LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Shelf JL»— UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SEP 19 1815 Scotland's Influence ON CIVILIZ THE Rev. LEROY J. HALSEY, D.D., LL.D., Author of " Literary Attractions of the Bible," " The Beauty of Immanuel," "Living Christianity," etc. PHILADELPHIA I PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. \ 5^' V* Os* S COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Westcott & Thomson, Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada. conteKt^: -"•*'■;" CHAPTER 'i. * m '** ' PAGE Scotland's Place in History 5 CHAPTER II. The Long Struggle for Liberty 12 CHAPTER III. Her Great Historic Names 19 CHAPTER IV. Grand Results of the Conflict for Liberty ... 29 CHAPTER V. The Two Principal Cities 41 CHAPTER VI. The Pulpit of Scotland 49 CHAPTER VII. Scotland's Literature and Authorship 59 4 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. FAGS The Science and Philosophy of Scotland 77 CHAPTER IX. The Women of :5oti^nd 100 CHAPTER X. The Influei^ce of Scottish Song 120 CHAPTER XL The Scottish Universities and Reviews 144 CHAPTER XII. The Churches of Scotland 158 CHAPTER XIII. Scottish Art and Industry 177 CHAPTER XIV. or, Influence c America and Other Lands 208 The Scot Abroad; or, Influence of Scotland on CHAPTER XV. Retrospect and Conclusion 239 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE ON CIVILIZATION. CHAPTER I. SCOTLAND'S PLACE IN HISTORY. THE land of the thistle and the heather, the castle and the crag, is at best but a narrow land — two hundred and eighty-eight miles between extremes from north to south, and fifty-two from east to west. Its place in history, however, is well assured, and its influence is wide as the world. Its physical aspect is exceedingly diver- sified and picturesque. The sky bends in beauty, the soil teems with verdure, the air rings in elastic tension, the waters sparkle with life and health. It is a land where youth may drink in exhilaration with every breath, manhood find food for high endeavor in every battle of life, and old age flourish like the evergreen pine. With a coast- line of twenty-five hundred miles so deeply in- denting the main land on three sides as to bring 5 6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. every foot of it within forty-five miles of the sea, with nearly eight hundred islands closely envi- roning it and furnishing many a quiet inlet and many a bold outlook to the ocean, and with an alternating panorama of highland and lowland, of lake, river and mountain, through all its bor- ders, — Scotland would seem to be the spot of all the earth ordained by Providence for the dwell- ing-place of a hardy, athletic, gallant race. Such, in fact, have been its destiny and its history. It is not the country, but the heroic people inhabiting it, that has given Scotland its name in history and its influence on the world's civilization. And the object of this monograph is to sketch in briefest outline a few salient points in the character of the people, the work they have done and the influence they have exerted. Who has not admired the genius and gloried in the heroism of that long line of "Scottish worthies" who fought as if they were fighting the battles of all mankind and gave their names to history as an everlasting remembrance ? Who has not followed them down from century to cen- tury and often felt his indignation ablaze at the recital of their wrongs and their sacrifices for truth and for conscience' sake? What associa- tions crowd upon us, what memories awake, what inspirations kindle, at the mention of such names as Bruce and Wallace, Knox and Melville, Argyle and Murray, Gillespie and Henderson, PLACE IN HISTORY. 7 Erskine and Chalmers, Scott and Burns, Living- stone and Alexander Duff! It is instructive to notice the part which the little nationalities of the earth have played in the grand drama of civilization. We hear much about the " great powers " and how they shape the destiny of the world. History, both ancient and modern, has much to tell us of their maj- esty, their broad domain, their almost omnipo- tent sway. The old world powers of the Orient — Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Medo-Persia, Macedonia, Rome — all figure largely on the pages of the past, each claiming in its turn the mastery of the world. In more recent times the great races of Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Turkey, England, have almost monopolized the map of Europe, where they still struggle for the balance of power. Is this the sum of the old-world civilized history? The whole tale is not told until we have looked at the little nationalities — Palestine, Greece, Venetia, Switzerland, the Neth- erlands, Scotland — each on its narrow strip of soil and with its wide influence on the world. Where has the human race risen to higher glory in the prowess of the individual man or in the achieve- ments of the body politic than in these " pent-up Uticas " of the rocks or seas ? Here is a belt of once-independent states, small isolated nations, stretching diagonally across the very heart of the civilized world from south-east to north-west. S SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. on the very line of march which civilization fol- lowed when it left the East and made the history of modern Europe. There is something sublime in the influence which has gone out over all time from these apparently insignificant corners of the earth. There is something which seems to point to an invisible and almighty hand that can work alike by many or by few, and that often with the smallest means accomplishes its great- est works. Strike from history these five or six lesser nationalities, and who then could tell the whole story of arts and arms, of literature and phil- osophy, of national independence, of civil and religious liberty? The Maccabean deliverers of Palestine, the Greeks at Marathon, the Vene- tian masters of the seas, the Swiss compatriots of William Tell, the heroes of the Dutch repub- lic, the Scots of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, belong to all nations and to all time. They have done much to make the larger nations what they were, and to make the world what it is. Pales- tine gave the world a religion — the first, the last, the best, the only divine, religion. Greece gave it art, literature, philosophy, the highest which human genius unassisted ever attained. Venice gave it the earliest essays in that skill of finance and commerce which has since ruled all civil- ized nations. Switzerland and Holland gave it the earliest practical demonstration of those re- PLACE IN HISTORY. 9 publican institutions which to-day constitute the civic glory of the American national Union. Scot- land, besides other great gifts, has bequeathed to it the finest example to be found in all Christen- dom of a thoroughly-educated, law-abiding, free and Christianized people. In some respects there is a marked parallel between Scotland and Greece — the one at the extreme north-west, the other at the extreme south-east, of Europe; the one jutting out high upon the Atlantic, the other overlooking the Mediterranean waters — Scotland being somewhat the larger of the two. Both are peninsular ter- minations of a larger territory and deeply inter- penetrated by surrounding seas. They are wholly different in climatic influences, the one looking southward over sunny and pacific seas which greatly modify the conditions of all animal and vegetative life, the other facing northward over wild and tempest-tossed waters with no protect- ing barrier against the storms of the frozen ocean. Each alike, however, is marvelously beautified by every changing mood of hill and valley, forest and mountain-chain. Each alike is, or was, the native home of a race of heroes, the birthplace of a long and glorious history in the days of its independence. Europe had but one Greece, the abode of the Muses, the battle-ground of the giants, the alma mater of science, philosophy and literature. And Europe has had but one Scot- IO SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. land for that older realm of beauty. Byron per- haps sang too sad a requiem in the line, " Tis Greece, but living Greece no more;" for when the iron yoke of the Turk shall be broken — as broken it will be — Greece is yet to awake to a new and nobler destiny. Scotland, however, needs no requiem. Her separate na- tionality is indeed gone, but no iron yoke has ever crushed her spirit. 'Tis Scotland — living Scotland — still; and the later glory outshines the earlier. The sceptre of dominion has passed from the old capital and passed into other hands, but the heroic race is still there in all its pristine vigor, undegenerated, unconquered, well worthy of the national emblem, and now as ever ready to make good its old motto : " Nemo me impune lacesset." The rugged hills and granite rocks that had so often given it shelter in the hour of disaster were not more indestructible than was the hardy life- blood which flowed through Scottish veins during all those years of conflict. That persistent purpose of a brave and united people who loved liberty as they loved life itself, that undefeated and un- conquerable national spirit which had showed itself so strong in Wallace and Bruce, at last asserted its power and its right to the soil in the just and equal terms of the national compact with England. This compact of incorporation PLACE IN HISTORY. II healed all past breaches and made the larger and the smaller kingdoms one and inseparable for all time. Nothing of honor, nothing of independ- ence, nothing of true national glory, was lost to the Scot in becoming a North Briton : it was an alliance of equals for the common weal and the common defence of Britain. Unlike other re- gions of the Old World when smaller national- ities have been crushed under the heel of despotic power, the traveler of to-day in Scotland finds no memorials there of subjection and degeneracy : all there is life and freedom. The same glorious race that existed a thousand years ago is still at home upon its soil, only more advanced in all the elements of true national greatness, and the no- bler, too, because of all the fiery trials of the past. CHAPTER II. THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. THE most impressive spectacle in history is not the march of mighty armies led by a conqueror and treading down all opposition un- der the iron heel of War, but a gallant people standing on the line of right within its own bor- ders and there heroically defending its firesides and its institutions of civil and religious freedom against overwhelming numbers. Such was the attitude of Scotland, and such the sublime spec- tacle of her intrepid race, through the long wast- ing wars that reddened all her southern borders and at times extinguished many of her noblest families. In all history it would be difficult to find a more enduring and heroic people. The present population of Scotland is upward of three millions. At the date of the final reunion and incorporation with England, near the opening of the eighteenth century, the whole Scottish peo- ple did not exceed one million. In all probability there had been no preceding period during the long eventful history in which the number of in- habitants was not considerably less than a million. 12 THE LONG STRUGGLE EOR LIBERTY. 1 3 Ten centuries of bloody, desolating warfare had often decimated the race and cut short illustrious lines. Less than two centuries of peaceful agri- culture, manufacture and commerce, under the genial sway of science, literature, religion, rudi- mental education, artistic culture, philosophical research and free constitutional government, have been sufficient to treble the home-population even while an adventurous foreign emigration has been carrying its uncounted myriads abroad to people every continent and every island of the ocean with Scotsmen. The grandest lesson of modern history — that peace, not war, is the true policy of nations, the ars artium of all human progress — was never more strikingly illustrated than it has been in the history of Scotland. Since the Union of 1707, Scotland has consti- tuted an integral portion of the British empire, having voluntarily yielded up her separate na- tionality after defending it with gallant success for more than a thousand years. In the early spring of 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, James VI. of Scotland, uniting in himself the royal titles to the crowns of both kingdoms, had quietly ascended the English throne. Edinburgh lost her royal court, but for a hundred years longer Scotland was still in possession of her Parliament and her independence, the joint-sov- ereign reigning over the two still separate king- doms. But in the year 1706 the Scottish Parlia- 14 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. ment met for the last time. The members, at the opening, rode, as was the custom, in slow and sol- emn procession up the old Canongate of Edin- burgh from Holyrood Palace to the Parliament- house. The act of union was passed by the two Parliaments, and on the 1st of May in the year following the two rival kingdoms became one; the court was transferred to London, and the gov- ernment merged into the one Parliament of Great Britain. The two nations in the long course of their history had met each other in three hun- dred and fourteen pitched battles, and had sacri- ficed more than a million of men as brave as ever wielded claymore, sword or battle-axe. Against superior numbers and amidst unparalleled dis- asters the lesser realm had fearlessly main- tained its independence from the days of Ken- neth MacAlpine to those of Robert Bruce, and from Bruce down to the last of the Stuart pre- tenders. When, however, the Scottish people at last yielded to the inexorable logic of events and accepted the situation, they went into the Union with a brilliant record and an unsullied escutcheon. They had covered themselves with glory (at times nothing else had been left to cov- er with), and they carried with them as the best prestige for the future the grandest of all remem- brances — the remembrance of a heroic national history. The Scot had now become a North Briton, but Scotland was living Scotland still. THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LLBERTY. 