearts and minds, and what, in that they 
 are facts, .they call on us to be. 
 
 If this distinction is properly considered, its ex- 
 ceeding practical importance must be felt. It is not 
 merely that abstract speculative thoughts on the 
 great facts which underlie religious obligation may 
 deceive by passing with us for being in some sort 
 religion ; they have a direct tendency to weaken the 
 faith which accepts these facts, and this even when 
 they are intended and may seem fitted to strengthen 
 it. And we can safely engage in them only when we 
 hold our faith altogether apart from them. If re- 
 ligion have its foundation in the truth of things, and 
 its obligation be real, its obligation is alike on all 
 men ; and the facts which are at its foundation must 
 be patent to all — cognisable by all. This, as religious 
 teachers, we assume the case to be ; and in regard to 
 the highest relation — as in regard to low^er relations, — 
 our teaching assumes the existence of the relation 
 we speak of to our people — of God as their Heavenly 
 Father, of themselves as God's offspring. Just as 
 
232 
 
 REMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 when we deal with our several families, we speak to them 
 as standing in various family relations to each other, 
 and in the higher and in the lower region alike our 
 teaching as to obligations of duty proceeds on the 
 assumed reality of the relations in question. This 
 assumption, as implied in any possibility of religion, 
 is made in good faith, being seen to be justifiable in 
 absolute truth: otherwise to make it would have in 
 it something of the nature of a pious fraud. But what 
 I now notice is the effect which the realisation of it 
 will have on thought and teaching. 
 
 The immediate effect on the teaching of the pastor 
 of the desire to meet his people on the practical ground 
 on which they meet and welcome him, and to be to 
 them that help to meet the demand of conscience in 
 their relation to God is to narrow the range of 
 subjects from which to choose in his pulpit ministra- 
 tions, forbidding as unsuitable much that had an 
 interest to himself as a thinker in his course of 
 preparatory study. And it is well for his people and 
 for himself also if he submit to the limits a wise con- 
 sideration of their mental position suggests. Laboured 
 proofs of what they already believe, will, he can see, 
 be worse than superfluous — they will be distracting. If 
 he could succeed in giving this kind of interest to his 
 teaching he w r ould be at least running the risk of 
 substituting the intellectual acceptance of an argu- 
 ment for faith in the living God, a loss the greatness 
 of which he will feel if he have discerned in himself 
 
RELA TION OF PASTOR AXD PEOPLE. 
 
 233 
 
 the difference between what of such assent to logical 
 conclusion he has known and what he has known 
 of the response of sonship to the Father of his spirit, 
 saying to him, " My son, give me thine heart." How 
 soon the whole attitude of their spirits may be 
 changed for the worse by unwise occupation of their 
 thoughts with arguments and proofs of what are 
 already to them — and that rightly — spiritual axioms ! 
 No one will run this risk as to his people who as to 
 himself has come — it may be by a painful path — to dis- 
 tinguish between his religion, much or little, and the 
 laborious searchings of thought which he has known 
 in his study of theology and philosophy. Such usur- 
 pation by these of the proper interest of the Divine 
 life he cannot forget, although he may have been 
 successful in relegating them to their proper place, and 
 may in that place give them their due honour. That 
 due honour may indeed imply in him sharing with his 
 people his thoughts in both these regions of high 
 interest, when these have been duly proved by the 
 experience which is their ultimate test ; as no doubt 
 it is the light in which they are best and most safely 
 considered from the first. He who yields himself to 
 the power of the self-commending utterance of the 
 Heavenly Father's will, — who is yielding to the draw- 
 ings of the cords of love as I have said in responding 
 to the words of God, " My son, give me thine heart," — 
 who is reverently listening to that witness for God's 
 love which is addressed to him, as to all, in the shining 
 
234 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 of the sun and the falling of the rain — a testimony 
 that God's love rests on us, as our Lord speaks, — who 
 thus hears that testimony for the Father's love in 
 nature and providence to which He appeals who came 
 to revive the witnesses of the Father's love as the Son 
 who dwells in the bosom of the Father, — who in 
 the school of love advances from these beginnings 
 seeing all the elements in the great salvation 
 in the light of love — the love that has come in 
 forms which should prepare for the due welcome of 
 its fulness — the love which, in its full shining, sheds 
 light back on all its dim foreshozvings : — he who has 
 been led by his pastor in this path, or, it may be, has 
 been found by his pastor already in this path and far 
 advanced in it beyond himself, such an one will 
 be prepared to share and even aid the thoughts 
 of his pastor in any path of theologic or philo- 
 sophic thought in which the intellect, guarded by 
 the higher light of the Spirit of God, may seek these 
 highest elevations of which it is capable, intelligent 
 apprehension of the mind of God in relation to man, 
 and all the Divine counsel concerning man, so far as 
 man's present capacity reaches. True religion is the 
 pre-requisite for the healthful study of theology as a 
 philosophy, and also I feel even as a system, ever 
 pulling up speculation ; as Lord Bacon has in the 
 region of science substituted knowledge of facts for 
 the day-dreams of a former time. 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 235 
 
 4. 
 
 The question "What ought men to be? " takes in the 
 young pastor the double form, " What ought I to be ?" 
 " What ought my people to be ? " But it has one 
 answer in either form. The will of God is one as to 
 the one and the many. For the pastor to be in the 
 light of that will as to himself, is to be in it as to his 
 people. The Father of spirits whose voice is to him, 
 "My son, give me thine heart/' is in spirit saying to 
 each individual of his flock, " Give me thine heart ; " 
 for they are all His offspring, and His desire is towards 
 them all. And as the demand made — the loving 
 invitation — is one and the same to one and to all, so is 
 it direct and immediate to each — direct and immediate 
 in all that belongs to it. The voice is one known by 
 each that hears in the very hearing of it : the witnesses 
 without which God has never left Himself witness to 
 all equally, and, being listened to, have their authority 
 in themselves, their trustworthiness being self-com- 
 mending. The due response on man's part is the 
 same therefore in every case. 
 