1 5 " Deep-graven on her breast she wore The names of all her valiant dead, And with the great inscription felt As Douglas with De Bruce' s heart — That she was still a conqueror." The fundamental principle of the union with England was that of a complete incorporation of the two nationalities in one government under one sovereign head and one representative Parlia- ment, with equal rights and privileges for the peo- ple and a proportionate burden of the common taxation. The conditions of the problem then set- tled and the greatness of that settlement are well stated in the following sentences from Charles Knight's History of England: "The complete union of two independent nations, to be brought about by common consent and the terms to be settled as in a commercial partnership, was an event which seems natural and easy when we look to the geographical position of the two na- tions and to the circumstance that they had been partially united for a century under six sovereigns wearing the crown of each kingdom. But when we look to the long-standing jealousies of the two nations, their sensitive assertion of ancient supe- riority, the usual haughty condescension of the wealthier country, the sturdy pride of the poorer, the ignorance of the bulk of each people of the true character of the other, the differences of the prevailing forms of religion, the more essential 1 6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. differences of laws and their modes of adminis- tration, — we may consider the completion of this union as one of the greatest achievements of statesmanship." It was, in fact, an admirable adjustment of all the old grievances and a fitting close to the feuds and animosities, inherited from generation to gen- eration, which had kept the neighboring king- doms in perpetual strife. If they had continued to fight each other to the present day, they could not have received an adjustment more honorable and advantageous to both parties. The weaker kingdom lost nothing by becoming an integral part of a greater kingdom, and the greater lost nothing, but gained much, by uniting its destiny with a powerful race that should henceforward contribute its full share to the national greatness. The Scot only relinquished a smaller for a more enlarged and permanent independence. He found a more solid and enduring basis for that national independence and that constitutional liberty in de- fence of which he had so often drawn the sword. There could have been no better, nobler termi- nation of the long and bloody conflict. He had, indeed, gained all for which he had ever fought. The royal race of his native land — that race which in the person of Bruce had struggled so hard to retain its independent throne — was now upon a greater throne, the throne of United Britain. That small and often turbulent Parliament of his THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. \J ancient capital had ceased only to give place to another and more powerful Parliament of the united nation, of which he was to be a constitu- ent member, and of which the Scottish people, like the English, were to be independent electors. The lesser nationality was not lost, but merged into the greater. The people who could look back through a long line of heroes never quail- ing before the face of battle surrendered no dignity by a voluntary union into which they carried such a history. It was a union not easily effected. In all prob- ability, it could never have been accomplished except by those peculiar circumstances which gradually prepared and at last reconciled the two divergent and conflicting nationalities. The cost of the preparation had been immense. To the last there were those in the smaller realm who stoutly resisted what seemed an unnatural con- nection. They felt that the knell of Scotland's glory had sounded. The union, however, once effected, soon demonstrated the wisdom of its policy. The success of it was its magnificent vindication. The' problem was plain enough when the overruling providence of God had once solved it by showing how much better it was for two powerful races shut up on a narrow island, with no natural boundary between them, to dwell in the close and peaceful bonds of a great national compact than to be for ever wasting each other's 2 1 8 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. strength by interminable bloody wars. Under such circumstances the good of the one was the highest good of the other, and whatever glory either could have attained alone was far more than doubled by the higher glory of one great united nation. Probably no union in all history has proved more beneficial to the contracting par- ties or become more close and indissoluble. CHAPTER III. HER GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. NOT a little of the heroic and romantic min- gles in the long story of Scotland's strug- gle for civil and religious liberty, giving rise to an illustrious roll known as the " Scottish chiefs " and the " Scottish worthies." Who are best enti- tled to stand as the representative heroes of that history ? Unquestionably, the three greatest names are those of William Wallace, Robert Bruce and John Knox — Bruce, the noblest of her warrior- kings ; Wallace, the most renowned of her peo- ple and gentry ; and Knox, the grandest cham- pion of her Reformed Church. There are two notable epochs in the Scottish history, each having all the elements of a mag- nificent picture. One of these belongs to the sixteenth century, with Knox and Queen Mary in the foreground ; the other carries us back to the days of Bruce and Wallace and the great house of Douglas, at the close of the thirteenth and the opening of the fourteenth century. A stern and lofty grandeur gathers around the brow of Knox. It is not surprising that Carlyle in his 19 20 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. Hero-Worship sets up the great Reformer as a veritable king of men, the highest type and em- bodiment of a nation, a man created for the times, the foster-child of divine Providence, " one of the few immortal names that were not born to die." " John Knox," says Carlyle, " is the one Scots- man to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt." " The life of Knox," says one of our own countrymen, Prof. Samuel J. Wilson, " was one of the grandest ever lived on this footstool of God. He has been dead these three hundred years. During all this time his- tory has been busy with his life and character. These have been fiercely assailed and eloquently defended. For three centuries his work has been speaking for him with ever-increasing volume of meaning and eloquence. He needs no other monument. He needs no other apology." John Knox at St. Andrews, or in his pulpit of St. Giles at Edinburgh, or summoned into the presence of Mary Stuart at Holyrood Palace, is a figure as grand as Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms. When standing before the imperious young queen for the fifth time, alike unawed by her threats and unmoved by her tears, and con- fronted with angry, indignant questions, " Who are you in this commonwealth, and what have you to do with my marriage ?" what could ex- ceed the calm dignity and heroism of the Reform- er's reply? " I am a subject born within the same, THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 21 madam; and, albeit I am neither earl, lord nor baron within it, yet has God made me, how abject soever I am in your eyes, a profitable member within the same. Yea, madam, to me it apper- tains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it doth to any of the nobility." It was not in vain that during the dark period of ten years' civil strife the voice of Knox had been heard ringing like a clarion in St. Giles's pulpit at Edinburgh, and that his words had been echoed in all the pulpits of the land. " His was the voice," says Professor Wilson, " that taught the peasant of the Lothians that he was a free- man, the equal in the sight of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. During the trying vicissitudes of civil war, Knox was the one pillar of strength upon which Scotland leaned with her whole weight. Wise in counsel, utterly fearless in ac- tion, mighty in the resistless torrents of his elo- quence, the nation turned to him instinctively as its God-given leader. With a price upon his head, with hired assassins waylaying his path, ever at the post of duty and of danger, careless of his own life, thinking only of his dear Scotland in the darkest extremities of perilous times, waking ,the expiring courage of heroes with the trum- pet-peals of his eloquence, — he fought the good fight bravely through until peace was proclaimed, 22 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. popery was abolished by act of Parliament, and a Confession prepared principally by himself was adopted. There never was a nobler fight, or one that was more signal in its achievements." The names of Sir William Wallace and King Robert Bruce, from the earlier period of Scottish history in the close of the thirteenth and opening of the fourteenth century, have been the loved themes of the poet, the historian, the orator and the statesman through all the succeeding ages. They have been the laurel-crowned heroes not only of their own country, but in all lands where the love of freedom has burned brightly in the hearts of the people. They have been the syn- onyms for natural independence, manly courage, heroic daring and perseverance unto death. They are the very watchwords of liberty for every op- pressed race and nation, in every battle of the weak against the strong, of the right against the wrong. Though one of them, Wallace, after win- ning one great battle, was crushed by treachery and superior numbers in a second, and at last shamefully executed as a traitor, his name has yet come down through history as one of the honored and immortal names that can never perish. Bruce a few years later took up the same battle of his country, and after almost unparalleled disasters and the most heroic energy was at last crowned with victory in the memorable battle of Bannock- burn. He lived to show by one great example THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2$ how freedom's cause may at last be won. If little Scotland had done no more than produce her Wallace and her Bruce, she would thereby have gained the lasting gratitude and admiration of the world, and sent down an influence and a prestige to be felt as long as independence and liberty are appreciated among men. In this connection must be briefly mentioned two other illustrious names on the roll of Scot- land's canonized heroes. They stand as the pio- neers and the representatives of her noble army of Christian champions in the cause of truth. These are Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, the precursors of the great Reformation — the first a young man of twenty-three with the blood of earls and dukes in his veins and a brilliant future opening before him ; the other, the learned and eloquent evangelist whose voice rang like a trum- pet over Scotland, and whose powerful preaching, whether in churches or in the open air, drew crowds of admiring people to hear him. By order of the papal hierarchy each was arrested, condemned and burned at the stake before the doors of the University of St. Andrews, which in better times they might have adorned by their learning and their eloquence. The worthy prede- cessors of Knox, and endued with his heroic spirit, they bravely met the issue, and nobly died for the rights of conscience and the word of God. From their ashes was kindled the flame of ref- 24 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. ormation that soon spread over all Scotland and prepared the way for the work of Knox. In them, truly, the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church. Cardinal Beaton sought to cover their names with infamy and to extin- guish their influence for ever. All generations have delighted to do them honor. The influence of their example has gone out over all the earth. It has become an inspiration of zeal and courage to the champions of truth and liberty in every civilized land. It is one of Scotland's precious contributions to the world's history. While to the thoughtful student all the ele- ments of moral sublimity will ever gather thick- est around the later period, with Knox as its pioneer and leader, still in the popular estima- tion probably the highest heroic interest of the Scottish history culminates, in the earlier period, around the names of Wallace and Bruce. The men of all free and civilized nations, the very boys and girls at school to the end of time, will read and be thrilled by that story. It was the era of the troubadour and the tournament, when Europe rang with the fame of the crusader and Christendom bowed at the mention of the cross. It was the noonday of romance and chivalry — the apotheosis of manly honor, of womanly beauty, of gallant prowess, of martial glory. There were indeed giants on earth in those days, and Scot- land's heroes were among them. THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2$ With all its glory, it was an age of iron, an age of blood. It is not the purpose of this sketch to dwell on its great characters or its cruel con- flicts ; it is enough now simply to point out influ- ences and results. Was all that gallant blood, of both the earlier and the later period, shed in vain? Assuredly not. It was the price of independence, of self-government, of civil and religious liberty. Costly as was the sacrifice, long and terrible as was the conflict, it was not too dear a cost at which to purchase such a boon. When it was won, it was not won for Scotland alone, but for posterity, for mankind. All that Scotland is to- day, all that she holds precious in the arts of peaceful industry and in the possession of civil and religious freedom, she owes, under God, to her own deathless struggle for independence, re- newed from century to century until it had red- dened her fields with blood and filled her land with ruins and monuments. No portion of the earth's surface is perhaps more thickly strewn with the ashes of martyred heroes and the bones of the slaughtered champions of truth and right. The seed was long sowing, but the harvest has been abundant and glorious. Victoria reigns to- day as truly Scotland's queen as she is England's — fifty-fourth sovereign of the Scottish royal line from Kenneth MacAlpine, and fifty-first of th English from Alfred the Great. It has been finely said that a land without 3 26 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. ruins is a land without memories, and a land without memories is a land without liberty. " The land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to look upon, but twine a few sad cypress- leaves around the brow of some bleak and bar- ren land (it may be dark and lonely as Monte- negro) and it becomes lovely in its coronet of sorrow. It wins the sympathies of the heart and of history. Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure. Calvaries and crosses take deep- est hold of humanity." " Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." Byron's strong line might be taken as the text and the key to a large portion of the Scottish history. In the struggle for national independ- ence and constitutional liberty the soil of Scot- land was made not only a battlefield, but a crowded cemetery. No equal portion of the earth's surface could better illustrate the senti- ment of a living American bard : " Give me a land where the ruins are spread, And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead; Ay, give me a land that is blest by the dust And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden just. I honor the land that hath legend and lays Enshrining the memory of long-vanished days; I honor the land that hath story and song To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong. Yes, give me the land with a grave in each spot, And names in the graves that shall not be forgot : There's a grandeur in graves, there's a glory in gloom, THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2J For out of the gloom future brightness is born, And after the night looms the sunrise of morn ; And the graves of the dead, with the grass overgrown, May yet form the footstool of Liberty's throne, And each single wreck in the warpath of might Shall yet be a rock in the temple of Right." Every part of Scotland is crowded with such memorials of the past — venerable ruins where " the living tread light on the hearts of the dead," battlefields that " tell of the strife of the right with the wrong," sacred enclosures " with a grave in every spot " and " names in the graves that shall not be forgot." Most of all do these grand mon- uments of the past cluster around Edinburgh, the unique and classic capital enthroned among crags where the new and the old so strangely meet. There a thousand associations of the past chain the antiquarian, a thousand beauties of the pres- ent make it to the eye of the artist the most picturesque city in Europe, " Where splendor falls on castle-walls And snowy summits old in story." Upon the splendid city of to-day the old castle looks down out of history. Within or close around it were transacted many of the most memorable scenes in the life of the nation. A mile from the castle, at the eastern termination of the Canongate, still remains in antique splen- dor the famous Holyrood Palace, flanked on one side by the monument-crowned Calton Hill, and 28 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. on the other by the loftier Salisbury Crag and Arthur's Seat, that stand like sentinels to guard the enchanted spot. Just on the outside of the city, in the Greyfriars' churchyard, the National Covenant — the Magna Charta of Scottish free- dom — was signed in the presence of sixty thou- sand persons. Close at hand, in what was then the open space of the Grass Market, hundreds who had signed that Covenant suffered death at the stake rather than abjure the rights of con- science. Thousands all over Scotland shared the same fate. " They lived unknown Till persecution dragged them into fame And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew No mortal tells us whither." Their heroic virtues, however, survived fresh and green in the memory of succeeding ages. The influence of their example became the heri- tage of Christendom. Not only Scotland, but England and America, became the richer for the legacy. All lands where history is read, where civil and religious liberty is prized, have felt the inspiring influence of that example. It is a part of the history of modern civilization. Our Chris- tian institutions in America are to-day in large measure indebted to that moral power of truth and right and freedom which Scotland's martyrs for conscience' sake so nobly illustrated on the scaffold and at the stake. CHAPTER IV. GRAND RESULTS OF THE CONFLICT FOR LIB- ERTY. IT is easy enough for us now, after several cen- turies of uninterrupted progress in Scotland, to look back into her heroic ages, to see the meaning of the great principles then so fiercely- contested, and to trace the results which have flowed from the vindication of those principles. In no part of the world is the true philosophy of history more easily discerned than in the his- tory of Scotland. And in no part of Scottish history have her gallant people given to man- kind a more important and impressive lesson for all ages than in the heroic times of Wallace, Bruce and Knox, and their successors of the Solemn League and Covenant. Through all the dark pages God's hand is clearly seen protecting his true Church and establishing the right. It must never be forgotten that Scotland had a double battle to fight — first, that of national independence and constitutional liberty against her more powerful neighbor, and then the hard- er, nobler battle for conscience and a pure Church, 29 30 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. against both papal and prelatical domination. There are few sublimer chapters in history than those which recount the deeds of the Scotch Reformers of the sixteenth century, the Presby- terian Covenanters of the seventeenth century, and the never-to-be-forgotten founders of the Free Church in the nineteenth century. The time was long, the causes of the conflicts were different, but the battle was substantially the same. The rights, liberties and principles of an evan- gelical Christianity and a pure spiritual Church, preached in Scotland by the martyred Wishart and Hamilton, heroically defended before kings, queens and nobles by Knox and Melville, vin- dicated and established by Henderson, Gillespie, Rutherford and their compeers, solemnly sworn to by the whole people in their national League and Covenant, cemented with the blood and at- tested by the last breath of thousands of martyrs in the "killing-time" of the bloody Claverhouse, — these grand principles of a Reformed religion and an evangelical Presbyterianism, for ever as- serting Christ's cross and crown and covenant in a free State and a free Church, we have lived to see carried to their consummation and estab- lishment under the leadership of Thomas Chal- mers and his five hundred coadjutors in the memorable Free-Church movement of 1843, the deed and the day of Scotland's greatest ecclesi- astical glory. RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 3 1 It was in vindication of these principles that John Knox had dared to tell Mary Stuart the truth even at the cost of her queenly anger and her woman's tears. At a time when men were beheaded or driven into exile for their senti- ments, and when kings had power to send a sub- ject to the scaffold for a word, it required cour- age of the highest order to stand up as Andrew Melville did before James VI. and utter these memorable words : " Sir, we will always rever- ence Your Majesty in public ; but since we have this occasion to be with Your Majesty in private, and since you are brought into extreme danger of your life and crown, and along with you the Church of God are alike to go to wreck for not telling you the truth and giving you faithful counsel, we must discharge our duty or else be traitors both to Christ and you. Therefore, sir, as divers times before I have told you, so now again I must tell you, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland : there is King James, the head of the commonwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose king- dom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. Sir, those whom Christ has called and commanded to watch over his Church have power and authority from him to govern his spir- itual kingdom, both jointly and severally; the which no Christian king or prince should control 32 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. and discharge, but fortify and assert, otherwise they are not faithful subjects of Christ and mem- bers of his Church. We will yield to you your place and give you all due obedience, but again I say you are not the head of the Church : you cannot give us that eternal life which we seek for even in this world, and you cannot deprive us of it. Sir, when you were in your swaddling- clothes, Christ Jesus reigned freely in this land, in spite of all his enemies. Permit me, then, freely to meet in the name of Christ and attend to the interests of that Church of which you are the chief member." Well and nobly said, brave Melville ! Well and nobly done ! Never was a grander truth more manfully stated and more stoutly stood by through all Old Scotia's battlefields by all her truest sons and daughters. That granite truth so nobly wrought out of Scottish quarries is to- day the very corner-stone in our glorious temple of civil and religious liberty. The struggle had been long and fearful; it had lasted a hundred years ; it had cost the sacrifice of generations of suffering men and women driven into exile or wafted to heaven in a winding-sheet of flame ; but the triumph was glorious at last. The result was a free Church and a free State, corelated to God and to the people, but each in- dependent of the other in the proper sphere of its jurisdiction. The result was a vindication in RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 33 a manner never before understood in any land of the true spiritual import of those memorable words uttered by Christ before Pilate's bar : " Ren- der unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." That great truth incorporated in the Westminster Confes- sion is the basis of all religious liberty and of all the Presbyterian Churches in the world : " God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to be- tray true liberty of conscience ; and the requir- ing of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also." This grand deliverance of scriptural truth, so clearly formulated in the Presbyterian Standards and so bravely maintained at every cost in Scot- land through the centuries following the Refor- mation, may be regarded as the essential article of all true ecclesiastical polity and of all relig- ious liberty. To maintain it intact and to hand it down to posterity was well worth the blood and the treasure which it cost the heroic found- ers of the Scotch churches. Certainly there is not a Presbyterian church in the world to-day which does not thank God for this glorious in- 34 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. heritance of Christian liberty, and rejoice that our Scottish forefathers were able to stand up for it in the hour of peril and bring it safely with them through the fiery ordeal. If the Scottish heroes who suffered unto death for Christ's cove- nant and crown had rendered no other service to mankind, this sacrifice alone in behalf of free- dom of conscience had been enough to immor- talize the service and entitle them to the grati- tude of the latest posterity. It was strikingly appropriate that a service to freedom and to mankind so great and inestimable should find honorable mention at the First Gen- eral Presbyterian Alliance, held in 1877 at Edin- burgh, the very seat and centre of the memorable conflict. That great council, gathered from the Presbyterian Churches of all lands, in the bosom of this venerable mother-Church of the widely- dispersed family, was itself a demonstration of what Scotland had done for Christendom by the long struggle for civil and religious liberty. It was one of the many results of the conflict, and no inconsiderable one at that ; for the men there assembled from so many widely-separated Chris- tian lands were themselves representatives of the very principles for which the Scottish forefathers had so long and so bravely battled. One of the delegates from the United States, Archibald A. Hodge, D. D., of Princeton, New Jersey, speak- ing of this priceless Presbyterian birthright of RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 35 civil and religious freedom, in pertinent and truth- ful words thus called to remembrance the place and the period from which it came : " In the orig- inal conflict these principles were brought into antagonism with absolutism both in Church and State. They first, though at the sacrifice of count- less martyrs, especially in France, Holland and Scotland, broke the power of the hierarchy and conquered liberty in the sphere of religious faith and practice. More gradually, but by inevitable consequence, they secured popular liberty in the sphere of civil and political life. The conditions of modern times, to the wants and tendencies of which it is our duty to adjust and apply Presby- terian principles, are largely the outcome of the influence exerted during the past three hundred years upon the life of European nations by those Presbyterian principles themselves." Another representative from America on that occasion, Moses D. Hoge, D. D., of Richmond, Virginia, also called to remembrance the princi- ples and the heroes of the great conflict in the following impressive words : " The saddest, and yet the brightest, pages of our ecclesiastical his- tory are those which recount the struggles of our fathers in behalf of the sacred rights of con- science. I need not speak of the practical power of our principles as they have been so often illus- trated in the heroic conflicts for the right and the true, whether in the glens of Scotland, or in the 36 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. villages of France, or on the northern coast of Ireland, or among the mountains of Switzerland. A portion of the people of my native State trace their ancestry back to the noble race of men who were compelled by Bourbon tyranny to flee from their once happy homes on the fertile plains of Languedoc or in the delightful valleys of the Loire, and who found an asylum on the high banks of the James River in Virginia or on the lowlands of the Cooper and Santee Rivers of South Carolina. Others of my Virginia people are the descendants of the men who contended for Christ's crown and covenant at the foot of the heath-clad Grampians, or who fought the dragoons under Claverhouse at Bothwell Bridge, or who at the siege of Londonderry held out to the bitter end against James himself. There is yet in a branch of my own family the old family Bible which their Huguenot ancestors carried with them first to Holland and then to Virginia. Its covers are worn, its leaves are yellow and faded ; they have often been wet with the salt spray of the sea and the salt tears of the sorrowing exiles ; but, though the names are growing dim on the family register, I trust they are bright in the book of life ; and now, thank God! the descendants of the Hugue- not and Covenanter, and of the noble martyrs of the North of Ireland, are found dwelling to- gether in one happy ecclesiastical household on our peaceful Virginia shores, with none to mo- RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 37 lest or make them afraid, yet ready, as I trust in God — ready once more, if need be — to brave and peril all for the testimony of Jesus and for the defence of the faith once delivered to the saints." One of the grand results secured by the long and bitter conflicts in Scotland was the settle- ment on a permanent basis of the true scriptural doctrine of religious tolerance. Clear as was the teaching of Christ on the subject, the princes and rulers of this world, and even his profound fol- lowers in the Churches established by law, were slow to learn the great truth. It is a truth which the papal Church never learned, being one dia- metrically opposed to its whole doctrinal and political system. Nor has it been always fully understood and practiced even in Protestant lands where the Erastian principle of state supremacy in matters of religion has been asserted. But from the dawn of the Reformation it was fully understood by the Presbyterian Church of Scot- land, and for ages maintained at every cost, even when there were some within her bosom who coveted alliance with the State and stood ready to sacrifice the independence of the Church and the rights of conscience at the bidding of lordly power. The great doctrine of a broad universal toleration — so strongly maintained, and at last secured, by the Presbyterians of Scotland — was but the necessary logical sequence of the funda- 38 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. mental article of their ecclesiastical creed that God alone is Lord of the conscience in all mat- ters of religious opinion. Where there is no au- thority to bind the conscience except God and his inspired word, every man is necessarily free to exercise his own private judgment in ascer- taining what the truth is, and his own conscience in accepting and following the truth. This is true religious liberty, and this the basis of relig- ious toleration. It was the true moral glory of the Scottish Re- formers, and of their successors through the ages that followed, that they understood these essential principles of Presbyterianism and dared to main- tain them in the face of all opposition. It is true that they did not always live up to them with an absolute consistency, for in ages of intolerance and persecution and Erastian interference on the part of the civil power they were sometimes driven to the wall and compelled, in self-defence, to strike back the iron hand that showed no tol- eration and sought only to crush them. Still, through all oppressions from without and amid all the feuds and divisions within, they did main- tain to the last, and they brought unscathed through the conflict, that glorious heritage of a free Church and a free State, with equal rights of conscience for all classes of men, in which not only Scotland, but the whole Presbyterian world, rejoices to-day. The distinction is as just RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 39 as it is honorable that through all its history the Presbyterian Church of Scotland has been a lib- erty-loving, a conscience-asserting and a tolerant Church. The Presbyterian Church has never been, either in Scotland or in any other land, an intolerant or a persecuting Church. It could never have persecuted without violating the fundamental principles of its divine constitu- tion. It was no empty boast, but the truth of his- tory, when the Right Honorable Lord Moncrief, one of the chairmen of the Edinburgh council, said, " The Presbyterian polity has been the cra- dle of toleration, and it has always been the stronghold of civil liberty. I do not know a bet- ter test of the efficiency and purity of a Church than these two features. A Church which is the enemy of toleration and a Church that is the in- timate companion of political oppression I do not think by any possibility can be an apostolic Church. But the Presbyterian Church was the cradle of toleration. I am far from saying that in days when religious opinions were really the politics of the times, and when men's lives hung by a thread, political or religious toleration was much in vogue; but this I do say— that where Presbyterian principles have prevailed there tole- ration has sprung and flourished, and that in the quarters where the principles of the early Reform- ers and Presbyterians first acquired strength the 40 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. principles of toleration followed in their wake. The Presbyterians of the North have had a large part in establishing civil and religious liberty in this country, and I am quite certain that where the Presbyterian polity prevails there will tolera- tion, there will liberty, flourish." CHAPTER V. THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. LET us now turn for a moment to survey the two principal cities of this historic North- land, Edinburgh — or Edinboro', as the Scots call it — overlooking the Forth from an elevation of several hundred feet, the most picturesque city in Europe, and Glasgow, the city of the Clyde, the great metropolis of manufacture and com- merce, the one commanding the eastern, and the other the western, waters. These two great cities, some forty miles apart, may be called the eyes of Scotland — organs of vision and high in- telligence through which she gives expression to the thought of her people and holds daily com- munication with all the world. Glasgow, the grand commercial emporium, far surpasses the sister-city in wealth and trade, and also in population, which now reaches about half a million, while Edinburgh has less than a quarter of a million. But for what is lacking in wealth and power Edinburgh is fully compensated in splendor of situation, in glorious memories of the past, and in the magnificence of her education- 41 42 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. al and religious institutions. Glasgow, the queenly city of the Clyde, with her ocean-steamers, her iron-clad ships of war, her vast cotton-mills, her merchant-princes and her colossal fortunes, that has in recent times grown to be one of the