 This is true whether we consider the faith called 
 for or the love which faith quickens. No man can 
 believe God for me, as no man can hear God for 
 his brother, or love God for his brother. It is 
 written in the prophets, " they shall be all taught 
 of God." Such directness of dealing with us indivi- 
 dually only accords with the nature of the demand, 
 
236 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 " Give me thine heart," as well as with the relation to 
 Himself which God recognises — "My son." 
 
 Therefore, faith in the pastor is identical in its 
 nature with faith in the people, the capacity of faith 
 exercised by him and by them being the same, and in 
 them the light in which it is exercised the same, — the 
 same in its inward and outward elements. If, there- 
 fore, the teacher teach successfully, he will have 
 simply helped the taught to hear themselves the one 
 Divine Teacher whom he is hearing ; and so them- 
 selves to see in a light in which he is seeing. They 
 are receiving nothing in a way of trust in him, either 
 as subjection to an authority or as confidence in his 
 greater insight. 
 
 The pastor who understands this will be necessarily 
 very jealous over himself and over his people, that he 
 and they may in their relation present a mental atti- 
 tude corresponding to it. 
 
 And as in all his keeping of his own heart and 
 mind he seeks to obey the w r ord " Call no man master," 
 so, as much as in him lies, he will seek to save his 
 people from calling him master. And this will be to 
 him matter of anxious solicitude. The temptation to 
 err here he will indeed know to be great on both sides. 
 It is not easy to say on which side it is greatest, 
 whether on the side of the people to lean, or on the 
 part of the teacher to be leant upon. They listen to 
 him as knowing so much more than themselves, and 
 in proportion as he is felt earnest, and one uttering 
 
RELATION' OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 2 37 
 
 deep convictions, they will be the more disposed to 
 accept his word. He, on his part, may welcome their 
 assent the more easily because of the depth of his own 
 convictions — this even although he may be saved from 
 the self-seeking that would be gratified by their 
 deference. 
 
 In proportion as a teacher of religion accepts — and 
 with joyful thankfulness — his place in its aspect of 
 absolute equality with the taught as far as he and 
 they come to be together children of the light, he will 
 understand the Apostle's words, " Not that we have 
 dominion over your faith, but are sharers of your joy." 
 But in this proportion, also, will he be jealous over 
 himself and his people that he should abide in his 
 own consciousness and in their thoughts in that place 
 of nothingness which the words recognise, " So, neither 
 is he that planteth anything, &c." For we know that 
 here the temptation to err is great both to pastor and 
 to people. As to him, it is not merely the temptation 
 to seek to be something, and to be leant upon to 
 which he is exposed. His consciousness of clearer 
 light and the very depth of his convictions, while this 
 rightly intensifies his earnestness, is also a temptation 
 to accept too easily their response to his words, which 
 he knows are true ; and to forget how far from seeing 
 light in God's light that response may be, however 
 honestly given. 
 
 And on the part of the people we know that though 
 
238 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 some sense of the obligation of religion be to them 
 the interest of their teacher, and though they have 
 welcomed him as seeing in him promise of help to 
 being what they ought to be ; yet their apprehension 
 of what religion truly is may be so superficial and 
 vague, and their temptation to call man master may 
 be so strong, that they may easily give their teacher a 
 wrong place, contenting themselves, as it were, to 
 know Divine things at second-hand through him. 
 And this danger may be all the more because of that 
 very depth of conviction and earnestness on the part 
 of their teacher which, while it attracts them to him, 
 inspires confidence in his being right. 
 
 The danger is on both sides. The protection must 
 chiefly be realisation of the danger on the side of the 
 teacher. If he is willing to accept a wrong place he 
 will certainly receive it. Nay, if his higher sense of 
 what religion is do not make him anxiously to watch 
 against this, it will be so. This anxiety in him is his 
 safety and theirs. 
 
 The thought ever present with him that his 
 people are to share his light — what is to him light of 
 life — will make the pastor fear lest, while he himself 
 is calling no man master, his people may be calling 
 him master. That thought will in many ways, besides 
 the natural working of this fear, influence his teaching, 
 — I mean both his choice of subjects and his way of 
 illustrating them, — an influence the more important 
 because fitted to counteract certain unhealthful in- 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 239 
 
 fluences incident to his college training and his 
 theological reading, however much he may really have 
 been benefited by both, — and in some respects more 
 fitted for his work because of them. 
 
 5. 
 To see the importance of that independent attitude 
 in relation to himself which the pastor will wish his 
 people to maintain, we must consider the difference 
 between his work and that of a lecturer commending 
 a system of thought. Even in that case, the lecturer 
 will measure his own success by the reality of inde- 
 pendent perception of the truth of his views which, by 
 his illustration of them, has been reached by his 
 hearers. But the endeavour to bring his people into 
 the light of life is something very different from shar- 
 ing with them an intellectual conviction, or com- 
 mending to them the grounds on which it is held. 
 The Divine life, into the fellowship of which he would 
 bring them, he is living in the exercise of his spiritual 
 nature, and of his capacity of knowing God — the 
 Father of his spirit — and having communion with Him 
 in the life of sonship ; and having this as his aim, the 
 imparting new, and even true views — however inde- 
 pendently held — might leave his teaching still a 
 failure. His teaching is about the facts of existence 
 in its spiritual aspect. That is successful when it 
 brings men to know these facts as facts ; and so places 
 
240 KEMIXISCEXCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 them under their practical power that they press with 
 their proper pressure on the will, leaving room only 
 for the reflection, u Seeing that these things are so 
 what manner of persons ought we to be ? " Here 
 heart and mind are possessed with " these things ; " 
 and the independence of himself to which the teacher 
 has brought the taught consists in this that he has 
 placed and left him alone with God, seeing in the 
 light of God, and in that degree knowing himself and 
 what he is called to be. When this is the result 
 accomplished there is no longer any room for such 
 wrong feeling, as has been referred to, to enter into 
 the relation of pastor and people. 
 
 There is, in truth, no demand for faith, which the 
 pastor has to enforce, which the people are not pre- 
 pared to concede, and his appeals will be to an 
 authority which they will not question — reason and 
 conscience, and those eternal witnesses, creation and 
 providence — or the Bible. 
 
 And yet, entering on his appointed task with the 
 advantage of all this common ground, the first effect 
 of letting the light of the true ideal of Christianity 
 fall on his work is likely to be discouraging. It needs 
 not that this light be bright or strong. If it only be 
 true, however dim, it will reveal a superficiality and 
 inadequacy in all that at first thought is so full of pro- 
 mise, which will at least be very trying to his faith and 
 hope. He may even be tempted to feel that the mind 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 241 
 
 of the school-boy repeating by rote that man's chief end 
 is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever, is typical 
 of the general acknowledgment of religious truth 
 which seemed present in that acceptance of himself 
 as a religious teacher, the warm cordiality of which 
 he had so prized. 
 
 But this would be a temptation. That reception 
 did not mean all that it might seem to mean, but it 
 was not therefore meaningless, or without a meaning 
 for which to be thankful. To take for granted, be- 
 cause of the value which seemed to be attached to 
 religion, that the true nature of religion was under- 
 stood; or that, because the people would recognise 
 the authority of appeals to the voices inward and 
 from without by which God makes Himself known, 
 and commends His authority and His love, they 
 therefore knew these Divine voices, and were respond- 
 ing to them with the obedience of faith : — to take all 
 this for granted would doubtless be a great error; but 
 to conclude from the meagreness of meaning in men's 
 honest profession that they had no meaning of any 
 value at all would also be an error. Whatever of 
 superficiality, of vagueness, even of misconception, 
 there may be, there is also something of real value 
 and of foundation on which to build. However much 
 may seem a mere traditional belief, having no spiritual 
 substance, the sense of religious obligation has yet a 
 living root. 
 
 Comparing what is with what ought to be, one may 
 
242 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 be tempted to feel as if the attempt to raise men from 
 this lower level to that higher level were altogether 
 hopeless. These considerations w r ill save from this 
 temptation. The pastor teaches that what God is 
 saying to himself, inwardly and from without, He is 
 saying to all. This he knows, in knowing that it is 
 God's voice to which his own heart responds. If God 
 is not saying it to all He is not saying it to him. The 
 other consideration is that he discerns indications that 
 God is speaking to them even in what shows that 
 they are not understanding Him. 
 
 The various circumstances of individuals, which in 
 the sight of God qualify responsibility, are hid from 
 the teacher. Nor would it be desirable that he should 
 be able to estimate them. He is not a taskmaster. 
 It is enough for him that he knows the faith to which 
 they are called, and the capacity of faith with which 
 they are endowed, and the corresponding grounds of 
 faith furnished to them. That capacity it is his 
 simple part to address, and those grounds it is his 
 part to illustrate. His hope in working is that the 
 spiritual capacity which he addresses will be quickened 
 into consciousness under his appeals to it, and the 
 ground of faith be seen to be such, according as he 
 succeeds in placing them in their true light. 
 
 Thus entering aright on his ministry, seeking the 
 right end by the right means, and keeping that end 
 steadily before him, even the smallest grain of the 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 243 
 
 right interest in his teaching will be turned to account, 
 will connect itself profitably with his teaching, and 
 with the power of light will gradually be freed from 
 what is merely traditional in the sense of religious 
 obligation, and all that fear of God which is only 
 obedience to the customs and the counsels of men. 
 
 6. 
 
 After the realisation of the high practical aspect of 
 the pastoral relation, as underlying its interest to the 
 flock and to himself, the next consideration is a right 
 conception of the help to be what they ought to be 
 which is given to a people in the gift of a pastor. 
 
 The young entrant on the ministry is called to ask 
 himself, How are my ministrations to be connected 
 with the accomplishment of the will of God in my 
 people ? He knows that God, who has never left 
 Himself without a witness, is not silent to them either 
 as to their relation to Him — that they are his off- 
 spring, — or as to His Divine feeling. Both the out- 
 going of His heart towards them and the response 
 due from them, God is Himself intimating to them, 
 in all that within them by which He is saying to each 
 man, "My son, give me thine heart.' , And what God 
 witnesses thus to man inwardly He witnesses to them 
 also outwardly, giving them rain from heaven and 
 fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and 
 gladness ; for they are reasonably expected to " con- 
 nect God without them with God within them," and 
 
244 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 to know their Father in Heaven as making His sun 
 to rise on the evil and on the good. 
 
 By this light they are encompassed, and it is light 
 not only as to their relation to God, but also as to their 
 relation to each other, as it springs out of their rela- 
 tion to God and in that light alone is rightly under- 
 stood, — "Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, that ye may be the children of your Father which 
 is in Heaven," — a light which is one with that which 
 shines for us in the relation of the second command- 
 ment to the first. 
 
 Further, what God speaks to them thus within is 
 what without they listen to with the Bible in their 
 hands, which repeats and seals this Divine teaching, 
 and sheds on the love of God to man and what that 
 love chooses only for man, as these are revealed in the 
 manner of man's being and in the circumstances by 
 which he is encompassed, the full and perfect light 
 of the Gospel in which the Son who dwells in the 
 bosom of the Father reveals the Father, — that full 
 and perfect revelation also, as well as that which was 
 its dawn and in which it was as in germ, being ac- 
 companied by that present dealing of the living 
 God with man's spirit which accompanies all re- 
 velation of God, and makes it that Divine voice, 
 which he that hath ears to hear is called to hear, 
 being the ultimate ground of man's obligation 
 to be taught of God. This Divine provision for their 
 being what God wills them to be his people enjoy 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 2 45 
 
 altogether independently of him. — What is added to 
 this in the gift of a pastor ? How is he supplemental 
 to all this light of life ? 
 
 This being rightly answered the pastor knows his 
 right place, and may be expected to take it. 
 
 In one view, the place thus known is seen to be so 
 subordinate as to be as nothing. That men are to be 
 all taught of God may seem to make no account of 
 the human teacher — " Paul may plant, Apollos may 
 water, but God giveth the increase." 
 
 These words have a deeper sense in relation to the 
 light of life than what would belong to them if we 
 would express by them God's part and man's part in 
 lower regions of teaching; while even in such regions 
 a true recognition of God will be analogous to that 
 which the Apostle expresses; and the analogy is in- 
 structive. The pastor who accepts and understands 
 his true subordination is thinking of himself and of 
 his flock as under one Divine teaching, which is direct 
 alike to them and to him, and to which it is his part to 
 direct their attention, helping them to understand by 
 the utterances of his own understanding of it. 
 