chief builders of the British navy, is not, indeed, with- out historic associations linking her to the mem- orable past. Tracing her foundations back into the sixth century — even earlier than those of Edinburgh — she bore her full share in all the terrific conflicts that wrought out the deliver- ance of Scotland. She can to-day point with just pride not only to her marts of trade and the palatial residences of her citizens, but to her ancient and magnificent cathedral, that survived the disasters of centuries — perhaps the most per- fect entire specimen of Gothic architecture now in the realm. She can point, also, with equal satisfaction to her churches, ancient and mod- ern, to her educational and benevolent institu- tions, and to her great university, rivaling in learn- ing and number of students the more famous city of the Forth. Edinburgh — or Edwin's Burg, so called from the Saxon king of England who laid its founda- tions in the seventh century — now covers those parallel ridges and the deep valleys between which extend east and west along the Firth of Forth about a mile's distance from the water. The old city was built on the middle and high- THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 43 est of the ridges. The ground gradually rises toward the west until it culminates in the great massive rock on which the castle stands, com- manding the whole city and its environs. Along the summit of the ridge for about a mile, from Holyrood Palace at the east up to Castle Rock, forming, as it were, the backbone of the town, was thickly built the old Canongate, or high street, lined with the residences of nobility and gentry. On this street stood the famous cathedral of St. Giles, the Tron church, John Knox's house, and other notable edifices. Here dwelt the lordly Stuart kings in the palace of Holyrood. Here the young and beautiful queen of Scots held her court until she wantonly threw away her crown. Here the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met, in 1560, in the little Magdalen chapel, deep down in the ravine to the north of the street. It was a sort of Thermopylae where this band of heroes pledged themselves to main- tain against all the world of papal power the divine rights of Presbytery. Here, on the hill, in old St. Giles church, John Knox — a man whom his enemies hated while living, and of whom they said when dead, " Here lies one who never feared the face of man " — poured forth his fiery elo- quence. Here are the spots where Rizzio fell, where the ill-fated Darnley was blown up, where the daring Montrose was dragged to execution, frowning defiance on his foes, and not far off is 44 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. the place where the great regent Murray was as- sassinated. And here stood the scaffold on which the noble Morton, and the still nobler statesman the marquis of Argyle, were beheaded. Edinburgh is full of such memorials. The past confronts us at every step. The castle looks down upon us out of history. To the poet, the historian and the artist almost every foot of Scot- land is classic ground. The traveler is scarcely ever out of sight of places of historic interest or scenes of surpassing beauty — battlefields like Ban- nockburn, Falkirk, Bothwell Bridge and Culloden, that once shook under the fierce onset of opposing hosts ; venerable abbeys like Melrose, Dryburgh and Dunfermline, fast crumbling to decay ; castles once impregnable, like those of Stirling, Berwick, Roslin, Dumbarton and Loch Levin ; mountain- peaks and highland lakes : Ben Lomond, Ben Lide and Ben Nevis rising in solitary grandeur to the clouds, Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond and Loch Ness with banks of sylvan beauty mirrored in their crystal depths, — all new-daguerrotyped for the world and made immortal for ever by the pen of the great enchanter Walter Scott, in this re- spect the Scot of all the Scots. After all, it is in and around Edinburgh that these precious and sacred memorabilia cluster the thickest. Here it is that the history of a thousand years has been fossilized without los- ing its living interest — written on the very streets THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 45 of a crowding population, graven as with an iron pen on rocks and crags and castle-walls. In this respect there is no city in Europe except Rome or Athens that can be compared with Edinburgh. Edinburgh is to Scotland what Rome is to Italy, what Athens was to Greece, what Jerusalem was to Palestine. The splendid modern city, with its magnificent Prince's street and its classical monument to Wal- ter Scott, is chiefly built on the northern ridge, nearest the Forth, while the southern ridge is largely given up to great manufacturing estab- lishments. Along the bottom of the south val- ley runs the old Cowgate street, once famous in history, now crowded with the humble tenements of the poor. Through the corresponding north ravine extend the great railways connecting the city at the west end with Glasgow and at the east with London. These deep valleys are now bridged over with solid masonry and crossed by streets run- ning north and south at the summit-level of the ridges, some hanging high in air on stone arches, and the one nearest the castle built on an artificial mound constructed for the purpose. Edinburgh thus presents the unique spectacle not only of an old city and a new looking each other in the face from opposite hills, but of an upper and a lower city — one bright and beautiful on her airy eleva- tions, the other dark and damp in the gloom of her sunken valleys. 46 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. Take now a picture of the city as viewed from Calton Hill and drawn by the graphic pen of a Scotsman, Alexander Smith : " Straight before the mound crosses the valley, leaving the white academy buildings ; beyond, the castle lifts from grassy slopes and billows of sum- mer foliage its weather-stained towers and fortifi- cations, the Half-Moon battery giving the folds of its standard to the wind. Living in Edinburgh, there abides among all things a sense of its beauty. Hill, crag, castle, rock, blue stretch of sea, the picturesque ridge of the Old Town, the squares and terraces of the New, — these things, seen once, are not to be forgotten. The quick life of to-day, sounding around the relics of an- tiquity and overshadowed by the august tra- ditions of a kingdom, makes residence in Edin- burgh more impressive than residence in any other British city. What a poem is that Prince's street ! The puppets of the busy many-colored hour move about on its pavements, while across the ravine Time has piled up the Old Town, ridge on ridge, gray as a rocky coast washed and worn by the foam of centuries, peaked and jagged by gable and roof, windowed from basement to cope, the whole surmounted by St. Giles's airy crown. " The New is there looking at the Old. Two periods are brought face to face, and are yet sep- arated by a thousand years. Wonderful on winter nights, when the gulley is filled with darkness THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 47 and out of it rises against the sombre blue and the frosty stars that mass and bulwark of gloom pierced and quivering with innumerable lights. There is nothing in Europe to match it. Could you but roll a river down the valley, it would be sublime. That ridged and chimneyed bulk of blackness with splendor bursting out at every pore is the wonderful Old Town, where Scot- tish history mainly transacted itself, while, oppo- site, the modern Prince's street is blazing through- out its length. During the day the castle looks down upon the city as out of another world, stern with all its peacefulness, its garniture of trees, its slopes of grass. The rock is dingy enough in color, but after a shower its lichens laugh out greenly in the returning sun while the rainbow is brightening on the lowering cloud beyond. How deep the shadow which the castle throws at noon over the gardens at its feet where the children play ! How grand where giant bulk and towery crown blacken against the sunset ! " Fair, too, the New Town, sloping to the sea. From George's street, which crowns the ridge, the eye is led down sweeping streets of stately architecture to villas and woods that fill the lower ground and fringe the shore ; to the bright azure belt of the Forth, with its smoking steamer or its creeping sail ; beyond, to the shores of Fife, soft, blue and flecked with fleeting shadows in the keen, clear light of spring, dark purple in 48 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. the summer heat, tarnished gold in the autumn haze; and farther away still, just distinguishable on the paler sky, the crest of some distant peak, carrying the imagination into the illimitable world. Residence in Edinburgh is an education in itself. It is perennial, like a play of Shakespeare. Noth- ing can stale its infinite variety. Its beauty re- freshes one like being in love." Such is the estimate of one who had felt the poetic inspiration of this scene of varied loveli- ness. It is a glowing picture, indeed, not unlike that drawn by a greater master, the author of Marmiori and Waverley, whose genius was nur- tured amid its scenes, and who rejoiced to call Dun Edin " mine own romantic town." Here Art and Nature conspire with all the glorious history to give the world assurance of a finished city. Not inappropriately may the lines of Tenny- son be applied to this romantic spot : " The Past and Present here unite Beneath Time's rolling tide, As footprints hidden by a brook Are seen on either side." CHAPTER VI. THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. OF the Scottish pulpit, in the wide fields of its influence upon the national charac- ter and upon the world's civilization, it is diffi- cult to speak here with that fullness which the intrinsic importance of the theme demands. Of the manifold agencies which had their share in working out the historic destiny of Scotland, forming the character of her people and giving them a strong hold upon the attention of other nations, far from being the least potential was her Christian pulpit. In truth, it is not going too far to say that in all these respects the bold, fearless, educated and evangelical ministry of Scotland, faithful to truth, to duty and to God, can be regarded as holding no second place. The history of Scotland and her influence upon the march of civilization could not have been what they were without such a ministry. No man can read or faithfully write that history without recognizing on every page the power- ful guiding hand of the pulpit. For more than three hundred years it has been 4 49 50 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. a throne of power in the land. It has attained an excellence and it has gained an influence over the whole home-population, and at the same time commanded a respect abroad, not often equaled, and certainly never excelled, in other Christian countries. It has moulded the national character of Scotland and controlled public opinion among an intelligent reading people whom it largely, more than any other single agency, helped to educate. It has for generations made its voice heard as an authority in the exposition of God's word, in every family of the land, and in the daily lives of the people. It has also made that voice heard through all the ramifications of private business, through the halls of literature, science and philosophy, as well as in all the departments of the public service. It has been, and it still is, one of the essential factors in all the practical problems of popular education. Its influence has been felt for good not alone within the narrow boundaries of her eastern and western shores, but in all lands where the Anglo-Saxon tongue has been. Scotland could not exist without her pulpit: she would no more be Scotland. From John Knox down to Alexander Duff, not to speak of the living, it is a long and illus- trious succession which in all the greatest ele- ments of evangelical preaching will compare favorably with the ablest ministry of any age or of any nation. It has been a ministry distin- THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 5 I guished for self-sacrificing zeal, conscientious loy- alty to truth, strong common sense, energy and decision of character, unshrinking devotion to principle in the discharge of duty, and not un- frequently in the case of its leaders possessed of learning, culture, philosophy and eloquence fully equal to any in the world. It has been emi- nently wise and conservative, and at the same time eminently practical and aggressive. It has through all the ages felt itself in possession of the true word of God and entrusted by divine appointment with a true mission to man ; nor has it ever shrunk, through fear or favor, from declar- ing to men what it conceived to be the whole counsel of God, whether men would hear or forbear to hear. John Knox, with his majestic intellect, his heart of energy, his will of ada- mant, his tongue of fire, may be regarded as the very founder and model of its peculiar style. He was himself, both in character and in action, the most fitting representative of its earlier period. He was the man for the times, and no man less highly endowed in all the attributes of intellect- ual and spiritual manhood could have stood in his place and accomplished his work. No man ever more thoroughly impressed his own charac- ter upon a people and upon a ministry than did Knox upon the pulpit and the people of Scot- land. The Presbyterian Church of to-day in every part of Christendom is proud to acknowl- 52 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. edge Knox as a leader and a champion of the truth who performed for Scotland a work not inferior to that accomplished by the great Re- formers on the Continent. As a body, the Scottish clergy throughout the succession have been characterized not so much for the graces of a finished oratory as for the greater gifts of profound thought, massive learn- ing, sound doctrine, evangelical zeal and impas- sioned energy. As a class, they have been marked by what was called " ingeniwn perfervi- dum Scotorum!' They have been earnest, thought- ful, conscientious men — men who felt that they had a mission from God, a work to do, and they were " straitened till it was accomplished." They have aimed to make their mark upon the men of their times, nor have they failed to do so. The grand distinction of the Scottish pulpit through every epoch has been "truth before beauty" — what to say rather than how to say it. Solid matter has been everything ; method, a thing of minor consequence. The preaching has there- fore been at all times instructive, practical, script- ural, experimental, discriminating, theological, and not unfrequently logical, philosophical and learned. This all-important attribute of strength and power shone forth in all the great preachers of the early period, who seemed to catch their inspiration from the heroic example of Knox. It was exemplified in the preaching of the learned THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 53 and noble John Erskine of Dun ; in James and Andrew Melville, the heroic compeers of Knox; in the eloquent Alexander Henderson, the gifted young George Gillespie, the saintly Samuel Ruth- erford — the three commissioners of the Scottish Church at the famous Westminster Assembly of 1643. It was illustrated in the preaching of the earnest John Welch and Robert Bruce, in David Dickson of Irvine and John Livingstone of Shotts, a single sermon of the latter being instrumental in converting five hundred souls. The same lofty style of spiritual power was manifested in the pulpits of the noble martyrs James Guthrie and James Renwick. It would be tedious to recount the shining list of their successors of a later day — to tell of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, of John McLaurin and Robert Walker, of Thomas McCree and Andrew Thompson, the accomplished John Logan, the elegant Hugh Blair, of James Hamilton of Lon- don and John Witherspoon of our own Revolu- tionary period. Each of these memorable names was a tower of strength in its day. The pulpit of Hamilton in London and the presidency of Witherspoon in America may be taken as types of a large class of distinguished men, who, after winning a just renown in the land that gave them birth, were enabled to carry the influence of that land abroad and to accomplish a still grander mission in the countries of their adop- 54 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. tion. And how shall we describe the learning, the scholarly culture, the Christian philosophy, the statesmanship and sagacity, the burning elo- quence and zeal, of Candlish and Cunningham, Buchanan and