 If the pastor helps his flock really, he is bringing 
 them to share in his light — such a reality of sharing 
 in light as makes them conscious of being in light as 
 independent of him as his is of them. 
 
 That God should invite men to such a personal 
 nearness to Himself as the consciousness of being 
 taught of God, and — as to what we believe and why 
 
2+6 REMINISCENCES AXD REFLECTIOXS. 
 
 we believe — throws nothing between us and the living 
 God Himself, may seem almost inconsistent with any 
 such thing as human teaching at all. But this in 
 this highest region is, as I have said, analogous to the 
 Divine order in lower regions. We are familiar in 
 these with such a participation in the light of the 
 teacher by the taught as makes their hold of what 
 they learn as independent of him as his hold of it is 
 of them. But the region most akin in this view, as 
 in dignity and importance also, to the region of 
 religious teaching, is the region of moral teaching. 
 No moral teacher can feel that he has succeeded in 
 teaching so long as moral precepts are accepted from 
 him on his authority, and are not yet seen by their 
 own inherent light. No father can feel that he has 
 taught his son to be true, so long as he speaks the 
 truth only because his father has bade him do so. 
 Yet the love of truth for its own sake, quickened in 
 the son, gladdens the truthful fathers heart not less, 
 but more — infinitely more — than any rigid observance 
 of truth in deference to his authority. Indeed, such 
 deference will be painful, not pleasant, if it occupies 
 the place which belongs rightfully to the higher 
 motive. 
 
 The place of the pastor in his relation to that 
 Divine teaching to which his is thus subordinate, has 
 many attractions when rightly conceived of. It is one 
 of freedom from a kind of responsibility under which 
 misconception here may bring one. If the taught 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 247 
 
 were ultimately dependent on the authority of the 
 teacher, the care of souls, great weight as it is, would 
 be still heavier. 
 
 Rising to the higher level of religion, parental 
 teaching has still the same character, seeking to bring 
 the taught into the fellowship of light. No parent who 
 is himself alive to God through faith in Christ can rest 
 satisfied with the simple reception by his children of 
 Divine truth as he knows it and presents it to them. 
 
 If he speaks to them of God as he himself knows 
 Him, it is that they may come themselves to know 
 Him as he knows Him. The value to himself of 
 what he knows of God is the life in God's favour to 
 which it has raised him. His religious teaching of 
 his children contemplates nothing short of their par- 
 ticipation in this same Divine life. If his labour of 
 love in this is successful, the elements of that life in 
 them will be just what they are in him. There will 
 be the same disclosures of Divine teaching, the same 
 inward hearing of the voice of God saying, " Give me 
 thine heart," the same apprehension of the love in 
 God which makes this demand reasonable; or rather, 
 the same hearing of the demand as made by love for 
 what love alone can value — all the apprehension of 
 the Father's heart, all the response of sonship, to 
 which, if to any human consciousness, belongs the 
 character of light — Divine light — self-evidencing light 
 — light known as light apart from all reverence for the 
 human teacher. 
 
248 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Many are the practical results of importance which 
 will follow when the direct relation with God into 
 which religious teaching proposes to introduce the 
 taught, and its personal character as being com- 
 munion of man with God, are understood; and when it 
 is rightly distinguished from all holding of opinions 
 about God. The thought will often suggest itself, — 
 How, if the result is such a being alone with God as 
 this, and if the individual is thus to know himself 
 taught of God and believing God directly, how is 
 such a place given to the human teacher, and why 
 does God use man to teach man when we must be all 
 taught of God ? As Christ says, " No man cometh 
 unto me except the Father draw him." This is a 
 part of that constitution of things in which our mem- 
 bership one with another gives a character to the 
 dealings of God with us who are individually His 
 offspring, for which we should not be prepared apart 
 from this membership, and considering only God and 
 the individual man. 
 
 If the system of things in which we are embraced 
 be contemplated by us only as a network of fixed 
 laws, which we are capable of so knowing as to 
 turn them to account by conforming to them; and 
 if no mind interested in us — no Father of our 
 spirits — be known as ordering all these things, 
 then we will set ourselves to the work of turning 
 things to the best account, according to the capabili- 
 ties with which we find ourselves endowed; taking 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 249 
 
 what is within our reach of all that we feel attractive, 
 not asking why anything that seems good should be 
 beyond our reach. But the case is altogether changed 
 when we see all things in their relation to God, and 
 know ourselves as His offspring, and ascribe to Him 
 a Father's heart in relation to ourselves. In this faith 
 we can believe the Apostle saying, " God appoints 
 the bounds of our habitation," ordering all our cir- 
 cumstances that we may seek after Him : we can 
 believe his Master saying, " The hairs of your head 
 are all numbered." But such faith is tried and sub- 
 mitted to a severe strain when we begin to connect 
 all that comes to us from God with love in God to us 
 as present in it all. And this which we are now con- 
 sidering — the place of man between his brother man 
 and God, in connection with the supreme desire of 
 the heart of God in relation to us, and in subordina- 
 tion to that teaching of God Himself by which we 
 come to know Him and have His will fulfilled in us 
 — is an aspect of humanity which we can contemplate 
 peacefully and confidingly only in the light of God 
 given to us for this end. 
 