Bonar, Guthrie and Chalmers, the leaders of that memorable disruption of 1843 that gave to Scotland a free Church for ever delivered from State intrusion, and to the world one of the most impressive examples of moral heroism in all history — that of five hundred ministers of the gospel in a body, representing the Christian peo- ple of half the realm, choosing to renounce all the honors and the incomes of a Church Estab- lishment rather than swerve a hair'sbreadth from the clear line of conscience. The olden days of allegiance to " Christ's crown and covenant " had witnessed nothing sublimer than this mod- ern spectacle of the Assembly of 1843 at Edin- burgh. Who was Thomas Chalmers, the leader of this great movement, but another and nobler Knox brought to the front by the stern exigences of those recent times, only melted by love, refined by wider culture, expanded by the larger liberty, the broader science, the warmer sympathies, the more catholic spirit and the higher civilization of the nineteenth century? We venerate the name and the work of Knox and all the worthies of his day, but in the lofty grandeur of his charac- ter, in the world-wide sweep of his charity and in THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 55 the soul-earnestness of his beseeching eloquence no pulpit of any age or of any country since apos- tolic times has probably produced a greater name and a higher type of preacher than Thomas Chal- mers. Where in the annals of modern missions can be found higher examples of heroic devotion to the cause of Christ and of philanthropic self- surrender to the good of men than those which shine forth in the lives of the Scottish mission- aries of the last fifty years, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone in Africa, John Wilson and Alexander Duff in India, fitting representatives of the noble band ? If their names do not ap- pear on the bright roll of the pulpit in the home- field, it is only because with apostolic zeal they had chosen to carry the gospel to the perishing and to spend their lives on foreign shores. But in influence and in power it was the Scottish pulpit still, only transplanted to distant climes. Their glorious record is on high : they have rested from their labors, and their works do follow them. They have impressed their char- acters on the people for whom they toiled never- more to be effaced. Their names are precious as household memories among the tribes of the Dark Continent and among the converts of Calcutta and Bombay. All the world knows how well they toiled and how nobly they died for the people of those distant regions. They were pioneers, 56 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. and they laid foundations that shall be the basis of civilizations yet to follow. In learning, cult- ure, philosophy and burning eloquence some of them — as Alexander Duff — would have graced any pulpit or any university chair in the mother- country. Indeed, the General Assembly of the Free Church in Edinburgh never honored itself more than when, in 185 1, on one of his visits to his native land, the venerable Alexander Duff, with all the scars of veteran service upon him, though still enthusiastic and eloquent as ever, was elected by acclamation to the moderatorship of that august body. The next year he visited the United States and electrified our churches by the splendor of his eloquence. At the opening of the present century Claudius Buchanan, a native of Glasgow, was already in Bengal, where he spent a long and active life exploring the country, translating the Scriptures into the language of Hindostan and laying the foundations of Christian missions. It was in 1829 that Dr. Duff was sent to Calcutta by the Church of Scotland, being the first Protestant missionary ever appointed by any national Es- tablished Church. His advent in that great capi- tal formed a new departure in the missionary work. He lived to see the great college for the education through the English tongue of the higher classes of Hindoo youth which he estab- lished there attended by thousands of pupils THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 57 and forming a landmark in the conduct of mis- sions to the more civilized heathen. Perhaps no Scotsman of this century has done a grander work in any land than this great man did at Cal- cutta. And almost equal commendation may be accorded to the similar career at Bombay of John Wilson — a man of kindred spirit and attainments, who was also made moderator of the Free Church General Assembly on one of his return-visits to Scotland. Thus has the Scottish pulpit through its great missionaries been sending its influence around the globe. In the vast populations of paganism it has kindled the lights of education, of high culture, of free thought, of science and liberty — in a word, of Christian civilization, the noblest civilization known to mankind. These lights can no more be extinguished than can the onward progress of the race be arrested. What has been done in Asia has also been done in Aus- tralia, in New Zealand and in Africa. The name of David Livingstone has been written across the centre of the Dark Continent as was that of his predecessor and father-in-law, Robert Moffat, over South Africa. Livingstone must henceforth stand among the greatest discoverers of the century, as he is one of its most daring and heroic mission- aries. In philanthropy and in all that constitutes the true missionary spirit he will hold equal rank with Vanderkemp and Moffat in Africa, with 58 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. Henry Martyn in Persia, and Judson in Burmah, with Gutzlaff and Morrison in China. And he has written his name also amid the stars of mod- ern geographical service. Scotland has given many names to science ; his is one which be- longs alike to philanthropy. His long and toil- some career in Central Africa, surrounded by savages and the dangers of the most pestilential climates, shut out so long from all the sweets of home and native land, is one of the great sig- nificant facts of the age. It shows what men will dare for truth and love. It shows, too, how heroi- cally such men can die. CHAPTER VII. SCOTLAND'S LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. NO account of Scotland's influence on the world in the general advance of civilization would be complete without some notice of her literature and her authorship. It is here, per- haps, that her educational and elevating influence comes most distinctly into view and is most gen- erally appreciated. It is by her public press, not less than by her sacred pulpit, that Scotland has spread her opinions before the reading world and become to a large extent a leader of its thought and a teacher of its youth. By her books, her public presses, her world-admired authors, Scot- land's influence has gone largely into the educa- tion not only of the British nation, but of the whole English-speaking race. It is at least one of the potential factors in the problem of the education and the right direction of this now most prominent and influential of all civilized races. At this point, however, our survey widens into a field almost illimitable. Who is competent to bring into one brief sketch the literary, scientific, 59 60 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. political, educational and religious authorship of the last two centuries of Scottish history ? In nothing has this small country been more pre- eminently distinguished than in that brilliant galaxy of authorship which stretches its starry belt across the whole literary firmament. In every department of literature, science, art, invention, philosophy, her writers have risen to the first rank and sent their influence to the ends of the earth. Her text-books of philosophy, theology, political, legal and medical science, education and reform, have found their way into the schools of all English-speaking Christendom ; while the great periodical magazines and reviews have helped to form the opinions, to shape the thinking and to direct the practical administration of all nations. Scotland has thus become for generations past a " city set on a hill whose light could not be hid." That tremendous energy of character which through all the early ages spent itself in wast- ing wars and carnage, as soon as the sword was sheathed at the Union of 1707, took the direction of peaceful invention, of useful industry, of practi- cal discovery, of scientific research, of philosoph- ical inquiry, of poetic inspiration, of historical romance, of educational reform, of political en- franchisement, of religious discussion, of elegant letters, absorbing and developing the best-culti- vated intellect of the country. And now for a hundred and seventy years this highly-cultivated LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6 1 and thoroughly-disciplined intellectual and moral force — equal, probably, in native ability to any that ever existed in any land — has been expend- ing all its resources in productions and achieve- ments that not unfrequently evince the highest triumphs of genius. Military glory has been ex- changed for the civic arm and the laurel-wreath, and Scotland's pen has become mightier than the sword. Thus modern Scotland, in place of a home of warriors, has grown to be the abode of an indus- trious, thriving, wealthy and happy people send- ing their well-trained and God-fearing sons and daughters into all the colonies of the British crown and into all new countries around the globe, there to make independent and happy homes for them- selves. Scotland herself is filled with such homes, from the palatial residences of noble and gentry down to the humblest dwellings of her Christian yeomanry. It was of such Christian homes, where her humblest cottagers ply their daily toil and eat their frugal meal, that the greatest of her national bards sang : " From scenes like these Old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad ; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, An honest man's the noblest work of God." One crowning glory of Scotland — that which gives her moral power at home and educational 62 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. influence all around the globe — is her Christian literature and her illustrious authorship. Her literature is for the most part baptized with the spirit of the gospel and consecrated at the altar of Christ. No literature of any land has been purer, more elevating, more inspiring in all its aims and influences, for none has ever been more fully pervaded with the very life and character of Christianity. The deep inspiration that comes from the Bible, alike pervading pulpit and press, is the true source of that influence which has made Scotland so potential in the education and civilization of recent times. Hugh Miller somewhere remarks that Eng- land has reached a higher rank of authorship than Scotland ever attained — that Scotland has produced no Shakespeare, no Milton, no Bacon, no Sir Isaac Newton, no John Locke. Is not this an overstretch of candor against his own country in the honest Scotsman? With as much truth it may be said that England has produced no Burns, no Walter Scott, no James Watt, no Sir William Hamilton, no Mary Somerville. It is difficult and unfair to offset the children of genius against one another. Each has his own high and divine vocation ; each is supreme in his own line of excellence. England to this day has no Hugh Miller; Scotland never had but one, and may never have another. John Knox and Thomas Chalmers, Robert Burns and Walter LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 63 Scott, Mary Somerville and Hugh Miller, David Livingstone and Alexander Duff, belong to that class of characters which we describe as sin gene- ris. They cannot well be compared with others, but each is in his own order unique and supreme. As we go to England to find the highest Shake- speare and the sublimest Milton the race has pro- duced, we go to Scotland to see the noblest Burns and the greatest Scott. Incomparable Robert Burns, as distinguished in song as Bruce was in battle ; the child of poverty, the child of genius, the child of nature ; the poet of humanity, the man of feeling, the interpreter of the common people, the artist of the soul ; loved, honored, idolized, by all Scotsmen, at home and abroad, as no poet was ever loved before ; his memory as fresh and green to-day in the hearts of his countrymen as it was three-quarters of a century ago; notwithstanding all his faults and foibles a true representative of the national heart and char- acter, and therefore entitled to wear, as he does wear, the laureate-crown of Scotland ! No name in literature perhaps has won a more profound and cordial homage for the genius of the man, and at the same time a deeper sympathy for the errors and misfortunes that so beset and darkened his pathway. How truly he struck all the deepest and tenderest chords of feeling in his matchless songs ! And how have the hearts of all civilized men who read his mother-tongue re- 64 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. sponded in loving admiration to those songs ever since he, the unfriended ploughman, first struck his inspiring lyre ! As truly of him as of Byron might his countryman Pollok have said : " He touched his harp, and nations heard entranced." Since the close of this unhappy life there is scarcely an English or American writer of any prominence in literature who has not paid a lov- ing tribute to the memory of Burns. His un- adorned and simple verse has been an inspiration of beauty and of love to the young poets of all the generations that have followed. The humble dwelling in Ayreshire where he first saw the light and the substantial monument that overlooks the Doon have been a sort of shrine where the trav- elers of all lands have come to attest their hom- age for his genius and their appreciation of the noble sentiments of truth and goodness that adorned his verse. It was in fitting recognition of the genius which had conferred such honor upon Scotland that his countrymen long after his death erected on one of the hills of their ancient capital a stately and imposing monument to Burns. In after-years another prominent site of the city was crowned in like manner with the magnificent monument of Scott. Edinburgh wears them both proudly among her crown-jewels. Poets, orators, divines and statesmen in all civilized lands have found the name of Burns a fruitful theme, and LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6$ vied with one another in throwing a chaplet of honor on his brow. In recent times his distin- guished countrymen Thomas Carlyle and Princi- pal Shairp have written, each with clear discrim- ination, and yet with eminently just appreciation, loving monographs on his life and character. Nothing, perhaps, in all Mr. Carlyle's numerous writings is more admirable than this sketch of the peasant-poet. What achievements in verse beyond those so early won might he not have reached had i he but escaped those evil influences which at &st overmastered his splendid powers and brought him to a premature grave ere he had passed the meridian of life ! But even as it is he sang so sweetly, so truly, so gloriously, as to embalm his name for ever in the hearts of his countrymen and make that name a familiar house- hold word in every habitation of the English- speaking race. That name is to-day one of the honored and enduring names of all literature. That name, despite the foibles of the poet, is a potential influence for humanity, for freedom, for universal brotherhood and good-will among men and nations, for right and justice, honesty and truth. It is a talisman to charm the world and make old Scotia's power felt wherever the foot of man has trod. Who stands next among her canonized bards ? Unquestionably, Walter Scott. His, however, is 66 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. a double diadem. To the laurel-crown of po- esy is added the amaranthine chaplet of his- torical romance, and the later outshines the earlier glory. Genius is the most wonderful endowment of man. It is hard to say what genius cannot do. It is not often given to human genius to achieve the highest excellence in two departments of lit- erature so distinct as those of poetic numbers and prose fiction, yet Walter Scott, apparently at a bound and without an effort, won them both. As the new and romantic bard of the North he sang his Lay of the Last Minstrel, his Lady of the Lake and Marmion in strains so sweet and joyous, and anon so martial and heroic, so true to nature and to Scotland, that the world heard entranced. And then, when he stood on these poetic heights, he purposed in his heart to take another step. As the author of Waverley — the " Great Unknown " — he poured forth in rapid succession that bril- liant series of historical romances and life-fictions which for power of delineation, fascinating interest and universal popularity find scarcely a parallel in the annals of literature. All Scotland hailed him as the great enchanter ; all the world recognized him as standing single and supreme in a depart- ment of literature which his own genius may be said to have created, and in which to this day he stands without an equal amongst his successors and imitators. He made a new era for Scotland. He opened Scotland to all the world as it had LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6j never been opened before. He threw a new charm over Scottish history and over Scottish scenery. The world read and admired; to this day it has not ceased to read and admire. Trav- elers from all lands rushed in to gaze upon the scenes of grandeur and beauty depicted on his pages. In literary history no man, perhaps, has ever done so much by his pen for a country as Scott did for Scotland — so much to exalt the national character and make it known to all the world. It has been well said that Scotland is now Scott's-land. And Abbotsford is the culmi- nating glory of it all. 'Tis a fine tribute to the character of Walter Scott which is given by Alexander Smith : " Never was an author so popular as Scott, and never was popularity worn so lightly and gracefully. In his own heart he- did not value it highly, and he cared more for his plantations at Abbotsford than for his poems and his novels. He was loved by everybody. George IV. on his visit to the northern kingdom declared that Scott was the man he most wished to see. He was a great, simple, sincere, warm-hearted man. The mass of his greatness takes away from our sense of its height. He is the light in which Scotland is now seen. He has pro- claimed all over the world Scottish story, Scot- tish humor, Scottish feeling and Scottish virtue." There can be no doubt that the literature of Scotland took a new departure with the writings 68 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. of this gifted man. In him the North Briton * became a very cosmopolitan whose teeming pro- ductions commanded the admiration of the world. The "author of Waveyley" belonged not alone to Scotland, but to literature — to all lands, all classes, all generations, of men. When the veil of mystery that had so long concealed his identity was at length lifted, the noble character of the man was as conspicuous as the consummate ge- nius of the author. No writer of modern times has done more to revive and to keep alive the spirit of past ages than Sir Walter Scott. In this respect he has been the benefactor of the world. He has thrown over history a light of romance in which the young and the aged of each generation since his time have continued to read it with new interest. This he has done by both his poetry and his historical novels, in all of which, unlike many of his successors, he invariably adhered to the most exalted standard of virtue and wrote n£ line which the moralist could wish to blot. Able critics like Professor Shairp have pointed out the striking resemblance between his longer romantic poems, such as the Lay, Lady of the Lake and Marmion, and the heroic poems of Homer. In these national ballads of Scott there is not a little of the life and fire as well as of the descriptive energy of the highest epic poetry, and the true Homeric spirit of the Iliad is breathed LITERATURE -AND AUTHORSHIP. 69 forth in all his battle-scenes, such as that of " Flodden Field," in the last canto of Marmion, or that of " Bannockburn" in the Lord of the Isles, or even that of " Fitzjames and Roderick D'hu," in the Lady of the Lake. Leaving out of view the supernatural machinery of the old pagan mythology which Homer delighted to in- troduce, these spirited pieces of Sir Walter would not suffer in comparison with the descriptions of the very prince of poets. In Professor Shairp's fine little volume on the Aspects of Poetry, in speaking of Scott's influence on the world, and especially of his wonderful power to delight the heart of childhood and youth almost beyond any other writer, the author gives us the following very suggestive remarks : " Mor- alists before now have asked, ' What has Scott done by all his singing about battles and knights and chivalry but merely amuse his fellow-men ? Has he in any way really elevated and improved them ?' It might be enough to answer this ques- tion by saying that of all writers, in verse or prose, he has done most to make us understand history, to let in light and sympathy upon a wide range of ages which had become dumb and meaningless to men, and which but for him might have con- tinued so still. There must be something high or noble in that which can so take unsophisticated hearts. In his later days Scott is reported to have asked Laidlaw what he thought the moral influ- JO SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. ence of his writings had been. ' Laidlaw well re- plied that his works were the delight of the young, and that to have so reached their hearts was sure- ly a good work to have done.' Scott was affected almost to tears, as well he might be. Again, not the young only, but the old, those who have kept themselves most childlike, who have carried the boy's heart farthest with them into life, — they have loved Scott's poetry even to the end. Something of this, no doubt, may be attributed to the pleas- ure of reverting in age to the things that have delighted our boyhood. But would the best and purest men have cared to do this if the things which delighted their boyhood had not been worthy ? It is the great virtue of Scott's poet- ry, and of his novels also, that, quite forgetting self, they describe man and outward nature broad- ly, truly, genially as they are. All contemporary poetry — indeed, all contemporary literature — goes to work in the exactly opposite direction, shaping men and things after patterns self-originated from within, describing and probing human feelings and motives with an analysis so searching that all manly impulse withers before it and single- hearted straightforwardness becomes a thing im- possible. Against this whole tendency of modern poetry and fiction, so weakening, so morbidly self- conscious, so unhealthily introspective, what more effective antidote than the bracing atmosphere of Homer and Shakespeare and Scott ?" LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 7 1 This able and accomplished writer closes his justly-appreciative criticism upon his gifted coun- tryman with the following passage, which may be commended not only to Scotsmen, but to all admirers of the character and genius of Scott throughout the world : " To have awakened and kept alive in an artificial and too money- loving age that character of mind which we call ' romantic,' which by transformation can become something so much beyond itself, is, even from the severest moral point of view, no mean merit. To higher than this few poets can lay claim. But let the critics praise him, or let them blame. It matters not : his reputation will not wane, but will grow w ith time. Therefore we do well to make much of Walter Scott. He is the only Homer who has been vouchsafed to Scotland — I might almost say, to modern Europe. He came at the latest hour when it was possible for a great epic minstrel to be born, and the altered condition of the world will not admit of another." We can scarcely agree with so sweeping a vati- cination. There are yet more things in heaven and earth than are known to our philosophy or sung by any minstrelsy. The writer forgets that there is a great Western world, with its teeming millions and its rising civilizations and its unfath- omed capacities, that as yet has had but little his- tory, still less philosophy, and is only collecting the materials for its epics. The possibilities of 72 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. the future on this side of the Atlantic are still large. After Burns and Scott, there is a brilliant array of poets and literary writers whose names are household words with all who speak the English tongue — Smollett and Falconer; MacPherson, Boswell and Beattie ; Thomson, sweet singer of the Seasons ; Campbell, author of the Pleasures of Hope ; Graham, the bard of the Sabbath; Mackenzie, the Scottish Addison, author of the Man of Feeling ; Professor Wilson, of the Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life ; Robert Poll ok, of the Course of Time ; James Montgomery, the sweet psalmist of the Church ; Motherwell and Aytoun : Jane Porter, Joanna Baillie, Allan Ram- say, George Macdonald, John Lockhart, Lord Jeffrey and the great reviewers. Nor has the Muse of History withheld her wreath from Scottish brows. The historical wri- ters of Scotland, in the fullness of their research and in the splendor of their diction, hold a rank not excelled by any of the great historians of modern times. High on the rolls of fame stand the great names of George Buchanan, William Robertson, David Hume, Sir Archibald Alison, Thomas Carlyle and Sir James Mackintosh, the latter to his brilliant genius as a profound phil- osophical historian adding the still more brilliant reputation of the jurist, the statesman and the orator. As an advocate at the bar and as a de- LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 73 bater in the British Parliament, like his country- men and predecessors on the same field, Lord Erskine and Chief-Justice Mansfield, he won his way to the foremost rank of greatness in an age of great men. This distinguished trio — Erskine, Mansfield and Mackintosh — may be taken as the representatives of a class of North Britons who, finding Edinburgh too small for their genius, have pressed their way to the metropolis of the empire, and from the high seats of power in Parliament, on the bench and in the Cabinet have made their names and their influence felt as far as Britain's power is felt. In eloquence, learning and states- manship there are no greater names than those of the Scotch trio — Erskine, Mansfield and Mack- intosh. They are the full-grown compeers and equals of Chatham, Fox and Burke, and on this high ground of eloquence Scotland stands side by side with England. Of the writers just named, some might almost be called the oracles of literary opinion, so great was the reputation they gained at home and so wide their celebrity abroad through their varied productions. Such was the case with the learned and at that time popular historians Hume, Rob- ertson and Alison, read all over England and America. So was it with the eloquent and bril- liant Sir James Mackintosh, always the advocate of popular rights. Equally popular and fascinat- ing in their day were the writings of John Wilson 74 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. (" Christopher North ") and the critics of the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood 's Magazine, and a host of young writers, some of Scotch and some of English birth, like Lord Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, Sydney Smith, Thomas de Quincey, Thomas Macaulay, John Lockhart and Mackin- tosh, who either in person gathered around Edin- burgh as their literary metropolis or through the pages of the great Reviews held periodical communication with the reading public of the world. In this connection one distinguished name de- serves a more distinct notice as filling a large space in the world's thought during much of the present century. It is that of Thomas Car- lyle, a Scotchman by birth and education, who spent the larger portion of his protracted life at Chelsea, near London, where by his numerous writings he achieved the widest literary renown as a profound and original thinker. He lived in a circle of men of letters of the highest order, where his brilliant genius was fully appreciated, and probably no one of them all during his whole career obtained a stronger hold upon the world's attention. His first important work, the Sartor Resartus of some fifty years ago, introduced him to the public as a remarkable writer, and his suc- ceeding volumes — Heroes and Hero-Worship, The Life and Letters of Cromwell, The French Revolu- tion, Frederick the Great, Miscellanies and Latter- LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. ?$ Day Pamphlets — but served to confirm the public estimate of his great ability. His writings have been read around the globe. They have been a power among all civilized men of our times, and it may be questioned whether any single writer of the century has exerted a wider and deeper influence over the minds of men, especially of young men. Some of these writings have be- come a part of the permanent literature of the age, and, though there has come a reaction against his influence as an oracle of opinion, they will no doubt long continue to be read with interest. Carlyle wrote no poems ; he rather held the verse-makers in contempt, as he did so many other classes. Still, his writings have some of the noblest elements of poetry. He has been styled a great prose-poet, though he is far from being a fine prose-writer. He sets all the laws of good English at defiance and sacrifices every element of grace and beauty on the altar of giant strength. In vigor and impassioned fervor no one ever went beyond him. His countryman Professor Shairp, in an admirable critique on his genius, says : " Carlyle's book on the French Revolution has been called the great modern epic ; and so it is — an epic as true and germane to this age as Homer's was to his." As to relig- ious opinion, it is difficult to say what Mr. Car- lyle held — if, indeed, he held anything firmly. ?6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. One of his contemporaries not unaptly describes him as "a Puritan who had lost his religion." He would appear, however, never to have given up the two fundamental beliefs in God and im- mortality. Unquestionably, his writings inculcate throughout a stern and high morality as set forth in the Christian Scriptures. Professor Shairp says: "Though the superstructure of Puritanism had disappeared, the original superstructure re- mained : the stern, stoical Calvinism of his nature was the foundation on which all his views were built. His religious faith, if we may venture to trace it, would seem to be the result of three things — his own strong, stern nature, his early Calvinistic training, and these two transformed by the after-influx of German transcendentalism tempered by Goethism." CHAPTER VIII. THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCOTLAND. IT is in the two closely-affiliated realms of science and philosophy that the intellectual education and development of a nation may be said to attain its higher levels. To this needs only to be added the equally important moral and religious development to make the education complete and the work of advancement satisfac- tory and perfect. Without claiming for the Scot- tish people any superior excellence over other civilized communities in these respects, it is enough now to say that during the past two cen- turies their progress has been manifest, and they have now reached these higher levels of modern cultivated thought. In the wide fields of invention and discovery and of the natural and physical sciences the sons of Scotland have ever marched with the vanguard in the grand army of human progress. From James Watt, the constructor of the steam-engine, and John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, and Colin Maclaurin's great treatise On Fluxions, down to Sir David Brewster the astronomer, 77 78 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. Playfair the geometrician, Sir Roderic Murchison the geographer, Sir Charles Lyell and Hugh Mil- ler the geologists, and from the early African trav- elers Mungo Park and Clapperton down to her great missionaries Robert Moffat and David Liv- ingstone in Africa, Claudius Buchanan and Alex- ander Duff in India, — little Scotland has borne her full share in the great work of scientific investi- gation and discovery, and in the still greater work of the world's evangelization. Her sons of science, her Christian civilizers, her heroic missionaries, have " stood before kings ; they have not stood before mean men." In the advancement of the inductive sciences, as well as in that of intellectual and moral phil- osophy, in Scotland, her great universities bore no inconsiderable part. These ancient and hon- ored seats of learning, though never so richly endowed as those of England, were from their early foundations the radiating centres of light and influence to the whole Scottish people. Around them gathered the most learned and noted men of the times. In