 I do not mean that the light granted, even when 
 we are most advanced in strength of vision, leaves 
 nothing to be explained (for now we see through 
 a glass darkly), but I know that without under- 
 standing all the meaning and all the results in Eter- 
 nity of that human membership which thus affects 
 our experience of Divine dealing as we are individu- 
 
25° 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 ally related to God, we can come to see manifold 
 wisdom in this Divine constitution of God's human 
 family. I here only ask attention to the fact that in 
 so many other forms in lower regions the difficulty 
 occurs of harmonising the Divine interest in the in- 
 dividual with the dependence of that individual on 
 others, in respect of what God may be believed to 
 will for him. I may speak of the very beginning of 
 the course of each individual life — the dependence of 
 the babe on its mother. Is this a child of the Most 
 High that we see entrusted, as to its physical well- 
 being, to human care that may prove, and alas! so 
 often does prove unequal to the trust, if not un- 
 worthy of it ? Not to raise questions which affect 
 physical life only, and its circumstances and its con- 
 tinuance — as to which we cannot say what is absolutely 
 good — we cannot look at desirable conditions, and say 
 that while these seem the portion of the few, all are 
 receiving what, in this view, is best for them; nor can 
 we, as to continuance of life, see death taking the 
 individual offspring of God away at all ages from a 
 first breath, or before it, to extreme old age, and say 
 that each and all have of life what, according to any 
 light we have, is seen to be in itself best. But, rising 
 higher, and to the moral region, we see what is 
 analogous to this difficulty in the higher region of 
 religion. God wills every man to be true, to be 
 righteous, to be loving, and the man who -is true, 
 righteous, loving, knows that to be such is good 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 251 
 
 — absolutely good ; nor, if he refers this his state to 
 God, does he see in it other than what is a fulfilment 
 of the will of God in him; nor will he regard the 
 light in which he so judges as other than Divine ; — 
 and yet he sees multitudes, as to whom such a moral 
 state is equally desirable not in it. 
 
 The higher we rise the difficulty increases. The 
 more our individual preciousness in the sight of God 
 is apprehended, the more is the mystery deepened of 
 our dependence one on another, as to the fulfilment 
 in the individual of the purpose of his Father's love. 
 
 Yet there is here only a trial of faith ; not a reason 
 for unbelief. The light in which I see that God is 
 love has in all its measures its authority in itself. It 
 is light, and the response of faith is obedience to light. 
 
 Seeing myself in my relation to God as an indi- 
 vidual man — one of God's offspring — in the highest 
 light yet shed on this relation, I am alone with God 
 in the Divine Light, as to the feelings with which God 
 is regarding me, and as to the response of love which 
 He desires from me. Nothing in the history of my 
 coming into this light affects its self-evidencing char- 
 acter as light. Such questions as " How, if this is 
 God, and this His mind towards me, and this to 
 which I have but now awakened is my relation to 
 Him, and my proper self-consciousness, how have I 
 not known this sooner ? How has this my God 
 permitted me to be hitherto in ignorance of this ? 
 How has He not forced this light upon me ? How 
 
252 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 has He at all left my receiving this so contingent on 
 outward circumstances and the teaching of other men 
 as it has been ?" — such questions, in another form, ask 
 attention and receive it; and, in God's good time, will 
 also be answered. But in the light of which I am 
 speaking, they do not — they cannot — arise as doubts, 
 or as making it questionable if that light is indeed 
 light and not a beautiful illusion. 
 
 Now, the ideal of a Christian pastor is a man in 
 this light, and whose value to his flock is that, as in it, 
 he is a witness for it whose witnessing is to help 
 others to come into it. And his self-consciousness 
 embraces the knowledge that the light is, and that 
 man can see in it, and that in directing others to this 
 light he but speaks of what is, and asks from them 
 the use of a spiritual reason with which they are en- 
 dowed. That he is in light intended for his people 
 as for himself, seeing by a vision that pertains to 
 them as to him, this it is that determines the true 
 character of his relation to them, and what manner of 
 gift he is to them, and how valuable. 
 
 The subordination of his own teaching to the Divine 
 teaching the pastor realises in proportion as he realises 
 the end of religious teaching, and this will be in the 
 measure in which he is himself a scholar in the school 
 of Christ. And this identity of what he is teaching 
 with what he is learning is an advantage to him as a 
 religious teacher which he cannot too highly prize, 
 but should seek to avail himself of to the full; an 
 
 
RELATION OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE. 
 
 253 
 
 advantage not less to the man than to the minister — 
 his care for others helping him as one keeping his 
 own heart with all diligence — his experience in so 
 keeping his own heart helping him to understand and 
 to minister to their need. The simplicity which this 
 imparts to a man's life-work — the singleness of eye 
 which it will give to all his seeing; the additional 
 welcome for his flock's sake of all accession of Divine 
 light — a blending of the joy of the purpose to impart 
 with the joy of receiving : this is to him strength for 
 his work and enlargement of heart. . . . 
 
III. 
 
 IN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSl 
 
 THESE Reminiscences belong to my early ministry 
 from September, 1825, to May, 183 1. The inter- 
 vening time, now nearly half a century, has brought 
 many changes in different regions of human interest ; 
 some of unqualified gain, others of more doubtful 
 character, welcomed or distrusted according to the 
 bias of men's several minds. 
 
 In the region of Religion the most obvious 
 change is the more widely-spread, almost universal, 
 attention now engaged by the question of man's 
 relation to God. Our first thought in recognising 
 this change is naturally that it is one for which to be 
 thankful ; and this will doubtless be -our final thought 
 also, for apathy and indifference here is certainly evil, 
 and as it is of God's mercy that a false peace should 
 be disturbed, so is our hope in Him that the result 
 may ultimately be good. 
 
 But the contemplation of this widened circle of 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 
 
 2 55 
 
 interest in the subject of religion, embracing hostile 
 feeling as well as friendly, awakens various and con- 
 flicting feelings, forbidding us to say confidently that, 
 viewed simply in itself and so far as it has gone, the 
 change is on the whole gain. This wide-spread 
 interest is at the same time in great part super- 
 ficial, — hasty in its utterances, yet also confident and 
 impatient; and this is true alike of the interest that is 
 friendly and of that which is unfriendly. 
 
 Yet under this repelling surface-aspect of things we 
 must believe in a present good as w r ell as hope for a 
 greater good in the future. The discordant din of 
 conflicting sects and systems, mutual recriminations, 
 mutual persecutions whereby Christendom is become 
 too truly Babylon, — this evil state of things is be- 
 coming not less but more as men's occupation with 
 religion increases. Yet let us not forget that within 
 the visible Church, so unlike the Bride of Christ, is 
 the invisible Church, hid from us but seen of God. 
 Nay, let us not forget how much of what is painful in 
 the aspect of the visible Church is yet due to the 
 erring zeal of men who may yet belong to the invisi- 
 ble Church because of the Tightness of their hearts 
 towards God. Our Lord says, a By this shall all men 
 know that ye are jmy disciples, if ye have love one to 
 another." Yet so darkened in our time is the glass 
 through which we see one another that the natural 
 outflow of the love of which our Lord speaks is sadly 
 hindered by the difficulties of mutual recognition. 
 
256 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTION'S. 
 
 We are not indeed therefore excused, for a genuine 
 love to all should save us from a wrong bearing 
 towards any. But the wisdom of love as practical 
 wisdom seems rarer than love itself, and we cannot 
 doubt that many a man truly seeks his brother's good 
 who errs in his dealing because he derives not his 
 practical guidance as well as his motive from Christ. 
 This thought is a permitted comfort in contemplating 
 many of the objectionable forms in which the present 
 increase of religious zeal is manifested. 
 
 As to the wider-spread interest of hostility — or 
 what wears the aspect of hostility — in regard to this 
 also, the pain which is caused by so much questioning 
 of that which is to us most sacred truth is qualified 
 by the hope that such questioning may in part belong 
 to a transition state, the transition from an unintelli- 
 gent assent to a traditional creed to a true faith. 
 
 But however we may comfort ourselves with the 
 thought of good, or even promise of good that may 
 underlie what yet is in itself evil, there is too much with- 
 in the wide circle of the occupation of thought with the 
 subject of religion which can, as to what now is, cause 
 only unmitigated pain. As we are not to do evil that 
 good may come, so neither are we to be reconciled to 
 evil, even by the hope that God will overrule it for good. 
 God Himself, who, while not causing evil, yet permits 
 it for reasons which we may hereafter see in His light, 
 however inscrutable to us now, nevertheless teaches 
 us to regard that evil as painful to Him. And how- 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 
 
 257 
 
 ever men put from them the testimony as to this of 
 holy men of old, speaking as they were moved by the 
 Holy Spirit, as the language of anthropomorphism in 
 them, the sight of moral evil is painful to us in propor- 
 tion as we ourselves partake in the Divine Holiness, — 
 and the contemplation of unbelief is painful in pro- 
 portion as we know God, and put our trust in Him. 
 
 The discordant din of conflicting sects and systems, 
 mutual recriminations, mutual persecutions, — at least, 
 to the extent of that smiting with the tongue which 
 our imperfect toleration has not yet forbidden : — these 
 are not less but more because of increased occupation 
 of men's minds with religion. For the interest felt, 
 while wide-spread, is superficial, and therefore hasty in 
 its utterances, self-confident, impatient of contradiction, 
 rash and unskilled to take the mote out of its brother's 
 eye, because the beam is still in its own eye. So the 
 confused sound that ascends even from the host of the 
 friendly painfully suggests the thought of a Babel, no 
 man understanding his brother's speech. 
 
 It is not the presence or absence of intellectual light 
 that is here in question ; it is the absence, or at least 
 feebleness, of the light of love — the sense of brother- 
 hood. No amount of error discerned in the creed of 
 another, no amount of conscious light in our own hold 
 of what we believe, can be any reason for bitterness 
 or even impatience in controversy. 
 
 We are not to stop at this repelling surface-aspect 
 
258 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 of things, or suffer it to hide from us the less obtrusive 
 good. We desire to discern the good that is present 
 and to acknowledge it thankfully. This is well, only 
 let not our wishes mislead us and tempt us hastily to 
 accept a mere show of good as good, or to be ready to 
 excuse evil because it presents itself blended with 
 good whether in individuals or in companies of men. 
 While, on the other hand, let us guard against the 
 opposite error of assuming that evil is unmixed even 
 when it predominates. 
 
 Our deepened feeling of the importance of religious 
 convictions has only increased the risk that this prin- 
 ciple, however clear and of sacred obligation, should 
 be lost sight of in controversy ; and it is lost sight of 
 even when we cannot question the actual existence of 
 brotherly love, which, were it used as a guiding light, 
 would have saved from such sins against love. 
 
 If mutual injustice and uncharitableness of feeling 
 find so much place between conflicting sects and be- 
 tween the advocates of different creeds, we must be 
 prepared to meet the same absence of right feeling in 
 controversies between the friends and the opponents 
 of religion. And it is seen on both sides : — unseemly 
 on the one side because on it men profess to contend 
 as the apostles of Divine love; unseemly on the other 
 side because on it men profess reverence for the 
 sacred anthority of Truth ; for the pure love of truth, 
 as well as the pure love of our brother men, is fair and 
 just. Unseemly, I say, yet not here, any more than 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 
 
 259 
 
 formerly, necessarily and absolutely negative of the 
 presence of the right mind in that which is wrong. 
 For as a man may love his brother man and yet lose 
 sight of what is due to love in the warmth of religious 
 controversy, so may a man have in him the pure love 
 of truth who yet is betrayed to hasty conclusions, and 
 a slight and superficial consideration of that against 
 which he contends. 
 
 These possibilities we are not to forget. But zeal 
 for religion may be without the presence of love to an 
 opponent, even in the smallest measure, — the odium 
 tlieologicum having possession of the whole man; so may 
 it be of unbelief or a reckless lawlessness of thought un- 
 restrained by any reverence for truth or dread of error. 
 But if we would be just to all parties we must realise 
 the presence of a real quest of truth, even when that 
 quest is not self-consistent, as well as of real desire to 
 benefit others, when yet that desire nullifies itself by 
 the harsh means it employs. 
 
 How, it is asked, can these men be one in love to 
 God and love to man, holding different creeds, if dif- 
 ference of creed be a thing of any importance ? . . . 
 
 2. 
 
 What offends us in religious controversy, as sin 
 against truth, no less than sin against love, is not a 
 new thing, and probably has always been in pro- 
 portion to the earnestness of such controversy. In 
 our time the apparent amount of the evil at least, if 
 
260 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 not its real amount, is greater because of that prompt 
 recourse to the press with all questions of interest 
 which has increased so much and still increases, giving 
 a voice to reach the public ear to men's hastiest 
 thoughts. We seem by our use of the press to have 
 come to think aloud in the presence of all who read, 
 and with even less care to think before we speak than 
 would be right speaking with our lips only and in the 
 retirement of our own homes. This " stimulating of 
 thought " may have some advantages — doubtless has ; 
 but its most obvious effect is to make men slow to 
 hear — quick to speak — quick to w T rath. 
 