them were edu- cated the young men who devoted themselves to scientific research or philosophic inquiry, and who in after-life were called back, crowned with honors, to fill the professor's chair in their alma mater, and from these centres of learning to send forth to the world the matured results of their investigations. Scotland has been highly favored SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. Jg with such seats of learning, having had four of them from early times — the two principal ones in the two chief cities of the realm, the renowned universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the other two in the ancient cities of St. Andrews and Aberdeen, not so widely known, but still ancient, honorable and influential in their share of the scientific, classical, philosophical, literary and theological training of the successive gene- rations of her youth. Nor has she from the foun- dation of these great schools ever been without an influence, both direct and indirect, upon the world at large. Through these schools, back to their origin, Scotland has been to a large extent the educator of the youth of other Christian lands. Into their academic halls from year to year have come the sons of the wealthy, from England, from Ireland, from America, from all the British dependencies abroad, and even from the Continent, to receive the higher culture of science, theology, law, medicine, philosophy. Es- pecially in the earlier history of our own coun- try, when institutions of learning were in compar- ative infancy here, was this educational influence of Scotland manifest in our pulpits and in all the learned professions. Here, from the lips of the most eminent professors, did many of our youth go to receive the finishing instructions of their life-work. And thither still do some of them go. One of the distinguished men first named, the 80 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. celebrated mathematician and philosopher Colin Maclaurin, was successively connected with three of these noted schools. He studied at Glasgow, where he took the degree of Master of Arts at the age of fifteen. He then obtained the math- ematical chair at Marischal College, Aberdeen, at the age of seventeen. At nineteen he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1725, at the age of twenty-seven, he was elected pro- fessor of mathematics at Edinburgh, where his lectures contributed much to raise the character of that university as a school of science. A con- troversy with Bishop Berkely led to the publica- tion of his Treatise on Fluxions. Of all the Scottish savans of the last century, the one who has probably acquired the widest and most enduring fame was Adam Smith, the author of the celebrated treatise on The Wealth of Nations. Before this book appeared he had already won a high reputation as an acute thinker in his chair of logic, and afterward of moral phil- osophy, at the University of Glasgow, having published two important works — The Theory of the Moral Sentiments and a Dissertation on Lan- guages. The appearance of his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations at once established his higher fame. It constituted a new departure in economical science. It revolution- ized the public opinion of the world on many questions of trade and commerce. It broke down SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 8 1 a thousand ancient prejudices and gave a new impulse to thought and a new direction to com- mercial enterprise. It demonstrated how both individuals and nations could grow rich without despoiling or interfering with each other. It entitled the author to rank as a pioneer — if not, indeed, the very founder — of political economy as a separate branch of human knowledge. He raised it to a position which it has never lost — of being one of the most important of all the modern sciences. His profound treatise became a text-book of instruction in many of the higher schools and colleges of all lands. It gave to the doctrine of free trade a prominence which it has held to this day among the deep problems of political economy. After ail the advances of a century, the name of Adam Smith still -stands as an authority among the greatest thinkers of the world. The mathematical and physical sciences in Scotland during the same century were well rep- resented at her universities by the distinguished names of Robert Simson, James Hutton and John Playfair, whose learned researches, given to the public in many forms of publication, contributed not a little to the general advancement of knowl- edge at home and abroad. The present century has furnished a bright cluster of scientific names in Scotland, contribut- ing their full share to that exalted estimation in 82 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. which scientific pursuits are now held in all civ- ilized nations. Of these was Hugh Miller, a self- taught man from the stone-quarries and a master of pure English diction, author of the Old Red Sandstone and the Testimony of the Rocks, the devotee and the martyr of scientific investigation. He brought to the elucidation of these studies a fresh and brilliant literary ability almost as untutored and spontaneous as that of his im- mortal countryman Robert Burns. Seldom has science in any country been made so clear, and so attractive to the popular mind as in his learned yet fascinating pages. Another eminent scientist of Scotland contemporary with Hugh Miller was Sir Charles Lyell, whose popular geological writ- ings and extended geological tours in many lands did much to develop his favorite science. The honor of knighthood was conferred upon him in recognition of the great services he had rendered to the cause of scientific knowledge. In this honored class stand the great names of Sir David Brewster and Sir Roderic Murchison of Edinburgh, well worthy, in the value and extent of their scientific labors, to be associated with the illustrious names of Michael Faraday and Sir John Herschel of the same period in London. Perhaps no two men of the times have conferred greater lustre upon British science than these two distinguished North Britons. Sir David Brews- ter — inventor of the kaleidoscope, editor of the SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 83 Edinburgh Encyclopedia and the Pliilosophical Journal, author of numerous scientific volumes covering a wide range of knowledge — lived long to adorn his native land by his rare virtues of character and by his contributions to science. " We love to think of him," says a contemporary, " as the experimental philosopher who combined in so extraordinary a degree the strictest severity of scientific argument and form with a freedom of fancy and imagination which lent picturesque- ness to all his illustrations and invested his later writings especially with an indefinable charm." While he lived no intelligent visitor of Edinburgh from abroad missed seeing the genial and accom- plished Sir David Brewster. Scarcely less dis- tinguished is the far-famed geologist and geog- rapher Sir Roderic Murchison, the friend of Livingstone, president of the Royal Geographical Society and of the British Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. No man living, perhaps, has contributed more by his studies and his per- sonal exertions to promote geographical science in Great Britain and to enkindle a spirit of adven- ture among the scientific explorers in distant lands. Another distinguished representative of the most recent Scottish science is Professor William Thomson of the University of Glasgow, one of the ablest of living mathematicians and natural philosophers. He is the author of many learned works and of some brilliant discoveries in sub- 84 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. marine telegraphy, to which he has devoted much research. His name is intimately associated with the successful solution of the great and once-dif- ficult problem of connecting the two continents by the Atlantic cable. By his long-continued experiments and investigations he contributed — perhaps more than any other one man — to the ultimate accomplishment of that great scheme of interoceanic communication which now so won- derfully binds the world together in thought, and so magnificently illustrates the triumph of mod- ern science. Whatever of good this practical realization of one of the great ideas of our most recent science may yet bring to the final triumph of Christian civilization among all nations, it is not without significance that Scotland, through her ancient university and her learned professor, has labored in the problem. In the coming glory Scotland, though small among the world's great potentates and dominions, will be entitled to her share. In the recent authorship of Scotland the duke of Argyle has won a distinguished position by several popular works which have been greatly admired on both sides of the Atlantic. His Reign of Laiv and his Primeval Ma?i — mainly contributions to science, but written in a pro- found philosophic spirit — have passed through many editions, and certainly take rank with the ablest works of our times on subjects of this kind. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 85 He is a thinker and a scholar, showing on every page a thorough mastery of the intricate and im- portant subjects he discusses. His volumes are replete with strong, sound, discriminating thought presented in a style of great clearness, reminding one of the lucid pages of his countryman Hugh Miller. It is refreshing to find the broadest sci- entific culture of the age thus combined in an author who at every step fills us with a convic- tion of his deep earnestness in the quest of truth and of his judiciousness in the statement of his opinions. The noble author deserves well of his country, and by these volumes has made rich contributions to the cause of popular science and philosophic truth. At its first appearance a competent critic pronounced Primeval Man " the most clear, graceful, pointed and precise piece of ethical reasoning which had been published for a quarter of a century." " Its great end is to show that it is impossible to pursue any investigation of man's history from the purely physical side. Its reasoning seems to us absolutely conclusive against the upholders of the natural-selection theory." In his work on the Reign of Law the accom- plished author has discussed some of the most abstruse and perplexing problems which divide the ablest speculative thinkers of our times. The great aim of the volume is to show that, while law reigns supreme in all the universe through- 86 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. out mind and matter, its supremacy does not exclude a divine Lawgiver : " Creation by law, evolution by law, development by law — or, as in- cluding all these kindred ideas, the reign of law — is nothing but the reign of creative force, directed by creative knowledge, worked under the control of creative power and in fulfillment of creative purpose." We scarcely know a finer passage in our recent literature than that which occurs at the close of this able discussion, where the author vindicates the presence and agency of God in all parts of this law-governed universe. He says : " The superstition which saw in all natural phenomena the action of capricious deities was not more irrational than the superstition which sees in them nothing but the action of invariable law. Men have been right, and not wrong, when they saw in the facts of nature the variability of adjustment even more surely than they saw the constancy of force. They were right when they identified these phenomena with the phenomena of mind. They were right when they regarded their own faculty of contrivance as the nearest and truest analogy by which the construction of the universe can be conceived and its order un- derstood. They were right when they regarded its arrangements as susceptible of change, and when they looked upon a change of will as the efficient cause of other changes without number SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 8? and without end. It was well to feel this by the force of instinct ; it is better still to be sure of it in the light of reason. It is an immense satisfaction to know that the result of logical analysis does but confirm the testimony of consciousness and run parallel with the primeval traditions of belief. It is an unspeakable comfort that when we come to close quarters with this vision of invariable law seated on the throne of Nature we find it a phan- tom and a dream — a mere nightmare of ill-di- gested thought and of God's great gift of speech abused. We are, after all, what we thought our- selves to be. Our freedom is a reality, and not a name. Our faculties have, in truth, the relations which they seem to have to the economy of na- ture. Their action is a real and substantial action on the constitution and course of things. The laws of nature were not appointed by the great Lawgiver to baffle his creatures in the sphere of conduct, still less to confound them in the region of belief. As parts of an order of things too vast to be more than partly understood they present, indeed, some difficulties which perplex the intellect, and a few also, it cannot be denied, which wring the heart. But, on the whole, they stand in harmonious relations with the human spirit. They come visibly from one pervading Mind and express the authority of one endur- ing kingdom. As regards the moral ends they serve, this too can be clearly seen — that the pur- 88 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. pose of all natural laws is best fulfilled when they are made, as they can be made, the instruments of intelligent will and the servants of enlightened conscience." These able contributions to natural science are the more important as coming from one who has thus made good his position both as a scientist and as a philosopher. They inspire us with confidence both by their research and by their conservatism. They illustrate how the widest scientific culture of the age is still consistent and harmonious with all those fundamental ethical principles that underlie the Christian system, and that distinguish the Scottish philosophy as a philosophy of sound reason and Common sense. While the noble writer is at home in the fields of physical science and does not shrink from discussing the deepest ethical and philosophical problems, yet, true to the genius of his country, he ever stands on solid ground and is never car- ried off to the dreamlands of an uncertain meta- physical speculation. He can look back upon an illustrious ancestry of stern, heroic, fighting men. He has here fought a higher and better battle. Let us turn now to survey another field of Scotland's authorship and influence, closely allied to that of the natural sciences. It is that of the higher intellectual and moral philosophy, or, as it may be called, metaphysical speculation. This SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 89 elevated region of abstract logical thought, which the educated men of all civilized ages and races have cultivated just in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge, has not lacked attrac- tion for the Scotch. If knowledge is power, then thought is power, philosophy is power ; for phil- osophy has to deal with thought and with knowl- edge as its essential elements. If, as has been said, the world is governed by ideas, then phil- osophy governs the world of thinking men ; for it is philosophy that classifies our ideas, systema- tizes our science and gives direction to all the great energies and enterprises of educated men. In this realm of pure reason, this wide domain of intellectual, moral and metaphysical philoso- phy, Scotland may be said to have created an independent school of her own whose power, almost omnipotent at home, has extended its modifying influences over all other Christian lands. In the olden times, as we have seen, the Scots were great fighters and dealt hard blows ; in more recent times they have been content to fight the higher battles of the mind. They have been great thinkers, deep thinkers, hard thinkers. They have well cultivated the reasoning faculties and sharp- ened them by use. They are dialecticians and logicians of the first order. In no country in the world has its dominant philosophy had more to do with the living thought of its people. It go SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. has stamped itself upon their character. It has been a potential factor in their education. It has given a coloring to their whole literature. It has gone into the ministrations of the pulpit as no other philosophy ever did. In all her history Scotland has probably produced no one thing which is more