 Nevertheless, beneath the unhealthy occupation 
 with this highest interest of humanity — man's relation 
 to God — we may believe that there is really more 
 healthy thought and feeling than would seem com- 
 patible with this evil surface, more right-heartedness 
 in the sight of God. How often is this comforting 
 faith greatly helped by most welcome discoveries as 
 to individuals, things coming to our knowledge which 
 shed a welcome light on what they really have been — 
 a light which justifies us in separating between the 
 men themselves, what was most truly they, and what 
 we had condemned in them. Such discoveries do not 
 change our estimate of the wrongness of what has 
 been wrong, while they check and rebuke that most 
 evil habit incident to an age of controversy of attack- 
 ing men in attacking error, — mistaking imputations 
 for arguments, and thinking to discredit a cause by 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 2 6 1 
 
 abuse of its advocates. Nothing can be more un- 
 worthy of our own good cause, if such it be ; yet the 
 temptation to this error is obvious. It is far more 
 easy to assume an evil in our opponent, as explaining 
 what we call his blindness to light, than to do him the 
 justice of trying to reach his standpoint to judge 
 fairly of his error, if such it be. Besides, to hold 
 an opponent unreasonable, and under the blinding 
 power of some form of self, helps us to feel secure in 
 our own position ; often a dear-bought feeling of 
 security, leaving undetected a weakness in our argu- 
 ment, a narrowness in our view, which a fair hearing 
 of the adverse argument might have revealed to us, — 
 at all events permitting an unloving feeling of triumph 
 foreign to the pure advocacy of truth. 
 
 How are reflections such as these often forced on 
 us even when the cause contended for has our sym- 
 pathy as the cause of truth ! 
 
 But even the path of charity is in such a time as 
 this one that must be trod warily. Even the desire 
 to do no injustice may mislead ; and this both in our 
 thoughts of individuals and of the truth itself. I 
 believe we are exposed to this temptation which calls 
 itself charity through lack of more Divine love — that 
 love which while we were yet sinners gave Christ to 
 die for us. For pure love needs no shutting of the 
 eyes on evil to sustain its intensity — needs, indeed, no 
 assumption of positive good, nothing beyond that 
 possibility of good which made man redeemable. 
 
262 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Again, there is a seeming charity which may mis- 
 lead as to right and wrong in their relations to truth 
 and error ; — the sight of abounding controversy and 
 the too common mutual injustice of those who are 
 engaged in it may have the effect of weakening our 
 sense of the value of truth and dimming our percep- 
 tion of its relation to righteousness. 
 
 Pope's words, — 
 
 " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right/ 7 — 
 
 express the erroneous conclusion to which we may be 
 here tempted. That he " can't be wrong whose life is 
 in the right " seems an axiom. But thus used it is a 
 sophism, assuming the unimportance of faith in re- 
 lation to righteousness which it is employed to prove. 
 If true faith — the faith of the truth — be a condition of 
 mind in harmony with the truth of things, the mind 
 of man is so far a mirror reflecting the mind of God. 
 Then faith is righteousness — righteousness in the 
 highest sense — the fountain of righteousness in all 
 lower senses. When I speak of the mind of man as 
 reflecting the mind of God, I contemplate, not the 
 intellect only, but all that is embraced in man's being 
 the image of God, what the words of Christ contem- 
 plate when He says, " God is a Spirit, and they that 
 worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." 
 Let us then not be tempted to find relief from the 
 pain with which we contemplate the fighting for 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 263 
 
 modes of faith which Pope satirises as the employ- 
 ment of graceless zealots, by giving place to lax and 
 vague notions of the relation of our thoughts of God 
 to righteousness. It may be well, as is sometimes 
 done, to bring together the names of men who have 
 borne the impress of righteousness, yet whose creeds 
 anc religious views present points of difference. 
 
 But, in marking wherein they differed, let us be 
 careful to distinguish and mark what in their thoughts 
 of their relation to God has been common to them — 
 the will of God in relation to themselves, the appre- 
 hension of what God is, implied in this will. A man's 
 real creed — that by which he lives — the faith which 
 determines the character of his personal intercourse 
 with God — underlies any peace with God and con- 
 scious harmony between himself and his God, what- 
 ever the amount of that peace or harmony may be. 
 
 This real living faith, could we see as God sees, 
 would be recognised as present wherever we have 
 been constrained to recognise true religion ; however 
 much besides of divergent thought and opinion has 
 drawn to itself our attention, looking only at the 
 outward appearance. How can these men be one in 
 love ? 
 
 No meditation on the evils incident to religious 
 controversy can be more baneful than that which 
 leads to lax views (in reality radical misconceptions) 
 
264 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 as to the relation between our thoughts of God and 
 righteousness. We see men differing from each other 
 in their creeds, and insisting earnestly, it may be, on 
 the points in which they think differently, who yet all 
 bear the impress of righteousness ; and we hastily 
 conclude that their belief is one thing, their righteous- 
 ness another thing, and a thing totally disconnected. 
 But not all that a man holds as his creed has part in 
 determining what a man is, but only that part of it 
 which is a spiritual reality to him, — a part of the 
 truth of things as he in his spirit knows them and 
 responds to them. To consider why such and such 
 men are good men — assuming that our own is the 
 Divine standard — in order to determine what part 
 their faith has in their goodness, or whether it have 
 any, is to venture on most delicate and dangerous 
 ground. Could we see as God sees we should doubt- 
 less be able to discriminate between a man's creed 
 and his living faith. But this the man himself may 
 be unable to do. How very imperfect any approxi- 
 mation by us then must be. Yet I believe if we ask 
 wherein the men in whom we recognise the mind of 
 Christ are one in their conceptions of God, and of 
 their own relation to Him, in those times in which 
 they are having living intercourse with God (realising 
 His mind towards them and cherishing that mind 
 towards Him which is their due response) we shall 
 recognise an identity in what they see as the mind of 
 God towards them and the mind towards God which 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 265 
 
 is their due response. We see what is common, though 
 we might in vain attempt in any one case to disen- 
 tangle it from elements in the individual man's creed 
 with which it is conjoined, and show that this or that 
 point of doctrine has practically no place in his walk 
 with God, in his love to God or in his love to man. 
 Would not the attempt to do so be often most un- 
 wise, — might we not in rooting out the tares root out 
 the wheat also ? Alas, have men not sometimes so 
 acted in reference to their own selves, hastily plucking 
 out the wheat with the tares, and then contending 
 that there had been nothing but tares only ! The 
 more weak and sickly the growth of the wheat the 
 more possible is this rashness. 
 