distinctly her own, which has ex- erted a stronger influence over her leading minds or contributed more to make her influence felt and respected abroad, than her indigenous, strongly- marked and solid philosophy. It has never been a philosophy of dreams and fancies, but a philos- ophy resting on the fundamental experience and axioms of intuition and common sense, the ob- served facts of human experience and the clear deductions of enlightened reason. This philos- ophy, the matured growth of ages, has been taught from generation to generation in the four great universities, especially in the law and divin- ity schools, and has been promulgated to the world not only by the- leading reviews and magazines, but in many profound systematic treatises. By this philosophy, both at home and in for- eign lands, Scotland has spoken in a voice as potential as it has been decided. There has never been much ambiguity in her teaching. With a few exceptions like David Hume, the Scottish philosophers have in the main uttered but one voice and taught one great system. By it they have become educators to mankind, and they have SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 9 1 largely led the thinking of the English-speaking race both in the Old World and in the New. There can be no question that they led it through all the colonial period of our own history, and that they still lead it both here and in Canada, notwithstanding the large influx, during the pres- ent century, of the more pretentious schools of German and French philosophy. So far as this New World can be said to have any one phil- osophy which it can claim as its own and call " American," it is certainly in its fundamental principles much more closely allied to Scotland than to Germany or to France. Philosophy, like all other departments of human knowledge, is progressive and changes both its teachers and its text-books from age to age, the old and im- perfect systems giving place to the new and im- proved methods. So has it been in Scotland. Still, there is to-day no sounder philosophy in the world than that which has been expounded in the writings of Reid and Brown, Abercrombie and Dugald Stewart, the brilliant Sir William Ham- ilton and our honored James McCosh. Many errors have from time to time been exploded and cast off: the true philosophy is in the sub- stantial residuum of truth that remains. Dr. McCosh is at this time probably the ablest living representative of the Scottish philosophy. No man is better qualified to expound it. His own contributions to its elucidation have not 92 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. been inconsiderable. In himself he well illus- trates that strong and sound educational influ- ence which we have been tracing in these pages, and which has gone out from his native land over all the earth. He may well be called a mission- ary not only of gospel truths, but of philosoph- ical thought. Since he came among us, and even before, he has been doing in America that kind of educational work which his great countryman Witherspoon did a hundred years ago. His Method of the Divine Government, which gave him his early and world-wide reputation, his Typical Forms, Intuitions of the Mind and Fundamental Truth, are all thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Scottish philosophy, as they are with sound Christian doctrine. These works form a part of the best literature of the age, have been studied in many colleges, have been read by the leading scholars of many lands, and their principles have been inculcated from many pulpits. In his volume entitled The Scottish Pliilosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, fi'om Hutclieson to Hamilton, Dr. McCosh has given an interest- ing sketch of the leading thinkers and writers of the school for a period of about two hundred years. He has introduced the work with a chap- ter on the characteristics of this philosophy, sin- gling out its three most prominent points. He styles it the philosophy of observation, the phil- osophy of self-consciousness and the philosophy SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 93 of intuitive principles, of fundamental laws of the mind, or of the principles of common sense. These three combined constitute its great dis- tinction by which, on one side or on the other, it is differentiated from all other schools of phil- osophy. " These three characters," he says, " are found in a more or less decided form in the works of the great masters of the school." " The great merit of the Scottish philosophy," he adds, " lies in the large body of truth which it has, if not dis- covered, at least settled on a foundation which can never be moved. It possesses a unity not only in the circumstance that its expounders have been Scotchmen, but also, and. more spe- cially, in its method, its doctrines and its spirit." Dr. McCosh gives a review of the lives and opinions of more than fifty of the leading writers who through this long period contributed to swell the stream of Scottish philosophical literature and give character to the system. Among the more distinguished names on the list are Thomas Reid, Henry Home (Lord Karnes), David Hume, Adam Smith, George Campbell, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, Henry Lord Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Thomas Chalmers, Sir James Mackintosh and Sir William Hamilton. David Hume, however, is no true representative of the Scottish philosophy. He was far more distinguished as a historian and a skeptic than as a philosopher, although he was anxious to be appointed professor of moral phil- 94 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. osophy in the University of Edinburgh. His sub- tle and ingenious arguments against Christianity were satisfactorily answered in his own day by many able writers both in Scotland and in Eng- land, and they have since been answered a thou- sand times. Still, it is not to be denied that by his writings he has for more than a hundred years wielded an influence which has been as widely spread as it has been pernicious. His example is an illustration of the indestructible power of philosophic thought even when the philosophy has been false and its teachings have been baneful. His writings unquestionably had much to do in creating that skeptical and anti-Christian public sentiment in France which brought in the Revo- lution of 1789 with all its terrific results. To this day there is scarcely a writer of former times who has done more to unsettle all fundamental beliefs in Christian truth than David Hume. In this case it is most sadly true that the influence of Scotland has been enduring and as wide as the world. But in the great skeptic the philosophy of Scotland is not to be held responsible for what one of her gifted sons has done in her name. It is not the purpose of the present brief sur- vey to describe the character and the work of these eminent philosophers — not even of those who may be regarded as the greater lights of the school. Reid, Stewart, Brown and Hamilton may perhaps be taken as the truest representatives SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 95 of the school. If not the founders (for they fol- lowed a considerable line of earlier writers), they certainly may be considered as the ablest expound- ers of the Scottish philosophy. Dr. McCosh pro- nounces a just eulogium on each of these great masters of the school, especially on Dugald Stew- art and Sir William Hamilton. Of the former he says : " I have noticed that in many cases Stewart hides his originality as carefully as others boast of theirs. Often have I found, after going the round of philosophers in seeking light on some absolute subject, that in turning to Stewart his doctrine is, after all, the most profound, as it is the most judicious." He tells us that at the time when the metropolis of Scotland was the residence of many of the principal Scottish families, and of persons of high literary and social distinction, the house of Dugald Stewart became the centre and bond of an accomplished circle, himself the chief attraction. Young men of rank and for- tune became inmates of his family, and received impressions from his teaching and society which they carried through life." " In his classes of moral philosophy and political economy he had under him a greater body of young men who afterward distinguished themselves than any oth- er teacher that I can think of. Among them we have to place Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Francis Horner, Lord Lands- downe, Francis Jeffrey, Walter Scott, Sydney g6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. Smith, Thomas Brown, Thomas Chalmers, James Mill, Archibald Alison, and many others who have risen to great eminence in politics, in liter- ature or philosophy. Most of them have ac- knowledged the good they received from his lectures, while some of them have carried out in practical measures the principles which he in- culcated." In the brilliant Sir William Hamilton the two centuries of Scottish philosophy may be said to have reached the flower. Not that he was nearer the truth than his predecessors — perhaps he was not so near as some of them — but because of his originality and his learning. He had a genius for philosophy and was certainly one of the great- est thinkers of his own or any other age. In his thorough acquaintance with the philosophical writers of all ages, ancient and modern, it would be difficult to find his equal. Dr. McCosh speaks of him as the most learned of all the Scottish met- aphysicians. " When he was alive," says he, " he could always be pointed to as redeeming Scotland from the reproach of being without high schol- arship. Oxford had no man to put on the same level. Germany had not a profounder scholar or one whose judgment in a disputed point could be so relied on. No man has ever done more in cleansing the literature of philosophy of common- place mistakes, of thefts and impostures. For years to come ordinary authors will seem learned SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 97 by drawing from his stores. For scholarship in the technical sense of the term, and in particular for the scholarship of philosophy, they (his pred- ecessors) were all inferior to Hamilton, who was equal to any of them in the knowledge of Greek and Roman systems and of the earlier philoso- phies of modern Europe, and vastly above them in a comprehensive acquaintance with all schools, standing alone in his knowledge of the more phil- osophic fathers, such as Tertullian and Augus- tine ; of the more illustrious schoolmen, such as Thomas Aquinas and Scotus ; of the writers of the Revival, such as the elder Scaliger; and of the ponderous systems of Kant and the schools which ramified from him in Germany." The influence of the Scottish philosophy, re- garded as a whole, both upon Scotland and upon other countries, is admirably stated in the follow- ing striking passage from Dr. McCosh's volume : " The Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their impress on their own land — not only on the ministers of religion, and through them upon the body of the people, but also on the whole thinking mind of the country. The chairs of mental science in the Scottish colleges have had more influence than any others in germinating thought in the minds of Scottish youth and in giving a permanent bias and direction to their intellectual growth. We have the express testi- mony of a succession of illustripus men for more 7 98 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE than a century to the effect that it was Hutche- son, or Smith, or Reid, or Beattie, or Stewart, or Jardine, or Mylne, or Brown, or Chalmers, or Wilson, or Hamilton, who first made them feel that they had a mind and stimulated them to in- dependent thought. We owe it to the lectures and writings of the professors of mental science — acting always along with the theological train- ing and preaching of the country — that men of ability in Scotland have commonly been more distinguished by their tendency to inward reflec- tion than inclination to sensuous observation. Nor is it to be omitted that the Scottish meta- physicians have written the English language, if not with absolute purity, yet with propriety and taste — some of them, indeed, with elegance and eloquence — and have thus helped to advance the literary cultivation of the country. All of them have not been men of learning in the tech- nical sense of the term, but they have all been well informed in various branches of knowledge (it is to a Scottish metaphysician we owe the Wealth of Nations). Several of them have had very accurate scholarship, and the last great man among them was not surpassed in erudition by any scholar of his age. Nor has the influence of Scottish philosophy been confined to its native soil. The Irish province of Ulster has felt it quite as much as Scotland, in consequence of so many youths from the North of Ireland having been SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 99 educated at Glasgow University. Though Scot- tish metaphysicians are often spoken of with con- tempt in the southern part of Great Britain, yet they have had their share in fashioning the thought of England, and in particular did much good in preserving it, for two or three ages toward the close of the last century and the beginning of this, from falling altogether into low materialistic and utilitarian views ; and in the last age Mr. J. S. Mill got some of his views through his father from Hume, Stewart and Brown, and an active philosophic school at Oxford has built on the foundation laid by Hamilton. The United States of America, especially the writers connected with the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, have felt pleasure in acknowledging their obli- gations to the Scottish thinkers. It is a most interesting circumstance that when the higher metaphysicians of France undertook, in the be- ginning of this century, the laborious work of throwing back the tide of materialism, skepticism and atheism which had swept over the land, they called to their aid the sober and well-grounded philosophy of Scotland. Nor is it an unimportant fact in the history of philosophy that the great German metaphysician Emmanuel Kant was roused, as he acknowledges, from his dogmatic slumbers by the skepticism of David Hume." CHAPTER IX. THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. IN tracing the influence of any one country upon the general civilization of the world, the view would scarcely be complete without some mention of its women. The present sur- vey of Scotland thus far has brought to notice only the part borne by her sons. What now shall be said of her daughters? Theirs, too, is a glorious record of woman's sufferings, of heroic endeavor and patient endurance unto death. High on that list stand the noble Isabella, countess of Buchan, who set the crown on the head of Robert Bruce; Catherine Douglas, who sacrificed her right arm to save her king ; Agnes of Dunbar, who defended her castle to the last extremity; Flora McDonald, who saved the life of the Young Pretender — styled by one " the fairest flower that ever bloomed in the rough pathway of a prince's hard fortune;" the noble martyrs Margaret Wilson and Margaret Mc- Laughlan, who were bound on the seashore and drowned by the rising tide ; and, in later times, those two bright examples of woman in her lofty 100 THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. IOI sphere of home influence and Christian philan- thropy, the accomplished Lady Janet Colquhoun, and Elizabeth, last duchess of Gordon, distin- guished alike for their beauty and their benefi- cence. Still later, even in our own times, we have seen Mary Somerville, daughter of a dis- tinguished naval officer, by the simple force of her own wonderful genius and industry, achieve a distinction in the higher walks of mathematics and astronomy which placed her in the foremost ranks of the savans and scientists of this advanced nineteenth century, and will send her name down through all time as one of the most remarkable women in the world's history — remarkable for an eminence in scientific attainments which but few men have surpassed, combined with that grace of character which is the crowning glory of wo- manhood. By far the most famous woman of Scotland was Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, celebrated for her beauty, her accomplishments, her errors and her misfortunes. No name of her country has gone more fully into history and into the general literature of the world than hers. The sad story of her life and her tragical end has been the undying theme of all the generations that have followed, and to this day it has never lost its attraction to the voun