 But if a man may so err as to the elements of his 
 own creed, how much more easily may he err in 
 dealing with other minds, — at least if he approach this 
 work in that confidence of intellect and trust in 
 logical inferences which make no account of our 
 spiritual nature in predicating what fruit such or such 
 opinions must bear; saying, for example, How de- 
 moralising must the creed of the Calvinist be ! 
 
 3-* 
 A more serious error to which we are exposed in 
 our thoughts about religious controversies, and the 
 large space they occupy in the history of Christianity, 
 
 * This section was written on the 20th of February, and con- 
 tains, therefore, his last words. 
 
266 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 is that into which we fall when the contemplation of 
 them influences our conceptions of the relation of 
 truth to righteousness. That relation is, indeed, in 
 reality so close as to approach to identity; for truth 
 and righteousness become to us one when we see 
 them in Christ the Truth. But truth, in connection 
 with religious controversy, under the name of creed 
 or dogma, means rather a form of thought than that 
 reality to which our Lord's words direct us. He is 
 the Truth, as He is the Life; also the way to the 
 Father, who is approached only in the Son. " God 
 is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." Our Lord is not, in such 
 words, speaking of a form of thought. But worship 
 in spirit and in truth embraces the whole man, and 
 implies thought concerning God and not feeling only 
 — that union of spirit and intellect which is implied 
 in knowing God, giving Him glory in the light of 
 what He is as in sympathy with what He is, being 
 a partaker in the Divine nature. However, therefore, 
 thoughts concerning God in the form of creed or 
 dogma are, so to speak, as intellect separated from 
 spirit, there is no such separation in the actual 
 experience of the Divine life. But familiarity with 
 discussions in which the w r ords which relate to the 
 highest realities are used almost as if they were 
 algebraic signs, tends to weaken in us the feeling 
 of reality which is never safely weakened or sus- 
 pended. Hence the possibility of lax thoughts as 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTRO VERSY. 267 
 
 to the relation of true thoughts concerning God 
 and our relation to Him to true righteousness* 
 and our being what the righteous God wills us 
 to be. 
 
 I believe that error here is one of those reactions 
 which are continually occurring. In this case, it is a 
 reaction from dwelling on the importance of what 
 men think rather than on the importance of what 
 they are. Is not what we are the great thing ? Is 
 not the question of what we think quite subordinate ? 
 So approached, the fact that in the course of religious 
 controversies we find goodness not confined to any 
 one class of thinkers, that men holding different views 
 — widely different even as to points to which they 
 alike attach much importance — still bear in common 
 the impress of righteousness; this fact tempts to the 
 thought that, after all, it is not a matter of con- 
 sequence what men think. Some line will, indeed, 
 usually be drawn between the doctrines that have 
 most claim to be fundamental and others; but it is a 
 line that a wider range of vision and freer thought 
 seems continually shifting so as to enclose a narrower 
 circle, until at last it becomes a mere point, or rather, 
 vanishes. 
 
 There may be profit in grouping together men of 
 undeniable goodness who yet are associated with 
 opposite sides in the history of religious controversies* 
 if this be done wisely, and in view of the difficulties 
 which our compound being, and the intermingling of 
 
2 68 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS. 
 
 intellect and spirit in the living man worshipping God, 
 present in this process of analysis. 
 
 Not to consider that extreme course of separating 
 between our thoughts concerning God and righteous- 
 ness, which goes beyond even the denial of the 
 relation of the faith of Christ to the worship of God, 
 to the denial of any relation of the worship of God 
 to goodness — the case in which the narrowing circle 
 has altogether vanished — I would invite those who 
 believe that Christianity has been a gain to humanity, 
 that the last eighteen hundred years have developed 
 in connection with faith in Christ an amount of good- 
 ness, — i.e., of love to God and love to man, for which 
 all who love God and man give thanks, and who, in 
 presence of this great fact, ask themselves what has 
 been the relation of this goodness in men to their 
 faith, — instead of considering on what men, in whom 
 the goodness which is acknowledged has been seen, 
 have differed in thoughts of God and of Christ, rather 
 to consider the measure of their agreement — what, 
 in their thoughts of God, and of the conditions of 
 their own being in relation to God, as revealed in 
 Christ, has been common to those in whom the will 
 of God for man has seemed to have been most 
 realised ? And any approximation to the answer we 
 seek will be through fixing our attention on the living 
 men as we see them responding to the will of God — 
 reflecting his image, and through considering what of 
 the element of thought is combined with the element 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 269 
 
 of spirit in their consciousness. There is thought 
 there. They are not worshipping an unknown God. 
 They ascribe to God a mind in relation to themselves 
 as well as themselves cherish a mind towards God. 
 Whatever elements of conscious darkness concerning 
 God are present hinder not this. Something they 
 seem to themselves to know. That something their 
 thought embraces while their spirit conforms to it. 
 The will of God fulfilled in them is a will intelligently 
 ascribed to God; the fulfilment in them is a response. 
 The question as to what is common to all in whom 
 there is response, is ultimately the question, What is 
 common in their thoughts of the will to which the 
 response is given ? So far, the conclusion seems clear. 
 Identity in the response implies identity in the con- 
 ception of that which is responded to. 
 
 The relation of faith to righteousness, then, is the 
 relation of our response to God, — to God's voice to us. 
 It is thus a reflection of the Divine righteousness. 
 A reflection which is one with what it reflects is 
 righteousness — a living reflection from and in the 
 w r hole man — thought and will, intellect and spirit. 
 
 THE END. 
 
WORKS BY THE LATE 
 
 J. M'LEOD CAMPBELL, D.D. 
 
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